stove, then you will change your minds and come to me on your knees,”
the old wicked, foul spirit had said mocking them, as he had opened the
door of the attic and passed away creaking down the dark stairs.
And I suppose he had reckoned on this; but if he had done so, he had
reckoned without his host, as your phrase runs: neither René nor Lili
ever went to him, either on knees or in any other wise.
When the spring came we three were still all living--at least their
hearts still beat and their lips still drew breath, as my boughs were
still green and my roots still clung to the soil. But no more to them
or to me did the coming of spring bring, as of old, the real living of
life, which is joy. And my lover the wind wooed me no more, and the
birds no more brought me the rose-whispers of my kindred in Provence.
For even the little pigeon-hole in the roof had become too costly a
home for us, and we dwelt in a den under the stones of the streets,
where no light came and scarce a breath of air ever strayed to us.
There the uncompleted canvases, on which the painter whom Lili loved
had tried to write his title to the immortality of fame, were at last
finished--finished, for the rats ate them.
All this while we lived--the man whose genius and misery were hell on
earth; the woman whose very purity and perfectness of love were her
direst torture; and I, the little white flower born of the sun and the
dew, of fragrance and freedom, to whom every moment of this blindness,
this suffocation, this starvation, this stench of putrid odors, this
horrible roar of the street above, was a moment worse than any pang of
death.
Away there in Provence so many a fair rose-sister of mine bowed her
glad, proud, innocent head with anguish and shuddering terrors to the
sharp summons of the severing knife that cut in twain her life, whilst
I--I, on and on--was forced to keep so much of life as lies in the
capacity to suffer and to love in vain.
So much was left to them: no more.
“Let us compel Death to remember us, since even Death forgets us!” René
murmured once in his despair to her.
But Lili had pressed her famished lips to his: “Nay, dear, wait; God
will remember us even yet, I think.”
It was her faith. And of her faith she was justified at last.
There came a ghastlier season yet, a time of horror insupportable--of
ceaseless sound beside which the roar of the mere traffic of the
streets would have seemed silence--a stench beside which the sulphur
smoke and the gas fumes of a previous time would have been as some
sweet, fresh woodland air--a famine beside which the daily hunger of
the poor was remembered as the abundance of a feast--a cold beside
which the chillness of the scant fuel and empty braziers of other
winters were recalled as the warmth of summer--a darkness only lit
by the red flame of burning houses--a solitude only broken by the
companionship of woe and sickness and despair--a suffocation only
changed by a rush of air strong with the scent of blood, of putridity,
of the million living plague-stricken, of the million dead lying
unburied.
For there was war.
Of year or day or hour I knew nothing. It was always the same blackness
as of night; the same horror of sound, of scent, of cold; the same
misery; the same torture. I suppose that the sun was quenched, that
the birds were dumb, that the winds were stilled forever--that all the
world was dead; I do not know. They called it War. I suppose that they
meant--Hell!
Yet Lili lived, and I; in that dead darkness we had lost René--we saw
his face no more. Yet he could not be in his grave, I knew, for Lili,
clasping my barren branches to her breast, would murmur: “Whilst he
still lives I will live--yes, yes, yes!”
And she did live--so long, so long!--on a few draughts of water and a
few husks of grain.
I knew that it was long, for full a hundred times she muttered aloud:
“Another day? O God!--how long? how long?”
At last in the darkness a human hand was stretched to her, once, close
beside me. A foul, fierce light, the light of flame, was somewhere on
the air about us, and that moment glowed through the horrid gloom we
dwelt in in the bowels of the earth. I saw the hand and what it held to
her; it was a stranger’s, and it held the little colorless dead rose,
my sweetest blossom, that had lain ever upon René’s heart.
She took it--she who had given it as her first love-gift. She was mute.
In the glare of the flame that quivered through the darkness I saw
her--standing quite erect and very still.
The voice of a stranger thrilled through the din from the world above.
“He fought as only patriots can,” it said softly and as through tears.
“I was beside him. He fell with Regnault in the sortie yesterday. He
could not speak; he had only strength to give me this for you. Be
comforted; he has died for Paris.”
On Lili’s face there came once more the radiance of a perfect peace, a
glory pure and endless as the glory of the sun. “Great in death!” she
murmured. “My love, my love, I come!”
I lost her in the darkness.
I heard a voice above me say that life had left her lips as the dead
rose touched them.
What more is there for me to tell?
I live, since to breathe, and to feel pain, and to desire vainly, and
to suffer always, are surest proofs of life.
I live, since that stranger’s hand, which brought my little dead
blossom as the message of farewell, had pity on me and brought me away
from that living grave. But the pity was vain; I died the only death
that had any power to hurt me when the human heart I loved grew still
forever.
The light of the full day now shines on me; the shadows are cool, the
dews are welcome; they speak around me of the coming of spring, and in
the silence of the dawns I hear from the woods without the piping of
the nesting birds; but for me the summer can never more return--for me
the sun can never again be shining--for me the greenest garden world is
barren as a desert.
For I am only a little rose, but I am in exile and France is desolate.
[Illustration]
COSY CORNER SERIES.
_A Series of Short Original Stories, or Reprints of Well-known
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BIG BROTHER. By ANNIE FELLOWS-JOHNSTON.
CHRISTMAS AT THOMPSON HALL. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. By JULIANA HORATIA EWING.
A PROVENCE ROSE. By LOUISA DE LA RAMÉ (OUIDA).
RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. By DR. JOHN BROWN.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.