Julia France and Her Times: A Novel

THE entrance of a British cruiser into the harbor of St. Kitts was always followed by a ball at Government House in the little capital of Basse Terre. To-night there was a squadron of three at anchor; therefore was the entertainment offered by the island’s President even more tempting than common, and hospitality had been extended to the officials and distinguished families of the neighboring islands, Nevis, Antigua, and Monserrat. On Nevis there remained but one family of eminence, that great rock having been shorn long since of all but its imperishable beauty.

But Mrs. Edis of “Great House,” an old stone mansion unaffected by time, earthquake, or hurricane, and surrounded by a remnant of one of the oldest estates in the West Indies, was still a personage in spite of her fallen fortunes, and to-night she contributed a young daughter. The introduction of Julia Edis to society had been expected all winter as she was several months past eighteen, and the President had offered her a birthday fête; but Mrs. Edis, with whom no man was so hardy as to argue, had replied that her daughter should enter “the world” at the auspicious moment and not before. This was taken to mean one of two things: either that in good time a squadron would arrive with potential husbands, or (but this, of course, was mere frivolous gossip) when the planets proclaimed the hour of destiny. For more than thirty years Mrs. Edis had been suspected of dabbling in the black arts, incited originally by an old creole from Martinique, grandson of the woman who so accurately cast the horoscope of Josephine. For the last eighteen of these years it had been whispered among the birds in the high palm trees that a not unsimilar destiny awaited Julia Edis.

Therefore, when the word ran round the great ball-room of Government House that the big officer with the heavy mustache and curiously hard, shallow eyes, who had pursued the debutante from the moment she entered with her fearsome mother, was Harold France, heir presumptive to a dukedom, whose present incumbent was sickly and unmarried, the dowager pack (dressed for the most part in the thick old silks and “real lace” of the mid-Victorian period) crystallized the whisper for the first time and condescended to an interest in astrology.

“But it would be odd,” said the wife of the President, “although I, for one, neither believe in that absurd old science, nor that there ever was any basis for the story. No doubt it originated with the blacks, who love any superstition.”

“Ah!” said the wife of the Magistrate, “but it is curious that the blacks on Nevis, led by the Obi doctors, besieged Great House for a night, some twenty years ago. In the morning they were driven off by Mrs. Edis herself, a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other. She handled the situation alone, for Mr. Edis was a—ill—as usual.”

“Drunk,” said the blunter lady of quality. “And so were the blacks. By dawn they were sober, sick, and flaccid. A woman of ordinary resolution could have dispersed them—and Mrs. Edis!” She shrugged her shoulders significantly.

One of the younger women, the wife of an Antigua official, chimed in eagerly. “But do you really believe she is a—a— Oh, it is too silly! I am almost ashamed to say it!”

“Astrologer,” supplied the wife of the Magistrate, who had an unprovincial mind, although she had spent the best of her years in the islands. “Look at her.”

Mrs. Edis was sitting apart from the other women, talking to the President, the Captain of the flagship, and several officers of riper years than the steaming young men in their hot uniforms frisking about the room with the cool white creole girls. Mrs. Edis had not liked women in her triumphant youth, and now in her embittered age (she was past sixty, for Julia was the last of many children), she classed them as mere tools of Nature, purveyors of scandal, and fools by right of sex and circumstance. Even in the early nineties, at all events in the world’s backlands, it was still the fashion for women of strong brains and character to despise their own sex, and Mrs. Edis had not sailed out of the Caribbean Sea since her return to Nevis, from her first and only visit to England, forty years ago. Living an almost isolated life on a tropic island, she held women in much the same regard as the unenlightened male does to-day, despite his growing uneasiness and horrid moments of vision. Upon the rare occasions when she deigned to enter the little world of the Leeward Islands, she greeted the women with a fine old-time courtesy, and demanded forthwith the attention of high officials too dignified or too portly to dance. The men, since she was neither beautiful nor young, were amused by her caustic tongue, and correspondingly flattered when she chose to be amiable.

It was difficult to believe that she had once been handsome—beautiful no one had ever called her. She was a very tall woman, already a little bowed, raw-boned, large of feature, save for the eyes, which were small, black, and piercing. Her black hair was still abundant, strong of texture, and changing only at the temples; her skin was sallow and much wrinkled, her expression harsh, haughty, tyrannical. There was no sign of weakness about her anywhere, although, now and again, as her eyes followed the bright figure of her daughter, they softened before flashing with pride and triumph.

She found herself alone with the Captain and turned to him abruptly.

“This is the eighth time Lieutenant France has taken my girl out,” she announced. “And it is true that he will be a duke?” Mrs. Edis disdained finesse, although she was capable of hoodwinking a parliament.

