Told in a French garden, August, 1914

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TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

TOLD IN
A FRENCH GARDEN

AUGUST, 1914

BY

Mildred Aldrich

Author of
'A Hilltop on the Ma me"

BOSTON

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916
BY MILDRED ALDRICH

Second Printing, October, iqzb
Third Printing, October, iqib

Fourth Printing, October, iqito
Fifth Printing, October, 79/6
Sixth Printing, October, 79/6
Seventh Printing, October, iqib

Eighth Printing, December, iqib

Jlrlntrro

S. J. PAKKHILL & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.

TO

F. E. C.

a prince of comrades and a royal
friend, whose quaint humor
gladdened the days of my early
struggle, and whose unfailing
faith inspired me in later days
to turn a smiling face to Fate

64,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION 3

How We Came into the Garden

I THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY ... 29

It Happened at Midnight — The
Tale of a Bride's New Home

II THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY . 45

The Son of Josephine — The Tale
of a Foundling

III THE CRITIC'S STORY .... 60

'Twas in the Indian Summer —
The Tale of an Actress

IV THE DOCTOR'S STORY .... 83

As One Dreams — The Tale of
an Adolescent

V THE SCULPTOR'S STORY ... 96

Unto This End — The Tale of a
Virgin

VI THE DIVORCEE'S STORY . . .135

One Woman's Philosophy — The
Tale of a Modern Wife

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

VII THE LAWYER'S STORY . . . .166

The Night Before the Wedding
— The Tale of a Bride-Elect

VIII THE JOURNALIST'S STORY . . . 188

In a Railway Station — The Tale
of a Dancer

IX THE VIOLINIST'S STORY . . .221

The Soul of the Song — The Tale
of a Fiancee

X EPILOGUE 259

Adieu — How We Went Out of
the Garden

TOLD IN A FRENCH
GARDEN

TOLD IN A FRENCH
GARDEN

INTRODUCTION

HOW WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

IT was by a strange irony of Fate that
we found ourselves reunited for a sum
mer's outing, in a French garden, in July,
1914.

With the exception of the Youngster,
we had hardly met since the days of our
youth.

We were a party of unattached people,
six men, two women, your humble serv
ant, and the Youngster, who was an out
sider.

With the exception of the latter, we
had all gone to school or college or danc
ing class together, and kept up a sort of
superficial acquaintance ever since — that
sort of relation in which people know
something of one another's opinions and

[ 3 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

absolutely nothing of one another's real
lives.

There was the Doctor, who had studied
long in Germany, and become an authority
on mental diseases, developed a distaste
for therapeutics, and a passion for research
and the laboratory. There was the Law
yer, who knew international law as he
knew his Greek alphabet, and hated a
court room. There was the Violinist, who
was known the world over in musical sets,
— everywhere, except in the concert room.
There w'as the Journalist, who had trav
elled into almost as many queer places as
Richard Burton, seen more wars, and fol
lowed more callings. There was the
Sculptor, the fame of whose greater father
had almost paralyzed a pair of good
modeller's hands. There was the Critic,
whose friends believed that in him the
world had lost a great romancer, but
whom a combination of hunger and lazi
ness, and a proneness to think that nothing
not genius was worth while, had con
demned to be a mere breadwinner, but a
breadwinner who squeezed a lot out of
life, and who fervently believed that in his
next incarnation he would really be " it."
Then there was " Me," and of the other

[4]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

two women — one was a Trained Nurse,
and the other a Divorcee, and — well,
none of us really knew just what she had
become, but we knew that she was very
rich, and very handsome, and had a lean
ing toward some sort of new religion. As
for the Youngster — he was the son of an
old chum of the Doctor — his ward, in
fact — and his hobby was flying.

Our reunion, after so many years, was
a rather pretty story.

In the summer of 1913, the Doctor and
the Divorcee, who had lost sight of one
another for twenty years, met by chance
in Paris. Her ex-husband had been a col
lege friend of the Doctor. They saw a
great deal of one another in the lazy way
that people who really love France, and
are done sightseeing, can do.

One day it occurred to them to take a
day's trip into the country, as unattached
people now and then can do. They might
have gone out in a car — but they chose
the railroad, with a walk at the end — on
the principle that no one can know and
love a country who does not press its
earth beneath his feet, — the Doctor
would probably have said, " lay his head
upon its bosom. " By an accident — thevj

[ 5 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

missed a train — they found themselves at
sunset of a beautiful day in a small village,
and with no possible way of getting back
to Paris that night unless they chose to
walk fifteen miles to the nearest railway
junction. After a long day's tramp that
seemed too much of a good thing.

So they looked about to find a shelter
for the night. The village — it was only
a hamlet — had no hotel, no cafe, even.
Finally an old peasant said that old Mother
Servin — a widow — living a mile up the
road — had a big house, lived alone, and
could take them in, — if she wanted to, —
he could not say that she would.

It seemed to them worth trying, so they
started off in high spirits to tramp another
mile, deciding that, if worse became worst
— well — the night was warm — they
could sleep by the roadside under the stars.

It was near the hour when it should
have been dark — but in France at that
season one can almost read out of doors
until nine — when they found the place.
With some delay the gate in the stone wall
was opened, and they were face to face
with the old widow.

It was a long argument, but the Doctor
had a winning way, and at the end they
[ 6 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

were taken in, — more, they were fed in
the big clean kitchen, and then each was
sheltered in a huge room, with cement
floor, scrupulously clean, with the quaint
old furniture and the queer appointments
of a French farmhouse.

The next morning, when the Doctor
threw open the heavy wooden shutters to
his window, he gave a whistle of delight
to find himself looking out into what
seemed to be a French Paradise — and
better than that he had never asked.

It was a wilderness. Way off in the
distance he got glimpses of broken walls
with all kinds of green things creeping and
climbing, and hanging on for life. Inside
the walls there was a riot of flowers —
hollyhocks and giroflees, dahlias and phlox,
poppies and huge daisies, and roses every
where, even climbing old tree trunks, and
sprawling all over the garden front of the
rambling house. The edges of the paths
had green borders that told of Corbeil
d'Argent in midwinter, and violets in
early spring. He leaned out and looked
along the house. It was just a jumble of
all sorts of buildings which had evidently
been added at different times. It seemed
to be on half a dozen elevations, and no

[ 7 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

two windows were of the same size, while
here and there an outside staircase led up
into a loft.

Once he had taken it in he dressed like
a flash — he could not get out into that
garden quickly enough, to pray the Widow
to serve coffee under a huge tree in the
centre of the garden, about the trunk of
which a rude table had been built, and it
was there that the Divorcee found him
when she came out, simply glowing with
enthusiasm — the house, the garden, the
Widow, the day — everything was per
fect.

While they were taking their coffee,
poured from the earthen jug, in the thick
old Rouen cups, the Divorcee said:

" How I'd love to own a place like this.
No one would ever dream of building such
a house. It has taken centuries of accu
mulated needs to expand it into being. If
one tried to do the thing all at once it
would look too on-purpose. This place
looks like a happy combination of circum
stances which could not help itself."

" Well, why not? It might be possible
to have just this. Let's ask the Widow."

So, when they were sitting over their
cigarettes, and the old woman was clear-
I 8 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

ing the table, the Doctor looked her over,
and considered the road of approach.

She was a rugged old woman, well on
toward eighty, with a bronzed, weather
worn face, abundant coarse gray hair, a
heavy shapeless figure, but a firm bearing,
in spite of her rounded back. As far as
they could see, they were alone on the
place with her. The Doctor decided to
jump right into the subject.

" Mother," he said, " I suppose you
don't want to sell this place? "

The old woman eyed him a moment
with her sharp dark eyes.

" But, yes, Monsieur'' she replied. " I
should like it very well, only it is not pos
sible. No one would be willing to pay
my price. Oh, no, no one. No, indeed."

" Well," said the Doctor, " how do you
know that? What is the price? — Is it
permitted to ask? "

The old woman hesitated, — started to
speak — changed her mind, and turned
away, muttering. " Oh, no, Monsieur, —
it is not worth the trouble — no one will
ever pay my price."

The Doctor jumped up, laughing, ran
after her, took her by the arm, and led
her back to the table.

[ 9 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" Now, come, come, Mother," he re
marked, " let us hear the price at any rate.
I am so curious."

" Well," said the Widow, " it is like
this. I would like to get for it what my
brother paid for it, when he bought it at
the death of my father — it was to settle
with the rest of the heirs — we were eight
then. They are all dead but me. But
no, no one will ever pay that price, so I
may as well let it go to my niece. She is
the last. She doesn't need it. She has
land enough. The cultivator has a hard
time these days. It is as much as I can
do to make the old place feed me and pay
the taxes, and I am getting old. But no
one will ever pay the price, and what will
my brother think of me when the bon Dieu
calls me, if I sell it for less than he paid?
As for that, I don't know what he'll say
to me for selling it at all. But I am get
ting old to live here alone — all alone.
But no one will ever pay the price. So I
may as well die here, and then my brother
can't blame me. But it is lonely now, and
I am growing too old. Besides, I don't
suppose you want to buy it. What would
a gentleman do with this? "

"Well," said the Doctor, "I don't
[ 10 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

really know what a gentleman would do
with it," and he added, under his breath,
in English, " but I know mighty well what
this fellow could do with it, if he could
get it," and he lighted a fresh cigarette.

The keen old eyes had watched his face.

" I don't suppose you want to buy it? "
she persisted.

" Well," responded the Doctor, " how
can a poor man like me say, if you don't
care to name your price, and unless that
price is within reason? "

After some minutes of hesitation the
old woman drew a deep breath. ' Well,"
she said, with the determination of one
who expected to be scoffed at, " I won't
take a sou less than my brother paid."

" Come on, Mother," said the Doctor,
"what did your brother pay? No non
sense, you know."

" Well, if you must know — it was FIVE
THOUSAND FRANCS, and I can't and won't
sell it for less. There, now ! "

There was a long silence.

The Doctor and his companion avoided
one another's eyes. After a while, he
said in an undertone, in English: " By
Jove, I'm going to buy it."

" No, no," remonstrated his companion,

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

her eyes gazing down the garden vista to
where the wistaria and clematis and flam
ing trumpet flower flaunted on the old
wall. " I am going to have it — I thought
of it first. I want it."

uSo do I," laughed the Doctor.
" Never wanted anything more in all my
life."

" For how long," she asked, " would a
rover like you want this? "

" Rover yourself ! And you? Besides
what difference does it make how long I
want it — since I want it now? I want
to give a party — haven't given a party
since — since Class Day."

The Divorcee sighed. Still gazing
down the garden she said quietly : " How
well I remember — ninety-two ! "

Then there was another silence before
she turned to him suddenly: " See here
• — all this is very irregular — so, that be
ing the case — why shouldn't we buy it to
gether? We know each other. Neither
of us will ever stay here long. One sum
mer apiece will satisfy us, though it is
lovely. Be a sport. We'll draw lots as
to who is to have the first party."

The Doctor waved the old woman
away. Her keen eyes watched too sharply.

[ 12 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

Then, with their elbows on the table,
they had a long and heated argument.
Probably there were more things touched
on than the garden. Who knows? At
the end of it the Divorcee walked away
down that garden vista, and the old woman
was called and the Doctor took her at her
word. And out of that arrangement
emerged the scheme which resulted in our
finding ourselves, a year later, within the
old walls of that French garden.

Of course a year's work had been done
on the interior, and Doctor and Divorcee
had scoured the department for old furni
ture. Water had been brought a great
distance, a garage had been built with serv
ants' quarters over it — there were no
servants in the house, — but the look of
the place, we were assured, had not been
changed, and both Doctor and Divorcee
declared that they had had the year of
their lives. Well, if they had, the place
showed it.

But, as Fate would have it, the second
night we sat down to dinner in that gar
den, news had come of the assassination
of Franz Ferdinand-Charles-Louis Joseph-
Marie d'Autriche-Este, whom the tragic
death of Prince Rudolphe, almost exactly

[ 13 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

twenty-four years and six months earlier
to a day, had made Crown Prince of Aus
tria-Hungary — and the tone of our
gathering was changed. From that day
the party threatened to become a little
Bedlam, and the garden a rostrum.

In the earlier days it did not make so
much difference. The talk was good.
We were a travelled group, and what with
reminiscences of people and places, and
the scandal of courts, it was far from be
ing dull. But as the days went on, and
the war clouds began to gather, the over
charged air seemed to get on the nerves
of the entire group, and instead of the
peaceful summer we had counted upon,
every one of us seemed to live in his own
particular kind of fever. Every one of
us, down to the Youngster, had fixed ideas,
deep-set theories, and convictions as differ
ent as our characters, our lives, our call
ings, and our faiths. We were all Cos
mopolitan Americans, but ready to spread
the Eagle, if necessary, and all of us,
except the Violinist, of New England
extraction, which means really of English
blood, and that will show when the screws
are put on. We had never thought of the
Violinist as not one of us, but he was really

[ 14 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

of Polish origin. His great-grandfather
had been a companion of Adam Czartor-
iski in the uprising of 1830, and had gone
to the States when the amnesty was not
extended to his chief after that rebellion,
Poland's last, had been stamped out.

As well as I can remember it was the
night of August 6th that the first serious
dispute arose. England had declared
war. All our male servants had left us
except two American chauffeurs, and a
couple of old outside men. Two of our
four cars, and all our horses but one had
been requisitioned. That did not upset
us. We had taken on the wives of some
of the men, among them Angele, the pretty
wife of one of the French chauffeurs, and
her two-months-old baby into the bargain.
We still had two cars, that, at a pinch,
would carry the party, and we still had one
mount in case of necessity.

The question arose as to whether we
should break up and make for the nearest
port while we could, or " stick it out."
It had been finally agreed not to evacuate
— yet. One does not often get such a
chance to see a country at war, and we
were all ardent spectators, and all unat
tached. I imagine not one of us had at

[ 15 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

that time any idea of being useful — the
stupendousness of it all had not dawned
on any of us — unless it was the Doctor.

But after the decision of " stick " had
been passed unanimously, the Critic, who
was a bit of a sentimentalist, and if he
were anything else was a Norman Angel-
lite, stuck his hands in his pockets, and
remarked: "After all, it is perfectly safe
to stay, especially now that England is
coming in."

" You think so? " said the Doctor.

" Sure," smiled the Critic. " The Ger
mans will never cross the French frontier
this time. This is not 1870."

u Won't they, and isn't it? " replied the
Doctor sharply.

" They never can get by Verdun and
Belfort."

" Never said they could," remarked the
Doctor, with a tone as near to a sneer as
a good-natured host can allow himself.
" But they'll invade fast enough. I know
what I am talking about."

" You don't mean to tell me," said the
Critic, " that a nation like Germany —
I'm talking now about the people, the
country that has been the hot bed of Social
ism, — will stand for a war of invasion? "
[ 16 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

That started the Doctor off. He flayed
the theorists, the people who reasoned
with their emotions and not their brains,
the mob that looked at externals, and
never saw the fires beneath, the throng
that was unable to understand anything
outside its own horizon, the mass that pre
tended to read the history of the world,
and because it changed its clothes imagined
that it had changed its spirit.

" Why, I've lived in Germany," he
cried. " I was educated there. I know
them. I have the misfortune to under
stand them. They'll stick together and
Socialism go hang — as long as there is a
hope of victory. The Confederation was
cemented in the blood of victory. It can
only be dissolved in the blood of defeat.
They are a great, a well-disciplined, and
an obedient people."

" One would think you admired them
and their military system," remarked the
Critic, a bit crest-fallen at the attack.

" I may not, but I'll tell you one sure
thing if you want a good circus you've got
to train your animals. The Kaiser has
been a corking ringmaster."

Of course this got a laugh, and though
both Critic and Journalist tried to strike

[ 17 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

fire again with words like " democracy "
and " civilization," the Doctor had cooled
down, and nothing could stir him again
that night.

Still the discord had been sown. I sup
pose the dinner-table talk was only a
sample of what was going on, in that
month, all over the world. It did not help
matters that as the days went on we all
realized that the Doctor had been right —
that France was to be invaded, not across
her own proper frontier, but across unpro
tected Belgium. This seemed so atrocious
to most of us that indignation could only
express itself in abuse. There was not a
night that the dinner-table talk was not
bitter. You see the Doctor did not expect
the world ever to be perfect — did not
know that he wanted it to be — believed
in the struggle. On the other hand the
Critic, and in a certain sense the Journalist,
in spite of their experiences, were more or
less Utopian, and the Sculptor and the
Violinist purely spectators.

No need to go into the details of the
heated arguments. They were only the
echo of what all the world, — that had
cradled itself into the belief that a great
war among the great nations had become,
[ 18 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

for economic as well as humanitarian rea
sons, impossible, — were, I imagine, at this
time saying.

As nearly as I can remember it was on
August 2Oth that the climax came. Liege
had fallen. The English Expedition had
landed, and was marching on Belgium.
A victorious German army had goose-
stepped into defenseless Brussels, and was
sweeping out toward the French frontier.
The French advance into Alsace had been
a blunder.

The Doctor remarked that " the Eng
lish had landed twelve days too late," and
the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely
imaginary, picture of the pathos of the
Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the
West for the coming of the men in khaki,
and unfortunately he let himself expatiate
a bit on German methods.

The spark touched the Doctor off.

" By Jove," he said, " all you sentimen
talists read the History of the World with
your intellects in your breeches pockets.
War is not a game for babies. It is war
— it is not sport. You chaps think war
can be prevented. All I ask you is — why
hasn't it been prevented? In every gen
eration that we know anything about there

c 19 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

have been some pretty fine men who have
been of your opinion — Erasmus for one,
and how many others? But since the
generations have contented themselves
with talking, and not talked war out of the
problem, why, I can't see, for my part,
that Germany's way is not as good as any.
She is in to win, and so are all the rest of
them. Schools of War are like the
Schools of Art you chaps talk so much
about — it does not make much difference
what school one belongs to — the only im
portant thing is making good."

" One would think," said the Journalist,
" that you liked such a war."

;< Well, I don't even know that I can
deny that. I would not deliberately
choose it. But I am willing to accept it,
and I am not a bit sentimental about it.
I am not even sure that it was not needed.
The world has let the Kaiser sit twenty-
five years on a throne announcing himself
as ' God's anointed.' His pretensions
have been treated seriously by all the
democracies of the world. What for?
Purely for personal gain. We have come
to a pass where there is little a man won't
do — for personal gain. The business of
the world, and its diplomacy, have all be-

[ 20 ]

How WE CAML INTO THE GARDEN

come so complicated and corrupt that a
large percentage of the brains of honest
mankind are little willing to touch either.
We need shaking up — all of us. If
nothing can make man realize that he was
not born to be merely happy and get rich,
or to have a fine old time, why, such a
complete upheaval as this seems to me to
be necessary, and for me — if this war can
rip off, with its shrapnel, the selfishness
with which prosperity has encrusted the
lucky: if it can explode our false values
with its bombs: if it can break down our
absurd pretensions with its cannon, — all I
can say is that Germany will have done
missionary work for the whole world —
herself included."

Before he had done, we were all on our
feet shouting at him, all but the Lawyer,
who smiled into his coffee cup.

" Why," cried the Critic, in anger, " one
would think you held a brief for them ! "

" I do NOT/' snapped the Doctor, " but
I don't dislike them any more than I do
— well," catching himself up with a laugh,
" lots of other people."

" And you mean to tell me," said the
gentle voice of the Divorcee at his elbow,
" that you calmly face the idea of the hun-

C 21 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

dreds of thousands of men, — well and
strong to-day — dead to-morrow, — the
thought of the mothers who have borne
their sons in pain, and bred them in love,
only to fling them before the cannon? "

" For what, after all, are we born?"
said the Doctor. " Where we die, or
when is a trifle, since die we must. But
why we die and how is vital. It is not
only vital to the man that goes — it is
vital to the race. It is the struggle, it is
the fight, which, no matter what form it
takes, makes life worth living. Men
struggle for money. Financiers strangle
one another at the Bourse. People look
on and applaud, in spite of themselves.
That is exciting. It is not uplifting. But
for men just like you and me to march out
to face death for an idea, for honor, for
duty, that very fact ennobles the race."

" Ah," said the Lawyer, " I see. The
Doctor enjoys the drama of life, but he
does not enjoy the purely domestic drama."

" And out of all this," said the Trained
Nurse, in her level voice, " you are leaving
the Almighty. He gave us a world full
of beauty, full of work, full of interest,
and he gave us capacities to enjoy it, and
endowed us with emotions which make it

[ 22 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

worth while to live and to die. He gave
us simple laws — they are clear enough —
they mark sharply the line between good
and evil. He left us absolutely free to
choose. And behold what man has made
of it!"

" I deny the statement," said the Doctor.

" That's easy," laughed the Journalist.

" I believe,'* said the Doctor, impa
tiently, " that no good comes but through
evil. Read your Bible."

" I don't want to read it with your eyes,"
replied the Journalist, and marched testily
down the path toward the house.

"Well," snapped the Doctor, "if I
read it with yours, I should call on the
Almighty to smite this planet with his fires
and send us spinning, a flaming brand
through space, to annihilation — the great
scheme would seem to me a failure — but
I don't believe it is." And off he marched
in the other direction.

The Lawyer shrugged his shoulders, and
suppressed, as well as he could, a smile.
The Youngster, leaning his elbows on his
knees, recited under his breath :

" And as he sat, all suddenly there rolled,
" From where the woman wept upon the sod,
" Satan's deep voice, ' Oh Thou unhappy God.' "

, [ 23 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" Exactly," said the Lawyer.

;< What's that? " asked the Violinist

" Only the last three lines of a great
little poem by a little great Irishman named
Stephens — entitled 4 What Satan Said.' "

" After all," said the Lawyer, " the Doc
tor is probably right. It all depends on
one's point of view."

" And one's temperament," said the
Violinist.

" And one's education," said the Critic.

Just here the Doctor came back, — and
he came back his smiling self. He made
a dash down the path to where the Journal
ist was evidently sulking, went up behind
him, threw an arm over his shoulder, and
led him back into the circle.

" See here," he said, " you are all my
guests. I am unreasonably fond of you,
even if we can't see Life from the same
point of view. Man as an individual, and
Man as a part of the Scheme are two dif
ferent things. I asked you down here to
enjoy yourselves, not to argue. I apolo
gize — all my fault — unpardonable of
me. Come now — we have • decided to
stay as long as we can — we are all inter
ested. It is not every generation that has

[ 24 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

the honor to sit by, and watch two systems
meet at the crossroads and dispute the pas
sage to the Future. We'll agree not to
discuss the ethics of the matter again. If
the men marching out there to the frontier
can agree to face the cannon — and there
are as many opinions there as here —
surely we can look on in silence."

And on that agreement we all went to
bed.

But on the following day, as we sat in
the garden after dinner, our attempts to
" keep off the grass " were miserably vis
ible. They cast a constraint on the party.
Every topic seemed to lead to the forbid
den enclosure. It was at a very critical
moment that the Sculptor, sitting cross-
legged on a bench, in a real Alma Tadema
attitude, filled the dangerous pause
with:

" It was in the days of our Lord 1348
that there happened in Florence, the finest
city in Italy — "

And the Violinist, who was leaning
against a tree, touched an imaginary
mandolin, concluding: "A most terrible
plague."

The Critic leaped to his feet.

[ 25 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" A corking idea," he cried.

" Mine, mine own," replied the Sculp
tor. " I propose that what those who, in
the days of the terrible plague, took refuge
at the Villa Palmieri, did to pass away the
time, we, who are watching the war ap
proach — as our host says it will — do
here. Let us, instead of disputing, each
tell a story after dinner — to calm our
nerves, — or otherwise."

At first every one hooted.

" I could never tell a story," objected
the Divorcee.

" Of course you can," declared the
Journalist. u Everybody in the world has
one story to tell."

" Sure," exclaimed the Lawyer. " No
embargo on subjects?"

" I don't know," smiled the Doctor.
" There is always the Youngster."

" You go to blazes," was the Young
ster's response, and he added: "No war
stories. Draw that line."

"Then," laughed the Doctor, "let's
make it tales of our own, our native land."
And there the matter rested. Only, when
we separated that night, each of us carried
a sealed envelope containing a numbered

[ 26 ]

How WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN

slip, which decided the question of prece
dence, and it was agreed that no one but
the story-teller should know who was to
be the evening's entertainer, until story
telling hour arrived with the coffee and
cigarettes.

I

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

IT HAPPENED AT MIDNGHT

THE TALE OF A BRIDE'S NEW HOME

THE daytimes were not ever very bad.
Short-handed in the pretty garden, every
one did a little work. The Lawyer was
passionately fond of flowers, and the
Youngster did most of the errands. The
Sculptor had found some clay, and loved
to surprise us at night with a new centre
piece for the table, and the Divorcee spent
most of her time tending Angele's baby,
while the Doctor and the Nurse were
eternally fussing over new kinds of band
ages and if ever we got together, it was
usually for a little reading aloud at tea-
time, or a little music. The spirt of dis
cussion seemed to keep as far away before
the lights were up as did the spirit of war,
and nothing could be farther than that
appeared.

The next day we were unusually quiet.

[ 29 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Most of us kept in our rooms in the
afternoon. There were those stories to
think over, and that we all took it so seri
ously proved how very much we had been
needing some real thing to do. We got
through dinner very comfortably.

There was little news in the papers that
day except enthusiastic accounts of the
reception of the British troops by the
French. It was lovely to see the two races
that had met on so many battle fields —
conquered, and been conquered by one an
other — embracing with enthusiasm. It
was to the credit of all of us that we did
not make the inevitable reflections, but
only saw the humor and charm of the
thing, and remembered the fears that had
prevented the plans of tunnelling the
channel, only to find them humorous.

The coffee had been placed on the table.
The Trained Nurse, as usual, sat behind
the tray, and we each went and took our
cup, found a comfgrtable seat in the circle
under the trees, where a few yellow lan
terns swung in the soft air.

Then the Youngster pulled a white head
band with a huge " Number One " on it,
out of his pocket, placed it on his head
after the manner of the French Conscripts,

[ 30 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

struck an attitude in the middle of the
circle, drew his chair deftly under him, and
with the air of an experienced monologist
began :

Not so very many years ago there was
a pretty wedding at Trinity Church in Bos
ton. It was quite the sort of marriage
Bostonians believe in. The man was a
rising lawyer, rather a sceptic on all sorts
of questions, as most of us chaps pride
ourselves on being, when we come out of
college. They were married in church to
please the Woman. What odds did it
make?

Before they were married they had de
cided to live outside the city. She wanted
a garden and an old house. He did not
care where they lived so long as they lived
together. Very proper of him, too.
They spent the last year of their engaged
life, the nicest year of some girls' lives, I
have heard — in hunting the place. What
they finally settled on was an old colonial
house with a colonnaded front, and a
round tower at each end, standing back
from the road, and approached by a wide
circular drive. It was large, substantial,
with great possibilities, and plenty of

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

ground. It had been unoccupied for many
years, and the place had an evil report,
and, at the time when they first saw it,
appeared to deserve it.

He had looked it over. The situation
was healthy. It was convenient to the
city. He could make it in his car in less
than forty-five minutes. They saw what
could be done with the place, and did not
concern themselves with why other people
had not cared to live there. Architects,
interior decorators, and landscape gar
deners were put to work on it, and, even
before the wedding, the place was well on
toward its habitable stage.

Then they were married, and, quite
correctly, went abroad to float in a gon
dola on the Grand Canal — together; to
cross the Gemmi — together; to stroll
about Pompeii and cross to Capri — to
gether; and then ravage antiquity shops in
Paris — together. They .returned in the
early days of a glorious September. The
house was ready for its master and mis
tress to lay the touch of their personality
on it, and put in place the trophies of their
Wedding Journey.

The evil look the house once had was
gone.

[ 32 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

A few old trees had been cut down round
it to let in the glorious autumn sun all over
the house, and when, on their first morn
ing, after a good sound, well-earned sleep,
they took their coffee on the terrace off
the breakfast room, under a yellow awn
ing, they certainly did not think, if they
ever had, of the mysterious rumors against
the house which had been whispered about
when they first bought it. To them it
seemed that they had never seen a gayer
place.

But on the second night, just as the
Woman was putting her book aside, and
had a hand stretched out to shut off the
light, she stopped — a carriage was com
ing up the drive. She sat up, and listened
for the bell. It did not ring. After a
few moments — as there was absolutely no
sound of the carriage passing — she got
up, and gently pushed the shutter — her
room wras on the front — there was noth
ing there, so, attaching no importance to it,
she went quietly to bed, put out her light,
just noticing as she did so, that it was
midnight, and went to sleep. In the morn
ing, the incident made so little impression
on her, that she forgot to even mention
it.

[ 33 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

The next night, by some queer trick of
memory, just as she went to bed, the thing
came back to her, and she was surprised
to find that she had no sleep in her. In
stead of that she kept looking at the clock,
and just before twelve, cold chills began
to go down her back, when she heard the
rapid approach of a carriage — this time
she was conscious that her hearing was so
keen that she knew there were two horses.
She listened intently — no doubt about it
— the carriage had stopped at the door.

Then there was a silence.

She was just convincing herself that
there must be some sort of echo which
made it appear that a team passing in the
road had come up the drive — when she
was suddenly sure that she heard a hurried
step in the corridor — it passed the door.
Now she was naturally a very unimagi
native person, and had never had occasion
to know fear. So, after a bit, she put out
her light, saying to herself that a belated
servant was busy with some neglected
work — nothing more likely — and she
went to sleep.

