The Haunted Orchard

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legalienn. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information and to find out how you can volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Jessica Snyder July two

(00:21):
thousand seven, The Haunted Orchard by Richard Legalienne. Spring was
once more in the world. As she sang to herself
in the far away woodlands, her voice reached even the
ears of the city, weary with the long winter. Daffodils

(00:43):
flowered at the entrances to the subway, Furniture removing vans
blocked the side streets. Children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps.
The open cars were running, and the cry of the
cash cloth man was once more heard in the land. Yes,
it was the spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of

(01:06):
lilacs and the dewy piping of birds in gnarled old
apple trees of dogwood lighting up with sudden silver, the
thickening woods of water plants unfolding their glossy scrolls in
pools of morning freshness. On Sunday mornings, the outbound trains

(01:30):
were thronged with eager pilgrims hastening out of the city
to behold once more the ancient marvel of the Spring,
and on Sunday evenings the railway term and I were
a flower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard,
carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes

(01:53):
still shone with the spring magic, in whose ears still
sang the fairy meal music. And as I beheld these
signs of the vernal equinox, I knew that I too
must follow the music forsake a while the beautiful siren
we call the city, and in the green silences meet

(02:16):
once more, my sweetheart Solitude. As the train drew out
of the Grand Central, I hummed to myself, I've a
neater sweet maiden in a greener, cleaner land. And so

(02:37):
I said good bye to the city and went forth
with beating heart to meet the Spring. I had been
told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast
of Connecticut, where the Spring and I could live in
an inviolate loneliness, a place uninhabited save by birds and blossoms,

(03:04):
woods and thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer. And
pervaded by the breath and shimmer of the sound. Nor
had rumor lied, for when the train set me down
at my destination, I stepped out into the most wonderful

(03:24):
green hush, a leafy sabbath silence through which the very train,
as it went farther on its way, seemed to steal
as noiselessly as possible, for fear of breaking the spell.
After a winter in the town, to be dropped thus

(03:47):
suddenly into the intense quiet of the countryside makes an
almost ghostly impression upon one, as of an enchanted silence,
a silent that listens and watches, but never speaks. Finger
on lip. There is a spectral quality about everything upon

(04:10):
which the eye falls. The woods like great green clouds,
the wayside flowers, the still farm houses half lost in
orchard bloom, all seem to exist in a dream. Everything

(04:30):
is so still, everything so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks,
except the gentle susuris of the spring wind swaying the
young buds high up in the quiet sky, or a

(04:51):
bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly
to itself among the crowding rushes. Though from the houses
one notes here and there there are evidently human inhabitants
of this green silence, None are to be seen. I

(05:12):
have often wondered where the country folk hide themselves, as
I have walked hour after hour past farm and croft
and lonely door yards, and never caught sight of a
human face. If you should want to ask the way,
a farmer is as shy as a squirrel, and if

(05:34):
you knock at a farmhouse door, all is as silent
as a rabbit warren. As I walked along in the
enchanted stillness, I came at length to a quaint old farmhouse,
old colonial in its architecture, embowered in white lilacs, and

(05:57):
surrounded by an orchard of anc and apple trees which
cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The
orchard had the impressiveness of those old religious groves dedicated
to the strange worship of Sylvan gods, gods to be

(06:19):
found now only in Horus or Catullus, and in the
hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin
is still dear. The old house seemed already the abode
of solitude. As I lifted the latch of the white

(06:39):
gate and walked across the forgotten grass and up on
to the veranda, already festooned with wisteria, and looked into
the window. I saw Solitude sitting by an old piano
on which no composer later than Bach had ever been played.
In other words, the house was empty. And going round

(07:03):
to the back, where old barns and stables leaned together
as if falling asleep, I found a broken pane, and
so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The
house was very lonely, evidently no one had lived in
it for a long time, yet it was all ready

(07:27):
for some occupant, for whom it seemed to be waiting.
Quaint old four poster bedsteads stood in three rooms, dimity
curtains and spotless linen, old oak chests and mahogany presses,
and opening drawers in chippendale sideboards. I came upon beautiful, frail,

(07:50):
old silver and exquisite china that set me thinking of
a beautiful grandmother of mine, made out of old lace
and laughing wrinkles and mischievous old blue eyes. There was
one little room that particularly interested me, a tiny bedroom,

(08:12):
all white, and at the window the red roses were
already in mud. But what caught my eye with peculiar
sympathy was a small bookcase in which were some twenty
or thirty volumes, wearing the same forgotten expression, forgotten and

(08:33):
yet cared for, which lay like a kind of memorial
charm upon everything in the old house. Yes, everything seemed forgotten,
and yet everything curiously, even religiously remembered. I took out
book after book from the shelves, once or twice flowers

(08:56):
fell out from the pages, and I caught sight of
a delicate handwriting here and there, and frail markings. It
was evidently the little intimate library of a young girl.
What surprised me most was to find that quite half
the books were in French. French poets and French romancers.

