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Show " By Efeawkft Finest SpofcB " fe" . . TajgMEnm.A?,, "All, you, too long since, ceased to be a fact in my life, for such fictions." "I ceased to be a fact in your life. What have I been thinking of all these years. Eugenia, to let the lonesome while go by v. hen I might have been daily within sound of a voice sweet as the music that 'flattered to tears that aged man and poor'! We read 'St. 'Agnes Eve together in this garden " "I could almost declare," she said, after the little miracle of threading her needle, "that such talcs have nothing to do with us. We arc so entirely other than the people of that day." "My God, how many recollections! The place Is full of ghosts!" he exclaimed. "But very gentle ones." "Are they not vindictive?" He paused a moment, looking before him, his chin on his stick. "When I first went away, Eugenia," he said, presently, "I meant to come home soon, as you know. Then one and another of the House had the first right. I became be-came head. I thought of a year or two longer, and independence. Ideas concerning an independence changed: suffered a sea change " "Into something rich and strange" "And then I said it was too late Things had grown vague, I w forgotten. I stayed on. One day my brother James wrote inc somewhat urgently, and I suddenly woke to the weight of my nearly seventy year. And I called my men, and stopped for nothing "And you will stop for nothing when you think i 'Tor the first lime." "But not the last." "Let us forget," she sighed. "But you see that 1 remember. Things arc not so vague when near you." "He forgot so long, so long," she whispered. "Forgot! When I am I am as much as much in love " ' You never were very much in love, Charles." she 'said, lifting her head and again plying her needle. "You have difficulty in saying it. You were simply in love with love. And now you are thinking you are in love with that young girl of long ago posibly, Certainly not with this old woman," And she laughed gently and put on her glasses. II. "Take those things off!" he exclaimed. "Will you give mc my shawl?" she asked. "Do you feci any chill in the air? Elderly folk can get rheumatism from a fan." "Why do you so insist upon the fact of age?" he asked, impatiently. "Perhaps because I cannot insist uptvi the fiction of youth. There is youth down there, in the garden alley You can smell the fragrance of the dark red calvcanthus buds where they walk now, the breath of tropical fruits made spiritual. You made mc a wreath of them once." "I will make yon another." "I would look fine in such a thing now!" should not have had my precious Angela poor Dolly's child. She is more than beauty, or youth or hie" "Or love!" "She is love itself." "But you want to hinder ruin of love for her, of hope and joy and fulfilment. That shows how you value these things. That puts your content to the blush. That tills me you know what is the happier " "You let mc doubt youc sincerity, Charles." 'Why? My brother James writes mc that his boy Francis is making a fool of himscf for jour Angela, without a penny to her name. It occurs to mc to come home and sec how much of a fool I come. As it happens, before I cross over into the. garden here, 1 sec Angela. I forget lime. I think I have seen you yourself. Something of the old passion revives for an instant the rose is in full and perfect flower. And then you, you. are standing in the dark doorway. door-way. An electric touch sets the crystals into new shape. I recover my base. The rose may droop a trifle. But, yc gods, how sweet it is still! It is you! And once more, as in the old days, I am yours. The fire may have been covered With ashes; but you breathed on it, and it was flame. Eugenia, I am a man of infinite sincerity " "And C3price." "You do not think, even at this late day, of making our lives one, Eugenia?'' J 1 i -. i 1 , . 1 mmmmm . .. 1 1. ... 