Marie | Page 4

village scouted this story, and called it
child's foolishness, but there were some who liked to believe it, and
who pointed out that these words were not carved deeply and regularly,
like the rest of the inscription, but roughly scratched, as if with a sharp
point. And that although merely so scratched, they had never been
effaced, but were even more easily read than the carven script.
Among those who held it for foolishness was the present Jacques De
Arthenay. He was perhaps the fifth in descent from the old Huguenot,
but he might have been his own son or brother. The Huguenot doctrines
had only grown a little colder, a little harder, turned into New England
Orthodoxy as it was understood fifty years ago. He thought little of his
French descent or his noble blood. He pronounced his name Jakes, as
all his neighbors did; he lived on his farm, as they lived on theirs. If it
was a better farm, the land in better condition, the buildings and fences
trimmer and better cared for, that was in the man, not in his
circumstances. He was easily leader among the few men whose
scattered dwellings made up the village of Sea Meadows (commonly
pronounced Semedders.) His house did not lie on the little "street," as
that part of the road was called where some half-dozen houses were
clustered together, with their farms spreading out behind them, and the
post-office for the king-pin; yet no important step would be taken by
the villagers without the advice and approval of Jacques De Arthenay.
Briefly, he was a born leader; a masterful man, with a habit of thinking
before he spoke; and when he said a thing must be done, people were
apt to do it. He was now thirty years old, without kith or kin that any
one knew of; living by himself in a good house, and keeping it clean
and decent, almost as a woman might; not likely ever to change his
condition, it was supposed.
This was the man who happened to come into the street on some errand,
that soft summer evening, at the very moment when Marie was feeling

lifted up by the light of joy in the children's faces, and was telling
herself how good it was that she had come this way. Hearing the sound
of the fiddle, De Arthenay stopped for a moment, and his face grew
dark as night. He was a religious man, as sternly so as his Huguenot
ancestor, but wearing his religion with a difference. He knew all music,
except psalm-tunes, to be directly from the devil. Even as to the
psalm-tunes themselves, it seemed to him a dreadful thing that worship
could not be conducted without this compromise with evil, this snare to
catch the ear; and he harboured in the depth of his soul thoughts about
the probable frivolity of David, which he hardly voiced even to himself.
The fiddle, in particular, he held to be positively devilish, both in its
origin and influence; those who played this unholy instrument were
bound to no good place, and were sure to gain their port, in his opinion.
Being thus minded, it was with a shock of horror that he heard the
sound of a fiddle in the street of his own village, not fifty yards from
the meeting-house itself. After a moment's pause, he came wrathfully
down the street; his height raised him a head and shoulders above the
people who were ringed around the little musician, and he looked over
their heads, with his arm raised to command, and his lips opened to
forbid the shameful thing. Then--he saw Marie's face; and straightway
his arm dropped to his side, and he stood without speaking. The
children looked up at him, and moved away, for they were always
afraid of him, and at this moment his face was dreadful to see.
Yet it was nothing dreadful that he looked upon. Marie was standing
with her head bent down over her violin, in a pretty way she had. A
light, slight figure, not short, yet with a look that spoke all of youth and
morning grace. She wore a little blue gown, patched and faded, and
dusty enough after her day's walk; her feet were dusty too, but slender
and delicately shaped. Her face was like nothing that had been seen in
those parts before, and the beauty of it seemed to strike cold to the
man's heart, as he stood and gazed with unwilling eyes, hating the
feeling that constrained him, yet unable for the moment to restrain it or
to turn his eyes away. She had that clear, bright whiteness of skin that
is seen only in Frenchwomen, and only here and there among these;
whiteness as of