Our Lady of the Beeches

VII.

LEDUC’S foot was better the next morning, but still too painful to step on, and Saxe walked over to the hotel to tell the Countess, and bring her and Annette back for the day, as they had taken for granted was to be done. Halfway down the road, however, he met young Cobb, alone, and learned that the Countess had a bad headache and could not come. He gave the boy a quarter, and went back alone, his face set into an expression of immobility habitual to him in moments of strong feeling. It was a day wasted, and a day with her had come to mean to him a decade. A boy of twenty could not have been more bitterly disappointed, and more savage in his disappointment. Leduc, however, saw nothing of this, and, when Saxe bandaged his foot again in the afternoon, and pronounced it decidedly better, the old man burst into a naive expression of surprise.

“ It is that to be an American ! The sooner I am able to go, the sooner M’sieu loses Mademoiselle, and yet he urges me to go ! He says my foot is better. A Frenchman would swear I have blood-poisoning.”

“ Not every Frenchman, mon vieux. There are a few decent ones among them, you to the contrary notwithstanding.” Then he told Leduc that on the third day following he was to take his wife and go to the grave of Le Mioche. Leduc, serious as he always became at any mention of Le Mioche, protested feebly.

“ But Annette has a right to go to it,” insisted Saxe.

“ She has no right. She left me.”

“ Because you ill-treated her.”

“ I struck her now and then when I’d been drinking whiskey, — I was n’t used to whiskey, — and I knew a pretty face when I saw it.”

“ Nonsense, Leduc. She was a good woman, and she could n’t stand your — general slackness. You are to take her to the grave of Le Mioche on Monday ; do you understand me ? ”

“ It’s very far, M’sieu, and she is an old woman.”

“ Monday you are to take her, or — no dog, and no present.”

Then savagely satisfied at having hastened a day he might well have put off, Saxe went for a long tramp, reaching home after sundown, tired and hungry. Leduc, unable to sulk, was as gay as a lark, singing snatches of “ La vie est vaine ” to himself, and expressing his convictions that after all it would be best to take Annette to the grave Monday and have it over with. He could n’t tell how long it would take. “ Cela dépend de mes jambes,” he said with a chuckle. It was n’t so near, but then it was n’t so far.

The forest was like fairyland that night in the moonlight. Saxe, tired as he was, could not sit still. Half an hour after supper he rose and started off restlessly through the wood. He had a good voice, uncultivated but sweet, and sang as he tramped through the lacy shadows of the beeches. It seemed as though she must be near, as though he caught glimpses of a light gown here and there among the mossy trunks. “ Ich gehe nicht schnell, ich eile nicht.” He stumbled on a root and saved himself with difficulty from a fall.

“ Ich gehe hin zu der schoensten Frau ” —

And there she was, as if in answer to his thoughts, as happens to most people once in their lifetime. She stood quite still, holding under her chin the light scarf that hid her hair.

“ ‘ Our Lady of the Beeches ! ’ ”

Saxe took her hands, kissed them both, and then stood with them in his.

“ You are here — alone ? ”

“ Yes. It is not five minutes from the hotel.”

“ Then I have gone around the village, and come up beyond the highroad ! ”

“ Yes.”

“ I love you.”

“ Hush ! ”

“ You know I love you with all my heart? ”

“ Yes.”

“ You are not angry ? ”

“ No.”

“ Look at me.”

Gathering her hands into one of his, with the other he tilted hack her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. “ I love you this way, — and you have not a scrap of feeling for me?”

“ I like you very much,” she answered quietly, not moving.

“ You like me very much. Then, let me kiss you — once.”

“No.”

“ Why not ? ”

“ Because I don’t wish to ” —

Her eyes, unwavering, were fixed on his ; the lace scarf slipped back, but she did not move. Slowly he let her go, and stood looking at her, while she rearranged her scarf, and once more gathered it under her chin.

“You are a very daring woman,” he said after a pause.

“Why? ”

“ Ah, why ! ” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “ Come, it is getting late, let me take you back to the hotel. How is your headache ? ”

“ Better, thank you, but you mustn’t take me back to the hotel; it would scandalize the good people there, and I know the way.”

He took out his watch. “ After all, it is early, — a little after nine. Sit down here and talk to me. You need n’t be afraid; I shan’t make an ass of myself again.”

She sat down on a log. “ I am not afraid.”

“ I know you ’re not, and — I wonder why ? ”

“ There are two reasons. One is that you are a gentleman, — in the real sense of the word ; the other that — that ” — “ That you are in no danger of losing your head.” He laughed.

“ Of course I am in no danger, but I did n’t mean that. I mean that a woman can always control a man, — if she wishes to.”

He laughed again. “ Oh, how young you are, how young ! ”

“ Am I so young ? ”

He looked at her, and saw her face worn and pale in the moonlight. “ I am old,” she went on slowly, her chin in her hand, “and you are young. I am cold, and calculating, and slow, and you are impetuous and hot-headed ” —

Saxe sighed. “ That is what love does to a man. Not that I did lose my head, dear child. If I had ! You were almost in my arms. I could have kissed you ” —

“ But you did n’t.”

