LITMIR.BIZ

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exclaimed: "Oh, I've left my little fur in my grip, right there!"

      He fulfilled his programme the next morning. The drowsy station of Sweetbay seemed to him larger than of yore as he glanced about him, but he did not stop to gather information in the matter. His bag was in the fly, and he was rattled to an hotel where the manager appeared surprised to see him. Although his sensations on the boat had left him with no insistent longing for a room with a sea-view, he accepted one without complaint, and learning that luncheon was being served, descended to where three despondent-looking visitors were scattered among an acre of tables. Evidently people continued to go abroad in spite of the advice. However, he had not come to Sweetbay for society.

      It was a neat and decorous little town awaiting him when he sallied forth from the hotel. Everything was very clean, very tidy. The pink-paved sidewalks, bordered by trees, glistened like coral; the snug villas, enclosed by euonymus hedges trimmed to precision, had a fresh and wholesome air, an air that made him think of honey soap and good rice puddings. He backed before the walls of the Parish Church. A play-bill of the Rosery Theatre, near by, seemed an anachronism, and even as he recalled Sweetbay it had been content with Assembly Rooms. On a hoarding he saw a poster of the Pier Pavilion—the pavilion was an innovation too. In the High Street photographs of some popular actors had invaded a shop window, and he was struck by the extraordinary resemblance they bore to one another—all wearing on the brow the frown of intellectuality, and carefully disordered hair. The Town Hall was a landmark. He murmured Matthew Arnold's line: "Expressive merely of the impotence of the architect to express anything," but the unparalleled ugliness of the building warmed him with recollections. He branched to the left, as he used to branch to the left when he carried Mary's bathing shoes, and surrendering himself to sentiment unreservedly now swung joyously for Eden.

      And from this point landmarks flocked thick and fast. The way began to climb the hill, the hill began to show the boughs, the boughs began to veil the road, the road began to woo the lane, the lane began to near the house, and—like the old woman's pig—Conrad got over the stile.

      And "Mowbray Lodge" was still painted on the gate! It was all so wonderfully the same for a moment in the shade behind the fir trees—so wonderfully—that he felt tearful. The scene had stood so still that there seemed something unreal in his returning here a man. Again he saw the slender columns of the long veranda, and the summer-house on which the weather-cock still perched. He looked, and looked wide-eyed, at a faded door—not green, not blue—and knew suddenly that behind that door there should be currant bushes and a tangle of nasturtium, and hens prinking on the path. His soul embraced the scene. And yet—and yet it was not the features which had lived in his mind that moved him most. The magic lay in the pervasive hush, and in a gust of the fir trees' smell, which he had forgotten until it swept him breathless across the years.

      Yes, there seemed something unreal in his standing here a man. His spirit was listening—and he knew that it was listening—for calls from children who had grown to middle-age now; his gaze was waiting—even he knew that it was waiting—for the rush of childish figures which the scene should yield.

      Presently he sought the space where they had played. But the Field of the Cloth of Gold was transformed. Where the dandelions had spread their splendour for Mary he saw a market-garden, and the sun that had made a halo for Mary glittered on glass. There was a quantity of glass, there were consequential rows of it, all raising money for somebody, all reminding the pilgrim that meadows move with the times. "Well, I suppose it's progress," said Conrad, shaking his head. But he missed the dandelions. He was a Conservative by instinct, though he was a Liberal by reason.

      When he loitered back to the view of Mowbray Lodge, a lady of the age which it is gallant to call "uncertain" had come out on the veranda. She had a little shawl over her shoulders, and in her hand she held a pair of scissors with which she was clipping a palm. The placid gaze she lifted to him was not discouraging, and advancing towards her with a bow he said:—

      "Pray forgive me for troubling you, but may I ask if Mr. Boultbee lives here now?"

      "N—no," answered the lady pensively, "no gentleman lives here. 'Mr. Boultbee'? I'm afraid I don't know the name. Are you sure he is still living in the town?"

      "I am sure of nothing," replied Conrad. "It is so long since my last visit that I am even doubtful if he is living at all."

      She seemed to reflect again and said: "Perhaps they might be able to tell you at the post-office."

      "It really isn't important," he declared, "though I'm obliged by your suggestion. To confess the truth, I am more drawn to the garden than to Mr. Boultbee. Years ago I spent a summer here, and being in the neighbourhood again I couldn't resist the temptation to come and dream over the top rail of your gate."

      "Oh—er—would you care to look round the place?" she murmured with a tentative wave of the scissors.

      "I should be charmed," said Conrad, "if I am not intruding."

      "Of course you don't see it to advantage now. Last month—" She moved across the lawn beside him, telling the falsehoods with which everybody who has a garden always dejects a visitor. He affected that thirst for knowledge with which everybody who is shown a garden always rewards a host.

      "It's a long time since you were here, I think you said?" she remarked, pleased by his eagerness.

      "It is," said Conrad, in his most Byronic manner, "just a quarter of a century." The lady looked startled, and he continued with a sigh, "Yes, I was then in that exquisitely happy period of life when we just begin to know that we are happy; you may imagine what memories are stirring in me:—

      "'I can recall, nay, they are present still,

       Parts of myself, the perfume of my mind,

       Days that seem farther off than Homer's now

       Ere yet the child had loudened to the boy' …

      That poem—Lowell's 'The Cathedral'—flashed into my mind as I came upon your parish church awhile ago, and

      "'gazed abashed,

       Child of an age that lectures, not creates,'

      at its old honours. I quoted the best part of a stanza to myself in the street. I'm afraid that is a habit of mine."

      "It must be very nice," said the lady apprehensively; "yes, indeed."

      It appeared that she was no more acquainted with Lowell than with Mr. Boultbee, so gliding to a subject which lay quite near his heart this afternoon he introduced a third name.

      "When I was here last a Dr. Page occupied the villa across the fence," he went on. "He had a daughter. To be prolix, he had several daughters, but to me his family consisted of Miss Mary. We were engaged. I won't ask you if they are there still—something warns me that they are not—but can you, by any chance, give me news of them?"

      "I am sorry I cannot," she returned, fluttering. "There has been no Dr. Page in Sweetbay—I am almost certain there has been no Dr. Page in Sweetbay since I settled here. I am positive there is none now—quite positive. There's Dr. Hunt, there's Dr. Tatham—" She recounted laboriously the names of all the medical men practising about the town, while he wondered what she was doing it for.

      "I thank you heartily," he said, when she reached the end of the list.

      The next moment it became evident that she, in her turn, had a question to put, for her glance was interrogating him already, and at last she faltered:—

      "Pardon my asking you, but did I understand you to say that you were—h'm—engaged to the daughter of Dr. Page twenty-five years ago? Surely when you said you were a child then, it was no figure of speech?"

      "No," answered Conrad; "but to be frank with you, it was nothing less than the thought of her that lured me back to-day. Let me admit that I wasn't quite ingenuous when I spoke of—of 'being' in the neighbourhood; I came deliberately, in fulfilment of a cherished plan. To me your garden is a tomb—if I may say so without depressing you—it is the tomb of the Used-to-be. We were both children, but there are some things that

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