Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“_Ecco_, Signore,--the only one!” said Oreste, with that polite gesture of regret with which he daily accompanied this small comedy. The Signore having possessed himself of the letter avidly, put it into his pocket with ostentatious carelessness and coolly lighted a cigarette. Oreste smiled comprehendingly but respectfully.

“You have had a long day of it?”

“Yes, Signore,” Oreste smiled with the satisfied air of one who has done a good day’s work.

“I suppose you have made a handful of money,” continued the Signore, severely.

Oreste shrugged his shoulders. “Not great things,--but, _altro_, I am content.”

The Signore shrugged in his turn. “Each to his own mind. Your _sposina_ has also made a long day; I saw her just now.”

“Ah, yes; it is a long way to Vincigliata, when one must walk. The Signore’s commands?”

“None.”

Truly, the Signorina Americana, if this was her work, had small reason to be proud of it. The Signore’s frown enveloped even the blue envelope, at which he stood staring long after Oreste had left the room.

And so it ran through the spring months,--the mournfully beautiful Tuscan spring. The nightingales in the villa gardens sang and sang, at dusk, in the moonlight, and at dawn, and the fireflies glittered all through the darkness up and down the olive slopes. An intenser life quickened in the little community as the summer stirred in the veins of her children. The youths went singing up and down the hills, and the girls and women lingered over their water jars at the fountain in the square. For what is it to be poor in the summer time?

Sometimes the Signore, lying awake at night, heard Oreste’s mellow voice as he passed by to the little house. But through all this gayety of being Gioja stole silently and dreamily, and the whisper of turned heads and eyes askance followed her. For there were the ever-recurring _festas_, when Oreste went to the city, and where then did Oreste’s _sposa_ go? That is what the community would like to know; for the tale of her grandmother was quite too large for the village throat. She kept her secret well,--yes; but there is only one kind of a secret possible to the Italian mind.

“Birbone!” said the women, with contempt of Oreste, while the men laughed and shrugged their shoulders. Oreste had caught a pretty _sposa_ who had thought herself much too good for them, but, _ma chè_,--he was paying for it.

It was impossible that the public curiosity should content itself with being curious. Maria, one of those public-minded souls which never lack in any community, toiled all the way over to Vincigliata, and brought back personal assurance from the _nonna_ herself that that pious granddaughter had not been seen in Vincigliata all these months.

“Eight good miles I trudged in all that sun, and a day’s work lost,” declared Maria, mopping her brow in the midst of an excited and sympathetic group. “_If_ my legs ache! But for the good of the community I did it; and what I know to-night the priest shall know before morning. I made haste to go to-day, for to-morrow, being the _festa_ of our Saint John, Oreste goes to the city, and that _civetta_--”

And nobody could say but that Maria had done well, and the girl deserved whatever might come of it.

But when the priest, sad-eyed and stern, knocked at the door of the little house in the early morning after Mass, no one was there. Having delivered a vain fusillade, to the accompaniment of many suggestions offered from the neighbors’ windows, the priest turned away and betook himself, with a clouded brow, to the Signore, who had invited him, by Oreste, to breakfast with him that morning. He was waiting for him now on the terrace with a morning countenance; and the breakfast-table, heaped with roses, wore a festal air which did not escape the priest, preoccupied though he was.

“You also are keeping a feast, Signore, to appearances?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, indeed! a _festa_ Americana?”

“No, my own. And now what is it about these two? Oreste, I know, went to the city. I tried to engage him, but he was pre-engaged to that patron of his. And Gioja,--well, I saw her pass a little later.”

“While we were in the church,--the guilty child!” said the priest, sternly. “But where can she have gone?” he added, sighing. “I have been much to blame; I have been too negligent; I should have dealt with her from the first. _Culpa mia!_” He crossed himself and looked so discouraged that the Signore was touched.

“Listen, _amico mio_,” he said. “As you say, it is a bad business; and, arrange it how you will, it will never be well that those two shall live here. The last of it will never be heard,--if I know your people. I am going away to Livorno next week, and I have asked Oreste to go with me. I like the fellow, and away from here she may come to her senses. She is young, and, guilty though she may be, she does not seem case-hardened.”

“Going away!” exclaimed the startled priest, in dismay. “And going to take those two away from their own country,--to a foreign place! What an idea,--but what an idea!”

“Scarcely foreign; it is only the other side of Florence.”

“Ah, ah! to you, but to us villagers! It is not a little thing to leave one’s home, where one has been born and bred, and knows his neighbors, after all, whether they be good or bad. It is a great thing to know one’s neighbors. And to go so far!--but they will think twice before they say ‘Yes.’”

“On the contrary, Oreste goes willingly. I do not think he is so blind; he knows well they are not friendly to his _sposa_ here.”

“And Gioja,” said the startled priest, “will she go?”

“He says so.”

The priest drew a long breath, half relief, half regret, and wholly wonder.

“Well, well, it is perhaps the best that could happen. But to lose two of my flock--and to leave one’s country like that! You are a strange people, you Americans. And what becomes of us without either you or the Signorina Americana here in the villa?”

“There are more Americans,” replied the Signore, smiling; “and who knows but that your Signorina will return to make you more trouble yet?”

The priest shook his head. “The next time she may bring her own maid. Not another girl from our village shall she turn the head of, that Signorina,” and the very tone of his voice as he said it was witness that he affirmed what he knew to be false. The Signore understood and laughed.

