Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 207, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1915 — HIS LOVE STORY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS LOVE STORY

By MARIE VAN VORST

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SYNOPSIS. —*l6 " Le Comte d«» Mbron, captain of French cavalry, takes Ut his quarters to raise by hand a motherless Irish terrier pup, and names It Pttchoune. He dines with the Marquise d’Esclignac and meets Miss Julia Redmond, American heiress. He is ordered to Algiers but is not allowed to take servants or dogs. Miss Redmond takes care of Pltohoune, who, longing for his master, runs away from her. The marquise plans to marry Julia to the Due 4e Tremont. Pitchoune follows Sabron to Algiers, dog and master meet, and Sabron gets permission to keep his dog with him. The Due de Tremont finds the American heiress capricious. Sabron, wounded in an engagement, falls Into the dry bed of a river and is watched over by Pitchoune. After a horrible night and day Pitchoune leaves him. Tremont takes Julia and the marquise to Algiers In his yacht but has doubts about Julia’s Red Cross mission. After long search Julia gets trace of Sabron’s whereabouts. Julia for the moment turns matchmaker in behalf of Tremont. Hammet Abou tells the Marquise where he thinks Sabron may be found. Tremout decides to go with Hammet Abou to find Sabron. Pitchoune finds a village, twelve hours journey away, and somehow makes Fatou Annl understand his master's desperate pltght. Sabron is rescued by the village men but grows weaker without proper care. Tremont goes into the desert with the caravan in search of Sabron. Julia follows with Madame de la Maine, whom Tremont loves. CHAPTER XXlV—Continued. At night as he lay in his bed in his tent, Tremont and Hammet Abou cooled his temples with water from the earthen bottles, where the sweet ooze stood out humid and refreshing on the damp clay. They gave him acid and cooling drinks, and now and then Sabron would smile on Tremont, calling him “petit frere,” and Tremont heard the words with molßture in his eyes, remembering what he had said to the Marquise d’Esclignac about being Sabron’s brother. Once or twice the soldier murmured a woman’s name, but Tremont could not catch it, and once he said to the duke: “Sing! Sing!” The Frenchman obeyed docilely, humming In an agreeable barytone the snatches of song he could remember, "La Fille de Madame Angot,” “II Trovatore;” running them into more modern opera, “La Veuve Joyeuse.” But the lines creased in Sabron’s forehead Indicated that the singer had not yet found the music which haunted the memory of the sick man. “Sing!” he would repeat, fixing his hollow eyes on his companion, and Tremont complied faithfully. Finally, his own thoughts going back to early days, he hummed tunes that he and a certain little girl had Bung at their games in the allees of an old chateau In the valley of the Indre. “Sonnez les matines Ding—din—don,” and other children’s melodies. In those nights, on that desolate way, alone, in a traveling tent, at the side of a man he scarcely knew, Robert de Tremont learned serious lessons. He had been a soldier himself, but his life had been an inconsequent one. He had lived as he liked, behind him always the bitterness of an early deception. But he-had been too young to break his heart at seventeen. He had lived through much since the day his father exiled him to Africa. Therese had become a dream, a memory around which he did not always let his thoughts linger. When he had seen her again after her husband’s death and found her free, he was already absorbed in the worldly life of an ambitious young man. He had not known how much he loved her until in the Villa des Bougainvilleas he had seen and contrasted her with Julia Redmond. All the charm for him of the past returned, and he that, as money goes, he was poor—she was poorer. The difficulties of the marriage made him dll the more secure In his determination that nothing should separate him again from this woman. By Sabron’B bed he hummed his little insignificant tunes, and his heart longed for the woman. When once or twice on the return Journey they had been threatened by the engulfing sand storm he had prayed not to die before be could again clasp her in his arms. Sweet, tantalizing, exquisite with the passion of young love, there came to him the memories of the moonlight nighta on the terrace of the old chateau. He saw her in the pretty girlish dresses of long ago, the melancholy droop of her quivering mouth, her bare young arms, and smelled the fragrance of her hair as he kissed her. So humming his soothing melodies to the sick man, with his voice softehed by. his memories, he soothed Sabron. Sabron closed his eyes, the creases in his forehead disappeared as though brushed away by a tender hand. Perhaps the sleep was due to the fact that, unconsciously, Tremont slipped into humming a tone which Miss Redmond had song in the Villa des Bougainvilleas, and of whose English words De Tremont was quite ignorant. “Will he last until Algiers, Hammet ▲boar* “What will be will be. monsieur!” Abou replied. “He must,” De Tremont answered fiercely. “He shalL” He became serious sad meditative

