Among them were a number of deputies who congratulated him upon the skilful way in which he had passed off as a joke their non-appearance when summoned to the Assembly. From them he learned that he had been right in his surmise that Gunston knew what would happen. On the last occasion when they had met he had brought drummer boys into the chamber with him, and each time the deputies had begun a protest on any point he had had their voices drowned by ordering a roll of drums; so they had publicly announced their intention of ignoring any further summonses to attend. But now they said they would talk to their fellow deputies, and that Roger could be sure of a good attendance whenever he chose to summon them again.
He did so a week later with most satisfactory results. Having delivered the King’s message, and announced the repeal of numerous edicts which gave offence, he spoke to them of conditions in Guadalupe, which had been retaken from the British, before they had had time to fully establish themselves there, and how Victor Hugues had since butchered every priest and person of property in that island. Then he told them of his own experiences in Saint-Domingue, and how that colony had been brought to utter ruin by the dissensions of its inhabitants. Finally he pointed out that in Martinique they had been spared from the fate which had overtaken the colonists in other French territories only because the British had arrived there before the Terror in France had reached its height. But, he added, the danger was not yet past. If the French inhabitants continued to bear ill-will to the British Authorities, evil men would take advantage of their differences and, perhaps, stir up a new and greater slave rebellion which, owing to his garrison having been so weakened by sickness, it might prove beyond his powers to put down. Therefore, the two nationalities must stand shoulder to shoulder, and the colonists must give loyal obedience to such new decrees as he might issue in the name of His Majesty King George III who had sent them this message of goodwill.
He had hardly ceased speaking before he knew that he had succeeded beyond his most sanguine hopes. The difficulty they had had in putting down the first slave revolts was still fresh in their minds, and they lived in constant fear of fresh outbreaks. His frank confession about the weakness of his garrison, and his plea for unity among the white population, had gone straight to their hearts. For ten minutes on end they gave him a tremendous ovation.
The following day, with full confidence that he need fear no trouble, as Fergusson’s arrangements were already completed, Roger ordered to sea the ships on which the sick and seedy had been embarked. Then, with Amanda’s help, he entered on arrangements for a great reception, at which Madame de Kay—or Cousin Margaret as she now asked them to call her—was to present the ladies of the island. It was held on March the 4th, and proved another triumph. From then onward Roger knew that he had both the official and social leaders of French opinion in the island solidly behind him.
Had Georgina’s father, the shrewd Colonel Thursby, been there to witness these events he would have had good cause to smile. For it was he who had said on the night that Roger had received his appointment that, in making it, Mr. Pitt had shown not only generosity but sound good sense, as there were few men better fitted to rule a colony recently taken from the French than Roger Brook.
By early March further news had come in from Europe. That extraordinarily astute diplomat, Catherine of Russia, had outwitted the Prussians by entering into a pact with the Emperor of Austria for the partitioning of Poland. It was true that Prussian troops were in occupation of a considerable part of Poland, but in the face of such an alliance the Prussians would now have no alternative but to accept the Empress’s decisions on how the remnant of that unfortunate country was to be permanently split up among the three powers concerned.
The transfer of a great part of the Prussian army to the east was now having disastrous effects upon the Allies in the west. The French Army of the Rhine, under General Jourdan, was carrying all before it on a front stretching from Cleves to Coblenz, and another under Pichegru had penetrated to Amsterdam, where the French had been welcomed as liberators By the Dutch republicans. Still worse, from the British point of view, General Moreau had with great daring performed an amazing feat of war. In January, followed by a few squadrons of cavalry and a battery of horse artillery, he had galloped across the ice at the estuary of the Helder to the island of Texel, where the Dutch fleet was frozen in at its moorings, and captured the whole of it intact, so that its ships had now been added to those of the French.
Bad as this news was, three days after giving his big reception Roger received news of a much more distressing nature from nearer at hand. A sloop arrived in the port with an express from the Attorney General of Grenada. It stated that without warning on the night of March the 2nd an insurrection had broken out there, the town of Grenville had been surrounded, and the whole of its British inhabitants—men, women and children—massacred. The Governor had chanced to be in another part of the island with a party of friends, and on hearing the news they had taken a sloop round to the small port of Gouyave, only to be immediately captured on landing by another band of insurgents. The revolt had been led by a coloured planter named Julien Fédon and it was now known that he had received his directions for the plot to seize Grenada from the indefatigable Victor Hugues. After sacking Grenville, Fédon had established his headquarters on an almost inaccessible hilltop outside the town and from there was now doing his utmost to set the whole island ablaze. Any help that could be sent was most urgently needed.
Grenada being the southernmost of the Windward Islands, its nearest neighbours were, to the south Trinidad, but that was held by the Spaniards, and to the north St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Martinique, in that order, with Barbados slightly nearer than the latter but further out into the Atlantic. Hugues had already started trouble in St. Lucia and engineered a rising of Black Càribs in St. Vincent; so, apart from anything the Governor of Barbados might be able to do, Roger felt that the responsibility for the prevention of further slaughter lay mainly with him.
