Christmas Roses and Other Stories Part 31

"We have all suffered," Mrs. Baldwin repeated gently.

"Some, more! some, more!" he said brokenly. "Some, most of all!"

They came back to the bridge, but though they crossed over, they did not pa.s.s out through the high gate that barred the other end. The gate was closed, and Guy stopped at it and leaned on it and put his face on his hands. Mrs. Baldwin stood at the gatepost beside him, her hand holding it and her head leaned against her hand.

"He would have liked you," she said. "He was so interested in young men, young poets. He was not old himself; and he wrote, too, did you know?

All those books in the living-room are his. He used to work there. I will give you his two books if you care to have them. They were thought very good; I think you will like them.--It was because of the crocuses we came here," she went on. "We found them one September, just like this, and the three little ruined cottages, and we knew at once that we must live here. He so loved them. When he was very ill--but before the very end when nothing could come to him any longer, when he was quite shut away--he used to lie at the window and look out at them--that big window above the living-room."

Divinely she was helping him. It was as if, taking him by the hand, she led him again away from his darkness and into her own light.

Yes, brokenly it came to him, it was there, secure; how won, he knew not. Through her he had found it; but that was because her feet had pa.s.sed before him up the calvary. She had gone through everything; and she knew everything.

And, to his new hearing, something of the infinite weariness of that ascent was in her voice when she next spoke, although it was a voice as peaceful as the evening air around them. "Are they not beautiful?" she said.

He raised his head and looked at the flowers through his tears. They had never been so beautiful. "They make me think of you," he told her.

"Do they?" Mrs. Baldwin still leaned her head against her hand, still looked out over the meadows. "But there are so many of them," she said.

"So many. That is what I feel first of all about them. I could not think of them as like one person. Mult.i.tudes. Mult.i.tudes.--And so silent! They make me think always of the souls of the happy dead."

_The Riverside Press_

CAMBRIDGE. Ma.s.sACHUSETTS

U. S. A.