Saint Idyl's Light

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Title:     Saint Idyl's Light
Author: Ruth McEnery Stuart [More Titles by Stuart]

You would never have guessed that her name was Idyl--the slender, angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a saint balancing a bucket of water on top of her head!

Yet, as she puts the pail down beside her, the evening sun gleaming through her fair hair seems to transform it into a halo, as some one speaks her name, "Saint Idyl."

Her thin, little ears, sun-filled as she stands, are crimson disks; and the outlines of her upper arms, dimly seen through the flimsy sleeves, are as meagre as are the ankles above her bare, slim feet.

The appellation "Saint Idyl," given first in playful derision, might have been long ago forgotten but for the incident which this story records.

It was three years before, when the plantation children, colored and white together, had been saying, as is a fashion with them, what they would like to be.

One had chosen a "blue-eyed lady wid flounces and a pink fan," another a "fine white 'oman wid long black curls an' ear-rings," and a third would have been "a hoop-skirted lady wid a tall hat."

It was then that Idyl, the only white child of the group--the adopted orphan of the overseer's family--had said:

"I'd choose to be a saint, like the one in the glass winder in the church, with light shinin' from my head. I'd walk all night up and down the 'road bend,' so travellers could see the way and wagons wouldn't get stallded."

The children had shuddered and felt half afraid at this.

"But you'd git stallded yo'se'f in dat black mud--"

"An' de runaways in de canebrake 'd ketch yer--"

"An' de paterole'd shoot yer--"

"An' eve'body'd think you was a walkin' sperit, an' run away f'om yer."

So the protests had come in, though the gleaming eyes of the little negroes had shown their delight in the fantastic idea.

"But I'd walk on a cloud, like the saint in the picture," Idyl had insisted. "And my feet wouldn't touch the mud, and when the runaways looked into my face, they'd try to be good and go back to their masters. Nobody would hurt me. Tired horses would be glad to see my light, and everybody would love me."

So, first laughingly, and then as a matter of habit, she had come to be known as "Saint Idyl."

As she stands quite still, with face uplifted, out on the levee this evening, one is reminded in looking at her of the "Maid of Domremi" listening to the voices.

Idyl was in truth listening to voices--voices new, strange, and solemn--voices of heavy, distant cannon.

It was the 23d of April, 1862. A few miles below Bijou Plantation Farragut's fleet was storming the blockade at Fort Jackson. All along the lower Mississippi it was a time of dread and terror.

The negroes, for the most part awed and terror-stricken, muttered prayers as they went about, and all night long sang mournfully and shouted and prayed in the churches or in groups in their cabins, or even in the road.

The war had come at last. Its glare was upon the sky at night, and all day long reiterated its persistent staccato menace:

"Boom-m-m! Gloom-m-m! Tomb-b-b! Doom-m-m!"

The air had never seemed to lose the vibratory tremor, "M-m-m!" since the first gun, nearly six days ago.

It was as if the lips of the land were trembling. And the trembling lips of the black mothers, as they pressed their babes to their bosoms, echoed the wordless terror.

Death was in the air. Had they doubted it? In a field near by a shell had fallen, burying itself in the earth, and, exploding, had sent two men into the air, killing one and returning the other unhurt.

Now the survivor, saved as by a miracle, was preaching "The Wrath to Come."

To quote from himself, he had "been up to heaven long enough to get 'ligion." He had "gone up a lost sinner and come down a saved soul. Bless Gord!"

Regarding his life as charmed, the blacks followed him in crowds, while he descanted upon the text: "Then two shall be in the field. One shall be taken and the other left."

A great revival was in progress.

But this afternoon the levee at Bijou had been the scene of a new panic.

Rumor said that the blockade chain had been cut. Farragut's war monsters might any moment come snorting up the river. Nor was this all. The only local defence here was a volunteer artillery company of "Exempts." Old "Captain Doc," their leader, also local druggist and postmaster (doctor and minister only in emergency), was a unique and picturesque figure. Full of bombast as of ultimate kindness of feeling, he was equally happy in all of his four offices.

The "Rev. Capt. Doc, M.D.," as he was wont, on occasion, to call himself--why drag in a personal name among titles in themselves sufficiently distinguishing?--was by common consent the leading man with a certain under-population along the coast. And when, three months before, he had harangued them as to the patriot's duty of home defence, there was not a worthy incapable present but enthusiastically enlisted.