“ No, because I knew you did n’t want me to. If you had wanted me to, with your heart, however much you might have protested with your lips ” —

She laughed outright. “ Baby! As if you would have known.”

Saxe watched her gravely. “ Ah, yes, I should have known. And if you had — well — after all, one has only one life to live, empty and dry enough at best, as a rule ” —

“ Tà, tà, tà, — the morals of a materialist ! Now I am going. Good-night.” “ And to-morrow ? ”

“ To-morrow we are coming to dinner, if you will have us.”

“ Are you angry ? ”

She held out her hand with a little gracious shake of the head. “ No. It was my own fault.”

“ Your own fault! ” repeated Saxe, taking off his glasses in his bewilderment.

“Yes. Such things are always the fault of the woman.”

“ It was n’t your fault, dear child, and your theory is wrong.”

She hesitated, and then answered: “No, my theory is right. I am much younger than you, but I live in the world, and I know it. A man loses his head, possibly, quite against the woman’s will, but — she should not have let him get to that point.”

“ And you mean that you will never let me get there ” —

“ Good-night.”

“ Good-night.”

She sped away into the denser shadow, leaving him looking after her.

VIII.

The next morning, when the Countess arrived at the camp, Saxe met her, with a tin of worms in one hand, and two bamboo fishing-rods over his shoulder.

“You will have to earn your dinner to-day,” he said, shaking hands with her. “ Nothing but salt pork in camp, and Leduc insists on fried fish.”

“ Oh, how nice ! It is cloudy, too ; so much the better for ' bites,’ is n’t it ? ”

She hurried on to say good-morning to the invalid, who was paring potatoes with a languid air, and then, leaving Annette to prepare the meal, joined Saxe at the water’s edge.

He had been prepared for her frank air of bon cameraderie, and had summoned up as near its counterpart as in man lies, so the morning passed busily and gayly, without allusions or awkwardness. The sport was good, the light breeze agreeable, and they went back to camp, tired and hungry, with a big string of fish, to find Annette about to try her hand at that test of skill, an omelette.

While Leduc cleaned the fish, the Countess and Saxe made coffee, and an hour later, Leduc was once more asleep, Annette busy washing dishes in the cabin, and the other two practically alone.

They sat in silence, she building a little pyre of pine-cones, he idly watching her hands. Suddenly she looked up and their eyes met. A sudden trouble filled hers, and they darkened for the first time with embarrassment, and he felt the blood sing in his ears.

“ You are not angry ? ” he said, almost in a whisper.

She shook her head, with a warning glance at Leduc, that nearly brought a cry of delight to Saxe’s lips.

He rose. “ Come,” and she followed him without a word.

“ That old wretch is playing possum,” he said, with an unsteady laugh. “ I will row you over to the water-lilies.”

She took her seat in the boat, and then, as the sun fell on her, put up her hand to her head. “ My hat! ”

“ Take mine.” He handed her his, and she crushed it down on her forehead and smiled at him.

He rowed with quite unnecessary vigor, telling her of Leduc’s consent to start Monday morning.

“ You told me that before.”

He laughed. “ Did I ? I’m sorry. Now, then ” —

They had reached the patch of pondlilies, and for a few minutes he worked in silence, cutting the languid white blossoms for her, and wiping their stems in his handkerchief.

As he got out of the boat he remarked, laughing, “ Oh, what a good boy am I! ”

“ You are, indeed,” she returned, taking the lilies he had held.

“ You know what I mean ? ”

“ Of course I do.”

“ And you think all the credit is due to you ? ” He smiled at her quizzically.

“ Oh, no ; not at all.”

“ Why not, if the blame was yours — last night ? ”

She shook her head. “ It is n’t fair to laugh at me. I only try to be ' square.’ ”

“ And you are square, Winifred. No woman ever was more square. Only — there are circumstances when it is very easy to be square.”

“ That, of course, is true,” she answered lightly. “ Good heavens ! what time is it ? Annette is lighting the fire ! We eat as much as pepple in a German novel, but even we can’t be going to eat again already.”

“ No, it is only five. Now, how am I going to amuse your ladyship for the rest of the day ? ”

She considered. “ I don’t know. Read aloud to me.”

“ Nothing to read.”

“ Not even a Greek Testament, or a Horace ? ”

“ Not even those general favorites.”

“ Have you literally not a book with you ? ” she asked curiously.

“ Oh, yes. I have two of my own great works that I am supposed to be revising, and Uncle Remus,and—Browning’s Shorter Poems.”

“ Oh, Uncle Remus, by all means. Read me the Tar Baby.”

“ Rather than Cristina, — or The Last Ride Together ? ”

“ Much rather,” she answered promptly, sitting down and demolishing her pyre of cones at a blow.

Saxe laughed. “ Oh, you baby ! You are afraid to face the music.”

She looked up serenely. “ What music ? ”

Saxe fetched the book and read to her for over an hour. She was too tired to go to see the sunset, and busied herself helping Leduc make Johnny-cake, greatly to his delight.

