Bear in mind that it was through all these years from that night at Beaumanoir, through peaceful times, through quiet harvests, through gathering clouds, through deep thunderings, through lightning bursting from those clouds, through a great war, through a noble effort, through a mighty liberation, through a peace that was not a calm and a calm that became peace, that Fernand had changed from the figure of a perfect manhood to what he then was. On the whole, his dread disease had been merciful to him. The muscles, once firm as Samson's, had long since betrayed their strength into eating ulcers. But Gangrene-Death's grimmest lieutenant-still refrained from striking. It hovered with its scythe over the feet, filled with a growth of pustules. It threatened those hands once so strong, so soft, as instinct with music as with daring; but ten fingers still remained to be counted between them. His voice had become rauque and broken; but the hair, beard, and eye-brows, although prematurely white, had not yet dropped from their follicles. His features were enlarged, had turned to ghastly grotesqueness, but so far they had escaped the teredo-like borings of leprosy. With all this, he felt himself growing weaker day by day. He had ceased to use Dr. Tousage's medicines, left at intervals on his window. He could have no faith whatsoever in the physician who had none in himself, and who had told him frankly: "Palliatives, not remedies, Fernand, these are all I can promise you." But even these were now beyond his reach-the good old doctor had written his last prescription. Little by little, Fernand yielded his consolations. A fine dust, setting around the strings of Duffeyte's Cremona, had clogged their melody. Of the wild-beast-like, circular paths around and about the Tombeau, no sign remained. The grass had grown thick over them, as well as over that which, night after night, had so long been his road in the old days, to the lowest rung of a ladder by which he had reached the summit of the great solemn wall, and where, condemned like Moses on Pisgah's height, he would direct yearning glances "westward and northward, and southward and eastward," toward the black waters of the bayou swirling by in the darkness, and the shadowy outlines of fertile fields, once his own, and of dark forests which had been his hunting-ground as boy and man. There is now but one path in the Tombeau Blanc. It was the leper's first, as it will be his last path-the walk which leads from the cottage to the turn-window, which holds, each morning and afternoon, his food and drink. There are two parts fairly mixed in our humanity when in extremity. One is animal; the other, spiritual. The two cannot live apart, so long as the body itself holds together. Fernand feels this keenly. He seeks his food, as a beast. maimed in the fierce wars of its kind, might crawl to seek it ---by habit. But unlike the beast, his spirit, which stands for his pleasures, is confined to his cottage, or, in fair, sunny weather, to his seat under the Father Oak. He can no longer find solace in his Cremona. He can no longer see to read. He can only think, think, think! He totters, while he keeps back the groans, as he now makes the daily trips for his food. He remembers how, years, years ago, he had firmly planted his feet on that well-beaten path, hopeless then, but self-poised. Now, he can only creep painfully along it, stopping at intervals to gasp, taking a half-hour where once the half-minute had sufficed. Then, he had clutched his food with the appetite which young manhood gives, even when it knows itself doomed to lingering disease. Now, he puts his hand up for it with loathing, and turns aside with a shudder when he draws it down. That terrible path! This is what he now most fears. His hands are not of the strongest for the carrying of food, none of the safest for bearing a full pitcher. For over their swollen surface the skin has thickened and stretched tight and hard like a drum's head. His fingers are gradually turning within like a harpy's claws. He is far from sure of them. One day he doubts whether they will be able to take the food without dropping it. The next day he fears that they cannot carry drink without spilling it. The sorrowful truth is that he is growing afraid of himself. He trembles as he looks down at his pustuled feet, now always bare. At times he holds before his eyes in the sunlight his two yellow swollen hands with their curved fingers. Then, indeed, he breaks out into sudden despair; he bows his head upon those fingers, blotting out the tell-tale sun, while through them trickle the scalding scanty tears which lepers weep. He knows that he is now far in the last stage of his disease; that the end of all this must be impotence. The certainty of his fate haunts him like a spectre. He has marked with a ? that unknown day, soon to come, when he shall be too weak to leave his room. One way or other, he feels that that day, when it does come, must break the self-will which has grown almost marble under the Père Chêne. The Church has taught him that suicide is a crime. Though in a tomb, whence he can neither see the blaze of altar-candles, nor hear the chimes in