Our Lady of the Beeches: Prologue of Letters

LETTER XXII.
June 4, AMONG THE BEECHES.
I AM glad you did not tell me who you are, as I do not wish to know. But I understand your letter only too well. You are lonely, poor man of science! you long for a friend, and because you do not know me, you fancy I might be that friend. You are in that state of mind — or isn’t it in reality a state of heart ? — when a man longs for a woman, a woman for a man friend.
I too have struggled with the feeling that it is foolish to keep you at such a distance, that we would each of us be happier for knowing the other, but I am conscious all the time that the feeling is a weakness. I like you, I like your letters; the eyes of the pastel in the tower-room have grown to be your eyes, and I like and trust them. But if I know who you are, would not half the charm be gone?
Have you never, before going to some strange place, made for yourself a picture of that place, and then, arriving, been almost ludicrously disappointed because the house was on the wrong side of the road, or the door not where you had built it in your imagination ? The me you have invented is the friend you want and need. The me I am is a different woman, the result of a host of things in which you have had no hand. And I confess that the you I have invented is all that I want, and I should be disappointed in a thousand ways if we should ever meet.
No, let us leave things as they are, dear Pessimist. I have been having a bad time of late: outside things have gone wrong; but what is worse, I am upset and jarred mentally. Even my trees cannot soothe me into my usual calm.
These lovely May days nearly break my heart, for some reason; the birds’ singing brings tears to my silly eyes; I feel the terror of growing old. Time is going, — “the bird of Time is on the wing, ” — and I am doing nothing. I am doing no one any good, myself least of all. I am not even enjoying life. But this is what you call “drivel,” — forgive it, and set it down to a touch of spring fever!
Thanks for the book, which I am glad to have, though I have not yet even opened it.
Old Annette expects her husband in July. She is much excited, in a quaint, shy way, and leaves me in a few days to go back to Paris. Here she comes with a frightful concoction of herbs for me to drink. She is very wise, and she thinks the spring air has got into my blood.
Perhaps it has!
Good - by, kindliest of Pessimists. Write me soon, and tell me I am a goose.
W.

LETTER XXIII.
June 15, BAR HARBOR.
DEAR W. — Poor child, poor child! so you have it, too. Spring fever is what the old wives in Yankeeland call it, did you know ? In children it may come from the liver. In grown people it comes from the memory. The memory of happy days is bad enough, but far worse is the memory of the happy days one never had.
But you are too young to know this. You should not know it,— should not, and yet you do; and I have a feeling that your pain comes, as does mine, from the memory of those happy days never had. Old Annette gave you all the mothering you ever knew. My grandmother gave me mine, and to this day I envy children with a silly, illogical, loving little mother who spoils them and cuddles them in her soft arms. Do you ? Have you children of your own ?
You are right, we must not meet; but we must be friends, we must trust each other. Do not be afraid of me ; I swear that if by moving my hand I could know all about you, I would not do it without your permission. There is not one person in the world who would not gasp with astonishment could he see this letter, but I mean it all. I am lonely. I do sometimes long, with a keenness that hurts, for a sympathetic woman friend with whom to talk, “ the heart in the hand, ” as Italians say; and yet I am not in the least a sentimental, or even a woman’s man. Once, years ago, when I was still in college, I fell in love with a pretty girl, and asked her to marry me. She refused, in the kindest way in the world, because I had no money, and she only a little ; beyond this I have had no romances. Is n’t it rather pitiful, the baldness of such a life? I could wish sometimes that I were the victim of a great tragedy. It would be something to remember, something for which to deserve the self-pity that wells up to my very eyes sometimes.
Are you laughing at me ? Is Our Lady of the Beeches in one of her mocking moods? If so, so be it. We are friends, and surely friends can bear a bit of chaff.
If you have not yet read the book, do not, I beg you. It is sincerely and honestly written, but it is the work of a materialist, and, I now see, no reading for a young woman of your character.
Why I was sent into the world with this taste and talent for iconoclastics, that which made me must know. I am counted a wise man, I have a string of letters after my name, I have made two discoveries considered important; but, after all, what good has it done me ?
And such reading as you could do on my lines, dear lady, at best superficial and imperfectly understood, can do you only harm. May I know whether you believe in a God ? If you do, as I hope, read nothing to shake that belief.
The Pessimist as a preacher!
I have been in this delightful place for ten days, and shall stay all summer, boating, riding, and loafing.
The air, a rare combination of sea and mountain, is delicious, the colors equal to those of Italy, and the house where I am stopping almost a bachelor’s hall, though my friend is married. His wife plays golf all day, and when the season is in full swing will dance all night, so we here are subject to but little control.
I went to a dinner last night, at which the conversation turned, strangely enough, on American women who have married foreigners. Nearly every one present knew of some such case, while of course several were well known to us all. I wondered whether any of the talkers knew Our Lady of the Beeches.
My silence drawing attention to me, one man asked, laughing: —
“And you, S—, don’t you know any such fair deserter ? ”
Almost involuntarily I answered, “Yes, the most charming woman I ever knew married in Europe.” And then the charming women present besieged me with questions, which I did not answer.
I noticed, among all the examples of international marriages cited, that not one was said to be conspicuously happy. I wonder why women will not learn that to cut themselves off from all early associations, after the age for making new close friends, is a dangerous thing. Women need friends, acquaintances will not do; and a girl brought up in one country can never — love her husband as she may — learn to be of another country.
But I am lecturing. Forgive me, you who know from experience whether I am right or wrong.
Write me soon again. Send your letter to Box 71, Bar Harbor, Maine. Faithfully your friend,
C. R. S.