After supper young Cobb appeared to ask whether Leduc or Saxe would mind driving the two ladies home, as he was on his way to a party and would be unable to come until late. He was very splendid in a red cravat, his hair glistening and fragrant with pomade. The horse was hitched to a tree, and knew the way back, even if they did n’t.

“ What time will the party be over ? ” asked Saxe.

“ ’Bout half-past ten.”

It was decided that young Cobb should come back by the camp and drive himself, Leduc being lame, and Saxe apparently afraid of horses.

“He ain’t got no bad habits, except biting,” the boy protested, half hurt.

“ But I don’t want to be bitten,” Saxe explained gravely, and Cobb went his way muttering some sarcasm about Bill’s not biting with his hind-legs.

“ Do you think it would be compatible with ‘squareness ’ to take a walk in the moonlight ? ” Saxe asked.

“ Perfectly. Nothing could be more unconventional in every way than my stay up here,—a walk or two in the moonlight can make no difference.”

Leduc and Annette were in the cabin.

“ But — the squareness ? ” persisted Saxe teasingly. “ Don’t you think walks in the moonlight with you may be rather hard on me ? ”

She laughed. “ That is your lookout. If you choose to risk it, I am ready.”

Saxe laughed too. “ Oh, I will risk it. I am, you know, as irresponsible as a baby ; if I should chance to misbehave it would be entirely your fault.”

“Yes. But — you will not ‘chance to misbehave.’ ”

They struck off through the pines, and soon came out on another part of the old logging-camp road, Saxe whistling Bonsoir under his breath. This part of the road was sandy and easier walking. They went on quickly through the mottled shadows. Suddenly Saxe exclaimed: —

“ Age tells on different people in such different ways ! I hardly realized how old I am, until I saw how hopelessly you bowled me over.”

“ Is that a sign of age ? ”

“ Certainly not, but there was undeniably something of — senility in my going to bits and making such an ass of myself. Still — it was rather pleasant, so long as it was n’t my fault. You are right about that, by the way, though you are young to have learned it. A man never goes any farther than a woman lets him — except, possibly, in what the poets call a great passion. A great passion is a rare bird nowadays, however, I imagine. Our lives are little, our aims are little, and our loves are little.”

He paused, and then, she not answering, went on reflectively : “ Or rather, not little, but fleeting. Confoundedly fleeting.”

“ That is certainly true,” she agreed, as they left the road and went down a steep incline toward the little river she had seen from Sunset Ledge.

“True, and—fortunate. ‘We forget, not because we will, but because we must,’—Arnold, is n’t it? Humiliating, but a tremendous comfort. If I had n’t believed it, I should have been pretty desperate last night.”

“ I knew it, and that is why I have been able to take it all so calmly, and — to go about with you this way.”

“Ah, you knew it. Women are quickwitted. I wonder if you knew how much I did care, — last night ? ”

“ I think I did.”

He looked at her profile sharply as they reached the bottom of the ravine.

“ I care now, too, you know; even nowadays it does n’t go quite as quickly as that ” —

“ I know. You care a little less than yesterday, to-morrow you will care a little less than to-day " —

“ Yes. Though I like you more than any woman I ever knew, and think that we could be the best of friends. Take care! ” he broke off, “ those stones are very slippery.”

Before them lay the plantation of birch trees, beautiful beyond description in the moonlight.

“ Could we get just within the forest ? ” she asked; “ we can’t half see them here. One must look up at the light through them ; it is the only way to see birches.”

They crossed the little river on a row of stepping-stones, climbed the bank, and reached the trees. She walked slowly, her head bent back, stopping now and then.

“ Hush! One can hear the wind. In the pine-wood I did n’t know there was any wind.”

He listened. “Yes. It is very pretty. So are you very pretty, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

She laughed. “ Certainly I don’t mind, if you really think so.”

“ I do, and just as an observation unbacked by any intention, I may add that I’d like to kiss you, under your chin ! ”

There was a kind of labored impertinence in his tone that she turned at, her eyebrows lifted.

Then, as he drew aside the sweeping branches of a young birch, and she passed him, she stopped short with a little cry.

“ A grave ! ”

“ The grave of Le Mioche! ”

IX.

There was a pause. Then she turned, her eyes full of tears.

“ See the poor white stones ! ”

Saxe nodded.

The moonlight, circled by the shadows of four large birches, fell full on the little mound. There was no headstone, nothing but the smooth white stones that surrounded it, nearly all of them half hidden in the long grass.

The Countess knelt down and looked at it closely.

“ Oh, how pitiful ! Think of his coming every year with one of these poor, ridiculous stones. Poor old man ! ”

“ It is the more pitiful when you consider that he was n’t old at all when he began, — that he was living a bad life among bad men.” He sat down by her, and took off his hat. “ And every year he had at least his one good day.”

Her shoulder touched his, and she leaned against it, unnoticing.

“ It has been his religion, — and who knows that it has not been a good one. He has prayed here. No Catholic ever quite forgets to pray.”

“No. But why wouldn’t he tell?” she asked, stroking the grass gently.

