Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Fairy Tree of Domremy

OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time
and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and
sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The
houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes
in the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there
was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main
industry; all the young folks tended flocks.

The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the rear
edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was
the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and
full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it
by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons
that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their
homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.
It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a
cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know
what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said
who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a
brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it,
therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was
not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when
there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any
bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber
and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time,
and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I
always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for
that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre
Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.
It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be
and we not suspect it.

In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the
earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and
get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest
had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it
in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners,
and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it
was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the
smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell
again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other--and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism,
but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be
so positive about.

In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there--oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years--went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it
was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years--tradition said a thousand--but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.

Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a
mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this
world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond
the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree--if all was well with his
soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways:
once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?

Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it--and there
is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a
far land, then--if they be at peace with God--they turn their longing
eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud
that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree,
clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping
away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and
sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades
and passes--but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.

Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice
--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it. Probably
because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most
things at second hand in this world.

Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he
is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."

Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside
with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative
evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof
all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become
authority--and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.

In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was
the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only
a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's
redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long
before, and with them peace--peace that might no more be disturbed--the
eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for
I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.

Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song,
the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet
air--a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming
spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and
carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know
or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us,
and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:

"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of
thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!"

And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows
it, yes, you will grant that:

L'ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT

SONG OF THE CHILDREN

Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?

The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.

And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?

The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young--
A thousand years of youth!

Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!

The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw
them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had
held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being
blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he
warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more
immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.

All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good
friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest
would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends. The
children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement
among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths
on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved
and remembered, though lost to sight.

But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother
passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking
anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild
happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey
which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey
stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a
great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and
spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the
ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very maddest and
witchingest dance the woman ever saw.

But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures
discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and
terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their
eyes and crying; and so disappeared.

The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but
only thoughtless--went straight home and told the neighbors all about it,
whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting
the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to
be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody
knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing
the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and
begging--and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most
kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and
said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at
the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of
her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and
persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake!
Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies--come
and save them; only you can do it!"

But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we
meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever
lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must
go, and never come back any more.

It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function
under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that
any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be
content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it
made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and
occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at
them to prevent that.

The great tree--l'Arbre Fee do Bourlemont was its beautiful name--was
never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was
always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there now, once a year in my
old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth
and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and
break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same
afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies'
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.

When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she
could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so
little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before
him where he sat, and made reverence and said:

"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?"

"Yes, that was it, dear."

"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?"

"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.

"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"

Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:

"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:

"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the saw was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"

The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:

"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking
are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for
your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there,
don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend--don't cry,
dear."

"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?"

Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:

"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on
sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?"

Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man
through her tears, and said, in her simple way:

"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you."

Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:

"Would you mind helping me, dear?"

"How, father?"

He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:

"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."

The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:

"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father."

"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"

"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, gather,
won't you?"

"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your
forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become
me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little
head."

The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own
head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:

"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."

The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:

"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify."

Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side
again, and said:

"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?"

That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up
and catch me in something--just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a
person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is
traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I
knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:

"Yes, father."

"Did you hang them on the tree?"

"No, father."

"Didn't hang them there?"

"No."

"Why didn't you?"

"I--well, I didn't wish to."

"Didn't wish to?"

"No, father."

"What did you do with them?"

"I hung them in the church."

"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"

"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that
it was sinful to show them honor."

"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"

"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."

"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin
to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn't they?"

"I suppose so--yes, I think so."

He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he
did. He said:

"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful
origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a
rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong
to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it.
In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"

How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of
a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which
merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he
never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only
way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and
set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished.

The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the
indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy
and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he
had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.

"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"

"God and the King."

"Not Satan?"

"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan owns no
handful of its soil."

"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five
long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them,
and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief. And
what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel stroke? The
poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the children? Yes, but
never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of the Fiend? What of
it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had; and children have
rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would have spoken--I
would have begged for the children and the fiends, and stayed your hand
and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is lost; everything is lost,
and there is no help more!"

Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship
because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very
reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing
they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them
by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!"
she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a
Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand
times more needs it!"

She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles in
her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst out of
the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together out of
this storm of words and this whirlwind of passion.

The Pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there
passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is
dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of his
little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur
sorrowfully:

"Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said
true--I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame."

When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set a
trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I seemed
to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get him into one; but
upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift.

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