there to account for such things? Grieving and brooding over the
woes of France had weakened that strong mind, and filled it with
fantastic phantoms–yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was
clear and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the
point. No, there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still
the soundest in the village and the best. She went on thinking for
others, planning for others, sacrificing herself for others, just as
always before. She went on ministering to her sick and to her poor,
and still stood ready to give the wayfarer her bed and content
herself with the floor. There was a secret somewhere, but madness
was not the key to it. This was plain.
Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter
which I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an
eyewitness talk of it before.
I was coming from over the ridge, one day–it was the 15th of May,
’28–and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to
step out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech
tree stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first–then I
took a step backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of
the foliage. For I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would
devise some sort of playful surprise for her. Think of it–that trivial
conceit was neighbor, with but a scarcely measurable interval of
time between, to an event destined to endure forever in histories
and songs.
The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree
stood lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed
by gnarled great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one
reposing in the other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward
the ground, and her air was that of one who is lost to thought,
steeped in dreams, and not conscious of herself or of the world.
And now I saw a most strange thing, for I saw a white shadow
come slowly gliding along the grass toward the Tree. It was of
grand proportions–a robed form, with wings–and the whiteness of
this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know of,
except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are
not so intense as it was, for one cal look at them without hurt,
whereas this brilliancy was so blinding that in pained my eyes and
brought the water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving that
I was in the presence of something not of this world. My breath
grew faint and difficult, because of the terror and the awe that
possessed me.
Another strange thing. The wood had been silent–smitten with that
deep stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest,
and the wild creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the
birds burst forth into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it
was beyond belief; and was so eloquent and so moving, withal,
that it was plain it was an act of worship. With the first note of
those birds Joan cast herself upon her knees, and bent her head low
and crossed her hands upon her breast.
She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her
it was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must
have happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that.
The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached
her, flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that
immortal light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became
divine; flooded with that transforming glory her mean peasant
habit was become like to the raiment of the sun-clothed children of
God as we see them thronging the terraces of the Throne in our
dreams and imaginings.