The tension of the times forbade perception of the ludicrous. For three months the "Riffraffs"--so they proudly called themselves--rheumatic, deaf, palsied, halt, lame, and one or two nearly blind, had represented "the cause," "the standing army," "le grand militaire," to the inflammable imaginations of this handful of simple rural people of the lower coast.

Of the nine "odds and ends of old cannon" which Captain Doc had been able to collect, it was said that but one would carry a ball. Certainly, of the remaining seven, one was of wood, an ancient gunsmith's sign, and another a gilded papier-mache affair of a former Mystick Krewe.

Still, these answered for drill purposes, and would be replaced by genuine guns when possible. They were quite as good for everything excepting a battle, and in that case, of course, it would be a simple thing "to seize the enemy's guns" and use them.

When the Riffraffs had paraded up and down the river road no one had smiled, and if anybody realized that their captain wore the gorgeous pompon of a drum-major, its fitness was not questioned.

It was becoming to him. It corresponded to his lordly strut, and was in keeping with the stentorian tones that shouted "Halt!" or "Avance!"

Captain Doc appealed to Americans and creoles alike, and the Riffraffs marched quite as often to the stirring measures of "La Marseillaise" as to "The Bonny Blue Flag."

Ever since the first guns at the forts, the good captain had been disporting himself in full feather. He was "ready for the enemy."

His was a pleasing figure, and even inspiring as a picturesque embodiment of patriotic zeal; but when this afternoon the Riffraffs had planted their artillery along the levee front, while the little captain rallied them to "prepare to die by their guns," it was a different matter.

The company, loyal to a man, had responded with a shout, the blacksmith, to whose deaf ears his anvil had been silent for twenty years, throwing up his hat with the rest, while the epileptic who manned the papier-mache gun was observed to scream the loudest.

Suddenly a woman, catching the peril of the situation, shrieked:

"They're going to fire on the gunboats! We'll all be killed."

Another caught the cry, and another. A mad panic ensued; women with babies in their arms gathered about Captain Doc, entreating him, with tears and cries, to desist.

But for once the tender old man, whose old boast had been that one tear from a woman's eyes "tore his heart open," was deaf to all entreaty.

The Riffraffs represented an injured faction. They had not been asked to enlist with the "Coast Defenders"--since gone into active service--and they seemed intoxicated by the present opportunity to "show the stuff they were made of."

At nearly nightfall the women, despairing and wailing, had gone home. Amid all the excitement the little girl Idyl had stood apart, silent. No one had noticed her, nor that, when all the others had gone, she still lingered.

Even Mrs. Magwire, the overseer's wife, with whom she lived, had forgotten to hurry or to scold her. What emotions were surging in her young bosom no one could know.

There was something in the cannon's roar that charmed her ear--something suggestive of strength and courage. Within her memory she had known only weakness and fear.

After the yellow scourge of '53, when she was but four years old, she had realized vaguely that strange people with loud voices and red faces had come to be to her in the place of father and mother, that the Magwire babies were heavy to carry, and that their mother had but a poor opinion of a "lazy hulk av a girrl that could not heft a washtub without panting."

Idyl had tried hard to be strong and to please her foster-mother, but there was, somehow, in her life at the Magwires' something that made her great far-away eyes grow larger and her poor little wrists more weak and slender.

She envied the Magwire twins--with all their prickly heat and their calico-blue eyes--when their mother pressed them lovingly to her bosom. She even envied the black babies when their great black mammies crooned them to sleep.

What does it matter, black or white or red, if one is loved?

An embroidered "Darling" upon an old crib-blanket, and a daguerreotype--a slender youth beside a pale, girlish woman, who clasped a big-eyed babe--these were her only tokens of past affection.

There was something within her that responded to the daintiness of the loving stitches in the old blanket--and to a something in the refined faces in the picture. And they had called their wee daughter "Idyl"--a little poem.

Yet she, not understanding, hated this name because of Mrs. Magwire, whose most merciless taunt was, "Sure ye're well named, ye idle dthreamer."

Mrs. Magwire, a well-meaning woman withal, measured her maternal kindnesses to the hungry-hearted orphan beneath her roof in generous bowls of milk and hunks of corn-bread.

Idyl's dreams of propitiating her were all of abstractions--self-sacrifice, patience, gratitude.

And she was as unconscious as was her material benefactress that she was an idealist, and why the combination resulted in inharmony.

