Our domremy was like any other humble little hamlet of that
remote time and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes
and alleys shaded and sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of
the barnlike houses. The houses were dimly lighted by
wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes in the walls which
served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there was very little
furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main industry; all the
young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the
rear edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top
was the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and
dense, and full of interest for us children, for many murders had
been done in it by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times
prodigious dragons that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from
their nostrils had their homes in there. In fact, one was still living
in there in our own time. It was as long as a tree, and had a body as
big around as a tierce, and scales like overlapping great tiles, and
deep ruby eyes as large as a cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on
its tail as big as I don't know what, but very big, even unusually so
for a dragon, as everybody said who knew about dragons. It was
thought that this dragon was of a brilliant blue color, with gold
mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, therefore this was not
known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was not my opinion; I
think there is no sense in forming an opinion when there is no
evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any bones in
him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and
cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another
time, and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that
dragon, I always held the belief that its color was gold and without
blue, for that has always been the color of dragons. That this
dragon lay but a little way within the wood at one time is shown by
the fact that Pierre Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and
recognized it by the smell. It gives one a horrid idea of how near to
us the deadliest danger can be and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in
the earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the
dragon and get the reward, but in our time that method had gone
out, and the priest had become the one that abolished dragons.
Père Guillaume Fronte did it in this case. He had a procession,
with candles and incense and banners, and marched around the
edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it was never heard
of again, although it was the opinion of many that the smell never
wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell again,
for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other--and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the
exorcism, but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing
which I cannot be so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground
toward Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with
wide-reaching arms and a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid
spring of cold water; and on summer days the children went
there--oh, every summer for more than five hundred years--went
there and sang and danced around the tree for hours together,
refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it was
most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies
that lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little
creatures, as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and
pretty like wild flowers put together in that way. And in return for
this attention the fairies did any friendly thing they could for the
children, such as keeping the spring always full and clear and cold,
and driving away serpents and insects that sting; and so there was
never any unkindness between the fairies and the children during
more than five hundred years--tradition said a thousand--but only
the warmest affection and the most perfect trust and confidence;
and whenever a child died the fairies mourned just as that child's
playmates did, and the sign of it was there to see; for before the
dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little immortelle over
the place where that child was used to sit under the tree. I know
this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the reason it
was known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made all of
black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were
called the Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it
carried with it a mystic privilege not granted to any others of the
children of this world. Which was this: whenever one of these
came to die, then beyond the vague and formless images drifting
through his darkening mind rose soft and rich and fair a vision of
the Tree--if all was well with his soul. That was what some said.
Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or
two years in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of
sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate winter aspect--then
that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance came, and
purity of life, the vision came again, this time summer-clad and
beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was
withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still others
said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last
dear reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to
their hearts like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their
love and the comrade of their joys and comforter of their small
griefs all through the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one
and some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was
the last one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they
were true, but I only know that the last one was; and it is my
thought that if one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble
about the things which he cannot be sure about, he will have the
steadier mind for it--and there is profit in that. I know that when
the Children of the Tree die in a far land, then--if they be at peace
with God--they turn their longing eyes toward home, and there,
far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that curtains heaven, they
see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, clothed in a dream of golden
light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping away to the river, and
to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet the fragrance of
the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and passes--b they
know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you know also,
you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared
twice--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it.
Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them; for
one gets most things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really
two apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient
times if one saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid
with a ghastly fright, it was common for every one to whisper to
his neighbor, "Ah, he is in sin, and has got his warning." And the
neighbor would shudder at the thought and whisper back, "Yes,
poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put
aside with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the
cumulative evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer
to being proof all the time; and if this continue and continue, it
will some day become authority--and authority is a bedded rock,
and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these
was the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these
cases only a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that
soul's redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them
long before, and with them peace--peace that might no more be
disturbed--the eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait
with serenity; for I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it,
and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands
and danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the
Tree's song, the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to
a quaint sweet air--a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring
through my dreaming spirit all my life when I was weary and
troubled, resting me and carrying me through night and distance
home again. No stranger can know or feel what that song has been,
through the drifting centuries, to exiled Children of the Tree,
homeless and heavy of heart in countries foreign to their speech
and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that song, and poor,
perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us, and what it
brought before our eyes when it floated through our memories,
then you will respect it. And you will understand how the water
wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us
around the Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it.
And that hallows it, yes, you will grant that:
L'ARBRE FÉE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young--
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never
saw them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of
Domremy had held a religious function under the tree and
denounced them as being blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them
from redemption; and then he warned them never to show
themselves again, nor hang any more immortelles, on pain of
perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their
good friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but
the priest would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have
such friends. The children mourned and could not be comforted;
and they made an agreement among themselves that they would
always continue to hang flower-wreaths on the tree as a perpetual
sign to the fairies that they were still loved and remembered,
though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's
mother passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance,
not thinking anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so
intoxicated with the wild happiness of it, and with the bumpers of
dew sharpened up with honey which they had been drinking, that
they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey stood there astonished and
admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms holding hands, as many
as three hundred of them, tearing around in a great ring half as big
as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and spreading
their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from
the ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very maddest
and witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined
creatures discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking
squeak of grief and terror and fled every which way, with their wee
hazel-nut fists in their eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not
heartless, but only thoughtless--went straight home and told the
neighbors all about it, whilst we, the small friends of the fairies,
were asleep and not witting the calamity that was come upon us,
and all unconscious that we ought to be up and trying to stop these
fatal tongues. In the morning everybody knew, and the disaster was
complete, for where everybody knows a thing the priest knows it,
of course. We all flocked to Père Fronte, crying and begging--and
he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most kind and
gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and said
so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all
happened at the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a
fever and out of her head, and what could we do who had not her
gifts of reasoning and persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed
and cried out, "Joan, wake! Wake, there is no moment to lose!