on those silent days, and his blue eyes, where the very whites were burned, began to wear the far-away, mysterious look of the traveler across long distances. During the last sand storm he Btood, with the camels, round Sabron’s litter, a human shade and shield, and when the storm ceased he fell like one dead, and the Arabs pulled off his boots and put him to bed like a child. One sundown, as they traveled into the afterglow with the East behind them, when Tremont thought he could not endure another day of the voyage, when the pallor and waxlness of Sabron’s face were like death itself, Hammet Abou, who rode ahead, cried out and pulled up his camel short He waved him arm. “A caravan, monsieur.” - In the distance they saw the tents, like lotus leaves, scattered on the pink sands, and the dark shadows of the Arabs and the couchant beasts, and the glow of the encampment fire. “An encampment, monsieur!” Tremont sighed. He drew the curtain of the litter and looked in upon Sabron, who was sleeping. His set features, the growth of his uncut beard, the long fringe of his eyes, his dark hair upon his forehead, his wan transparency —with the peace upon his face, he might have been a figure of Christ waiting for sepulture. Tremont cried to him: “Sabron, mon vieux Charles, reveille-toi! We are in sight of human beings!” But Sabron gave no sign that he heard or cared. Throughout the journey across the desert, Pitchoune had ridden at his will and according to his taste, sometimes journeying for the entire day perched upon Tremont’s camel. He sat like a little figurehead or a mascot, with ears pointed northward and his keen nose sniffing the desert air. Sometimes he would take the same position on one of the mules that carried Sabron’s litter, at his master’s feet. There he would lie hour after hour, with his soft eyes fixed with understanding sympathy upon Sabron’s face. He was, as he had been to Fatou Anni, a kind of fetish —the caravan adored him. Now from his position at Sabron’s feet, he crawled up and licked his master’s hand. “Charles!" Tremont cried, and lifted the soldier’s hand. Sabron opened his eyes. He was sane. The glimmer of a smile touched his lips. He said Tremont’s name, recognized him. “Are we home?” he asked weakly. “Is it France?” Tremont turned and dashed away a tear. He drew the curtains of the litter and now walked beside it, his legs feeling like cotton and his heart beating. As they came up toward the encampment, two people rode out to meet them, two women in white riding habits, on stallions, and as the evening breeze fluttered the veils from their helmets, they seemed to be flags of welcome. Under his helmet Tremont was red and burned. He had a short, rough growth of beard. Therese de la Maine and Julia Redmond rode up. Tremont recognized them, and came forward, half staggering. He looked at Julia and smiled, and pointed with his left hand toward the litter; but he went directly up to Madame de la Maine, who sat immovable on her little stallion. Tremont seemed to gather her in his arms. He lifted her down to him. Julia Redmond’s eyes were on the litter, whose curtains were stirring in the breeze. Hammet Abou, with a profound salaam, came forward to her. “Mademoiselle," v he said, respectfully, "he lives. 1 have kept my word.” Pitchoune sprang from the litter and ran over the sands to Julia Redmond. She dismounted from her horse alone and called him: "Pitchoune! Pitr choune!” Kneeling.down on the desert, she stooped to caress him, and he crouched at her feet, licking her hands. CHAPTER XXV. Aa Handsome Does. When Sabron next opened his eyes he fancied that he was at home in his old room fax Rouen, in the house where he was bora, in the little room in which, as a child, dressed In his dimity night gown, he had sat up in his bed by candle light to learn his letters from the cookery book. The room was snowy white. Outside the window he heard a bird sing, and near by, he heard a dog’s smothered bark. Then he knew that he was not at home or a child, for with the languor and weakness came his memory. A quiet nurse in a hospital dress was sitting by his bed, and Pitchoune rose from the foot of the bed and looked at him adoringly. He was in a hospital in Algiers. "Pitchoune,” he murmured, not knowing the name of his other companion, “where are we, old fellow r The nurse replied in an agreeable Anglo-Saxon French:

-Toa are in a French hospital hi Ah | glers, sir, and doing welL” Tremont came up to him. *T remember you,” Sabron said. “To* have been near me a dozen times lately." “You must not talk, mon vieux.” “But I feel as though I must talk a great deal. Didn't you come for me Into the desert?” Tremont, healthy, vigorous, tanned, gay and cheerful, seemed good looking to poor Sabron, who gazed np at him with touching gratitude. "I think I remember everything, I think I shall never forget it,” he said, and lifted his hand feebly. Robert de Tremont took it “Haven’t we traveled far together, Tremont?” “Yes,” nodded the ether, affected, "but you must sleep now. We will talk about it over our cigars and liquors soon.” Sabron smiled faintly. His clear mind was regaining its balance, and thoughts began to sweep over it cruelly fast He looked at his rescuer, and to him the other’s radiance meant simply that ha> was engaged to Miss Redmond. Of course that was natural. Sabron tried to accept it and to be glad for the happiness of the man who had rescued him. But as he thought this, he wondered why he had been rescued and shut his eyes so that Tremont might not see his weakness. He said hesitatingly: “I am haunted by a melody, a tune. Could you help me? It won’t come.” “It’s not the “Marseillaise?” asked the other, sitting down by his side and pulling Pltchoune’s ears. “Oh, no!" "There will be singing in the ward shortly. A Red Cross nurse comes to sing to the patients. She may help you to remember.” Sabron renounced in despair. Haunting, tantalizing in his brain and illusive, the notes began and stopped, began and stopped. He wanted to ask his friend a thousand questions. How he had come to him, why he had come to him, how he knew. ... He gave it all up and dozed, and while he slept the sweet sleep of those who are to recover, he heard the sound of a worn-

an’s voice in the distance, singing, one after another, familiar melodies, and finally he heard the “Kyrie Eleison,” and to its music Sabron again fell asleep. The next day he received a visitor. It was not an easy matter to introduce visitors to his bedside, for Pitchoune objected. Pitchoune received the Marquise d’Esclignac with great displeasure. “Is he a thoroughbred?” asked-the Marquise d’Esclignac. “He has behaved like one,” replied the officer. There was a silence. The Marquise d’Esclignac was wondering what her niece saw in the pale man so near still to the borders of the other world. "You will be leaving the army, of course,” she murmured, looking at him interestedly. “Madame!” said the Capitaine de Sabron, with hia blood—all that was in him —rising to his cheeks. “I mean that France has done nothing for you. France did not rescue you and you may feel like seeking a more—another career.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Threatened by the Engulfing Sandstorm.