Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1915 — HIS LOVE STORY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS LOVE STORY

By MARIE VORST

ILLUSTRATIONSWALTERS

SYNOPSIS.

De Comte de Sabron, captain of French ■avalry, takes to his quarters to raise by hand a motherless Irish terrier pup, and names It Pitchoune.- He dines with the Marquise d’Esclignac and meets Miss Julia Redmond, American heiress, who sings for him an English ballad that lingers In his memory. Sabron Is ordered to Algiers, hut is not allowed to take servants or dogs. Miss Redmond offers to take care of the dog during his master’s absence, but Pitchoune, homesick for his master, runs away from her. The Marquise plans to marry Julia to the Due de Tremont. Unknown to Sabron, Pitchoune follows him to Algiers. Dog and master meet and Sabron gets permission from the war minister to keep his dog with him. Julia writes him that Pitchoune has run away from her. He writes Julia Of Pltchoun®. The Due de Tremont finds the American heiress capricious. A newspaper report that Sabron-ls among the missing after an engagement with the natives causes JuHa to confess to her aunt that ■he loves him. Sabron, wounded In an engagement, falls Into the dry bed of a river, and Is watched over by Pitchoune.

CHAPTER XIII—Continued.

“But,” Sabron said aloud, “it Is a prayer to be said at night and not in the afternoon of an African hell.” He began to climb; he pulled himself along, leaving hie track in blood. He fainted twice, and the thick growth held him like the wicker of a cradle, and before he came to .his consciousness the sun was mercifully going down. He finally reached the top of the bank and lay there panting. Not far distant were the bushes of rose and mimosa flower, and still panting, weaker and ever weaker, his courage the only living thing in him, Sabron, with Pitchoune by his side, dragged himself into healing hands. All that night Sabron was delirious; his mind traveled far into vague fantastic countries, led back again, ever gently, by a tune, to safety. Every how and then he would realize that he was alone on the vast desert, destined to finish his existence here, to cease being a human creature and to become nothing but carrion. Moments of consciousness succeeded those of mental disorder. Every now and then he would feel Pitchoune close to his arm. The dog licked his hand and the touch was. grateful to the deserted officer. Pitchoune licked his master's cheek and Sabron felt that there was another life beside his In the wilderness. Neither dog nor man could long exist, however, without food or drink and Sabron was growing momentarily weaker. The Frenchman, though a philosopher, realized how hard it wan to die unsatisfied in love, unsatisfied in life, having accomplished nothing, having wished many things and realized at an early age only death! Then this point of view changed and the physical man was uppermost. He groaned for water, he groaned for relief from pain, turned his head from side to side, and Pitchoune whined softly. Sabron was not strong enough to speak to him, and their voices, of man and beast, inarticulate, mingled—bothJeft to die in the open. Then Sabron violently rebelled and cried out in his soul against fate and destiny. He could have cursed the day he was horn. Keenly desirous to live, to make his mark and to win everything a man values,' why should he be picked and chosen for this lonely pathetic end? Moreover, he did not wish to suffer like this, to lose his grasp on life, to go on into wilder delirium and to die! He knew enough of injuries to feel sure that his wound alone would not kill him. When he had first dragged himself into the shade he had fainted, and when he came to himself he might have stanched his blood. His wound was hardly bleeding now. It had already died! Fatigue and thirst, fever would finish him, not his hurt He was too young to die. With great effort he raised himself on his arm and scanned the desert stretching on all sides like a rosy sea. Along the river bank the pale and delicate blossom and leaf of the mimosa lay like a bluish veil, and the smell of the evening and the smell of the mimosa flower and the perfumes of the weeds came to him, aromatic and sweet Above his head the blue sky was ablaze with stars and directly over him the evening star hung like a crystal lamp. But there was no beauty in it for the wounded officer who looked in vain to the dark shadows on the desert that might mean approaching human life. It would be better to die as he was dying, than to be found by the enemy! The sea of waste rolled unbroken as far'as his fading eyes could reach. He sank back with a sigh, not to .rise again, and closed his eyes and waited. He slept a short, restless, feverish ■sleep, and in It dreams chased one another like those evoked by a narcotic, but out of them, over and over again came the picture of Julia Redmond, and she sang to him the song whose words were a prayer for the safety of a loved one during the night. From that romantic melody there seemed to rise more solemn ones. He heard the rolling of the organ in the cathedral in his native town, for he came from Rouen originally, where there is one of the most beautiful cathedrals In the world. The music vailed and rolled and passed over the

desert's face. It seemed to lift his spirit, and to cradle it Then he breathed his prayers —they took form, and in his sleep he repeated the Ave Maria and the Paternoster, and the words rolled and rolled over the desert’s face and the supplication seemed to his feverish mind to mingle with the stars.

A sort of midnight dew fell upon him: so at least he thought, and it seemed to him a heavenly dew and to cover him like a benignant rain. He grew cooler. He prayed again, and with his words there came to the young man an ineffable sense of peace. He pillowed his fading thoughts upon it; he pillowed his aching mind upon it and his body, too, and the pain of his wound and he thought aloud, with only the night airs to hear him, in broken sentences: “If this is death it is not so bad. One should rather be afraid of life. This is not difficult, if I should ever get out of here I shall not regret this night.” Toward morning he grew calmer, he turned to speak to his little companion. In his troubled thoughts he had forgotten Pitchoune. Sabron faintly called him. There was no response. Then the soldier listened in sllehee. It was absolutely unbroken. Not even the call of a night-bird—not even the cry of a hyena—nothing came to him but the inarticulate voice of the desert. Great and solemn awe crept up to him, crept up to him like a spirit and sat down by his side. He felt his hands grow cold, and his feet grow cold. Now, unable to speak aloud, there passed through his mind that this, indeed, was death, desertion absolute in the heart of the plains.