“Put it all away, _amico mio_, for to-day, and go with me to Florence. Gioja has gone; and you can do nothing but listen to your people, who will deafen you before night. Come and see your _bella Firenze_ in her _festa_ dress. We will take a tram below and find a cab at the gates.”

The priest’s face brightened like a child’s.

“Ah, Signore, now it is I you are proposing to carry away! But why not? It is long since I was in Florence, and I have already said service here. But it is not necessary to say anything to my people. Discretion, Signore, discretion is a great thing!”

And thus it happened that when the village folk saw the good father depart in company with the Signore _forestiere_, they sagely concluded, with that sense of the importance of our own affairs common to the race, that the two had gone to Fiesole, or who knew but even Florence, to consult the authorities in the matter of that unhappy Gioja. And, in point of fact, though the priest was fairly running away from the subject, he was destined to run straight into its arms instead.

Florence was all in _festa_; and if there is anything lovelier than Florence in _festa_, who has seen it? The streets ran over with bright sunshine; and the Florentines, reinforced by _contadini_ from all the neighboring towns, in holiday garb, made a bright, shifting mass for the sunbeams to play over. Arno rolled its now shallow stream like muddy gold, and pale golden palaces stood loftily up and looked down at her. Over her streaming Ways, Florence shook the bells in all her towers every fifteen minutes, and at intervals the deep, golden-throated voice in Giotto’s Tower answered with a rich hum, hum-m, hum-m-m, like a melodious summer bee. The strident notes of the _grilli_, in their little wicker cages, brought from the Cascine at dawn, completed the joyous pandemonium.

The Signore’s spirits ran at higher tide than even the bright tide of humanity about him. He laughed at all; he bought flowers of the boys and girls who ran after the carriage holding up glowing armfuls, until the carriage-seat was heaped, and the priest held up his hands at the extravagance. He climaxed his folly by buying all the remaining _grilli_ in their cages, and letting them loose upon the grass of the Cascine.

“Do not scold, _amico mio_,” he said to the priest gayly; “I told you it is a _festa_. I have come into a fortune, and it is written that nobody must be shut up to-day or hungry.” He tossed a handful of soldi to a group of children.

“I am afraid your fortune will not last long,” replied the priest, shaking his head.

But he forgot his own prudence when, a little later, they went to a restaurant,--not Doney’s, where the foolish tourists go, fancying themselves in Italy, and where the priest would have been miserable,--but Gilli’s on the Piazza Signoria. There, it being a feast day, and his host newly come into a fortune, the good father ate, for the honor of religion and his own temporal good, such a meal as had never before found its way to his stomach, and washed it down with glasses of Chianti, not merely old (vecchio), but extravagantly old (stravecchio). Golden moments were these, and he put down his glass at last with a sigh of regret that it was impossible to prolong them further. His limit of possibility was reached.

“Now,” said the Signore, casting an extravagant fee upon the table, “where next?”

“To the Baptistery and the Duomo, my son,” answered the priest, with sudden gravity, crossing himself, “to say our _grazie_, and put up a little prayer to our good Saint John.”

It was precisely upon emerging from the door of Gilli’s in this comfortable and untroubled frame of mind, arising from the perfect balance of the carnal and the spiritual, that he came face to face with the worst trouble of all. For, straightening his shabby hat and smoothing his shabby cassock, what should his eyes fall upon but Oreste,--Oreste, who, having that moment emerged from a café below, was assisting a very elegant signora into his cab. Just as he got her safely tucked in, his eye caught the two pairs staring at him. His sturdy face blanched; then, before either could make step forward, he had shut the door, sprung quickly to the seat, and, touching up Elisabetta, with a glance of defiance whirled away. The two left, staring, drew a long breath.

“_Ebbene_,” remarked the Signore, at last, “so the patron was a _padrona_; perhaps Gioja has not been so much to blame after all.”

“I will know,” answered the priest, sharply.

The Signore said a word to the nearest cabman, slipping something into his hand, and in a moment they were bowling up the Via Calzaioli. It cost a city cabman nothing to keep Elisabetta in sight; and they drew up in the Piazza del Duomo just in time to see Oreste deferentially assisting his Signora to alight at the Cathedral steps. He saw them and his eyes shot such a glance of stern warning that both men sat stupidly, and the next moment nearly fell over each other as the Signora, in her silks and nodding plumes, swept by,--for, lo, it was Gioja!

In another instant she had swept up the steps and the great doors had swallowed her. Then Oreste’s manner changed. He leaned against the cab-door, and turned upon the two men a regard which said: “And now what have you to say about it?”

There was a decidedly awkward silence while they drew near; then the Signore burst out laughing.

“You have found a fine patron, _amico mio!_” he said.

“What folly!” ejaculated the priest, holding up his hands and recovering breath at last. “Gran’ Dioy what folly!”

“Reverendo,” replied Oreste, quietly, “perhaps not so much folly as some of you have thought. Perhaps I know what the tongues up there wag like, and if I choose not to mind, whose affair is that? If it pleases us to please ourselves, who is the worse for that?”

“And the scandal!” exclaimed the priest. “And the waste, and the ideas you are putting in Gioja’s head,--the wicked vanity and pride--Oh, I told the Signorina how it would end!”

“As for that, Reverendo, you will pardon me; but tongues must wag when they are hung in the middle, and if they wag about Gioja,--why it does n’t hurt her, and some one else goes safe. And as for the waste,--the price of a fare now and then,--why if it suits us to live on polenta six days, and take our pleasure on the seventh, whose misery is that? I have never yet lacked my soldo for the Church or for a neighbor poorer than I.”