Again the morning sunlight, the Man's
gay companionship, the hundreds of de
lightful things to do, wiped out that bad
[ 34 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

quarter of an hour, and again it never
occurred to her to mention it.

The next night the remembrance came
back so vividly after the Man had gone
to his room, that she regretted she had
not at least asked him if he had heard a
carriage pass in the night. Of course she
was sure that he had not. He was such
a sound sleeper. Besides, it was not im
portant. If he had, he would not have
been nervous about it. Still, she could
not sleep, and, just before the dining room
clock began to chime midnight — she had
never heard it before, and that she heard
it now was a proof of how her whole body
was listening — again came the rapid
tread of running horses. This time every
hair stood up on her head, and before
she could control herself, she called out
toward the open door : " Dearest, are you
awake? "

Almost before she had the words out
he was standing smiling in the doorway.
It was all right.

" Did you think you heard a carriage
come up the driveway? " she asked.

11 Why, yes," he replied, " but I didn't/'

"Listen! Is there some one coming
along the corridor? "

[ 35 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

He crossed the room quietly, opened the
door, and turned on the light. " No,
dear. There is no one there."

" Hadn't you better ring for your man,
and have him see if any of the servants
are up? "

He sat down on the edge of the bed,
and laughed heartily.

" See here, dear girl," he said, " you and
I are a pair of healthy people. We have
happened to hear a noise which we can't
explain. Be sure that there is rational
explanation. You're not afraid?"

" Well, no, I really am not," she de
clared, " but you cannot deny that it is
strange. Did you hear it last night? "

" Go on, now, with your cross-exami
nation," he said. u Let's go to sleep. At
any rate the exhibition is over for to
night."

The fourth night they did not speak in
the night any more than they had in the
daytime. But the next day they had a
long conversation, the gist of which was
this : That they had bought the place, that
except for fifteen minutes at midnight, the
place was ideal. They were both level
headed, neither believed in anything super
natural. Were they to be driven out of

c 36 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

such a place by so harmless a thing as an
unexplained noise ? They could get used
to it. After a bit it would no more wake
them up, — such was the force of habit —
than the ticking of the clock. To all this
they both agreed, and the matter was
dropped.

For ten days they did not mention it,
but in all those ten days a sort of cres
cendo of emotion was going on in her.
At first she began to think of it as soon as
bed-time approached; then she felt it
intruding on her thoughts at the dinner
table; then she was unable to sleep for an
hour or two after the fifteen minutes had
passed, and, finally, one night, she fled into
his room to find him wide awake, just
before dawn, and to confess that the
shadow of midnight was stretched before
and after until it was almost a black circle
round the twenty-four hours.

She knew it was absurd. She had no
intention of being driven out of such a
lovely place — BUT —

"See here, dear," he said. "Let's
break our rule. We neither of us want
company, but let's, at least, have a big week
ender, and perhaps we can prove to our
selves that our nerves are wrong. One

[ 37 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

thing is sure, if you are going to get pale
over it, I'll burn the blooming house down
before we'll live in it."

" But you mind it yourself? "

"Not a bit!"

" But you are awake."

" Of course I am, because I know that
you are."

" Do you mean to say that if I slept you
wouldn't notice it? "

" On my honor — I should not."

* You are a comfort," she ejaculated.
" I shall go right to sleep." And off she
went, and did go to sleep.

All the same, in the morning, he insisted
on the house-party.

" Let me see our list," he said. " Let
us have no students of occult; no men who
dabble in laboratory spiritualism; just nice,
live, healthy people who never heard of
such things — if possible. You can find
them."

u You see, dear," she explained, " it
would not trouble me if I heard it and you
did not — but — "

" Oh, fudge ! " he laughed. " Just now
I should be sure to hear anything you did,
I suppose."

[38 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

" You old darling," she replied, " then
I don't care for it a bit."

" All the same we'll have the house-
party."

So the following Saturday every room
in the house was occupied.

At midnight they were all gathered in
the long drawing room opening on the
colonnade, and, when the hour sounded,
some one was singing. The host and
hostess heard the running horses, as usual,
and they were conscious that one or two
people turned a listening ear, but evidently
no one saw anything strange in it, and no
comment was made. It was after one
when they all went up to their rooms, so
that evening passed off all right.

But on Sunday night two of the younger
guests had gone to sit on the front terrace,
and the older people were walking, in the
moonlight, in the garden at the back. The
sweet little girl, who was having her hand
held, got up properly when she heard the
carriage coming, and went to the edge of
the terrace to see who was arriving at mid
night. She had a fit of nerves as the
invisible vehicle and its running horses
seemed about to ride over her. She ran

[ 39 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

in, trembling with fear, to tell the tale,
and of course every one laughed at her,
and the matter would have been dropped,
if it had not happened that, just at that
moment a very pale gentleman came
stumbling out of the house with the state
ment that he wanted a conveyance " to take
him back to town," that " he refused to
sleep in a haunted house," that he " had
encountered an invisible person running
along the corridor to his room," in fact the
footsteps had as he put it " passed right
through him."

The host broke into laughter, but he
took the bull by the horns — the facts, as
he knew them, were safer than the tales
which he knew would run over the city if
he attempted to deny things.

" See here, my good people," he said,
" there is a little mystery here that we
can't explain. The truth is, there is a
story about this house. It used to belong
to the president of a well-known railroad.
That was twenty-five years ago. They
say that one night, when he was driving
from a place he had up country, his team
was run into at a railway crossing five
miles from here — one of those grade
crossings that never ought to have been — •
[ 40 ]

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

and he was killed and his horses came
home at midnight. 4 They say ' that the
people who lived here after that declared
that the horses have come home every
midnight since. Now, there's the story.
They don't do any harm. It only takes
them a few minutes. They don't even
trample the driveway, so why not? "

" All the same, I want to go back to
town," said the frightened guest.

" I would stay the night, if I were you,"
said the host. " They won't come again
until to-morrow."

All the same, when morning came, every
one skipped, and as the last of them drove
away, the Woman put her hand through
the Man's arm, and smiled as she said:
" It's all over. I don't mind a bit.
When I heard you saying last night, ' They
don't even trample the driveway, so why
not?' I said to myself, * Why not?' in
deed."

" Good girl," he replied. " I'll bet my
top hat you grow to be proud of them."

I don't know that they ever did, but I
do know that they still live there. I went
to school with the son, and whenever any
one bragged, he used to say, " Well, we've
always had a ghost. You ain't got that ! "

[ 4i ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

The Youngster threw his lighted ciga
rette into the air, ran under it, caught it
between his lips, and made a bow, as the
Doctor broke into a roar of laughter.

" I know that old house," he said.
" Jamaica Pond. But see here, Young
ster, your idea of ghosts is terribly illogi
cal. It was the man who was killed, not
the horses. The wrong part of the team
walked."

" You are particular," replied the
Youngster. " The man did not come
back, and the horses did. I can't split
hairs when it's a ghost story. I feel
afraid that I have missed my vocation, and
that flights in the imagination are more in
my line than flights in the air. I don't
know what you think. / think it's a
mighty good story. I say, Journalist, do
you think I could sell that story? I've
never earned a dollar in my life."

"Well," laughed the Journalist, "a
dollar is just about what you would get
for it."

" If I had been doing that story," said
the Critic, " I should have found a logical
explanation for it."

" Of course you would," said the
Youngster. " I know one of a haunted

[ 42 1

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

house on St. James Street which had an
explanation."

But the Doctor cut him short with:
" Come now, you've done your stunt. No
more stories to-night. Off to bed. You
and I are going to take a run to Paris to

morrow."

"What for?"

'* Tell you to-morrow."

As every one began to move toward the
house, the Violinist remarked, " I was
thinking of running up to Paris myself to
morrow. Any one else want to go with
me?" The Journalist said that he did,
and the party broke up. As they strolled
toward the house the Lawyer was heard
asking the Youngster, " What were the
steps in the corridor? "

" Well," replied the Youngster, " I sup
pose on the night that the team came home
there must have been great excitement in
the house — every one running to and fro
and — "

But the Journalist's shout of laughter
stopped him.

The Youngster eyed him with shocked
surprise.

" By Jupiter!" cried the Journalist.
" That is the darnedest ghost story I ever

[ 43 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

heard. Everything and everybody walked
but the dead man — even the carriage."

" That isn't my fault," said the Young
ster, indignantly.

[ 44 ]

II

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

THE SON OF JOSEPHINE
THE TALE OF A FOUNDLING

THE house was very quiet next day.
All the men, except the Critic and the
Sculptor, had made an early and hurried
run to Paris. So we saw little of each
other until we gathered for dinner, and the
conversation was calm — in fact subdued.

The Doctor was especially quiet. No
one was really gay except the Youngster.
He talked of what he had seen in Paris —
the silent streets — the moods of the
women — the sight of officers in khaki fly
ing about in big touring cars — and no one
asked what had really taken them to town.

The Trained Nurse and I had walked
to the nearest village, but we brought back
little in the way of news. The only inter
esting thing we saw was Monsieur le Cure
talking to a handsome young peasant

[ 45 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

woman in the square before the church.
We heard her say, with a sob in her
throat, " If my man does not come back,
I'll never say my prayers again. I'll never
pray to a God who let this thing happen
unless my man comes back."

" She will, just the same," said the Law
yer. " One of the strangest features of
such a catastrophe is that it steadies a race,
especially the race convinced that it has
right on its side."

" It goes deeper than that," said the
Journalist. " It strikes millions with the
same pain, and they bear together what
they could not have faced separately."

u True," remarked the Doctor, " and
that is one reason why I have always mis
trusted the effort of people outside the ra
dius of disaster to help in anyway, except
scientifically."

" That is rather a cruel idea," com
mented the Trained Nurse.

" Perhaps. But I believe organized
charity even of that sort is usually inef
fective, and weakens the race that accepts
it. I believe victims of such disaster are
healthier and come out stronger for facing
it, dying, or surviving, as Fate decrees."

" Keep off the grass," cried the Young-
[ 46 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

ster. " I brought back a car full of
books." The hint was taken, and we
talked of books until the coffee came out.
As usual, the Trained Nurse sat behind
the pot, and when we were all served, she
pushed the tray back, folded her strong
capable white hands on the edge of the
table, and said quietly:

" Messieurs et Mes dames " —

We lit our cigarettes, and she began :

It was the first year after I left home
and took up nursing. I had a room at
that time in one of the Friendly Society
refuges on the lower side of Beacon Hill.
It was under the auspices of an Episcopal
High Church in the days of Father Hall,
and was rather English in tone. Indeed
its matron was an Englishwoman — gen
tle, round-faced, lace-capped, and very
sympathetic. I was very fond of her. I
had, as a seamstress, a neat little girl
named Josephine.

Josephine was a tiny creature, all grey in
tone, with mouse-colored hair. She was
a foundling. She had not the least no
tion who her people were. Her first recol
lections were of the orphan asylum where
she was brought up. In her early teens

[ 47 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

she had been bound out to a dressmaker,
who had been kind to her, and, when her
first employer died, Josephine, who had
saved a little money, and longed for inde
pendence, began to go out as a seamstress
among the women she had grown to know
in the dressmaking establishment, and went
to live at one of the Christian Association
homes for working girls.

Every one knows what those boarding
houses are — two or three hundred girls
of all ages, from sixteen up, of all tem
peraments. All girls willing to submit to
control; girls with their gay days and their
tragic, girls of ambition, and girls with
faith in the future, as well as girls of no
luck, and girls with their simple youthful
romances.

Every one loved Josephine.

She was by nature a little lady, dainty
in her ways, industrious, unrebellious, al
ways ready to help the other girls about
their clothes, and a model of a confidant.
Every one told her their little troubles,
every one confided their little romances.
They were sure of a good listener, who
never had any troubles or romances of her
own to confide.

I don't know how old Josephine was at

[ 48 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

that time. She might have been twenty-
five, looked younger, but was perhaps
older. She was so tiny, and such a mouse
of a thing that she seemed a child, but for
her energy, and her capacity for silence.

It was, I fancy, three years after I first
knew her that she one evening confided
to a group of her intimate friends, as they
sat together over their sewing, that she
was engaged to be married. There was
a great excitement. Little lonely Jose
phine, so discreet, who had sympathized
with the romances of so many of her com
rades, had a romance of her own. Such
a hugging and kissing as went on, you
never saw, unless you have seen a crowd
of such girls together. Every one was
full of questions, and there were almost
as many tears shed as questions asked.

He was a carpenter, Josephine told
them. She had known him ever since she
was with the dressmaker who took her out
of the asylum. He lived in Utica, New
York. He had a good job, and they were
to be married as soon as she could get
ready.

So Josephine set to work with her nim
ble fingers to make her trousseau. Dur
ing the years she had worked for me, the

[ 49 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Matron at the Friendly Society, and many
of its patrons had come to know and love
dear little Josephine, and in our house
there was almost as much excitement over
the news as there was at the Association
at the South End. All the girls set to
work to make something for little Jose
phine. Every one for whom she had
worked gave her something. One lady
gave her black silk for a frock. All the
girls sewed a bit of underwear for her.
She had sheets and table linen, and all
sorts of dainty things which her girl friends
loved to count over, and admire in the eve
ning without the least bit of envy. By
the time Spring came Josephine had to buy
a new trunk to pack her things away in.

Then she told us all that she was going
to Utica to be married. What was the
use of his spending his money to come east
for her, and pay his expenses back? That
seemed reasonable, and the day was fixed
for her departure.

Her trunks were packed.

She took a night train so that we could
all go to the station to see her off, and I
am sure that the crowd who saw us kissing
her good-bye are not likely to forget the
scene.

[ 50 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

Then the girls went home chattering
about " dear little Josephine."

In due time came a letter from a place
near Utica, where she was, she said, on her
little u wedding trip," and " very happy,"
and " he " sent his love, and it was signed
with her new name, and she would send us
her address as soon as she was settled.

Time went by — some months. Then
she did send an address, but she did not
write often, and when she did, she said
little but that she was happy.

As nearly as I can remember, it was a
year and a half after she left that news
came that Josephine had a son. By that
time a great many of the girls she had
known were gone. Changes come fast in
such a place. But there was great rejoic
ing, and those who had known her found
time to make something for dear little
Josephine's baby, and the sending of the
things kept up the interest in her for some
months.

Then the letters ceased again.

I can't be sure how long it was after that
that I received a letter from her. She
told me that her husband was dead, that
she never really had taken root in Utica,
and now that she was alone, with her baby

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

to support, she longed to come back to
Boston, and asked my advice. Did I think
she could take up her old work?

I took the letter at once to the Matron
of the Friendly Society — I happened to
be resting between two cases — and we
decided that it was safe. At least between
us we could help her make the trial.

A few months later she came, and we
went to the station to meet her. I could
not see that she had changed a bit. She
did not look a day older, and the bouncing
baby she carried in her arms was a darling.

Of course she could not go back to the
Association. That was not for married
women. But we found her a room just
across the street, and in no time, she
dropped right back into the place she had
left. Every morning she took the baby
boy to the creche and every night she took
him home, and a better cared-for, better
loved, more wisely bred youngster was
never born, nor a happier one. Every
one loved him just as every one loved
Josephine.

There I thought Josephine's story ended,
and so far as she was concerned, it did.

But when the baby was six years old,
and forward for his age, the Matron of

[ 52 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

the'Triendly Society came into my room
one day, when I was there to take a longer
rest than usual, after a very trying case,
and told me that she was in great distress.
A friend of hers, who had been her prede
cessor, and was now the Matron of an
Orphan Asylum in New York State, was
going to the hospital to have a cataract
removed from her eye, and had written to
ask her to come and take her place while
she was away. She begged me to replace
her at the Friendly Society while she was
gone. As her assistant was a capable
young woman, and my relations witn every
one were pleasant I was only too glad to
consent. She had always been so good to
me.

She was gone a month.

On her return I noticed that she was dis
tressed about something. I taxed her with
it. She said it was nothing she felt like
talking about. But one evening when
Josephine had been sewing for me, after
she was gone, the Matron, who had been
in my room, got up, and closed the door
after her.

" I've really got to tell you what is on
my mind," she said. " And I am sure that
you will look on it as a confidence. You

[ 53 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

know the asylum where I have been is not
far from Utica, where Josephine went
when she was married. Well, one day,
about a fortnight after I got there, I had
occasion to look up the record of a child
in the books, and my attention was at
tracted by a name the same as Josephine's.
The coincidence struck me, and I read the
record that on a certain day, which as near
as I could calculate, must have been a year
after Josephine left, a person of her name,
written down as a widow, a member of
the Orthodox Church, had adopted a male
child a few months old. I was interested.
I did not suspect anything, but I asked the
assistant matron if she remembered the
case. She did, clearly. She said the
woman was a dear little thing, who had
come there shortly before, a young widow,
a seamstress. She was a lonely little
thing, and some one connected with the
asylum had given her work, which she had
done so well that she soon had all she
needed. She had been employed in the
asylum, and loved children as they did her.
The child in question was the son of a
woman who had died at its birth, from the
shock of an accident which had killed the
father. It took a fancy to Josephine, and

1 54]

THF TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

she wanted to adopt it. The committee
took the matter up. The clergyman spoke
well of her, as did every one, and they all
decided that she was perfectly able to care
for it. So she took the child. All of a
sudden, one day, Josephine went, as she
had come. There was no mystery about
it. She told the clergyman that she was
homesick for her old friends, and had
gone east, and would write, and she always
has.

" Of course I was puzzled. There was
no doubt in my mind that it was our little
Josephine. Naturally I was discreet.
Luckily. I spoke of her to several people
who remembered her, and they all called
her ' dear little Josephine ' just as we had.
I talked of her with the clergyman and his
wife. I asked questions that were too
natural to rouse suspicions, when I told
them that I knew her, that the baby was
the dearest and happiest child I knew, and
what do you suppose I found out, more
by inference than facts ?"

No need to ask me. Didn't I know?

Josephine had never been married.
There had never been any " He." It all
seemed so natural. It did not shock me,
as it had the Matron, and I was glad she

[ 55 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

had told no one but me. Dear little
Josephine! Sitting there in the Associa
tion without family, with no friends but
her patrons, and those girls whose little
romances went on about her ! No ro
mances ever came her way. So she had
made one all of her own. I proved to the
Matron easily that what she had dis
covered by accident was not her affair, that
to keep Josephine's secret was a virtue,
and not a sin. I was sure of that, for,
as I watched her afterwards, I knew that
Josephine had played her part in her
dream romance so well, that she no longer
remembered that it was not true. She
had forgotten she had not really borne the
child she carried so lovingly in her arms.

" Is that all? " asked the Journalist.

"That is all," replied the Trained
Nurse.

" By Jove," said the Doctor, " that is
a good story. I wish I had told it."

" Thank you, Doctor," laughed the
Trained Nurse. " I thought it was a bit
in your line."

" But fancy the cleverness of the little
thing to do all the details up so nicely,"
said the Lawyer. " She dovetailed every-

[ 56 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

thing so neatly. But what I want to know
is whether she planned the baby when she
planned the make-believe husband?"

u I fancy not," replied the Nurse.
" One thing came along after another in
her imagination, quite naturally."

" Poor little Josephine — it seems to
me hard luck to have had to imagine such
an every day fate," sighed the Divorcee.

u Don't pity her," snapped the Doctor.
" Poor little Josephine, indeed! Lucky
little Josephine, who arranged her own
romance, and risked no disillusion. There
have been cases where the joys of the
imagination have been more dangerous."

" You are sure she had no disillusion? "
asked the Critic.

" I am," said the Nurse.

" And her name was Josephine? " asked
the Divorcee.

" It was not, and Utica was not the
town," replied the Nurse.

" Perhaps her disillusion is ahead of
her," said the Journalist. " ' Say no
man ' — or woman either — ' is happy un
til the day of his death.' "

u She is dead," said the Nurse.

" I told you she was lucky little Jose
phine," ejaculated the Doctor.

[ 57 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" And she died without telling the boy
the truth? " asked the Journalist.

"The truth?" repeated the Nurse.
" IVe told you that she had forgotten it.
No woman was ever so loved by a son.
No mother ever so grieved for."

"Then the son lives?" asked the
Doctor.

The Nurse smiled quietly.

"Good-night," said the Doctor. "I
am going to bed to dream of that. It is
a pity some of the rest of us childless
slackers had not done as well as Josephine.
She took her risk. She was lucky."

" She did," replied the Nurse, " but she
did not realize anything of that. She was
too simple, too unanalytic."

" I wonder? " said the Critic.

" You need not, I know." Her eyes
fell on the Lawyer, and she caught a laugh
in his eye. " What does that mean? " she
asked.

" Well," said the Lawyer, " I was only
thinking. She was religious, that dear
little Josephine?"

" At least she always went to church."

" I know the type," said the Violinist,
gently. " Accepted what she was taught,
believed it."
[ 58 ]

THE TRAINED NURSE'S STORY

" Exactly " said the Lawyer, " that is
what I was getting at. Well then, when
her son meets her an dela — he will ask
for his father — "

" Or," interrupted the Violinist, " his
own mother will claim him."

" Don't worry," laughed the Critic.
'* It's dollars to doughnuts that she was
i dear little Josephine ' to all the Heavenly
Host half an hour after she entered the
4 gates of pearl.' Don't look shocked.
That is not sacrilegious. It is intentions
— motives, that are immortal, not facts.
Besides—"

" Don't push that idea too far," inter
rupted the Doctor from the door.

" Don't be alarmed. I was only going
to say — there are Ik Marvels au dela — "

" I knew that idea was in your head.
Drop it! " laughed the Doctor.

" Anyway," said the Violinist, " if Life
is but a dream, she had a pretty one.
Good night." And he went up to bed,
and we all soon followed him, and I im
agine not one of us, as we looked out into
the moonlit air, thought that night of war.

[ 59 ]

Ill

THE CRITIC'S STORY

'TWAS IN THE INDIAN SUMMER
THE TALE OF AN ACTRESS

THE next day, just as we were sitting
down to dinner, the news came that Namur
had fallen. The German army had
marched singing into the burning town the
afternoon before. The Youngster had
his head over a map almost all through
dinner. The Belgians were practically
pushed out of all but Antwerp, and the
Germans were rapidly approaching the
natural defences of France running from
Lille to Verdun, through Valenciennes,
Mauberge, Hirson and Mezieres.

Things were beginning to look serious,
although we still insisted on believing that
the Germans could not break through.
One result of the march of events was that
we none of us had any longer the smallest
desire to argue. Theories were giving
way to the facts of every day, but in our

[ 60 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

minds, I imagine, we were every one of
us asking, " How long CAN we stay here?
How long will it be wise, even if we are
permitted ?" But, as if by common con
sent, no one asked the question, and we
were only too glad to sit out in the garden
we had all learned to love, and to talk of
anything which was not war, until the Critic
moved his chair into the middle cf the
circle, and began his tale.

" Let me see," he remarked. " I need
a property or two," and he pulled an
envelope out of his pocket and laid it on
the table, and, leaning his elbows on it,
began:

It was in the Autumn of 'Si that I last
saw Dillon act.

She had made a great success that win
ter, yet, in the middle of the season, she
had suddenly disappeared.

There were all kinds of newspaper ex
planations.

Then she was forgotten by the public
that had enthusiastically applauded her,
and which only sighed sadly, a year later,
on hearing of her death, in a far off Italian
town, — sighed, talked a little, and forgot
again.

[ 61 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

It chanced that a few years later I was
in Italy, and being not many miles from
the town where I heard that she was
buried, and a trifle overstrung by a few
months delicious, aimless life in that won
derful country, I was taken with a senti
mental fancy to visit her grave.

It was a sort of pilgrimage for me, for
I had given to Dillon my first boyish
devotion.

I thought of her, and to remember her
was to recall her rare charm, her beauty,
her success, after a long struggle, and the
unexpected, inexplicable manner in which
she had abandoned it. It was to recall,
too, the delightful evenings I had spent
under her influence, the pleasure I had had
in the passion of her u Juliet," the poetic
charm of her "Viola"; the graceful
witchery of her " Rosalind"; how I had
smiled with her " Portia " ; laughed with
her "Beatrice"; wept with her " Ca-
mille " ; in fact how I had yielded myself
up to her magnetism with that ecstatic
pleasure in which one gets the best joys
of every passion, because one does not
drain the dregs of any.

I well remembered her last night, how
she had disappeared, how she had gone to

[ 62 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

Europe, how she had died abroad, — all
mere facts known in their bareness only to
the public.

It was hard to find the place where she
was buried. But at last I succeeded.

It was in a humble churchyard. The
grave was noticeable because it was well
kept, and utterly devoid of the tawdry
ornamentation inseparable from such
places in Italy. It was marked by a monu
ment distinctly unique in a European coun
try. It was a huge unpolished boulder,
over which creeping green vines were
growing.

On its rough surface a cross was cut,
and underneath were the words:

"Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare,
"To-morrow's Silence, Triumph or Despair."

Below that I read with , stupefaction,
" Margaret Dillon and child,"

and the dates

"January, 1843 "
"July 25, 1882."

In spite of the doubts and fancies this
put into my mind, I no sooner stood beside
the spot where the earth had claimed her,
than all my old interest in her returned.

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

I lingered about the place, full of roman
tic fancies, decorating her tomb with
flowers, as I had once decorated her tri
umphs, absorbed in a dreamy adoration of
her memory, and singing her praise in
verse.

It was then that I learned the true story
of her disappearance, guessed at that of
her death, as I did at the identity of the
young Dominican priest, who sometimes
came to her grave, and who finally told
me such of the facts as I know. I can best
tell the story by picturing two nights in
the life of Margaret Dillon, the two fol
lowing her last appearance on the stage.

The play had been " Much Ado."

Never had she acted with finer humor,
or greater gaiety. Yet all the evening
she had felt a strange sadness.

When it was all over, and friends had
trooped round to the stage to praise her,
and trooped away, laughing and happy,
she felt a strange, sad, unused reluctance
to see them go.

Then she sat down to her dressing table,
hurriedly removed her make-up, and al
lowed herself to be stripped of her stage
finery. Her fine spirits seemed to strip
off with her character. She shivered

THE CRITIC'S STORY

occasionally with nervousness, or supersti
tion, and she was strangely silent.

All day she had, for some inexplicable
reason, been thinking of her girlhood, of
what her life might have been if, at a
critical moment, she had chosen a woman's
ordinary lot instead of work, — or if, at a
later day, she had yielded to, instead of
resisted, a great temptation. All day, as
on many days lately, she had wondered if
she regretted it, or if, the days of her
great triumph having passed, — as pass
th^yjrmst, — she should regret it later if
she did not yet.

It was probably because, — early in the
season as it was — she was tired, and the
October night oppressed her with the heat
of Indian Summer.

Silently she had allowed herself to be
undressed, and redressed in great haste.
But before she left the theatre she bade
every one " good night " with more than
her usual kindliness, not because she did
not expect to see them all on Monday, —
it was a Saturday night, — but because, in
her inexplicably sad humour, she felt an
irresistible desire to be at peace with the
world, and a still deeper desire to feel her
self beloved by those about her.

C 65 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Then she entered her carriage and drove
hurriedly home to the tiny apartment
where she lived quite alone.

On the supper table lay a note.

She shivered as she took it up. It was
a handwriting she had been accustomed to
see once a year only, in one simple word of
greeting, always the same word, which
every year in eighteen had come to her on
New Year's wherever she was.

But this was October.

She sat perfectly still for some minutes,
and then resolutely opened the letter, and
read:

"Madge: — I am so afraid that my voice
coming to you, not only across so many years,
but from another world, may shock you, that
I am strongly tempted not to keep my word to
you, yet, judging you by myself, I feel that per
haps this will be less painful than the thought
that I had passed forgetful of you, or changed
toward you. You were a mere girl when we
mutually promised, that though it was Fate
that our paths should not be the same, and hon
orable that we should keep apart, we would not
pass out of life, whatever came, without a fare
well word, — a second saying ' good-bye.' "

" It is my fate to say it. It is now God's
will. Before it was yours. It is eighteen years
since you chose my honor to your happiness and
mine. To-day you are a famous woman. That

[ 66 ] '

THE CRITIC'S STORY

is the consolation I have found in your decision.
I sometimes wonder if Fame will always make
up to you for the rest. A woman's way is pe
culiar — and right, I suppose. I have never
changed. My son has been a second consola
tion, and that, too, in spite of the fact that, had
he never been born, your decision might have
been so different. He is a young man now,
strangely like what I was, when as a child, you
first knew me, and he has always been my con
fidant. In those first days of my banishment
from you I kept from crying my agony from
the housetops by whispering it to him. His un
comprehending ears were my sole confessional.
His mother cared little for% his companionship,
and her invalidism threw him continually into
my care. I do not know when he began to
understand, but from the hour he could speak
he whispered your name in his prayers. But it
was only lately that, of himself, he discovered
your identity. The love I felt for you in my
early days has grown with me. It has survived
in my heart when all other passions, all prides,
all ambitions, long ago died. I leave you, I
hope, a good memory of me — a man who loved
you more than he loved himself, who for eight
een years has loved you silently, yet never ceased
to grieve for you. But I fear that I have be
queathed to my son, with the name and estate of
his father, my hopeless love for you. If, by
chance, what I fear be true, — if, when bereft
of me, he seeks you out, as be sure he will, — deal
gently with him for his father's sake.

" There was an old compact between us, dear.
I mention it nowr only in the hope that you may

JOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

not have forgotten — indeed, in the certainty
that you have not. I know you so well. Re
member it, I beg of you, only to ignore it. It
was made, you know, when one of us expected
to watch the passing of the other. This is dif
ferent. If this reminds you of it, it reminds you
only to warn you that Time cancels all such
compacts. It is my voice that assures you of it.