He was in no position to send a considerable force but was determined to do his best, and rode over to consult with Colonel Penruddock. The major part of the Fort Royal garrison was due back from its cruise in two days’ time; so it was decided that as soon as it had landed three hundred and fifty men of the St. Pierre garrison should be despatched to Grenada under a promising young Major named Marsden.
When the commandeered ships returned to port it transpired that nineteen of the sick had died while at sea but the remainder were convalescent, and that the health of the seedy men had greatly improved. As those who had succumbed would almost certainly have done so anyway, Roger was highly pleased, and thought with gratitude of his old friend Droopy Ned who had suggested to him this method of combating the scourge. He could hope now that the three hundred and fifty men of the 57th who were soon to leave for Grenada would not only turn the tide in favour of its small garrison, but return equally improved in health.
Having seen the expedition off he now allowed himself a greater degree of relaxation. Since the reception, invitations had been pouring in from all the leading families in the island. To accept as many of them as possible was obviously good policy, so Amanda, Clarissa and himself were fêted and dined and shown the beauties of the island in the pleasantest possible circumstances.
The news received from Europe in April continued to be bad. In February the Prussians had actually opened peace negotiations with the French at Basle; the Dutch Army which had been fighting to maintain the Prince of Orange had received such a mauling that it had been forced to surrender; and Tuscany had seceded from the Grand Alliance, which now seemed to be falling to pieces.
From France there were indications that the Moderates were at last getting the upper hand. The sale of the property of the relations of émigrés had been stopped and the priests and nobles sentenced to deportation had been released. More indicative still, the Government had offered liberal terms, including liberty of worship, to the Royalist Army in la Vendée, and its Chief
, the brave Charette, had signed a peace at La Jaunaie by which he acknowledged the Republic. But that meant that still more French troops were freed to fight against the remaining Allies.
The news from Grenada was also bad. Fédon still remained secure in his natural fortress and the British troops were dying like flies in the fever swamps below it. Marsden had himself gone down with Yellow Jack, and, in a fit of despair, committed suicide.
Roger was distressed, and much angered by this wastage of his men, but there was nothing he could do about it; so, very sensibly, he continued with his pleasant round of entertaining and being entertained.
Clarissa had, justifiably, become one of the most popular ‘toasts’ in the island, and was having the best of both worlds. As comparatively few of the young British Officers could speak French she was their unrivalled darling, and as she went frequently into French society with Amanda, there was a score of young Frenchmen always seeking her company. Roger watched her with interest, wondering for which of her many beaux she would soon show a definite preference; but, although she was obviously having the time of her young life, the weeks went by without any sign that she had entered upon a serious romance.
At the beginning of May, as the hot season was approaching, they moved to a smaller but very pleasant Residence high up among the hills in the interior of the island; but they continued their social life, except for modifying it to the extent that from the 1st of June no engagements were ever entered into between eleven in the morning and five in the afternoon, as for the greater part of those hours the heat was too intense for them to do anything but doze nearly naked on their beds under mosquito curtains.
In June a slave revolt broke out in the extreme south of the island, but by prompt and firm handling it was stamped out within a week; and Roger, who had gone down there to superintend operations, afterwards held a special court of justice at which he showed no mercy to the ringleaders. He also occasionally signed a death warrant for a hanging, as he gave short shrift to any of Hugues’s agitators whom his own spies caught at their nefarious work. In consequence, Martinique remained tranquil.
It was in June, too, that news arrived of the Prussians having finally agreed peace terms with the French, and that there had been an insurrection in Paris. On April the 1st—or 12th Germinal, Year III, according to the Revolutionary calendar—the sans-culottes had risen in protest against the relaxation of the persecution of the bourgeois’, but they had been put down with a firm hand by the victorious and popular General Pichegru, on his being given command of the troops in the capital.
Within a few weeks of Roger’s arrival in Martinique, he had appointed a retired merchant named Beckwith to act in the rather nebulous capacity of his Commercial Adviser and Comptroller of his Household. Mr. Beckwith’s mother had been French and he had long been resident in the island, but he had never wavered in his personal allegiance, to Britain, was still in the vigour of robust middle-age, and rich enough not to be corruptible; so he was an admirable choice to act as the guardian of Roger’s financial interests. Without being extortionate, he saw to it that as each administrative post fell vacant a successor for it was appointed who was both politically sound and could afford to contribute a suitable sum to the Governor’s ‘expenses’. He also kept a sharp eye upon the payments of dues, and for licences, that were the Governor’s official perquisites.
In consequence, by midsummer Roger had been for some months in receipt of a steady and quite considerable income. Having no worry neither about money nor the carrying out of such decrees as he issued, and with the troops in far better health from shifts of some ten per cent of them being sent to sea each week in a few coasting vessels acquired for that purpose, he was now able to enjoy to the full the gracious social life of the island, which still retained a distinct flavour of the ancien régime.