“And the ideas you are encouraging in her unhappy head!--but I will have something to say to that child.”

“Reverendo,” interposed Oreste, sternly, “by your leave,--you are a good man, half a saint, and I am only an ignorant peasant, but there are some things priests and nuns do not understand, and what one does not understand, that one should not meddle with. The Signorina understood; she knew well it was neither pride nor vanity in Gioja, but just a kind of _poesia_ which made her like to play the signora. The Signorina understood because she herself was full of _poesia_.”

“Oh, the Signorina,--the Signorina!” interjected the priest, in despair.

“She _knew_,” Oreste went on. “You remember the time of the hat, Reverendo?”

“_If_ I remember!” groaned the priest.

“_Ebbene!_” said Oreste, emphatically, “when I found it out, I went straight to the Signorina and told her. She was on the terrace, and she sat down and laughed a little. You remember our Signorina’s way of laughing?”

It was to the priest that he addressed this; but it was the Signore, looking straight before him and smiling, who looked as if he remembered.

“Nothing would do,” continued Oreste, “but that she must jump into my cab then and there, with only a lace on her head, and she a Signorina! [here the Signore laughed aloud]--and drive straight to Florence, not to one of the small shops, but to the great milliner’s on Tornabuoni, where she bought a hat,--who knows what it cost?--and she bade me take it to Gioja and tell her to wear it when she liked, for there was nothing wicked about it.”

The priest groaned again.

“Only,” added Oreste, with the suspicion of a twinkle, “she bade us say nothing about it, lest you, Reverendo, might think it your duty to lecture the child again; and it was a pity, she said, to make so good a man uncomfortable. So, as she could not wear it openly, we had to find a way under the plate; and as the whole village would have been talking if we went away together, I had to make that little story of a patron. Once outside of Vignola, I wait for Gioja, and there in the olive grove she makes herself into a signora; and on the way home we stop again, and--the signora’s hat and gown stowed away under my seat--my little _sposa_ climbs up beside me and we talk it all over. And then the next day I count my francs, and the folk call me ‘_Birbone_;’ and the lads think evil of my Gioja because she would never look at them; and we laugh in our sleeves. What does all that matter when one is happy?”

“And so,” said the priest, sternly, “you let all Vignola think your wife has a lover, and say nothing?”

“They have to think something; and isn’t it better they should think she has a lover, Reverendo, than a _cappello di signora?_”

“Surely,” assented the priest, quickly; “a lover, at least, they can all understand; and only too many of them--Madonna pardon them!--have had; but a signora’s hat nobody in the village has ever had, and they would never pardon Gioja for having. And they have right; Gioja has no business with a signora’s hat, nor you to waste your time and money, as if you would be _bambini_ all your lives. And for you, a man, to make yourself the servant of your wife,--oh, it is shameful, _vergognoso!_”

“Pardon again, Reverendo, but that, too, you can’t understand. If it is Gioja’s _poesia_ to play the signora,--why, Gioja is _my poesia_. As for its lasting, _altro!_ the future is long; and if we had others to feed all that might be different. She is only a child herself now; but when the good God sends a child to a child, that makes a woman of her; He himself sees to that. When that comes, she will care nothing to play the signora with her stupid Oreste. All this our Signorina knew; for that night, when the child came to me weeping, and saying how wicked she had been, and begging me to forgive her and marry her at once, _at once_--I, Signori, who would have married her any moment for years!--it put me in trouble. I had fear to take her like that, and perhaps have her sorry for it later. But I went to our Signorina with her, and told her all; and she looked at us both and said: ‘Marry her, Oreste; you safely may;’ for the Signorina understood. And so--I married her.”

The eyes of the two young men met suddenly, and exchanged across the gulf of position and race one rapid thrill of comprehension. The priest looked half-timidly at both; but perhaps he, too, comprehended something, for he said meekly,--

“After all, I did no harm.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Oreste, with his frank smile; “but that was not your fault, Reverendo. And now, if the Signore and you will excuse me, that was the bell of the Elevation. If Gioja saw you, she would have no more pleasure; and that would be all the more a pity, because it is our last _festa_ here. We are going to live with the Signore and his Signora. Is n’t it so, Signore?”

“Ah, ah!” exclaimed the priest, with vivacity, “so that was your _festa_ and your fortune, Signore? And that is why you have so much sympathy for even the _grills_ and these foolish children! Well, well, it is perhaps the best that could happen; for it would be impossible to go on giving scandal like this, and if I said a word you would all be for taking my life. It may do for Gioja, who is not like the others; but Heaven forbid the other _ragazze_ should get such ideas in their heads; I have enough to do to keep track of them and their affairs as it is.”

“Signori!” said Oreste, warningly. The two slunk behind the next cab, and from there beheld the stream of life suddenly burst from the big doors of the Duomo,--men and women and children, prince and citizen and peasant, and among them a slender, graceful shape, her cappello di signora sitting well upon the ruffled gold of her hair, and her long skirt raised in one gloved hand with a gesture at which the Signore’s heart beat suddenly faster against the blue envelope above it. So very excellent an imitation of the Signora that even an expert need not blush to be deceived by it.

Oreste stepped forward and flung open the cab-door with ostentation. The Signora mounted languidly, and sank back against the cushions, making a great rustling of silk. The loungers on the Duomo steps stole covert glances at the pretty woman. Then Oreste slammed the door, took off his hat, and approached deferentially.