Saxe hesitated, and then, closing his hand over hers, answered in a low voice, “ I suppose because it has been his most precious secret for so many years ; one hates to give one’s most precious secret to — some one one does n’t love.”

“Yes.” She did not move, her hand rested quietly under his.

“ And then,” he went on, “ I think he is ashamed, — ashamed of his real feeling about the little dead child, — ashamed of his sentimentality; men are fools.”

She did not answer. The trees rustled softly ; a cloud hid the moon for a few seconds, then floated off again ; and Le Mioche lay under his thirty-one stones.

“ Dear,” said Saxe suddenly, “ I lied to you on our way here. It was all false, every word of it.”

“ I know.”

“ I love you once and for all — shall always love you. I’ve no right to, but I can’t help it, and it is in a way the best of me. I was ashamed of it, like a fool.”

“ Like Leduc.”

“ Like Leduc. It — hurt me to know that I could care so without you caring a — hang.”

“ My caring would only make matters worse,” she said dreamily.

“ Yes, of course it would only make matters worse, in one way, and I think I can honestly say I am glad that you do not care.”

“ If you can say that, you are a very good man.”

Her hand tightened a little on his. Putting his arm around her he drew her close to him.

“ I am not a very good man. It is one side of me that can say that, dear. The other side says — My God, I would give my right hand to have you care ! ”

“That is the worst side.”

“ As you like. You are a strange woman.”

“Am I? In what way?”

Le Mioche was forgotten.

“You know what I am feeling at this minute, and you sit here in my arms as calmly as though I were your grandfather ! ”

“ That is because I do not care, I suppose.”

“ Yes. Tell me, are you sorry ? ”

“ Sorry — that you care for me, or that I do not care for you ? ”

“ Sorry for me. Have you a heart in your body ? ”

He had not tightened his hold of her by a hair’s breadth, but his voice had changed.

“ Yes, I am sorry, if you are unhappy. I have a heart,” she answered matterof-factedly.

He released her, and jumping up suddenly, walked to the opposite side of the little inclosure, leaning his head against one of the birches.

She sat still for several seconds, and then rose and followed him. He did not move, and she laid her hand on his arm.

“ Don’t ! ”

He turned, half laughing. “ I’m not crying, if that’s what you mean.”

With a sudden movement, she took off his glasses and turned his face to hers. “ Why do you feel so badly ? ”

“ Why ? Because I am a man and I love you ; and I want you, and I can’t have you. Incidentally, I can’t see you without my glasses.”

“ I know ; never mind. Listen. Is it only that, or because I do not love you ? ”

He bent toward her, half closing his near-sighted eyes as he tried to get her face within focus.

“ What is the use of talking about it ? ” he retorted impatiently. “ It may be fun for you to vivisect my feelings, but it is not fun for me. You don’t love me, and when I’m sane I’m glad of it. But you torment me beyond endurance. What do you think I am made of ? ”

He reached for his eye-glasses, but she held them tight.

“ No, wait. What do you think I’m made of ? ”

Saxe laughed. “ You ! Ice and impeccability.”

“Then it has n’t occurred to you that I might care too.”

He stared at her stupidly. “You care too ! You never said so.”

“ No, I never said so.”

“ And you certainly have not done anything to make me think you cared.”

Vaguely, as in a mist, he saw her face. Without speaking he opened her hand and put on the eye-glasses that dispelled the mist.

“ Then, —you do care.”

“ Yes.”

She bent her face to his arm and stood there motionless. When she looked up she was very pale.

Saxe took her hands, as he had done the night before, and kissed them. He was utterly bewildered, and hardly knew what he was about. The feeling that had made him tremble a few minutes before had gone.

“We must go back,” he said at length. “It is late.”

“ Yes ? Oh, Le Mioche, Le Mioche ! ”

With an abandon that half frightened him, she flung herself on the ground and spread her arms out over the narrow grave. There was, in its perfect spontaneity, nothing theatrical in the act; it expressed her loneliness, hopelessness, her longing to take something to her aching heart. Saxe knew all this as he watched her, immovable. Le Mioche had been dead for more years than she had lived, yet at that minute he was a child, an armful, to her. The man knelt and raised her, holding her gently, her head thrown back against his shoulder. “ Dear heart,” he said, using the quaint phrase gravely, as though he originated it. Then he kissed her. She lay quite passive for a minute, and then drawing herself away, rose, and stood unconsciously smoothing her ruffled hair.

“ We must go.”

“ Yes.”

They walked slowly away, over the stepping-stones, up the hill, his arm about her shoulders. As they went down the next slope it grew darker, the moon having slipped below a bright cloud. Once she stumbled, and as she clung to him to regain her balance he caught her suddenly to him, bending his head.

Instead of her face, her hands met his cheeks in the darkness and pushed him gently away.

“ No, dear.”

“ Just once ! ”

“ No. Never. I told you because it seemed squarer, but you must not kiss me again.”

Saxe essayed a laugh. “ Then you kiss me.”

She paused, then taking his head in her hands, kissed him gravely, full on the mouth. The next instant the campfire glowed through the dark pine-trunks.