LETTER XXIV.
June 27, LONDON.
Yesterday I had a tremendous shock. A man whom I have known for years, and liked, a friend of my husband, I had thought a friend of mine, asked me to go away with him.
I have never flirted with him, I knew that he was more or less in love with me, but I had thought that he was a gentleman. He has been mixed up in my life a great deal of late, and once or twice has shown me a kind of tacit sympathy that I could not refuse. That is all. Yesterday he dared, in perfectly cold blood, to propose to me to leave my husband for him.
He began by telling me I had a great deal of self-control, and you will see how innocent I was when I tell you I did not know what he meant. Then he asked me point-blank whether I had not known that he loved me.
I answered honestly that I had known it, and that I was very grateful to him for never letting his feelings become an obstacle to our pleasant friendship.
He informed me thereupon that when a man loves a woman he never is mistaken about her feeling for him, that he knew I loved him, and that the time had come when neither of us could stand the strain of present circumstances any longer.
His strength of conviction was such that I was utterly aghast for a minute, and then, the funny side of it suddenly appearing to me, I burst into what he called “a roar” of laughter. It was all so absurd.
When at last he stopped talking I told him very gently that he was utterly wrong, that I was not in the least in love with him, and that I must beg of him not to force me to see him again until he had come to his senses. He left me without a word, and I have been growing angrier ever since.
There must be a strain of vulgarity in me, for I should like at this moment nothing better than to box his ears. The worst of it is, Pessimist, that I am sure the wretch is somewhere cursing my self-control.
The belief that I care for him appears to be too deep-rooted to be jerked out so suddenly, and it seems that several of my innocent words and acts have been construed into a tacit acceptance of his passion. He called it his passion !
My unfortunate burst of laughter he no doubt took on consideration as the result of hysterical joy, and here I am, angry as I have been but a few times in my life, and — perfectly helpless. How can I make the creature believe that I never gave him a thought of that kind — that I looked on him as a good sort, not too clever, and rather attractively faithful to his mute adoration of my charming self! However —
So you are at dear old Bar Harbor! Why spell it with a “ u ” ? Anything so essentially, deliciously American surely ought to be writ in the American way. I have been there, and love it.
When I was very young I was in love there, and that was enchanting.
The object of my love was a handsome youth with blue eyes, and, oh rapture! a budding mustache. He had a great deal of money, and his attentions, although I was in reality too young to be the recipient of such things, were not discouraged by my only relative, a cousin, and for a time all went well, and we were engaged, subject to certain restrictions.
The following winter I had the measles and was taken South to recuperate. My young body, alas, recuperated no sooner than did my young heart, and poor Annette’s was the task of seeing him when he came to see me in the early spring. Vanity notwithstanding, I am compelled to admit that he was not crushed by the blow, and a few years ago I met him at Venice with his wife, a very pretty girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead.
Does one still go to Duck Brook and Bubble Pond ? Dear Bar Harbor, how blue the air is there, and how strong the salt smell!
No, I have no children; and will you think me very awful for being glad I have not?
Your moralizing on international marriages amuses me. How do you know, dear Pessimist, for you do know a great deal. You are not entirely right, however. Now the reason, I think, that such marriages are apt to be unhappy is that they are nine times out of ten merely manages de convenance. A very rich girl marries a more or less needy nobleman (and say what one will, European men as a whole greatly prefer marrying women of their own race) ; she lives with him the life he is used to and likes, and takes up his interests. If they are in love with each other in such a way that it lasts, of course all is well; but usually at least one of them tires, and then no old associations, no common relations and friends binding them together, the woman, do what she will, compares the two countries, and grows homesick. It is a dangerous experiment, as you say, though there are some exceptions.
The happiest people I know in the world are an American girl and her Dutch husband. The girl was not rich, the man had not only little money, but also no particular social position, and yet they are perfectly happy; the necessary bond in this case being a passion for tulips. The girl was always crazy about flowers, and the man is one of the most successful amateur “tulipists ” in Holland. He directed her love for flowers in general to tulips in particular, and there they live among acres of garden, like an unmolested Adam and Eve.
So you have never married. I thought you had not, even before the letter after your illness. I have been married for some years. My husband is very good to me; I can’t imagine a better husband, in many ways.
I tell you this that you may imagine me no Griselda, after my occasional wails. The unhappiness I have, amigo, comes from within. Do not pity me too much.
To-day, or rather this evening, I am savage with the whole world, most of all with myself for paying so little heed to the moods and thoughts of what I considered a harmless little man. I should like to fly off to a wilderness and revert to a savage life. I wish my only thought was to have enough to eat. I wish I had a nice comforting vice, such as smoking, or bridge. Nothing keeps a woman out of mischief so well as a pet vice.
I have not read the book, but I think you had better let me. The God I believe in is the God of no creed, and of infinite mercy. I do not fear Him. Your book would not shake me. No book in the world could, though I am not at all pious.
Annette had a mass read to-day, in the I fear vain hope of receiving a letter from her husband, who has not once written since you sent him the money. Poor old woman!
I trust the money reached you safely through the Harpers?
Good-by. I like the thought that you are my friend. God bless you.
W.