(09:18):
A charming, very rare edition of Bonzarde, a beautifully printed
edition of Alfred de Marseille, and a copy of Theophilicotier's
Mademoiselle le Maoupine. How did these exotic books come to
be there alone in a deserted New England farmhouse. This

(09:40):
question was to be answered later in a strange way. Meanwhile,
I had fallen in love with this sad, old, silent place,
and as I closed the white gate and was once
more on the road, I looked about for some one
who could tell me whether or not this house of

(10:00):
ghosts might be rented for the summer by a comparatively
living man. I was referred to a fine old New
England farmhouse, shining white through the trees, a quarter of
a mile away. There I met an ancient couple, a
typical New England farmer and his wife. The old man,

(10:21):
lean chin bearded with keen gray eyes flickering occasionally with
a shrewd humor, the old lady with a kindly old
face of the withered apple type. And ready they were
evidently prosperous people, but their minds, for some reason I

(10:42):
could not at the moment divine, seemed to be divided
between their New England desire to drive a hard bargain
and their disinclination to let the house at all. Over
and over again they spoke of the loneliness of the place.
They feared I would find it very lonely, no one

(11:04):
had lived in it for a long time, and so on.
It seemed to me that afterwards I understood their curious hesitation,
but at the moment only regarded it as a part
of the circuitous New England method of bargaining. At all events.
The rent I offered finally overcame their disinclination, whatever its cause,

(11:27):
and so I came into possession for four months of
that silent old house, with the white lilacs and the
drowsy barns, and the old piano and the strange orchard.
And as the summer came on and the year changed
its name from May to June, I used to lie
under the apple trees in the afternoons, dreamily reading some

(11:51):
old book, and through half sleepy eyelids, watching the silken
shimmer of the sound. I had lived in the old
house for about a month when one afternoon a strange
thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It
was the afternoon of Tuesday, June thirteenth. I was reading,

(12:12):
or rather dipping here and there in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
As I read, I remember that a little unripe apple,
with a petal or two of blossoms still clinging to it,
fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I
must have fallen into a dream. Though it seemed to

(12:34):
me that both my eyes, and my ears were wide open,
for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice,
singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. The singing was
very frail, almost imperceptible, as though it came out of

(12:56):
the air. It came and went fitfully, like the elusive
fragrance of sweetbriar, as though a girl was walking to
and fro dreamily humming to herself in the still afternoon.
Yet there was no one to be seen. The orchard

(13:16):
had never seemed more lonely. And another fact that struck
me as strange was that the words that floated to
me out of the aerial music were French, half sad,
half gay, snatches of some long dead singer of old France.
I looked about for the origin of the sweet sounds,

(13:38):
but in vain could it be the birds that were
singing in French in this strange orchard. Presently the voice
seemed to come quite close to me, so near that
it might have been the voice of a tryad singing
to me out of the tree against which I was leaning.

(13:59):
And this time I distinctly caught the words of this
sad little song, Jean de rousin your room de wall
grea cooker to a lacome wall up your ven. But

(14:24):
though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see
no one. And then the singing stopped with what sounded
like a sob, And a moment or two later I
seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard.
Then there followed silence, and I was left to ponder

(14:47):
on the strange occurrence. Naturally, I decided that it was
just a day dream between sleeping and waking over the
pages of an old book. Yet when next day and
the day after, the invisible singer was in the orchard again,
I could not be satisfied with such mere matter of

(15:10):
fact explanation. Oh Lo clau Fontana went the voice to
and fro through the thick orchard boughs, mornolonpoman e juotolusu
baalo colomu, sweepingeyoluontong ku hudama jome douloi. It was certainly

(15:45):
uncanny to hear that voice going to and fro the
orchard there somewhere amid the bright sun dazzled boughs. Yet
not a human creature to be seen, not another house
even within half a mile. The most materialistic mind could
hardly but conclude that here was something quote not dreamed

(16:07):
of in our philosophy. It seemed to me that the
only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one, that my
orchard was haunted, haunted by some beautiful young spirit with
some sorrow of lost joy that would not let her

(16:29):
sleep quietly in her grave. And next day I had
a curious confirmation of my theory. Once more, I was
lying under my favorite apple tree, half reading and half watching,
the sound lulled into a dream by the whirr of
insects and the spices called up from the earth by

(16:49):
the hot sun. As I bent over the page, I
suddenly had the startling impression that some one was leaning
over my shoulder and rear with me, and that a
girl's long hair was falling over me. Down on to
the page. The book was the Gonsald that I had

(17:10):
found in the little bedroom. I turned, but again there
was nothing there. Yet this time I knew that I
had not been dreaming, and I cried out, poor child,
tell me of your grief, that I may help your
sorrowing heart to rest. But of course there was no answer.