X.

Saxe slept little that night. At length, toward morning, tired of his hard cot, he dressed and threw himself down on a blanket under the beech tree. Through the branches the sky gleamed coldly, no color had as yet come to it; the birds were still asleep ; it was the quietest hour of the twenty-four. Leduc would sleep for hours yet, his cabin hermetically sealed. Saxe rolled over on his back and something hard hurt his head. He turned down the blanket and found the little heap of pine-cones with which Winifred had played the day before. She loved him. The tumult in his brain was such that he did not know whether he was happy or in despair. She was going away, but she loved him. He had held her in his arms and kissed her. Probably no woman knows what that first surrender means to a man who has loved hopelessly. A bird chirped in the tree above him. The light in the cabin went out, exhausted. Saxe shuddered at the thought of what the atmosphere in the little room must be. Suddenly he realized that all the birds in the world were singing. It annoyed him. Then he found that he had been asleep, and that the sun was up.

Tired and aching all over he fetched a towel and went for a swim, after which a stiff drink of whiskey sent him into a profound sleep that lasted until Leduc awoke him by hobbling into the tent and calling him. It was eight o’clock, and Leduc had been afraid M’sieu might have died in his sleep. That sometimes happens. Breakfast was ready, and Leduc’s foot was better. After breakfast, Leduc would have something to tell M’sieu.

Before they had finished breakfast, however, young Cobb came in with a note. Saxe opened it.

DEAR DR. SAXE, — I am going away to-day. Annette will stay as long as she likes, and then join me in New York. You will understand, and forgive me. Good-by, — and God bless you.

“ There’s an answer, she said,” announced Cobb, eating a piece of Leduc’s fried pork. “ I c’n wait.”

Saxe went into his tent and let down the flap. The note he sent back was shorter than hers.

DEAR COUNTESS, — You know best. I have nothing to forgive, much to bless you for. R. S.

It was over then, he thought, resolutely finishing his breakfast. It had to come to this end, and after a bit the relief would follow. He lit a pipe and stretched himself out under a tree, as he had done every day since he had been there.

Leduc fussed about, grumbling over his foot, singing, whistling, carrying things to and from the cabin. Everything was just as usual, apparently. When Saxe was halfway through his second pipe, the old man came and sat down by him.

“ Will M’sieu be so good and look at my foot ? ”

“ Yes,” grunted Saxe.

Leduc pulled off the slit boot, and displayed a yellow woolen stocking with neither heel nor toe.

“Did she find the socks?” asked Saxe.

“No, M’sieu. She gave me up.”

Saxe pulled off the sock, and pronounced the foot well enough for moderate use. Suddenly he remembered. “ Quite well enough for you to walk to the grave of Le Mioche,” he added, sharply.

Leduc started. “It is not so far, but it is not so near,” he stammered in French.

“ Oh, damn ! I tell you I know all about it, Leduc. I ’ve seen it. I know just where it is.”

The old man flushed, a slow red that burned painfully through his brown skin. “M’sieu knows,—M’sieu has seen ” —

“ Yes. The white stones are very pretty, mon vieux.”

Leduc sat without moving, the ragged sock loose in his hands. “ The white stones, — M’sieu likes them ? M’sieu did not laugh ? ”

“ Why should I laugh, Leduc ? ”

“ Thirty-one years is a long time. I was young then, I am old now,” the old man answered in French, as he drew on the sock. “ No one here knows ; I have never told ; they would have mocked me. Pauv’ Mioche ! ”

His brilliant blue eyes were dimmed with tears that did not fall; Saxe had seen tears rolling down his cheeks, but these were different. After a pause the younger man said gently : —

“ Why would n’t you show Annette ? And why did you pretend it was so far ? ”

Leduc laughed aloud. “ ‘Not so near, but not so far! ’ She would have found it not so near, if I had taken her, for I meant to go to it by way of Everett.”

“ But Everett is sixty miles from here.”

“Yes. I would have taken her by train to West Garfield, then to Everett, and back by train as far as Clinton. Then we ’d have hired a wagon ” — He broke off, smiling in delight at his clever scheme.

“You had no right to do such a thing, and I won’t have it; do you hear me ? ”

Leduc shrugged his shoulders and rose slowly. “ Eh, mon Dieu, I had given it up. She would have spoiled it all. She ’d have cut the grass and put up a gravestone, and cried over the mound. It is my grave, I tell you ! I tended it for years while she was in France. I never forgot it. Wherever I was I came back every year to put a stone on it. It is n’t hers, and she shan’t go to it.”

There was a certain dignity in his selfishness that appealed to Saxe.

“ You will have to take her, though,” he said sympathetically.

Leduc straightened up to his full height and looked down at the man in whose hands were, so to say, dogs and presents of money.

“ No, M’sieu,” he said, relapsing into his half-breed dialect. “ Leduc not have to. Leduc going away.”

“ Going away ! ”

“ Oui, M’sieu. Leduc has been thinking, and he is going away north.”

“ But that is nonsense. In the first place, I could take Annette to the grave if I chose. Your going can’t change that.”

