The Choir Invisible

J >> James Lane Allen >> The Choir Invisible

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Hence the Jacobin clubs that were formed in Kentucky: one at Lexington, a
second at Georgetown, a third at Paris. Hence the liberty poles in the
streets of the towns; the tricoloured cockades on the hats of the men; the
hot blood between the anti-federal and the federalist parties of the State.

The actions of Citizen Genet had indeed been disavowed by his republic. But
the sympathy for France, the hatred of England and of Spain, had but grown
meantime; and when therefore in this spring of 1795 the news reached the
frontier that Jay had concluded a treaty with England--the very treaty that
would bring to the Kentuckians the end of all their troubles with the posts
of the Northwest--the flame of revolution blazed out with greater
brilliancy.

During the hour that John Gray spent in that assemblage of men that night,
the talk led always to the same front of offence: the baser truckling to
England, an old enemy; the baser desertion of France, a friend. He listened
to one man of commanding eloquence, while he traced the treaty to the
attachment of Washington for aristocratic institutions; to another who
referred it to the jealousy felt by the Eastern congressmen regarding the
growth of the new power beyond the Alleghanies; to a third who foretold that
like all foregoing pledges it would leave Kentucky still exposed to the fury
of the Northern Indians; to a fourth who declared that let the treaty be
once ratified with Lord Granville, and in the same old faithless way,
nothing more would be done to extort from Spain for Kentucky the open
passage of the Mississippi.

At any other time he would have borne his part in these discussions. Now he
scarcely heard them. All the forces of his mind were away, on another
battle-field and he longed to be absent with them, a field strewn with the
sorrowful carnage of ideal and hope and plan, home, happiness, love. He was
hardly aware that his own actions must seem unusual, until one of the older
men took him affectionately by the hand and said:

"Marshall tells me that you teach school till sunset and read law till
sunrise; and tonight you come here with your eyes blazing and your skin as
pallid and dry as a monk's. Take off the leeches of the law for a good
month, John! They abstract too much blood. If the Senate ratifies in June
the treachery of Jay and Lord Granville, there will be more work than ever
for the Democratic Societies in this country, and nowhere more than in
Kentucky. We shall need you then more than the law needs you now, or than
you need it. Save yourself for the cause of your tricolour. You shall have a
chance to rub the velvet off your antlers."

"We shall soon put him beyond the reach of his law," said a member of the
Transylvania Library Committee. "As soon as his school is out, we are going
to send him to ask subscriptions from the President, the Vice-President, and
others, and then on to Philadelphia to buy the books."

A shadow fell upon the face of another officer, and in a lowered tone he
said, with cold emphasis:
"I am sorry that the citizens of this town should stoop to ask anything from
such a man as George Washington."

The schoolmaster scarcely realized what he had done when he consented to act
as a secret emissary of the Jacobin Club of Lexington to the club in
Philadelphia during the summer.

The political talk ended at last, the gentlemen returned to the ladies. He
found himself standing in a doorway beside an elderly man of the most
polished hearing and graceful manners, who was watching a minuet.

"Ah!" he said, waving his hand with delight toward the scene. "This is
Virginia and Maryland brought into the West! It reminds me of the days when
I danced with Martha Custis and Dolly Madison. Some day, with a beginning
like this, Kentucky will be celebrated for its beautiful women. The
daughters and the grand-daughters and the great-granddaughters of such
mothers as these--"

"And of fathers like these!" interposed one of the town trustees who came up
at that moment. "But for the sake of these ladies isn't it time we were
passing a law against the keeping of pet panthers? I heard the cry of one as
I came here to-night. What can we do with these young backwoods hunters?
Will civilization ever make pets of them--ever tame them?"
John felt some one touch his arm; it was Kitty with Horatio. Her cheeks were
like poppies; her good kind eyes welcomed him sincerely.

"You here! I'm so glad. Haven't you seen Amy? She is in the other room with
Joseph. Have they explained everything? But we will loose our place--"she
cried, and with a sweet smile of adieu to him, and of warning to her
partner, she glided away.

"We are entered for this horse race," remarked Mr. Turpin, lingering a
moment longer. "Weight for age, agreeable to the rules of New Market. Each
subscriber to pay one guinea, etc., etc., etc." He was known as the rising
young turfman of the town, having first run his horses down Water Street;
but future member of the first Jockey Club; so that in the full blossom of
his power he could name all the horses of his day with the pedigree of each:
beginning with Tiger by Tiger, and on through Sea Serpent by Shylock, and
Diamond by Brilliant, and Black Snake by Sky Lark: a type of man whom long
association with the refined and noble nature of the horse only vulgarizes
and disennobles.

