We landed at a very neat little wharf, by far the best we had seen yet, and close to a substantial lighthouse. No Custom House officer troubled us, though we carried ashore some small satchels. We found ourselves in a little park by the water, with a stone paved levee running from it down to the sea. The park was well shaded and provided with benches.
So we started off to find the "Hôtel day Bee-ang." This was not so easy as it seemed. I asked one gentleman to direct me to it, and he made some reply in French which I took to mean that he did not understand English. I asked another with the same result. The third told me the same thing. I looked about for a policeman (being a New-Yorker, and naturally supposing that all policemen are Irishmen,) but there were no policemen in sight.
Just at the right moment the young boatman who had talked to me on the ship came up. He guided us to the hotel in short order. It was not more than three or four blocks from the landing place, and we went in by a big double door, that at home we would be strongly inclined to think was a stable door, and through a long, dark, broad, brick paved hallway.
This led us into the café and office of the "Hôtel des Bee-ang" which occupied two sides of a square, the centre being a sort of open courtyard, paved with flat stones, with a very large dove-cote in the centre of it, and a large stone fountain at the rear. There were tables all about the café, at which gentlemen were sitting, eating, drinking, and playing cards. It seemed rather an odd place to take ladies into (there were two ladies with me,) but there was nowhere else to take them. In one part of the café was a raised platform perhaps a foot high and five feet square, on the front of which stood a large desk. This was the office of the Hôtel des Bains.
Behind the desk sat the most remarkable human being I ever saw. I was convinced that it was human from the little I could see of it, but whether it was man or woman, boy or girl, it was impossible to determine. It proved to be the landlady, wife of the proprietor, and a lady of color. Her head was completely enveloped in an immense red and yellow checked turban. Her face (a very full, round face,) was tied up with another turban, so that there was hardly anything visible of her but eyes, nose, and mouth. These features had a Chinese appearance, and her whole make-up made her startling to look at. On the desk in front of her she had not only her account books, but the stock of cigars, cigarettes, and toothpicks inseperable from a restaurant.
I asked her, through the boatman interpreter, whether she could let us have two rooms. The boatman spoke to her, she replied in French, and the boatman said she said we could have a large room with as many beds in it as we wanted. I tried to be as emphatic as possible in explaining that that would not do at all, that we wanted two rooms with one bed in each. The boatman had another conversation with her, and she began to shake her head. This was ominous.
Then the landlord was sent for, and the boatman stated the case to him. When they got through their talk, this was the report the boatman gave me of it:
"He says you don't need to bring any servants. They have servants in the hotel."
I wonder what French word means both "rooms" and "servants?" Nobody had said a word about servants—at least not in English. But it was ridiculous, this talking to a hotel keeper through a boatman...
At any rate, the landlord gave me up for a bad job, and, instead of saying anything more to me, he put both hands to his mouth to make a trumpet and called:
"Marguerite!"
In a moment the summons was answered by a light-colored girl wearing a skirt that was short in front and trailed on the ground fully a yard behind, with a turban on her head and a stylish air that no negress carries half as well as a French negress. The landlord nodded his head from me to Marguerite, which I understood to mean that I was to talk to her. So I told her what we wanted.
"Ah, oui," said Marguerite, "ze gentleman and ze ladies wish for two rooms. J'entends." And she told the landlord what we wanted, and he once more said, "Oui, oui, oui," and took down a bunch of keys and handed them to Marguerite, who immediately invited us "to go up ze stairs wiz" her and see the rooms. We went most willingly...
The other room was up one more flight of stairs, and was reached by going along a narrow outside balcony overlooking the courtyard. A number of other rooms opened upon the same balcony, which answered the purpose of a hallway.
The room was a large one, with two immense beds in it, and two dormer windows, opening out upon the tiled roof. There was no carpet, of course. But there were any number of chairs—a dozen, I should think—and a large sofa, and a small table. A door with a transom without any sash in it opened into an adjoining room; and in that other room a gentleman connected with the theatrical company then in the city was rehearsing his part. A window, as well as a door, opened from the room upon the balcony. It certainly was an "owlish" looking place...