I.

“‘ La vie est brève, un peu d’espoir, ’ ” Leduc sang as he came slowly up the slope,the letter in his hand: Un peu de rêve, et puis bonsoir! ' ”

Saxe rolled over, brushing the pine needles from his coat. “Hurry up! ” he called.

Leduc’s vivid blue eyes twinkled under their wrinkled lids as he put the letter into Saxe’s outstretched hand.

“M’sieu is pretty old to be so excited by a letter from a woman. Pretty old! ”

“Old? I? I am twenty-five this evening in feelings and in appetite. Did you get the coffee ? ”

Leduc grunted. “Yes an’ the deviled ham, an’ the whiskey. Leduc tired, Leduc must sleep two-three minutes, — then he make the fire. ”

Throwing himself face downward on the fragrant earth, he was silent.

Saxe watched him, an amused smile in his eyes.

“The facile sleep of the man of rudimentary conscience and a good digestion. The man is to be envied, —by another than me, however.”

The letter expected for days lay on Saxe’s updrawn knees: a long, slim white envelope, addressed in a very clear, unadorned handwriting, “To the Author of The Pessimist’s Breviary, ” and re-addressed by a clerk in his publisher’s office. He turned it over; the blue seal was small and perfect.

“When I held out my hand to take it,” the man mused, “it trembled. I both felt and saw it tremble. Once more, Richard Saxe, I ask you, on your honor, are you in love with her ? ”

A snore from Leduc being the only answer to his question, he took a knife from his pocket and carefully cut the letter open.

It was five o’clock in the evening, and the ochre seams in the big pines about him were crimson in the sunlight. The ground, modulating gently to a little blue lake, was bare of grass, warm with rich tints of brown, and swept with swift shadows as the wind stirred the branches high above. To the left stood a small cabin, flanked by a dingy tent.

Saxe read his letter slowly, often going back and re-studying a phrase, his expression changing curiously in his perfect freedom from observation. His face was that of a man close on middle age, with a handsome nose and chin, small brilliant eyes that shone behind rimless glasses, a broad, well-modeled brow shadowed by a lock of stiff brown hair, and a heavy, short-cut mustache streaked with gray. His muscular throat, bared by a low-collared flannel shirt, lent him a youthful air that he would have lacked in more civilized clothes, and his clever looking hands, though brown, were distinctly the hands of a student. Once he laid down the letter, and taking off his eyeglasses with a little downward swoop of three fingers, opened and closed his eyes several times in rapid succession, in a way evidently characteristic, before putting them on again.

