Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/291

 told me—even in France, where they profess to understand such matters—that I retained my attractions still. You may believe that thirty years ago the Quadroon of Cash-a-crou, as they called her, had suitors, lovers, and admirers by the score. Somehow, I laughed at them all. It seemed to me that a man's affection for a girl only lasted while she despised him, and I resolved that no weakness of my own should ever bring me down a single step from the vantage-ground I held. Planters, overseers, councillors, judges, all were at my feet; not a white man in the island but would have given three months' pay for a smile from the yellow girl at Cash-a-crou; and the yellow girl—slave though she was—carried her head high above them all.

"Well, one bright morning, a week before crop-time, a fine large ship, twice the size of that brigantine in the harbour, came and dropped her anchor off the town. The same night her sailors gave a dance at one of the negro-houses in Port Welcome. I never hear a banjo in the still, calm evenings but it thrills to my very marrow still, though it will be five-and-twenty long years, when the canes are cut, since I went into that dancing-room a haughty, wilful beauty, and came out a humble, love-stricken maid. Turn a bit more to the light, my boy, that I may look into your blue eyes; they shine like his, when he came across the floor and asked me to dance. I've heard the Frenchwoman say that it takes a long time for a man to win his way into a girl's heart. Theirs is a cold country, and they have no African blood in their veins. All I know is, that your father had not spoken half-a-dozen words ere I felt for him as I never felt for any creature on earth before. I'd have jumped off the Sulphur Mountain, and never thought twice about it, if he had asked me. When we walked home together in the moonlight—for he begged hard to see me safe to my own door, and you may think I wasn't very difficult to persuade—I told him honestly that I had never loved any man but him, and never would love another, come what might. He looked down into my eyes for a moment astonished, just as you look now, and then he smiled—no face ever I saw had such a smile as your father's—and wound his great strong arm round my waist, and pressed me to his heart. I was happy then. If I might live over