(17:35):
Yet that night I dreamed a strange dream. I thought
I was in the orchard again in the afternoon, and
once again heard the strange singing, But this time, as
I looked up, the singer was no longer invisible. Coming

(17:55):
toward me was a young girl with wonderful blue eyes,
eyes filled with tears, and gold hair that fell to
her waist. She wore a straight white robe that might
have been a shroud or a bridle dress. She appeared
not to see me, though. She came directly to the

(18:17):
tree where I was sitting, and there she knelt and
buried her face in the grass and sobbed, as if
her heart would break. Her long hair fell over her
like a mantle, and in my dream I stroked it
pityingly and murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I

(18:39):
did not understand. Then I woke suddenly, as one does
from dreams. The moon was shining brightly into the room.
Rising from my bed, I looked out into the orchard.
It was almost as bright as day. I could plainly
see the tree of which I had been dreaming, And

(19:00):
then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my clothes,
I went out into one of the old barns and
found a spade. Then I went to the tree where
I had seen the girl weeping in my dream, and
dug down at its foot. I had dug little more

(19:20):
than a foot when my spade struck upon some hard substance,
And in a few more moments I had uncovered and
exhumed a small box, which, on examination proved to be
one of those pretty old fashioned Chippendale work boxes used
by our grandmothers to keep their thimbles and needles in

(19:41):
their reels of cotton and skeins of silk. After smoothing
down the little grave in which I had found it,
I carried the box into the house, and under the
lamplight examined its contents. Then at once I understood why
that sad young spirit went to and fro the orchard,

(20:03):
singing those little French songs for the treasure trove I
had found under the apple tree. The buried treasure of
an unquiet, suffering soul proved to be a number of
love letters, written mostly in French in a very picturesque
can letters too, written, but some five or six years before.

(20:26):
Perhaps I should not have read them. Yet I read
them with such reverence for the beautiful, impassioned love that
animated them and literally made them quote smell sweet and
blossom in the dust end quote that I felt I
had the sanction of the dead to make myself the

(20:47):
confidante of their story. Among the letters were little songs,
two of which I had heard the strange young voice
singing in the orchard. And of course there were many
withered flowers and such like remembrances of by gone rapture.

(21:08):
Not that night could I make out all the story,
though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy.
And later on a gossip in the neighborhood and a
headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The unquiet
young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro

(21:31):
the orchard was my landlord's daughter. She was the only
child of her parents, a beautiful, wilful girl, exotically unlike
those from whom she was sprung, and among whom she lived,
with a disdainful air of exile. She was, as a
child a little creature of fairy fancies, and as she

(21:54):
grew up it was plain to her father and mother
that she had come from another world than their. To them,
she seemed like a child in an old fairy tale,
strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd as he
returns from the field at evening a little fairy girl
swaddled in fine linen and dowered with a mysterious bag

(22:17):
of gold. Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs, to which
her simple parents were strangers from long truancies in the woods.
She would come home laden with mysterious flowers, and soon
she came to ask for books and pictures and music

(22:38):
of which the poor souls that had given her birth
had never heard. Finally, she had her way and went
to study at a certain fashionable college, and there the
brief romance of her life began. There she met a
romantic young Frenchman who had read Goonzarde to her and
written her those picturesque letters I had found in the

(23:01):
old mahogany work box. And after a while the young
Frenchman had gone back to France, and the letters had ceased.
Month by month went by, and at length one day,
as she sat wistful at the window, looking out at
the foolish sunlit road, a message came. He was dead.

(23:30):
That headstone in the village churchyard tells the rest. She
was very young to die, scarcely nineteen years. And the
dead who have died young, with all their hopes and
dreams still like unfolded buds within their hearts, do not

(23:55):
rest so quietly in the grave as those who have
gone through the long day from morning until evening, and
are only too glad to sleep. End of the Haunted
Orchard by Richard la Gallienne