Once afterward Gray's glance fell on Amy and Joseph across the room. They
were looking at him and laughing at his expense and the sight burnt his eyes
as though hot needles had been run into them. They beckoned gaily, but he
gave no sign; and in a moment they were lost behind the shifting figures of
the company. While he was dancing, however, Joseph came up.

"As soon as you get away, Amy wants to see you."

Half and hour later he came a second time and drew Gray aside from a group
of gentlemen, speaking more seriously: "Amy wants to explain how all this
happened. Come at once."

"There is nothing to explain," said John, with indifference.
Joseph answered reproachfully:
"This is foolish, John! When you know what has passed, you will not censure
her. And I could not have done otherwise." Despite his wish to be serious,
he could not help laughing for he was very happy himself.

But to John Gray these reasonable words went for the very thing that they
did not mean. His mind had been forced to a false point of view; and from a
false point of view the truth itself always looks false. Moreover it was
intolerable that Joseph should be defending to him the very woman whom a few
hours before he had hoped to marry.
"There is no explanation needed from her," he replied, with the same
indifference. "I think I understand. What I do not understand I should
rather take for granted. But you, Joseph, you owe me an explanation. This
is not the place to give it." His face twitched, and he knotted the fingers
of his large hands together like bands of iron. "But by God I'll have it;
and if it is not a good one, you shall answer." His oath sounded like an
invocation to the Divine justice--not profanity.
Joseph fixed his quiet fearless eyes on Gray's. "I'll answer for myself--and
for her"--he replied and turned away.

Still later Gray met her while dancing--the faint rose of her cheeks a shade
deeper, the dazzling whiteness of her skin more pearl-like with warmth, her
gaiety and happiness still mounting, her eyes still wandering among the men,
culling their admiration.

"You haven't asked me to dance to-night. You haven't even let me tell you
why I had to come with Joseph, when I wanted to come with you." She gave a
little pout of annoyance and let her eyes rest on his with the old fondness.
"Don't you want to know why I broke my engagement with you?" And she danced
on, smiling back at him provokingly.
He did not show that he heard; and although they did not meet again, he was
made aware that a change had at last come over her. She was angry now. He
could hear her laughter oftener--laughter that was meant for his ear and she
was dancing oftener with Joseph. He looked at her repeatedly, but she
avoided his eyes.

"I am playing a poor part by staying here!" he said with shame, and left the
house.

After wandering aimlessly about the town for some two hours, he went
resolvedly back again and stood out in the darkness, looking in at her
through the windows. There she was, unwearied, happy, not feigning; and no
more affected by what had taken place between them than a candle is affected
by a scorched insect. So it seemed to him.

This was the first time he had ever seen her at a ball. He had never
realized what powers she possessed in a field like this: what play, what
resources, what changes, what stratagems, what victories. He mournfully
missed for the first time certain things in himself that should have
corresponded with all those light and graceful things in her.
Perhaps what hurt him most were her eyes, always abroad searching for
admiration, forever filling the forever emptied honeycomb of self-love.

With him love was a sacred, a grim, an inviolate selection. He would no more
have wished the woman he had chosen to seek indiscriminate admiration with
her eyes than with her lips or her waist. It implied the same fatal flaw in
her refinement, her modesty, her faithfulness, her high breeding.
A light wind stirred the leaves of the trees overhead. A few drops of rain
fell on his hat. He drew his hand heavily across his eyes and turned away.
Reaching his room, he dropped down into a chair before his open window and
sat gazing absently into the black east.

Within he faced a yet blacker void--the ruined hopes on which the sun would
never rise again.

It was the end of everything between him and Amy: that was his one thought.
It did not occur to him even to reflect whether he had been right or wrong,
rude or gentle: it was the end: nothing else appeared worth considering.

Life to him meant a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known
principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see
every move of the other: and all who chose could look on.

He was still very young.

X
THE glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A
fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls
of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their
drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took
their last leap into little pools below.
With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his
weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and
try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven
on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk.
As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always
fastened by a simple latch, now stood open; and he went over to see if
everything inside were in order. All his life, when any trouble had come
upon him, he had quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like a
soldier; and once in the school-room now, he threw himself down in his chair
with the sudden feeling that here in his familiar work he must still find
his home--the home of his mind and his affections--as so long in the past.
The mere aspect of the poor bare place had never been so kind. The very
walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him
with friendly strength and understanding.

He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at
the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into
the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long,
lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist
passed over it. When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was
creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its
motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never
before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog
closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more
swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of
snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the
trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which
formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in
the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then
it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until
its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set
forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing
with steady green fire--as still as death. And then with his blood become as
ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a
deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face
unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come for its kill.

