XXIV

THE HOUSE WHERE LOVE LIVED

It was past the middle of October, and Allison's injured hand was not only free of its bandages, but he had partially regained the use of it. Doctor Jack still lingered, eagerly seizing every excuse that presented itself.

"I suppose I ought to be back looking for another job," he regretfully observed to Allison, "but I like it here, and besides, I want to hear you play on your fiddle before I go."

Allison laughed and hospitably urged him to stay as long as he chose. Colonel Kent added, heartily, after an old Southern fashion: "My house is yours."

Crimson and golden leaves rained from the maples, and the purple winds of Autumn swept them into drifts at the roadside. Amethystine haze shimmered in the valleys and lay, cloud-like, upon the distant hills. Through the long aisles of trees a fairy patter of tiny furred feet rustled back and forth upon the fallen leaves. Only a dropping nut or a busy squirrel broke the exquisite peace of the forest, where the myriad life of the woods waited, in hushed expectancy, for the tide of the year to turn.

Like a scarlet shuttle plying through the web of Autumn, the big red touring car hummed and whirred, with a happy young man at the wheel and a laughing girl beside him. Juliet's momentary self-consciousness was gone, and she was her sunny self again, though she still occasionally wept in secret, longing for her brother.

"Aunt Francesca," she said, one day, when the two were sewing on dainty garments destined to adorn Juliet, "do you think Romie will ever come back to me?"

"Not in the sense you mean, dear," replied Madame, gently. "We live in a world of change and things are never the same, even from day to day."

"She made him think I was a tomboy, and now she'll teach him not to love me. Why does she want everything?"

"Some women do, when they marry. Many are not content to be sweetheart and wife, but must take the place of mother and sisters too. But remember, Juliet, when a woman closes a man's heart against those of his own blood, the one door she has left open will some day be slammed in her own face."

"And then—?"

"Then the other doors will swing ajar, turning slowly on rusty hinges, but the women for whom they are opened will never cross the threshold again."

"Why?"

"Because they have ceased to care. There is nothing so dead as a woman's dead love. When the fire goes out and no single ember is left, the ashes are past the power of flame to rekindle."

"Do you think that, after a while, I won't care for Romie any more?"

"Not as you used to—that is impossible even now."

Juliet sighed and hastily wiped away a tear. With a quick, sure stroke, her life seemed to have been divided.

"Don't, dear. Remember what you have had. I often think a woman has crossed the line between youth and maturity, when she begins to put away, in the lavender of memory, the lovely things she has had—and is never to have again. The after years are made up, so many times, of things one has had—rounded off and put away forever."

"I know," returned Juliet, with a far-away look in her eyes. "I remember the day I grew up—almost the hour. It was the day I came here."

Madame stooped to kiss the girl's rosy cheek, then swiftly turned the talk to linen and lace. Always quick to observe, Juliet had acquired little graces of tone and manner, softened her abruptness, and, guided by loving tact, had begun to bloom like a primrose in a sunny window.

"When—when Miss Bernard comes back again," asked Juliet, wistfully, "shall I have to go?"

"No, dear—indeed no! This is your home until the right man comes a- wooing, and takes you to a little house of your own."

Scarlet signals flamed in Juliet's cheeks as she earnestly devoted herself to her sewing, and Madame smiled. Already, in quiet moments, she had planned a pretty wedding gown for Juliet, and a still prettier wedding.

Allison came frequently, sometimes alone and sometimes with his father or Doctor Jack. He had remarked once that when he desired to consult his physician, he always knew where to find him. Madame affected not to notice that a strange young man had become a veritable part of her family, for she liked Doctor Jack and made him very welcome, morning, noon, and night.

On Wednesdays, the men of the other household dined with her. Saturdays, she and Juliet were honoured guests at the Colonel's, though he deprecated his own hospitality. "A house needs a woman at the head of it," he said. "It was different when Miss Rose was here."

"Indeed it was," thought Allison, though he did not put it into words.

At the end of the month, when it was cool enough to make an open fire seem the most cheerful of companions, Madame had them all at her own table. Juliet was surpassingly lovely in her first long gown, of ivory- tinted chiffon, ornamented only by hand embroidery and a bit of deep- toned lace. Her wavy hair was gathered into a loose knot, from which tiny tendrils escaped to cling about her face. Madame had put a pink rose into her hair, slipped another into her belt, and had been well pleased with the work of her own hands.

After dinner, while Juliet played piquet with the Colonel, and Doctor Jack sat quietly in the shadow, where he could watch every play of light and shade upon the girl's lovely changing face, Allison drew Madame into the library and quietly closed the door.