The old man’s face twitched suddenly. “ M’sieu will not do that. Surely M’sieu will not do that ! It is all I have.”

Saxe hesitated, and then, rising suddenly, held out his hand. “ Look here, Leduc. I promise not to tell if you promise not to go.”

“ Not tell ? ”

“ No. I ’ll not tell if you ’ll stay until to-morrow.”

After an instant’s deliberation Leduc promised, and Saxe went off on his suddenly conceived errand.

He found Annette at the hotel, and learned that her mistress was to go by the afternoon train, and was now in the wood across the road, taking a walk. Saxe found her where he had known she would be, seated on the log where he and she had sat a few nights before.

She was very pale and looked worn, as if with a sleepless night.

“ Do not scold me for coming,” he began at once. “ I am not here on my account. You must not go until to-morrow.”

XI.

“ I remember,” began the Countess, gazing dreamily into the glowing ashes, “ a story that Annette — ‘ Nana ’ I called her then — used to tell me when I was very little.”

No one spoke ; no one had spoken for some time. Something, possibly the blending of the moonlight with the firelight had quieted them all, and then the pines, stirred by a soft overhead wind, were more than usually articulate.

“ It was the story of a little boy,” she went on after a pause, her hands clasped about her knees. “ She never told me his name. One day when I was ill. she showed me a curl of his hair in a locket, — such yellow hair, and so silky.”

Leduc looked up from his whittling, his eyes glinting under the heavy brows.

“ He must have been a dear little boy,” the Countess continued, looking absently at him.

“ He was lame. One poor little leg was shorter than the other, and his back was not quite straight, but only his father and mother cared; he did n’t because they were so good to him, and he was so happy.”

Saxe watched her, hardly hearing her words as the pine-cones he tossed into the dying fire blazed up and threw a vivid light over her.

He had walked all the afternoon, tramping doggedly over the roughest ground he could find, and he was tired, both mentally and physically ; his feelings were deadened, in a comfortable way, so that he was almost happy.

“ The father, a big, strong man, used to knot an old shawl — a blue and green plaid shawl it was, I remember — about his neck as Indian women do, and the little boy would sit in the shawl with his hands clasped just under his father’s chin, — and away they would gallop through the woods ! The little boy used to pretend that his father was a horse, — named ”— She broke off. “ I have forgotten the name! ”

“ ’Bucéphale.’ ”

It was Leduc who spoke, his voice harsh. Saxe turned to him. The old man had dropped his whittling and drawn back out of the firelight, only his big knotted hands, lying helplessly open, palm uppermost, with loose-curled fingers, being distinctly visible. There was something very pathetic about those hands.

The Countess’s eyes met Saxe’s, and held them for a minute, until the changing expression of his startled her, and she turned away with a slight shake of the head.

“ The little boy was very fond of his mother, but he loved his father even more, and when he was ill, as he was very often, he used to rest best when his father lay him on a pillow and carried him up and down before the cottage where they lived. He used to kiss his father’s hair, and pat it with his hot hands. I have often thought,” went on the Countess, in another voice, speaking very meditatively, “ that it must have made the poor mother unhappy to have the little boy love his father so much more than he loved her.”

“ I loved him more than she loved him, always ! ” exclaimed Leduc fiercely, rising with clenched hands. “ She hated his being lame — She was proud, ma femme, and resented his crooked leg. All her people were tall and straight, and — she blamed me — I always loved him the more, — I was a scamp, and a lame child was good enough for me.”

Annette sat with a white face and tight-clasped hands, looking at him, but he was not talking to her.

“ I know,” he went on, still in French ; “you want me to take her to his grave; you are trying to work on my feelings. You have done it, I — you have hurt me. But she shall not see it. It is mine, and she shall not spoil it.”

“ Lucien, — I would not spoil it, I only want to see it,” pleaded the old woman, rising too, and going to him. The others were forgotten. “ Why do you hate me so ? I did love him. God knows I loved him. I never tried to make him love me more than you. It hurt, but — I was glad. I thought it might help you.”

Leduc looked down at her with a curious dignity. “ If you loved him, why did you leave him all alone ? ”

“ Lucien ! ” Her voice rose to a trembling cry. “ I never left him, never a minute, except when you had him, and I knew—he did n’t want me.”

It was perhaps the most heart-breaking avowal a woman could make, and Saxe started up, his face hot.

“ Leduc ! ” he began, but Winifred stopped him with a gesture. He caught her hand and they stood there, reverential, unnoticed observers of the strange scene.

The pile of shavings and the stick forgotten by the old man caught fire from a spark, and threw flitting flames upon the figures of the two speakers.

“ I meant, — why did you leave him after he was dead ? He was afraid of the dark, he was afraid of the trees when the wind blew, — he was afraid of the black shadows rushing over the ground. He thought they were beasts. And you left him alone, — alone with all these things ! ”

Annette laid her hands on his arm. “ But, — he was dead, he did n’t know, he was n’t there, he was with the Blessed Virgin and the saints.”

Leduc shook her off.