“Beast! ” he said aloud once, and then a quick smile at himself flashed two dimples in his cheeks.

At last Leduc grunted, rolled over, and awoke. “Bien, bien, bien, bien,” he muttered,yawning. “I dream M’sieu have the fire all built for poor old Leduc! ”

“Leduc had better hurry and build the fire for poor old M’sieu. The trout is cleaned, and in the pail there. I ’ll attend to the coffee while you fry him.”

Leduc paused, looking down at him shrewdly. “ De bonnes nouvelles, M’sieu ? ”

“Yes. Very good. More than — get to work, man.”

“When I was the age of M’sieu, there was a little English girl in Bangor, — pretty to eat, I tell you. My God, how I love that girl, — when I was the age of M’sieu! ”

“Why didn’t you marry her?” asked Saxe, rising too, and walking the old man toward the cabin.

“Oh, — she was married, — and me, too. Telle est la vie. Rotten old world! ”

“Rotten old Leduc ! I forgot you were a Frenchman. Unmarried Frenchmen never fall in love with girls, do they ? ”

Leduc scrutinized his innocent face sharply, and then, satisfied of his good faith, “No, we marries them, but we do not love them. Oh no. I too have passed that way. I too married a girl. Là, là, — where is that trout ? ”

He disappeared behind the cabin, and a few minutes later Saxe heard him burst into a shout of laughter, and exclaim: “Holy Mother of God, he has cut off its head! ”

Saxe apologized. He had cut the trout’s head off,half through ignorance, half through absent-mindedness, and felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. He was feeling very happy, moreover, and quite willing to apologize to nearly any one for nearly anything.

As he poured out a glass of whiskey, he smiled at it absently and said to Leduc: “Nothing like a ' nice comforting vice,’ is there ? ”

“Vice? M’sieu! But yes, M’sieu is right, only I should choose not whiskey. Whiskey make a brute of a man. A pig.”

“I may say without vanity that neither would it be my choice. By Jove, smell that coffee! ”

The fire, burnt down to a steady glow, cast a faint circle of beautiful light around the two men sitting by it. The fish, nailed to a strip of board, was half cooked; the fragrance of the coffee mingled with the pine smell as a cone crackled from time to time, sending a spray of sparks into the closing in darkness. An owl hooted. Saxe sat with his arms clasped about his knees, his eyeglasses glinting in the firelight, his forehead white under the lock of hair. Leduc, a picturesque enough figure, knelt close in the glow, shifting the board to which the decapitated trout, ruined, according to him, for boiling, was nailed. Suddenly the old man turned, and dropped the board full in the fire.

“Can you kindly show us the way to Lake Silver Camp ? ”

The speaker stood close by him, her face in the light, his back to it. “ Lake Silver ? ”

“I am looking for a guide there, Lucien Bonnet.”

Leduc rose. “Sacristi, Annette!”

Saxe sat perfectly still. It all seemed to have happened before. The burning fish hissed, the coffee boiled over. Leduc and the little woman stood staring at each other; then she put her hand to her face and burst into tears.

Saxe rose and left the firelight.

She was standing just outside its radius, and as he approached, a sudden leap of the flame fed by the pine board flashed over her.

“ Let us — leave them alone, poor things, ” he said.

The boat was drawn up in the sand, and they sat down on it in silence.

At last she said, “Is it really he,— Bonnet ? ”

“Yes. But — I knew him — they all do hereabouts — as Leduc. You must believe that.”

“I must believe that ? What do you mean ? ” she returned, struck by his tone.

“I mean that I did n’t know. I am Richard Saxe, and you are ‘ Our Lady of the Beeches.’ ”

There was a short silence, while the water lapped the sand with soft lips, and the trees stirred overhead. He could barely see the outlines of her figure, it was so dark; he looked in vain for the moon; the mesh of waving darkness overhead was studded with stars.

“Hush! ” she said suddenly. “He is crying, too.”

“Le Mioche,” suggested Saxe.

Then he smiled to himself. Leduc’s tears were very near the surface.

“Where has he been, do you know ? ” she asked, rising and facing him. “He did not come, and he never wrote.”

“Yes, he has been on a spree, —to Bangor. ”

“To Bangor! ” She laughed softly.