steeple-bells, he believes it from his soul to be one. He is utterly alone in these days. Even Nature, the tried ally of solitary man, has neglected, if it have not altogether forgotten him. For years, that wizard of the forest, the mocking-bird, has cheered him with its "lyric bursts" of unmatched melody. But, true to its own instincts, it has set up its throne in the thickets around Confianza's hut. Outside of, not within, the gloomy wall is where the singer chooses to reign; and there it reigns, day and night, content if it only knows that the leper within gains from its wondrous notes a single hope. Fernand does not doubt his consoler, I think; or, if he do, his is only the faint shadow of a fainter doubt. Both were bred in the land of the orange and the sugar-cane. In the man's philosophy, born of his old nurse's lullabies, a certain sorcery attaches to this wondrous bird of wondrous song. As he listens in his agony to its joyous bursts, he so bound, it so free, he murmurs half unconsciously, in the wild words of an old Creole hymn of Nature, caught breathing from her by Père Rouquette: Ah, mokeur! Ah, mokeur shanteur! To gagnin tro l'espri, mokeur. *Ah, mocking bird! Ah, mocking songster, Thus, in its own fashion, is the gray maestro faithful to him. But not so his old shy comrade, the whippoorwill, which has long since left the tree that, in its depths, it haunted, and the master whom, in its coyness, it had seemed to love. The cyprière has sent none other of its songsters; and even the little twittering birds, that dote on freedom and space and glitter and company, avoid the mournful Father Oak as though he were a plague. Or, perhaps, these tiny creatures have finer senses than man, and know of the plague that sits and ponders, a breathing corpse, under the grand old tree. Here it is that Fernand passes hours in figuring over and over again what will come of the inevitable invasion. Confianza must, of course, be admitted. And Blanche? Oh, would that she could! But how foolish all this is, none knows so well as he. He would not let his darling in, no! not were she even to knock at the gate and ask that it be opened unto her. Nor can Blanche-but I had forgotten, there is no longer a Blanche. There is a Sœur Angélique who once bore her name-a fair and sinless woman dedicated to God, of whom her blackrobed sisters speak with love and pride. Nothing of all this passes into the Tombeau Blanc. Fernand has not forgotten Blanche, but he has no knowledge of Sœur Angélique. He is ever intent upon the old problems that vex his waning life. The great iron-bound door, so long closed, must soon turn upon its rusty hinges. Who will dare pass the gate? Who will, having once passed it, dare advance to confront the odor of the charnel-house which fills the square, and which seems to have blasted the green old age of le Pène Chêne. Who? The world? No! His old doctor? No!~ His former slaves. No! Delegates from Leper-Land? Yes! Forgetfulness forbids the first; death, the second; superstition and "exodus," the third; brotherhood admits the last. At this prospect, leper as he is, he shudders. These fancies fill his dark hours. He keeps his failing eyes fastened wearily upon his narrow domain. The grass is growing thick and green over all the paths which he once circled in his madness. It is with eager longing he awaits the day when it shall spring up as thick and green around and cover his last walk. "It took years to cover those," he murmurs hoarsely. "My God! how many weeks will it be before this last one is covered?" December 25, 187-. A letter just received from my friend, the Mayor of Thibodaux, contains this simple announcement: "Death, the Consoler, has at last come to Fernand.” THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN SOUTHERN BY JOHN BELL HENNEMAN [The Sewanee Review, July, 1903] It is well understood that in any proper acceptance of the term, American literature must reflect the progress and processes of American thought and life. What seems a truism in uttering it, was long hidden from the practice of American writers. At first American letters represented almost anything but American life, and, in consequence, no life anywhere. The American inherited English law and English custom; these he made his own and modified them to suit his convenience. He also inherited the English language and English literature complete at his command; but not so happy always were the uses to which he subjected the language, and his direction in literary work was frequently obtuse. There could not here be the same mastery over matter as in the laws; there was not the same independence of conditions nor the same self-reliance. In this case isolation wrought a harm that in the other had stimulated development. In thought, in literature, or in the attempts that passed under the name of literature, English traditions, English models, English productions, were long dominant; English culture in education and letters was merely transferred, and too often, after tradition became weakened, there was current what purported to be the genuine article under borrowed forms that were but shoddy. Nor in the nature of the case has this influence ever been |