Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 119, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1918 — Souvenir d’Amour [ARTICLE]

Souvenir d’Amour

By MONA COWLES

{Copyright. 1918. by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) The new sales girl In the little penfume shop on Maine street had broken a bottle of French perfume just as the clock pointed to twelve o’clock, and so it happened that shoppers and office workers, idlers and persons bent on business as they walked along the busy section of Main street that d. about lunch time were Impressed either pleasurably or otherwise by the penetrating odor of one of the most alluring of perfumes. For the perfume lad been spilled on the floor of the shop near the door, which was open to let in the first warm spring sunlight and it had been carried forth on the fresh air till it suffused the atmosphere for g hundred feet or more. Some who passed looked about as if to behold a tree in blossom in the vicinity; but whoever scented it felt curiosity, for there was that, in the extract that called up Indefinable and tantalizing recollections. Susan Beverly, as she alighted from her little electric that she drove herself and put. foot.on the curbstone, first sniffed vigorously and then looked about To her the perfume had potent associations that seemed to possess her imagination before she could put into form the nature of them. She whiffed again, looked around and then heard one of the girls who worked in the perfume shop say to another, as they stepped out of the shop on their way to luncheon; “Too bad she happened to break that bottle,” with an emphasis on the that. “It’s the most expensive perfume in the shop—souvenir d’amour’ ” —only she pronounced it “soovenire damoor.” “Sells for twelve dollars a bottle.” “Yes, it was too bad, and the madam says she’ll take it out of her wages.” “It's a shame to spill twelve dollars all at once. But it makes an elegant smell--” And the other girl agreed that it was “swell.” Long after Susan had passed out of the radius of the aroma of the spilled souvenir d’amour her mind was occupied with the train of associations it had called up. At first vague and ill defined, they gradually shaped themselves. By the time she reached her home on the outskirts of the city she was deep in recollection but her recollections were by no means melancholy. The detail of the little experience of the spilled perfume that assumed the largest proportions in her thoughts was that the bottle had cost twelve dollars. Twelve dollars was a g#od deal for anyone to spend for a gift. She reflected that people did not spent that much —especially when they were not especially well off —on persons for whom they had little regard. It seemed to her then that if she had always known that souvenir d’amour cost twelve dollars a bottle it might have made a difference. She had thought if she had thought about the cost of it at all—that it cost not more than a dollar a bottle. But though her thoughts were thus mercenary to begin with, eventually the seducive Influence of the perfume had its effect and, though she was far out of the radius of the sweet odor, In her Imagination she smelled it yet. It (haunted her like a vision that would not down —or a sweet, haunting melody that runs through the mind—only this was a vision or melody of the sense of smell and, they say, this sense is of the five the most persistent in its power of association. So from being quite cheerful about the recollections that it aroused, she became truly pensive. Susan was thirty and she had so often told herself that a spinster of that age has grown too old and too sensible for romantic recollections or sentiments that she believed it. It was just a. little disconcerting then when, as the afternoon wore on, she found her- > self in the mood of a love-struck girl of twenty. She had planned to spend the afternoon on the golf links getting In trim for the week-end tournament, but for o’clock found her reclining on a wicker long chair under the trees in the garden, shielded by the lilac hedge with an assortment of once favorite poets for diversion. This was not at all like the thirty-year-old Susan. It really did seem as if a drop of the perfume must have spattered on Susan’s frock so persistent were the memories !t hhd recalled. Eventually she rose from her chair, walked along the lilac row, retraced her steps, counted out the seventh lilac bush from the end, dnd then stood gazing down at the earth beneath the bush. She went off to the gardener’s hut and returned with a trowel, then she fell to work digging ■with the intensity of one sure of unearthing Captain Kid’s treasure in a •certain spot. Once the old gardener •came along and tasked her whether he might help her. She said something ebout wanting, to see the condition of the soil, and continued. Once she was interrupted by a member of her family; she hastily pressed back the sod when she saw him approaching, remimed her posture on the long chair end remained there till he had gone. Then she took up her digging. Her first excavation was not in the right place, nor the second, and it was *ot till she had made a third hole of about a foot’s depth in the ground that she found her treasure. As she lifted It up from the earth that clung around