This evening, as she stood alone upon the levee, listening to the cannon, a sudden sense of utter desolation and loneliness came to her. She only of all the plantation was unloved--forgotten--in this hour of danger.

A desperate longing seized her as she turned and looked back upon the nest of cabins. If she could only save the plantation! For love, no sacrifice could be too great.

With the thought came an inspiration. There was reason in the women's fears. Should the Riffraffs fire upon the fleet, surely guns would answer, else what was war?

She glanced at her full pail, and then at the row of cannon beside her.

If she could pour water into them! It was too light yet, but to-night--

How great and daring a deed to come to tempt the mind of a timid, delicate child who had never dared anything--even Mrs. Magwire's displeasure!

All during the evening, while Mother Magwire rocked the babies, moaning and weeping, Idyl, wiping her dishes in the little kitchen, would step to the door and peer out at the levee where the guns were. Every distant cannon's roar seemed to challenge her to the deed.

When finally her work was done, she slipped noiselessly out and started towards the levee, pail in hand; but as she approached it she saw moving shadows.

The Riffraffs were working at the guns. Seeing her project impossible, she sat down in a dark shadow by the roadside--studied the moving figures--listened to the guns which came nearer as the hours passed.

It was long after midnight; accelerated firing was proclaiming a crisis in the battle, when, suddenly, there came the rattle of approaching wheels accompanied by a noisy rabble. Then a woman screamed.

Captain Doc was coming with a wagon-load of ammunition. The guns were to be loaded.

The moon, a faint waning crescent, faded to a filmy line as a pillar of fire, rising against the sky northward towards the city, exceeded the glare of the battle below.

The darkness was quite lifted now, up and down the levee, and Idyl, standing in the shadow, could see groups of people weeping, wringing their hands, as Captain Doc, pompon triumphant, came in sight galloping down the road.

In a second more he would pass the spot where she stood--stood unseen, seeing the sorrow of the people, heeding the challenge of the guns. The wagon was at hand.

With a faint, childish scream, raising her thin arms heavenward, she plunged forward and fell headlong in its path.

The victory was hers.

The tinselled captain was now tender surgeon, doctor, friend.

In his own arms he raised the limp little form from beneath the wheel, while the shabby gray coats of a dozen "Riffraffs," laid over the cannon-balls in the wagon, made her a hero's bed; and Captain Doc, seizing the reins, turned the horses cautiously, and drove in haste back to his drug-store.

Farragut's fleet and "the honor of the Riffraffs" were forgotten in the presence of this frail embodiment of death.

Upon his own bed beside an open window he laid her, and while his eager company became surgeon's assistants, he tenderly bound her wounds.

For several hours she lay in a stupor, and when she opened her eyes the captain knelt beside her. Mrs. Magwire stood near, noisily weeping.

"Is it saved?" she asked, when at length she opened her eyes.

Captain Doc, thinking her mind was wandering, raised her head, and pointed to the river, now ablaze with light.

"See," said he. "See the steamboats loaded with burning cotton, and the great ship meeting them; that is a Yankee gunboat! See, it is passing."

"And you didn't shoot? And are the people glad?"

"No, we didn't shoot. You fell and got hurt at the dark turn by the acacia bushes, where you hang your little lantern on dark nights. Some one ought to have hung one for you to-night. How did it happen, child?"

"It didn't happen. I did it on purpose. I knew if I got hurt you would stop and cure me, and not fire at the boats. I wanted to save--to save the plan--"

While the little old man raised a glass to the child's lips his hand shook, and something like a sob escaped him.

"Listen, little one," he whispered, while his lips quivered. "I am an old fool, but not a fiend--not a devil. Not a gun would have fired. I wet all the powder. I didn't want anybody to say the Riffraffs flinched at the last minute. But you--oh, my God!" His voice sank even lower. "You have given your young life for my folly."

She understood.

"I haven't got any pain--only--I can't move. I thought I'd get hurt worse than I am--and not so much. I feel as if I were going up--and up--through the red--into the blue. And the moon is coming sideways to me. And her face--it is in it--just like the picture." She cast her eyes about the room as if half conscious of her surroundings. "Will they--will they love me now?"

Mrs. Magwire, sobbing aloud, fell upon her knees beside the bed.

