THE BELLES OF THE ISLAND. A COLONIAL SKETCH. BY MRS. BUSHBY. Come to the distant islands of the golden West, Where the red Carib once, and Aruaka, dwelt; Where, passing unknown seas, Columbus first found rest; I. It is probable that there are very few localities in which any society at all is to be found, where there are not one, two, or more damsels who are the belles of the place that is to say, most thought of, most courted, most admired; and this sort of pre-eminence is more generally accorded in smaller than in larger circles. Thus, every country town has its beauty, or beauties; and even in the most distant colonies there are always a few young ladies who are selected by the general voice to hold a position distinguished above their compeers. Such a position was held in the West India island of St. by two very pretty girls, who had been schoolfellows and friends in England, where both had been educated. Helen Ludlow, the only child of a wealthy West India proprietor, had left her parents and her home at a very early age, and had subsequently been joined in England by her mother, who went to Europe for the restoration of her health, but died there. Helen remained for many years in Britain, and was nearly nineteen when her father recalled her to her native island. Here she was placed at the head of his establishment, ostensibly; but though she was mistress of her father's house, another, a woman of colour, had more power in it than she had. Helen had been nearly two years in the West Indies, when her friend, Geraldine Montresor, returned to her paternal home. She was the youngest daughter of a West India planter-a man who, in the prosperous days of the colonies, had been possessed of considerable fortune, which he spent with West India profusion, and gave away with West India generosity. Not a few who asked for loans obtained gifts, and his name lent security to the tottering credit of many. His children had received the best education that Europe could afford. His sons had been brought up to the learned professions, and were satisfactorily settled in the adjacent islands; while his elder daughters-pretty, accomplished, and well portioned-had made suitable marriages: one having married a post-captain in the English navy, another a rich planter, and a third the governor of a neighbouring colony. Geraldine, the youngest of the family, was about eighteen when she left England for her native island, and exchanged the routine of a fashionable London school for the gaieties of a limited West India circle -limited even in regard to the extent of the island by the exclusive feelings of the set to which her mother belonged. "Exclusives in the April-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXXII. 2 c West Indies!" some reader may exclaim, with lip curling disdainfully. In every country, great or small-important or insignificant-there are some who claim a certain superiority to the common herd, and whose claims are implicitly yielded to. Even in that land of equality, America, there are the higher and the lower circles; and in West India societythough there is no assumption of rank to which, as commoners, they can have no right-there are strongly marked local distinctions, insomuch that the stranger, who unluckily falls first into the hands of the second or third set, finds it almost impossible afterwards to gain admission into the best circle. By circles, the difference of colour, or caste, is not meant ; the grades in white society alone are alluded to. It was to this best circle that Geraldine belonged, and among them her expected arrival caused some sensation, for matters, trivial in themselves, become of moment in limited societies; and in them, moreover, the spirit of gossip is always known to preside. "So Geraldine Montresor is coming out immediately," observed, in a gossiping coterie, Helen Ludlow to another young lady. "I shall be very glad to see her, and she will be able to tell me of many of my friends at home.* I long to hear of them again, and to talk over our happy days in England. I wonder if I shall ever return to dear England!" "And if you did," said Mrs. Temple, a young widow lady, "you would not love it as much as you do now, Helen." "Oh, Mrs. Temple, I cannot bear to hear you speak so. How can you be such a traitress to our country?" "To our country, Helen? England is not our country; this is our country, and in transferring all your affections to England, you are the traitress to our country." "But nobody looks upon the West India Islands as his country: these are only colonies, branches, as it were, from the parent trunk. Don't we always hear of the mother country? Don't we call the inhabitants of Guadaloupe and Martinique, French? In short, are not the colonists, English, French, Danes, Swedes, and Dutch, according to the flag under which they are born?" "To a certain degree they are- -but there is one name which they all bear, the