Come and plead for the fairies--come and save them; only you can
do it!"
But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor
what we meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all
was lost, forever lost; the faithful friends of the children for five
hundred years must go, and never come back any more.
It was a bitter day for us, that day that Père Fronte held the
function under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not
wear mourning that any could have noticed, it would not have
been allowed; so we had to be content with some poor small rag of
black tied upon our garments where it made no show; but in our
hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and occupying all the
room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at them to
prevent that.
The great tree--l'Arbre Fée do Bourlemont was its beautiful
name--was never afterward quite as much to us as it had been
before, but it was always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there
now, once a year in my old age, to sit under it and bring back the
lost playmates of my youth and group them about me and look
upon their faces through my tears and break my heart, oh, my God!
No, the place was not quite the same afterward. In one or two ways
it could not be; for, the fairies' protection being gone, the spring
lost much of its freshness and coldness, and more than two-thirds
of its volume, and the banished serpents and stinging insects
returned, and multiplied, and became a torment and have remained
so to this day.
When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much
her illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in
believing she could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of
anger, for so little a creature, and went straight to Père Fronte, and
stood up before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again,
is it not so?"
"Yes, that was it, dear."
"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that
person is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that
person is showing himself to that man?"
"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy
when he said it.
"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"
Père Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to
his side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace
with her, but her temper was up so high that she could not get it
down right away, but buried her head against his breast and broke
out crying and said:
"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to
commit one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because
they were little creatures and could not speak for themselves and
say the saw was against the intention, not against the innocent act,
because they had no friend to think that simple thing for them and
say it, they have been sent away from their home forever, and it
was wrong, wrong to do it!"
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and
unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little
creatures back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have
been unjust. There, there, don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than
your poor old friend--don't cry, dear."
"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for
such an act?"
Père Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see
him laugh, and said:
"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put
on sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?"
Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the
old man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you."
Père Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he
had not remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a
very agreeable one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to
the fireplace, Joan watching him with deep interest, and took a
shovelful of cold ashes, and was going to empty them on his old
gray head when a better idea came to him, and he said:
"Would you mind helping me, dear?"
"How, father?"
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest.
One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike
Joan or any other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon
her knees by his side and said:
"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father."
"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"
"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that
must forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get
up, gather, won't you?"
"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning
your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not
become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this
with your wise little head."
The Père would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to
cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged
her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings
and suffocations:
"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast
and said:
"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of
a sort presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it;
that I testify."
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her
face and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits
now, and ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew
Joan to his side again, and said:
"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with
the other children; is it not so?"
That was the way he always started out when he was going to
corner me up and catch me in something--just that gentle,
indifferent way that fools a person so, and leads him into the trap,
he never noticing which way he is traveling until he is in and the
door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I knew he was going to drop
corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:
"Yes, father."
"Did you hang them on the tree?"
"No, father."
"Didn't hang them there?"
"No."
"Why didn't you?"
"I--well, I didn't wish to."
"Didn't wish to?"
"No, father."
"What did you do with them?"
"I hung them in the church."
"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"
"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and
that it was sinful to show them honor."
"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"
"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."
"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were
of kin to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and
the other children, couldn't they?"
"I suppose so--yes, I think so."
He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap,
and he did. He said:
"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of
fearful origin; they could be dangerous company for the children.
Now give me a rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why
you call it a wrong to drive them into banishment, and why you
would have saved them from it. In a word, what loss have you
suffered by it?"
How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could
have boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was
going along all right until he ruined everything by winding up in
that foolish and fatal way. What had she lost by it! Was he never
going to find out what kind of a child Joan of Arc was? Was he
never going to learn that things which merely concerned her own
gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he never get the
simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only way to
rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had
gone and set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished.
The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up,
the indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with
an energy and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish
me, for I knew he had fired a mine when he touched off his
ill-chosen climax.
"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"
"God and the King."
"Not Satan?"
"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan
owns no handful of its soil."
"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who
protected them in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to
dance and play there all those centuries and found no fault with it?
God. Who disapproved of God's approval and put a threat upon
them? A man. Who caught them again in harmless sports that God
allowed and a man forbade, and carried out that threat, and drove
the poor things away from the home the good God gave them in
His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was
their home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no
man had a right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest,
truest friends that children ever had, and did them sweet and
loving service all these five long centuries, and never any hurt or
harm; and the children loved them, and now they mourn for them,
and there is no healing for their grief. And what had the children
done that they should suffer this cruel stroke? The poor fairies
could have been dangerous company for the children? Yes, but
never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of the Fiend?
What of it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had; and
children have rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would
have spoken--I would have begged for the children and the fiends,
and stayed your hand and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is
lost; everything is lost, and there is no help more!"
Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and
friendship because salvation was barred against them. She said
that for that very reason people ought to pity them, and do every
humane and loving thing they could to make them forget the hard
fate that had been put upon them by accident of birth and no fault
of their own. "Poor little creatures!" she said. "What can a person's
heart be made of that can pity a Christian's child and yet can't pity
a devil's child, that a thousand times more needs it!"
She had torn loose from Père Fronte, and was crying, with her
knuckles in her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and
now she burst out of the place and was gone before we could
gather our senses together out of this storm of words and this
whirlwind of passion.
The Père had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood
there passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a
person who is dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered
toward the door of his little workroom, and as he passed through it
I heard him murmur sorrowfully:
"Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said
true--I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame."
When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set
a trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I
seemed to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get
him into one; but upon reflection my heart went down, for this was
not my gift. |