The Flower of the Chapdelaines | Page 7

the rains of all its valleys. Presently the
open window gave me my cue: the stars! the unvexed and unvexing
stars, that shone before human wrongs ever began, and that will be
shining after all human wrongs are ended--our talk should be of them.

V
At the supper-table on the following evening I became convinced of
something which I had felt coming for two or three days, wondering
the while whether Sidney did not feel the same thing. When we rose
aunt drew me aside and with caressing touches on my brow and
temples said she was sorry to be so slow in bringing me into social
contact with the young people of the neighboring plantations, but that
uncle, on his arrival at home, had found a letter whose information had
kept him, and her as well, busy every waking hour since. "And this
evening," she continued, "we can't even sit down with you around the
parlor lamp. Can you amuse yourself alone, dear, or with Sidney, while
your uncle and I go over some pressing matters together?"
Surely I could. "Auntie, was the information--bad news?"
"It wasn't good, my dear; I may tell you about it to-morrow."
"Hadn't I better go back to father at once?"
"Oh, my child, not for our sake; if you're not too lonesome we'd rather
keep you. Let me see; has Mingo ever danced for you? Why, tell
Sidney to make Mingo come dance for you."
Mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a most
laughable wonder, and I should have begged for more than I did, but I
saw that it was a part of Sidney's religion to disapprove the dance.
"Sidney," I said, "did you ever hear of the great clock in the sky? Yes,

there's one there; it's made all of stars." We were at the foot of some
veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo were about to
settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to the top of the
flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believed those eternal
lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of the night,
others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never sank out of
sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went round and round
with all the others; and why I called those the clock of heaven; which
gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, on the time we kept by
the sun.
"Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Sidney. "Miss Maud, please hol' on tell
Mingo run' fetch daddy an' mammy; dey don't want dat sto'y f'om me
secon' haynded!" Mingo darted off and we waited. "Miss Maud, what
de white folks mean by de nawth stah? Is dey sich a stah as de nawth
stah?"
I tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the stars
around us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there would
necessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never
move at all, and that any star directly in line with those two points
would seem as still as they.
"Like de p'int o' de spin'le on de spinnin'-wheel, Miss Maud? Oh, yass,
I b'lieve I un'stand dat; I un'stan' it some."
I showed her the north star, and told her how to find it; and then I took
from my watch-guard a tiny compass and let her see how it forever
picked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, and
held quiveringly to it. She hung over it with ecstatic sighs. "Do it see de
stah, Miss Maud, like de wise men o' de Eas' see de stah o' Jesus?"
I tried to make plain the law it was obeying.
"And do it p'int dah dess de same in de broad day, an' all day
long?--Pra-aise Gawd! And do it p'int dah in de rain, an' in de stawmy
win' a-fulfillin' of his word, when de ain't a single stah admissible in de
ske-eye?--De Lawd's na-ame be pra-aise'!" Her father, mother, and
brother were all looking at it with her, now, and she glanced from one
to another with long heavings of rapture.
"Miss Maud," said Silas, in a subdued voice, "dat little trick mus' 'a'
cos' you a mint o' money."
"Silas," put in Hester, "you know dass not a pullite question!" But she

was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it for twenty-five
cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I told Sidney she might
have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop
unconsciously while she gazed on the trinket.
They all sat down on the steps nearest below me,