By The Bayou St. John
The Bayou St. John slowly makes its dark-hued way through reeds
and rushes, high banks and flat slopes, until it casts itself
into the turbulent bosom of Lake Pontchartrain. It is dark, like
the passionate women of Egypt; placid, like their broad brows;
deep, silent, like their souls. Within its bosom are hidden
romances and stories, such as were sung by minstrels of old.
From the source to the mouth is not far distant, visibly
speaking, but in the life of the bayou a hundred heart-miles
could scarce measure it. Just where it winds about the northwest
of the city are some of its most beautiful bits, orange groves on
one side, and quaint old Spanish gardens on the other. Who cares
that the bridges are modern, and that here and there pert
boat-houses rear their prim heads? It is the bayou, even though
it be invaded with the ruthless vandalism of the improving idea,
and can a boat-house kill the beauty of a moss-grown centurion of
an oak with a history as old as the city? Can an iron bridge
with tarantula piers detract from the song of a mocking-bird in a
fragrant orange grove? We know that farther out, past the
Confederate Soldiers' Home,--that rose-embowered, rambling place
of gray-coated, white-haired old men with broken hearts for a
lost cause,--it flows, unimpeded by the faintest conception of
man, and we love it all the more that, like the Priestess of
Isis, it is calm-browed, even in indignity.
To its banks at the end of Moss Street, one day there came a man
and a maiden. They were both tall and lithe and slender, with
the agility of youth and fire. He was the final concentration of
the essence of Spanish passion filtered into an American frame;
she, a repressed Southern exotic, trying to fit itself into the
niches of a modern civilisation. Truly, a fitting couple to seek
the bayou banks.
They climbed the levee that stretched a feeble check to waters
that seldom rise, and on the other side of the embankment, at the
brink of the river, she sat on a log, and impatiently pulled off
the little cap she wore. The skies were gray, heavy, overcast,
with an occasional wind-rift in the clouds that only revealed new
depths of grayness behind; the tideless waters murmured a faint
ripple against the logs and jutting beams of the breakwater, and
were answered by the crescendo wail of the dried reeds on the
other bank,--reeds that rustled and moaned among themselves for
the golden days of summer sunshine.
He stood up, his dark form a slender silhouette against the sky;
she looked upward from her log, and their eyes met with an
exquisite shock of recognising understanding; dark eyes into dark
eyes, Iberian fire into Iberian fire, soul unto soul: it was
enough. He sat down and took her into his arms, and in the eerie
murmur of the storm coming they talked of the future.
"And then I hope to go to Italy or France. It is only there,
beneath those far Southern skies, that I could ever hope to
attain to anything that the soul within me says I can. I have
wasted so much time in the mere struggle for bread, while the
powers of a higher calling have clamoured for recognition and
expression. I will go some day and redeem myself."
She was silent a moment, watching with half-closed lids a
dejected-looking hunter on the other bank, and a lean dog who
trailed through the reeds behind him with drooping tail. Then
she asked:
"And I--what will become of me?"
"You, Athanasia? There is a great future before you, little
woman, and I and my love can only mar it. Try to forget me and
go your way. I am only the epitome of unhappiness and
ill-success."
But she laughed and would have none of it.
Will you ever forget that day, Athanasia? How the little gamins,
Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and
exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the
silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black
water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue
in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This
Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and
paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom.
The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; the Don
smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the
reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a
foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued
garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her keen
black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously
at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it
seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more
pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let
us go," she said; "the eternal feminine has spoiled it all."
The bayou flows as calmly, as darkly, as full of hidden passions
as ever. On a night years after, the moon was shining upon it
with a silvery tenderness that seemed brighter, more caressingly
lingering than anywhere within the old city. Behind, there rose
the spires and towers; before, only the reeds, green now, and
soft in their rustlings and whisperings for the future. False
reeds! They tell themselves of their happiness to be, and it all
ends in dry stalks and drizzling skies. The mocking-bird in the
fragrant orange grove sends out his night song, and blends it
with the cricket's chirp, as the blossoms of orange and magnolia
mingle their perfume with the earthy smell of a summer rain just
blown over. Perfect in its stillness, absolute in its beauty,
tenderly healing in its suggestion of peace, the night in its
clear-lighted, cloudless sweetness enfolds Athanasia, as she
stands on the levee and gazes down at the old log, now almost
hidden in the luxuriant grass.
"It was the eternal feminine that spoiled our dream that day as
it spoiled the after life, was it not?"
But the Bayou St. John did not answer. It merely gathered into
its silent bosom another broken-hearted romance, and flowed
dispassionately on its way.
-THE END-
Alice Dunbar's short story: By The Bayou St. John
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