“Commanda, Signora?” he said, loud enough for everybody to hear.

“_Alla casa_,--home,” responded the Signora, with superb languor.

And, mounting upon the seat, with a parting glance of mingled triumph and humor in the direction of the two watchers, Oreste, Elisabetta, and the Signora whirled triumphantly away.

The two left upon the sidewalk remained speechless for a few minutes; then the priest’s eye caught his companion’s, deprecatingly, but with an echo of Oreste’s twinkle.

“That Signorina,” he said, with an indulgent sigh, “she has much to answer for!”

But the Signore, looking into the distance and laughing softly to himself, said not a word.

THE APPEAL TO ANNE

By Edward Cummings

I--FROM ROGER

YOU are my friend. Therefore I am sure of your patience. My dearest, yield it to me now, of all times! This is a confession and prayer.

True, I might dissemble still. Chance lends the ready garment.

But I am resolved I will have no more lies. I will speak the truth, though I lose you. I never knew much good to come of lies.

Dear, if you love me much, this will pain you bitterly. I should be glad to die now, if so I rightly might, that you might think of me always as you do now, and _she_ might never know, or be wounded in her faith and pride.

For me has been destined the doing of that wrong I look upon as the deadliest of all. Treachery is the crime, and the crime is mine.

Let me tell you again, you tender woman, you dearest and noblest in the world, how I love you. I think of you constantly, I yearn for your sweet companionship. You are my dear ideal,--you are to me all peacefulness and worth and wisdom and womanly greatness and incomparable grace. You are the pure air to me.

Dear, it is because my love for you is the best that is in me that I am at such pains to make my confession absolute. My heart grows imperious at thought of you, and leaps for the highest course, though that bids for the supernal sacrifice of losing you--you, so sweetly gained! For you I should be happy to die now, heart in hand.

It would be sweet, I think, to die now, to leave this black dilemma, to vanish utterly. And yet, while you live, all splendor and all graces are here!

... Dear Anne, there is another woman I have been making love to--how I loathe to write the name--Doris Ewing, who loves me as I love you, and to whom I grew tender just in hopelessness of you.

So far away in the North you were, so like the figment of a fond impossible ideal, and she was here beside me, dark-eyed and sweet. I loved her. So often I said it--so sweetly she believed, and the habit grew. “I love you,” I said, even when I knew that love was just like. For often she was but as a small craft on the heaving sea of my passion, the sea that ran to its flood-tide for you!

I told her repeatedly I loved her--and lied. Was it any the less a lie that the spirit of romance was strong within me, and my heart-hunger made me mad? I loved her in this fashion, say, because she was loving, and my heart was full of love.

It did not come to me forcibly at the time that I was lying. I had come into the habit of her, and the words did not stick in my throat, as lies usually do. I did not despise myself. My duplicity I learned to contemplate with equanimity and to forget, and so I lied ardently and successfully. What a bad success it was!

For Doris loved me dearly, and cried over me a bit, now and then, I suspect, and was beautiful and happy. I wondered, sometimes (forgetting the reason that lay in my larger desire--you!), why I did not really love her.

Such is my story, as well as I understand it.

She is very sweet, and I am very fond of her. I seek to extenuate nothing; I write the crude facts as I know them. She has black hair and eyes; she is very white and slender, with nestling ways. She is not very learned or rich, but patrician and proud; all agree that she is beautiful. She is debonair and sweet, and when I think of you she is nothing to me--nothing!

But I tried to love her just in love’s despite; and she was happy in the main, and I was half-resigned. I stifle when I think of that.

How pitiful it all was!

Often she leaned, touched my shoulder, and spoke with downcast eyes:--

“Do you really love me?”

“Very tenderly.”

“Passionately?”

“Passionately.”

“With all your heart?”

“With all my heart.”

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

She mistrusted me no more than the day mistrusts the sun.

And one night I sat late in my room, thinking. It was cold; the wild wind arose, hissing in the stark trees. Out in the cold sky the stars shone white and multitudinous. There came to me a wanton mood; I floated with it, pensive and relaxed. I had no wish to change it, but desired only to sit peacefully through the midnight until sleep should come, to lightly conjecture and mildly reflect, to clasp my knees by the fire and await the fortunes of the hour. Life had grown trivial.

And by degrees the thoughts of you came intensely and possessed me. That was the night I wrote you that mad long letter of adoration and despair.

Ah, you were to me impossible! I had been half-resigned. But that night passion reigned. It was my dearest tribute just to tell you of the love I had for you. If it was madness, it was a sweet madness.

I thought when your letter would come I would sit for a while with it in my hand, and dream the sweet, the terrible, the improbable,--before I opened it to read your kind wording (I knew it would be kind) of what my despair taught me to expect.

Then the wires shot stupefying joy.

“_Everything! Why did you wait so long? Come to me now--at once! I give you all!_”

I had the message there at the street. I gazed blankly. Then with realization came tumultuous sweetness that was pain. Doris, across the way, stopped singing.

“Good news, Roger?”

“The best, and the worst!”

“Oh! Tell me about it, when I come.”

...Do your eyebrows slope, and your lips upcurl?

I have written it all out. When she comes (she is coming soon) I shall tell her all, as I have told you. This is to be the blackest hour of my life. I have made up my mind to tell her the truth. It is her right. But my heart has so often failed me. If this is tenderness, why what a false tenderness it is!