1 1 I - - B" 1 1 1 1 i i I i I ' $ mr-- - K' 1 I I 1 JmW 1 I ' I 1 I 1 Jh PICKING CP HIS STICK, HE TKACED SOME CHARACTT.RS ON THE C.RAEL. ffi i i I . I ife : . ia WERE there but two in the garden or. really, was it four? For down a long alley, just turning the corner of the starry althca bush, was it the flutter of a white gown and a pale green ribbon? And did one sec, or dream one saw, another, a darker shape, bending and lilting a beech bough, and passing on? Was it a trick of the eyes, or was it a vision of the past, made all of shade and shadow? "It seems to mc, Eugenia," said the old man, seating seat-ing himself near the old woman, leaning an arm on the sun dial between them, without consciously reading read-ing again the legend there, "that I have been in another planet, that I have been living the life of some one else, that, in returning from all those years in the Orient, 1 take up my real life only by your ;.ije"' "I am glad you feel so; if only for the moment," she replied. "I myself have thought it might sometimes some-times be pleasant to forget all the long waste of years. Youth is so disturbed age is so peaceful.' "Is age so peaceful? I do not find it so. 1 pass my time detesting it. Why, when my heart is vuung, and I feel the youth of mc in every thought, should my pulses fail mc and my body become a wreck figure bent " "But it is not a wreck," said the old woman, looking look-ing up intently. "You do not appear greatly changed to mc, although perhaps you did at first Except m tnc way tnal tnc ycars have written the script of high thoughts and actions." 'High thoughts and actions of a life spent in wringing wealth from the heathen!" not without some bitterness. "And then to go back and finish en the same lines, in the hot climate, and with the hot dishes and the dark faces. Tor everything is changed here. Not even you, Eugenia, are the r,mo." "Oh, I know it," sighed the old woman. "Did you rot expect it. That is if you thought at all about it. Every year, as it passes, carries something some-thing that was precious away with it- A woman is amused at her first gray hair; it is a jest time has played. It gives her then a strange sensation of being human, after all; and before that she had felt full of an unquenchable youth. But when one day she finds her head silvered, then she is dismayed. The white dust of the road to death has settled on her. She sees " "Nothing that is not. in its way, lovely still if you ?.rc that woman, Eugenia. She sees her head powdered, it may be, as if she were a beauty of the seventeenth century, with her delicate brows, and her eyes as soft and dark as stars in a misty midnight, mid-night, with a faint rose on her checks" "Oh, such a faded rose!" she sighed. "Xo. You arc not the same. But something every whit as sweet." "Like the rose that is jellowcd and pressed in a book." "Come, come, we must not speak in this fashion, like two shades meeting outside the tombs. At least, I am one," he said, hurriedly. "You, Eugenia, if you were a hundred, would still be young in my eyes! The face of sixteen summers swims over the face of sixty." "The sixty have not all been 'Summers." "Where you were?" "Do you remember one morning," she said, suddenly, sud-denly, "when the honeysuckles were in bloom, and -the bees and the humming-birds made the air busy, and the southwest wmd blew from the fields where they were tossing the hay in the sun; a day like this; and you and I sat here by the sun dial, and two Italian boys, going along, wandered in and played strange tunes on their 'violins " "Tunes that might have been played to the Caesars! Do I remember!" "I wonder what brought them to mind? The fragrance frag-rance of the new mown hay, maybe. I suppose those boys with the red crushed on their golden skins, and their languishing large eyes, arc two hob-f-oblins by this if they are not dust and ashes." "Even an old man can be picturesque. If he is Italian." "You would sec beauty, Charles, in the bark of a tree." "I am not purblind yet. One morning this was at the beginning of life, you know you came dancing danc-ing down that path, wearing a white gown and pale green ribbon. I !avv beauty then." She laughed. "It is pleasant to have been thought beautiful, whatever happens," she said. "They painted my picture in that gown. It hangs in there. I go and look at it, now and then, and feci as though I had been dead a long while, and were revisiting, the .'limpfcs of the moon. When I beard that yuu were coming home I often went. Somehow, Charles, I disliked to have you see it " "You you felt hostile to that young girl." "I, so old, so old!" "You, forever young!" "Truly, my friend, you must use more measured phrase. The ground on which we meet is that of impersonal memories." "And not hopes?" "Ah, yes, for other. We ourselves have nothing ti hope for. Our happiness lies in the happiness of those dear to u. Mine, for instance, in that of the young girl you saw disappearing down the allheas. She wears white and pale green ribbons in in innocent