A Maid of the Kentucky Hills

by Edwin Carlile Litsey

CHAPTER TWELVE

IN WHICH I ATTEND AN ORATORIO

It is one o'clock in the morning—and I have been going to bed at nine!

You will wonder what has happened to so outrageously disturb the rigorous routine governing my night hours, and I shall tell you, for that is the purpose of this chronicle.

It is now three days since I went to Hebron. After leaving the priest's house I came on down the hill, trudged back to the river to get my coat and garden seed, then turned homeward. The sun was hot by this time, my clothes quickly dried on me, and I have felt no bad effects since. Another sign, it seems to me, of my increasing physical sturdiness. These three days have passed without sight or sound of a soul. I have pottered about my yard, mowing down the insistent heterogeneous growth which daily now threatens to take me; clearing a broad space about my precious well—whose water, by the way, is sparkling, clear and cold—and this morning spading in my garden for two hours or more.

I cannot explain that which follows, but a little before nine, as I was preparing to light my bedtime pipe and sit down for a chuckle with that old pagan monk, Rabelais, I felt the call to go up. As I said, I can offer no explanation. But all of us have been subject, many times in our lives, to sudden, inexplicable yearnings; silent longings as powerful and real as though a voice had spoken them. There is no need to specialize. You, if you have a spark of temperament, will understand, because you will have experienced something of the sort. You have felt that mysterious tugging toward a certain thing, when there was nothing on earth to incite it. What was it? I felt it to-night as I held my pipe in one hand and a lighted match in the other; felt it growing and expanding until it became a fierce desire. I tossed my half-burned match among the logs in the fireplace, put my filled pipe in my pocket, and with something akin to awe sobering my face, drew my cap on my head and walked softly outdoors.

It was a perfect moonless May night. I had never seen the stars brighter or nearer. I felt that by tiptoeing I might almost reach them. And their number amazed me. The sky was looking down at me with a million eyes, and each eye was a voice which said "Come up! Come up!" I went, not stopping to question, analyze, or combat. Something irresistible urged me to surmount the peak, and I bent to the climb. As I came out of the Stygian gloom of the belt of evergreens I knew that some subtle change had taken place. The atmosphere had a different feel; a different smell. There was no wind, but when I swept my gaze around I saw many horizon clouds; jagged, mountainous looking outlines, with floating fragments everywhere. Some of the cloud fragments would touch and merge even as I watched them. I did not know the significance, if there was any. I turned to the slope again. Before the last steep stretch I halted the second time. Far as I could see the perspective was bounded by a black, towering wall, which seemed to grow taller every moment. This wall was topped by fantastic turrets and towers which swayed, lengthened, expanded, or disappeared at will. Still there was no wind, even at the great height to which I had already come. The day had been suffering hot, and the perspiration was streaming from me. I breathed softly, and listened. No sound but the monotonous call of the night insects, except from a point far below, like the muffled cry of a lost soul pleading for grace, the ineffably sad tones of a whip-poor-will pulsed dimly through the dark. I turned my face upward. The calm stars still called, and I answered.

Presently I could go no further. I stood on the apex of my high hill, a jubilation of spirit making my breast to heave in deeper breaths than my exertion had caused. Then, ere I knew what I was about I had flung my arms out and up, toward the vast deeps from which had come the still summons I had felt in the quiet peace of the Lodge. I felt unreal; I was trembling. I knew not what impended, but the air was charged with an electrical tenseness, and the pall of utter silence which hung over the world was pregnant with import. My arms dropped, and a sweet calm stole over me. Slowly I turned my gaze in every direction. That mammoth wall of blackness encircled the earth in an unbroken line, and was now quickly mounting to the zenith. How grand the sight! I bared my head before the majesty of it. How like battlements and ramparts the grim expanses appeared, crowned with their changing towers! And to make the comparison still more true, I now saw the flash of cannon through the jagged embrasures, and caught the distant thunder of their detonations. Quickly the conflict grew. North, south, east and west, and all between, the batteries of the sky unveiled. Not loud, as yet, but perpetual, and furious in the very absence of thunderous sound. There were constant growlings and incessant flashings, as back and forth over the aerial battleground the challenges were sent and answered. Now, a girdle of glory, the lightning zoned the middle sky, and ever upward, as though propelled by forces set in the earth beneath, the walls arose, blotting out stars by the thousands, and steadily converging toward a common meeting point directly overhead. Then, for the first time, I knew that the Harpist of the Wood had awakened.

The unnatural stillness was disturbed by motion which became a breath of music. I leaned forward involuntarily, my lips apart, my hands out-thrust from me in the attitude one unconsciously assumes when listening intently. From the thick darkness hundreds of feet below I caught the first faint pianissimo notes from a million strings, all attuned by the unerring touch of Nature. In gentle waftures of sound the vast prelude arose, filling my soul with an eerie delight, and causing me to draw a deep, shuddering breath. Then I crept to the rim of the peak and sat down, both humbled and exalted. Faintly now I sensed the reason of that imperious call to come up. Each succeeding measure struck by the invisible Harpist became louder, sweeter, and more stupendous. It seemed as if all creation was one mighty instrument, and a myriad-fingered master was sweeping the throbbing strings. The clouds were now a canopy without a rent. From a dozen points at once the lightning flashed and staggered and reeled in dazzling splendor across the sable field. There were no terrific thunder crashes. But, like the pedal bass of a pipe organ, there was the ever present subdued reverberation like far-off guns fired in unison. Then the strength and skill of the Harpist increased simultaneously, and waves of barbaric melody rushed upward. There was shriek and groan; there were living voices awfully mingled in one wild chorus, and in brief lulls trembling tones as sweet as a mother's good-night song to her babe. Flute-like and full of delicate color a cadenza breathing of sylvan joys rippled forth, and as its last bubbling notes yet fluttered like apple-blossoms of sound against my ravished ears, they were drowned and whelmed by a crashing diapason of majestic harmony which rushed on wide wings over leagues and leagues of forest; a thundering gamut fearfully blended into an oratorio inexpressibly sublime! Wild and shrill came a fife-like call from the west, whistling out of the gloom in a quivering cadence of victorious escape. Then it was blended with a multitudinous legion of loosened chords, and dashed over me as a surging, resplendent sea of mind-numbing melody.

So the oratorio advanced, and I sat enthralled.