I have no more hopes of you now than I had when I wrote you. But I belong to you, and will always belong to you, just for your once loving, even though you despise me, now and forever.

I shall tell her frankly, extenuating nothing. _For I will have no more lies_. On that I am resolved.

Anne, I do not truly live without you, and I crave the intensest living. I think of you always as I saw you first--tall and fair, with the gold across your temples, and the museful, wistful mouth with its serious thinking silences and then its soft rapid speech, and the eyes, the blue eyes, that had for me such exquisite language. You are repose--Heaven! And I am in a hell of my own making, and, dearest, I could not help it! Ah, I am pleading! I did not mean to plead.

Did you have a dream of me, as noble, say? Here am I, who love life because of you, who love you more than that life or my hope of heaven. But what to you is such a love?

She is coming soon, and I shall tell her. I say I shall have no more deception. I am yours--yours! I dare not write the prayer that is in my heart. I cannot say farewell. Remember, when you despise me worst, I am yours!

II--FROM DORIS

The letter sent with this was found sealed and bearing your name and address in the room where Roger died yesterday. He had spoken of you so often that I came almost to know you. That is why I am writing this note; you were his friend, and one so noble as he must have noble friends. I thought for a moment I would ask you to let me read the letter; but I could not bear to see it and know that it was his last, and written to another.--The trouble was his heart. Will you be present? I cannot write any more for crying.

III--THE TWO WOMEN

Said Doris: “You are just as I pictured you. May I call you just Anne? How long they prayed! I did not know you would come. I could not think who you were, standing beside his grave so beautiful and tearless. I could not see well for weeping, and the wind was cold, and my head ached. Oh, the wan face! The black clothes--I did not like the black. I wanted to lie down there with him and be covered up. The clay was so cold and wet. Oh, how cold my heart grew! Did you think they prayed long? I was so cold!”

“I have never been told how he died,” said Anne.

“I entered the library, where he was waiting for me,” Doris replied. “It was near twilight. He sat by the window, looking out. When I came in he turned and his face was pale. The room was cold. The fire had gone out. I never saw him pale before; I was frightened and cried out. He came to re-assure me, and his face was so pale! He looked at me long and anxiously--so anxiously. I did not understand this look, it was so strange. It hurt me because I did not understand it. Now I know it was physical suffering. He went back to the window and sank into his chair. ‘Are you not ill?’ I asked. He answered, ‘A little,’ and added, ‘It will pass.’ But he did not speak at all or touch me, and when I stroked his forehead he leaned suddenly forward, his face in his arms, on the window-sill, and would not answer me. I ran out to tell them he was ill. When the doctor came I was told he was dead. They gave me his letter to send you, and tell you.”

“You do not wish,” said Anne, “to read the letter?”

Doris did not reply.

“It would make you less able to realize that he is--gone,” said Anne, gently.

“Yes,” said Doris, “and then it was to you,--not me.”

The other’s face was suffused with tender pity. She spoke impulsively, and yet with a timorous boldness, as one who ventures upon hazardous and novel ways:--

“Doris, he loved you with all his heart!”

“He told you?”

“Yes.”

“He spoke of you so often, Anne. We shall always be friends.”

“Yes, always.”

“You are sure he loved me so?” The girl’s mouth tremored at the corners. “He did not tell me often enough.”

“He loved you dearly,” said Anne.

“Ah, if you knew what sweet comfort you give! You are sure?--quite sure?”

“He loved you with all his heart,” repeated Anne.

“I will go, Anne. I thank you so much! I think I can weep again, now. For a while, goodbye. Give me both your hands, and kiss me.”

THE DEAD OAK

By Anna Vernon Dorsey

THE November day was drawing to a close. The shadows were deepening in the pine forest that lay on one side of the sandy road. On the other side, the corn-stalks stood in level rows against the yellow of the sunset. My horse limped painfully, for he had cast a shoe several hours since, and my hurried ride through a thinly inhabited part of lower Maryland, with which I was unfamiliar, had so far brought me near no blacksmith’s shop. Great, then, was my relief, on passing the wood, to find a three-cross-roads, and a small house with a shed from which rang the measured stroke of the anvil, while the square of the door was ruddy with the forge fire.

After calling loudly and waiting in vain for a reply, I dismounted. Just then the blacksmith came to the door,--a big, low-browed, long-haired fellow, of few words. After examining my horse’s feet, he announced that it would be necessary to replace not only the missing shoe, but also three others.

As he proceeded slowly to work, I saw that there was before me the prospect of a long wait which did not promise to be agreeable, for the man was either surly or stupid, and gave out monosyllabic replies in answer to my questions about the country. A dreary country it was, that through which I was passing,--flat, sandy, impoverished, the virtue having been tilled out of the soil for two hundred years. Now that the old landed proprietors had departed to the cities, the majority of the inhabitants were miserable poor whites and negroes, principally fishermen and oystermen. Here and there one came across a relic of the past,--an old manor-house, ruined or deserted, the property generally of one man, a former overseer, who seemed to own most of the country.

And yet there was a charm of the past over this low-lying land,--a blaze of glory in the west, reflected in the broad river that almost lapped the roots of the huge pine forests that grew along its banks.

As I stood at the door of the smithy, looking eastward, I could see only one exception to this sombre monotony of pines. On the roadside, in the middle of a dense sweep of meadows, entirely isolated, stood a huge oak-tree, the only one of its kind to be seen for miles around.

