"Kin poppies scream?" asked Petie, opening great eyes of wonder. "My! ourn can't. We've got big red ones, biggest ever you see, but I never heerd a sound out of 'em."

Explanations ensued, and a digression in favour of the six puppies, whose noses were softer and whose tails were funnier than anything else in the known, world; and then—

"So Coquelicot, he come and he sit down before the poppies, and he open his mouth, so!" here Marie opened her pretty mouth, and tried to look like a malicious poodle,—with singular lack of success; but Petie was delighted, and clapped his hands and laughed.

"And then," Marie went on, "Lisette, she is the poppies' mother, and she hear them, and she come wiz yells, too, and try to drive Coquelicot, but he take her wiz his teeth and shake her, and throw her away, and go on to make faces, and all is horreebl' noise, to wake deads. So Old Billy call me, and I come, and I go softly behind Coquelicot, and down I put me, and Madame speak in her angry voice justly in Coquelicot's ear. 'La la! tra la li la!' deep down like so, full wiz angryness, terreebl', yes! And Coquelicot he jump, oh my! oh my! never he could jump so of all his life. And the tail bit-ween his legs, and there that he run, run, as if all devils run after him. Yes, funny, Petie, vairy funny!" She laughed, and Petie laughed in violent, noisy peals, as children love to do, each gust of merriment fanning the fire for another, till all control is lost, and the little one drops into an irrepressible fit of the "giggles." So they sat under the pine-trees, the two children, and laughed, and Marie forgot the hunger at her heart; till suddenly she looked and saw her husband standing near, leaning on his rake and gazing at her with grave, uncomprehending eyes. Then the laugh froze on her lips, and she rose hastily, with the little timid smile which was all she had for Jacques (yet he was hungry too, so hungry! and knew not what ailed him!) and went to meet him; while Petie ran away through the grove, as fast as his little legs would carry him.

CHAPTER VIII.

A FLOWER IN THE SNOW.

The winter, when it came, was hard for Marie. She had never known severe weather before, and this season it was bitter cold. People shook their heads, and said that old times had come again, and no mistake. There was eager pride in the lowest mercury, and the man whose thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero was happier than he who could boast but of twenty-five. There was not so much snow as in milder seasons, but the cold held without breaking, week after week: clear weather; no wind, but the air taking the breath from the dryness of it, and in the evening the haze hanging blue and low that tells of intensest cold. As the snow fell, it remained. The drifts and hollows never changed their shape, as in a soft or a windy season, but seemed fixed as they were for all time. Across the road from Jacques De Arthenay's house, a huge drift had been piled by the first snowstorm of the winter. Nearly as high as the house it was, and its top combed forward, like a wave ready to break; and in the blue hollow beneath the curling crest was the likeness of a great face. A rock cropped out, and ice had formed upon its surface, so that the snow fell away from it. The explanation was simple enough; Jacques De Arthenay, coming and going at his work, never so much as looked at it; but to Marie it was a strange and a dreadful thing to see. Night and morning, in the cold blue light of the winter moon and the bright hard glitter of the winter sun, the face was always there, gazing in at her through the window, seeing everything she did, perhaps—who could tell?—seeing everything she thought. She changed her seat, and drew down the blind that faced the drift; yet it had a strange fascination for her none the less, and many times in the day she would go and peep through the blind, and shiver, and then come away moaning in a little way that she had when she was alone. It was pitiful to see how she shrank from the cold,—the tender creature who seemed born to live and bloom with the flowers, perhaps to wither with them. Sometimes it seemed to her as if she could not bear it, as if she must run away and find the birds, and the green and joyous things that she loved. The pines were always green, it is true, in the little grove across the way; but it was a solemn and gloomy green, to her child's mind,—she had not yet learned to love the steadfast pines. Sometimes she would open the door with a wild thought of flying out, of flying far away, as the birds did, and rejoining them in southern countries where the sun was warm, and not a fire that froze while it lighted one. So cold! so cold! But when she stood thus, the little wild heart beating fiercely in her, the icy blast would come and chill her into quiet again, and turn the blood thick, so that it ran slower in her veins; and she would think of the leagues and leagues of pitiless snow and ice that lay between her and the birds, and would close the door again, and go back to her work with that little weary moan.