" FELIX R."

Underneath, written in letters, like, yet
so unlike, were the words, " My father
died this morning. F. R." and an uncer
tain mark as though he had begun to add
" Jr." to the signature, and realized that
there was no need.

The letter fell from her hands.

For a long time she sat silent.

Dead ! She had never felt that he could
die while she lived. A knowledge that he
was living, — loving her, adoring her hope
lessly — was necessary to her life. She
felt that she could not go on without it.
For eighteen years she had compared all
other men, all other emotions to him and
his love, to find them all wanting.

And he had died.

She looked at the date of the letter. He
would be resting in that tomb she remem
bered so well, before she could reach the
[ 68 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

place; that spot before which they had
often talked of Death, which had no ter
rors for either of them.

She rose. She pushed away her un
touched supper, hurriedly drank a glass of
wine, and, crossing the hall to her bed
room, opened a tiny box that stood locked
upon her dressing table. She took from it
a picture — a miniature. It was of a
young man not over twenty-five. The
face was strong and full of virile sugges
tion, even in a picture. The eyes were
brown, the lips under the short mustache
were firm, and the thick, short, brown hair
fell forward a bit over the left temple.
It was a handsome manly face.

The picture was dated eighteen years
before. It hardly seemed possible that
eighteen years earlier this woman could
have been old enough to stir the passionate
love of such a man. Her face was still
young, her form still slender; her abundant
hair shaded deep gray eyes where the
spirit of youth still shone. But she be
longed, by temperament and profession, to
that race of women who guard their youth
marvellously.

There were no tears in her eyes as she

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

sat long into the morning, and, with his
pictured face before her, reflected until she
had decided.

He had kept his word to her. His
" good bye " had been loyally said. She
would keep hers in turn, and guard his
first night's solitude in the tomb with her
watchful prayers. She calculated well the
time. If she travelled all day Sunday, she
would be there sometime before midnight.
If she travelled back at once, she could be
in town again in season to play Monday;
not in the best of conditions, to be sure,
for so hard a role as " Juliet," but she
would have fulfilled a duty that would
never come to her again.

It was near midnight, on Sunday.

The light of the big round harvest moon
fell through the warm air, which scarcely
moved above the graves of the almost for
gotten dead in the country churchyard.
The low headstones cast long shadows
over the long grass that merely trembled
as the noiseless wind moved over it.

A tall woman in a riding dress stood
beside the rough sexton at the door of the
only large tomb in the enclosure.

He had grown into a bent old man since

THE CRITIC'S STORY

she last saw him, but he had recognized
her, and had not hesitated to obey her.

As he unlocked and pushed back the
great door which moved easily and noise
lessly, he placed his lantern on the steps,
and telling her that, according to a family
custom, there were lights inside, he turned
away, and left her, to keep his watch near
by.

No need to tell her the family customs.
She knew them but too well.

For a few moments she remained seated
on the step where she had rested to await
the opening of the door, on the threshold
of the tomb of the one man among all the
men she had met who had stirred in her
heart a great love. How she had loved
him ! How she had feared that her love
would wear his out! How she had suf
fered when she decided that love was some
thing more than self-gratification, that even
though for her he should put aside the
woman he had heedlessly married years
before, there could never be any happiness
in such a union for either of them. How
many times in her own heart she had
owned that the woman would not have had
the courage shown by the girl, for the girl
did not realize all she was putting aside.

[ 71 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Yet the consciousness of his love, in which
she never ceased to believe, had kept her
brave and young.

She rose and slowly entered the vault.

The odor of flowers, the odor of death
was about it.

She lifted the lantern from the ground,
and, with it raised above her head, ap
proached the open coffin that rested on the
catafalque in the centre of the tomb and
mounted the two steps. She was con
scious of no fear, of no dread at the idea
of once more, after eighteen years, look
ing into the face of the man she had loved,
who had carried a great love for her into
another world. But as she looked, her
eyes widened with fright. She bent lower
over him. No cry burst from her lips,
but the hand holding the lantern lowered
slowly, and she tumbled down the two
steps, and staggered back against the wall,
where, behind lettered slides, the dead
Richmonds for six generations slept their
long sleep together. Her breast heaved
up and down, as if life, like a caged thing,
were striving to escape. Yet no sound
came from her colorless lips, no tears were
in her widened eyes.

The realizing sense of departed years

[ 72 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

had reached her heart at last, and the
shock was terrible. With a violent effort
she recovered herself. But the firm step,
the fearless, hopeful face with which she
had approached the coffin of her dead
lover were very different from the blind
manner in which she stumbled back to his
bier, and the hand which a second time
raised the lantern trembled so that its
wavering light shed an added weirdness
on the still face, so strange to her eyes, and
stranger still to her heart.

He had been a young man when they
parted. To her he had remained young.
Now the hair about the brows was thin
and white, the drooping mustache that
entirely concealed the mouth was grizzled;
lines furrowed the forehead, outlined the
sunken eyes, and gave an added thinness
to the nostrils. She bent once more over
the face, to her only a strange cold mask.
A painful fascination held her for several
minutes, forcing her to mark how love,
that had kept her young, proud, content in
its very existence, had sapped his life, and
doubled his years.

The realization bent her slender figure
under a load of self-reproach and self-
mistrust. She drooped lower and lower

[ 73 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

above the sad, dead face until she slid to
the ground beside him. Heavy tearless
sobs shook her slight frame as it stretched
its length beside the dead love and the dead
dream. The ideal so long treasured in
her soul had lost its reality. The present
had wiped out the past as a sponge wipes
off a slate.

If she had but heeded his warning, and
refrained from coming until later, she
would have escaped making a stranger of
him forever. Now the sad, aged face, the
dead, strange face which she had seen but
five minutes before, had completely ob
scured in her memory the long-loved,
young face that had been with her all these
years. The spirit whose consoling pres
ence she had thought to feel upholding her
at this moment made no sign. She was
alone in the world, bereft of her one sup
porting ideal, alone beside the dead body
of one who was a stranger alike to her
sight and her emotions; alone at night in
an isolation as unexpected as it was terrible
to her, and which chilled her senses as if
it had come to oppress her forever.

The shadows which she had not noticed
before, the dark corners of the tomb, the
motionless gleam of the moon as it fell

[ 74 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

through the open door, and laid silently
on the floor like light stretched dead, the
low rustle of the wind as if Nature rest
lessly moved in her sleep, came suddenly
upon her, and brought her — fear. She
held her breath as she stilled her sobs to
realize that she alone lived in this city of
the Dead. The chill of fright crept along
the surface of her body, which still vibrated
with her storm of grief.

She seemed paralyzed. She dared not
move.

Every sense rallied to her ears in dread.

Suddenly she heard her name breathed:
"Margaret!"

It was whispered in a voice once so
familiar to her ears, a voice that used to
say, " Madge."

She raised herself on her elbow.

She dared not answer.

She hardly dared breathe.

She was afraid in every sense, and yet
she hungered for another sound of that
loved voice. Every hour of its banishment
was regretted at that moment. There
seemed no future without it.

Every nerve listened.

At first she heard nothing but the rest
less moving of the air, which merely

[ 75 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

emphasized her loneliness, then she caught
the pulsation of slow regular breathing.

She started to her feet.

She snatched up the lantern and quickly
mounted to the bier. She looked sharply
down into the dead face.

Silent, with its white hair, and worn
lines, it rested on its white pillows.

No sound came from the cold still lips.

Yet, while her eyes were riveted on them,
once more the longed-for voice breathed
her name. " Margaret! "

It came from behind her.

She turned quickly.

There in the moonlit doorway, with a
sad, compassionate smile on his strong,
young face — as if it were yesterday they
had parted — stood the man she remem
bered so well.

Her bewildered eyes turned from the
silent, unfamilar face among the satin
cushions, to the living face in the moon
light, — the young, brown eyes, the short,
brown hair falling forward over the left
temple, the erect, elastic figure, the strong
loving hands stretching out to her.

She was so tired, so heart sick, so full
of longing for the love she had lost.

" Felix," she sobbed, and, blindly grop-
[ 76 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

ing to reach what she feared was a halluci
nation, she stumbled down the steps, and
was caught up in the arms flung wide to
catch her, and which folded about her as
if forever. She sighed his name again,
upon the passionate young lips which had
inherited the great love she had put aside
so long before.

As the last words died away, the Critic
drew himself up and laughed.

He had told the story very dramatically,
reading the letter from the envelope he
had called a " property," and he had told
it well.

The laugh broke the spell, and the Doc
tor echoed it heartily.

" All right, old man," said the Critic,
" you owed me that laugh. You're wel

come."

;t I was only thinking," said the Doctor,
his face still on a broad grin, " that we
have always thought you ought to have
been a novelist, and now we know at last
just what kind of a novelist you would
have been."

" Don't you believe it," said the Critic.
" That was only improvisatore — that's
no sample."

[ 77 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" Ho, ho ! I'll bet you anything that
the manuscript is up in your trunk, and
that you have been committing it to mem
ory ever since this idea was proposed/'
said the Doctor, still laughing.

" No, that I deny," replied the Critic,
" but as I am no poseur, I will own that I
wrote it years ago, and rewrote it so often
that I never could forget it. I'll confess
more than that, the story has been * de
clined with thanks ' by every decent maga
zine in the States and in England. Now
perhaps some one will tell me wrhy."

" I don't know the answer," said the
Youngster, seriously, " unless it is ' why
not?'"

:t I shouldn't wonder if it were senti
mental twaddle," sighed the Journalist,
" but I don't know:'

" I noticed," expostulated the Critic,
" that you all listened, enthralled."

" Oh," replied the Doctor, " that was a
tribute to your personal charm. You did
it very well."

" Exactly," said the Critic, " if editors
would let me read them my stories, I could
sell them like hot cakes. I never believed
that Homer would have lived as long as
he has, if he had not made the reputation

[ 78 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

of his tales by singing them centuries be
fore any one tried to read them. Now
no one dares to say they bore him. The
reading public, and the editors who cater
to it, are just like some stupid theatrical
managers I know of, who will never let
an author read a play to them for fear
that he may give the play some charm that
the fool theatrical man might not have felt
from mere type-written words on white or
yellow paper. By Jove, I know the case
of a manager who once bought the option
on a foreign play from a scenario provided
by a clever friend of mine — and paid a
stiff price for it, too, and when he got the
manuscript wrote to the chap who did the
scenario — ' Play dashety-dashed rot. If
it had been as good as your scenario, it
would have gone.' And, what is more,
he sacrificed the tidy five thousand he had
paid, and let his option slide. Now, when
the fellow who did the scenario wrote:
* If you found anything in the scenario
that you did not discover in the play, it is
because I gave you the effect it would have
behind the footlights, which you have not
the imagination to see in the printed
words,' the Manager only replied * You
are a nice chap. I like you very much,

[ 79 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

but you are a blanketty-blanketty fool.' "

l4 Which was right? " asked the Journal
ist.

4 The scenario man."

" How do you know? "

"How do I know? Why simply be1-
cause the play was produced later — ran
five years, and drew a couple of million
dollars. That's how I know/'

44 By cricky," exclaimed the Youngster,
" I believe he thinks his story could earn
a million if it had a chance."

"I don't say 'no,'" said the Critic,
yawning, u but it will never get a chance.
I burned the manuscript this morning, and
now being delivered of it, I have no more
interest in it than a sparrow has in her last
year's offspring."

4 The trouble with you is that you
haven't any patience, any staying power.
That ought to have been a three volume
novel. We would have heard all about
their first meeting, their first love, their
separation, his marriage, her debuts, etc.,
etc.," declared the Journalist.

44 Oh, thunder," said the Doctor. 44 1
think there was quite enough of it. Don't
throw anything at me — I liked it — I
liked it! Only I'm sorry she died."
[ 80 ]

THE CRITIC'S STORY

"So am I," said the Critic. " That
really hurt me."

" Because," said the Doctor, shying
away toward the door, " I should have
liked to know if the child turned out to be
a genius. That kind do sometimes," and
he disappeared into the doorway.

" Anyhow," said the Critic, " I am going
to wear laurels until some one tells a better
— and I'd like to know why the Journalist
looks so pensively thoughtful?"

" I am trying to recall who she was —
Margaret Dillon."

" Don't fret — she may be a ' poor
thing/ but she is all * mine own ' — a
genuine creation, Mr. Journalist. I am
no reporter."

"Ah? Then you are more of a senti
mentalist than I even dared to dream."

" Don't deny it," said the Critic, as he
rose and yawned. " So I am going to bed
to sleep on my laurels while I may. Good
night."

" Well," called the Sculptor after him,
as he sauntered away, " as one of our
mutual friends used to say ' The Indian
Summer of Passion scorches.' '

" But, alas! " added the other, " it does
not always kill."

[ 8! ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" Witness — " began the Journalist, but
the Critic cut him short.

" As you love me — not that famous
list of yours including so many of the act
resses We all know. I can't bear THAT
to-night. After all the French have a
better phrase for it — ' La Crise de quar-
ante ans.' '

The Nurse and Divorcee had been very
quiet, but here they locked hands, and the
former remarked that they prepared to
withdraw:

" That is our cue to disappear — and
you, too, Youngster. These men are far
too wise."

So we of the discussed sex made a circle
with our clasped hand about the Youngster
and danced him into the house. The last
I saw of the garden that night, as I looked
out of my window toward the northeast,
with " Namur " beating in my head, the
five men had their heads still together, but
whether " the other sex " was getting
scientifically torn to bits, or they, too, had
Namur in their minds I never knew.

IV

THE 'DOCTOR'S STORY

AS ONE DREAMS
THE TALE OF AN ADOLESCENT

THE next day was very peaceful. We
were becoming habituated to the situation.
It was a Sunday, and the weather was
warm. There had been no real news so
far as we knew, except that Japan had
lined up with the Allies. The Youngster
had come near to striking fire by wonder
ing how the United States, with her dis
like for Japan, would view the entering
into line of the yellow man, but the spark
flickered out, and I imagine we settled
down for the story with more eagerness
than on the previous evening, especially
when the Doctor thrust his hands into his
pockets and lifted his chin into the air, as
if he were in the tribune. More than one
of us smiled at his resemblance to Pierre
Janet entering the tribune at the College

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

de France, and the Youngster said, under
his breath, " A Clinique, I suppose. "

The Doctor's ears were sharp. " Not
a bit," he answered, running his keen
brown eyes over us to be sure we were
listening before he began :

In the days when it was thought that the
South End was to be the smart part of
Boston, and when streets were laid out
along wide tree shaded malls, with a square
in the centre, in imitation of some quarters
of London, — for Boston was in those
days much more English in appearance
than it is now, — there was in one of those
squares a famous private school. In those
days it was rather smart to go to a private
school. It was in the days before Boston
had much of an immigrant quarter, when
some smart families still lived in the old
Colonial houses at the North End, and
ministers and lawyers and all professional
men sent their sons and their daughters to
the public schools, at that time probably
the best in the world.

At this private school, there was, at the
time of which I speak, what one might
almost call a " principal girl."

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

She was the daughter of a rich banker

— his only daughter. The gods all
seemed to have been very good to her.
She was not only a really beautiful girl,
she was, for her age, a distinguished girl,

— one of the sort who seemed to do every
thing better than any one else, and with a
lack of self-consciousness or pretension.
Every one admired her. Some of her
comrades would have loved her if she had
given them the chance. But no one could
ever get intimate with her. She came and
went from school quite alone, in the habit
of the American girl of those days before
the chaperon became the correct thing.
She was charming to every one, but she
kept every one a little at arm's length.
Of course such a girl would be much talked
over by the other type of girl to whom con
fidences were necessary.

As always happens in any school there
was a popular teacher. She taught his
tory and literature, and I imagine girls get
more intimate with such a teacher than
they ever do with the mathematics.

Also, as always happens, there was
a " teacher's pet," one of those girls that
has to adore something, and the literature

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

teacher, as she was smart and good look
ing, was as convenient to adore as anything
else, — and more adjacent.

Of course " teacher's pet " never has
any secrets from the teacher, and does not
mean to be a sneak either. Just can't help
turning herself inside out for her idol, and
when the heart of a girl of seventeen turns
itself inside out, almost always something
comes out that is not her business. That
was how it happened that one day the
literature teacher was told that the u Prin
cipal Girl " was receiving wonderful boxes
of violets at the school door, and " Don't
you know ONE DAY she was seen by a
group of pupils who happened to be going
home, and were just behind her, getting
into a closed carriage and driving away
from the corner of the street! "

Now the literature teacher did not, as
a rule, encourage such confidences, but this
time it seemed useful. She liked the
Principal Girl — admired her, in fact.
She was terribly shocked. She warned
her pet to talk to no one else, and then she
went at once to the clergyman who was at
the head of the school. She knew that he
felt responsible for his pupils, and this had
an unpleasant look. He took the pains

[ 86 1

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

to verify the two statements. Then there
was but one thing to do — to lay the mat
ter before the parents of the girl.

Now, as so often happens in American
families, the banker and his wife stood in
some awe of their daughter. There was
not that confidence between them which
one traditionally supposes to exist between
parents and children. I imagine that there
is no doubt that the adolescent finds it
much easier to confide in some one other
than the parents who would seem to be
her proper confidants.

At any rate, the banker and his wife
were simply staggered. They dared not
broach the subject to the Principal Girl,
and in their distress turned to the family
lawyer. As they were too cowardly to
take his first advice — perhaps they were
afraid the daughter would lie, they some
times do in the best regulated families, —
it was decided to put a discreet person " on
the job," and discover first of all what was
really going on.

The result of the investigation was at
first consoling, and then amazing.

They discovered that the bunches of
violets were ordered at a smart down town
florist by the girl herself, and by her order

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

delivered at the school door by a liveried
messenger boy, who, by her orders,
awaited her arrival. As for the closed
carriage, that she also bespoke herself at
a smart livery stable where she was known.
When she entered it, she was at once
driven to the Park Street station, where
she bought a round trip ticket to Waltham.
There she walked to the river, hired a
boat, rowed herself up stream, tied her
boat at a wooden bank, climbed the slope,
and sat there all the afternoon, sometimes
reading, and sometimes merely staring out
at the river, or up at the sky. At sunset
she rowed back to the town, returned to
the city, and walked from the station to
her home.

This all seemed simple enough, but it
puzzled the father, it made him unquiet
in his mind. Why all this mystery?
Why — well, why a great many things,
for of course the Principal Girl had to
prepare for these absences, and, although
the little fibs she told were harmless
enough — well, why? The literature
teacher, who had been watching her care
fully, had her theory. She knew a lot
about girls. Wasn't she once one herself?
So it was by her advice that the family doc-
[ 88 ]

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

tor was taken into the family confidence,
chiefly because neither father nor mother
had the pluck to tackle the matter — they
were ashamed to have their daughter
know that she had been caught in even a
small deception — it seemed so like intrud
ing into her intimate life.

There are parents like that, you know.

The doctor had known the girl since he
ushered her into the world. If there were
any one writh whom she had shown the
slightest sign of intimacy, it was with him.
Like all doctors whose associations are so
largely with women, and who are moder
ately intelligent and temperamental, he
knew a great deal about the dangers of the
imagination. No one ever heard just
what passed between the two. One thing
is pretty sure, he made no secrets regard
ing the affair, and at the end of the inter
view he advised the parents to take the
girl out of school, take her abroad, keep
her active, present her at courts, show her
the world, keep her occupied, interest her,
keep her among people whether she liked
it or not.

The literature teacher counted for some
thing in the affair, and I imagine that it
was never talked over between the parents

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

and daughter, who soon after left town
for Europe, and for three years were not
seen in Boston.

When they did return, it was to an
nounce the marriage of the Principal Girl
to the son of the family lawyer, a clever
man, and a rising politician.

Relations between the literature teacher
and the Principal Girl had never wholly
broken off, so ten years after the school
adventure it happened one beautiful day
in early September that the teacher was a
guest at the North Shore summer home of
the Principal Girl, now the mother of two
handsome boys.

That afternoon at tea, sitting on the
verandah, watching the white sails as the
yachts made for Marblehead harbor, and
the long line of surf beating against the
rugged rocks beyond the wide pebbly
beach on which the dragging stones made
weird music, the literature teacher, sup
posing the old story to be so much an
cient history that it could, as can so many
of the incidents of one's teens, be referred
to lightly, had the misfortune to mention
it. To her horror, the Principal Girl
gave her one startled look, and then rolled
over among the cushions of the hammock

[ 90 ]

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

in which she was swinging, and burst into
a torrent of tears.

When the paroxysm had passed, she sat
up, wiped her eyes in which, however,
there was no laughter, and said passion
ately :

" I suppose you think me the most un
grateful woman in the world. I know
only too well that to many women my
position has always appeared enviable.
Poor things, if they only knew! Of
course, my husband is a good man. In all
ways I do him perfect justice. He is
everything that is kind and generous —
only, alas, he is not the lover of my dreams.
My children are nice handsome boys, but
they are the every day children of every
day life. I dreamed another and a differ
ent life in which my children were oh, so
different, and beside which the life I try
to lead with all the strength I have is no
more like the life I dreamed than my boys
are like my dream children. If you think
it has not taken courage to play the part
I have played, I am sorry for your lack
of insight."

And she got up, and walked away.

It was as well, for, as the literature
teacher told the doctor afterward, it was

[ 91 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

one notch above her experience, and she
absolutely could have found no word to
say. When the Wife came back to the
hammock, ten minutes later, the cloud was
gone from her face, and she never men
tioned the subject again. And you may
be sure that the literature teacher never
did. She always looked upon the incident
as her worst moment of tactlessness.

" Bully, bully! " exclaimed the Lawyer.
" Take off your laurels, Critic, and crown
the Doctor ! "

" For that little tale," shouted the
Critic. " Never! That has not a bit of
literary merit. It has not one rounded
period."

" The Lawyer is a realist," said the
Sculptor. " Of course that appeals to
him."

" If you want my opinion, I consider
that there is just as much imagination in
that story as in the morbid rigmarole you
threw at us last night," persisted the Law
yer.

"Why," declared the Critic, "I call
mine a healthy story compared with this
one. It is a shocking tale for the oper
ating room — I mean the insane asylum."

[ 92 ]

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

" All right," laughed the Doctor, " then
we had all better go inside the sanitarium
walls at once."

" Do you presume," said the Journalist,
" to pretend that this is a normal inci
dent?"

" I am not going into that. I only
claim that more people know the condition
than dare to confess it. It is after all only
symbolic of the duality of the soul — or
call it what you like. It is the embodi
ment of a truth which no one thinks of
denying — that the spirit has its secrets.
Imagination plays a great part in most of
our lives — it is the glory that gilds our
facts — it is the brilliant barrier which
separates us from the beasts, and the only
real thing that divides us into classes,
though, of course, it does not run through
the world like straight lines of latitude and
longitude, but like the lines of mean tem
perature."

" The truth is," said the Lawyer, " if
the Principal Girl had been obliged to
struggle for her living, the fact that her
imagination did not run at any point into
her world of realities would not have been
dangerous."

" Naturally not," said the Doctor, " for

[ 93 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

she would have been a great novelist, or a
poor one, and all would have been well, or
not, according to circumstances."

" All the same," persisted the Critic, " I
think it a horrid story and — "

" I think," interrupted the Doctor,
"that you have a vicious mind, and — "
Here the Doctor cast a quick look in the
direction of the Youngster, who was
stretched out in a steamer chair and had
not said a word.

" All right," said the Trained Nurse,
" he is fast asleep." And so he was.

" Just as well," said the Doctor,
" though it does not speak so well for the
story as it might."

" Well," laughed the Journalist, " you
have had a double success, Doctor. You
have been spontaneously applauded by the
man of law, and sent the man of the air to
faire dodo. I reckon you get the laurels."

" Don't you be in such a hurry to award
the palm," protested the Sculptor.
' There are some of us who have not
spoken yet. I am going to put some bril
liant touches on mine before I give my
star performance."

"What's that about stars?" yawned
the Youngster, waking up slowly.
[ 94 ]

THE DOCTOR'S STORY

" Nothing except that you have given
a very distinguished and unexpected star
performance as a sleeper," said the Doc
tor.

"I say!" he exclaimed, sitting up.
" By Jove, is the story of the Principal
Girl all told? That's a shame. What
became of her? "

"You'll never know now," said the
Doctor.

" Besides," said the Critic, " you would
not understand. You are too young."

" Well, I like your cheek."

" After all," said the Journalist, " it is
only another phase of the Dear Little
Josephine, and I still think that is the ban
ner story."

" Me, too," said the Doctor, as we went
into the house.

And I thought to myself, " I can tell
a third phase — the tragic — when my
turn comes," and I was the only one who
knew that my story would come last.

C 95 3

V

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

UNTO THIS END
THE TALE OF A VIRGIN

IT was on August 26th that we were
first sure that the Allied forces and the
German army had actually come in con
tact. It seemed impossible for us to real
ize it, but, in the afternoon the Doctor,
the Lawyer, and the Youngster took one
of the cars, and made a run to the north
east. The news they brought back did not
at all coincide with the hopeful tone of the
morning papers. In fact it was not only
evident that the fall of Namur had been
followed almost immediately by that of
Mons and Charleroi, but that the German
hordes were well over the French fron
tier, and advancing rapidly, and the Al
lied armies simply flying before them.

The odd part was, that though the
Youngster said that they had only run out

[ 96 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

fifty miles, they had heard the guns, and
" the Doctor thinks," he added, under his
breath, " that we may be able to stick it
out to the last day of the month. Any
way, I advise you girls to look over your
kits. We may fly in a hurry — such of
us as must fly."

However, we managed to get through
dinner quite gaily. We simply could not
realize the menace, and the Doctor evi
dently meant that we should not. He was
in gayer spirits than he had been since the
days of the great discussions, and after
the few facts he had brought back were
given us, he kept the talk on other mat
ters, until the Sculptor, who had been lying
back in his chair, blowing smoke rings in
the air, stretched himself into his most
graceful position, and called attention even
to his pose, before he threw his cigarette
far from him with a fine gesture, settled
his handsome head into his clasped hands,
and began:

I had been ten years abroad.

In all that time I had been idle, pros
perous, and wretched.

Every time Fate wrenched my heart
with one of her long thin pitiless hands,

[ 97 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

she recompensed me with what the world
calls " good luck." Every hope I had
cherished failed me. Every faith I had
harbored deserted me. Every venture in
which neither heart nor soul was con
cerned flourished and flaunted its success
in the face of the world, where I was con
sidered a very fortunate man.

In the ten years of my exile I had trav
elled much, had been in contact with all
kinds of people, had served some, and
tried in vain to be concerned for them
while I served. If it had been my fate to
make no friends, it was within my choice
to be never alone.

I had that in my memory which I
hoarded, and yet with which I would not
allow myself to be deliberately alone.
The most terrible hours of my life were
those when, toward morning, the rest of
the world — all the world save me — hav
ing no past to escape, no enticing phantom
to flee, went peacefully off to bed, and I
was left alone in the night to drug mem
ory, fight off thought, outwit imagination
by any means that I might — and some of
them were desperate enough.

Ten years had passed thus.

[ 98 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

Another tenth of August had come
round !

Only a man who has but one anniversary
in his life, the backward and forward
shadows of which make an unbroken cir
cle over the whole year, can appreciate my
existence. One cannot escape such a date.
You may never speak of it. You may
forswear calendars, abjure newspapers, re
fuse to date a letter; you may even lose
days in a drunken stupor. Still there is
that in your heart and your brain which
keeps the reckoning. The hour will
strike, in spite of you, when the day comes
round on the dial of the year.

I had been living for some time in a
city far distant from my native land.
Half the world stretched on either side be
tween me and the spot I tried to forget,
and which floated forever, like a vision,
between me and reality.

I had remained longer than usual in this
city, for the simple reason that it was the
hot season, and while the natives could
stand it by day, visitors, unused to the
heat, were forced to sleep by day and wan
der abroad by night, a condition that made
it possible for me to feel my fellowmen

[ 99 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

about me nearly the entire twenty-four
hours.

It was night.

I was sitting alone on the balcony of my
room, looking down on to the crowded
bridges of the city where throngs were
passing, and filled my eyes and mind.

It was the very hour at which I had last
seen her. There was no clock in sight —
I always guarded against that in selecting
my room. I had long ceased to carry a
watch.

Yet I knew the hour.

I had been sitting there for hours
watching the crowd. I had not been
drinking. I had long ago abandoned
that. No stimulant could blur the fixed
regret, no narcotic numb my full sense of
it. Sleep, whether I rose to it, or fell to
it — only brought me dreams of her.
Desperate nourishing of a great misery, in
a nature that resented it, even while cher
ishing it, had made me a conscious mono
maniac. Fate had thwarted me, and dis
torted me. I had become jealous and
morbid, bitterly reviling my hurt, but vio
lently preventing its healing.

There was a moon — just as there had
been that night, only now it fell on a many

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

bridged river across which were ghostly
cypress trees, rising along the hill-side to
a strangely outlined church behind ruined
fortifications. I was wondering, against
my will, at what hour that moon rose over
the distant New England village, which
came before me in a vision that wiped out
the wooded heights of reality.

Suddenly all the pain dropped away
from me.

I drew a long breath in amazement.

Where was the weight under which I
had staggered, mentally, all these years?
Whence came the peace that had so sud
denly descended upon me? In an instant
it had passed, and I could only remember
my bitter mood of ten years as if it had
been a dream that I had lived so long un-
consoled by that great healer, Time.

As the torturing jealousy dropped from
me, a gentle sadness took its place. In an
instant my mind was made up. I would
go back.

