Lilian found her husband supporting her, while water and sky and white palaces and hurrying people swam giddily in a far-off circle. She said “Thank you,” and clutched his arm.
“Sis here, she liked the Babe,” continued the old father, forced to wipe his eyes on the corner of a red handkerchief which he drew half way out of his side pocket. “And the Babe he liked her. I reelly thought he was pinin’ sometimes for young folks; for he done well while you was there.... Billy—you recollect Billy the gander? He takes it to heart like a dog.... I’m glad I seen you. I was goin’ along feelin’ too bitter in my thoughts about the Babe.”
Silently parting company, the old man walked on amidst wonders which he scarcely noticed, and the young pair turned aside from the crowds.
“Oh Jack!” said Lilian, when she could control her weeping, “I have killed the Babe Jerome!”
THE CALHOUN FIDDLER
Time, 1890
November frost lay on the ferns and mosses along the Calhoun bluffs, and on that castellated mass of rock with round turrets which hangs over the cove known as French Hollow. From a divide in wooded hills a small stream came down unfrozen, quivering over pebbles and clean sand. Crossing an alluvial plat of ground, it turned beside a cabin to meet the broad and whispering Illinois.
In all Calhoun County, that long narrow ridge isolated between two great rivers, there was not on height or in cove such another cabin. It was fifty-two feet square and two stories high, with a Norman projection of the eaves. The house, with its back to a road winding at the foot of the bluffs, sat facing the historic Illinois—a river now yellow and wrathful with floods, now spreading in blue or seashell tints away to the opposite forest.
In the days of old Antoine Dejarnet, the builder of this log-house and the first Frenchman who ever set foot in Calhoun County, hospitality had overflowed the now silent place. Then there was dancing every Sunday after mass, in the undivided lower story like a feudal hall; and the family violin was coaxed to heavenly tunes by Antoine Dejarnet himself.
But long before this November afternoon the French colony in Calhoun County had dwindled to a remnant; the forty goats which used to climb those heights or stand captive to half old Antoine’s many daughters while the rest milked them, had not a single descendant; and the last Dejarnet carried his name locally disfigured into De Zhirley.