Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and RomancesAllen, James Lane
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Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances
Allen, James Lane
Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting
the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face
kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed
in this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something
serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar interest:
"Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?"
"No," she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to
great sadness. "There was one a few years ago. His death was a great
blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the
head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon."
For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side,
looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out
as the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his
mind had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him:
"No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every
landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor
as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are
the eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties;
everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is
the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must
share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life
and death."
"Sister!" called up the nun waiting below, "is not the wind blowing?
Will you not take cold?"
"The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming."
They turned their faces outward upon the landscape once more. Across
it wound the little foot-path towards the farm-house in the distance.
By a common impulse their eyes rested upon the place of their first
meeting. He pointed to it.
"I shall never forget that spot," he said, impulsively.
"Nor I!"
Her words were not spoken. They were not uttered within. As
unexpectedly and silently as in the remotest profound of the heavens at
midnight some palest little star is loosened from its orbit, shoots a
brief span, and disappears, this confession of hers traced its course
across the depths of her secret consciousness; but, having made it to
herself, she kept her eyes veiled, and did not look at him again that
day.
"I think you have now seen everything that could be of any interest,"
the aged Sister said, doubtfully, when they stood in the yard below.
"The place is very interesting to me," he answered, looking around that
he might discover some way of prolonging his visit.
"The graveyard, Sister. We might go there." The barely audible
words were Sister Dolorosa's. The scene of the temptation was to be
transferred for the third time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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