This idea, which had never come to me
in ten years, seemed now perfectly natu
ral. I would return at once to that far off
village where, for a brief hour, I had
dwelt in a " Fool's Paradise," through
which my way had lain but a brief span,

[ 101 ]

TOLD TN A FKENCH GARDEN

and where I had passed, like the fabled
bird, that " floats through Heaven, but
cannot light."

I remember but little of the journey
home, save that it was long, and that I
slept much. But whether it was months
or years I never knew. I seemed to be
making up what I had lost in ten years.
Time occupied itself in restoring the bal
ance I had taken so much pains to upset.

It was night when I reached the place
at last.

I found it as I had left it. Had a
magic sleep settled there it could not have
been less changed.

I was recognized in the small bare office
of the one tavern. I felt that my sudden
appearance surprised no one. But I did
not wonder why.

Oddly enough, I never asked a question.
I had not even questioned myself as to what
I expected to find. Years afterward I was
convinced, in reviewing the matter, that
my soul had known from the first.

I dined alone, quite calmly, after which

I stepped out into the starlight. I turned

up the hill, and struck into the familiar

road I had so often travelled in the old

[ 102 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

days. It led toward the river, and along
the steep bank of the rapid noisy stream.
The chill wind of an early autumn night
moaned sadly in the tall trees, and the
dead leaves under my feet rustled a sad
accompaniment to my thoughts, which at
last, unhooded, flew back to the past

Below rushed the river, whose torrent
had ever been an accompaniemnt to all my
recollections of her — as inseparable from
them as the color of her eyes, or the tones
of her voice.

I could not but contrast my present calm
with the mad humor in which I had last
rushed down the slope I was so quietly
climbing. As I went forward, I began to
ask myself, "Why?" I could not an
swer that, but I began to hurry.

Suddenly I stopped.

The moon had emerged above the trees
on the opposite side of the river. It
struck and illumined something white
above me. I was standing exactly where
I had stood on that fatal tenth of August,
so many years before.

I came to my senses as if by an electric
shock.

At last everything was clear to me. At
last I understood whence had gone all my

[ 103 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

vanity and jealousy. At last I understood
the spell of peace that had settled on me
in that moonlit tenth of August, in that far
off city.

My burden had passed through the Val
ley of the Shadow of Death with her —
for I was standing at the door of her
tomb!

I did not question. I knew, I compre
hended.

In no other way could I have found such
calm.

Though I flung myself on the shining
marble steps that led in the moonlight up
to the top of the knoll where the tomb
stood, I had no tears to shed.

The present floated still further away.

Even the rush of the torrent died out of
my ears.

Once more it seemed to me that lovely
day in May when we three had marched,
shoulder to shoulder, down the city street
— that spring day in the early sixties,
when the North was sending her flower to
fight for a united country.

Again I felt the warm sunshine on my
head.

Once more I heard the ringing cheers,
saw the floating flags, and the faces of

[ 104 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

women who wept as well as women who
smiled in the throngs that lined the street.

Just as in all my life it had been his emo
tions and his enthusiasms that led me, it
was his excitement that impelled me for
ward at this moment. His was the hand
that in my school days, at college, in our
Bohemian days abroad, had swept my re
sponsive nature as a master hand strikes
a harp, and made harmonies or discords
at his will — or, I should say, according
to his mood.

I used to think in those days that he
never willfully wronged any one, but I
had to own also that he never deliberately
sacrificed himself for any one. And, if I
were the victim of his temperament, he
was no less so. But he was an artist. I
was not. All things either good or bad
were merely material to him. With me it
was different.

He and I were alone in the world. But
beside us marched, that May morning,
with the glory of youth on his handsome
but weak face, one whose " baptism of
fire " was to make him a hero, who had
else been remembered a coward.
, The story of the girl he had wronged,
and fear of whom had even reconciled l*i.s

[ 105 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

family to his enlisting, was common prop
erty, and had been for several seasons.
There was a child, too, a little daughter,
fondly loved, but unacknowledged, the
fame of whose childish beauty many a
heedless voice had already sung.

He, poor youngster, looked on his all
that morning.

Once more I saw the flag draped house
where his mother waved a brave farewell
to him.

But there was another later picture in
my mind. Again I heard the blare of the
band before us as it flung its satire of
" The Girl I Left Behind Me," into the
spring air. I saw once more in my mind
the child, with her floating red gold curls,
raised above the crowd on the shoulders of
tall men. Her eyes were too young for
tears — and for that matter, tears came
to her but seldom in later years — and the
lips that shouted " bood-bye " smiled, un
conscious of bravery, as she swung her hat
with its symbolic colors above her shining
head.

That was the picture that three of us
carried to the front.

We left him — all his errors redeemed
[ 106 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

by a noble death — with his face turned up
to the stars, as silent, as mysterious as they,
after our first battle.

From the horrors of that night we two
came away bound by an oath to care for
that child.

Again my memory shifted to the days
that found her a woman. Fair, beautiful,
dainty, her father's daughter in looks, but
inheriting from a rare mother a peculiar
strength of character, a moral force rarely
found with such a temperament and such
beauty.

We had aided to raise her as became the
child of her father, whose story she knew
as soon as she was able to understand, but
she knew it from the lips of the brave
mother, who cherished his memory. Un
til she was a woman grown it was I, how
ever, who, of her two self-appointed
guardians, had watched over her. Chil
dren did not interest him.

He had married some years before that
time, married well with an eye to a calm
comfortable future, as became an artist
who could not be hampered by the need
of money.

[ 107 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Indeed, it was not until he knew that I
was to marry her that he really looked at
her.

And I, with all my experience of him,
simply because I was never able to under
stand the dual nature, failed at that fatal
hour when we stood together beside our
protegee to apply to the situation the
knowledge that years of experience should
have taught me.

I was so bound up in my own feelings
that I failed to remember that, until then,
I had never had a great emotion that
his nature had not acted as a lens in the
kindling.

Then, too, there was a dense sense of
the conventional — a logical enough
birthright — in my make-up. I, who had
known him so long, so well, seemed, never
theless, when he married, to have fancied
there was some hocus-pocus in the cere
mony, which should make a definite change
in a man's character, as well as a presum
able change in his way of life.

It must have been that there, in the
open, at the foot of the knoll, I slept, as
one does the first night after a long
awaited death, when the relief that pain is
passed, and suspense ended, deadens grief.
[ 108 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

She was no longer in this world of torture.
That helped me.

The next I knew, it was the sun, and not
the moon which was shining on me.

The wind had stilled its sobbing in the
trees.

Only the rushing of the river sounded
in my ears.

I rose slowly, and mounted the steps.

A tiny white marble mosque of wonder
ful beauty — for he who erected it was
one of the world's great artists, whose
wrorks will live to glorify his name and his
art when all his follies shall have been for
gotten — stood in a court paved with mar
ble.

It was encircled with a low coping of the
whitest of stone. Over this low wall vines
were already growing, and the woodbine
that was mingled with it was stained with
those glorious tints in which Nature says
to life, " Even death is beautiful."

The wide bronze doors on either side
were open.

I accepted the fact without even wonder
ing why — or asking myself who, in open
ing them, had discovered my presence 1

I entered.

[ 109 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

For a brief time I stood once more
within the room where she lay.

An awful peace fell on my soul, as if
her soul had whispered in the words we
had so often read together:

" I lie so composedly
" Now in my bed — "

I knew at last, as I gazed, that all her
life, and all mine, as well, had been to his
profit. That out of this, too, he had
wrought some of his greatness.

The interior of the vault was of red
marble, and, such of chiselling as there was
done, seemed wonderful to me even in my
frame of mind. I took it all in, through
unwilling, though fascinated eyes.

I have never seen it since. I can never
forget it.

Yet art is, and always has been, so much
to me, that I could not help, even in my
strangely wrought-up mental condition,
comprehending and admiring his scheme
and the masterly manner in which he had
worked it out.

At my feet, as I stood on the threshold,

was an elaborate scroll engraved on the

stone and surrounded with a wreath of

leaves, that vied with the tombs of the old

[ no ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

world. As I gazed at it, and read the
gothic letters in which it was set forth that
this monument was erected in adoration of
this woman, how well I remembered the
day when we had crouched together over
those stones in the crypt at Certosa, to
admire the chiselling of Donatello which
had inspired this.

There was a space left for the signature
of the artist, which would, I knew, some
day be written there boldly enough !

In the centre stood the sarcophagus.

I felt its presence, though my eyes
avoided it.

Above, on the wall, were the words
borne along by carved angels :

" My love she sleeps: Oh, may her sleep
As it was lasting, so be deep."

And I seemed to hear her voice intone
the words as I had heard them from her
lips so many times.

And then my eyes fell — on her ! Aye !
On her, stretched at full length in her
warm and glorious tomb. For above her
mortal remains slept her effigy wrought
with all the skill of a great art.

I had feared to look upon it, but hav
ing looked, I felt that I could never tear

[ in ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

myself away from its peace and loveliness.

The long folds of the drapery fell
straight from the small, round throat to
the tiny unshod feet, and so wonderfully
was it wrought, that it seemed as if the
living beautiful flesh of the slender body
was still quick beneath it. The exquisite
hands that I knew so well — so delicate,
and yet so strong — were gently crossed
upon her breast, and her arms held a long
stemmed lily, emblem of purity, and it
looked to me there like a martyr's palm.

Perhaps it was the pale reflection from
the red walls, but the figure seemed too
real to be mere stone !

I forgot the irony of the fact that I was
merely seeing her through his eyes — the
eyes of the man who had robbed me. I
felt only her presence. I fell on my
knees. I flung my arms across the beauti
ful form — no colder to my embrace than
had been the living woman! As I re
coiled from the death-like touch, my eyes
fell on the words carved on the face of the
sarcophagus, and once more, it was like
the voice that was hushed in my ears.

" I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by."

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

" Amen," I said, with all my heart, to
the words he had carved above her, for
what, after the fever of such a life, could
be so welcome to her as dreamless, eternal
silence, in which there would be no more
passion, no more struggling, no more love?

And, if I wished with all my soul, that
the great surprise of death might, for her,
have been peace and silence, did I not bar
myself as well as him from the hope of
Heaven?

How long I stood there, with hungry
eyes devouring the marble effigy of her I
so loved — now tortured by its fidelity,
now punished by its coldness — I never
knew.

Sometimes I noticed the changing of the
light, the shifting of the shadows, as the
sun swung steadily upward, but it was a
subconscious observation which did not re
call me to myself and the present.

Back, back turned my thoughts to the
past.

Here, where she now lay in her gor
geous tomb, had then stood an arbor, and
below had roared the rushing river.

It was the night of our wedding.

Then, as now, on this very spot, I had
looked down on that fair pale face, and

c us i

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

then it had given me back a gaze as life
less as this.

I had missed my bride from the little
throng in the quaint house beyond. I had
stolen out to seek her. Instinctively I had
turned to the old arbor above the river,
where her hours of meditation had always
been passed.

It was there I had found her as a child,
when I came to bring her father's dying
message. It was there I had asked her to
become my wife. It was there we three
had first stood together.

For a week before the wedding she had
been in a strange mood, tearless, but nerv
ous, and sad ! Still, it had not seemed to
me an unnatural mood in such a woman,
on the eve of her marriage.

Fate is ironical.

I remembered that I was serenely happy
as I sped up the hill in search of her, and
so sure that I knew where to find her.
Light scudding clouds crossed the track
of the moon, which, with a broadly smil
ing face, rolled up the heavens at a spin
ning pace, now appearing, now disappear
ing behind the flying clouds.

I was humming gaily as I strode along
the narrow path. Nothing tugged at my

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

heart strings to warn me of approaching
sorrow. There was no signal in all na
ture to prepare me for the end in a com
plete shipwreck of all my dreams. The
peace about me gave no hint of its cynic
ism. Nothing, either within or without,
hinted that my hours of happiness and con
tent were running out rapidly to the last
sand!

I had reached the shallow steps that led
up the knoll to the arbor !

At that moment the clouds were swept
off from the face of the moon, and the
white light fell full on her.

But she was not alone. She rested in
the arms of my friend, as, God help me,
she had never rested in mine — in an aban
don that was only too eloquent.

What was said?

Who but God knows that now ?

What do men like us, who have thought
themselves one in all things, until one love
rends them asunder, say at such a time?
As for me, I cannot recall a word!

I did not even see his face.

I think he saw mine no more.

We seemed to see into the soul of each
other, through the very heart of that frail
woman between us, that slender creature in

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

the bridal dress, who sank down before us,
as if the colliding passions of two strong
men had killed her.

It was he who raised her up. His
hands placed her in my arms. No need to
say that she was blameless. I knew all
that.

It was only Fate after all, that I blamed,
yet the fatalist is human. He suffers in
living like other men — sometimes more,
because he refuses to struggle in the
clutches of Chance !

As I gazed down into her white face, I
heard the steps of my friend, even above
the roaring of the river, as he strode down
the hillside, out of my life ! And I know
not even to-day which was the bitterest
grief, the loss of my faith in being loved,
or the passing from my heart of that man !

Of the pain of the night that followed,
only the silence and our own hearts knew.

Love and passion are so twinned in
some hours of life that one cannot distin
guish in himself the one from the other.

Into my keeping " to have and to hold,"

the law had given this beautiful woman,

" until death should us part." I loved

her! But, out of her heart, at once

[ "6 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

stronger and weaker than mine, my friend
had barred me.

It is not in hours like these, that all men
can be sane.

I thought of what might have been, if
they had not met that night, and my ig
noble side craved ignorance of that
Chance, or the brutality to ignore it.

I looked down into that cold face as I
laid her from the arms that had borne her
down the hill — laid her on what was to
have been her nuptial couch — and closed
the door between us and all the world.

We were together — alone — at last!

I had dreamed of this hour. Here was
its realization. I watched the misery of
remembrance dawn slowly on her white
face. I pitied her as I gazed at her, yet
my whole being cried out in rage at its
own pity. On her trembling lips I
seemed to see his kisses. In her fright
ened eyes I saw his image. The shudder
that shook her whole body as her eyes
held mine, confessed him — and that con
fession kept me at bay.

All that night I sat beside her.

What mad words I uttered a merciful
nature never let me recall.

[ "7 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

In the chill dawn I fled from her pres
ence.

The width of the world had lain be
tween us, me — and this woman whom I
had worshipped, of whom a consuming
jealousy had made ten years of my life a
mad fever, which only her death had
cured. Saner men have protested against
the same situation that ruined me — and
yet, even in my reasoning moments, like
this, I knew that to have rebelled would
have been to have forced a tragic climax
before the hour at which Fate had fixed it.

When something — I know not what —
recalled me again to the present, I found
that I had sat by her a day, as, on our last
meeting, I watched out the night. The
sun, which had sent its almost level rays
in at the east door of the tomb when I en
tered, was now shining in brilliant almost
level rays in at the west.

The day was passing.

A shadow fell from the opposite door.
I became suddenly conscious of his pres
ence, and, once more, across her body, I
looked into my friend's eyes.

Between us, as on that dreadful night,
she was stretched !

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

But she was at peace.

Our colliding emotions might rend us,
they could never again tear at her gentle
heart. That was at rest.

Over her we stood once more, as if
years had not passed — years of silence.

Above the woman we had both loved,
we two, who had stood shoulder to shoul
der in battle, been one in thought and am
bition until passion rent us asunder, met
as we parted, but she was at peace !

We had severed without farewells.

We met without greetings.

We stood in silence until he waved me
to a broad seat behind me, and sank into
a similar niche opposite.

We sat in the shadow.

She lay between us in the level light of
the setting sun, which fell across her from
the wide portal, and once more our eyes
met on her face, but they would not disturb
her calm.

His influence was once more upon me.

In the silence — for it was some time
before he spoke, and I was dumb — my
accursed eye for detail had taken in the
change in him. Yet I fancied I was not
looking at him. I noted that he had aged
— that this was one of the periods in him

[ "9 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

which I knew so well — when a passion for
work was on him, and the fever and fervor
of creation trained him down like a race
horse, all spirit and force. I noted that
he still wore the velveteens and the broad
hat and loose open collar of his student
days.

Sitting on either side of the tomb he had
built to enshrine her, on carved marble
seats such as Tuscan poets sat on, in the
old days, to sing to fair women, with our
gaze focussed on the long white form be
tween us — ah, between us indeed! — his
voice broke the long silence.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his
knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat
swept the marble floor with a gentle rhyth
mic swish, as it swung idly from his loos
ened grasp. I heard it as an accompani
ment to his voice.

His eyes never once strayed from her
face.

' You think you are to be pitied/' he
said. "You are wrong! No one who
has not sinned against another needs pity.
I meant you no harm. Fate — my tem
perament, your immobility, the very gifts
that have made me what I am were to
blame — if blame there were. Every one
[ 120 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

of us must live out his life, according to
his nature. I, as well as you !

" When, on this very spot where we last
parted, you told me that you loved her, I
swear to you, if need be, that I rejoiced.
I was glad that she would have you to
make the future smooth for her. Later I
grew to envy you. It was for your safety,
as well as mine and hers, that I decided to
see neither of you again until she had been
some time your wife. No word of love,
no confidence of any kind, had ever passed
between us. When I wrote you that I
should not be here to see you married, and
when not even your reproaches could move
me, I had already engaged my passage on
a sailing ship bound for the Azores. I
had planned to put a long uncertain voyage
between you and any possibility that I
might mar your chances for happiness, for
the nearer the day came, the more — in
spite of myself — I resented it!

" My good intentions were thwarted by
— Fate.

" For some reason, forgotten and unim
portant, the Captain deferred lifting an
chor for a whole week. I called myself
unpretty names for thinking that I could
not even see her without danger. I de-

* TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

spised myself for the judgment that ac
cused me of being such a scamp as to think
I would do anything to rob her of the pro
tection and safety you could give her, and
I could not, and an egoist for being pos
sessed with the idea that I could if I would.

" Suddenly I felt quite sure of myself.

" Yet I had meant to see her without
being seen, when I hurried so unexpectedly
down here on your wedding night. I fan
cied I only longed to see what a lovely
bride she would make — she who as a
child, a girl, a maiden, had been in your
eyes the most exquisite creature you had
ever known; she whom I had avoided for
years, because I, of all men, could least
afford to take a place in her life! I
longed to see those eyes, still so pure, un
der her bridal veil.

" I came in secret ! I saw her - — and
all prudence fled out of me, leaving but
one instinct.

" Was it my fault that, alone, she fled
from the house? That, with her veil
thrown over her arm, she ran directly by
me, like a sprite in the moonlight, to this
spot?

' The rest you know.

" It is not you who need pity !
[ 122 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

1 You have the pain of an imperishable
loyalty in your soul. It is like a glory
in your face, in spite of all you have suf
fered. As I look at you, it seems but yes
terday that all was well between us.

;< I lost much in losing you.

" Nor am I sure that you were right to
go ! But that was for your own nature to
decide. In your place I should have
fought Fate, I expected you to do it.

" I loved her first, because she satisfied
my eyes. I loved her the more that she
was denied to me ! Yet I knew always
that this love was not in me what it was
in you. With me it was, like many other
emotions of a similar sort — a sentiment
that would pass. I tried to think other
wise. But I had awakened her heart, and
you, to whom the law had given her, were
gone !

u I waited long for your return, or for
some sign.

' You neither came nor spoke.

" I argued that something must be done.
I owed it to her to offer her my protec
tion.

" I came back here. I met her on this
very spot. I said to her, ' You are alone
in the world — your mother has married

[ 123 1

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

— she has other children. I have sad
dened your life with my love. Let me at
least help to cheer it again. You need
affection. Here it is — in my arms! '

" And, while I waited for her answer, I
prayed with all my soul that she might
deny me.

" God bless her! She did! I turned
away from her with a glad heart, and in
that heart I enshrined this woman, who,
loving me, had denied me. There I set
up her image, pure and inviolate. Two
long years I stayed away from her, and as
I worked, I worshipped her, and out of
that worship I wrought a great thing.

" With time, however, her real image
grew faint within me. Other emotions,
other experiences seemed to blur and dim
it. In spite of myself, I returned here.
Once more I stood on this spot, within
the gaze of her deep eyes. I began to be
lieve that a love everlasting, all enduring,
had been given me ! But still it was pas
sion that pleaded for possession, and still it
was self-knowledge that looked on in fear.

"Passion bade me plead: ( You love
me ! You need me ! Come to me ! '
And fear kept my heart still, in dread of
her consent.

[ 124 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

" But she looked up into my face with
eyes that seemed to widen under mine, and
simply whispered, * My mother.' The
heart that knew and understood now all
that sad history seemed to feel that her
act might re-open the mother's old wound;
that the verdict ' like mother, like daugh
ter ' would turn virtue back to sin again.

" Once more I went out into the world
with a light heart! Her virtue, her
strength, seemed to be mine. I went back
to my work with renewed spirit, back to
my life with no new self-reproach.

" But once more I swung round the cir
cle. With a perversity that, dreading suc
cess, and conscious of fear, yet longs to
strive for what it dreads to win, I returned
to her again. The death of her mother
was my new excuse.

" She came to me — here, as usual.
But this time she came leading by the hand
her little sister, and I felt her armored
against me even before I spoke.

' You, who used to believe in a merci
ful God, can you explain to me why he has
left in the nature of man, created — so you
believe — in His own image — that im
pulse to destroy that which he loves? I
loved her for exactly what she was. I

C

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

loved her because she had the courage to
resist me. Yet from each denial so ar
dently desired, so thankfully received, my
soul sprang up strengthened in desire.
Safe above me I worshipped her. Once
in my arms, I knew, only too well, that
even that love would pass as all other emo
tions had done. I knew I should put her
aside, gently if I could, urgently, if I must,
and pass on. That is my Fate! Every
thing that enters my life leaves something
I need — and departs ! For what I have
not, I hunger. What I win soon wearies
me. It is the price life exacts for what it
gives me.

" So, when August of this year came
round, I found myself once more standing
here.

' Ten years had passed since we stood
here with her'between us — ten years that
had laid their richest gifts on her beauty.
This time she was indeed alone. As I
looked into her face, I somehow thought
of Agamemnon's fair daughter doomed to
die a virgin. You can see my ' Iphigenia '
in the spring, if you chance to be in Paris.

'* This time, self-knowledge deserted
me. The past was forgotten. The fu
ture was undreaded. The passion in my

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

heart spoke without reserve or caution!
I no longer said : ' You need me ! You
love me ! ' I cried out : * I can no longer
live without you ! ' I no longer said,
* Come to me ! ' I pleaded, * Take me to
your heart. There, where my image is,
let me rest at last. I have waited long,
be kind to me.'

" I saw her sway toward me as once be
fore she had done. It was too late to
look backward or forward. I had con
quered. In my weakness I believed it was
thus ordained — that I deserved some
credit for waiting so long.

" Yet, when she left me here alone, hav
ing promised, with downcast eyes that
avoided mine, to place her hand in mine,
and walk boldly beside me down the for
bidden path of the world, I fell down on
the spot her feet had pressed, and wept
bitterly, as I had never done before in all
my life. Wept over the shattered ideal,
the faith I had so wilfully torn down, the
miserable victory of my meanest self.

" I thought the end was come. Fate
was merciful to me, however!

" I had myself fixed the following
Thursday as the day for our departure.
As I dated a letter to her that night my

[ 127 3

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

mind involuntarily reckoned the days, and
I was startled to find that Thursday fell on
that fatal tenth of August.

" I had not thought I could be so tor
tured in my mind as I was by the dread
that she should notice the dire coinci
dence.

" She did!

" The hour that should have brought
her to me, brought a note instead. It was
dated boldly ' August tenth.' It was with
out beginning or signature. It said — I
can repeat every word — * Of the two
roads to self-destruction open to me, I
have chosen the one that will, in the end,
give the least pain to you. I love you. I
have always loved you since I was a child.
I do not regret anything yet! Thank
God for me that I depart without ever
having seen a look of weariness in the eyes
that gazed so lovingly into mine when we
parted, and thank Him for yourself that
you will never see a look of reproach in
mine. I know no time so fitting to say a
long farewell for both of us as this —
Farewell, then.'

" I knew what I should find when I went
up the hill.

" The doctors said ' heart disease.'
[ 128 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

She had been troubled with some such
weakness. I alone knew the truth ! As I
had known myself, she had known me !

" You think you suffer — you, who
might, but for me, have made her happy,
as such women should be, in a world of
simple natural joys! My friend, loss
without guilt is pain — but it is not with
out the balm of virtuous compensation.
You have at least a right to grieve.

" But I ! I am forced to know myself.
To feel myself borne along in spite of
myself; and to realize that she who should
have worn a crown of happy womanhood,
lies there a sacrifice, to be bewailed like
Jepthah's one fair daughter; and to sit
here in full dread of the ebbing of even
this great emotion, knowing too well that
it will pass out of my life when it shall have
achieved its purpose, leaving only as evi
dence this — another great work, crystal-
ized into immortality in everlasting stone.
I know that I cannot long hold it here in
my heart. The day will come — perhaps
soon — when I shall stand outside that
door, and recognize this as my work, and
be proud of it, without the power to grieve,
as I do now; when I shall approve my own
handiwork, and be unable to mourn for

[ 129 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

her who was sacrificed to achieve it.
What is your pain to mine? "

And I saw the hot tears drop from his
eyes. I saw them fall on the marble floor,
and they watered the very spot where his
name was so soon to spring up in pride to
confess his handiwork.

I looked on her calm face. I knew she
did not regret her part ! I rose, and, with
out a word, I passed out at the wide door,
and, without looking back, I passed down
the slope in the dusk, and left them to
gether — the woman I had loved, and the
friend I had lost !

As his voice died away, he sat upright
quickly, threw a glance about the circle,
and, with another fine gesture said : " Et

The Doctor was the only one to really
laugh, though a broad grin ran round the
circle.

" Well," remarked the Doctor, who had
been leaning against a tree, and indulging
in shrugs and an occasional groan, which
had not even disconcerted the story teller,
" I suppose that is how that very great
man, your governor, did the trick. I can
see him in every word."

[ 130 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

" That is all you know aboi't it,"
laughed the Sculptor. " That is not a bit
how the governor did it. That is how I
should have done it, had I been the gov
ernor, and had the old man's chances. I
call that an ideal thing to happen to a

man."

" Not even founded on fact — which
might have been some excuse for telling
it," groaned the Critic. " I'd love to
write a review of that story. I'd polish
it off."

" Of course you would," sneered the
Sculptor. " That's all a critic is for —
to polish off the tales he can't write. I
call that a nice romantic, ideal tale for a
sculptor to conceive, and as the Doctor
said the other night, it is a possible story,
since I conceived it, and what the mind of
mortal can conceive, can happen."

' The trouble," said the Journalist,
" with chaps like you, and the Critic, is
that your people are all framework.
They're not a bit of flesh and blood."

" I'd like to know," said the Sculptor,
throwing himself back in his chair, " who
has a right to decide that?"

"What I'd like to know," said the
Youngster, " is, what did she do between

3

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

times? Of course he sculped, and earned
slathers of money. But she — ?"

" Oh, ouch — help ! " cried the Sculp
tor. " Do I know?"

" Exactly! " answered the Critic, " and
that you don't sticks out in every line of
your story."

" Goodness me, you might ask the same
thing about Leda, or Helen of Troy."

"Ha! Ha!" laughed the Doctor.
" But we know what they did! "

" A lot you do. It is because they are
old classics, and you accept them, whereas
my story is quite new and original — and
you were unprepared for it, and so you
can't appreciate it. Anyway, it's my first
born story, and I'll defend it with my life."

Only a laugh replied to the challenge,
and the attitude of defense he struck, as he
leaped to his feet, though the Journalist
said, under his breath, " It takes a carver
in stone to think of a tale like that ! "

" But think," replied the Doctor, " how
much trouble some women would escape if
they kept on saying ABC like that — for
the A B C is usually lovely — and when
it was time to X Y Z — often terrible,
they just slipped out through the * open
door.' "

[ 132 ]

THE SCULPTOR'S STORY

" On the other hand, they risk losing
heaps of fun," said the Journalist.

" What I like about that story," said the
Lawyer, " is that it is so aristocratic.
Every one seems to have plenty of money.
They all three do just what they like, have
no duties but to analyze themselves, and
evidently everything goes like clockwork.
The husband enjoys being morbid, and has
the means to be gloriously so. The sculp
tor likes to carve Edgar Allan Poe all over
the place, and the fair lady is able to
gratify the tastes of both men."

" You can laugh as much as you please,"
sighed the Sculptor, " I wish it had hap
pened to me."

"Well," said the Doctor, " you have
the privilege of going to bed and dreaming
that it did."

" Thank you," answered the Sculptor.
' That is just what I am going to do."

" What did I tell you last night? " said
the Doctor, under his breath, as he
watched the Sculptor going slowly toward
the house. " Bet he has been telling that
tale to himself under many skies for
years!"

" I suppose," laughed the Journalist,
" that the only reason he has never built

C 133 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

the tomb is that he has never had the
money."

"Oh, be fair!" said the Violinist.
" He has not built the tomb because he is
not his father. The old man would have
done it in a minute, only he lacked imagi
nation. You bet he never day-dreamed,
and yet what skill he had, and what adven
tures! He never saw anything but the
facts of life, yet how magnificently he
recorded them."

" It is a pity," sighed the Violinist,
" that the son did not seek a different

career."

4 What difference does it make after
all? " remarked the Doctor. u One never
knows when the next generation will step
up or down, and, after all, what does it
matter?"

" It is all very well for you to talk,"
said the Critic.

" I assure you that the great pageant
would have been just as interesting from
any other point of view. It has been a
great spectacle, — this living. I'm glad
I've seen it."

