This eBook was produced by David Widger
By Gilbert Parker
With a deep sigh, the planter raised his head from the table where he waswriting, and looked out upon the lands he had made his own. They lay onthe Thomas River, a few hours' horseback travelling from Spanish Town,the capital, and they had the advantage of a plateau formation, withmountains in the far distance and ravines everywhere.
It was Christmas Day, and he had done his duty to his slaves and the folkon his plantation. He had given presents, had attended a seven o'clockbreakfast of his people, had seen festivities of his negroes, and thefeast given by his manager in Creole style to all who came—plantingattorneys, buccras, overseers, bookkeepers, the subordinates of the localprovost-marshal, small planters, and a few junior officers of the armyand navy.
He had turned away with cynicism from the overladen table, with itsshoulder of stewed wild boar in the centre; with its chocolate, coffee,tea, spruce-beer, cassava-cakes, pigeon-pies, tongues, round of beef,barbecued hog, fried conchs, black crab pepper-pod, mountain mullet, andacid fruits. It was so unlike what his past had known, so "damnableluxurious!" Now his eyes wandered over the space where were thegrandilla, with its blossom like a passion-flower, the black Tahiti plum,with its bright pink tassel-blossom, and the fine mango trees, loadedhalf with fruit and half with bud. In the distance were the guineacornfields of brownish hue, the cotton-fields, the long ranges of negrohouses like thatched cottages, the penguin hedges, with their beautifulred, blue, and white convolvuluses; the lime, logwood, and breadfruittrees, the avocado-pear, the feathery bamboo, and the jack-fruit tree;and between the mountains and his own sugar-estates, negro settlementsand pens. He heard the flight of parrots chattering, he watched thefloating humming-bird, and at last he fixed his eyes upon the cabbagetree down in the garden, and he had an instant desire for it. It was anatural and human taste—the cabbage from the tree-top boiled for asimple yet sumptuous meal.
He liked simplicity. He did not, as so many did in Jamaica, drink claretor punch at breakfast soon after sunrise. In a land where all were bon-vivants, where the lowest tradesmen drank wine after dinner, and rum,brandy and water, or sangaree in the forenoon, a somewhat lightsome viewof table-virtues might have been expected of the young unmarried planter.For such was he who, from the windows of his "castle," saw his domainshimmering in the sun of a hot December day.
It was Dyck Calhoun.
With an impatient air he took up the sheets that he had been reading.Christmas Day was on his nerves. The whole town of Kingston, with itstwenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, had but one church. If he enteredit, even to-day, he would have seen no more than a hundred and fifty totwo hundred people; mostly mulattoes—"bronze ornaments"—and peasants inshag trousers, jackets of coarse blue cloth, and no waistcoats, with oneor two magistrates, a dozen gentlemen or so, and probably twice thatnumber of ladies. It was not an island given over to piety, or toreligious habi