Chapter 18

"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:

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.

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?

"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