“Yes, he told me of the spree, but I never suspected that you furnished the money for it. You and I.”

They both laughed again.

All at once she turned. “What is burning? It is your supper! ”

“It is my supper; my only trout. Let it burn.”

But she sped up the path; he saw her slight figure bend easily over the fire, there was a splash of sparks, another laugh, and she stood upright, her face in the light beckoning to him.

“It is a charcoal — ruined — a wreck. And those two old — geese — have disappeared. I hope they have n’t gone altogether! ”

“I should n’t mind, ” answered Saxe recklessly. “But they are only in the cabin.”

“Oh, you have a cabin ? How disappointing. ”

She turned, with a little gesture of disapproval that delighted him.

“The cabin is Leduc — Bonnet’s. Behold my habitation.”

“Ah, a tent. That is much better.”

She sat down, leaning against the very tree on which he had leaned two hours before while reading her letter, and took off her hat. Her fair hair was ruffled into a roughness of little curls and tendrils ; her cheeks were flushed. Saxe stood looking at her.

From the cabin window came a narrow strip of yellow light and the sound of voices.

“If you don’t put on some wood, the fire will be out in two minutes.”

He started. “Yes, — I will put on a log.”

While he bent over the fire an idea struck him. “You will have a cup of coffee? It is good.”

“Yes. I am hungry.”

She smiled on him with the serenity common to some women when a man is on their account beside himself with embarrassment — or any other emotion. He poured out the coffee, gave her sugar and condensed milk; he rushed to the cabin and brought out a tin of “ water crackers ” and another of deviled ham. A small box — it had held candles — did duty as her table. He watched her eat.

“Don’t you want to know how we happened to drop in on you in this way ? ” she asked, after a time.

“Yes, I want to know,” he answered with an effort. “Your letter came this afternoon. It was written in England. ”

She dropped her cracker, and looked away. “My letter,” she repeated — “which letter? I never”— A slow flush, deliciously visible in the now vivid firelight, was creeping from her high white collar to the loose hair on her brow.

Saxe’s courage came back with a rush. “Yes, your letter. The best of them all. The one about the fool who dared to make love to you. To you! You ended by bidding God bless me.”

She set down her cup, and rose. “Mr. Saxe, —or do I mean Dr. Saxe? — that was all very well, it was amusing, and harmless, so long as we didn’t know each other, but now that we do — in a way — you must forget all that. Although,” she went on, in a lighter tone and with a little smile, “I am off to-morrow, so after all it doesn’t make much difference.”

Saxe winced.

“I must forget all that. And you are off to-morrow? ”

“Yes, I go back to civilization, leaving Annette.” As she spoke, the old woman and the old man came out of the cabin, and approached the fire.

“Monsieur must excuse me,” Leduc began at once, in French, wiping his eyes. “It is my wife. She comes all the way from Paris to look me up.”

Saxe held out his hand to the old woman. “I cannot tell you how glad I am that you found us, ” he said. “Sit down and have some supper.”

“Thank you, sir,” she answered, in far better English than her husband could boast. “We drove over from Windsor.”

“Mademoiselle will permit the old man to kiss her hand, after all these years ? ” Leduc bowed in a graceful way that amused Saxe in the midst of his bewildered pain. Going away tomorrow !

“It is to visit the grave of our little child, sir, that I have come,” Annette went on, in an undertone, to Saxe. “And Mademoiselle has come with me because I am too old to go so far alone. She is an angel.”

“I am sure of it.”

“What will you? Only my man knows to find the grave, and we may be gone two-three days, and who but Mademoiselle would stay all that time in the ’otel at Windsor! ”

Saxe took off his eyeglasses and closed his eyes hard for a minute.

“She is going to stay at Windsor ? ”

“Annette, some one must tell the boy that we are coming, or he will drive off and leave us.”

It was the voice of Mademoiselle.

Annette turned down the slope, and Saxe, calling after her to wait, thrust a lighted lantern into Leduc’s hand and sent him after her.

Then he turned. “You say you are off to-morrow,” he said quickly; “but Annette tells me that you were going to stay on at Windsor while she and — he — go to see the grave of Le Mioche. Now listen. You say I must forget all that, now that we know each other. Yery well; I promise; I will neither by word nor look, if I can help it, remind you of anything. You will have to see me only when you choose. I will do all that you wish. I have always done all that you wish. Only stay. Let them go to the grave of Le Mioche.”