“That must be a pretty old tree,” I remarked.

“The Dead Oak? Many a hundred years old, I reckon.”

“It doesn’t look dead to me,” I answered; “it has a dense foliage.”

“That’s what they call it,--the Dead Oak. A man hung himself to it three years ago,” said the smith, with some show of animation.

“One of the neighborhood?”

“No; a stranger round here. Nobody ever could find out where he come from,--Washington likely. The niggers say it’s ha’nted.”

“How is that?” I asked, much interested.

“Don’t know; just ha’nted,” said the man gruffly, relapsing into silence amid a fire of sparks.

Leaving my taciturn companion, I sauntered down to the road, my steps turning intuitively in the direction of the old tree.

A chill wind came from the river, and a flight of crows with harsh cries arose from its branches, as it stood, the central landmark in the stretch of meadows. On one side of the road was a zigzag rail fence, and on the topmost rail of this, under the tree, I seated myself. The lowest branches almost touched my head, and the dry and dense foliage rustled with every breeze.

Just beyond were two wooden posts, the entrance of a carriage-way leading through a corn-field to what I had not noticed before, a large house far back from the road. As I sat there, facing the afterglow of the sunset, I became aware of the figure of an old negro coming slowly through the corn-rows, through the gate,--a bent negro with bushy white hair. Taking off his rabbit-skin cap, with a courtly bow he seated himself on the roots of the tree.

For some moments we sat there in silence, the old man, with his hands folded, gazing into the west.

“Good evening, uncle,” I ventured to remark. “Do you live near here?”

“Not far away,--up dat a-way,” waving his hand indefinitely in the direction of the shadowy mansion.

“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Many an’ many a year,” he responded wearily. “Ebber sence I cum inter de world. I belonged to Mars’ Brooke up yonder.”

“Then you must know about the man who hung himself here three years ago?”

“He war n’t no man,” said the old darky sternly. “He wuz first quality, my young gen’leman. I ought ter know, kase I buried him bofe times.”

At these words, suddenly a thrill ran over me, a sense of mystery, something accursed brooding over this desolate spot.

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Who was he?”

“Befo’ de Lord, boss, I don’ know, an’ nobody else does. It came about dis ‘er’ way: De first time wuz years an’ years ago. Dar wuz good times in de country den. De quality had n’t all gone away an’ sol’ de ole places to oberseers an’ po’ white trash. Mars’ Harry Brooke wuz keepin’ bachelor’s hall up dar, an’ many’s de high ol’ times and junketings dey had. Well, one night dey had a gran’ time, a-drinkin’ an’ a-carryin’ on, he an’ de udder young gemlemens.’Bout day de party bruk up, kase de wuz sober enuff den ter ride home. I wuz a young chap den, an’ I wuz runnin’ on in front ter open de gate, bar’footed, from de door, kase it war hot weather den, like Injum summer. When I open’ de gate I scrich out ‘O Gord!’ an’ I like ter fall ter de groun’, kase dar, wid his face all white an’ orful ‘gainst de red leabes, a-lookin’ me right in de eyes, wuz a man tied to der branch, wid a white han’chif aroun’ his neck. It didn’t take me long ter jump fo’ward an’ take him down, an’ when de gemlemen rid up dar he wuz a-lyin’ on de groun’ an’ me a-settin’ right hyar on dis same stump wid his curly head on my knees. He war n’t quite dead an’ his han’ kotch mine, an’ his beautiful brown eyes closed a minute, an’ he gasped like an’ died. All de gemlemen dat came up an’ stan’ ‘roun’, dey say dey nebber see any one so handsom’ ez my young man wuz, jes like one er de marble statues in de parlor, wid a eagle nose, an’ a mouth many a young lady must ‘a’ kissed. But dose days wuz ober fur him far ebber,--yes, mon.

“De quarest thing wuz, he didn’t hab nuthin’ on but a shirt, an’ dat wuz de fines’ quality, real linin, embroidered, but no mark or sign on it ter tell whar he cum from. Nobody ain’t nebber seed him befo’ in dis part ob de kentry. Mars’ Harry sont all ober the kentry, clar up ter Washin’ton an’ Baltimor’, but nobody cum fo’ward ter claim him, so he wuz buried. De parson say he can’t be buried in de cons’crated groun’, kus he mus’ ‘a’ kill hisself, so me an’ anudder man buried him in de medder, under dis tree, right nigh whar you is a-settin’.”

The old man’s narrative ran on monotonously. It seemed as natural, as much a part of the scene, as the croaking of the frogs in the deepening twilight, in which it seemed that I could almost see that white face with its aquiline nose and large brown eyes.