Her husband was very kind in these days; oh, very kind and gentle. He kept the dark moods to himself, if they came upon him, and tried even to be gay, though he did not know how to set about it. If he had ever known or looked at a child, this poor man, he would have done better; but it was not a thing that he had ever thought of, and he did not yet know that Marie was a child. Sometimes when she saw him looking at her with the grave, loving, uncomprehending look that so often followed her as she moved about, she would come to him and lay her head against his shoulder, and remain quiet so for many minutes; but when he moved to stroke her dark head, and say, "What is it, Mary? what troubles you?" she could only say that it was cold, very cold, and then go away again about her work.

Sometimes an anguish would seize him, when he saw how pale and thin she grew, and he would send for the village doctor, and beg him to give her some "stuff" that would make her plump and rosy again; but the good man shook his head, and said she needed nothing, only care and kindness,—kindness, he repeated, with some emphasis, after a glance at De Arthenay's face, and good food. "Cheerfulness," he said, buttoning up his fur coat under his chin,—"cheerfulness, Mr. De Arthenay, and plenty of good things to eat. That's all she needs." And he went away wondering whether the little creature would pull through the winter or not.

And Jacques did not throw the food into the fire any more; he even tried to think about it, and care about it. And he got out the Farmer's Almanac,—yes, he did,—and tried reading the jokes aloud, to see if they would amuse Mary; but they did not amuse her in the least, or him either, so that was given up. And so the winter wore on.

It had to end sometime; even that winter could not last forever. The iron grasp relaxed: fitfully at first, with grim clutches and snatches at its prey, gripping it the closer because it knew the time was near when all power would go, drop off like a garment, melt away like a stream. The unchanging snow-forms began to shift, the keen outlines wavered, grew indistinct, fell into ruin, as the sun grew warm again, and sent down rays that were no longer like lances of diamond. The glittering face in the hollow of the great drift lost its watchful look, softened, grew dim and blurred; one morning it was gone. That day Marie sang a little song, the first she had sung through all the long, cruel season. She drew up the blind and gazed out; she wrapped a shawl round her head and went and stood at the door, afraid of nothing now, not even thinking of making those tiresome horns. She was aware of something new in the air she breathed. It was still cold, but with a difference; there was a breathing as of life, where all had been dry, cold death. There was a sense of awakening everywhere; whispers seemed to come and go in the tops of the pine-trees, telling of coming things, of songs that would be sung in their branches, as they had been sung before; of blossoms that would spring at their feet, brightening the world with gold and white and crimson.

Life! life stirring and waking everywhere, in sky and earth; soft clouds sweeping across the blue, softening its cold brightness, dropping rain as they go; sap creeping through the ice-bound stems, slowly at first, then running freely, bidding the tree awake and be at its work, push out the velvet pouch that holds the yellow catkin, swell and polish the pointed leaf-buds: life working silently under the ground, brown seeds opening their leaves to make way for the tender shoot that shall draw nourishment from them and push its way on and up while they die content, their work being done; roots creeping here and there, threading their way through the earth, softening, loosening, sucking up moisture and sending it aloft to carry on the great work,—life everywhere, pulsing in silent throbs, the heart-beats of Nature; till at last the time is ripe, the miracle is prepared, and

"In green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins."

Marie too, the child-woman, standing in her doorway, felt the thrill of new life; heard whispers of joy, but knew not what they meant; saw a radiance in the air that was not all sunlight; was conscious of a warmth at her heart which she had never known in her merriest days. What did it all mean? Nay, she could not tell, she was not yet awake. She thought of her friend, of the silent voice that had spoken so often and so sweetly to her, and the desire grew strong upon her. If she died for it, she must play once more on her violin.

There came a day in spring when the desire mastered the fear that was in her. It was a perfect afternoon, the air a-lilt with bird-songs, and full of the perfume of early flowers. Her husband was ploughing in a distant field, and surely would not return for an hour or two; what might one not do in an hour? She called her little friend, Petie, who was hovering about the door, watching for her. Quickly, with fluttering breath, she told him what she meant to do, bade him be brave and fear nothing; locked the door, drew down the blinds, and closed the heavy wooden shutters; turned to the four corners of the room, bowing to each corner, as she muttered some words under her breath; and then, catching the child's hand in hers, began swiftly and lightly to mount the attic stairs.



CHAPTER X.

DE AKTHENAY'S VIGIL.