“ Contes que tout cela! He was there, — there in the black earth under the shadows. He is there still. And you left him alone.”

Winifred’s hand closed more tightly over Saxe’s. Leduc’s obstinacy seemed invincible.

There was a short silence, while the old woman, her face hidden by her hands, rocked to and fro without speaking.

Then, leaving Saxe, Winifred approached the old man.

“ Leduc,” she said, gently using Saxe’s name for him, “don’t you believe in Heaven and the Blessed Virgin ? ”

“ Do you, Mademoiselle ? ”

She flushed. “ Yes, I do. I believe that Le Mioche has been there with her all these years.”

“ Then you don’t believe in Purgatory ? ” he broke in.

“ No. I don’t know, — but I believe in God, — and I know that God would n’t leave le pauvre Mioche all alone there all these years. Annette is a good Catholic ; she has not forgotten him, but she has not thought of him there; she has thought of hirn as being in Heaven. Do you see ? ”

“ I did n’t leave him all alone. I loved him,” he muttered, a little irresolutely, and then, drawing a long breath, she went on : —

“ Annette, Leduc — I mean Lucien — has gone every year to the grave, — every year, no matter where he was, and laid on it a white stone in memory of his visit. The grave has been taken care of by him. You have prayed for Le Mioche, you have not forgotten him, but — you did forget his grave.”

Annette uncovered her face. “ Yes, I did. Lucien, — will you forgive me, my man, and let me see it ? It is yours ; I will not touch it. But — oh, Le Mioche, Le Mioche ! ”

She burst into hard, painful sobs, and went up to him. Winifred drew back quietly and waited.

“ Annette, ma vieille, don’t cry. Come, I will show you. You are not to cut the grass,—you are to remember that it is mine, but — I will let you see it. Come.”

The old woman raised her head. “To-night ? ” she asked in amazement.

Leduc put his arm about her shoulders. His eyes were wet with tears that do not fall, but there was condescension in every movement as he led her away.

“ To-night. It is n’t so near,” he added, with an unsteady laugh, “ but then, it is n’t so far.”

XII.

The other two, left alone, sat down again, and Saxe mechanically threw some cones and sticks on the fire.

“ A very curious scene, was n’t it ? ” Winifred said, smiling thoughtfully. “ I wonder how far it is possible to love, after thirty years, a child who died at the age of four.”

“ It was n’t only the child,” returned Saxe in the same reflective tone, “ it was their youth, their old love and old dislike for each other, — their vanity, their obstinacy, — all of it together.”

“ He was offended at the thought of her having left him, quite as much as by her having left Le Mioche, — and she was irritated, in a way, by his faithfulness to the grave.”

Saxe watched her absently. “Yes. Oh yes,” he answered.

“ The beginning of the trouble,” she went on, “ was that Lucien threw her down, once, when he was drunk. Le Mioche was born a few months after, — lame. She blamed her husband, and said cruel things to him, poor woman ; it was hard for her, and then, from the first, the little fellow preferred his father.”

Saxe did not speak, and for a time she too was silent; then, a little hastily : “ I am glad I stayed. It will be a comfort to her, poor thing, as long as she lives, that she saw the grave, and that at the end they were —kind to each other.”

Saxe laughed. “Yes. Only, — you must go by the early train. Leduc’s emotionality will not last.”

“ I know. Yes, we will take the early train. Tell me, Dr. Saxe, what is the best hotel in Boston ? We shall stop over night there.”

“ The Touraine, I should say.”

“Thanks. It would be easy to go direct to New York, I suppose, but i like to be comfortable, and I confess I don’t find your much lauded dining-room cars up to their reputation ! ”

“ I never lauded them.”

“ I don’t mean you personally, of course. I mean all Americans in Europe. Americans arc so tremendously patriotic in Europe.”

Saxe frowned impatiently.

“ Hang Americans in Europe! ” he exclaimed, throwing a branch into the fire with a force that sent a shower of ashes and sparks out into the darkness. An owl hooted.

She laughed softly. “ How very rude you are! ”

He did not answer, and again they were silent, neither looking at the other. The moonlight no longer reached them, and the night was dark but for the red firelight; the wind had gone down, and silence brooded on the quiet trees.

At last, without moving, Saxe spoke.

“ I wonder,” he said slowly, “ why women have their feelings so much better under control than men. It is either that they have better disciplined wills, or — less strength of feeling.”

“ The latter, I should say,” she answered. “ Women are weaker physically and mentally than men, — why not emotionally ? ”

“ You must be right. Probably if you were at this moment feeling one tenth of what I feel, you would cry out.”

“ Probably. So it is just as well that matters are as they are.”

Saxe watched her as she spoke. “ Yes. It may interest you to know,” he went on in the same even voice, “ that if I were not convinced of the cowardice of such an act, I should shoot myself tonight.”

“ I am glad that you are convinced of the cowardice of such an act. You are also probably convinced, as I am, of the fleeting nature of most emotions. What is the song Leduc sings : ‘ Un peu d’amour, un peu de haiue, et puis ’ ” —

“ Et puis, bonsoir! Yes.”