"God love her, the heavenly child!" she wailed. "She was niver intinded for this worrld. Sure, an' I love ye, darlint, jist the same as Mary Ann an' Kitty--an' betther, too, to make up the loss of yer own mother, God rest her."

Great tears rolled down the cheeks of the dying child, and that heavenly light which seems a forecast of things unseen shone from her brilliant eyes.

She laid her thin hand upon Mrs. Magwire's head, buried now upon the bed beside her.

"Lay the little blanket on me, please--when I go--"

She turned her eyes upon the sky.

"She worked it for me--the 'Darling' on it. The moon is coming again--sideways. It is her face."

So, through the red of the fiery sky, up into the blue, passed the pure spirit of little Saint Idyl.

* * * * *

The river seemed afire now with floating chariots of flame.

Slowly, majestically, upward into this fiery sea rode the fleet.

Although many of the negroes had run frightened into the woods, the conflagration revealed an almost unbroken line on either side of the river, watching the spectacular pageant with awe-stricken, ashy faces.

At Bijou a line of men--not the Riffraffs--sat astride the cannon, over the mouths of which they hung their hats or coats.

"I tell yer deze heah Yankees mus' be monst'ous-sized men. Look at de big eye-holes 'longside o' de ship," said one--a young black fellow.

"Eye-holes!" retorted an old man sitting apart; "dem ain't no eye-holes, chillen. Dey gun-holes! Dat what dey is! An' ef you don't keep yo' faces straight dey'll 'splode out on you 'fo' you know it."

The first speaker rolled backward down the levee, half a dozen following. The old man sat unmoved. Presently a little woolly head peered over the bank.

"What de name o' dat fust man-o'-war, gran'dad?"

"Name Freedom." The old man answered without moving. "Freedom comin' wid guns in 'er mouf, ready to spit fire, I tell yer!"

"Jeems, heah, say all de no-'count niggers is gwine be sol' over ag'in--is dat so, gran'dad?"

"Yas; every feller gwine be sol' ter 'isself. An' a mighty onery, low-down marster heap ob 'em 'll git, too."

* * * * *

It was nearly day when Captain Doc, pale and haggard, joined the crowd upon the levee.

As he stepped upon its brow, a woman, fearing the provocation of his military hat, begged him to remove it.

It might provoke a volley.

Raising the hat, the captain turned and solemnly addressed the crowd:

"My countrymen," he began, and his voice trembled, "the Riffraffs are disbanded. See!"

He threw the red-plumed thing far out upon the water. And then he turned to them.

"I have just seen an angel pass--to enter--yonder." A sob closed his throat as he pointed to the sky.

"Her pure blood is on my hands--and, by the help of God, they will shed no more.

"These old guns are playthings--we are broken old men.

"Let us pray."

And there, out in the glare of the awful fiery spectacle, grown weird in the faint white light of a rising sun, arose the voice of prayer--prayer first for forgiveness of false pride and folly--for the women and children--- for the end of the war--for lasting peace.

It was a scene to be remembered. Had anything been lacking in its awful solemnity, it was supplied with a tender potency reaching all hearts, in the knowledge of the dead child, who lay in the little cottage near.

From up and down the levee, as far as the voice had reached, came fervent responses, "Amen!" and "Amen!"

Late in the morning the Riffraffs' artillery, all but their largest gun, was, by the captain's command, dumped into the river.

This reserved cannon they planted, mouth upwards, by the roadside on the site of the tragedy--a fitting memorial of the child-martyr.

It was Mrs. Magwire, who, remembering how Idyl had often stolen out and hung a lantern at this dark turn of the "road bend," began thrusting a pine torch into the cannon's mouth on dark nights as a slight memorial of her. And those who noticed said she took her rosary there and said her beads.

But Captain Doc had soon made the light his own special care, and until his death, ten years later, the old man never failed to supply this beacon to belated travellers on moonless nights.

After a time a large square lantern took the place of the torch of pine, and grateful wayfarers alongshore, by rein or oar, guided or steered by the glimmer of Saint Idyl's Light.

Last year the caving bank carried the rusty gun into the water. It is well that time and its sweet symbol, the peace-loving river, should bury forever from sight all record of a family feud half forgotten.

And yet, is it not meet that when the glorious tale of Farragut's victory is told, the simple story of little Saint Idyl should sometimes follow, as the tender benediction follows the triumphant chant?

[The end]
Ruth McEnery Stuart's short story: Saint Idyl's Light

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