This dreaded animal, the panther or painter of the backwoodsman, which has
for its kindred the royal tiger and the fatal leopard of the Old World, the
beautiful ocelot and splendid unconquerable jaguar of the New, is now rarely
found in the Atlantic States or the fastnesses of the Alleghanies. It too
has crossed the Mississippi and is probably now best known as the savage
puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout
the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain
rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane,
or close to miry swamps and watery everglades; and no other region was so
loved by it as the vast game park of the Indians, where reined a
semi-tropical splendour and luxuriance of vegetation and where, protected
from time immemorial by the Indian hunters themselves, all the other animals
thatconstitute its prey roved and ranged in unimaginable numbers. To the
earliest Kentuckians who cut their way into this, the most royal jungle of
the New World, to wrest it from the Indians and subdue it for wife and
child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations
with the last degree of dread. To them its cry--most peculiar and startling
at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or
of a traveller lost in the woods--aroused more terror than the nearest bark
of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and
address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic,
resistless bison, or the furious pass with antlers lowered of the noble,
ambereyed, infuriated elk. Hidden as still as an adder in long grass of its
own hue, or squat on a log, or amid the foliage of a sloping tree, it waited
around the salt licks and the springs and along the woodland pathways for
the other wild creatures. It possessed the strength to kill and drag a
heifer to its lair; it would leap upon the horse of a traveller and hang
there unshaken, while with fang and claw it lacerated the hind quarters and
the flanks--as the tiger of India tries to hamstring its nobler,
unmanageable victims; or let an unwary bullock but sink a little way in a
swamp and it was upon him, rending him, devouring him, in his long agony.

Some hunter once had encamped at the foot of a tree, cooked his supper, seen
his fire die out and lain down to sleep, with only the infinite solitude of
the woods for his blanket, with the dreary, dismal silence for his pillow.
Opening his eyes to look up for the last time at the peaceful stars, what he
perceived above him were two nearer stars set close together, burning with a
green light, never twinkling. Or another was startled out of sleep by the
terrible cry of his tethered horse. Or after a long, ominous growl, the
cougar had sprung against his tent, knocking it away as a squirrel would
knock the thin shell from a nut to reach the kernel; or at the edge of the
thicket of tall grass he had struck his foot against the skeleton of some
unknown hunter, dragged down long before.

To such adventures with all their natural exaggeration John Gray had
listened many a time as they were recited by old hunters regarding earlier
days in the wilderness; for at this period it was thought that the cougar
had retreated even from the few cane-brakes that remained unexplored near
the settlements. But the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persistence
returns again and again to its old-time ranges and coverts long after the
bison, the bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs; and the cougar
besets the deer.

It was these stories that he remembered now and that filled him with horror,
with the faintness of death. His turn had come at last, he said; and as to
the others, it had come without warning. He was too shackled with weakness
to cry out, to stand up. The windows on each side were fastened; there was
no escape. There was nothing in the room on which he could lay hold--no
weapon or piece of wood, or bar of iron. If a struggle took place, it would
be a clean contest between will and will, courage and courage, strength and
strength, the love of prey and the love of life.It was well for him that
this was not the first time he had ever faced death, as he had supposed; and
that the first thought that had rushed into his consciousness before
returned to him now. That thought was this: that death had come far too
soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a
great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it
for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible
quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong
attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed
him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already
yielded him its due result that growth of character which arises silently
within us, built up out of a myriad nameless elements--beginning at the very
bottom of the ocean of unconsciousness; growing as from cell to cell, atom
to atom--the mere dust of victorious experience--the hardening deposits of
the ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will; until at last, based on
eternal quietude below and lifting its wreath of palms above the waves of
life, it stands finished, indestructible, our inward rock of defence against
every earthly storm.

Soon his face was worth going far to see. He had grown perfectly calm. His
weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary. His
old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple,
agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued;
he had never taken them from the cougar.

Keeping them on it still, he rose slowly from the chair, realizing that his
chances would be better if he were in the middle of the room. He stepped
round in front of his table and walked two paces straight forward and then
paused, his face as white, as terrible, as death. At the instant of his
moving he could see the tense drawing in of all the muscles of the cougar
and the ripple of its skin, as its whole body quivered with excitement and
desire; and he knew that as soon as he stopped it would make its spring.