Was it a loup-garou in the attic? was it a loup-garou that drew that long, sighing breath, as of a soul in pain; was it a loup-garou that now groped its way to the other staircase, that which led up from the woodshed, pausing now and then, and going blindly, and breathing still heavily and slow?

De Arthenay had come up to the attic in search of something, tools, maybe, or seeds, or the like, for many odd things were stowed away under the over-hanging rafters. He heard steps, and stood still, knowing that it must be his wife who was coming up, and thinking to have pleasure just by watching her as she went on some little household errand, such as brought himself. She would know nothing of his presence, and so she would be free, unrestrained by any shyness or—or fear; if it was fear. So he had stood in his dark corner, and had seen little, indeed, but heard all; and it was a wild and a miserable man that crept down the narrow stairway and out into the fresh air.

He did not know where he was going. He wandered on and on, hearing always that sound in his ears, the soft, sweet tones of the accursed instrument that was wiling his wife, his own, his beloved, to her destruction. The child, too, how would it be for him? But the child was a smaller matter. Perhaps,—who knows? a child can live down sin. But Mary, whom he fancied saved, cured, the evil thing rooted out of her heart and remembrance!

Mary; Mary! He kept saying her name over and over to himself, sometimes aloud, in a passion of reproach, sometimes softly, broodingly, with love and pathos unutterable. What power there was in that wicked voice! He had never rightly heard it before, never, save that instant when she stood playing in the village street, and he saw her for a moment and loved her forever. Oh, he had heard, to be sure, this or that strolling fiddler,—godless, tippling wretches, who rarely came to the village, and never set foot there twice, he thought with pride. But this, this was different! What power! what sweetness, filling his heart with rapture even while his spirit cried out against it! What voices, entreating, commanding, uplifting!

Nay, what was he saying? and who did not know that Satan could put on an angel's look when it pleased him? and if a look, why not a voice? When had a fiddle played godly tunes, chant or psalm? when did it do aught else but tempt the foolish to their folly, the wicked to their iniquity?

Mary! Mary! How lovely she was, in the faint gleams of light that fell about her, there in the dim old attic! He felt her beauty, almost, more than he saw it. And all this year, while he had thought her growing in grace, silently, indeed, but he hoped truly, she had been hankering for the forbidden thing, had been planning deceit in her heart, and had led away the innocent child to follow unrighteousness with her. He would go back, and do what he should have done a year ago,—what he would have done, had he not yielded to the foolish talk of a foolish woman. He would go back, and burn the fiddle, and silence forever that sweet, insidious music, with its wicked murmurs that stole into a man's heart—even a man's, and one who knew the evil, and abhorred it. The smoke of it once gone up to heaven, there would be an end. He should have his wife again, his own, and nothing should come between them more. Yes, he would go back, in a little while, as soon as those sounds had died away from his ears. What was the song she sung there?

"'Tis long and long I have loved thee! I'll ne'er forget thee more."

She would forget it, though, surely, surely, when it was gone, breathed out in flame and ashes: when he could say to her, "There is no more any such thing in my house and yours, Mary, Mary."

How tenderly he would tell her, though! It would hurt, yes! but not so much as her look would hurt him when he told her. Ah, she loved the wooden thing best! He was dumb, and it spoke to her in a thousand tones! Even he had understood some of them. There was one note that was like his mother's voice when she lifted it up in the hymn she loved best,—his gentle mother, dead so long, so long ago. She—why, she loved music; he had forgotten that. But only psalms, only godly hymns, never anything else.

What devil whispered in his ear, "She never heard anything else. She would have loved this too, this too, if she had had the chance, if she had heard Mary play!" He put his hands to his ears, and almost ran on. Where was he going? He did not ask, did not think. He only knew that it was a relief to be walking, to get farther and farther away from what he loved and fain would cherish, from what he hated and would fain destroy.

The grass grew long and rank under his feet; he stumbled, and paused for a moment, out of breath, to look about him. He was in the old burying-ground, the grey stones rearing their heads to peer at him as he hurried on. Ah, there was one stone here that belonged to him. He had not been in the place since he was a child; he cared nothing about the dead of long ago: but now the memory of it all came back upon him, and he sought and found the grey sunken stone, and pulled away the grass from it, and read the legend with eyes that scarcely saw what they looked at.

"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"

And the place was free from moss, as they always said; the rude scratch, as of a sharp-pointed instrument. Did it mean anything? He dropped beside it for a minute, and studied the stone; then rose and went his way again, still wandering on and on, he knew not whither.