" Amen to that," said the Divorcee.
" I only hope I am going to see it again
— even though it hurts."

[ 134 ]

VI

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

ONE WOMAN'S PHILOSOPHY
THE TALE OF A MODERN WIFE

As I look back, I remember that the
next night was one of the most trying of
the week.

As we came down to dinner we all had
visions of the destruction of Louvain, and
the burning of the famous library. It is
hard enough to think of lives going out;
still, as the Doctor was so fond of saying,
" man is born to die, and woman, too,"
but that the great works of men, his be
quest to the coming generations, should be
wantonly destroyed, seemed even more
horrible, especially to those who love
beauty, and the idea of the charred leaves
of the library flying in the air above the
historic city of catholic culture, made us
all feel as if we were sitting down to a
funeral service rather than a very good
dinner.

[ 135 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

Matters were not made any gayer be
cause Angele, who was waiting on table,
had rings round her eyes, which told of
sleepless nights. And why? We were
mere spectators. We had been interested
to dispute and look on. But she knew that
somewhere out there in the northeast her
man was carrying a gun.

Yet all about us the country was so
lovely and so tranquil, horses were walking
the fields, and, even as we sat at dinner,
we could hear the voices and the heavy
feet of the peasant women as they went
home from their work. The garden had
never been more beautiful than it was that
evening, with the silver light of the moon
through the trees, and the smell of the
freshly watered earth and flowers.

We had no doubt who was to contribute
the story. The Divorcee was dressed with
unusual care for the role, and carried a
big lace bag on her arm, and, as she leaned
back in her chair, she pulled one of the
big old fashioned candles in its deep glass
toward her, and said with a nervous laugh :

" I shall have to ask you to let me read
my story. You know I am not accustomed
to this sort of thing. It is really my very
4 first appearance/ and I could not possibly

[ 136 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

tell it as the rest of you more experienced
people can do," and she took the manu
script out of her lace hag, and, settling
herself gracefully, unrolled it. The
Youngster put a stool under her pretty
feet, and the Doctor set a cushion behind
her back, while the Journalist, with a
laugh, poured her a glass of water, and
the Violinist ceremoniously leaned over,
and asked, " Shall I turn for you? "

She could not help laughing, but it did
not make her any the less nervous, or her
voice any the less shaky as she began:

It was after dinner on one of those rare
occasions when they dined alone together.

They were taking coffee in Mrs. Shat-
tuck's especial corner of the drawing-room,
and she had just asked her husband to
smoke.

She was leaning back comfortably in a
nest of cushions, in her very latest gown,
with a most becoming light falling on her
from the tall, yellow-shaded lamp.

He was facing her — astride his chair,
in a position man has loved since creation.

He was just thinking that his wife had
never looked handsomer, finer, in fact, in
all her life- — quite the satisfactory, all-

[ 137 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

round, desirable sort of a woman a man's
wife ought to be.

She was wondering if he would ever be
any less attractive to all women than he
was now at forty-two — or any better able
to resist his own power.

As she put her coffee cup back on the
tiny table at her elbow, he leaned forward,
and picked up a book which lay open on a
chair near him, and carelessly glanced at it.

u Schopenhauer," and he wrinkled his
brows and glanced half whimsically down
the page. "I never can get used to a
woman reading that stuff — and in French,
at that. If you took it up to perfect your
German there would be some sense in it."

Mrs. Shattuck did not reply. When a
moment later, she did speak it was to
ignore his remark utterly, and ask:

" The Kaiser Wilhelm got off in good
season this morning — speaking of Ger
man things? "

" Oh, yes," was the indifferent reply,
" at ten o'clock, quite promptly."

" I suppose she was comfortable, and
that you explained why I could not come ? "

" Certainly. One of your beastly head
aches. She understood."

" Thank you."
[ 138 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

Shattuck yawned lazily, and changed the
subject, which did not seem to interest
him.

" Do you mean to say," he asked, still
turning the leaves of the book he held,
" that this pleases you? "

" Not exactly."

"Well, amuses you? Instructs you, if
you like that better? "

" No, I mean to say simply — since you
insist — that he speaks the truth, and there
are some — even among women — who
must know the truth and abide by it."

" Well, thank Heaven," said the man,
pulling at his cigar, " that most women
are more emotional than intelligent — as
Nature meant them to be."

Mrs. Shattuck examined her daintily
polished nails, rubbed them carefully on
the palm of her hand, as women have a
trick of doing, and then polished them on
her lace handkerchief, before she said,
" Yes, it is a pity that we are not all like
that, — a very great pity — for our own
sakes. Yet, unluckily, some of us will
think."

" But the thinking woman is so rarely
logical, so unable to take life impersonally,
that Schopenhauer does her no good. He

[ 139 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

only fills her mind with errors, mistrust,
unhappiness."

' You men always argue that way with
women — as if life were not the same for
us as for you. Pass me the book. I
wager that I can open it at random, and
that you cannot deny the truth of the first
sentence I read."

He passed her the book.

She took it, laid it open carelessly on
her knees, bending the covers far back
that it might stay open, and she gave her
finger tips a final rub with her handkerchief
before she looked at the page. She
paused a bit after she glanced at it, then
picked up the book and read: " ' L'homme
est par Nature porte a I'inconstance dans
V amour, la femme a la fide lite. U amour
de I'homme balsse d'une faqon sensible a
partir de I* instant ou il a obtenu satisfac
tion: il semble que toute autre femme ait
plus d'attrait que celle qu'il possede.' '

She laid the book down, but she did not
look at him.

u Rubbish," was his remark.

* Yes, I know. You men always find
it so easy to say * rubbish ' to all natural
truths which you prefer not to discuss."

" Well, my dear Naomi, it seems to me

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

that if you are to advocate Schopenhauer,
you must go the whole length with him.
The fault is in Nature, and you must
accept it as inevitable, and not kick against
it."

" I don't kick against Nature — as you
put it — I kick against civilization, which
makes laws regardless of Nature, which
deliberately shuts its eyes to all natural
truths in regard to the relations of men
to women, — and is therefore forced to
continually wink to avoid confessing its
folly."

" Civilization seems to me to have done
the best it could with a very difficult
problem. It has not actually allowed dif
ferent codes of morals to men and women,
and it may have had to wink on that
account. Right there, in your Schopen
hauer, you have a primal reason, that is,
if you chose to follow your philosopher to
the extent of actually believing that Nature
has deliberately, from the beginning, pro
tected women against that sin of which so
much is made, and to which she has, as
deliberately, for economic reasons of her
own, tempted men."

" I do believe it, truly."

1 You are no more charitable toward

c

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

my sex than most women are. Yet neither
your teacher nor you may be right. A
theoretic arguer like Schopenhauer makes
good enough reading for calm minds, but
he is bad for an emotional temperament,
and, by Jove, Naomi, he was a bad ex
ample of his own philosophy."

u My dear Dick, I am afraid I read
Schopenhauer because I thought what he
writes long before I ever heard of him.
I read him because did I not find a clear
logical mind going the same way my mind
will go, I might be troubled with doubts,
and afraid that I was going quite wrong.'*

" Well, the deuce and all with a woman
when she begins to read stuff like that is
her inability to generalize. You women
take everything home to yourselves. You
try to deduct conclusions from your own
lives which men like Schopenhauer have
scanned the centuries for. The natural
course of your life could hardly have
provided you with the pessimism with
which — I hope you will pardon my re
mark, my dear — you have treated me
several times in the past few months.
Chamfort and Schopenhauer did that.
But these are not subjects a man discusses
easily with his wife."

[ 142 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

" Indeed? Then that is surely an error
of civilization. If a man can discuss such
matters more easily with a woman who is
not his wife, it is because there is no frank
ness in marriage. Dick, did it ever occur
to you that a man and woman, strongly
attracted toward one another, might live
together many years without understand
ing each other? "

" God forbid!"

" How easily you say that ! "

" I have heard that most women think
they are not understood, but I never
reflected on the matter."

" You and I have not troubled one
another much with our doubts and per
plexities."

" You and I have been very happy to
gether — I hope." There was a little
pause before the last two words, as if he
had expected her to anticipate them with
something, and there was a half interroga
tive note in his voice. She made no re
sponse, so he went on, " I've surely not
been a hard master — and I hope I've not
been selfish. I know I've not been unlov-
ing."

" And I hope you've not suffered many
discomforts on my account. I think, as

[ 143 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

women go, I am fairly reasonable — or
I have been."

For some reason Shattuck seemed to
find the cigar he was smoking most unsat
isfactory. Either it had been broken, or
he had unconsciously chewed the end — a
thing which he detested — and there was
a pause while he discarded the weed, and
selected a fresh one. He appeared to be
reflecting as he lighted it, and if his mind
could have been read, it would have prob
ably been discovered that he was wonder
ing how it had happened that the conver
sation had taken this turn, and mentally
cursing his own stupidity in making any
remarks on the Schopenhauer. He was
conscious all the time that his wife was
looking rather steadily at him, and he
knew that at least a conventional reply was
expected of him.

" My dear girl," he said, " I look back
on ten very satisfactory years of married
life. You have been a model wife, a
charming companion — and if occasionally
it has occurred to me — just lately — that
my wife has developed rather singular, to
say the least, unflattering ideas of life, why,
you have such a brilliant way of putting it,
that I am more than half proud that you've
[ 144 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

the brains to hold such ideas, though they
are a bit disconcerting to me as a husband.
I suppose the development is logical
enough. You were always, even as a girl,
inclined to making footnotes. I suppose
their present daring is simply the result
of our being just a little older than we
used to be. I suppose if we did not out
grow our illusions, the road to death
would be too tragic."

For a moment she made no reply.
Then, as if for the first time owning to
the idea which had long been uppermost
in her mind, she said suddenly: "The
truth of the matter is, that I really believe
marriage is foolish. I do believe that no
man ever approached it without regretting
that civilization had made it necessary, and
that many men would escape, at the very
last moment, if women did not so rigidly
hold them to their promises, and if, be
tween two ridiculous positions, marriage
having been pushed nearest, had not
become desperately inevitable."

" How absurd, Naomi, when you see
the whole procession of men walking, —
according to their dispositions — calmly
or eagerly to their fate every day."

u Nevertheless, I think the pre-nuptial

[ 145 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

confessions of a majority of men of our
class, would prove that what I say is true."

" Are you hinting that it was true in
your case? "

" Perhaps."

Shattuck gave an amused laugh. " Do
you mean to say that you kept me to the
point?"

" Not exactly. At that time I had an
able bodied father who would have had
to be dealt with. Besides, a man does not
own up even to himself — not always —
when he finds himself face to face with the
inevitable. I am not speaking of what
men talk about in such cases, or of what
they do, but of what they feel, — of the
fact that, in too many instances, Nature
not having meant men for bondage, after
they have passed the Rubicon to that spot
from which the code of civilized honor
does not permit them to turn back, they
usually have a period of regret, and are
forced to make a real effort to face the
Future, — to go on, in fact."

The smile had died out of Shattuck's
face and he said quite seriously: u As far
as we are concerned, Naomi, I have very
different recollections of the whole affair."

" Have you? And yet, months before

[ H6 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

we were married, I knew that it would not
have broken your heart if the wedding had
not come off at all."

" My dear, the modern heart does not
break easily in this age. We are schooled
to meet the accidents of life with some
philosophy."

" And yet to have lost you then, would
have killed me."

Shattuck looked at her sharply, with,
one might almost have said, a new interest,
but she was no longer looking at him.
She went on, hurriedly: u You loved me,
of course. I was of your world. I was
a woman that other men liked, and there
fore a desirable woman. I was of good
family — altogether your social equal, in
fact, quite the sort of woman it became
you to marry. I pleased you — and I
loved you."

' Thank you, my dear," he said. " In
ten years, I doubt if you have ever made so
frank a declaration as that — in words."
He was wondering, if, after all, she were
going to develop into an emotional woman,
and his heart gave a quick leap at the very
thought — for there are hours when a
woman who runs too much to head has a
man at a cruel disadvantage.

c

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

1 Things are so much harder, so much
more complex for a woman," she went on.

" For the protection of the commun
ity?"

" Perhaps. Still, it is not always pleas
ant to be a woman, — and yet think ; a
woman whose reason has been mistakenly
developed at the expense of her capacity
to enjoy being a woman, and who is forced
at the same time to encounter the laws of
Nature, and pay at the same time, the
penalty of being a woman, and the penalty
of knowledge. For, just so surely as we
live, we must encounter love* — "

' You might take it out," interrupted
the husband, " in feeling flattered that it
takes so much to conquer such as you."

" So we might, but that, once conquered,
neither man nor Nature has any further
use for us, and regret, like art, is long.
Not even you can deny," she exclaimed,
sitting up in some excitement, and letting
her cushions fall in a mess all about her,
" that life is very unfair to women."

" Well, I don't see that. Physically it
is a little rough on you, but there are
compensations."

" I have never been able to discover
them. Love itself is hard on a woman.
[ 148 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

It seems to stir a man's faculties heathily.
They seem the stronger and more fit for
it. It does not seem to uproot a man's
whole being. Does it serve women in that
way?"

" I bear witness that it makes some of
you deucedly handsome. And I have
heard that it makes some of you — good."

" Yes, as chastisement does. No, Life
seems to have adjusted matters between
men and women very badly, very unjustly."

" And yet, as this life is the only one
we know we must adjust ourselves to it as
we find it."

" No, no. We had better have accepted
the thing as Nature gave it to us. We
came into this world like beasts — why
aren't we content to live like beasts, and
make no pretenses? Women would have
nothing to expect then, and there'd be no
such thing as broken hearts. In spite of
all the polish of civilization, man is simply
bent on conquest. Woman is only one
phase of the chase to him — a chase in
which every active virile man is occupied
from his cradle to his grave. You are
the conquerors. We are simply the
conquered."

Shattuck tried to make his voice light,

[ 149 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

as he said: " Not always unhappy ones,
I fancy."

" I suppose all men flatter themselves
that way, and argue that probably the
Sabine women preferred their fate to no
fate at all."

:* Don't be bitter on so old and imper
sonal a topic, Naomi. It is the law of life
that one must give, and one must take.
That the emotions differ does not prove
that one is better than the other."

Shattuck took a turn up and down the
long room, not quite at ease with him
self.

Mrs. Shattuck seemed to be thinking.
As he passed her, he stopped, picked up
her cushions, and re-arranged them about
her, with an idle caress by the way, a kiss
gently dropped on the inside of her white
wrist.

She followed his every movement with
a strange speculative look in her eyes, al
most as if he were some new and strange
animal that she was studying for the first
time.

When she spoke again, it was to go on
as if she had not been interrupted, " It
seems to me that man comes out of a great
passion just as good as new, while a

[ 150 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

woman is shattered — in a moral sense —
and never fully recovers herself."

Shattuck's back was toward her when he
replied. " Sorry to spoil any more illu
sions, dear child, but how about the long
list of men who are annually ruined by it?
The men in the prisons, the men who kill
themselves, the men who hang for it? "

" Those are crimes. I am not talking
of the criminal classes, but of the world in
which normal people live."

" Our set," he laughed, " but that is not
the whole world, alas ! "

" I know that men — well bred, culti
vated, refined, even honorable men, — seem
to be able to repeat every emotion of life.
A woman scales the heights but once.
Hence it must depend, in the case of
women capable of deep love — on the men
whether the relation into which marriage
betrays them be decent or indecent. What
I should like to be able to discover is —
what provision does either man or civiliza
tion propose to make for the woman whom
Fate, in wanton irony, reduces, even in
marriage, to the self-considered level of
the girl in the street?"

There was amazement — even a fore
boding — on Shattuck's face as he paused

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

in his walk, and, for the first time speaking
anxiously ejaculated, " I swear I don't fol
low you ! "

She went on as if she had not been inter
rupted, as if she had something to say
which had to be said, as if she were reason
ing it out for herself: " Take my case.
I don't claim that it is uncommon. I do
claim that I was not the woman for the
situation. I was an only child. My
father's marriage had not been happy. I
was brought up by a disappointed man on
philosophy and pessimism."

" Old sceptics, and modern scoffers. I
remember it well."

14 Before I was out of my teens, I had
imbibed a mistrust for all emotions. Per
haps you did not know that? You may
have thought, because they were not all on
the outside, that I had none. My poor
father had hoped, with his teachings, to
save me from future misery. He had
probably thought to spare me the com
monplace sorrows of love. But he could
not."

u There is one thing, my child, that the
passing generation cannot do for its heirs
— live for them — luckily. Why, you
might as well forbid a rose to blossom by

c 152 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

word of mouth, as try to thwart nature
in a beautiful healthy woman."

" It seems to me that to bring up a
woman as I was brought up only prepares
her to take the distemper the quicker."

" I do not remember that of you. But
I do know that no woman was ever wooed
as hotly as you were — or ever — I swear
it — more ardently desired. No woman
ever led a man the chase you led me. If
ever in those days you were as anxious for
my love as you have said you were this
evening, no one would have guessed it,
least of all I."

" My reason had already taught me that
mine was but the common fate of all
women : that life was demanding of me the
usual tribute to posterity: that the sweet
ness of the emotion was Nature's trick to
make it endurable. But according to
Nature's eternal plan, my heart could not
listen to my head — it beat so loud when
you were by, it could not hear, perhaps.
But there was something of my father's
philosophy left in me, and when I was
alone it would speak, and be heard, too.
Even when I believed in you — because I
wanted to — and half hoped that all my
teaching was wrong, I made a bargain with

C 153 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

myself. I told myself, quite calmly, that
I knew perfectly well all the possibilities of
the future. That if I went forward with
you, I went forward deliberately with open
eyes, knowing what, logically, I might
expect to find in the future. Ignorance —
that blissful comfort of so many women, —
was denied me. Still, the spell of Nature
was upon me, and for a time I dreamed
that a depth of passionate love like mine,
a life of loyal devotion might wrap one
man round, and keep him safe — might in
fact, work a miracle — and make one po
lygamous man monogamous. But, even
while that hope was in my heart, reason
rose up and mocked it, bidding me advance
into the Future at my peril. I did it, but
I made a bargain with myself, I agreed
to abide the consequences — and to abide
them calmly."

" And during all those days when I sup
posed we were so near together — you
showed me nothing of this that was in your
heart.'7

" Men and women know very rarely
anything of the great struggles that go on
in the hearts of one another. Besides, I
knew how easily you would reply —
naturally. We are all on the defensive in

[ 154 1

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

this life. It was with things deeper than
words that I was dealing — the things one
does — not says. Even in the early days
of our engagement I knew that I was not
as essential to you as you were to me.
Life held other interests for you. Even
the flattery of other women still had its
charm for you. Young as I was, I said
to myself : ' If you marry this man — with
your eyes open — blame yourself, not him,
if you suffer.' I do believe that I have
been able to do that."

Shattuck was astride his chair again, his
elbows on the back, his chin in his hands.
He no longer responded. Words were
dangerous. His lips were pressed close
together, and there was a long deep line
between his eyes.

" My love for you absorbed every other
emotion of my life. But I seemed to lack
some of the qualities that aid to reconcile
other wives to life. I seemed to be with
out mother-love. My children were dear
to me only because they were yours. The
maternal passion, which in so many women
is the absorbing emotion of life, was
denied me. My children were to me
merely the tribute to posterity which Life
had demanded of me as the penalty of

c 155 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

your love — nothing more. I must be
singularly unfitted for marriage, because,
when the hour came in which I felt that I
was no longer your wife, your children
seemed no longer mine. They merely rep
resented the next generation — born of
me. I know that this is very shocking. I
have become used to it, — and, it is the
truth. I have not blamed you, I could not
— and be reasonable. No man can be
other than Nature plans or permits, but
how I have pitied myself! I have been
through the tempest alone. In spite of
reason, — in spite of philosophy — I have
suffered from jealousy, from shame, from
rage, from self contempt. But that is all
past now."

She had not raised her voice, which
seemed as without feeling as it was without
emphasis. She carefully examined her
handkerchief corner by corner, and he
noticed for the first time how thin her
hands had become.

u Naturally," she went on in that color
less voice, " my first impulse was to be
done with life. But I could not bring
myself to that, much as I desired it. It
would have left you such a wretched mem
ory of me. You could never have par-

[ 156 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

doned me the scandal — and I felt that I
had at least the right to leave you a decent
recollection of me."

Shattuck's head fell forward on his
arms. — The idea of denial or protest did
not occur to him.

The steady voice went monotonously on.
" I could not bear to humble you in the
eyes of others even by forcing you to face
a scandal. I could not bear to humble
you in your own eyes by letting you suspect
that I knew the truth. I could not bring
myself to disturb the outward respect
ability of your life by interrupting its out
ward calm. To be absolutely honest —
though I had lost you, I could not bring
myself to give you up, — as I felt I must,
if I let any one discover — most of all you
— what I knew. So, like a coward, I lived
on, becoming gradually accustomed to the
idea that my day was past, but knowing
that the moment I was forced to speak, I
would be forced to move on out of your
life. Singularly enough, as I grew calm,
I grew to respect this other woman. I
could not blame her for loving you. I
ended by admiring her. I had known her
so well — she was such a proud woman !
I looked back at my marriage and saw the

c is? ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

affair as it really was. I had not sold my
self to you exactly — I had loved you too
much to bargain in that way; nevertheless,
the marriage had been a bargain. In
exchange for your promise to protect and
provide for me, — to feed me, clothe me,
share your fortune with me, and give me
your name, I had given you myself, —
openly sanctioned by the law, of course —
I was too great a coward to have done it
otherwise, in spite of the fact that the
law gives that same permission to almost
any one who asks for it."

" Naomi," he groaned from his covered
mouth, " what ghastly philosophy."

" Isn't that the marriage law? How
much better am I after all than the poor
girl in the street, who is forced to it by
misery? To be sure, I believe there is
some farcical phrase in the bargain about
promising to love none other, — a bare
faced attempt to outwit Nature, — at which
Nature laughs. Yet this other woman,
proud, high-minded, unselfish, hitherto
above reproach, had given herself for love
alone — with everything to lose and noth
ing to gain. I have come to doubt myself.
I have had my day. For years it was an
enviable one. No woman can hope for

[ 158 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

more. What right have I to stand in the
way of another woman's happiness? A
happiness no one can value better than I,
who so long wore it in security. I bore
my children in peace, with the divine con
solation of your devotion about me.
What right have I to deny another woman
the same joy? "

Shattuck sprang to his feet.

" It's not true ! " he gasped. " It's not
true!"

The woman never even raised her eyes.
She went on carefully inspecting the filmy
bit of lace in her hands.

" It is true," she replied. " Never
mind how I discovered it. I know it.
That is why she has gone abroad alone.
I did not speak until I had to. I am a
coward, but not enough of one to bear the
thought of her alone in a foreign country
with mind and emotions clouded. I may
be cowardly enough to wish that I had
never found it out, — I am not coward
enough to keep silent any longer."

A torrent of words rushed to the man's
lips, but he was too wise to make excuses.
Yet there were excuses. Any fair-minded
judge would have said so. But he knew
better than to think that for one moment

[ 159 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

they would be excuses in the mind of this
woman. Besides, the first man's excuse
for the first sin has never been viewed with
much respect under the modern civiliza
tion.

He felt her slowly rise to her feet, and
when he raised his head to look at her —
not yet fully realizing what had happened
to him — all emotion seemed to have be
come so foreign to her face, that he felt
as if she were already a stranger to him.

She took a last look round the room.
Her eyes seemed to devour every detail.

" I shall find means to give you your
freedom at once."

" You will actually leave me — go
away? "

" Can we two remain together now? "

" But your children?"

11 Your children, Dick — I have for
gotten that I have any. I have had my
life. You have still yours to live."

She swept by him down the long room,
everything in which was so closely associ
ated with her. Before she reached the
door, he was there — and his back against
it. She stopped, but she did not look at
him. If she could have read the truth in
his face, it would have told her that she

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

had never been loved as she was at that
moment. All that she had been in her
loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of
this man's life. What, compared to that,
were petty sins, or big ones? He saw the
past as a drowning man sees the panorama
of his existence. Yet he knew that every
thing he could say would be powerless to
move her.

It was useless to remind her of their
happy years together. They could never
be happy again with this between them.
It would be equally useless to tell her that
this other woman had known, but too well,
that he would never desert his wife for her.
Had he not betrayed her?

Of what use to tell her how he had
repented his folly, that he could never
understand it himself? There were the
facts, and Nature, and his wife's phi
losophy against him.

And he had dared be gay the moment
the steamer slid into the channel! Was
that only this morning? It seemed to be
in the last century.

She approached, and stretched her hand
toward the door.

He did not move.

" Don't stop me," she pleaded.

[ 161 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

" Don't make it any harder than it is.
Let me take with me the consolation of a
decent life together — a decent life de
cently severed."

He made one last appeal — he opened
his arms wide to her.

She shrank back with a shudder, crying
out that he should spare her her own con
tempt — that he should leave her the
power to seek peace — and her voice had
such a tone of terror, as she recoiled from
him, that he felt how powerless any protest
would be.

He stepped aside.

Without looking at him she quickly
opened the door and passed out.

The Divorcee nervously rolled up her
manuscript.

The usual laugh was not forthcoming.
No one dared. Men can't rough-house
that kind of a woman.

After a moment's silence the Critic
spoke up. " You were right to read that
story. It is not the sort of thing that
lends itself to narrating. Of course you
might have acted it out, but you were wise
not to."

" I can't help it — got to say it," said

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THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

the Journalist : " What a horrid woman ! "

The Divorcee looked at him in amaze
ment. " How can you say that? " she
exclaimed. " I thought I had made her
so reasonable. Just what all women ought
to be, and what none of us are."

" Thank God for that," said the Jour
nalist. " I'd as lief live in a world created
and run by George Bernard Shaw as in
one where women were like that."

" Come, come," interrupted the Doctor,
who had been eyeing her profile with a
curious half amused expression, all through
the reading: " Don't let us get on that
subject to-night. A story is a story. You
have asked, and you have received. None
of you seem to really like any story but
your own, and I must confess that among
us, we are putting forth a strange bag
gage."

" On the contrary," said the Critic, " I
think we are doing pretty well for a crowd
of amateurs."

' You are not an amateur," laughed the
Journalist, " and yours was the worst yet."

"I deny it," said the Critic. " Mine
had real literary quality, and a very dra
matic climax."

" Oh, well, if death is dramatic — per-

c

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

haps. You are the only one up to date
who has killed his heroine."

" No story is finished until the heroine
is dead," said the Journalist. " This wo
man, — I'll bet she had another romance."

"Did she?" asked the Critic of the
Divorcee, who was still nervously rolling
her manuscript in both hands.

" I don't know. How should I? And
if I did I shouldn't tell you. It isn't a
true story, of course." And she rose
from her chair and walked away into the
moonlight.

" Do you mean to say," ejaculated the
Violinist, who admired her tremendously,
" that she made that up in the imagination
she carries around under that pretty fluffy
hair? I'd rather that it were true — that
she had picked it up somewhere."

As we began to prepare to go in, the
Doctor looked down the path to where the
Divorcee was still standing. After a
moment's hesitation he took her lace scarf
from the back of her chair, and strolled
after her. The Sculptor shrugged his
shoulders with such a droll expression that
we all had to smile. Then we went in
doors.

" Well," said the Doctor, as he joined
[ 164 ]

THE DIVORCEE'S STORY

her — she told me about it afterwards —
" was that the way it happened? "

" No, no," replied the Divorcee, petu
lantly. " That is not a bit the way it
happened. That is the way I wish it had
happened. Oh, no. I was brought up to
believe in the proprietary rights in mar
riage, and I did what I thought became a
womanly woman. I asserted my rights,
and made a common or garden row."

The Doctor laughed, as she stamped
her foot at him.

" Pardon — pardon," said he. " I was
only going to say ' Thank God.' You
know I like it best that way."

" I wish I had not told the old story,"
she said pettishly. " It serves me quite
right. Now I suppose they've got all
sorts of queer notions in their heads."

"Nonsense," said the Doctor. "All
authors, you know, run the risk of getting
mixed up in their romances — think of
Charlotte Bronte."

" I'm not an author, and I am going to
bed, — to repent of my folly," and she
sailed into the house, leaving the Doctor
gazing quizzically after her. Before she
was out of hearing, he called to her: " I
say, you haven't changed a bit since '92."

She heard but she did not answer.

[ 165 ]

VII

THE LAWYER'S STORY

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING
THE TALE OF A BRIDE-ELECT

THE next day we all hung about the
garden, except the Youngster, who disap
peared on his wheel early in the day, and
only came back, hot and dusty, at tea-time.
He waved a hand at us as he ran through
the garden crying: " I'll change, and be
with you in a moment," and leapt up the
outside staircase that led to the gallery on
which his room opened, and disappeared.

I found an opportunity to go up the
other staircase a little later — the Young
ster was an old pet of mine, and off and
on, I had mothered him. I tapped at the
door.

" Can't come in! " he cried.

"Where've you been?"

" Wait there a minute — and mum — .
I'll tell you."

So I went and sat in the window looking
[ 166 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

down the road, until he came, spick and
span in white flannels, with his head not
yet dried from the douching he had taken.

" See here," he whispered, " I know you
can keep a secret. Well, I've been out
toward Cambrai — only sixty miles — and
I am tuckered. There was a battle there
last night — English driven back. They
are only two days' march away, and oh !
the sight on the roads. Don't let's talk
of it."

In spite of myself, I expect I went white,
for he exclaimed: " Darn it, I suppose I
ought not to have told you. But I had to
let off to some one. I don't want to tell
the Doctor. In fact, he forbade my going
again."