inno-cent (lattery of my portrait." "Then I really saw her. And it was not some, glamour of long ago. a work of disordered vyesight, Uut nerves you yourself, and I by your side?" "Let mc sec," he said, eagerly. "There is the old house on the hill. It still belongs to mc. I believe. I suppose that with a wing, a new chimney, some piazzas, that would do if it were theirs." "Why, perfectly, Charles! And enough, besides, to keep the wolf away." she added, anxiously. "We will have a fine time together, putting it into shape. You and I." "You will possibly have some Eastern rugs?" "And ivories, and potteries, and gods, and devils." "Let us say nothing about it? Let us just do it! And. oh, how delightful their surprise and joy will be!" And the flush and 'sparkle and smile made the old woman, for the moment, almost young again. J "It will seem." he said, "what it might have seemed forty years ago." - "If you or I had had a friend In the India trade." "By Jove! You think it hilarious this living one's life vicariously." "The lot of old age. Our happiness in theirs." They were silent a brief space. "You, will be Jonely, Eugenia," then he said, "Angela "An-gela being jjonc." "Not long. At most, not long." "The death's head at the feast!" "When the years have robbed and stripped us, death reaches a kind hand, restoring our birthright." birth-right." "I have not your equanimity. I do not want death. I want life, full and abounding, and more of it!" "You should go, on your way back-, and take those baths of high frequency, or potency, or whatever, what-ever, that they give in Tans for the new lease of life " ' "Not without you." - "I expect to have t, without going farther than across the Dark River." "Strange," he said, presently, "that the' old thco- -logical imagining, which spoke in hymns of our being bathed, hereafter, in rivers of light, anticipated antici-pated the scientific possibility." -- She sat with her needle on her lip, thinking. "How happy," she said, looking up, the softly gleaming eyes misting with an unshed tear "how happy Angela and Francis will bcl" TJie summer wind brought them a strain of the song Angela was singing, in a voice slender bu. sweet as the sound of a flute over water: "Like a rose the morning breaks, Day is dear, and night is deep, Love be with her when she wakes. Love be with mc while I sleep!" He reached with the hooked handle of his stick for a long. loose spray of the yellow Persian rose, and brought it down to catch its thorns in her lace y and make a scarf across her shoulders with one great blossom and half a hundred buds. "'Like a rose the morning breaks,'" he repeated. "Wc used "to sing that song ourselves, Eugenia. "When Francis sings it, I think I hear .your golden tenor again." "The rose," said the old man, still gazing at her, "has been the companion and symbol of love in all generations. It is as immortal as love. Buried in graves a thousand years it will bloom again. And love that has been true love is equally imperishable. imper-ishable. Now I see you as you werc-Mvith that heavenly smile. What will you do without mc, Eugenia?" "What have I done before?" she answered lifiitly. "If you go back overseas, I shall be looking for a letter may I not? Tomorrow it will be coming. And then I shall be looking for another. And life will be full of tomorrows such glad tomorrows!" "But if I do not come back?" "Then there is the. wicket gate between the gardens." gard-ens." ! "Cold comfort, Eugenia." "Oh, no. In winter the snow will be swept away. In summer the path will be strewn with fallen flowers." "You were leaning there one evening, with the sweet brier blossoms embowering you, when the moon came up and shone full upon you " "It was behind you. And you stood there, dark, and all surrounded with its aureola." "Eugenia, it will take the rest of our lives to thread these memories!" "Like beads on a string. Summer mornings, winter win-ter evenings if the wanderlust does not seize you. Ah, there is Angela coming. Did you ever sec anything any-thing sweeter?" "Certainly I have!" "And Francis so tall and dark the image of you at his age. Is it not Arcady? Are they not like pictures of people in the Vale of Tempe? It is you that will have made their days like life in one of the Islands of the Blest! See, they suggest all the fortunate for-tunate parallels. Dear me, how soon the morning goes!" looking at the dial, and her glance lingering j on its legend, "Time turns not back." She began to