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Deesha hastened forward, all joy and pride at being the hostess of the Ouverture family. Eagerly she led the way into the inhabited part of the abode a corner of the palace-like mansion a corner well covered in from the weather, and presenting a strange contrast of simplicity and luxury.
Never propitiated, and long unsubdued, Charles Bellair and his wife lived henceforth in the fastnesses of the interior; and never for a day desisted from harassing the foe, and laying low every Frenchman on whom a sleepless, and apparently ubiquitous vengeance, could fix its grasp. Deesha was not the only woman who seemed to bear a foeman's soul.
"He carries away a mark from us, thank Heaven!" said Dessalines. "Madame Bellair shot him." It was so. Deesha saw Vincent join the French, and go off with them, on the arrival of L'Ouverture; and, partly through revenge, but not without a thought of the disclosures it was in his power to make, she strove to silence him for ever.
"Yes, and tell me first," cried a voice near at hand. There was a great rustling among the bushes, and Denis appeared, begging particularly to know what they were talking about. They, in return, begged to be told what brought him this way, to interrupt their conversation. "Deesha says Juste is out after wild-fowl, and, most likely, among some of the ponds hereabouts."
"I shall tell Charles that you will cherish Deesha. It is well that we can let her remain here, beside the graves of her children. Bury them with honour, Margot." In time of peace, and if her children had perished by any other mode, it might have been a consolation to Deesha to dwell for a time beside their graves.
More, however, were perpetually brought over from Cuba, and regularly trained, by means too barbarous for detail, to make negroes their prey. From the hour when Deesha first heard the cry of a bloodhound, more than the barbarism of her native Congo took possession of her. Never more was she seen sowing under the shade of the tamarind-tree.
News, stirring news, came from all corners of the colony with every fresh arrival. Deesha, especially, could tell all that had been done, not only at L'Etoile, and in all the plain of Cul-de-Sac, but within the districts of the unfaithful generals, Clerveaux and La Plume.
His wife was at work and singing to her child under the shadow of the colonnade once an erection of great beauty, but now blackened by fire, and at one end crumbling into ruins. "Minerve!" cried Madame, on seeing her. "Deesha is her name," said Bellair, smiling. "Oh, you call her by her native name! Would we all knew our African names, as you know hers! Deesha!"
When Denis and Juste found that they could not succeed, and were only chidden for being in the way, they left the drawing party seated under their clump of cocoa-nut trees, and went to hear what Madame was relating to Bellair and Deesha, in the hearing of Monsieur Moliere, Laxabon, and Vincent. Her narration was one which Denis had often heard, but was never tired of listening to.
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