The Captain started under this direct attack. His large face darkened until it looked like well-laid slabs of brick pricked out with white. He cleared his throat, glanced uneasily at the formidable old lady, then answered resolutely:—

“Better take your girl home, ma’am, and keep her close while we’re in harbor.”

The look she turned on him under heavy glistening brows, that reminded the imaginative Scot of lizards, and were fit companions for her thick dilating nostrils, made him quail for a moment: like many sea martinets he was shy with women of all sorts. Then he reflected (never having heard of the black arts) that looks could not kill, and returned to the attack.

“I mean, madam, that France is not a decent sort and would have been chucked long since but for family influence.”

“What do you mean by not a decent sort, sir?”

“He’s dissipated, vicious—”

“All young men sow their wild oats.” Mrs. Edis had forgotten none of the early and mid-Victorian formulæ, and would have felt disdain for any young aristocrat who did not illustrate the most popular of them.

“That’s all very well, but France’s crop is sown in a soil fertile to rottenness, and it will take him a lifetime to exhaust it. I’d rather see a daughter of mine in her coffin than married to him, duke or no duke.”

Mrs. Edis favored him with another look, under which his hue deepened to purple: poor worm, he was but the son of an industrious merchant, and he knew that the sharp eyes of this old woman, despite the eagle in his glance and a spine like a ramrod, read his family history in his honest face.

“It’s God’s truth, ma’am. It’s not that I mind a young fellow’s being a bit wild; there’s plenty that are and make good husbands when their time comes. But with France it’s different.” He hesitated, then floundered for a moment as if unaccustomed to analysis of his fellows. “It’s not that he’s a cad—not in the ordinary sense—I mean as far as manners go—. I’ve never seen a man with better when it suits him—or more insolent when that suits him; and they’re more natural to him, I fancy, for he’s fair eaten up with pride—out of date in that respect, rather. It’s the fashion, nowadays, for the big-wigs to be affable and easy and democratic, whether they feel that way or not—however, I don’t mind a man’s feeling his birth and blood, for like as not he can’t help it, although it doesn’t make you love him. No. It’s more like this: I believe France to be entirely without heart. That’s something I never believed in until I met him—that a human being lived without a soft spot somewhere. But I’ve seen an expression in his eyes, especially after he’s been drinking, that appalls me, although I can only express it by a word commonplace enough—heartless. It’s that—a heartless glitter in his eyes, usually about as expressionless as glass marbles; and although I’m no coward, I’ve felt afraid of him. I don’t mean physically—but absolute lack of heart, of all human sympathy, must give a person an awful power—but it’s too uncanny for me to describe. I’m not much at words, ma’am, and, for the matter of that, I shouldn’t have got on the subject at all, it not being my habit to discuss my officers with any one, if this wasn’t the first time I’ve ever seen him devote himself to a respectable girl. But he’s smitten with that pretty child of yours, no doubt of it; and there are three handsome young married women in the room, too. I don’t like the look of it.”

“I do.” Mrs. Edis had not removed her eyes from the old sailor’s face as he endeavored to elucidate himself.

“There’s many a slip, you know. The duke’s not so old, only fifty odd, and marvellous cures are worked these days. Some mother is always tracking him with a good-looking girl. As for France, his debts are about all he has to live on—”

“The President just told me that he has an income independent of his allowance from the head of his house, and I have knowledge that his expectations are founded upon certainty.”

The Captain, not long enough in port to have heard aught of Mrs. Edis’s dark reputation, glanced at her with a puzzled expression, then gave it up and answered lightly, “His income is good enough, yes, but nothing to his debts, which he never pays.”

“If he doesn’t pay his debts, what do they matter?” asked the old aristocrat, whose husband had never paid his, and whose son, having sold the last of his acres, was drinking himself into Fig Tree churchyard.

The Captain laughed. “I know your creed, madam. And I must admit that France is a true blood. He never arrives in port without being showered with writs, and he brushes them off as he would these damned mosquitoes—beg pardon, ma’am. But all the same, it wouldn’t be pleasant for your little girl. Fancy being served with a writ every morning at breakfast.”

The contempt in those sharp, unflinching eyes almost froze the words in their exit. “My daughter would never know what they were. Of money matters she knows as little as of Life itself. Writs would not disturb her youthful joyousness and serenity for an instant.”

“Damn these aristocrats!” thought the old sailor. “And what a hole this must be!” He continued aloud, “But after the luxury of her old home—”

“Luxury? We are as poor as mice. If my father had not put a portion of his estate in trust for me, as soon as he discovered that my husband was a spendthrift, we should have been on the parish long ago.”