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.