" Is it a real German victory? " I asked.

" If it isn't I don't know what you'd call
it, though such of the English as I saw
were in gay enough spirits, and there was
not an atmosphere of defeat. Fact is —
I kept out of sight and only got stray
impressions. Go on down now, or they'll
guess something. I'm not going to say a
word — yet. Awful sorry now I told
you. Force of habit."

I went down. I had hard work for a
few minutes to throw the impression off.

[ 167 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

But the garden was lovely, and tea being
over, we all busied ourselves in rifling the
flowerbeds to dress the dinner table. If
we were going in two days, where was the
good of leaving the flowers to die alone?
I don't suppose that it was strange that the
table conversation was all reminiscent.
We talked of the old days : of ourselves
when we were boys and girls together: of
old Papanti, and our first Cotillion, of
Class Days, and, I remembered afterward,
that not one of us talked of ourselves
except in the days of our youth.

When the coffee came out, we looked
about laughing to see which of the three
of us left was to tell the story. The Law
yer coughed, tapped himself on his chest,
and crossed his long legs.

It was a cold December afternoon.

The air was piercing.

There had been a slight fall of snow,
then a sudden drop in the thermometer
preceded nightfall.

Miss Moreland, wrapped in her furs,
was standing on a street corner, looking in
vain for a cab, and wondering, after all,
why she had ventured out.

It was somewhat later than she had
[ 168 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

supposed, and she was just conventional
enough, in spite of her pose to the exact
contrary, to hope that none of her friends
would pass. She knew her set well enough
to know that it would cause something
almost like a scandal if she were seen out
alone, on foot, on the very eve of her
wedding day, when all well bred brides
ought to be invisible — repenting their
sins, and praying for blessings on the future
in theory, but in reality, fussing themselves
ill over belated finery.

She had had for some years a number
of poor protegees in the lower end of the
city, which she had been accustomed to visit
on work of a charitable nature begun when
she was a school girl. She had found
work enough to do there ever since.

It was work of which her father, a hard
headed man of business, strongly disap
proved, although he was ready enough to
give his money. Jack was of her father's
mind. She realized that when she re
turned from the three years' trip round the
world, on which she was starting the day
after her wedding, she would have other
duties, and she knew it would be harder to
oppose Jack, — and more dangerous —
than it had been to oppose her father.

[ 169 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

In this realization there was a touch of
self-reproach. She knew, in her own
heart, that she would be glad to do no
more work of that sort. Experience had
made her hopeless, and she had none of
the spiritual support that made women like
St. Catherine of Sienna. But, if experi
ence had robbed her of her illusions, she
knew, too, that it had set a seal of pain
on all the future for her. She could never
forget the misery she had seen. So it had
been a little in a desire to give one more
sop to her conscience, that she had dedi
cated her last afternoon to freedom to her
friends in the very worst part of the
town.

If her mother had remained at home,
she would never have been allowed to go.
All the more reason for returning in good
season, and here it was dark! Worse
still, the trip had been in every way unsuc
cessful. She had turned her face home
ward, simply asking herself, as she had
done so many times before, if it were
" worth while," and answered the question
once more with: "Neither to me nor to
them." She had already learned, though
too young for the lesson, that each indi
vidual works out his own salvation, — that

[ 170 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

neither moral nor physical growth ever
works from the surface inward. Oppor
tunity — she could perhaps give that in the
future, but she was convinced that those
who may give of themselves, and really
help in the giving, are elected to the task
by something more than the mere desire to
serve. In her case the gift of her youth
and her illusions had done others no real
good, and had more or less saddened her
life forever. If she were to really go on
with the work, it would only be by giving
up the world — her world, — abandoning
her life, with its luxury, its love, everything
she had been bred to, and longed for.
She did not feel a call to do that, so she
chose the existence to which she had been
born; the love of a man in her own set, —
but the shadow of too much knowledge sat
on her like a shadow of fear.

She was impatient with herself, the
world, living, — and there was no cab in
sight.

She looked at her watch. Half past
four.

It was foolish not to have driven over,
but she had felt it absurd, always, to go
about this kind of work in a private car
riage, and to-day she could not, as she

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

usually did, take a street car for fear of
meeting friends. They thought her queer
enough as it was.

An impatient ejaculation escaped her,
and like an echo of it she heard a child's
voice beside her.

She looked down.

It was a poor miserable specimen. At
first she was not quite sure whether it were
boy or girl.

Whimpering and mopping its nose with
a very dirty hand, the child begged money
for a sick mother — a dying mother —
and begged as if not accustomed to it —
all the time with an eye for that dread of
New England beggars, the man in the blue
coat and brass buttons.

Miss Moreland was so consciously irri
tated with life that she was unusually
gentle. She stooped down. The child
did not seem six years old. The face was
not so very cunning. It was not ugly,
either. It was merely the epitome of all
that Miss Moreland tried to forget — the
little one born without a chance in the
world.

With a full appreciation of the child's
fear of the police, — begging is a crime in
many American towns — she carefully

[ 172 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

questioned her, watching for the dreaded
officer herself.

It was the old story — a dying mother
— no father — no one to do anything — a
child sent out to cunningly defy the law,
but it seemed to be only for bread.

Obviously the thing to do was to deliver
the child up to the police. It would be at
once properly cared for, and the mother
also.

But Miss Moreland knew too much of
official charity to be guilty of that.

The easiest thing was to give her money.
But, unluckily, she belonged to a society
pledged not to give alms in the streets, and
her sense of the power of a moral obliga
tion was a strong notion of duty, which
had descended to her from her Puritan
ancestors. There was one thing left to do.

" Do you know Chardon Street? " she
asked.

The child nodded.

There was a flower shop on the corner.
She led the child across to it, entered, and
asked for an envelope. She wrote a few
lines on a card, enclosed it and sealed the
envelope. Then she went out to the side
walk again with the child. Stooping over
her she made sure that the little one really

C 173 3

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

did know the street. " It isn't far from
here," she said. " Give that to any one
there, and somebody will go right home
with you to see your mother, to warm you,
you poor little mite, and feed you, and
make you quite happy."

She did not explain, and the child would
not have understood, that she vouched for
a special donation for the case as a sort of
commemorative gift. The sum was large
— it was a quixotic sort of salve to a sick
conscience which told her that she ought
to go herself.

The child, still sobbing, turned away,
and drearily started up the hill. She did
not go far, however. Miss Moreland had
her misgivings on that point. And, just
as she was about to draw a breath of relief,
convinced that, after all, she would go, the
girl stopped deliberately in the shadow of
a tree, and sat down on the snow-covered
curbstone.

No need to ask what the trouble was.
The poor are born with a horror of
organized charity. It obliges them to be
looked over in all their misery; it presumes
a worthiness, or its pretence, which they
resent almost as much as they do the intru-

[ 174 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

sion of the visiting committee. This dis
inclination is as old as poverty, and is the
rock ahead of all organized charity. Its
exemplification was very trying to Miss
Moreland at that moment, and the crouch
ing figure was exasperating.

She pursued the child. She pulled her
rather roughly to her feet. It was so pro
voking to have her sit down in the cold,
and to so personify all that she wanted so
ardently, — it was purely selfish, she knew
that, — to put out of her mind. There
seemed but one thing to do: go with the
child.

She knew that if she did not, she would
not sleep that night, nor smile the next day
— and that seemed so unfair to others.
Besides, it was not yet so very late.

Bidding the child hurry, she followed
her up the hill, and down the other side to
a part of the city with which she was not
familiar.

The child cried quietly all the way.

Miss Moreland was too vaguely uncom
fortable to talk to her, as they hurried
along.

It was in front of a dark house that they
finally stopped, and went up the stone steps

[ 175 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

into a hall so dark that she was obliged to
take the child's dirty cold hands in hers to
be sure of the way.

Perhaps it was a foolish distaste for
the contact, combined with her frame of
mind, which prevented her from noticing
facts far from trifles, which came back to
her afterward.

She groped her way up the uncarpeted
stairs, and followed her still whimpering
guide along what seemed an upper corri
dor, stumbled on what she immediately
knew was the sill of a door, lurched for
ward as the child let go of her hand, and,
before she recovered her balance, the door
closed behind her.

She called to the child. No answer.

She felt for the door, found it — it was
locked.

She was in perfect darkness.

A terrible wave of sickness passed over
her and left her trembling and weak.

All she had ever heard and found it
difficult to believe, coursed through her
mind.

The folly of it all was worse. Fifteen
minutes before all had been well with her
— and now — !

Through all her terror one idea was

[ 176 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

strong within her. She must keep her
head, she must be calm, she must be alertly
ready for whatever happened.

The whole thing had seemed so simple.
The crying child had been so plausible !
Yet — to enter a strange dark house, in
an unknown part of the city ! How absurd
it was of her ! And that — after noticing
— as she had — that, cold as the halls
were and uncarpeted, there was neither
smell of dirt nor humanity in the air !

While all these thoughts pursued one an
other through her mind she stood erect
just inside the door.

She really dared not move.

Suddenly a fear came to her that she
might not be alone. For a moment that
fear dominated all other sensations. She
held her breath, in a wild attempt to hear
she knew not what.

It was deathly still!

She backed to the door, and began
cautiously feeling her way along the wall.
Inch by inch, she crept round the room,
startled almost to fainting at each obstacle
she encountered.

It was a large room with an alcove — a
bedroom. There was but little furniture,
one door only, two windows covered with

[ 177 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

heavy drapery, the windows bolted down,
and evidently shuttered on the outside.

When she returned to the door, one
thing was certain, she was alone. The
only danger she need apprehend must come
through that one door.

Yet she pushed a chair against the wall
before she sat down to wait — for what?
Ah, that was the horror of it! Was it
robbery? There was her engagement
ring, a few ornaments like her watch, and
very little money! Yet, as she had seen
misery, even that might be worth while.
But was this a burglar's method? A
ransom? That was too mediaeval for an
American city. If neither, then what?

She had but one enemy in the world, her
Jack's best friend, or at least, he was his
best friend until the days of her engage
ment. But he was a gentleman, and these
were the days when men did not revenge
themselves on women who frankly rejected
the attentions they had never encouraged.
It was weak, she knew it, to even remember
the words he had said to her when she had
refused to hear the man she was to marry
slandered by his chum — still she wished
now that she had told Jack, all the same.

If she could only have a light! There

THE LAWYER'S STORY

was gas, but no matches. To sit in the
dark, waiting, she knew not what, was
maddening.

Then a new terror came over her. Sup
pose she should fall asleep from fatigue
and exhaustion, and the effect of the dark?

It seemed days that she sat there.

She knew afterward that it was only five
hours and a half, but that five hours and a
half were an eternity — three hundred and
thirty minutes, each one of which dragged
her down, like a weight, into the black
abyss of the unknown; three hundred and
thirty minutes of listening to the labored
beating of her own heart — it was an age,
after all!

Only once did she lose control of her
self. She imagined she heard voices in the
hall — that some one laughed — was there
still laughter in the world? In spite of
herself, she rushed to the door, and
pounded on it. This was so useless that
she began to cry hysterically. Yet she
knew how foolish that was, and she stum
bled back to her chair, sank into it, and
calmed herself. She would not do that
again.

What was her mother thinking? Poor
mama! What would Jack say, when, at

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

eleven o'clock, he ran in from his bachelor's
dinner — his last — which he was giving
to a few friends ? What would her father
say? He had always prophesied some
disaster for her excursions into the slums.

Her imagination could easily picture the
mad search that would be made — but
who could find a trace of her?

The blackness, the fear, the dread, were
doing their work ! She was numb ! She
began to feel as if she were suspended in
space, as if everything had dropped away
from her, as if in another instant she would
fall _ and fall — and fall — .

Suddenly she heard a laugh in the hall
again — this time there was no mistake
about it, for it was followed by several
voices. Some one approached the door.

A key was inserted and turned in the
lock.

She started to her feet, and steadied
herself!

The door swung open quickly — some
one entered. By the dim light in the hall
behind, she saw that it was a man — a
gentleman in evening clothes, with a hat on
the back of his head, and a coat over his
arm.

But while her alert senses took that in,
[ 180 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

the door closed again — the man had re
mained inside.

The thought of making a dash for the
door came to her, but it was too late.

She heard the scratching of a match —
a muttered oath at the darkness in a thick
voice — then a sudden flood of light
blinded her.

She drew her hands quickly across her
eyes, and was conscious that the man had
flung his hat and coat on the bed before
he turned to face her.

In a moment all her fear was gone.

She stumbled weakly as -she ran toward
him, crying hysterically, " Jack, dear Jack,
how did you find me ? I should have gone
mad if you had been much later ! Take
me home! Take me home — "

Had Miss Moreland fainted, as a well-
conducted girl of her class ought to have
done, this would have been a very differ
ent kind of a story.

Unluckily, or luckily, according as one
views life — in the relief of his presence,
all danger of that fled. Unluckily for
him, also, the appearance of his bride-
elect in such an unexpected place was so
appalling to him that his nerve failed him
entirely. Instead of clasping her in his

C 181 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

arms as he should have done, he had the
decency to recoil, and cover his face in
stinctively from her eyes.

Miss Moreland stopped as if turned to
stone.

She was conscious at first of but one
thing — he had not expected to find her
there. He had not come to seek her.
Then, for what?

A sudden flash illumined her ignorance,
and behind it she grasped at the vague ac
cusation her other suitor had tried to make
to her unwilling ears.

Her outstretched hands fell to her sides.

He still leaned against the wall, where
the shock had flung him. The exciting
fumes of the wine he had drunk too reck
lessly evaporated, and only a dim recol
lection remained in his absolutely sobered
brain of the idiotic wager, the ugly jest,
the still more contemptible bravado that
had sent him into this hell.

He did not attempt to speak.

When her strained voice said: " Take
me home, please," he started and the fear
that had been on her face was now on his.
A hundred dangers, of which she did not
dream, stood between that room and a
safe exit in which she should not be seen,

[ 182 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

and that much of this wretched business —
which he understood now only too well —
miscarry.

He started for the door. " Stay here,"
he said. " You are perfectly safe," and
he went out, and closed and locked the
door behind him.

For the man who plotted without, and
the woman who sat like a stone within that
room, the next half hour were equally hor
rible. But time was no longer measured
by her !

She never remembered much more of
that evening. She had a vague recollec
tion that he came back. She had a re
membrance that he had helped her stand
— given her a glass of water — and led
her down the uncarpeted stairs out into
the street. Then she was conscious that
she wralked a little way. Then that she
had been helped into a carriage, and then
she had jolted and jolted and jolted over
the pavings, always with his pale face op
posite, and she knew that his eyes were full
of pity. Then everything seemed to stop,
but it was only the carriage that had come
to a standstill. She was in front of her
own door.

A voice said in her ear, " Can you

[ 183 ] '

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

stand?" And she knew she was on the
steps. She heard the bell ring, but before
her mother could catch her in her arms as
she fell, she heard the carriage door bang,
and he was gone forever.

All that night she lay and tossed and
wept and raved, and longed in her fever
to die.

And all night, he walked the streets
marvelling at himself, at Nature, and at
Civilization, between which he had so dis
astrously fallen, and wondering to how
many men the irremediable had ever hap
pened before.

And the next morning, early, messen
gers were flying about with notices of the
bride's illness. — Miss Moreland's wed
ding was deferred by brain fever.

When she recovered, her hair was white,
and she had lost all taste for matrimony,
but she had found instead that desire for
anything rather than personal existence,
which made her the ardent, self-abnegat
ing worker for the welfare of the down
trodden that the world knew her.

There was a moment of surprised si
lence.

Some one coughed. No one laughed.

[ 184 ]

THE LAWYER'S STORY

Then the Journalist, always ready to leap
into a breach, gasped: " Horrible! "

4< Getting to be a pet word of yours,"
said the Lawyer.

The Violinist tried to save the situation
by saying gently: "Well, I don't know.
It is the commonest of all situations in a
melodrama. So why fuss?"

The Trained Nurse shrugged her shoul
ders. " I know that story," she said.

" You do not," snapped the Lawyer.
" You may know a story, but you never
heard that one."

" All right," she admitted. " I am not
going to add footnotes, don't be alarmed."

" You don't mean to say that is a true
story?" ejaculated the Divorcee.

" As for me," said the Critic, " I don't
believe it."

" No one asked you to," replied the
Lawyer. " It is only another case of the
Doctor's pet theory — that whatever the
mind of mortal mind can conceive, can
come to pass."

" I suppose also that it is a proof of
another of his pet theories. Scratch civil
ized man, and you find the beast."

The Doctor was lying back in his chair.
He never said a word. Somehow the

c 185 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

story seemed a less suggestive topic of con
versation than usual.

" The weather is going to change," said
the Doctor. ** There's rain in the air."

" Well, anyway," said the Journalist, as
we gathered up our belongings and pre
pared to shut up for the night, " the
Youngster's ghost story was a good 'night
cap compared to that."

" Not a bit of it," said the Critic.
" There's the foundation of a bully melo
drama in that story, and I'm not sure that
it isn't the best one yet — so full of re

serves."

" No imagination, all the same," an
swered the Critic. " As realistic in sub
ject, if not in treatment, as Zola."

" Now give us some shop jargon,"
laughed the Lawyer. " You've not really
treated us to a true touch of your methods
yet."

" I only do that," laughed the Critic,
" when I'm getting paid for it. After all,
as the Violinist remarked, the situation is
a favorite one in melodrama, from the
money-coining ' Two Orphans ' down.
The only trouble is, the Lawyer poured his
villain and hero into one mould. The
other man ought to have trapped her, and
C 186 ]

LAWYER'S STORY

the hero rescued her. But that is only the
difference between reality and art. Life
is inartistic. Art is only choosing the best
way. Life never does that."

" Pig's wrist," said the Doctor, and that
settled the question.

C 187 ]

VIII
THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

IN A RAILWAY STATION
THE TALE OF A DANCER

ON Friday night, just as we were finish
ing dinner — we had eaten inside — the
Divorcee said: " It may not be in order
to make the remark, but I cannot help say
ing that it is so strange to think that we are
sitting here so quietly in a country at war,
suffering for nothing, very little inconven
ienced, even by the departure of all the
men. The field work seems to be going
on just the same. Every one seems calm.
It is all most unexpected and strange to

me."

" I don't see it that way at all," said the
Journalist. " I feel as if I were sitting on
a volcano, knowing it was going to erupt,
but not knowing at what moment."

" That I understand," said the Di
vorcee, " but that is not exactly what I
[ 188 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

mean. I meant that, in spite of that feel
ing which every one between here and
Paris must have, I see no outward signs
of it."

" They are all about us just the same,"
remarked the Doctor, " whether you see
them or not. Did it ever happen to you
to be walking in some quiet city street, near
midnight, when all the houses were closed,
and only here and there a street lamp
gleamed, and here and there a ray of light
filtered through the shuttered window of
some silent house, and to suddenly remem
ber that inside all these dark walls the
tragedies of life were going on, and that,
if a sudden wave of a magician's wand
were to wipe away the walls, how horri
fied, or how amused one would be? "

" Well," said the Lawyer, " I have had
that idea many times, but it has come to
me more often in some hotel in the moun
tains of Switzerland. I remember one
night sitting on the terrace at Murren,
with the Jungfrau rising in bridal white
ness above the black sides of the Schwarze-
Monch, and the moon shining so brightly
over the slopes, that I could count any
number of isolated little chalets perched
on the ledges, and I never had the feeling

[ 189 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

so strongly of life going on with all its
joys and griefs and crimes, invisible, but
oppressive.'7

" I am afraid," said the Doctor, " that
there is enough of it going on right here
— if we only knew it. I had an example
this afternoon. I was walking through
the village, when an old woman called to
me, and asked if I were the doctor from
the old Grange. I said I was, and she
begged me to come in and see her daugh
ter-in-law. She was very ill, and the local
doctor is gone. I found a young, very
pretty girl, with a tiny baby, in as bad a
state of hysteria as I ever saw. But that
is not the story. That I heard by degrees.
It seems the father-in-law, a veteran of
1870, now old, and nearly helpless, is of
good family, but married, in his middle
age, a woman of the country. They had
one son who was sent away to school, and
became a civil engineer. He married,
about two years ago, this pretty girl whom
I saw. She is Spanish. He met her
somewhere in Southern Spain, and it was
a desperate love match. The first child
was born about six weeks before the war
broke out. Of course the young husband
was in the first class mobilized. The
[ 190 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

young wife is not French. She doesn't
care at all who governs France, so that her
man were left her in peace. I imagine
that the old father suspected this. He had
never been happy that his one son married
a foreigner. The instant the young wife
realized that her man was expected to put
love of France before love of her, she
began to make every effort to induce him
to go out of the country. To make a long
story short, the son went to his mother,
whom he adored, made a clean breast of
the situation, and proposed that, to satisfy
his wife, he should start with her for the
Spanish frontier, finding means to have her
brother meet them there and take her
home to her own people. He promised
to make no effort to cross the frontier him
self, and gave his word of honor to be
with his regiment in time. He knew it
would not be easy to do, and, in case of
accident, he wished his mother to be able
to explain to the old veteran. But the lad
had counted without the spirit that is dom
inant in every French woman to-day.
The mother listened. She controlled her
self. She did not protest. But that night,
when the young couple were about to leave
the house, carrying the sleeping baby, they

C

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

found the old man, pistol in hand, with his
back against the door. The words were
few. The veteran stated that his son
could only pass over his dead body — that
if he insisted, he would shoot him before
he would allow him to pass: that neither
wife nor child should leave France. It
was in vain that the wife, on her knees,
pleaded that she was not French — that
the war did not concern her — that her
husband was dearer to her than honor —
and so forth. The old man declared that
in marrying his son she became French,
though she was a disgrace to the name,
that her son was a born Frenchman; that
she might go, and welcome, but that she
would go without the child, and, of course,
that ended the argument. The next morn
ing the baby was christened, but the tale
had leaked out. I suppose the Spanish
wife had not kept her ideas absolutely to
herself — and the son joined his regiment.
The Spanish wife is still here, but, need
less to say, she is not at all loved by her
husband's family, who watch her like
lynxes for fear she will abduct the child,
and she has developed as neat a case of
hysterical mania of persecution as I ever
encountered. So you see that even in this
[ 192 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

quiet place there are tragedies behind the
walls. But I seem to be telling a story
out of my turn! "

" And a forbidden war story, at that,"
said the Youngster. " So to change the
air — whose turn is it? "

The Journalist puffed out his chest.
" Ladies and gentlemen," he said, as he
rose to his feet, and struck the traditional
attitude of a monologist, " I regret to in
form you that you will be obliged to have
a taste of my histrionic powers. I've got
to act out part of this story — couldn't
seem to tell it in any other form."

"Dora!"

A slender young woman turned at the
word, so sharply spoken over her shoulder,
and visibly paled.

She was strikingly attractive, in her
modish tailor frock, and her short tight
jacket of Persian lamb, with its high col
lar of grey fur turned up to her ears.

Her singularly fair skin, her red hair,
her brown eyes, with dark lashes, and nar
rowly pencilled eyebrows that were al
most black, gave her a remarkable look,
and at first sight suggested that Nature
had not done it all. But a closer obser-

[ 193 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

vation convinced one that the strange com
bination of such hair and such eyebrows
was only one of those freaks by which Na
ture now and then warns the knowing to
beware even of marvellous beauty. In
this case it stamped a woman as one who
— by several signs — might be identified
by the initiated as one of those, who, with
out reason or logic, spring now and again
from most unpromising soil!

She had walked the entire length of the
station from the wide doors on the street
side to the swing doors at the opposite end
which gave entrance to the tracks.

As she passed, no man had failed to turn
and look after her, as, with her well hung
skirts just clearing the wet pavement, she
stepped daintily over the flagging, and so
lightly that neither boots nor skirt were
the worse for it. One sees women in
Paris who know that art, but it is rare in
an American.

She must have been long accustomed to
attracting masculine eyes, and no wonder,
for when she stepped into the place she
seemed to give a color to the atmosphere,
and everything and everybody went grey
and commonplace beside her.

It was a terrible night in November.

[ 194 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

The snow was falling rapidly outside,
and the wind blew as it can blow only on
the New England coast.

It was the sort of night that makes one
forced to be out look forward lovingly to
home, and think pityingly of the unfortu
nate, while those within doors involun
tarily thank God for comfort, and hug at
whatever remnant of happiness living has
left them.

The railway station was crowded.

The storm had come up suddenly at the
close of a fair day. It was the hour, too,
at which tradespeople, clerks, and laborers
were returning home to the suburbs, and
at which the steamboat express for New
York was being made up — although it
was not an encouraging night for the lat
ter trip.

The pretty young woman with the red
hair had looked through the door near the
tracks, and glanced to the right, where the
New York express should be. The gate
was still closed. She was much too early!
For a second she hesitated. She glanced
about quickly, and the look was not with
out apprehension. It was evident that she
did not see the man who was following
her, and who seemed to have been waiting

[ 195 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

for her near the outer door. He did not
speak, nor attract her attention in any way.
The crowd served him in that !

After a moment's hesitation, she turned
toward the ladies' waiting room, and just
as she was about to enter, the man behind
addressed her — and the word v/as said
so low that no one near heard it — though,
by the start she gave, it might have been
a pistol shot.

" Dora ! "

She stood perfectly still. The color
died out of her face; but only for an in
stant. She looked alarmed, then per
plexed, and then she smiled. She was evi
dently a young woman of resources.

The man was a stalwart handsome fel
low of his class — though it was almost
impossible to guess what that was save that
it was not that which the world labels by
exterior signs " gentleman." He might
easily have been some sort of a mechanic.
Fie was certainly neither a clerk nor the
follower of any of the unskilled profes
sions. He was surely countrybred, for
there was a largeness in his expression as
well as his bearing that spoke distinctly of
broad vistas and exercise. He was tall
and broad-shouldered. He stood well on

[ 196 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

his feet, hampered as little by his six feet
of height and fourteen stone weight as he
was by the size of his hands. One would
have easily backed him to ride well and
shoot straight, though he probably never
saw the inside of what is called a " draw
ing-room."

There was the fire of a mighty emotion
in his deep-set eyes. There were signs of
a tremendous animal force in his square
chin and thick neck, but it was balanced
well by his broad brow and wide-set eyes.
He seemed at this moment to hold himself
in check with a rigid stubbornness that an
swered for his New England origin, and
Puritan ancestry ! Indeed, at the moment
he addressed the woman, but for his eyes,
he might have seemed as indifferent as any
of the stone figures that upheld the iron
girders of the roof above him !

Still smiling archly she moved forward
into the waiting room and, passing through
the dense crowd that hung about the door,
crossed the room to an open space.

Without a word the man followed.

The room was dimly lighted. The
crowd that surged about them, coming and
going, and sometimes pressing close on
every side, seemed not to note them.

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

And, if they had, they would have seen
nothing more remarkable than an ex
tremely pretty young woman conversing
quietly with a big fellow in a reefer and
long boots — a rig he carried well.

" Dora! " he said again, and then had
to pause to steady his voice.

Dora wet her red lips with the pointed
tip of her tiny tongue; swallowed nerv
ously once or twice, before she spoke.
She was now facing him, and still smil
ing.

He kept his eyes fixed on her face. He
did not respond to the smile. His eyes
were tragic. He seemed to be seeking
something in her face as if he feared her
mere words would not help him.

" Why, Zeke," she said at last, when she
realized that he could not get beyond her
name, " I thought you had gone home an
hour ago! Why didn't you take the 5.15
train?"

" I changed my mind ! To tell you the
truth, I heard that you were in town this
afternoon. I have been watching for you
— for some time."

" Well, all I can say is — you are fool
ish. Where's the good for you fretting
yourself so? I can take care of myself."

[ 198 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

" I can't get used to you being about in
the city streets alone."

"How absurd!"

" I have been absurd a great many times
of late — in your eyes. Our ideas don't
seem to agree any more."

"No, Zeke, they don't!"

" Why speak to me in that tone, Dora?
Don't do it!"

He looked over her head, as if to be
sure of his hold on himself. He was
ghastly white about his smooth-shaven,
thick lips. Both hands were thrust deep
into his reefer pockets.

"What's come to you, Zeke?" she
asked nervously. His was not exactly the
face one would see unmoved!

He answered her without looking at her.
It was evident he did not dare just yet.
" Nothing much, I reckon. I've been a
bit down all day. I really don't know
why, myself. I've had a queer presenti
ment, as if something were going to hap
pen. As if something terrible were com
ing to me."

'* Well, I'm sorry. You've no occasion
to feel like that, I'm sure."

." All right, if you say so. What train
shall we take?"

[ 199 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

He stretched out one hand to take the
small bag she carried.

She shrank back instinctively, and with
drew the bag. He must have felt rather
than seen the movement, it was so slight.

His hand fell to his side.

Still, he persisted.

" I'm dead done up, Dora. I need my
dinner, come on ! "

" Then you'd better take the 6.00 train.
You've just time," she said hurriedly.

"All right. Come on!"

He laid his hand on her shoulder with
a gesture that was entreating. It was the
first time he had touched her. A fright
ened look came into her eyes. He did not
see it, for he was still avoiding her face.
It was as if he were afraid of reading
something there he did not wish to know.

Her red lips had taken on a petulant
expression — that of one who hated to be
" stirred up." In a childish voice —
which only thinly veiled an obstinate de
termination — she pouted : " I'm not go
ing — yet."

