Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples
With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor.
Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle,
In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters,
And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,—
Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners,
One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters,
And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them,
Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted.
Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper,
the hunter, the fighter,
From the unlucky French of Gallipolis
he descended,
Heir to Old-World want and New-World love
of adventure.
Vague was the life he led, and vague and
grotesque were the rumors
Wherethrough he loomed on the people,
the hero of mythical hearsay,—
Quick of hand and of heart, insouciant,
generous, Western,—
Taking the thought of the young in secret
love and in envy.
Not less the elders shook their heads
and held him for outcast,
Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse
than a Papist,
With his whispered fame of lawless exploits
at St. Louis,
Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds
out on the Osage,
Brawls at New-Orleans, and all the towns
on the rivers,
All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed
rivers.
Only she that loved him the best of all,
in her loving,
Knew him the best of all, and other than
that of the rumors.
Daily she prayed for him, with conscious
and tender effusion,
That the Lord would convert him.
But when her father forbade him
Unto her thought, she denied him, and
likewise held him for outcast,
Turned her eyes when they met, and would
not speak, though her heart
broke.
Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned
from wrong unto error:
“This is their praying and singing,”
he said, “that makes you reject
me,—
You that were kind to me once. But
I think my fathers’ religion,
With a light heart in the breast, and
a friendly priest to absolve one,
Better than all these conversions that
only bewilder and vex me,
And that have made man so hard and woman
fickle and cruel.
Well, then, pray for my soul, since you
would not have spoken to save
me,—
Yes,—for I go from these saints
to my brethren and sisters, the
sinners.”
Spake and went, while her faint lips fashioned
unuttered entreaties,—
Went, and came again in a year at the
time of the meeting,
Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with
passion and sorrow.
Dead in his eyes was the careless smile
of old, and its phantom
Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless
incredulous mocking.
Day by day he came to the outer skirts
of the circle,
Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the
white-haired exhorter, her
father,
With his hollow looks, and never moved
from his silence.