Amanda too was in excellent spirits and enjoyed abundant health. Vague and forgetful as she was by nature, now that her household was run for her by Cousin Margaret, who had accepted an invitation to move up to the summer Residence with them, she made a charming and most decorative hostess. Now, too, that she and Roger had been together again for some months without strain, he fell in love with her anew, and during this halcyon summer they enjoyed what amounted to a second honeymoon.
During August, news of further troubles in France reached them. In many parts, particularly in the cities of the south, a White Terror had set in, and bands of revengeful citizens were hunting out and murdering many of the Red Terrorists at whose hands they had suffered such miseries. Paris was said to be near starvation, and general discontent with the Government had gained wide support for another rising, in which the Jacobins and remaining extremists of the Mountain had endeavoured to use the mobs in an attempt to reimpose the old terrorist dictatorship. On May the 20th—or 1st Prairial—the storm had broken; once more the Chamber had been invaded by a howling mob and blood had been spilled in it. But the Thermidorians still controlled the army. Twenty thousand troops had been rushed into Paris overnight, this time with General Menou in command. By the 23rd the insurrection had been suppressed, and a number of its instigators sentenced to transportation to the fever ridden island of Cayenne—a punishment which had recently been meted out to the majority of those found guilty at treason trials, instead of death; but which had become popularly known as the ‘dry guillotine’.
It was early on the morning of August the 18th that Roger rode down to St. Pierre, to confer on various matters with Colonel Penruddock, and spend the night there. That evening the Colonel suggested that it might amuse him to visit a new house of entertainment that had recently been opened on the outskirts of the city. It was, he said, a brothel and a gaming-hall of the more exclusive kind; but there was no obligation to patronise either its pretty mulatto wenches or probably crookedly-run tables. It had other attractions, in that an excellent dinner was served in its garden, and afterwards one could sit and listen to strangely fascinating negro music.
At first, Roger demurred on the score that although regarded by the Catholic clergy of the island as an heretic, several of them had held him up to their congregations as a man who by his happily married life gave a fine example; and as he set some store by their opinion of him he did not want it noised abroad that he had been seen in such a place.
To that Penruddock replied that His Excellency was far from being alone in his desire to protect his reputation; and it was for that reason that many of the French nobility made a practice of hiding their identity under masks on such occasions; so why should they not do the same. To that Roger willingly agreed, and as dusk was falling, accompanied by young Cowdray and three other officers also masked, they set off in a coach driven by a coachman in plain livery for ‘Belinda’s Parlour’, as the place was called.
They had not been there long before Roger decided that the Colonel’s recommendation had been fully justified. The establishment was clean and well run; they were not pestered by the girls and the twenty odd tables in the garden were set far enough from each other to ensure the parties at each of them a pleasant privacy. The Creole dishes served proved excellent and the wines were of the first quality; so few ways of passing an evening could have been more enjoyable than to dine there in the cool, after a day of torrid heat, under a tropical sky bright with a myriad of stars.
It was not until they had finished their meal that they saw Madame Belinda, the proprietress. She came to their table then to enquire if they had everything they wanted and had been pleased by the efforts of her cook.
She had come up quite silently, and as Roger was saying something to Cowdray he did not glance at her as she first spoke. But a familiar note in her voice caused him sharply to turn his head, and he got one of the shocks of his life. Madame Belinda was none other than Lucette.
As he sat there staring at her through the slits of his mask, he marvelled at her audacity in coming to Martinique and opening a public establishment there. She must have learnt that he had survived and taken up th
e Governorship of the island; and there were other people such as his Cousin Margaret and the de Taschers who, even after a lapse of years, might recognise her.
He could only suppose that, after he had wrought havoc among de Senlac’s lieutenants and left his crew without a suitable leader, she had decided to sever her connections with the rabble that remained and make off with her share of the spoils; and that then the island in which she had spent her youth had exercised such a pull upon her that she had made up her mind to face the risk entailed in running this expensive whore-shop there.
Yet, on further thought, he realised that the risk she had taken, under a changed name, was not really very great. That he, the Governor, would ever visit her establishment must have seemed to her most unlikely. That Cousin Margaret or Madame de Tascher would do so could be entirely ruled out. And even if some men she had known as a young girl came there, and recognised her, she would be in no danger from them because they would not know that for thirteen years or more she had lived by participating in innumerable abominable crimes.
True to his principle of always looking before he leapt, Roger kept control of himself and made no move which draw her attention particularly to him. There was no risk of her running away and he did not wish to spoil the evening, which had begun so pleasantly, for the others.
For the best part of another two hours they sat on there drinking good French cognac and listening to the strange, haunting melodies of the negro singers. Then, when Penruddock suggested that perhaps the time had come to make a move, Roger said:
‘Yes, Colonel; and all my thanks are due to you for a delightful evening. However, I trust that you will forgive me for marring a social occasion by attending to one small piece of business before we leave. Strictly speaking we should have here for it a corporal and two men; but I have little doubt that we can manage it between us, and find a room for one extra passenger in our coach. Would you be good enough to send for Madame Belinda.’
The Dark Secret of Josephine Page 30