We would most likely need to spend some money that same evening, and would certainly have a hotel bill to pay on the morrow—and I had not a cent of French money, not even English money—nothing but greenbacks. And nothing would pass current in Martinique, I was told, but French gold and silver. I began to have a strong desire to see the American Consul to learn where I could get some money changed, so I summoned Marguerite.
"Ah, oui, oui. Ze Consul. His brother is now in ze café. I will bring him." And off she went, coming back presently with a very polite and accomodating young American gentleman, who soon gave me directions that saved me any further trouble about money.
They called us down to dinner soon afterward, in the "salle à manger." This was a large front room on the first floor, paved with bricks, and very nicely furnished with marble-top tables and comfortable chairs. They gave us an excellent dinner, with a pint of claret each to wash it down; everything was clean and neat; the dishes were well cooked and well served, and we had every reason to congratulate ourselves that our lines had fallen in such pleasant places.
We learned, on inquiry, that there was to be no performance in the theatre that evening, that being one of the "off" nights. But I discovered that I could buy 20 very fair cigars in the hotel for a French 50-cent piece and that there was plenty of ice in the house, so I did not worry.
We sat for an hour or more in our private parlor, from whose broad back window we could watch the interior of the café, and see the gentlemen still playing cards, still eating, still drinking, and still smoking. The temperature was not much too warm. We could hear the dripping of the stone fountain outside our window, and there was nothing to find fault with.
From our front windows I could see a large and well-lighted room in the house oppposite; and although the lower sections of its inside shutters were tightly closed, I could see that it contained a large green-covered table, and that eight or ten men sat around this table, and that their arms were continuously reaching out over the table, as if they were handing things to each other. I thought perhaps it was a committee meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association, till I saw waiters handing very frequent drinks to the gentlemen, and then I saw that it was a gambling house.
At 8 o'clock, or thereabout, when one of our ladies had retired to rest, and when the remainder of the party were thinking very seriously of following suit, Marguerite came in to tell us that there was a play that evening after all, and we had just time to go. So two of us determined to see the play, and we inquired where we could get a carriage.
"Carriage! Ah, non, non! It is just one leetle wee distance," holding up both hands about six inches apart. It will not fatigue ze Madame. If you will pay for my ticket, I vill go wiz you and show you."
Most accommodating of all chambermaids. She would even be our guide to the theatre! But we accepted her offer, and were glad enough to have her.
I hinted mildly to Marguerite that we would expect her to grace the gallery with her presence, and to this she offered no objections. She reappeared in a short time decorated with a fresh turban and a pair of gold earrings about the size of ink bottles, and we started off...
We pushed along and at length reached the Savannah—a large open square, bordered with fine large trees. And at the further end of it a great big tent, well lighted inside, and a band playing. Verily, Marguerite had led us to the circus.
We saw the advantage of this at once. We could understand the circus performance, while the play would have been in unintelligible French. We found a crowd about the tent, of course, which we pushed through and made our way up to the ticket office. I inquired about the price of seats and was told they were 6 cents each.
"Are those the best you have? Do you speak English?" I inquired of the ticket seller.
"Well, I should smile if I didn't," he replied. "I wouldn't be found dead talking nothing else." Then he told me that the circus company was from Brazil, and that he had been sick for a week and was anxious to get home.
We bought some reserved seats, and sent Marguerite in on a six-cent ticket to a part of the tent in which she speedily found acquaintances. Our "reserved seats" were on a narrow board, without any back, but we managed to sit through about half the performance. The tent was lighted by a "chandelier" hanging around the centre pole, holding 20 or 30 candles, and in the middle of an act the rope that held it broke and the whole thing came down with a crash. Some colored gentlemen came out and put it up again, and the play went on.
There were no horses, but some of the performers were very good acrobats.
On the way back to the hotel our route led near to a big stone wall, on the other side of which was a deep ravine, and through the ravine ran the little river which I have mentioned before. There was a bed of grass, perhaps 20 feet wide, between the sidewalk and the wall. I wanted to see the river, and started to walk across the grass to look over the wall. But Marguerite took hold of my sleeve and held me back.
"Non, non!" said she. "You must not walk on ze grass at night. Ze serpents! Ze serpents!"
We reached the hotel in safety, and passed a comfortable night. In the morning the whole world of Martinique lay before us.
WILLIAM DRYSDALE.
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