When the day came Roger had no reason to complain of Gunston's arrangements. A troop of Hanoverian cavalry had been detailed to escort his coach and British red-coats lined the approaches to the Assembly Hall. Gunston, the senior Naval officer m the port, the Mayor and numerous other French officials were gathered on its steps to receive him. Having acknowledged their greetings, he drew himself up to his full six feet, and, followed by them, marched into the building. He was directed to a curtained archway which led on to a dais at one end of the hall. Two footmen drew aside the curtains. Flushing with mortification and rage he halted between them. Every bench m the hall was empty.
For a moment he was utterly at a loss, then he turned about and marched straight back to his coach. As he got in, he beckoned Gunston to accompany him. He felt that he had been made a complete fool of, and that his bete noire was responsible. Now, white to the lips with fury, he snapped:
"What's the meaning of this?"
"Don't ask me," the Colonel replied quite calmly. "I had the notices sent out as you directed. But I did warn you that they are an unruly lot of bastards. I suppose they got together beforehand and decided to ignore the summons to attend you."
"You must have known that the hall was empty."
"How could I? It's not my business to act as usher to a crowd of Frogs and see them into their seats. I never went inside the building until I entered it behind you."
There seemed no reply to that; yet Roger remained convinced that Gunston must have known, or at least suspected, that he was about to be made the laughing stock of Fort Royal. He was, moreover, intensely annoyed by the thought that such an affront to himself, as the representative of his Sovereign, could not be allowed to pass without his taking some appropriate action.
Gunston suggested that the obvious course was to arrest some of the leading deputies and send them to cool their heels in prison until they learned better manners; but Roger was most loath to antagonize them still further. After some thought that evening, he penned a circular letter to be sent to each of them, which read as follows:
His Excellency the Governor appreciates that in every occupation, a new hand is expected to pay his footing, and should not resent-jokes played upon him. But the repetition of a joke deprives it of its humour.
His Excellency had intended to convey to the Assembly a message of goodwill from His Majesty the King, and also to announce the relaxation of certain restrictions. He therefore counts upon a full attendance of deputies when they are next summoned, for the betterment of relations between the Government and people of Martinique.
This, Roger felt, would not only save his face but evoke considerable surprise and discussion; and, in order that his good intentions might have ample time to become generally known, he decided not to summon the Assembly again until another week or ten days had elapsed.
Meanwhile he thought it would be a good plan to spend a few nights in St. Pierre, the oldest settlement in the island, which had since become a fine city and the centre of its commerce. It was only some fifteen miles away along the coast, but there was another Governor's Residence there; so he sent orders for rooms in it to be prepared for him, and despatched Dan and his new negro body-servant by coach in advance.
Gunston's two A.D.C.'s had automatically been transferred to him on his arrival. To one of them, a tall fair-haired youth named Colin Cowdray, he at once took a liking, but the other was a boorish Captain whose sole conversation consisted of grumbles that he was missing the fox hunting in England; so after a few days Roger had returned him to Gunston, saying that he would, in due course, replace him with another officer more to his taste. Accompanied therefore only by Colin Cowdray and a groom Roger set out on horseback late one afternoon for St. Pierre.
A Colonel Penruddock, who commanded the garrison there, received him with due honours and entertained him to an excellent dinner. Penruddock, a man in his late thirties, came of an old Cornish family which had fought for Charles I during the Great Rebellion, and Roger found him both efficient and congenial. The following day they made a round of the fortifications, and the next an excursion through ever steepening jungle-fringed paths to the summit of Monte Pelee, the great volcano five miles inland from St. Pierre, which one hundred and seven years later was fated totally to destroy the city.
On the third afternoon, pleased by all that he had seen, but much worried at having learned that the 57th Regiment of Foot, stationed in St. Pierre, was as severely stricken by Yellow Fever as the troops in Fort Royal, he took the road back. They had not gone far when Colin Cowdray's mare cast a shoe; so Roger told him to return and have her shod, while he rode on with the groom.
Presently he came abreast of a small but charming property; and, reining in, asked an elderly negro engaged on clearing out a ditch at the side of the road who lived there. To his surprise the old fellow replied that the house belonged to a Madame de Kay.
Dismounting, Roger gave the bridle of his horse to his groom and walked up the short drive. On a veranda before the house a coloured maid was laying a small table; so he told her who he was and asked her to request her mistress to allow him to pay his respects to her.
The maid went in but returned with the reply that her mistress begged to be excused, as she was averse to receiving the Governor in her house.
Roger frowned at this new evidence of the dislike with which the British were regarded, but sent the girl back with another message to say he would much like to talk to her mistress about her son William's early marriage to a Mademoiselle Tascher de la Pagerie.
A few minutes later a grey haired lady wearing a lawn mob cap, a tight bodice, voluminous black skirts, and carrying an ebony cane, came out of the house.
When Roger had made a leg to her curtsy, she said: "I am much surprised. Monsieur, that you should know aught of my son's marriage—if indeed it can be termed so, for it has long been regarded as invalid."
"That, Madame," Roger smiled, "I gathered from a handsome mulatto woman named Lucette, and it was she who recently told me of it."
"Then that limb of Satan is still alive?"
"Yes. And I was so intrigued by the youthful romance she related, in which she said she had played a part, that on learning that you lived here I felt I must find out how much, if any of it, was true. On second thoughts, though, I fear you must regard my curiosity as an impertinence, and the means I used to overcome your reluctance to receive me an aggravation of it"
Making a slight inclination of the head, she said: "You were announced to me as the Governor; so I thought you to be the brutish young Colonel who lords it in Fort Royal and rides rough-shod over all our susceptibilities."
He gave a rueful smile. "Alas, Madame, from what I have gathered there are good grounds for the antipathy you display towards him. I am the new Governor, and landed but ten days ago. As I have lived long in France and am accustomed to French ways, I hope before long to give people here cause to form a better opinion of myself."
Her face softened then, and she gestured with her long cane towards the table. "In that case, as I was about to partake of a dish of tea, perhaps you would care to join me?"
"Indeed I would; and for me it will be a treat, as tea is so hard to come by in these coffee islands."
As they enjoyed the brew he described how the Circe had been captured and how Lucette's duplicity, after she had made Bloggs second-in-command of the ship, had nearly cost him and his party their lives.