With a growl that announces that all hiding and stealth are over, the leap
came. He had thrown his body slightly forward to meet it with the last
thought that whatever happened he must guard his throat. It was at this that
the cougar aimed, leaping almost perpendicularly, its widespread fore feet
reaching for his shoulders, while the hind feet grasped at his legs. The
under part of its body being thus exposed, he dealt it a blow with all his
strength--full in the belly with his foot, and hurled it backward. For a
second it crouched again, measuring him anew, then sprang again. Again he
struck, but this time the fore feet caught his arm as they passed backward;
the sharp, retractile nails tore their way across the back and palm of his
hand like dull knives and the blood gushed. Instantly the cougar leaped upon
the long, wooden desk that ran alone one side of the room, and from that
advantage, sprang again but he bent his body low so that it passed clean
over him. Instantly it was upon his desk at his back; and before he could
more than recover his balance and turn, it sprang for the fourth time. He
threw out his arm to save his throat, but the cougar had reached his left
shoulder, struck its claws deep into his heavy coat; and with a deafening
roar sounding close in his ears, had buried its fangs near the base of his
neck, until he heard them click as they met through his flesh.

He staggered, but the desk behind caught him. Straightening himself up, and
grappling the panther with all his strength as he would a man, he turned
with it and bent it over the sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower,
trying to break its back. One of the fore feet was beginning to tear through
his clothing, and straightening himself up again, he reached down and caught
this foot and tried to bend it, break it. He threw himself with all his
force upon the floor, falling with the cougar under him, trying to crush it.
He staggered to his feet again, but stepped on his own blood and fell. And
then, feeling his blood trickling down his breast and his strength going,
with one last effort he put up his hands and seizing the throat, fastened
his fingers like iron rivets around the windpipe. And then--with the long,
loud, hoarse, despairing roar with which a man, his mouth half full of
water, sinks far out in the ocean--he fell again.
XI

IT was ten o'clock that morning of mid-May. The rain was over. Clouds and
mists were gone, leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal. The sun floated a
globe of gold in the yielding blue. Above the wilderness on a dead treetop,
the perch of an eagle now flashing like a yellow weather-vane, a thrush
poured the spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over upon the bowed
woods. Beneath him the dull green domes of the trees flashed as though
inlaid with gems, white and rose. Under these domes the wild grapevines,
climbing the forest arches as the oak of stone climbs the arches of a
cathedral, filled the ceiling and all the shadowy spaces between with fresh
outbursts of their voluptuous dew-born fragrance. And around the
rough-haired Satyr feet of these vines the wild hyacinth, too full of its
own honey to stand, fell back on its couch of moss waiting to be visited by
the singing bee.

The whole woods emerged from the cloudy bath of Nature with the coolness,
the freshness, the immortal purity of Diana united to the roseate glow and
mortal tenderness of Venus; and haunted by two spirits: the chaste, unfading
youth of Endymion and the dust-born warmth and eagerness of Dionysus.

Through these woods, feeling neither their heat nor their cold, secured by
Nature against any passion for either the cooling star or the inflaming
dust, rode Amy--slowly homeward from the ball. Yet lovelier, happier than
anything the forest held. She had pushed her bonnet entirely off so that it
hung by the strings at the back of her neck; and her face emerged from the
round sheath of it like a pink and white tulip, newly risen and bursting
forth.

When she reached home, she turned the old horse loose with many pattings and
good-byes and promises of maple sugar later in the day; and then she bounded
away to the garden to her aunt, of whom, perhaps, she was more truly fond
than of any one in the world except herself.

Mrs. Falconer had quickly left off work and was advancing very slowly--with
mingled haste and reluctance--to meet her.
"Aunt Jessica! Aunt Jessica!" cried Amy in a voice that rang like a small
silver bell, "I haven't seen you for two whole nights and three whole days!"
Placing her hands on Mrs. Falconer's shoulders, she kissed her once on each
cheek and twice playfully on the pearly tip of the chin; and then she looked
into her eyes as innocently as a perfect tulip might look at a perfect rose.

Mrs. Falconer smilingly leaned forward and touched her lips to Amy's
forehead. The caress was as light as thistle-down--perhaps no warmer.

"Three entire days!" she said chidingly. "It has been three months," and she
searched through Amy's eyes onward along the tortuous little passages of her
heart as a calm blue air might search the chambers of a cold beautiful
sea-shell.

Each of these women instantly perceived that since they had parted a change
had taken place in the other; neither was aware that the other noticed the
change in herself. Mrs. Falconer had been dreading to find one in Amy when
she should come home; and it was the one she saw now that fell as a chill
upon her. Amy was triumphantly aware of a decisive change in herself, but
chose for the present, as she thought, to keep it hidden; and as for any
change in her aunt--that was an affair of less importance.

"Why, Aunt Jessica!" she exclaimed indignantly, "I don't believe you are
glad to see me," and throwing her arms around Mrs. Falconer's neck, she
strained her closely. "But you poor dear auntie! Come, sit down. I'm going
to do all the work now--mine and yours, both. Oh! the beautiful gardening!
Rows and rows and rows! With all the other work beside. And me an idle
good-for-nothing!"

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