The old pair were coming back, the lantern danced among the trees, and Leduc’s voice, piercingly sweet, sang a snatch of some old song: “Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un instant.”

She laughed. “Not very polite of him, after her coming all this way, is it ? ”

“You will stay?” he persisted, frowning over his eyeglasses.

“If I had known I was to see you ” — she answered, demurring.

“But you did not. Nor I. And it is not fair to punish me for what — the gods have chosen to bring about.”

“Mademoiselle, a storm is comng up, and the boy refuses to wait,” Annette said, coming toward them.

The trees were tossing, the wind moaning.

“Yes, you must go,” assented Saxe, a little roughly.

She put on her hat without speaking, and they followed the lantern to the waiting wagon.

“Well?” he said suddenly, stopping.

“I — I would rather go.”

“No. Stay. You forget the chief thing, ” he added, forcing a laugh. “I do not, need not, know your name, Mademoiselle ! Can’t you stay? ”

“‘Mademoiselle,’” she repeated, hesitating. Then, holding out her hand, “Very well. I will stay; you will not know my name, and — you will forget the rest. We will begin over! ”

Saxe awoke at dawn, a sound of beating mingling with the every-day one of Leduc’s piercingly sweet voice raised in his favorite “La vie est vaine.” Vague reminiscences of house-cleaning, years ago in his grandmother’s day, stirred his brain; he opened his eyes to find his tent flooded with rosy light; to see, beyond, a patch of blue sky, blurred and broken by stiff pine branches. He remembered, and reaching for his eyeglasses, put them on.

“I say, Leduc, — Bonnet, — whatever your name is ! ”

“M’sieu?”

Leduc’s face, rosy as the drawn itself in spite of his age, appeared in the open flap, his soft curly hair ruffled.

“ What the deuce is that noise ? ”

The old man entered unceremoniously, a stout stick in his hand.

“It is that I am preparing for Annette, M’sieu. She has eyes like a hawk, and a tongue like a scourge.”

“So it was house-cleaning! ”

“C’est ça. I’ve been beating my mattress. The dust in that mattress was something étonnant ! and not a grain would have escaped her. A terrible woman! ”

Saxe turned over lazily. “Then you think she will be coming again to-day ? ”

Leduc rose and took up his stick. “Coming? M’sieu — she love Leduc, that old woman. It is a cur’ous thing, by gum! Twenty years ago she left Leduc. He treated her pretty bad, an’ she couldn’t stand it, so off she went at the end. Now — here she is.”

“You know perfectly well that she hasn’t come on your account, you old scoundrel,” returned Saxe, watching him.

“Comment ça ? Why then ? Why she come ? ”

“Le Mioche.”

Leduc turned and looked out into the morning.

“Tiens, Le Mioche! ”

“Yes, Le Mioche. Now look here, Leduc. Did I, or did I not, pay you well, last year ? ”

“Oui, monsieur” —

“Did I, or did I not, give you a new rifle, and a present in money besides ? ”

“M’sieu was very good — M’sieu is galant homme.”

The old man turned, his face irradiated with the most enchanting of smiles.

Saxe went on, rubbing his eyeglasses on a corner of his blanket. “Very well. If you want another present this time, — say that setter of Sam Bradley’s and some money, — you, too, are going to behave like a — galant homme ! ”

“M’sieu, Leduc is a galant homme. Leduc a bad man, but he always been a slave to women.”

“Nonsense ! I don’t want you to be a slave, but I won’t have you disappoint — Annette. ”

“M’sieu a raison. Poor Annette, she would be very sad. Also Mademoiselle.”

“Also Mademoiselle,” agreed Saxe, without flinching from the keen eyes fixed on him.

“What does M’sieu wish me to do ? ” asked the old man, unable, as he always was, to look long into Saxe’s face, and turning away.

“I want you to be as decent as your instincts, partly inherited, no doubt, also partly acquired, will allow you.” Then with a mischievous delight he went on slowly: “ Those fools who deny atavism, inherited tendency, the whole Darwinian theory, should be confronted in a body, my good Leduc, with you. You are a most beautiful example of all of those things. The shape of your head is distinctly simian; your instincts are simian, —splendidly so. You have spent the greater part of your life in the humanizing influence of great trees, and yet you are untouched by any of the qualities that emanate from them. Amazing, amazing! ”

There was a short pause, after which the old man, passing his hand through his hair as if to feel the shape of his head, said: —

“M’sieu wishes to bathe, this morning? What time does M’sieu want his coffee? ”

Saxe looked at his watch. “Be ready for me at half-past six — and remember : one word to disappoint your poor wife, —no dog, no present.”