“Dat wuz long ago, long ago,” the old man resumed, “long ago. De War come an’ went, an’ Mars’ Harry wuz killed, an’ de firs’ people lef’ de kentry and de kentry wuz like new-made sod, dirt up’ards; but I nebber fo’got my young gemleman, real quality, hangin’ hyar in dis tree, away from all his people. Well, boss, many years parse, an’ Mars’ Harry’s oberseer done bought de ole place up dar. One night ‘bout three years ago dey gib one er dese hyar big abricultural suppers, an’ dey set dare all night eatin’ an’ drinkin’ like dere betters used ter do. It wuz de same time er year, but misty an’ damp an’ in de early mornin’ I wuz comin’ long de road an’ I see a crowd gaddered aroun’ de tree, jus’ like it wuz dat udder mornin’ long time ago. When I come up, boss, for Gord! dar wuz my young, beautiful gemleman a-lyin’ on de groun’, stiff an’ stark, in his shirt, wid dat hankerchief ‘roun’ his neck. I wuz glad ter see him ag’in, but he war n’t nearly alive, like he wuz befo’. De doctor wuz dere, an’ he felt him an’ he say, ‘Dis man bin dead fo’ days. Who has hang dis corpse to dis tree? Who is de man?’ Jes’ like dey say befo’, ‘Who is de man?’ Nobody remember’ him ‘cept’n’ me. De ole crowd dat wuz dere befor’, de quality, dey all parsed ‘way, what wid de War an’ one thing ur nudder, all gone but me. But I nebber said nuthin’ ter be called ole crazy nigger,--no, mon. Dare he wuz, shore ‘nuff, de same eagle nose an’ brown eyes an’ curls, de same leetle scratch, like de razor done scratch him on de chin. I knowed him, an’ I cyarried him; none er dem common folks ain’t fetched him. Dey abertised eberywhar, but nobody ain’t answer.’ ’Case dey can’t. Dey war n’t nobody lef’ ter answer ‘cept me,” and the old man gave an eerie chuckle. “De doctors an’ de lawyers talk it all ober, but dey cay n’t agree, an’ de parson, one er dese hyar new kind, he say he kin be buried in de churchyard, but de people make a fuss, kase he mought er bin a su’cide. So I helped bury him ag’in. Seems like I wuz specially ‘pinted ter be his body-sarvant; dis time it’s right outside de churchyard, an’ nobody don’t know it’s him but me, kase dey all passed away.”

A pale, watery moon had emerged, the wind soughed among the pine-trees, and away off an owl hooted.

“De nex’ time I’s gwine to bury him right in de churchyard. He gwine ter come once mo’, an’ I ain’t gwine ter die till den, an’ dat time he’s gwine ter be buried in de churchyard, and he won’t come no mo’, an’ den I’ll pass away.”

A shout came through the dusk from the smithy:

“Say, mister, come; here’s your horse.” The other words were indistinguishable. I arose and started up the road reluctantly, longing to know more of the mystery. The old man again removed his cap, and so I left him, motionless, seated in the shadows, facing the faint glow in the west. My horse was ready when I reached the forge, the blacksmith standing dark and massive in the doorway. “An old negro has just been telling me a remarkable story,” I said after mounting; “that there have been two suicides found hanging to the old oak, one long ago.”

“Can’t say,” answered the blacksmith, impassively and stolidly. “Ain’t lived here very long myself. Always been called the ‘Dead Oak’ ever since I knowed it.”

“Well, do you know an old negro with a bushy white head and beard, who lives near the Brooke House? Who is he?”

“Might be old Sam, or Lige, or Cash. Lots of ‘em round here,” answered the man, and that was all he would say.

I mounted and rode off rapidly, for there were still six hours of travel before reaching my destination.

The moonlight was faint and chill, silvering the dry foliage of the old tree. I drew rein under it, and peered vainly into the shadows for the darker outlines of the old negro; he had disappeared, but it seemed to me he was still present, sitting on the gnarled root, with the pallid face of that young old corpse against his knee, waiting.

The owl hooted. A faint light shone from the dim mansion in the fields, and I pressed on through a belt of low pines. When some distance on my way I turned and looked back. The glow of the smithy was hidden. All the low stretch of land was folded in twilight, and against the pale sky the Dead Oak stood spectral and alone.

THE MAKING OF MONSIEUR LESCARBOT’S BALLAD

By William Holloway, Jr.

T was a stormy evening of March, 1611. All day snow had fallen in a white whirlwind on Port Royal, winning one by one its points of vantage, and submerging each in turn relentlessly, till now the tiny colony had almost vanished in the drifts.

Signs of outline there were none. The great stone gateway at the southeast, carven above with the fleur-de-lis, was dim and shapeless even to the sentry in the guard-room beside it; the bastion to the southwest, its four cannon quite buried, melted vaguely into the darkness. Snow lay everywhere. The gabled houses were turned into white misshapen monsters, and strange fantastic mounds stretched across the Square. Even the flag of France in the centre, beneath which the Seigneur of Port Royal stood each year to greet his vassals, had suffered with the rest, the wind having wrapped it tightly about its staff, and the interminable flakes blotted out its lilies.

It was ten by the clock, and the colonists long since abed, so that, save for the blink of the sentry’s candle, a stranger passing by the guard-room would have seen no sign of life. But that was only because a giant drift hid the great hall of the seigneurie from sight, for there a few of them were still awake and drinking deep, in honor of the coming to Acadie of the Duc de Montpelier, cousin of the king.

Within the long wainscoted room, Poutrincourt, Seigneur of Port Royal, sat musing before a huge log fire, with his thin white hands spread out to the mellow heat. His face, delicately contoured and crossed by many lines, gleamed with a ruddy hue while the flames roared up the high-arched chimney; when they sank low again, it had the likeness of an ashen mask against the blackness of his silken doublet. He was clad entirely in black, even to his ruffles. His head was sunken on his breast. And thus he sat gazing at the fire, his shadow on the wall behind keeping time grotesquely to the leaping flames.

To his left Marc Lescarbot, the poet of the colony, listened across a bowl of muscat to one of Imbert’s endless stories. He was tall and thin, with dreamy gray eyes; there were girlish dimples on his cheeks.

