第21章 What is a country village without its mysterious p
There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet.But one of the village people had a large Newfoundland dog,of a very sociable disposition,with which he determined to test the question.
He watched for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the woods or the lake,and started with his dog to meet him.The animal walked up to the stranger in a very sociable fashion,and began making his acquaintance,after the usual manner of well-bred dogs;that is,with the courtesies and blandishments by which the canine Chesterfield is distinguished from the ill-conditioned cur.Maurice patted him in a friendly way,and spoke to him as one who was used to the fellowship of such companions.That idle question and foolish story were disposed of,therefore,and some other solution must be found,if possible.
A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard to cats.This has never been explained.It is not mere aversion to the look of the creature,or to any sensible quality known to the common observer.The cat is pleasing in aspect,graceful in movement,nice in personal habits,and of amiable disposition.No cause of offence is obvious,and yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of the most innocent little kitten.They can tell,in some mysterious way,that there is a cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the creature.Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon,or whatever it may be,of the fact of this strange influence there are too many well-authenticated instances to allow its being questioned.But suppose Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its extremest degree,it would in no manner account for the isolation to which he had condemned himself.He might shun the firesides of the old women whose tabbies were purring by their footstools,but these worthy dames do not make up the whole population.
These two antipathies having been disposed of,a new suggestion was started,and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief,very much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and inquiring persons.This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable gift of the evil eye.He was in frequent communication with Italy,as his letters showed,and had recently been residing in that country,as was learned from Paolo.Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not rarely met with in Italy.Everybody who has ever read Mr.Story's "Roba di Roma"knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil eye exercises.It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon.No person's life or limb is safe if the jettatura,the withering glance of the deadly organ,falls upon him.
It must be observed that this malign effect may follow a look from the holiest personages,that is,if we may assume that a monk is such as a matter of course.Certainly we have a right to take it for granted that the late Pope,Pius Ninth,was an eminently holy man,and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing.If Maurice Kirkwood carried that destructive influence,so that his clear blue eyes were more to be feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent,it could easily be understood why he kept his look away from all around him whom he feared he might harm.
No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil eye,but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis,as do many suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without putting any real confidence in them.It was just suited to the romantic notions of the more flighty persons in the village,who had meddled more or less with Spiritualism,and were ready for any new fancy,if it were only wild enough.
The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find any very speedy solution.Every new suggestion furnished talk for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two educational institutions.Naturally,the discussion was liveliest among the young ladies.Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young ladies,who,having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of Mary,saw fit to have herself called Mollie in the catalogue and in her letters.The old postmaster of the town to which her letter was directed took it up to stamp,and read on the envelope the direction to "Miss Lulu Pinrow."He brought the stamp down with a vicious emphasis,coming very near blotting out the nursery name,instead of cancelling the postage-stamp."Lulu!"he exclaimed."I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet!I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs to her,but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister gave her,and it was n't 'Lulu,'or any such baby nonsense."And so saying,he gave it a fling to the box marked P,as if it burned his fingers.Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a graduate of the Corinna Institute,the old postmaster could not guess.He was a queer old man.
The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's written loquacity:
"Oh,Lulu,there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of 'in all your born days,'as mamma used to say.He has been at the village for some time,but lately we have had--oh,the weirdest stories about him!'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give him,but we girls call him the Sachem,because he paddles about in an Indian canoe.If I should tell you all the things that are said about him I should use up all my paper ten times over.He has never made a visit to the Institute,and none of the girls have ever spoken to him,but the people at the village say he is very,very handsome.