When De Zhirley first came in she had decided to let herself down from an upper window rather than face him. When he recommended her stepbrother to a sleeping-room upstairs, she looked about in panic for something which could be made an immediate rope or ladder. But when she saw the violin’s destruction, it was to hang outside that tragedy in a passion of sympathy. She had been the most solitary creature in Calhoun County, but this supreme sharing of the young fiddler’s anguish broke the shell of her dumbness; she felt her soul spreading out its crumpled wings like a new butterfly.
He laid the violin on the chair, and with a sudden abandonment of all restraint shook his fists above his head, wailing and sobbing:—
“Oh, my Lord, my Lord! What will I do now?”
It was the agony of an artist, of a lonely soul, of unspeakable bereavement.
Jeanne wept in her shawl. She had thought her hunger for the unknown best thing in the world a singular experience. She waited until his tears and hers could be wiped off, and then opened the door and came lightly downstairs.
De Zhirley huddled his violin again in his arms, as if dreading the descent of more drunken men, and, in the embarrassment and anguish of a man whose weakness has been spied upon, turned his face to the hearth. Jeanne stopped at the foot of the stairs and drew her shawl over her head. They continued in silence while the coffee bubbled up and firelight flickered on the wall.
De Zhirley understood her errand into his cabin with the simplicity of primitive manhood. He knew she always took to flight when her stepbrother appeared. When he could speak without a sob, he said, acknowledging all she had done for his comfort that afternoon:—
“I’m much obleeged.”
Jeanne, on her part, ignored the services.
“Is it bad hurt?” she murmured, with unconscious maternal pathos.