Just now, however, his face was flushed and his fingers played nervously about his girdle, for Imbert, after a fashion of his own, was emphasizing the narrative with reckless flourishings of his naked sword. But even then, with the point almost upon his breast, Monsieur Lescarbot by no means lost his urbanity, for his smile, albeit a trifle anxious, was still most wondrous sweet. As for Imbert, the story he was telling had excited him beyond control. It was as if his wild sea-roving days had returned. His black eyes flashed fiercely from out his red, scarred face; his rubicund lips were protruded; his massive left hand was twined in the coarse black hair that overhung his forehead. As the firelight danced athwart him he seemed to Lescarbot, always fanciful, much like the gods on the bowls of the Indian lobster-claw pipes, so broad was his short, squat body and so flaming red his face.

On the right at a small table the Seigneur’s son, Biencourt, and the Duc de Montpelier played at dice; the one eagerly, as if mindful of his growing pile of pistoles, the other in listless unconcern. And this difference the appearance of the two enhanced, for while Biencourt was tall, blue-eyed, and smooth and fresh of face, the duc was short and dark, with glittering black eyes and a pale, wearied countenance. And whereas Biencourt was bravely dressed in doublet and hose of soft blue satin, the duc wore a black velvet that harmonized sombrely with his paleness and his listlessness. He had but that day reached Acadie from France, yet the sight of the forest life about him, the fur-clad lackeys and strange Indian relics, seemed scarcely to stir his pulses. Instead he sat in silence by the table, carelessly toying with his white, ringed hands.

The round ended and Biencourt swept in his gains. “Doubles?” he cried.

The duc nodded and pushed forward his stake.

“It was then the English came aboard us, Monsieur Lescarbot,” roared Imbert, waving his sword, “and I leave you to judge how fierce the fighting was with half our men already dead. The deck was a red shambles, and in the midst stood Pierre Euston, blood from head to heel.”

“It is worthy of a ballad,” murmured his hearer.

The duc shivered and drew nearer the fire. “Do ballads flourish in this frozen land?” he asked, with a languid lift of his black eyebrows.

Poutrincourt started from his reverie. “Lescarbot is a famous poet, monsieur le duc. For a ballad or love-song I know few to equal him.”

A blush reddened the poet’s dimpled cheeks. “The wilderness is full of subjects,” said he, modestly.

The wind was rising higher and the stout oaken door rattled clamorously to the white gusts. His highness the Duc de Montpelier shivered again and looked about him somewhat curiously at the quaintly carven doors and the bearskins and heads of deer that hung upon the dark wainscoted walls.

“It was then I came up from the lower deck,” went on Imbert, “and side by side Pierre Euston and I charged together. Ah! Pierre was a brave fighter in those days, I warrant you, and together we swept the decks before us. And droll enough work it was, with the wounded dogs of English laying their swords about our heels as we passed.”

“It was scoundrelly work,” broke in Biencourt, balancing his dice-box on his fingers. “Nothing would please me better than a meeting with this droll gentleman, this Pierre Euston.”

Half seriously, half amusedly, the quondam pirate shrugged his great shoulders. “Tush! I was but a lad,” he said in a tone of apology, “and I took no share beyond the fighting.”

The dicing went on. The duc threw and lost again and impassively as ever filled his silver flagon from the pitcher on the long oaken table behind him. “To your next ballad, Monsieur Lescarbot,” he said, politely. But the wine was scarce half way to his lips ere there came a strange interruption. The door opened slowly from without, and a woman entered, an infant in her arms.

In after years, when alone with Imbert in the ruined fort, that scene came back to Biencourt with startling vividness. Once again he beheld the long room dyed red in the glow of the fire; once more he saw them as they started to their feet and stood staring blankly at the stranger. And much cause was there to stare, for women in Port Royal this winter there were none,--least of all grand ladies, such as each movement showed this to be,--while beyond the fort lay naught but a savage, unbroken wilderness. And Biencourt remembered standing thus while one might slowly count ten.

The duc was the first to speak. “You are cold, madame,” he said softly. “You must drink some wine.” And, flagon in hand, he approached her.

But the newcomer, who was blue-eyed and most marvellously fair of face, waved him curtly back. “I have come to ask shelter for myself and babe, from the lord of the seigneurie, monsieur, not to drink wine.” Then, pausing as if for breath, she stood erect beside the door, slender and lissome, a multitude of snow-flakes slowly melting in the red-gold of her hair.

For a moment Poutrincourt was silent. Idly his thoughts travelled the endless forest wastes of Acadie, snow-clad and inhospitable, where, this winter of 1611, was no white settlement beside his own. He had even passed up the great river to Quebec, where his friend Captain Samuel Champlain had three years before planted the banner of the fleur-de-lis, when with a start he became aware the woman’s eyes were fixed haughtily upon him. Then, mindful of his duty, he stepped forward, bowing low, and bade her welcome to his seigneurie of Port Royal, brushing the snow from her long fur mantle with his own white hands. And in an instant more the stranger was ensconced in a chair before the fire.

Biencourt and the duc resumed their gaming, Monsieur Lescarbot took out his tablets preparatory to verse-making, and Imbert busied himself mulling wine for the conclusion of the evening’s potations, which in Port Royal were wont to be of the deepest. But no one ventured to mar the hospitality of Port Royal with a question, and the newcomer proved more taciturn than would have been expected from the laughing curves of her lips, sitting moment after moment silent in the glow of the fire.