name of West Indian, and it is a weakness, a folly, to endeavour to sink it in the name of the distant country who claims us as its subjects, but treats us like aliens and inferiors. These islands, small as they are, and unimportant in the scale of nations, are our native land; to them belong our feelings of patriotism, and their welfare should be our "Ah, well! Don't let us get into a political discussion, dear Mrs. Temple. I am sure I wish the welfare of the West Indies with all my heart; it is my interest to do so. I sincerely pray for good rains, good crops, good prices, and all these desirable things that I hear papa eternally talking about. I do wish them with all my soul, for on them depends my return to dear England, which, notwithstanding your lecture, It is so much the custom among the British residents in the West Indies, and the descendants of British settlers, to call England, Scotland, and Ireland "home," that the very negroes have adopted the phrase; which, however, they (the negroes) apply to every part of the world distant from the West Indies, except Africa. I cannot forbid myself to prefer to this land of mosquitoes, centipedes, guanas, and woolly heads." "Well, Helen, I do hope that you may return to your beloved England some of these days, and the worst punishment I shall wish you is, that you be disenchanted." may "There lives not the magician who can disenchant me,” said Helen, warmly. "We shall see," coolly replied Mrs. Temple, with an incredulous shrug of the shoulders. "But," said Miss O'Brien, a young lady who had been yawning during the above conversation," what sort of a girl is Miss Geraldine Montresor, Helen ?" "A very nice girl indeed. She has a fine voice, and plays well on the harp and pianoforte. I shall be able now to get up some of my vocal and instrumental duets; I was almost afraid that they were to be for ever condemned to the sole service of the cockroaches." "I hope," said Miss O'Brien, "that Mrs. Montresor will give balls and other evening parties again, when this Geraldine comes out: the parties at Prospect-hill used to be very pleasant, but since Alicia's marriage they have only had horrid dinner-parties." Two other persons now joined the little group: one was Mrs. Mackenzie, a fat, elderly lady; the other was Mr. Fanshawe, a slender young Englishman. "I thought I heard the name of Geraldine Montresor," said the lady. "Pray, Miss Ludlow, is she equal to her elder sisters ?” "I think she is quite equal," said Helen. "What! as pretty as Georgina ?-as Georgina was, at least, for she has fallen off lately, and has so entirely lost her bright colour that one might suspect she had been more indebted to art than to nature for it." "Just as pretty." "As clever as Alicia?" "Quite as clever." I "Ah! it is a very good thing to be clever, but, somehow, you will seldom find a clever girl marry well. But that can't be said of Alicia; she was extremely fortunate in carrying off the governor of confess I was astonished at it; but they say it was her mother's skilful manoeuvring that managed the affair. And is Geraldine as lively as Mary?" me. "No. I think she is of a more grave turn of mind than Mary." "I am thankful to hear it; Mary's vivacity used quite to overcome It is fortunate for her husband that he is a naval officer; he can escape the volubility of her tongue sometimes. I wonder who Geraldine will marry, though perhaps she may not marry at all, for the men are becoming rather shy of matrimony now-a-days; and we have had so many young ladies returning from England, and France, and America, lately, that the men begin to get saucy. They have too many to pick and choose among. Ah! there is quite un embarras de richesses." "I rather think," observed Mrs. Temple, "that it is indeed an embarrassment on the score of riches that deters so many of our young men from marrying now; not, however, that they could not choose, but that they dare not. Properties are becoming less valuable, trade is becoming depressed, money is becoming scarce, and many an attachment must remain untold where the lover, laying aside selfishness, dreads to entail poverty and privation on the object of his affections." "She is getting round to politics again," whispered the terrified Florence O'Brien to Helen. "For Heaven's sake, say something to stop her! I can't think of anything." "Mr. Fanshawe," exclaimed Helen, nodding slightly to Florence, as a sign that she obeyed her request, "you are the only representative of your sex present; what do you say to the charge brought against you by Mrs. Mackenzie, and the apology put forth for you by your friend Mrs. Temple ?" "Ch-charge-ap-apology!" stammered the astonished representative of his sex, who had been, apparently, absorbed in contemplating a ring that sparkled on his little finger, and whose thoughts, if he thought at all, had been wandering to some other subject. "What is the charge against me? You-you frighten me.” The ladies all laughed. "Did you not hear what was said ?" asked Florence, simpering. "I-I-heard you talking of-Miss Geraldine Montresor." "And no doubt fascinated by her very name, you became insensible even to our presence. Vastly gallant towards us, indeed! Have you no curiosity to hear anything of my friend Geraldine ?" continued Helen. "I have been asked so many questions about her." "Ah, you know her! Is she blue ?" lisped the tight-laced fop, who, by the way, was a late exportation from England. "No," said Helen, gravely, pretending to misunderstand him, "she is fair." "Ah-really you-I-by a blue-I mean a-does she read?