[Pg 106] [Pg 107] [Pg 107] VI THE FACE AT THE WINDOW He had gone down at Christmas, where our host Had opened up his house on the Maine coast, For the week's holidays, and we were all, On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall, About the corner fireplace, while we told Stories like those that people, young and old, Have told at Christmas firesides from the first, Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and nursed His knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head, And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said, "This is so good, here—with your hickory logs Blazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs, And sending out their flicker on the wall And rafters of your mock-baronial hall, All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor, And the steel-studded panels of your door— I think you owe the general make-believe Some sort of story that will somehow give [Pg 108] A more ideal completeness to our case, And make each several listener in his place— Or hers—sit up, with a real goose-flesh creeping All over him—or her—in proper keeping With the locality and hour and mood. Come!" And amid the cries of "Yes!" and "Good!" Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air, Looked around him on our hemicycle, where He sat midway of it. "Why," he began, But interrupted by the other man, He paused for him to say: "Nothing remote, But something with the actual Yankee note Of here and now in it!" "I'll do my best," Our host replied, "to satisfy a guest. What do you say to Barberry Cove? And would Five years be too long past?" "No, both are good. Go on!" "You noticed that big house to-day Close to the water, and the sloop that lay, Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier? Well, there she has lain just so, year after year; And she will never leave her pier again; But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain, For Bay Chaleur—or Bay Shaloor, as they Like better to pronounce it down this way." He had gone down at Christmas, where our host [Pg 108]
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