The words were said almost under her
breath, as if she were fearful of their ef
fect on him, yet was determined to carry
her point.
[ 200 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

But the man only sighed deeply as he
replied : " I thought your dancing lessons
were over. I hoped I was no longer to
spend my evenings alone. Alone ! Look
ing round at the things that are yours, and
among which I feel so out of place, except
when you are there to make me forget.
God ! What damnable evenings I've
spent there — feeling as if you were slip
ping further and further out of my life —
as if you were gone, and I had only the
clothes you had worn, an odor about me
somewhere to convince me that I had not
dreamed you! Sometimes that faint, in
distinct, evasive scent of you in the room
has almost driven me out of my head. I
wonder I haven't killed you before now —
to be sure of you ! I'm afraid of Hell, I
suppose, or I should have."

The woman did not look at all alarmed.
Indeed there was a light in her amber eyes
that spoke of a kind of gratification in stir
ring this young giant like that — this huge
fellow that could so easily crush her — but
did not! She knew better why than he
did — but she said nothing.

With his eyes still fixed on space —
after a pause — he went on : "I was fool
enough to believe that that was all over,

[ 201 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

at last, that you had danced to your heart's
content, and that we were to begin the old
life — the life before that nonsense —
over again. You were like my old Dora
all day yesterday ! The Dora I loved and
courted and married back there in the
woods. But I might have known it wasn't
finished by the ache I had here," and he
struck himself a blow over the heart with
his clenched fist, " when I waked this morn
ing, and by the weight I've carried here all
day." And he drew a deep breath like
one in pain.

The woman looked about as if appre
hensive that even his passionate undertone
might have attracted attention, but only a
man by the radiator seemed to have no
ticed, and he had the air of being not quite
sober enough to understand.

There was a long pause.

The woman glanced nervously at the
clock.

The man was again staring over her
head.

It was quarter to six. Her precious
minutes were flying. She must be rid of
him!

" See here, Zeke, dear," she said, in des
peration, speaking very rapidly under her
[ 202 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

breath — no fear but he would hear —
" the truth is, that I'm not a bit better
satisfied with our sordid kind of life than
I was a year ago, when we first discussed
it. I'm awfully sorry! You know that.
But I can't change — and there is the
whole truth! It's not your fault in one
way — and yet in one way it is. God
knows you have done everything you could,
and more some ways than you ought.
But, unluckily for you, gratifying me was
not the way to mend the situation for your
self. It is cruel — but it is the truth ! If
a man wants to keep a woman of my dis
position attached to him, he'd do far bet
ter to beat her than over-educate her, and
teach her all the beauties of freedom.
He should keep her ignorant, rather than
cultivate her imagination, and open up the
wonders of the world to her. It's rough
on chaps like you, that with all your clev
erness you've no instinct to set you right
on a point like this — but it is lucky for
women like me — at times ! You were
determined to force all this out of me, so
you may as well hear the whole brutal
truth. I'm sick of our stupid ways of life
— I have been sick of it for a long time.
I've passed all power to pretend any

[ 203 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

longer. I have learned that there is a
great and beautiful world within the reach
of women who are clever enough and
brave enough to grasp at an opportunity,
without looking forward or back. I want
to walk boldly to this. I'm not afraid of
the stepping-stones ! This is really all
your fault. When you married me, five
years ago, I was only sixteen, and very
much in love with you. Now, why didn't
you make me do the housework and drudge
as all the other women on the farms about
yours did? I'd have done it then, and
willingly, even to the washing and scrub
bing. I had been working in a cotton
mill. I didn't know anything better than
to drudge. I thought that was a woman's
lot. It didn't even seem terrible to me.
But no — you set yourself to amuse me.
You brought me way up to town on a wed
ding journey. For the first time in my life
I saw there idle women in the world, who
wore soft clothes and were always dressed
up. You bought me finery. I was clever
and imitative. I pined for all the excite
ment and beauty of city life when we were
back on the farm, in the life you loved. I
cried for it, as a child cries for the moon.
I never dreamed of getting it. And you
[ 204 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

surprised me by selling the farm, and com
ing nearer the town to live. Just because
I had an ear for music, and could pick out
tunes on the old melodeon, I must have a
piano and take lessons. Just because my
music teacher happened to be French and
I showed an aptitude for studying, that
must be gratified. Can you really blame
me if I want to see more of the wide world
that opened up to me? Did you really
think French novels and music were likely
to make a woman of my lively imagination
content with her lot as wife of a mechanic
— however clever ? "

The man looked down at her as if
stunned. Arguments of that sort were a
bit above the reasoning of the simple mas
culine animal, who seemed to belong to
that race which comprehends little of the
complex emotions, and looks on love as
the one inevitable passion of life, and on
marriage as its logical result and everlast
ing conclusion.

It was probable at this moment that he
completed his alphabet in the great lesson
of life — and spelled out painfully the aw
ful truth, that not all the royal service of
worship and love in a man's heart can hold
a woman.

[ 205 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

There was something akin to a sob in
his throat as he replied: " You were so
young — so pretty! I could not bear to
think that you should soil your hands for
me ! I wanted to make up to you for all
the hardships and sorrows of your child
hood. I dreamed of being mother and
father as well as husband to you. I
thought it would make you happy to owe
everything to me — as happy as it made
me to give. I would willingly have car
ried you every step of your life, rather
than you should have tired your feet. Is
that a sin in a woman's eyes?"

A whimsical smile broke over the wom
an's face. It quivered on her red lips for
just a breath, as if conscious how ill-timed
it was. " I really like to tire my feet,"
she murmured, and she pointed the toe of
her tiny boot, as if poised to dance, and
looked down on it with evident admira
tion.

The man caught his breath sharply.

" It's that damned dancing that has up
set you, Dora ! "

"Sh! Don't swear! I do like danc
ing! I have always told you so. It was
you who first admired it. It was you who
let me learn."
[ 206 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

" You were my wife ! I thought that
meant everything to you that it meant to
me. I loved your beauty because it was
yours; your pleasures because they gave
you pleasure. All my ideas of right and
wrong in marriage which I learned in my
father's honest house bent to your desires
and happiness."

She looked nervously at the clock. Ten
minutes to six.

" Dora — for God's sake look at me !
Dora — you're not leaving me? "

It was an almost inarticulate cry, as of
a man who had foreseen his doom, and
only protested from some unconquerable
instinct to struggle !

She patted his clenched hand gently.

It was plainly evident that she hated the
sight of suffering, and hated more not hav
ing her own way, and was possessed by a
refined kind of cowardice.

" Don't make a row, there's a dear boy !
It is like this: I am going over to New
York, just for a few weeks. I would
have told you yesterday, only I hated spoil
ing a nice day. It was a nice day ? — with
a scene. You'll find a nice long letter at
home — it's a sweet one, too — telling
you all about it. Don't take it too hard !

[ 207 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

I am going to earn fifty dollars a week —
just fancy that — and don't blame me too
much!"

He didn't seem to hear! He hung his
head — the veins in his forehead swelled
— there were actually tears in his eyes —
and the mighty effort he made to restrain
a sob was terrible — and six feet of Amer
ican manhood, as fine a specimen of the
animal as the soil can show, animated by
a spirit which represented well the dignity
of toil and self-respect, stood bowed down
with ungovernable grief and shame before
a merely ornamental bit of femininity.

Fate had simply perpetrated another of
her ghastly pleasantries !

The woman was perplexed — natu
rally! But it was evidently the sight of
her work, and not the work itself, that
pained her.

" Don't cut up so rough, Zeke, please
don't," she went on. " I'm very fond of
you — you know that — but I detest the
odor of the shop, and it is so easy for us
both to escape it."

He shrank as if she had struck him.

Instinctively he must have remembered
the cotton mill from which he took her.
A man rarely understands a woman's fac-

[ 208 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

ulty for forgetting — that is to say, no
man of his class does.

" Doesn't it seem a bit selfish of you,"
she went on, " to object to my earning
nearly three times what you can — and so
easily — and prettily?"

" I wanted you to be happy with what
I could give you."

" Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not. No use
to fib about it! It is too late. Your no
tions are so queer."

" I suppose it is queer to love one
woman — and to love her so that laboring
for her is happiness ! I suppose you do
find me a queer chap, because I am not
willing that my wife — flesh of my flesh —
should flaunt herself, half dressed, to ex
cite the admiration of other men — all for
fifty dollars a week! "

" See here, Zeke, you are making too
much of this! If it is the separation you
can't stand — why come, too! I'll soon
enough be getting my hundred a week, and
more. That is enough for both of us.
You can be with me, if that is what you
mind!"

" If that is what I mind? You know
better than that! Am I such a cur that
you think, if there were no other reason,

[ 209 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

I'd pose before the world as the husband
of a woman who owes nothing to him —
as if I were — "

She interrupted him sharply.

" What odds does it make — tell me
that — which of us earns the money? To
have it is the only important thing! "

The man straightened up — and
squared his broad shoulders. A strange
change came over him.

He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder,
and, for the first time, he spoke with a dis
regard for self-control, although he did
not raise his voice.

" Look at me, Dora, and be sure I mean
what I say. Leave me to-day, and don't
you ever come back to me. It may kill me
to live without you. Well, better that
than — than the other ! I married you to
live with you — not merely to have you !
I've been a faithful husband to you! I
shall remain that while I live. I never
denied you anything I could get for you!
But this I will not put up with ! I thought
you loved me — even if you were some
times vain, and now and then cruel. If
you're ill — if you disappoint yourself, I'll
be ready to take care of you — as I prom-
[ 210 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

ised. But don't never dare to come back
to me otherwise ! Unless you're in want
and homeless, unless you can't live, but
by the labor of my hands, I'll never sleep
under the same roof with you again.
Never !"

" What nonsense, Zeke ! Of course I'll
come back! You won't turn me away!
I only want to see a little of the world, to
get a few of the things you can't give me
— no blame to you, either! "

He did not seem to hear her.

Almost as if speaking to himself, he
went on : " I've feared for some time you
didn't love me. I didn't want to believe
it. I was a coward. I shut my eyes. I
took what you gave me — I daren't think
of this — which has come to me ! I dared
not! God punishes idolatry! He has
punished mine. Be sure you're not mak
ing a mistake, Dora ! There may be
other men will admire you, my girl — will
any of them love you as I do? There's
never a minute I'm not conscious of you,
sleeping or waking. Think again, Dora,
before you leave me ! "

" I can't, Zeke. I've signed a contract.
I couldn't reconsider if I wanted to. It's

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

just seven minutes to train time. Kiss me
— there's a dear lad — and don't row me
any more ! "

She raised herself on tip toes and ap
proached her red lips to his face — lips
of an intense color to go with the marked
pallor of the rest of the face, and which
surely were never offered to him in vain
before — but he was beyond their seduc
tion at last.

"You've decided?" he said.

" Of course ! "

" All right ! Good-bye, then i You
promised to cleave to me through thick
and thin c till death did us part.' I'll have
no halfway business," and he turned on his
heel, and without looking back he pushed
his way through the crowd, which chatted
and fussed and never even noted the pass
ing of a broken heart.

The pretty creature watched him out of
sight.

There was a humorous pout on her lips.
But she seemed so sure of her man! He
would come back, of course — when she
called him — if she ever did! Probably
she liked him better at that moment than
she had liked him in two years. He had
opposed her. He had defied her power
[ 212 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

over him. He had once more become a
man to conquer — if she ever had time !

But just now there was something more
important. That train! It was three
minutes to the schedule time.

As he disappeared into the crowd she
drew a breath of relief, and hurried out of
the waiting room and pushed her way to
the platform, along which she hurried to
the parlor car, v/here she seated herself
comfortably, as if no man with a broken
life had been set down that day against
her record.

To be sure, she could not quite rid her
self of thoughts of his face, but the recol
lection rather flattered her, and did not in
the least prevent her noticing the looks of
admiration with which two men on the
opposite side of the car were regarding
her.

Once or twice she glanced out of the
window, apparently alternately expecting
and dreading to see her stalwart husband
come sprinting down the platform for the
kiss he had refused.

He didn't come !

She was relieved as the train started —
yet she hated to feel he could really let her
go like that!

[ 213 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

She never guessed at the depth of suf
fering she had brought him. How could
she appreciate what she could never feel?
She never dreamed that as the train pulled
out into the storm he stood at the end of
the station, and watched it slowly round
the curve under the bridge and pass out of
sight. No one was near to see him turn
aside, and rest his arms against the brick
wall, to bury his face in them, and sob like
a child, utterly oblivious of the storm that
beat upon him.

And he sat down.

" Come on," yelled the Youngster,
" where's the claque? " And he began to
applaud furiously.

" Oh, if there is a claque, the rest of us
don't need to exert ourselves," said the
Lawyer, indolently.

" But I say," asked the Youngster, after
the Journalist had made his best bow. " I
AM disappointed. Was that all? "

" My goodness," commented the Doc
tor, as he lighted a fresh cigar. " Isn't
that enough? "

" Not for me" replied the Youngster.
" I want to know about her debut. Was
she a success? "

[ 214 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

" Of course," answered the Journalist.
" That sort always is."

" And I want to know," insisted the
Youngster, " what became of him? "

"Why," ejaculated the Sculptor, "of
course he cut his big brown throat ! "

" Not a bit of it," said the Critic.
" He probably went up to New York, and
hung round the stage door."

" Until she called in the police, and had
him arrested as a common nuisance,"
added the Lawyer.

" I'll bet my microscope he didn't,"
laughed the Doctor.

" And you won't lose your lens," re
plied the Journalist. " He never did a
blooming thing — that is, he didn't if he
existed."

" Oh, my eyes," said the Youngster.
" I am disappointed again. I thought
that was a simon-pure newspaper yarn —
one of your reporter's dodges — real jour
nalese!"

" She is true enough," answered the
Journalist, " and her feet are true, and so
is her red hair, and, unless she is a liar,
and most actresses are, so is he and her
origin, but as for the way she cut him out
— well, I had to make that up. It is bet-

c 215 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

ter than any of the six tales she told as
many interviewers, in strict secrecy, in the
days when she was collecting hearts and
jewels and midnight suppers in New
York."

" Is she still there? " asked the Young
ster, " because if she is, I'll go back and
take a look at Dora myself — after the
war!"

" Well, Youngster," laughed the Jour
nalist, " it will have to be * after the war,'
as you will probably have to go to Berlin to
find her."

"That's all right!" retorted the
Youngster. " I am going — with the Al
lied armies."

We all jumped up.

" No ! " cried the Divorcee. " No ! 1 "

" But I am. Where's the good of keep
ing it secret? I enlisted the day I went
to Paris the first time — so did the Doctor,
so did the Critic, and so did he, the inno
cent looking old blackguard," and he
seized the Journalist by both shoulders
and shook him well. " He thought we
wouldn't find it out."

" Oh, well," said the Journalist, " when
one has seen three wars, one may as well

[ 216 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

see one more. — This will surely be my
last."

" Anyway," cried the Youngster, u we'll
see it all round — the Doctor in the Field
Ambulance, me in the air, the Critic is
going to lug litters, and as for the Jour
nalist — well, I'll bet it's secret service for
him ! Oh, I know you are not going to
tell, but I saw you coming out of the Eng
lish Embassy, and I'll bet my machine
you've a ticket for London, and a letter to
the Chief in your pocket."

" Bet away," said the Critic.

"What'd I tell you — what'd I tell
you? He speaks every God-blessed lan
guage going, and if it wasn't that, he'd tell
fast enough."

" Never mind," said the Trained Nurse,
" so that he goes somewhere — with the
rest of us."

"You— You?" exclaimed the Di
vorcee.

;' Why not? I was trained for this sort
of thing. This is my chance."

14 And the rest of us?"

The Doctor intervened. " See here,
this is forty-eight hours or more earlier
than I meant this matter to come up. I

[ 217 ]

.TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

might have known the Youngster could
not hold his tongue."

" I've been bursting for three days."

* Well, youVe burst now, and I hope
you are content. There is nothing to
worry about, yet. We fellows are leav
ing September ist. The roads are all
clear, and it was my idea that we should all
start for Paris together early next Tues
day morning. I don't know what the rest
of you want to do, but I advise you" turn
ing to the Divorcee, " to go back to the
States. You would not be a bit of good
here. You may be there."

" You are quite right," she replied
sadly. " I'd be worse than no good. I'd
need ' first aid/ at the first shot."

" I'm going with her," said the Sculp
tor. " I'd be more useless than she
would." And he turned a questioning
look at the Lawyer.

" I must go back. I've business to at
tend to. Anyway, Td be an encumbrance
here. I may be useful there. Who
knows?"

As for me, every one knew what I pro
posed to do, and that left every one ac
counted for except the Violinist. He had
been in his favorite attitude by the tree,

[ 218 ]

THE JOURNALIST'S STORY

just as he had been on that evening when
it had been proposed to " tell stories,"
gazing first at one and then at another, as
the hurried conversation went on.

" Well," he. said, finding all eyes turned
on him, " I am going to London with the
Journalist — if he is really going."

" All right, I am," was the reply.

" And from London I shall get to St.
Petersburg. I have a dream that out of
all this something may happen to Poland.
If it does, I propose to be there. I'll be
no good at holding a gun — I could never
fire one. But if, by some miracle, there
comes out of this any chance for the * Fair
Land of Poland ' to crawl out, or be
dragged out, from under the feet of the
invader — well, I'll go home — and —
and — "

He hesitated.

" And grow up with the country,"
shouted the Youngster. " Bully for you."

" I may only go back to fiddle over the
ruins. But who knows? At all events,
I'll go back and carry with me all that
your country had done for three genera
tions of my family. They'll need it."

" Well," said the Doctor, " that is all
settled. Enough for to-night. We'll still

[ 219 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

have one or two, and it may be three days
left together. Let us make the most of
them. They will never come again."

" And to think what a lovely summer
we had planned," sighed the Divorcee.

"Tush!" ejaculated the Doctor.
' We had a lovely time all last year. As
for this summer, I imagine that it has been
far finer than what we planned. Anyway,
let us be thankful that it was this summer
that we all found one another again."

" Better go to bed," cried the Critic;
"the Doctor is getting sentimental — a
bad sign in an army surgeon."

" I don't know," remarked the Trained
Nurse; "I've seen those that were more
sentimental than the Journalist, and none
the worse for it."

[ 220 ]

IX

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

THE SOUL OF THE SONG
THE TALE OF A FIANCEE

ON Saturday most of the men made a
run into Paris.

It had finally been decided as best that,
if all went well, we should leave for Paris
some time the next day. There were
steamer tickets to attend to. There were
certain valuables to be taken up to the
Bank. The Divorcee had a trunk or two
that she thought she ought to send in order
that we might start with as little luggage
as possible, so both chauffeurs were sent up
to town with baggage, and orders to wait
there. The rest of us had been busy do
ing a little in the way of dismantling the
house. The unexpected end of our sum
mer had come. It was sad, but I imagine
none of us were sorry, under the circum
stances, to move on.

It was nearly dinner time when the cars

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

came back, almost together, and we were
surprised to see the Doctor going out to
the servants' quarters instead of joining
us as he usually did. In fact, we did not
see him until we went into the dining room
for dinner.

As he came to the head of the table, he
said: "My good people, we will serve
ourselves as best we can with the cook's
aid. We have no waitress to-night. But
it is our last dinner. A camp under
marching orders cannot fuss over trifles. "

"Where is Angele?" asked the Di
vorcee. " Is she ill?" And she turned
to the door.

"Come back!" said the Doctor,
sharply. " You can't help her now. Bet
ter leave her alone ! "

As if by instinct, we all knew what had
happened.

"Who brought the news?" some one
asked.

" They gave it to me at the Maine as
I passed," replied the Doctor, " and the
garde champetre told me what the envel
ope contained. He fell at Charleroi."

" Poor Angele," exclaimed the Trained
Nurse. " Are you sure I could not help
her?"

[ 222 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

" Sure," said the Doctor. " She took it
as a Frenchwoman should. She snatched
the baby from its cradle, and held it a
moment close to her face. Then she
lifted it above her head in both hands, and
said, almost without a choke in her throat,
€ Vive la France, quand meme!' — and
dropped. I put them on the bed together,
she and the boy. She was crying like a
good one when I left her. She's all
right."

"Poor child — and that tiny baby!'1
exclaimed the Divorcee, wiping her eyes.

" Fudge," said the Doctor. "She is
the widow of a hero, and the mother of
the hero's son. Considering what life is,
that is to be one of the elect of Fate.
She'll go through life with a halo round
her head, and, like most of the French
women I have seen, she'll wear it like a
crown. It becomes us, in the same spirit,
to partake of the food before us. This
life is a wonderful spectacle. If you saw
an episode like that in a drama, at the
theatre, you would all cheer like mad."

We knew he was right.

But the Youngster could not help add
ing, " That's twice — two days running,
that the Doctor has told a story out of his

[ 223 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

turn, and both times he outraged the con
sign, for both times it was a war story."
That seemed to break the ice. We
talked more or less war during dinner, but
this time there were no disputes. Still I
think we were glad when the cook trotted
in with the trays, and with our elbows on
the table, we turned toward the Violinist,
who leaned against the high back of his
chair, and with his long white hands rest
ing on the carved arms, and his eyes on
the ceiling — an attitude that he did not
change during the narrative, began :

It was in the early eighties that I re
turned from Germany to my native land,
and settled myself and my violin in the city
of my birth.

I was not rich as my countrymen judge
wealth, but, in my own estimation, I was
well to do. I had enough to live without
labor, and was, therefore, able to devote
myself to my art without considering too
closely the recompense.

In addition to that, I was still young.

I had more love for my chosen mistress

— Music — than the Goddess had for me,

for, while she accepted my worship with

indulgence, she wasted fewer gifts on me

[ 224 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

than fell to the lot of many a less faithful
follower.

Still, I was happy and content in my love
for her, and only needed her to keep me so
until, a year after my return, I met one
woman, loved her, and begged her to share
with my music, my heart, and its adora
tion.

That satisfied her, since, in her own
love for the same art, she used to assure
me that she possessed, by proxy, that
other half of myself which I still dedi
cated to the Muse.

Perhaps it was the vibrant spirit of this
woman which seemed musical to me, and
which I so ardently loved, for she ap
peared to have a veritable violin soul.
Her face was often the medium through
which I saw the spirit of the music I was
playing, as it sang in gladness, sobbed in
sadness, thrilled in passion along the
strings of my Amati.

I knew that I never played so well as
when her face was before me. I felt that
if ever I approached my dreams in
achievement, it would be her soul that in
spired me. So like was she, in my fancy,
to a musical instrument, that I used to tell
her, when the wind swept across her bur-

[ 225 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

nished hair, that the air was full of mel
ody. And when she looked especially
ethereal — as she did at times — I would
catch her in my arms, and bid her tell me,
on peril of her life, what song was hidden
in her heart, that I might teach it to my
violin, and die great. Yet, remarkable as
it seems to me still, the Spirit of Music
that surely dwelt within her, dwelt there
a dumb prisoner. It had no audible voice,
though I was not alone in feeling its pres
ence in her eyes, on her lips, in her spir
itual charm.

She had a voice that was melody itself,
yet she never sang. I always fancied her
hands were a musician's hands, yet she
never played. This was the more singu
lar as her mother had been a great singer,
and her father, while he had never risen
above the desk of chef d'orchestre in a
local playhouse, was no mean musician.

Often, when the charm of her spirit was
on me, I would pretend to weave a spell
about her, and conjure the spirit that was
imprisoned in the heart that was mine, to
come forth from the shrine he was so im
pudently usurping.

Ah, those were the days of my youth !

We had been betrothed but a brief time
[ 226 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

when Rodriguez, for some seasons a Eu
ropean celebrity, made his first appear
ance in our city.

I had heard most of the great violinists
of that time, had known some of them well,
had played with many of them, as I did
later with Rodriguez, but I had never
chanced to see or hear him.

His fame had, however, preceded him.
The newspapers were full of him. Faster
even than the tales of his genius had trav
elled the tales of his follies — tales that
out-Don- Juaned the famous rake of tradi
tion.

However little credence one gives to
such reports — mad stories of a scan
dalous nature — these repeated episodes
of excesses, only tolerated in the conspicu
ous, do color one's expectations. I sup
pose that, being young, I expected to see
a man whose face would bear the brand
of his errors as well as the stamp of his
genius.

That was not Rodriguez's fate. What
ever the temperamental struggle had been,
he was " take him for all in all," the least
disappointing famous man that my experi
ence had ever shown me. He was more
virile than handsome, and no more aesthetic

[ 227 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

to look at than he was ascetic. At that
time he was on the sunny side of forty, and
not yet at the zenith of his great career.
His face was fine, manly, and sympathetic.
His brow was broad, his eyes deep-set
and widely spaced, but very heavy lidded.
The mouth and chin were, I must own, too
delicate and sensitive for the rest of the
face. His dark hair, young as he was,
had streaks of grey. In bearing he was
so erect, so sufficient, that he seemed taller
than he was. If he had the vanity which
so often goes with his kind of tempera
ment, it was most cleverly concealed.
Safe in the dignified consciousness of his
unquestioned gifts, secure in his achieve
ments, he had a winning gentleness, and
an engaging manner difficult to resist.

But for a singular magnetic light in his
eyes, which belied the calm of his bearing,
when he chanced to raise the heavy lids
full on one — they usually drooped a lit
tle — but for a sensitive quiver along the
too full lips, as if they still trembled from
the caress of genius — the royal accolade
of greatness — he might have looked to
me, as he did to many, more the diplomat
than the artist.

It would be useless for me to analyse his

[ 228 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

command of his instrument. I could not.
It would be superfluous for me to recount
his triumphs. They are too recent to
have been forgotten. Both tasks have,
moreover, been done better than I could
do either.

This I can do, however, bear witness to
the glowing wings of hope, of longing, of
aspiration which his singing violin lent to
hearts oppressed by commonplace every
day cares, to the moments of courage, of
re-awakened endeavor which he inspired
in his fellowmen, to the marvellous mag
netism of his playing which seemed for the
moment to restore to a soul-weary world
its illusions, and to strike off the fetters of
despondency which bind mortality to earth.

It was not alone the musically intelli
gent who felt this, for his playing had a
universal appeal. Thorough musicians
marvelled at and envied him his mystery
of the details of his art, but it seemed to
me that those who knew least of its tech
nique were equally open to his influence.

I don't presume to explain this. I
merely record it. There were those who
analysed the fact, and explained it on the
ground of animal magnetism. For my
self, I only know that, as the magic music

[ 229 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

which Hunold Singref played in the streets
of Hamelin, whispered in the ears of little
children words of promise, of happiness,
of comfort that none others could hear, so,
to the emotional heart, Rodriguez's violin
spoke a special message.

The man who sets the faces of the
throng upward, and lights their eyes with
the magic fire of hope, has surely not lived
in vain, whatever personal offerings he
may have made on the altar of his genius
to keep alive the eternal spark. It cannot
be denied that Art has fulfilled some part
of its mission on earth, if, but for one hour,
thousands, marshalled by its music, as the
children of Israel by the pillar of flame,
have looked above the dull atmosphere
where pain and loss and sorrow are, to
feel in themselves that divine longing
which is ecstasy, that soaring of the spirit
which, in casting off fear and rising above
doubt, can cry out in joy, " Oh, blessed
spark of Hope — this soul which can so
rise above sorrow, so mount above the
body, must be immortal. This which can
so cast off care cannot die I "

All the great acts of life, and all the
great arts, are purely emotional. I know
that modern cults deny this, and work to
[ 230 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

see everything gauged by reason. But
thus far musicians and painters, preachers
and orators all approach their goal by the
road to the emotions — if they hope to
win the big world. Patriotism, fidelity —
love of country, like love of woman — are
emotions, and it would puzzle logicians, I
am afraid, to be sure that these emotions,
at times sublime, might not be as sensual
as some of Rodriguez's critics found his
music.

The series of concerts he gave was very
exhausting to me, owing to the novelty of
some of his programs, and the constant
rehearsals. The final concert found me
quite worn out.

During the latter part of the evening I
had been too weary to even raise my eyes
to the balcony in front of me, where, from
my position among the first violins, I could
see the fair face of my beloved.

The evening had been a great triumph,
and when it was all over the audience was
quite mad with enthusiasm. It was one of
Rodriguez's inviolable rules to play a pro
gram exactly as announced, and never to
add to it. In the month he had been in
town, the public had learned how impossi-

[ 231 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

ble it was to tempt him away from his
rule. But Americans are persistent!

Again and again he had mounted the
steps to the platform, and calmly bowed
his thanks, while long drawn cheers surged
through the noise of hand-clapping, as
strains on the brass buoy up the melody.
I lost count of the number of times he had
ascended and descended the little flight of
steps which led, behind a screen, from the
artist's room to the stage, when, having
turned in my seat to watch him, as he came
up and bowed, and walked off again, I saw
him, as he stood behind the screen, gazing
directly over our heads, suddenly raise his
violin to his ear and slowly draw the bow
across the strings.

Almost before we could realize what
had happened, he crossed the stage,
stepped to his stand, and drew his bow
downward.

The applause died sharply on the crest
of a crescendo, and left the air trembling.
There was a sudden hush. A few sank
back in their seats, but most of them re
mained standing where they were, just as
we behind him were suddenly fixed in our
positions.

I have since heard a deal of argument
[ 232 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

as to the use and power of music as the
voice of thought. I was not then — and
I am not now — of that school which
holds music to be a medium to transmit
anything but musical ideas. So, of the
effect of Rodriguez's music on my mind, or
the possibility that, for some occult reason,
I was for the moment en rapport with him,
as after events forced me to believe, I shall
enter into no discussion. I am merely
going to record, to the best of my ability,
my thoughts, as I remember them. I no
more presume to explain why they came
to me, than I do to analyse my trust in im
mortality.

As he drew his bow downward, as the
first chord filled my ears, everything else
faded away.