-does she write ?" "Why, yes," replied Helen, still misunderstanding him, "to the best of my knowledge, she can read, and spell, and write." q Mr. Fanshawe was in despair; he looked round for some one to come to his assistance, in explaining to the opaque comprehension of Helen what was the signification of a blue. No one spoke. Helen's malicious eyes were upon him, and he half suspected for a moment that she was quizzing him. But he glanced at his fashionable coat and boots: how could a West Indian dare to quiz a well-dressed Englishman? He felt strong in his own superiority, and pitying the ignorance and the barbarism of the individuals around him, he once more addressed himself to the task of enlightening Helen's understanding. "Blue-in England, we call a lady who affects to be-to be-very literary, a blue." "Indeed!" exclaimed Helen, with mock astonishment; "and what is the origin of the term ?" Here was a poser; poor Fanshawe had never been asked the origin of a term from the time his A B C had been whipped into him up to the present hour. He looked utterly confounded, and for a moment or two switched his afore-mentioned boots in silence; but he rallied soon, and replied: "Arigin! Really, I-in England-a-words are used in society, and -and understood, without anybody's thinking of-of-their arigin. 'Pon soul-really-I-I don't know it." "Thank you," said Helen, demurely, "for not quizzing my ignorance by misleading me with some fictitious origin of the term blue." "One good turn deserves another, Helen," said Mrs. Temple; "you had better tell Mr. Fanshawe, what he says he never heard in England, the origin of bluism." "And be stigmatised as a blue by him for my pains," replied Helen, laughing. "Oh no, I value too profoundly his good opinion." Mr. Fanshawe felt very uncomfortable, and reflecting that he was unhappily placed among a set of female savages, who seemed to feel no awe of his English superiority, he thrust out his chin by way of nodding his head, and rather abruptly took his departure, to the no small regret of Florence, who had counted on a quarter of an hour's flirtation. He listened for one moment after he left the room to observe if the ladies laughed; but there was no audible symptom of mirth: they were too well-bred to laugh at a departed guest—at least, until he was out of hearing. II. THE Geraldine, who formed the principal subject of the foregoing conversation, and of many other conversations in the island of her birth, was, in the mean while, ploughing the wide Atlantic. She was young, and there are not many young hearts stoical enough to leave any place where even a few pleasant days have been spent, without a sensation of sadness. She was anxious to return to her native country and to her immediate family, but the ties of childhood and of youth could not be severed without many a pang, and the scenes endeared by habit could not be left, perhaps for ever, without tears of unfeigned sorrow. During the first part of her voyage, it must be confessed, Geraldine thought more of the friends she had quitted than of those she was soon to meet; but her feelings seemed to change with the latitude and longitude, and when the daily toast after dinner was altered from "Friends astern" to "Friends ahead," she found that she could smile at the latter as she had sighed at the former. She soon learned to be occupied with the little events of the voyage; to ask with eagerness, when the line was thrown, "How many knots are we going?" To look out for sails on the horizon, for shoals of porpoises, banks of sea-weed, and those sailors' horrors "Mother Cary's chickens." The brilliant skies and soft climate when passing Madeira delighted her; and she was still more enchanted as, skimming over the sparkling waters of the Atlantic before the steady breezes of the Trades," they approached the tropical islands of the West India archipelago. The dolphin and the flying-fish were caught and tasted, and allowed by every one to be excellent. The Portuguese men-of-war spread their gossamer sails, glittering as it were with lilac and silver, burnished gold and rose colour; while the deep, intense blue of the heavens was reflected in the clear waves beneath. Then came the first sight of land, like the faint outline of a passing |