“ To-night you are — sorry I am going, — but in a month you will be glad I did go, and in giving you a month I am unnecessarily generous.”

“ I shall be glad to-morrow, as far as that is concerned, but — it will all hurt none the less.”

“ It hurts me, too,” she said, relenting a little, and then sorry, as he laughed.

“ My dear child ! Thank you ; you are kind. It may hurt you a little ; I believe that it will, — but you are young, and this is the last of my youth.”

“ Nonsense ! You are forty-two ! ”

“ Yes. But this is the last, as it was almost the first of my youth. You are young, and I am old. That is the difference.”

She started as if to speak, and then was silent, her chin in her hand, the fingers edged with flame in the firelight.

At length she turned, looking full at him for the first time.

“ When I told you that I loved you, what did you think I meant ? ”

“ I knew. I knew ” —

“ But you think that I, a woman of nearly thirty, a woman who has been eating her heart out in a horrible loneliness for years, did not know what I was saying. That I loved you for a week, for a month. That — all this — has been a pleasant little romantic episode on which I should look back with a smile, — you thought all these things, because I can talk and laugh, and — ask you about — hotels ? In a word, because I do not mourn and sentimentalize, as you would like to have me.”

“ Stop ! I never wanted you to mourn and ” —

“ Wait. Now, just before I go away, — and it is to be Bonsoir, — I must tell you, in a way that you will remember, that I love you with every bit of me, and that as long as I live I will love you.”

She leaned over, laying one hand on his arm. With a sort of groan he shook her off.

“ Don’t touch me,” he said breathlessly.

He rose and walked up and down for a few seconds, without speaking.

“ God bless you for saying that,” he went on, as she rose, facing him. “ The worst of it is that it hurts you. I wish I could have it all.”

She smiled. “ No, dearest, I would not give up my share. It is a sorrow sweeter than all the happiness in the world. It is the best thing in the world ” —

Suddenly she reached out and took off his glasses, as she had done at the grave of Le Mioche. His eyes were wet.

They were hard, brilliant eyes, of a kind to which such moisture looks almost impossible.

With a little cry she hid her face on his arm and held it there until, breathing hard, he turned her head and kissed her.

“ Ah, it is hard, it is hard,” she cried, holding him tight. “ I cannot say Bonsoir — I cannot.”

He laid his hand on her hair. “ Dear, — we must. It is no good, we must.”

Her little outburst of passion was spent. “ Yes. Of course we must. Hush, — there they come. We must take the first train, — for it is n’t only Leduc, whose mood will not last ” —

Leduc was singing as they came, a song they both knew. “ Ah, vous diraisje Maman,” —

“ Le Mioclie loved it,” whispered Winifred. “ Richard, — promise me on your word of honor never to write to me.”

“ I promise on my word of honor.”

“ Even if I — should write — you.”

“ Even if — I cannot! ”

“ You must.”

“ Even if you should write to me.”

In the darkness they waited.

“ Papa vent que je raisonne ” — Annette was singing with him.

“ Good-by.”

“ Good-by.”

“ Bonsoir,” added Winifred.

“ Bonsoir ! ”

“ Here’s the lantern, Leduc ; light it, it is late.”

“ Oui, M’sieu.”

“ So you saw the grave, Annette ? ”

“ Yes, Mad’moiselle. The trees have grown big, but they are the same trees. And we are grown old, but we are the same people.”

“ We must go to-morrow morning, you know.”

“ Oh yes, I know,” returned the old woman composedly. “ It is best. Tonight we have been very happy, but we are the same people we used to be, — to-morrow we should quarrel. We are old, and I suppose we will never meet again. It is better so, — but this night will always be a happy memory.”

Winifred turned as they left the camp, and looked back at the now lonely fire. For a second she stood quite still, and then followed Leduc and Annette who carried the lantern.

“ Hotel Touraine, you said,” she remarked, as they reached the wagon, and Leduc waked young Cobb.

“Yes. It is a very good one. I hope you will have a pleasant summer.”

“ Thanks. All good wishes for your books, and — the laboratory.”

Leduc embraced his wife with a kind of tender gallantry not unmixed with relief, and the two women got into the wagon.

“ Good-by.”

“ Good-by.”

Cobb Happed tbe reins on the back of his horse, and the wagon started with a jerk.

When it was almost out of sight, Winifred called softly, —

“ Bonsoir.”

“ Bonsoir.”

Leduc sighed ostentatiously. “ Mon Dieu, mon Dieu. Bonsoir reminds me of the song.”

As they went back, following the dancing light of the lantern the old man raised his voice and sang cheerfully : —

“ ‘ La vie est value,

Un peu d’espoir,

Un peu de rêve,

Et puis — bonsoir! ’

That is very true, M’sieu. Leduc has found it very true, and Leduc is old, and knows.”

Saxe laughed.

“ Leduc is a very wise man. Does he know, among other things, where the whiskey is ? ”

As he poured out a glass by the lantern’s light, Saxe laughed again.

“ Et puis — bonsoir ! ”

Bettina von Hutten.

(The end.)