"Aunt Francesca," he said, without preliminary, "I've been more kinds of a fool in a few months than most men can manage to be in a lifetime."

"Yes," Madame agreed, with a cool little smile.

"Where is Rose?" he demanded.

"Rose," replied Madame, lightly, "has gone away."

"I know that," he flashed back. "I realise it every day and every hour of my life. I asked where she was."

"And I," answered Madame, imperturbably, "have told you. She is simply 'away.'"

"Is she well?"

"Yes."

"Is she happy?'

"Of course. Why not? Beauty, health, talent, sufficient income, love— what more can a woman desire?"

"Aunt Francesca! Tell me, please. Where is Rose?"

"When I was married," answered Madame, idly fingering an ivory paper knife, "I went to live in a little house in the woods."

"Yes? Where is Rose?"

"It was only a tiny place, but a brook sang in front of it, night and day."

"Must have been pretty. Where did Rose go?"

"It was very quiet there. It would have been a good place to work, if either of us had been musical, or anything of that sort."

"Charming," replied Allison, absently.

"It wasn't far from town, either. We could take a train at two o'clock, and reach Holly Springs a little after three. It was half a mile up the main road from the station, and, as we had no horse, we always walked."

"Nice walk," said Allison, dejectedly.

"I have never been back since—since I was left alone. Sometimes I have thought my little house ought to have someone to look after it. A house gets lonely, too, with no one to care for it."

"I suppose so. Is Rose coming back?"

"I have often thought of the little Summer cottages, huddled together like frightened children, when the life and laughter had gone and Winter was swiftly approaching. How cold their walls must be and how empty the heart of a little house, when there is no fire there! So like a woman, when love has gone out of her life."

Allison sighed and began to sharpen his pencil. Madame observed that his hands were trembling.

"I see," he said. "I don't deserve to know where she is, and Rose doesn't want me chasing after her. Never mind—I had it coming to me, I guess. What a hopeless idiot I've been!"

"Yes," agreed Madame, cordially. "Carlyle says that 'there is no other entirely fatal person.'"

Something in her tone gave him courage for another question. "Once for all, Aunt Francesca, will you tell me where Rose is?"

"George Washington was a great man," Madame observed. "He never told a lie. If he had promised not to tell anything, he never told it." Then she added, with swift irrelevance, "this used to be a very pleasant time of the year at Holly Springs."

A great light broke in upon Allison. "Aunt Francesca!" he cried. He put his arms around her, lifted her from her chair, and nearly smothered her in a bear-like embrace. "God bless you!"

"He has," murmured Madame, disengaging herself. "My foster son has been a dunce, but his reason is now restored."

The two o'clock train to Holly Springs did not leave town until three, so Allison waited for an hour in the station, fuming with impatience. Both Colonel Kent and the Doctor had offered to accompany him, individually or together, but he had brusquely put them aside.

"Don't worry," he said. "My name and address are in my pocket and also inside my hat. I'll check my grip and be tenderly considerate of my left hand. Good-bye."

When he had gone Colonel Kent anxiously turned to the doctor. "Where do you suppose—and why—"

"Cherchez la femme," returned the Doctor.

"What makes you think so? It's not—"

"It's about the only errand a man can go on, and not be willing to take another chap along. And I'll bet anything I've got, except my girl and my buzz-cart, that it isn't the fair, false one we met at the hour of her elopement."

"Must be Rose, then," said the Colonel, half to himself, "but I thought nobody knew where she was."

"Love will find a way," hummed Doctor Jack. "I suppose you don't care to go for a ride this afternoon?"

"Not I," laughed the Colonel. "Why don't you take Juliet?"

"All right, since you ask me to. I wonder," he continued to himself, as he went toward Madame Bernard's at the highest rate of speed, "just how a fellow would go to work to find a woman who had left no address? Sixth sense, I suppose, or perhaps seventh or eighth."

Yet Allison was doing very well, with only the five senses of the normal human being to aid him in his search. He left the train at the sleepy little place known as "Holly Springs," and walked up the main road as though he knew the way.

"Half a mile," he said to himself, "and a little brown house in the woods with a brook singing in front of it. Ought to get to it pretty soon."

The prattling brook was half asleep in its narrow channel, but the gentle murmur was audible to one who stopped in the road to listen. It did not cross the road, but turned away, frightened, from the dusty highway of a modest civilisation, and went back into the woods, where it met another brook and travelled to the river in company.

The house, just back of the singing stream, was a little place, as Madame Bernard had said, but, though he rapped repeatedly, no one answered. So he lifted the latch and cautiously stepped in.