Darkness came, and he was in the woods, stumbling here and there, driven as by a strong wind, scorched as by a flame. At last he sank down at the foot of a great oak-tree, in a place he knew well, even in the dark: he could go no farther.

"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"

It whispered in his ears, and seemed for a little to drown the haunting notes of the violin. He, the Calvinist, the practical man, who believed in two things outside the visible world, a great hell and a small heaven, now felt spirits about him, saw visions that were not of this life. His ancestor, the Huguenot, stood before him, in cloak and band; in one hand a Bible, in the other a drawn dagger. His dark eyes pierced like a sword-thrust; his lips moved; and though no sound came, Jacques knew the words they framed.

"Tenez foi! Keep the faith that I brought across the sea, leaving for it fair fields and vineyards, castle and tower and town. Keep the faith for which I bled, for which I died here in the wilderness, leaving only these barren acres, and the stone that bears my last word, my message to those who should come after me. Keep the faith for which my fair wife faded and died, far away from home and friends! Let no piping or jigging or profane sound be in thy house, but let it be the house of fasting and of prayer, even as my house was. Keep faith! If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee!"

Who else was there,—what gentle, pallid ghost, with sad, faint eyes? The face was dim and shadowy, for he had been a little child when his mother died. She was speaking too, but what were these words she was saying? "Keep faith, my son! ay! but keep it with your wife too, the child you wedded whether she would or no, and from whom you are taking the joy of childhood, the light of youth. Keep faith as the sun keeps it, as the summer keeps it, not as winter and the night."

What did that mean? keep faith with her, with his wife? how else should he do it but by saving her from the wrath to come, by plucking her as a flower out of the mire?

"What shall I save but her soul, yea, though her body perish?"

He spoke out in his trouble, and the vision seemed to shrink and waver under his gaze; but the faint voice sighed again,—or was it only the wind in the pine-trees?—"Care thou for her earthly life, her earthly joy, for God is mindful of her soul."

But then the deeper note struck in again,—or was it only a stronger gust, that bowed the branches, and murmured through all the airy depths above him?

"Keep the faith! Thou art a man, and wilt thou be drawn away by women, of whom the best are a stumbling-block and a snare for the feet? Destroy the evil thing! root it out from thy house! What are joys of this world, that we should think of them? Do they not lead to destruction, even the flowery path of it, going down to the mouth of the pit, and with no way leading thence? Who is the woman for whose sake thou wilt lose thine own soul? If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out!"

So the night went on, and the voices, or the wind, or his own soul, cried, and answered, and cried again: and no peace came.

The night passed. As it drew to a close, all sound, all motion, died away; the darkness folded him close, like a mantle; the silence pressed upon him like hands that held him down. Like a log the man lay at the foot of the great tree, and his soul lay dead within him.

At last a change came; or did he sleep, and dream of a change? A faint trembling in the air, a faint rustling that lost itself almost before it reached the ear. It was gone, and all was still once more; yet with a difference. The darkness lay less heavily: one felt that it hid many things, instead of filling the world with itself alone.

Hark! the murmur again, not lost this time, but coming and going, lightly, softly, brushing here and there, soft dark wings fanning the air, making it ever lighter, thinner. Gradually the veil lifted; things stood out, black against black, then black against grey; straight majesty of tree-trunks, bending lines of bough and spray, tender grace of ferns.

And now, what is this? A sound from the trees themselves,—no multitudinous murmur this time, but a single note, small and clear and sweet, breaking like a golden arrow of sound through the cloudy depths.

Chirp, twitter! and again from the next tree, and the next, and now from all the trees, short triads, broken snatches, and at last the full chorus of song, choir answering to choir, the morning hymn of the forest.

Now, in the very tree beneath which the man lay, Chrysostom, the thrush, took up his parable, and preached his morning sermon; and if it had been set to words, they might have been something like these:—

"Sing! sing, brothers, sisters, little tender ones in the nest! Sing, for the morning is come, and God has made us another day. Sing! for praise is sweet, and our sweetest notes must show it forth. Song is the voice that God has given us to tell forth His goodness, to speak gladly of the wondrous things He hath made. Sing, brothers and sisters! be joyful, be joyful in the Lord! all sorrow and darkness is gone away, away, and light is here, and morning, and the world wakes with us to gladness and the new day. Sing, and let your songs be all of joy, joy, lest there be in the wood any sorrowing creature, who might go sadly through the day for want of a voice of cheer, to tell him that God is love, is love. Wake from thy dream, sad heart, if the friendly wood hold such an one! Sorrow is night, and night is good, for rest, and for seeing of many stars, and for coolness and sweet odours; but now awake, awake, for the day is here, and the sun arises in his might,—the sun, whose name is joy, is joy, and, whose voice is praise. Sing, sing, and praise the Lord!"

