The Conqueror | Page 7

she barely had entered her teens
when her happy indifference was dispelled; for the young planters
besieged her gates.
Girls mature very early in the tropics, and at fourteen Rachael Fawcett
was the unresponsive toast from Basseterre to Sandy Point. Her height
was considerable, and she had the round supple figure of a girl who has
lived the out-door life in moderation; full of strength and grace, and no
exaggeration of muscle. She had a fine mane of reddish fair hair, a pair
of sparkling eager gray eyes which could go black with passion or even
excited interest, a long nose so sensitively cut that she could express
any mood she chose with her nostrils, which expanded quite alarmingly
when she flew into a temper, and a full well-cut mouth. Her skin had
the whiteness and transparency peculiar to the women of St. Kitts and
Nevis; her head and brow were nobly modelled, and the former she
carried high to the day of her death. It was set so far back on her
shoulders and on a line so straight that it would look haughty in her
coffin. What wonder that the young planters besieged her gates, that her
aspirations soared high, that Mary Fawcett dreamed of a great destiny
for this worshipped child of her old age? As for the young planters,
they never got beyond the gates, for a dragon stood there. Mistress
Fawcett had no mind to run the risk of early entanglements. When
Rachael was old enough she would be provided with a distinguished
husband from afar, selected by the experienced judgement of a woman
of the world.
But Mary Fawcett, still hot-headed and impulsive in her second
half-century, was more prone to err in crises than her daughter. In spite
of the deeper passions of her nature, Rachael, except when under the
lash of strong excitement, had a certain clearness of insight and
deliberation of judgement which her mother lacked to her last day.
III
Rachael had just eaten the last of her sixteenth birthday sweets when, at
a ball at Government House, she met John Michael Levine. It was her
début; she was the fairest creature in the room, and, in the idiom of Dr.
Hamilton, the men besieged her as were she Brimstone Hill in

possession of the French. The Governor and the Captain General had
asked her to dance, and even the women smiled indulgently, disarmed
by so much innocent loveliness.
Levine, albeit a Dane, and as colourless as most of his countrymen, was
her determined suitor before the night was half over. It may be that he
was merely dazzled by the regal position to which the young men had
elevated her, and that his cold blood quickened at the thought of
possessing what all men desired, but he was as immediate and
persistent in his suit as any excitable creole in the room. But Rachael
gave him scant attention that night. She may have been intellectual, but
she was also a girl, and it was her first ball. She was dazzled and happy,
delighted with her conquests, oblivious to the depths of her nature.
The next day Levine, strong in the possession of a letter from Mr. Peter
Lytton,--for a fortnight forgotten,--presented himself at Mistress
Fawcett's door, and was admitted. The first call was brief and
perfunctory, but he came the next day and the next. Rachael, surprised,
but little interested, and longing for her next ball, strummed the harp at
her mother's command and received his compliments with indifference.
A week after his first call Mary Fawcett drove into town and spent an
hour with the Governor. He told her that Levine had brought him a
personal letter from the Governor of St. Croix, and that he was wealthy
and well born. He was also, in his Excellency's opinion, a distinguished
match even for the most beautiful and accomplished girl on the Island.
Peter Lytton had mentioned in his letter that Levine purposed buying
an estate on St. Croix and settling down to the life of a planter. On the
following day Levine told her that already he was half a West Indian,
so fascinated was he with the life and the climate, but that if she would
favour his suit he would take Rachael to Copenhagen as often as she
wished for the life of the world.
Mary Fawcett made up her mind that he should marry Rachael, and it
seemed to her that no mother had ever come to a wiser decision. Her
health was failing, and it was her passionate wish not only to leave her
child encircled by the protection of a devoted husband, but to realize
the high ambitions she had cherished from the hour she foresaw that

Rachael was to be an exceptional woman.
Levine