CHAPTER XIV.

An American Girl. The Marquise d’Escllgnac saw that she had to .reckon with an American girl. Those who know these girls know what their temper and mettle are, and that they are capable of the finest reverberation. Julia Redmond was very young. Otherwise she would never have let Sabron go without one sign that she was not indifferent to him, and that she was rather bored with the idea of titles and fortunes. But she adored her aunt and saw, moreover, something else than ribbons and velvets in the make-up of the aunt. She saw deeper than the polish that a long Parisian lifetime had overlaid, and she loved what she saw. She respected her aunt, and knowing the older lady’s point of view, had been timid and hesitating until now. - Now the American girl woke up, or rather asserted herself. “My dear Julia,’’ said the Marquise d’Escllgnac, “are you sure that all the tinned things, the cocoa, and so forth, are on board? I did not see that box." “Ma tante,” returned her niece from her steamer chair, "It’s the only piece of luggage I am sure about" At this response her aunt suffered a slight qualm for the fate of the rest of her luggage, and from her own chair in the shady part of the deck glanced toward her niece, whose eyes were on her book. “What a practical girl she Is,” thought the Marquise d’Escllgnac. “She seems ten older than I. She is cut out to be the wife of a poor man. It is a pity she should have a fortune. Julia would have been charming as love in a cottage, whereas I . . .”

She remembered her hotel on the Parc Monceau/ ker*’ chateau by the Rhone, her villa At Biarritz—-and sighed. She iffifi: not always been the Marquise d’Esclignac;’ she had been an American girl first and remembered that her maiden name had been -Pe Puyster and that she had come from Schenectady originally. But for many years she had forgotten these thingA Near to Julia Redmond these last few weeks all but courage and simplicity had seemed to have tarnish on its wings. Sabron had not been found. It was a curious fact, and one that transpires now and then in the history of desert wars —the man is lost The captain of the cavalry was missing, and the only news of him was that be had fallen in an engagement and that his body had never been recovered. Several sorties had been made to find him; the war department had done all that it could; he had disappeared from the face of the desert and even his bones could not be found. From the moment that Julia Redmond had confessed her love for the Frenchman, a courage had been born in her which never faltered, and her aunt seemed to have been infected by -It The marquise grew sentimental, found out that she was more docile and Impressionable than she had believed herself to be, and the veneer and etiquette (no doubt never a very real part of her) became less important than’other things. During the last few weeks she had been more a De Puyster from Schenectady than the Marquise d’Esclignac. “Ma tante,” Julia Redmond had said to her whan the last telegram

was brought ft to the Chateau d’Escttgnac. “I shall leave for Africa tomor row.” ? '"U* "My dear Julia!” "He Is alive! God will not let him die. Besides, I have prayed. I believe In God, don’t you?” “Of course, my dear Julia.” "Well,” said the girl, whose pal® cheeks and trembling hands that held the telegram made a sincere impression on her hunt, “well, then, if you believe, why do you doubt that he is alive? Someone must find him. Will you tell Eugene to have the motor here in an hour? The boat sails tomorrow, ma tante.” The marquise rolled her embroidery and put it aside for twelve months. Her fine hands looked capable as she did so. "My dear Julia, a young and handsome woman cannot follow like a daughter of the regiment, after the fortunes of a soldier.” “But a Red Cross nurse can, ma tante, and I* have my diploma.” “The boat leaving tomorrow, my dear Julia, doesn't take passengers." "Oh, ma tante! There will be no other boat for Algiers,” she opened the newspaper, “until • - • oh, heavens!”

“But Robert de Tremont’s yacht is in the harbor.” Miss Redmond looked at her aunt speechlessly. “I shall telegraph Madame d’ Haussonville and ask permission for you to go in that as an auxiliary of the Red Cross to Algiers, or rather, Robert is at Nice. I shall telegraph him." "Oh, ma tante!" "He asked me to make up my own party for a cruise on the Mediterranean,” said the Marquise d’Esclignan thoughtfully. Miss Redmond fetched the telegraph blank and the pad from the table. The color began to return to her cheeks. She' put from her mind the idea that her aunt had plans for her. All ways were fair in the present situation. The Marquise d’Esclignac wrote her dispatch, a very long one, slowly. She said to her servant: “Call up the Villa des Perroquets at Nice. I wish to speak with the Due dft

Tremont.” She then drew her niece very gently to her side, looking up at her as a mother might have looked. “Darling Julia, Monsieur de Sabron has never told you that he loved you?" Julia shook her head. “Not in words, ma tante.” There was a silence, and then Julia Redmond said: “I only want to assure myself that he is safe, that he lives. I only wish to know his fate.” “But if you go to him like this, ma chere, he will think you love him. He must marry you! Are you making a serious declaration.” “Ah,”!> breathed the girl from be> tweentrembling lips, “don’t go on. I shall be shown the way.” The Marquise d’Esclignac then said, musing: A “I shall telegraph to England for provisions. ‘ Food is vile in Algiers .Also, Melanie must get out our summer clothes.” “Ma tante!” said Julia Redmond, “our summer clothes?” “Did you think you were going alone, my dear Julia!" She had been so thoroughly the American girl that she had thought of nothing but going. She threw her arms around her aunt’s neck with an abandon that made the latter young again. The Marquise d’Esclignac kissed her niece tenderly. “Madame la Marquise, Monsieur lg Due de Tremont is at the telephone,” the servant announced to her from ths doorway. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

She Was Bored With the Idea of Titles and Fortunes.