So the bird sang, praising God, and the other birds, from tree and shrub, answered as best they might, each with his song of praise; and the man, lying motionless beneath the great tree, heard, and listened, and understood.

Still he lay there, with wide open eyes, while the golden morning broke over him, and the light came sifting down, through the leaves, checkering all the ground with gold. The wood now glowed with colour, russet and green and brown, wine-like red of the tree-trunks where the sun struck aslant on them, soft yellow greens where the young ferns uncurled their downy heads. The air was sweet, sweet, with the smell of morning; was the whole world new since last night?

Suddenly from the road near by (for he had gone round in a circle, and the wooded hollow where he lay was out of sight but not out of hearing of the country road which skirted the woods for many miles), from the road near by came the sound of voices,—men's voices, which fell strange and harsh on his ears, open for the first time to the music of the world, and still ringing with the morning hymn of joy. What were these harsh voices saying?

"They think she'll live now?"

"Yes, she'll pull through, unless she frets herself bad again about Jacques. Nobody'd heerd a word of him when I come away."

"Been out all night, has he?"

"Yes! went away without saying anything to her or anybody, far as I can make out. Been gone since yesterday afternoon, and some say—" The voices died away, and then the footsteps, and silence fell once more.



CHAPTER XI.

VITA NUOVA.

De Arthenay never knew how he reached home that day. The spot where he had been lying was several miles from the white cottage, yet he was conscious of no time, no distance. It seemed one burning moment, a moment never to be forgotten while he lived, till he found himself at the foot of the outer stairway, the stair that led to the attic. She might still be living, and he would not go to her without the thing she craved, the thing which could speak to her in the voice she understood.

Again a moment of half-consciousness, and he was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, looking in with blind eyes of dread. What should he see? what still form might break the outline of that white bed which she always kept so smooth and trim?

The silence cried out to him with a thousand voices, threatening, condemning, blasting; but the next moment it was broken.

"Mon ami!" said Marie. The words were faint, but there was a tone in them that had never been there before. "Jacques, mon ami, you are here! You did not go to leave me?"

The mist cleared from the man's eyes. He did not see Abby Rock, sitting by the bed, crying with joyful indignation; if he had seen her, it would not have been in the least strange for her to be there. He saw nothing—the world held nothing—but the face that looked at him from the pillow, the pale face, all soft and worn, yet full of light, full—was it true, or was he dreaming in the wood?—of love, of joy.

"Come in, Jacques!" said Abby, wondering at the look of the man. "Don't make a noise, but come in and sit down!"

De Arthenay did not move, but held out the violin in both hands with a strange gesture of submission.

"I have brought it, Mary!" he said. "You shall always have it now. I—I have learned a little—I know a little, now, of what it means. I hadn't understanding before, Mary. I meant no unkindness to you."

Abby laughed softly. "Jacques De Arthenay, come here!" she said. "What do you suppose Maree's thinking of fiddles now? Come here, man alive, and see your boy!"

But Marie laid one hand softly on the violin, as it lay on the bed beside her,—the hand that was not patting the baby; then she laid it, still softly, shyly, on her husband's head as he knelt beside her. "Jacques, mon ami," she whispered, "you are good! I too have learned. I was a child always, I knew nothing. See now, I love always Madame, my friend, and she is mine; but this, this is yours too, and mine too, our life, our own. Jacques, now we both know, and God, He tell us! See, the same God, only we did not know the first times. Now, always we know, and not forget! not forget!"

The baby woke and stirred. The tiny hand was outstretched and touched its father's hand, and a thrill ran through him from head to foot, softening the hard grain, melting, changing the fibre of his being. The husk that in those lonely hours in the forest had been loosened, broken, now fell away from him, and a new man knelt by the white bed, silent, gazing from child to wife with eyes more eloquent than any words could be. The baby's hand rested in his, and Marie laid her own over it; and Abby Rock rose and went away, closing the door softly after her.

THE END.