Told in a French Garden Part 22

"I wanted you to be happy with what I could give you."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not. No use to fib about it! It is too late.

Your notions are so queer."

"I suppose it is queer to love one woman--and to love her so that laboring for her is happiness! I suppose you do find me a queer chap, because I am not willing that my wife--flesh of my flesh--should flaunt herself, half dressed, to excite the admiration of other men--all for fifty dollars a week!"

"See here, Zeke, you are making too much of this! If it is the separation you can't stand--why come, too! I'll soon enough be getting my hundred a week, and more. That is enough for both of us. You can be with me, if that is what you mind!"

"If that is what I mind? You know better than that! Am I such a cur that you think, if there were no other reason, I'd pose before the world as the husband of a woman who owes nothing to him--as if I were--"

She interrupted him sharply.

"What odds does it make--tell me that--which of us earns the money? To have it is the only important thing!"

The man straightened up--and squared his broad shoulders. A strange change came over him.

He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder, and, for the first time, he spoke with a disregard for self-control, although he did not raise his voice.

"Look at me, Dora, and be sure I mean what I say. Leave me to-day, and don't you ever come back to me. It may kill me to live without you.

Well, better that than--than the other! I married you to live with you--not merely to have you! I've been a faithful husband to you! I shall remain that while I live. I never denied you anything I could get for you! But this I will not put up with! I thought you loved me--even if you were sometimes vain, and now and then cruel. If you're ill--if you disappoint yourself, I'll be ready to take care of you--as I promised. But don't never dare to come back to me otherwise! Unless you're in want and homeless, unless you can't live, but by the labor of my hands, I'll never sleep under the same roof with you again.

Never!"

"What nonsense, Zeke! Of course I'll come back! You won't turn me away! I only want to see a little of the world, to get a few of the things you can't give me--no blame to you, either!"

He did not seem to hear her.

Almost as if speaking to himself, he went on: "I've feared for some time you didn't love me. I didn't want to believe it. I was a coward.

I shut my eyes. I took what you gave me--I daren't think of this--which has come to me! I dared not! G.o.d punishes idolatry! He has punished mine. Be sure you're not making a mistake, Dora! There may be other men will admire you, my girl--will any of them love you as I do?

There's never a minute I'm not conscious of you, sleeping or waking.

Think again, Dora, before you leave me!"

"I can't, Zeke. I've signed a contract. I couldn't reconsider if I wanted to. It's just seven minutes to train time. Kiss me--there's a dear lad--and don't row me any more!"

She raised herself on tip toes and approached her red lips to his face--lips of an intense color to go with the marked pallor of the rest of the face, and which surely were never offered to him in vain before--but he was beyond their seduction at last.

"You've decided?" he said.

"Of course!"

"All right! Good-bye, then! You promised to cleave to me through thick and thin 'till death did us part.' I'll have no halfway business," and he turned on his heel, and without looking back he pushed his way through the crowd, which chatted and fussed and never even noted the pa.s.sing of a broken heart.

The pretty creature watched him out of sight.

There was a humorous pout on her lips. But she seemed so sure of her man! He would come back, of course--when she called him--if she ever did! Probably she liked him better at that moment than she had liked him in two years. He had opposed her. He had defied her power over him. He had once more become a man to conquer--if she ever had time!

But just now there was something more important. That train! It was three minutes to the schedule time.

As he disappeared into the crowd she drew a breath of relief, and hurried out of the waiting room and pushed her way to the platform, along which she hurried to the parlor car, where she seated herself comfortably, as if no man with a broken life had been set down that day against her record.

To be sure, she could not quite rid herself of thoughts of his face, but the recollection rather flattered her, and did not in the least prevent her noticing the looks of admiration with which two men on the opposite side of the car were regarding her.

Once or twice she glanced out of the window, apparently alternately expecting and dreading to see her stalwart husband come sprinting down the platform for the kiss he had refused.

He didn't come!

She was relieved as the train started--yet she hated to feel he could really let her go like that!

She never guessed at the depth of suffering she had brought him. How could she appreciate what she could never feel? She never dreamed that as the train pulled out into the storm he stood at the end of the station, and watched it slowly round the curve under the bridge and pa.s.s out of sight. No one was near to see him turn aside, and rest his arms against the brick wall, to bury his face in them, and sob like a child, utterly oblivious of the storm that beat upon him.

And he sat down.

"Come on," yelled the Youngster, "where's the claque?" And he began to applaud furiously.

"Oh, if there is a claque, the rest of us don't need to exert ourselves," said the Lawyer, indolently.

"But I say," asked the Youngster, after the Journalist had made his best bow. "I AM disappointed. Was that all?"

"My goodness," commented the Doctor, as he lighted a fresh cigar.

"Isn't that enough?"

"Not for _me_," replied the Youngster. "I want to know about her _debut_. Was she a success?"

"Of course," answered the Journalist. "That sort always is."

"And I want to know," insisted the Youngster, "what became of him?"

"Why," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Sculptor, "of course he cut his big brown throat!"

"Not a bit of it," said the Critic. "He probably went up to New York, and hung round the stage door."

"Until she called in the police, and had him arrested as a common nuisance," added the Lawyer.

"I'll bet my microscope he didn't," laughed the Doctor.

"And you won't lose your lens," replied the Journalist. "He never did a blooming thing--that is, he didn't if he existed."

"Oh, my eyes," said the Youngster. "I am disappointed again. I thought that was a simon-pure newspaper yarn--one of your reporter's dodges--real journalese!"

"She is true enough," answered the Journalist, "and her feet are true, and so is her red hair, and, unless she is a liar, and most actresses are, so is he and her origin, but as for the way she cut him out--well, I had to make that up. It is better than any of the six tales she told as many interviewers, in strict secrecy, in the days when she was collecting hearts and jewels and midnight suppers in New York."

"Is she still there?" asked the Youngster, "because if she is, I'll go back and take a look at Dora myself--after the war!"

"Well, Youngster," laughed the Journalist, "it will have to be 'after the war,' as you will probably have to go to Berlin to find her."

"That's all right!" retorted the Youngster. "I _am_ going--with the Allied armies."

We all jumped up.