27) “The Haunted Orchard” by Richard Le Gallienne
Plot:
The unnamed narrator tells the reader about leaving the city for the Connecticut countryside and coming across an empty “quaint farm-house,” an “old colonial,” with lilacs and “surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple trees.” He finds a broken window pane and enters the house. Why not? Perfectly civilized behavior for a gentleman trying to satisfy his curiosity.
He’s charmed by what he sees inside, particularly by what appears to be the “little intimate library of a young girl.” Half the books are in French.
After some inquiries, he finds the owners and agrees to rent the place for four months.
After about a month of living in the farmhouse, while he’s sitting in the orchard reading The Anatomy of Melancholy he hears snatches of sad songs in French. No one is around. The nearest neighbor is miles away.
He figures he’s half-asleep and dreaming.
But it happens for several days in succession.
Finally, he calls out, “Poor child! Tell me of your grief— that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest.”
He receives no response, but that night, he has a dream.
Thoughts:
The story’s prose is lush and poetic throughout, betraying its roots in the Decadent Movement. In the opening paragraph, the reader is told, “As [spring] sang to herself in the faraway woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the long winter.”
When our hero arrives in the countryside, we are told:
“Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle susurrus of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowing rushes.”
The girl’s library consists of suggestive volumes: Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard, who wrote, among other things, love poetry to his mistresses; Romantic poet and dramatist Alfred de Musset, who wrote confessionally of his extended affair with George Sand; and Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin, in which a young man falls in love with a woman dressed as a man. The young girl had none of the light reading or conventional prayer books or devotional volumes one might expect.
The ancient orchard “had the impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in Horace or Catullus, and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear.”
While a ghost may haunt “those old religious groves,” it does not frighten our hero. It is not frightening to the reader, either, only sad. She sings songs of lost love and mourning, but she doesn’t speak.
The story is dreamy, atmospheric, and sad, even with its resident ghost, but it is not scary. Nevertheless, there is a price to pay.
It is short. If such an atmospheric tale that says more than the words do appeals to the reader, this should be an enjoyable read.
This story can be read here:
This story can be listened to here: (21:19)
Bio: Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) was a Decadent Movement British poet and writer. He is best known for his contributions to the British periodical The Yellow Book and his 1896 novel The Quest for the Golden Girl. He married three times and seems to have been romantically involved with Oscar Wilde, at least briefly. Maybe.
Title: “The Haunted Orchard”
Author: Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)
First published: Harper’s Magazine, January 1912
Length: short story
