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The Outlandish Ladies
by
She was a leper!
They gave one look at that featureless face, with the white scales shining upon it, and ran back with their arms lifted before their eyes. One woman screamed. Then a dead stillness fell on the place, and the cottage was empty.
On the following Saturday Parson Morth walked down to the inn, just ten minutes after stalling his mare. He strode into the tap-room in his muddy boots, took two men by the neck, knocked their skulls together, and then demanded to hear the truth.
“Very well,” he said, on hearing the tale; “to-morrow I march every man Jack of you up to the valley, if it’s by the scruff of your necks, and in the presence of both of those ladies–of both, mark you–you shall kneel down and ask them to come to church. I don’t care if I empty the building. Your fathers (who were men, not curs) built the south transept for those same poor souls, and cut a slice in the chancel arch through which they might see the Host lifted. That’s where you sit, Jim Trestrail, churchwarden; and by the Lord Harry, they shall have your pew.”
He marched them up the very next morning. He knocked, but no one answered. After waiting a while, he put his shoulder against the door, and forced it in.
There was no one in the kitchen. In the inner room one sister sat in the arm-chair. It was Mademoiselle Henriette, cold and stiff. Her dead hands were stained with earth.
At the back of the cottage they came on a freshly-formed mound, and stuck on the top of it a piece of slate, such as children erect over a thrush’s grave.
On it was scratched–
Ci-Git
Lucille,
Jadis si Belle;
Dont dix-neuf Jeunes Hommes, Planteurs de
Saint Domingue.
ont demande la Main.
Mais La Petite ne Voulait Pas.
R.I.P.
This is the story of Loose-heels, otherwise Lucille’s.