Part 4

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.