There was the merest prelude, and then
the theme, which appeared, disappeared
and re-appeared again and again to be
woven about every emotion, at once devel
oped and dominated me.

I seemed at first to hear its melody in
the fresh morning air, where it soared up
ward above the gentle breezes, mingling in
harmony with the matins of the birds and
the softly rustling trees. Hopeful as
youth, careless as the wind, it sang in glad-

[ 233 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

ness and in trust. Then I heard the same
melody throb under the noonday glow of
summer. Its tone was broadened and
sweetened, but still brave and pure, when
all else in Nature, save its clear voice,
seemed sensuous. I saw gardens in a riot
of color; felt love at its passionate con
summation, ere the light seemed to fade
slowly toward the sunset hour. The
world was still pulsing with color, but the
grey of twilight was slowly enwrapping it.
Then the simple melody soared above the
day's peacefulest hour, firm in promise
on the hushed air. In the mystery of
night which followed, when black clouds
snuffed out the torches of heaven, when the
silence had something of terror even for
the brave, that same steadfast loving hope
ful theme moved on, consoling as trust in
immortality. Through youth to maturity,
and on to age, it sang with the same re-
iterant, subduing, infallible loyalty — the
crystallized melody of all that is spiritual
in love, in adoration, in passion.

As it died away into the distance, as if
its spirit, barely audible, were translated to
the far off heavenly host, I strained my
hearing to catch that " last fine sound "
that passed so gently one " could not be
[ 234 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

quite sure where it and silence met," and
for the first and last time in my life I had
known all that a violin can do.

For a moment the hush was wonderful.

Rodriguez stood like a statue. His
bow still touched the strings. Yet there
was no sound that one could hear, though
his own fine head was still bent, as though
he, too, listened.

He gently dropped his bow — he smiled
— we all came back to earth together.

Then such a scene followed as beggars
description.

But he passed hurriedly out of sight,
and no amount of tumult could induce him
to even show himself again.

Slowly, reluctantly, the audience dis
persed, still murmuring. The musicians
picked up their traps, and wildly or soberly
according to their temperaments, began to
dispute. It was everywhere the same
topic — the unknown work that Rodriguez
had so marvellously played.

As for me — as he played, I seemed to
be in the very heart of the melody, singing
it too, as his violin sang it. As the song
soared upward, my heart was filled with
longing, with pain, with joy, with regret.
As it gradually died into silence a mist

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

seemed to pass from before my eyes, and
I became suddenly conscious of the sweet
face of my beloved, growing more and
more distinct, until, as the last note died
away, I was fully conscious that the music
had passed between us, like a cloud, to
obscure my sight utterly, and to recede as
slowly, leaving her face before me.

I knew afterward, that, to all appear
ances, I had been gazing directly into her
face all the time.

Through it all I had a vague sense that
what he played was not new to me. It
seemed like something I had long known
and tried to say, but could not.

In a daze, I left the stage. Silently I
put my violin in its case, pulled on my
great coat, and turned up the collar about
my face. I was sure I was haggard, and
I did not wish her to remark it. I knew
that I should find her waiting in the corri
dor with her father.

Just as I passed out of the artists* room,
I was surprised to see Rodriguez standing
there in conversation with her, and her
father. He was, however, just leaving
them, and did not see me.

I knew that her father had known him
in Vienna, when the now great violinist

[ 236 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

was a mere lad, and I had heard that he
forgot no one, so the sight gave me a
merely momentary surprise.

As I joined her, and we stepped out into
the night together, I could not help won
dering if Rodriguez had noticed her sensi
tive violin face, as I tried to get a look
into her eyes. I remembered afterward
that, so wrapped was I in my own emo
tions, and so sure was I of her sympathy,
that I neither noted nor asked how the
music had affected her.

It was bitterly cold. We walked
briskly, and parted at the door.

As I look back, I realize how much an
egoist an emotional man can be, and in
good faith be unconscious of it.

The day after the concert was Satur
day — a day on which I rarely saw her, as
it was my habit to spend all Sunday with
her. I was always somewhat an epicure
in my moral nature. I liked to pet my in
clinations, as I have seen good livers whet
their appetites, by self-denial.

All day I was restless and depressed.

At the piano, with my violin in my hand,
it was still that same haunting melody that
bewitched my fingers. Whatever I es
sayed led me, unconsciously, back to the

[ 23? ]

.
TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

same theme; and whenever that motif fell
from my fingers her face appeared before
my eyes so distinctly that I would have to
dash my hand across them to wipe away
the impression that it was the real face
that was before me. Afterward, when I
was calmer, I knew that this was nothing
singular since, whether I had ever re
flected on the fact or not, she was rarely
from my mind.

As I played that melody over and over
again, it puzzled me more and more. I
could find nowhere within my memory
anything that even reminded me of it.
Yet I was vaguely familiar with it.

When evening came on I was more rest
less than ever. By nine o'clock I found
it impossible to bear longer with my own
company, and I started out. I had no des
tination. Something impelled me toward
the Opera House, though I cared little for
opera as a rule, that is, opera as we have
it in America — fashionable and Philis
tine. t

I entered the auditorium — the opera
was " Faust " — just in season to hear the
last half of the third act.

As the sensuous passionate music
swelled in the sultry air of the dark gar-

c 238 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

den at Nuremburg, I listened, moved by
it as I always am — when I cannot see
the over-dressed, lady-like Marguerite
that goes a-starring in America. My eyes
wandered restlessly over the audience.
Suddenly there was a rushing, like the
surging of waters, in my ears, which
drowned the music, and I saw Rodriguez
sitting carelessly in the front of a stage
box. His eyes were fixed on me, and I
thought there was an expression of relief
in them.

Shocked that the unexpected sight of the
man should have such an effect on me, I
pulled myself together with an effort.
The sound of the waters receded, the
music rushed back, leaving me amazed at
a condition in myself which should have
rendered me so susceptible, in some sub
conscious way, to the undoubted magnet
ism of the man whose violin had so af
fected me the night before, and so haunted
me all day, and in regard to whose com
position I had an ill-defined, but insistent,
theory which would intrude into my mind.

In vain I turned my eyes to the stage.
I could not forget his presence. Every
few minutes my glance, as if drawn by a
magnet, would turn in his direction, and

[ 239 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

as often as that happened, whether he
were leaning back to speak to some one
hidden by the curtain, or watching the
house, or listening intently to the music, I
never failed to find that his eyes met mine.

I sat through the next act in this con
dition. Then I could stand it no longer.
I felt that I might end by making myself
objectionable, and that, after all, it was
far wiser to be safe at home, than sitting
in the theatre where I occupied myself in
staring at but one person.

I made my way slowly up the aisle and
into the foyer, and had nearly reached the
outer lobby, when I suddenly felt sure that
he was near.

I looked up !

Yes, there he was, and he was looking
me directly in the face again. An odd
smile came into his eyes. He nodded to
me as he approached, and, with a quaint
shake of the head, said: " I just made a
wager with myself. I bet that if I en
countered you in the lobby, without actu
ally seeking you, andiyou saw me, I'd speak
to you — and ask a favor of you. I am
going to win that wager."

He 'did not seem to expect me to answer
him. He simply turned beside me, thrust
[ 240 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

his arm carelessly through mine, and
moved with me toward the exit.

" Let us step outside a moment," he
said. It was easy to understand why.
The hero of the night before could not
hope to pass unnoted.

He stepped into the street.

It was a moonlit night. I remember
that distinctly.

He lighted his cigarette, and held his
case toward me. I shook my head. I
had no desire to smoke.

We walked a few steps together in si
lence before he said: "I am trying to
frame a most unusual request so that it
may not seem too fantastic to you. It is
more difficult than writing a fugue. The
truth is — I have gotten myself into a bit
of a fix — and I want to guard against its
turning into something worse than that.
I need some man's assistance to extricate
myself."

I probably looked alarmed. Those
forebears of mine will intrude when I am
taken by surprise. He saw it, and said,
quickly: " It is nothing that a man, will
ing to be of service to me, need balk at;
nothing, in fact, that a chivalrous man
would not be glad to do. You may not

[ 241 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

think very well of me afterward, but be
sure you will never regret the act. I was
in sore need of a friend. There was none
at hand — if such as I ever have friends.
Suddenly I saw you. I remembered your
violin as I heard it behind me last night —
an Amati, I fancy? "

I nodded assent.

" A beautiful instrument. I may some
day ask you to let me try it — you and I
can never be quite strangers after to
night."

He paused, pounded the sidewalk with
his stick, impatiently, as if the long pre
amble made him as nervous as it did me.
Then, looking me in the face, he said rap
idly: "This is it. When I leave the
box, after the next act, do you follow me.
Stay by me, no matter what happens.
Stick to me, even though I ask you to leave
me, so long as there is any one with me.
Do more — stay by me, until, in your
room or mine, you and I sit down together,
and — well, I will explain what must, until
then, seem either mad or ridiculous. Is
that clear?"

I assured him that it was.

" Agreed then," he said.

By this time we were back at the door.
[ 242 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

The whole thing had not taken five min
utes. We re-entered the theatre, and
walked hurriedly through the lobby to the
foyer. As we were about to separate, he
laid a hand on either of my shoulders, and
with a whimsical smile, said: "I'll dare
swear I shall try to give you the slip." —
The smile died on his lips. It never
reached his eyes. " Don't let me do it.
After the next act, then," and, with a wave
of his hand, he disappeared.

I thought I was ridiculous enough when
he had gone, and I realized that I had
promised to follow this man, I did not
know where, I did not know with whom, I
did not know why.

It was useless for me to go back into
the auditorium. I could not listen to the
music. In spite of myself, I kept ap
proaching the entrance opposite the box,
and peering through the glass, like a de
tective. I knew I was afraid that he
would keep his word and try to give me
the slip. I never asked myself what differ
ence it would make to me if he did. I
simply took up the strange unexplained
task he had given me as if to me it were a
matter of life or death.

Even before the curtain fell, I had hur-

[ 243 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

ried round the house and placed myself
with my back to the door, so that I could
not miss him as he passed, and yet had no
appearance of watching him. It was well
that I did, for in an instant the door
opened. He came out and passed me
quickly, followed by a tall slender woman
in a straight wrap that fell from her head
to the ground, and the domino-like hood
which completely concealed her face.

As he drew her hand through his arm,
he looked back at me, over his shoulder.
His eyes met mine. They seemed to say,
" Is it you, old True-penny? " But he
merely bent his head courteously and with
his lips said, " Come ! " I felt sure that
he shrugged his shoulders resignedly, as
he saw that I kept my word, and followed.

At the door he found his carriage. He
assisted his companion in. Then in the
gentlest manner he said in my ear, as he
stood aside for me to enter, " In with you.
My honor is saved, but repentance dogs its
heels."

To the lady he said, " This is the friend
whom you were kind enough to permit me
to ask for supper."

She made no reply.

I uncovered my head to salute her, mur-

[ 244 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

muring some vague phrase of thanks,
which was, I am sure, inaudible. Then
Rodriguez followed, and took his place
beside me on the front seat.

As the door banged I could have sworn
that the lady, whose face was concealed
behind the falling lace of her hood, as if
by a mask, spoke.

He thought so, too, for he leaned for
ward as if to catch the words. Evidently
we were mistaken, for he received no re
sponse. He murmured an oath against
the pavements and the noise, and turned
a smiling face to me — and I ? Why, I
smiled back !

As we rattled over the pavings, through
the lighted streets, no one spoke. The
lady leaned back in her corner. Opposite
her Rodriguez hummed " Salve! dirnora "
and I beside him, sat strangely confused
and inert, still as if in a dream.

I had not even noted the direction we
were taking, until I found that we had
stopped in front of a French resturant, one
of the few Bohemian resorts the town
boasted.

Rodriguez leaped out, assisted the lady,
and I followed.

Just as we reached the top of the stairs,

[ 245 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

as 1 was about to follow them into one of
the small supper rooms, like a flash, as if
I were suddenly waking from a dream into
conscious, with exactly the same sensation
I have experienced many and many a morn
ing when struggling back to life from sleep,
I realized that the slender figure before
me was as familiar as my own hand.

As the door closed behind us, I called
her by name — and my voice startled even
myself.

She threw back the hood of her cape and
faced me.

Rodriguez had heard, too. He wheeled
quickly toward us, as nearly broken from
his self-control as a man so sure of himself
could be.

Under the flash of our eyes the color
surged up painfully in her pale face.
There was much the same expression in
our eyes, I fancy, — Rodriguez's and mine
— but I felt that it was at his face she
gazed.

I have never known how far it is given
to woman to penetrate the mysteries of
human nature, for she is gifted, it seems
to me, with a dissimulation in which she
wraps herself, as with an impenetrable
veil of outward innocence, and ignorance,

[ 246 ].

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

from our less acute perception and ruder
knowledge.

There were speeches enough that it
would have become a man in my position
to make. I knew them all. But — I said
nothing. Some instinct saved me; some
vague fore-knowledge made me feel — I
knew not why — that there was really
nothing for me to say at that moment.

For fully a minute none of us moved.

Rodriguez recovered himself first. I
cannot describe the peculiar expression of
his eyes as he slowly turned them from her
face to mine. So bound up was he in him
self that I was confident that he did not
yet suspect more than that she and I had
met before. What was in her mind I
dared not guess.

He composedly crossed to her. He
gently unfastened her heavy wrap, care
fully lifted it from her shoulders. He
pushed a high backed chair toward her,
and, with a smile, forced her to sit — she
did look dangerously white. She sank
into it, and wearily leaned her pretty head
back, as if for support, and I noticed that
her slender hands, as they grasped either
arm of the chair, trembled, in spite of the
grip she took to steady herself. I felt her

[ 24? ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

whole body vibrate, as a violin vibrates
for a moment after the bow leaves the
strings.

" It is a strange chance that you two
should know each other," he said, " and
very well, too, if I may judge from your
manner of addressing her? "

I moved to a place behind her chair, and
laid my hand on it. " This lady is my
affianced wife," I replied.

He did not change color. For an
instant not a muscle moved. He did not
stir a step from his place before the fire,
where he stood, with his gaze fixed on her
face. For one instant he turned his widely
opened eyes on me — brief as the glance
was, I felt it was critical. Then his lids
quivered and drooped completely over his
eyes, absolutely veiling the whole man, and,
to my amazement, he laughed aloud.

But even as he did so, he spread his
hands quickly toward us as if to apologize,
and ghastly as the comment was, grotesque
even, as it all seemed, I think we both
understood. He hardly needed to say,
" Pardon me," as he quickly recovered his
strong hold on himself.

The next instant he was again standing
erect before the fire, with his hands thrust

[ 248 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

deep into his pockets, and his voice was
absolutely calm as he turned toward me
and said, with a smile under his half
lowered heavy lids, " I promised you, when
I asked you to accompany me, that before
we slept to-night I would explain my singu
lar request. I hardly thought that I
should have to do it, whether I would or
not, under these circumstances. Indeed,
it appears that you have the right to de
mand of me the explanation I so flippantly
offered you an hour ago. I am bound to
own that, had I dreamed that you knew
this lady — that a relation so intimate
existed between you — I should surely
never have done of my own will this which
Fate has presumed to do for me. What
can I say to you two that will help or mend
this — to you, my fellow musician, who
were willing to stand -my friend in need,
without question; and to the woman you
love, and to whom I owe an eternal debt
— that we may have no doubts of one
another in the future? I cannot make
excuses well, even if I have the right to.
I only hope we are all three so constituted
that we may be able to feel that for a
little we have been outside common causes
and common results, and that you may

[ 249 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

listen to an explanation which may seem
strange, pardon me, and part from me
without resentment, being sure that I shall
suffer, and yet be glad."

The face against the high-backed chair
was very pale. She closed her eyes. His
gaze was on her. He marked the change,
I was sure. He thrust his hands still
deeper into his pockets, as if to brace him
self, and went on. " Last night her pure
eyes looked into mine. I had seen her
face before me night after night, never
dreaming who she was. I had always
played to her, and it had seemed to me at
times as if the music I made was in her
face. I could see nothing else. I seemed
to be looking through her amber eyes,
down, down into her deep beautiful soul,
and my soul reached out toward her, with
a sudden knowledge of what manhood
might have been had all womanhood been
pure; of what life might have been with
one who could know no sin.

" It was only her face that I saw, as I
stood waiting the end of the applause. I
seemed to be gazing between her glorious
eyes, as to tell the truth, I had more than
once gazed in my dreams in the past month.
I had already written the song that seeing

[ 2.50 J

,THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

her face had sung in my heart. It was
with an irresistible longing, an impulse
stronger than my will, to say to her just
what her face had said to me, — though
she might never know it was said to her —
that I went back to the stage. Almost
before I realized it, I was there. I felt
the vibrant soul of my violin as I laid my
cheek against it, and I saw the same spirit
tremble behind the eyes of the fair face
above me, as one sees a reflection tremble
under the wind rippled water. The first
chord throbbed on the air in response to
it. Then I played what she had uncon
sciously inspired in me. It was in her
eyes, where never swerving, immortal
loyalty shone, that I read the deathless
theme. Out of her nature came the inspi
ration. To her belongs the honor. I
know — no one better, that as I played
last night, I shall never play again; just
as I realize that what I played last night
my own nature could never of itself have
created. It was she who spoke, it was not
I. Let him who dares, try to explain that
miracle."

She rose from her chair and moved
toward him, and as she moved, she swayed
pitifully.

[ 251 i

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

He did not stir.

It was I who caught her as she stumbled,
and I held her close in my arms. After
a moment, she relaxed a little, and her
head drooped wearily on my shoulder.
He lowered his lids, and I felt that every
nerve in his well controlled body quivered
with resentment.

He motioned to entreat her to sit down
again. She shook her head, and, when he
went on, again, he for the first time ad
dressed himself directly to her. " It was
chance that set you across my path last
night — you and your father. I recog
nized him at once. I knew your mother
well. I can remember the day on which
you were born, I was a lad then. Your
mother was one of my idols. Why, child,
I fiddled for you in your cradle. At the
moment I realized who you were, you were
so much a part of my music that you only
appealed to me through that. But when
I left you, I carried a consciousness of you
with me that was more tangible. I had
held your hand in mine. I feel it there
still.

" I went directly to my room, alone. I
sat down immediately to transcribe as
much of what I had played as possible
[ 252 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

while it was fresh in my mind. As I wrote
I was alone with you. But as the spirit
of the music was imprisoned, I knew that
you were becoming more and more a ma
terial presence to me. When I slept, it
was to dream of you again — but, oh, the
difference !

" I should have been grateful to you for
the inspiration that you had been to me —
and I was ! But it had served its purpose.
They tell me I never played like that
before. I feel I never shall again. But
the end of an emotion is never in the spirit
with me.

" I started out this afternoon to find you,
oblivious of the fact that I should have left
town. I had the audacity to tell myself
that I should be a cad if I departed with
out thanking the sweet daughter of your
mother for her share in making me great.
I had the presumption to believe in myself.
It seemed natural enough to your good
father that ' a whimsical genius/ as he
called me, should be allowed the caprice
of even tardily looking up his boyhood's
acquaintance. He received me nobly,
was proud that you should see I remem
bered him — and simply made no secret
of it.

[ 253 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

u Though I knew what you had seemed
to me, I little realized that the child of true,
fine musical spirits had a nature strung like
my Strad — fine, clear, true, matchless, as
well as inspiring. I spent a beautiful
afternoon with you. I cannot better ex
plain than by saying that to me it was like
such a day as I have sometimes had with
my violin. I call them my holy-days, and
God knows I try to keep them holy, —
though after too many of them follow a
St. Michael and the Dragon tussle — and
I mean no discredit to the Archangel,
either.

" The honest old father, proud to trust
his daughter to me, — in his kind heart he
always considered me a most maligned
man, — went off to the play and his Satur
day night club. He told me that.

'* We were alone together. It was then
that I began to think that I could probably
play on her nature as I did on my violin,
and then, with a player's frenzy, to realize
that I had been doing it from the first; that
we had vibrated in harmony like two ends
of a chord. Then I saw no more the spirit
behind her eyes. I saw only the beautiful
face in which the color came and went, the
burnished hair so full of golden lights, on

C 254 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

which I longed to lay my hand — the sen
sitive red lips — and the angel and the
demon rose up within me, and looked one
another in the face, and I heard the one
fling the truth at the other, which even the
devil no longer cared to deny — Ah, for
give me ! — "

In his egoism of self-analysis and open
confession, I am sure he did not realize
how far he was going, until she buried her
face in her hands.

Then he stepped across the room and
stood before me as she rested her face in
her hands against my breast.

" It was not especially clever — the last
struggle against myself. I had never
known such a woman before. I suppose
if I had, I should have tortured her to
death to strike new chords out of her
nature, — and wept at my work ! I had
not the courage to tear myself abruptly
away. I suggested an hour of the opera
— I gave her the public as a protector —
and they sang * Faust.' It was then that,
knowing myself so well, I looked out into
the auditorium and saw you! It was
Providence that put you in my way. I
thought it was accident. I am sure I need
say no more? "

[ 255 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

I shook my head.

He leaned over her a moment. He
gently took her hands from her face. Her
eyelids trembled. For one brief moment
she opened her eyes to his.

" You have given me one sweet day,"
he murmured. " Some part of your soul
has called its music out of mine. That off
spring of a miraculous sympathy will live
immortal when all else of our two lives is
forgotten. Remember to-day as a dream
— and me as a shadow there — " he
stopped abruptly. I felt her head fall for
ward. She had swooned.

Together we looked into the beautiful
colorless face.

I loved music as I loved light. I was
an artist myself. A great musician — and
this man was one — was to me the greatest
achievement of Art and Living.

I did not refuse the hand he held out.
I buried mine in it.

I did not smile nor mistrust, nor mis
understand the tears in his eyes, nor despise
him because I knew they would soon
enough be dry. I did not doubt his sin
cerity when he said, " I have never done
so bitter a thing as say ' good-bye ' to this

[ 256 ]

THE VIOLINIST'S STORY

— though I know but too well such are not
for me."

He bent over her, as if he would take
her in his arms.

She was unconscious. I felt tempted to
put her there. I knew I loved her as he
could never love — yet I pitied him the
more for that.

"Tell her," he whispered, "tell her,
when she shall have forgotten this — as I
hope she will — that for this hour at least
I loved her; that losing her I am liable to
love her long,- — so we shall never meet
again. I shall never cease to be grateful
to the Providence that threw you in my
way — after to-night. To-night I could
curse it and my conscience with a right
good will." With an effort he straight
ened himself. " You can afford to for
give me," he said, " for I — I envy you
with all my heart." — And he was gone.

I heard his voice as he spoke to the
waiter outside. I listened to his step as
he descended the stairs. He had passed
out of our life forever.

That was years ago.

She has long been dead.

He was not to blame if the sunshine that

[ 257 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

danced in music out of the eyes of the
woman I loved never quite came back
again. We were, all the same, happy
together in our way.

He was not to blame if it was written
in the big book of Fate that it should be
his heart, and not mine, that should read
the song she bore in her soul.

Something must be sacrificed for Art.
We sacrificed our first illusions — and the
Song he read will sing on when even Rodri
guez is but a tradition.

[ 258 ]

EPILOGUE

ADIEU
How WE WENT OUT OF THE GARDEN

THE last word had hardly been uttered
when the Youngster, who had been fidget
ing, leaped to his feet.

" Hark !" he cried.

We all listened.

" Cannon," he yelled, and rushed out to
the big gate, which he tore open, and
dashed into the road.

There was no doubt of it. Off to the
north we could all hear the dull far-off
booming of artillery.

We followed into the garden.

The Youngster was in the middle of the
road. As we joined him he bent toward
the ground, as if, Indian-like, he could
hear better. " Hush," he said in a
whisper, as we all began to talk. " Hush !
I hear horses."

There was a dead silence, and in it, we

C 259 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

could hear the pounding of horses' hoofs
in the valley.

" Better come in out of the rain," said
the Doctor, and we obeyed. Once inside
the gate the Doctor said, " Well, I reckon
it is to-morrow at the latest for us. The
truth of the matter is: I kept something
from you this evening. The village was
drummed out last night. As this road is
being kept clear, no one passed here, and
as we were ready to start at a moment's
notice, I made up my mind to have one
more evening. However, we've time
enough. They can't advance to-night.
Too wet. No moon. Come on into the
house."

He closed and locked the big gate, but
before we reached the house, there was a
rush of horsemen in the road — then a
halt — the Youngster opened the gate
before it was called for. Two mounted
men in Khaki rode in, stopped short at the
sight of the group, saluted.

"Your house?" asked one, as he slid
from his saddle and leaned against his
horse.

" Mine," said the Doctor, stepping
forward.

" You are not proposing to stay here? "
[ 260 ]

How WE WENT OUT OF THE GARDEN

" No, we are leaving in the morning."

u Got any conveyances? "

" Two touring cars."

" Good. You don't mind my proposing
that you go before daylight, do you? "

" Not a bit," replied the Doctor, " if it
is necessary."

" That's for you to decide," said the
other officer. " We are going to set up
a battery in this garden. Awfully sorry,
you know, but it can't be helped."

The Youngster, who had remained at
the gate, came back, and whispered in my
ear, " They are coming. It's the English
still retreating. By Jove, it looks as if
they would get to Paris ! "

" How many are there of you? " asked
the senior officer.

" Ten," replied the Doctor.

" Eleven," corrected the Divorcee. " I
shall take Angele and the baby." And
she started on a run for the garage.

" Perhaps," said the Doctor, looking
through the open gate, where the weary
soldiers were beginning to straggle by,
" perhaps it will not be necessary for all
of us to go." And he went close to the
officers, and drew his papers from his
pocket. There was a hurried whispered

[ 261 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

conversation, in which the Critic and the
Journalist joined. When it was over, the
Doctor said, " I understand," and returned
to our group.

"Well, good friends," he said, "it
really is farewell to the garden! The
Critic and I are going to stay a bit. We
are needed. The Youngster will drive
one car, and the Lawyer the other. Get
ready to start by three, — that will be
just before daylight — and get into the
house, all of you. You are in the way
here!"

Everybody obeyed.

We had less than three hours to get
together necessary articles and all the time
there was the steady marching of feet in
the road, where what servants we had were
standing with water and such small help as
could be offered a tired army, and bringing
in for first aid such of the exhausted men
as could be braced up.

Long before we were ready, we heard
the rumble of the artillery and the low
commands of the officers. In spite of our
selves, we looked out to see the gray things
being driven into the gate, and down
toward the hillside.

c 262 ]

How WE WENT OUT OF THE GARDEN

" Oh," groaned the Divorcee, " right
over the flower beds ! "

" Bother it all, don't look out," shouted
the Youngster from his room. " That's
just like a woman ! Be a sport ! " And
he dashed down the hall. We had just
time to see that he had " put that uniform
on." He was going into the big game,
and he was dressed for the part. In a
certain sense, all the men were, when we
at last, bags in hand, gathered in the din
ing room, so we were not surprised to find
the Nurse in her hospital rig, with a white
cap covering her hair, and the red cross
on her arm. We knew at once that she
was remaining behind with the Doctor and
the Critic.

The cars were at the door. Angele?
with her baby in her arms, was sitting in
one.

" Come on," said the Doctor, " the
quicker you are out of this the better."

And, almost without a word, like sol
diers under orders, we were packed into
the two cars. The Youngster, the Law
yer, and the two officers stood together
with their heads bent over a map.

" Better take a side road," said the

[ 263 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

officer, " until you get near to Meaux, then
take the route de Senlis. It will lead you
right over the hill into the Meaux, then
you will find the route nationale free.
Cross the Marne there, and on into Paris
by the forest of Vincennes."

" Let the Lawyer lead," said the Doctor,
" and be prudent, Youngster. You know
where a letter will reach me. See that the
girls get off safely!" He shook hands
all round. The cars shot out of the gate,
tooted for a passage through the strag
gling line of tired men in Khaki, took the
first turn to get out of the way, and shot
down the hill to the river.

" Well," said the Youngster, who was
driving our car, with the Voilinist beside
him, " I think we behaved fine, and, by
Jove, how I hate to go just now! But I
have to join day after to-morrow, and I
suppose it will be a long time before I see
anything as exciting as this. Bother it.
Well, you were amazed at the calmness
only yesterday ! "

No one replied. We were all busy
with our own thoughts, and with " playing
the game." In silence we crossed the first
bridge. Day was just breaking as we
mounted the hill on the other side. Sud-
[ 264 ]

How WE WENT OUT OF THE GARDEN

denly the Youngster put on the brake.

" Here," he said to the Violinist, " take
the wheel a moment. I must look back."

Just as he spoke there was a tremendous
explosion.

" Bomb," he cried, as he got out his
glass, and, standing on the running board,
looked back. " They've got it," he yelled.
"Look!"

We all piled out of the car, and ran to
the edge of the hill. From there we could
look back and just see the dear old house
standing on the opposite height in its
walled garden.

There was another explosion, and a puff
of smoke seemed to rise right out of the
middle of the garden, where the old tree
stood, under which we had dined so many
evenings.

For a few minutes we stood in silence.

It was the gentle voice of the Violinist
that called us back. " Better get on," he
said. " We can do nothing now but obey
orders," and quietly we crawled back and
the car started on.

We did not speak again until we ran up
to the gates of Paris, and stopped to have
our papers examined for the last time.
Then I said, with a laugh: "And only

[ 265 ]

TOLD IN A FRENCH GARDEN

think! I did not tell my story at all! "
" That's so," said the Youngster.
" What a shame. Never mind, dear, you
can tell the whole story!": — • And I
have.

THE END

[ 266 ]

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