The Conqueror | Page 5

life with no will in it but
her own, and she could bring up her little girl in an atmosphere of peace
and affection. She moved to an estate she owned on St. Christopher and
never saw John Fawcett again. He died a few years later, leaving his
diminished property to his children. Rachael's share was the house in
Charles Town.
The spot on which Rachael spent her childhood and brief youth was
one of the most picturesque on the mountain range of St. Christopher.
Facing the sea, the house stood on a lofty eminence, in the very shadow
of Mount Misery. Immediately behind the house were the high peaks of
the range, hardly less in pride than the cone of the great volcano. The
house was built on a ledge, but one could step from the terrace above
into an abrupt ravine, wrenched into its tortuous shape by earthquake
and flood, but dark for centuries with the immovable shades of a virgin
tropical forest. The Great House, with its spacious open galleries and
verandahs, was surrounded with stone terraces, overflowing with the
intense red and orange of the hybiscus and croton bush, the golden
browns and softer yellows of less ambitious plants, the sensuous tints
of the orchid, the high and glittering beauties of the palm and cocoanut.
The slopes to the coast were covered with cane-fields, their bright
young greens sharp against the dark blue of the sea. The ledge on
which the house was built terminated suddenly in front, but extended
on the left along a line of cliff above a chasm, until it sloped to the road.
On this flat eminence was an avenue of royal palms, which, with the
dense wood on the hill above it, was to mariners one of the most
familiar landmarks of the Island of "St. Kitts." From her verandah Mary
Fawcett could see, far down to the right, a large village of negro huts,
only the thatched African roofs visible among the long leaves of the
cocoanut palms with which the blacks invariably surround their
dwellings. Beyond was Brimstone Hill with its impregnable fortress.
And on the left, far out at sea, her purple heights and palm-fringed
shores deepening the exquisite blue of the Caribbean by day, a white
ever changing spirit in the twilight, and no more vestige of her under
the stars than had she sunk whence she came--Nevis. Mary Fawcett
never set foot on her again, but she learned to sit and study her with a
whimsical affection which was one of the few liberties she allowed her

imagination. But if the unhappiest years of her life had been spent there,
so had her fairest. She had loved her brilliant husband in her youth, and
all the social triumphs of a handsome and fortunate young woman had
been hers. In the deep calm which now intervened between the two
mental hurricanes of her life, she sometimes wondered if she had
exaggerated her past afflictions; and before she died she knew how
insignificant the tragedy of her own life had been.
Although Rachael was born when her parents were past their prime, the
vitality that was in her was concentrated and strong. It was not enough
to give her a long life, but while it lasted she was a magnificent creature,
and the end was abrupt; there was no slow decay. During her childhood
she lived in the open air, for except in the cold nights of a brief winter
only the jalousies were closed; and on that high shelf even the late
summer and early autumn were not insufferable. Exhausted as the trade
winds become, they give what little strength is in them to the heights of
their favourite isles, and during the rest of the year they are so constant,
even when storms rage in the North Atlantic, that Nevis and St.
Christopher never feel the full force of the sun, and the winter nights
are cold.
Rachael was four years old when her parents separated, and grew to
womanhood remembering nothing of her father and seeing little of her
kin, scattered far and wide. Her one unmarried sister, upon her return
from England, went almost immediately to visit Mrs. Lytton, and
married Thomas Mitchell, one of the wealthiest planters of St. Croix.
Mary Fawcett's children had not approved her course, for they
remembered their father as the most indulgent and charming of men,
whose frequent tempers were quickly forgotten; and year by year she
became more wholly devoted to the girl who clung to her with a
passionate and uncritical affection.
Clever and accomplished herself, and quick with ambition for her best
beloved child, she employed the most cultivated tutors on the Island to
instruct her in English, Latin, and French. Before Rachael was ten years