fold her work. "I think luncheon may be waiting. wait-ing. Shall wc go in? I cannot give you peppers and giifgers and hot Indian sauces. There is only bread and butter and cream and strawberries." "I am growing used to cool things," he said. "Come, children. Come down to earth!" And while with the aid of his stick he got upon his feet, she detached the spray of yellow roses, shook it lightly, and sent the petals of its one great fullblown full-blown flower scattering on the wind. "That rose, at any rate," she Aid to herself, "is not immortall" best to return as precipitately." "Unless " "Unless," she said, hastily, "you decide to make your home with these two young people when they have their home." "Would you counsel that, Eugenia?" He seemed to love pronouncing her name with a lingering accent, as if it were a magic word caiiing up all the san-b'.iinc san-b'.iinc of old days. "You might miss your hot suns, your curries and chiiM'eva. vnir dark faces " "iut 1 should spend every morning, every evening, even-ing, with you if no nurc. Eugenia why not? Hark! that bird! What is he doing with morning and daylight? Do you No, you -have never forgotten for-gotten that evening when wc walked together hcrt, a row of white lilies on cither side " "Half guessed in the starlight, making one think of angels with their gold harps in their hands. And tweet as the Blessed Damoscl s." "And then a thrush in the wood under the hill piped a broken melody voice of the grief of some wandering soul. There was enchantment in it. For at the sound we woke; wc knew that something had changed the face of the earth wc turned to each other, and our lips " The old woman's hand, with its shining needle, had fallen on her knee; her head was drooping. "No, irn." she said. And then, quite under her breath, she added: "You always looked divinely." "Indeed, my friend, a truce to compliment. It cannot cover the lapse of "years and silence " ' "You mean that my delay has closed the gates of raradisc. Then I shall sit outside." And he tossed off thc'pet.'.ls of the flower he had picked to pieces, and dusted his hands. "One i sometimes so clamorous clamor-ous outside that they let him in," he said. "In a great unhappincss. the youth, the life, the loC in mc was killed I am a different person from the gi;r who looked divinely. Tell mc I shall live a hundred years longer, even with all my disabilities, my lameness, my coming blindness, the slight difficulty diffi-culty in my hearing, and all the rest, and I will' listen oh, how gladly! But as for that young girl, she K dead lang sync. No more of her, an it please your Majesty." "You will hear a grcaTdcal more of her if I stay here! You fetl her 'wrongs so that you avenge them now." Ticking up his stick, he traced with the point some characters on the gravel. "I thii.k it escapes you." she s,aid. "that when you hrst went away I studied, for a little while, those characters you write. There for the silly things!" And, thrustm-z out a slippered foot that was still dainty, she wiped the lines away. "Wrongs? But no, indeed. All is tranquil. I am content as tilings are. If sometimes a tinge of sadness sad-ness darkens the moment, it is only a tinge, only a moment. If affairs had had been different, I opyrlbt, 190S by Harpor - Brothers, ell rJ'hta renon "And all the world laughing at two old fools? Oh no!" "Let them laugh that win. I mean to win. If not the old love, yet the old companionship." ' "A cloud is coming over the sun. I shall have to go in, I fear," she said, gathering her muslins more closely. "1 hoped, when I heard that you were sailing, sail-ing, Charles, simply that you would make it right for Francis to marry Angela. I did not dream of past or future for you or me. I thought if the boy had a house, and a certain sufficient income, he would have the heart to work faithfully for further advance." "To t!J you the truth, I thought of that, on the seas. But he is more or less like me. Would he be long content with the day of small things?" "But he would be in anchorage. There would be no separation." "Great heavens! Euycnia, if when we thought of a future " "You had no rich uncle to play the part, of the beneficent powers. Francis has. And then Angela, I think, is strong enough" To hold her quarry." "If you care to put it so." The cloud had passed from the sun, and she held her filmy work to the light. A little indignation burns away tears. But why be angry at palpable truth? She turned ard smiled. |