Leduc straightened up. “It is not necessary for M’sieu to menacer. Leduc have a heart, and Leduc grows old.”

Then he went out with a beautiful dignity of carriage.

Saxe splashed about in the still gilded waters of the little lake for ten minutes, dressed, and appeared at the fire at promptly half-past six. Breakfast was ready. Coffee, fried eggs, bacon, and johnny-cake. Leduc, in a clean flannel shirt, his hair still separated into gleaming, wavy locks by the recent passage of a wet comb, awaited him.

When Saxe had demonstrated his good humor by praise of the johnnycake, the old man began gravely: —

“M’sieu — Leduc wants to tell M’sieu something.”

“To tell me something? ”

“Oui, M’sieu — Leduc has no children, he is a poor solitary old man — except when M’sieu is with him.”

Saxe bowed his acknowledgment of this compliment in silence.

“But Leduc, — Leduc has here in his breast — what no one can take from him. A memory.”

The sharp blue eyes were wet. Saxe put down his cup and watched him, a frown of interest between his brows.

“Years ago — Leduc had a little child. A little child with so yellow curls. God sent it to Leduc to make him a better man. But God got tired of trying and took Le Mioche.”

“For Heaven’s sake, man, stop it! ”

Saxe rose impatiently and turned away. A squirrel rushed across an opening in the trees, his plumy tail erect; birds were singing everywhere ; a little yellow flower peered out from the mossy roots of the one beech near. Saxe stooped and picked the flower with gentle fingers, and after looking at it closely, laid it between the leaves of his notebook.

“M’sieu! ”

He turned. Leduc’s face was white, his eyes dry. “M’sieu, you wrong an old man. Leduc a bad man, a liar, he beat his wife when he was drunk, he cheat at cards. But Leduc love Le Mioche. Le Mioche love him. M’sieu scold about Annette. Bien — I am sorry she comes, — ça m’ennuie, —but M’sieu go to the grave of Le Mioche and he will see how many white stones! Thirty-one. Every year one. Leduc did not forget Le Mioche, M’sieu.”

He was telling the truth, and the poor dignity in his voice touched Saxe, who held out his hand.

“I beg your pardon, Leduc. I was wrong, and I am sorry.”

Leduc shook his hand and sat down again in silence.

“Monsieur,” he said at last, in one of his accesses of good French, “you are very wise, and I am an ignorant old scoundrel, but I have taught you one thing that you did not know before. The worst of men has his one good quality. The blackest of sheep has its one white hair. It is bad to be too pessimistic.”

Saxe repressed a smile at the old man’s vain delight in himself as an exposition of this theory, and went on with his breakfast.

“M’sieu, Mademoiselle is pretty, is n’t she ? ”

Saxe started. “Pretty, oh yes. Very pretty, and very good — I gather from your wife.”

“Yes, very good. I know her since she was a little baby. That ’s why I still say ‘Mademoiselle.’ Her real name is ” —

“My very good fellow, do you think I do not know her real name ? ”

Leduc started, as he scraped the remaining shreds of bacon together preparatory to mopping them up on a bit of bread. “M’sieu knew her before ? ”

“Of course I knew her before,” returned the other man, taking off his glasses and opening his eyes very wide. “Why should n’t I know her? ”

“Dieu, que le monde est petit! But that is very nice for her, — to find M’sieu here, — and very nice for M’sieu — as the other lady does not come.”

“The other lady ? ”

“The lady whose letter makes M’sieu’s eyes change. Oh, Leduc is not blind! Last year there was a letter, too ” —

Saxe considered a minute, and then, vaguely seeing a series of advantages to be derived from this error, laughed aloud.

“Leduc certainly is not blind. As he says, I cannot have the lady of the letters, so it will be very agreeable for me to see something of Mademoiselle, who is charming, too.”

“I suppose M’sieu will not be coming to the woods any more ? ”

The old man, encouraged in his curiosity, smiled knowingly. “He will be marrying this winter.”

“Everything is possible in this best of possible worlds. Now then, old chatterbox, hurry and clear away that mess! ”

Bettina von Hutten.

(To be continued.)