Part 23 (2/2)

”I came to see if I could be of any a.s.sistance.”

(”Ah,” ran Cartaret's unjust thoughts, ”it's very evident you're rich now, Charlie!”)

”n.o.body else came with you,” he said.

Seraphin hesitated. He twirled his soft hat in his hands.

”They thought--all but Houdon, who still persists that you have been rich always--they thought that, now that you were rich, you might prefer other society.”

”_You_ didn't think it?”

”I did not.”

It was said so frankly that even Cartaret's present mood could not resist its sincerity. Charlie frowned and put both his hands on Seraphin's shoulders.

”Dieudonne,” he said, ”I'm in trouble.”

”I feared it.”

”Not money-trouble.”

”I feared that it was not money-trouble.”

”You understood?”

”I guessed. You have been so happy of late, while you were so poor, that to absent yourself from this gayety when you were rich----” An expressive gesture finished the sentence. ”Besides,” added Seraphin, ”one cannot be happy long, and when you told me that you had money, I feared that you would lose something else.”

Cartaret wrung the hand of his friend.

”Go back,” he said. ”Go back and tell them that it's not pride. Tell them it's illness. I _am_ ill. It was good of you to come here, but there's nothing you can do just now. To-morrow, or next day, perhaps I can talk to you about it. Perhaps. But not now. I couldn't talk to any one now. Good-night.”

He sat down again--sat silent for many hours after he had heard Seraphin's footsteps die away down the stairs. He heard the hurdy-gurdy and thought that he could not bear it. He heard the other lodgers return. He heard the strange sounds--the creaking boards, the complaining stairway, the whispering of curtains--which are the night-sounds of every house. In the ear of his mind, he heard the voices of his distant guests:

”What woman's lips compare to this: This st.u.r.dy seidel's frothy kiss?----”

Because he grew afraid of the ghosts of doubt that haunt the darkness, he lighted his lamp; but for a long time the ghosts remained.

This was the very room in which he had told her that he loved her; this desert place was once the garden in which he had said that little of what was so much. She had stood by that table (so shabby now!) and made it a wonderful thing. She had touched that curtain; her fingers, at parting, had held that rattling handle of the shattered door. He half thought that the door might open and reveal her, even now. Memory joined hands with love to make her poignantly present. Her lightest word, her least action: his mind retained them and rehea.r.s.ed them every one. The music of her laughter, the melody of her grace, wove spells in the lamplit room; but they ceased as she had ceased; they left the song unfinished, they stopped in the middle of a bar.

He wondered whether it must always remain unfinished, this allegro of love in what, without it, would be the dull biographic symphony of his life; whether he would grow to be an old man with no memories but broken memories to warm his heart; and whether even this memory would become as the mere memory of a beautiful portrait seen in youth, a Ghirlandaio's or a Guido Reni's work, some other man's vision, a part of the whole world's rich heritage, a portion of the eternal riddle of existence.

”So short a time ago,” crooned the ghosts--”and doubtless she has already forgotten you. You have but touched her hands: how could you hope that you had touched her heart? She will be happy, though she knows that you are unhappy; glad, though you are desolate. You gave her your dreams to keep, your hopes, your faith in love and womankind: and this is what she did with them! They are withered like that rose.”

He had put the yellow thing against his heart, where once he had put it when it was fresh and pure. He drew it out now and looked at it.

What did it mean--that message of the rose? That, as she had once treasured the flower, so now she would treasure in its place her memory of him?

<script>