She would forget it, though, surely, surely, when it was gone, breathed out in flame and ashes: when he could say to her, "There is no more any such thing in my house and yours, Mary, Mary."
How tenderly he would tell her, though! It would hurt, yes! but not so much as her look would hurt him when he told her. Ah, she loved the wooden thing best! He was dumb, and it spoke to her in a thousand tones! Even he had understood some of them. There was one note that was like his mother's voice when she lifted it up in the hymn she loved best,—his gentle mother, dead so long, so long ago. She—why, she loved music; he had forgotten that. But only psalms, only godly hymns, never anything else.
What devil whispered in his ear, "She never heard anything else. She would have loved this too, this too, if she had had the chance, if she had heard Mary play!" He put his hands to his ears, and almost ran on. Where was he going? He did not ask, did not think. He only knew that it was a relief to be walking, to get farther and farther away from what he loved and fain would cherish, from what he hated and would fain destroy.
The grass grew long and rank under his feet; he stumbled, and paused for a moment, out of breath, to look about him. He was in the old burying-ground, the grey stones rearing their heads to peer at him as he hurried on. Ah, there was one stone here that belonged to him. He had not been in the place since he was a child; he cared nothing about the dead of long ago: but now the memory of it all came back upon him, and he sought and found the grey sunken stone, and pulled away the grass from it, and read the legend with eyes that scarcely saw what they looked at.
"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
And the place was free from moss, as they always said; the rude scratch, as of a sharp-pointed instrument. Did it mean anything? He dropped beside it for a minute, and studied the stone; then rose and went his way again, still wandering on and on, he knew not whither.
Darkness came, and he was in the woods, stumbling here and there, driven as by a strong wind, scorched as by a flame. At last he sank down at the foot of a great oak-tree, in a place he knew well, even in the dark: he could go no farther.
"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
It whispered in his ears, and seemed for a little to drown the haunting notes of the violin. He, the Calvinist, the practical man, who believed in two things outside the visible world, a great hell and a small heaven, now felt spirits about him, saw visions that were not of this life. His ancestor, the Huguenot, stood before him, in cloak and band; in one hand a Bible, in the other a drawn dagger. His dark eyes pierced like a sword-thrust; his lips moved; and though no sound came, Jacques knew the words they framed.
"Tenez foi! Keep the faith that I brought across the sea, leaving for it fair fields and vineyards, castle and tower and town. Keep the faith for which I bled, for which I died here in the wilderness, leaving only these barren acres, and the stone that bears my last word, my message to those who should come after me. Keep the faith for which my fair wife faded and died, far away from home and friends! Let no piping or jigging or profane sound be in thy house, but let it be the house of fasting and of prayer, even as my house was. Keep faith! If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee!"