A grand piano, unblushingly new, and evidently of recent importation from the city, occupied most of the tiny living-room. The embers of a wood fire lay on the hearth and the room was faintly scented with the sweet smoke of hard pine. A well-known and well-worn sonata was on the music rack; a volume of Chopin had fallen to the floor. Allison picked it up, and put it in its place. On the piano was some of his own music, stamped with his Berlin address.

A familiar hat, trimmed with crushed roses, lay on the window seat. The faint, indefinable scent of attar of roses was dimly to be discerned as a sort of background for the fragrant smoke. An open book lay face downward on the table; a bit of dainty needlework was thrown carelessly across the chair. An envelope addressed to "Madame Francesca Bernard" was on the old-fashioned writing desk, and a single page of rose-stamped paper lay near it, bearing, in a familiar hand: "My Dearest."

The two words filled Allison with panic. Not knowing how Rose was wont to address the little old lady they both loved, he conjured up the forbidding spectre of The Other Man, that had haunted him for weeks past.

Sighing, he sat down at the piano, and began to drum idly, with one hand. "Wonder if I could use the other," he thought. "Pretty stiff, I guess."

He began to play, from memory:

[Illustration: musical notation]

and outside a woman paused, almost at the threshold, with her hands upon her heart. In a sudden throb of pain, the old days came back. She saw herself at the piano, aching with love and longing, while just beyond, in an old moonlit garden, Allison made love to Isabel.

[Illustration: musical notation]

Was it a ghost, or was it—? No, she was only foolish. Aunt Francesca had promised not to tell, and she never broke her word. Besides, why should he seek her?

[Illustration: musical notation]

"It's only someone who has stopped in passing," Rose thought, "to ask the way to the next town, or to get a glass of water, or—I won't be foolish! I'll go in!"

So she crossed the threshold, into the house where Love lived.

At the sound of her step, the man turned quickly, the music ending in a broken chord.

"You!" she gasped. "Oh, how could you come!"

"By train," answered Allison, gently, "and then by walking. I've frightened you, Rose."

"No," she stammered sinking into a chair. "I'm—I'm surprised, of course. I'm glad you're well enough to be about again. Did—is anything wrong with Aunt Francesca?" she asked, anxiously.

"Indeed there isn't. She was blooming like a lilac bush in May, when I saw her last night."

"Did-did—she tell you?"

"She did not," he returned, concisely.

"Then how—how—?"

"I just came. What made you think you could get away from me?"

"I wasn't—getting away," she returned with difficulty. "I was just tired—and I came here to—to rest—and to work," she concluded, lamely. "You didn't need me."

"Not need you," he cried, stretching his trembling hands toward her.
 "Oh, Rose, I need you always!"
 

Slowly the colour ebbed from her face, leaving her white to the lips.
 "Don't," she said, pitifully.
 

"Oh, I know," he flashed back, bitterly. "I've lost any shadow of right I might ever have had, because I was a blind fool, and I never had any chance anyway. All I can do is to go on loving you, needing you, wanting you; seeing your face before me every hour of the day and night, thirsting for you with every fibre of me. All I have to keep is an empty husk of memory—those few weeks you were kind to me. At least I had you with me, though your heart belonged to someone else."

"Someone else?" she repeated, curiously. The colour was coming back slowly now.

"Yes. Have you forgotten you told me? That day, don't you remember, you said you had loved another man who did not care for you?"

Rose nodded. Her face was like a crimson flower swaying on a slender stem. "I said," she began, "that I had loved a man who did not care for me, and that I always would. Wasn't that it?"

"Something like that. I wish to God I could change places with him."

"Did I," hesitated Rose, "are you sure—that I said—another man, or was it just—a man?"

"Rose! What do you mean?"

Covered with lovely confusion, she stumbled over to the window, where she might hide her burning face from him. "Don't you think," she asked, unsteadily, "that it is beautiful here? This is Aunt Francesca's little house, where she came when she was first married. She always calls it 'the little house where Love lived.'"

"And I came here," she went on, courageously, "because, in a house where
 Love—had lived, I thought there might be some—for—"
 

Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur. "Rose," cried Allison, "couldn't you give me just what I had before? Couldn't we go back, and never mind the other man?"

"There's never any going back," she answered, in a whisper. Her heart was beating wildly because he was so near. "And did I say—are you sure I said—another man?"

"Rose! Rose! Look at me! Tell me, for God's sake, who he was—or is. I can't bear it!"

She turned toward him. "Look," she said, softly. "Look in my face and see."

For a tense instant he hesitated. Then, with a little cry of joy, he clasped her close forever, having seen his own face mirrored in her happy eyes.

THE END