it, it looked as if it might have been the tear bottle of some long interred Egyptian princess, but as she scraped off the mold from the sides it appeared to be modern glass. After a little effort she unloosed the stopper and leaned over the bottle for the scent there was no mistake about it. It was souvenir d’amour. “Twelve dollars a bottle,” sighed Susan to herself. And then she fell to thinking of what might have been. She pressed back the sod under the lilac bushes, carefully folded the moldy bottle in a handkerchief and resumed her seat. She was really in a most unusual mood. In the magic aroma of that scent Came rushing back sentiments and Illusions that she had long forgotten. The sensible, perfectly contented Susan went and, In her place came a Susan that was not entirely satisfied with the prosaic role of being Susan Beverly, and playing off golf tournaments. The truth was that Susan was being tormented by a return of the only sentiment approaching love that had ever marred the serene contentment of her existence; and the fact that she had successfully put it from her Tor five years—ever since she burled that bottle" of magic sweetness—did not make it any the less keen now that it returned with the sweet scent. She was thinking of Tom Canton. She wondered whether they would ever meet again. Surely he must sometimes return to his home town and sometimes he must think of the hours under the lilac bushes that spring time five years ago. But then, why should he? Susan herself had succeeded in putting away those thoughts and he was no less sensible than she. There was a sound along the gravel walk and Susan looked up to see Tom. She passed her hand across her eyes. It occurred to her at first that this vision was but the final and most tormenting effect of the magic perfume. But when she heard his voice calling her by name she knew that it wab reality. He called her Susan with all the ease of five years before, and Susan sat there on the long chair with Tom beside her just as they had sat five years before on a little rustic bench that had since been demolished. First they talked of generalities, the weather, the war and mutual friends. Then the conversation drifted back to the- key in which it had been pitched on evenings like this five years before. The five years that had between seemed as but a day gone by and sensible thirty-year-old Susan found hen muscular, athletic hands held in Tom’s with as complete surrender as in the days when they had played off fewer golf tournaments and were berhaps a little softer. Then—lt was no more Tom’s fault than Susan’s, and surely not Susan’s In the least —Susan’s head leaned on Tom’s shoulder and there were some stammered monosyllables about love, and, on first regaining a sensible way of looking at things, Susan wondered whether It all meant that they were engaged again. “It has all come so quickly,” she told him. “I thought if it ever did come there would be so much explaining and it would be so hard for us both to get back Into the old mood again. You see, with me it came about this way. I chanced to get a whiff of perfume like a bottle that you once sent me, five years ago. lam afraid f didn’t realize then that you really cared for me. After we had that misunderstanding I returned the letters and the gifts, but this perfume —well, I didn’t want to throw it away. That would have seemed sacrilege, and I couldn’t bear to use It because you had given it to me, and it reminded me of you. So I buried it here under the lilac hedge, And today I came out just ont of curiosity, I dug it ufl' again. There was a little left, and it’s the magic of that perfume that has brought back all the old feelings.” .. Susan took the mold-covered bottle from the handkerchief and rew forth the cork to let escape a breath of the sweet perfume. “That perfume seemed to me then to express your personality perfectly,” Tom said. “That’s why I bought ft for you. And you used to use it sometimes and —well, it had the same effect that the perfume of a woman a man loves always does. It was intoxicating. And then you lost Interest and I never came across that perfume again—except in my imagination—it’s painful how the memory of a perfume will haunt you—till today. Today on Main street some one must have spilled some. Anyway, I got a whiff of it and that was all I needed.* It brought the old longing back again and I just had to see ydu.” • And as Susan allowed her two hands to be clasped - eagerly in Tom’s she was trying to work out a plan whereby the little salesgirl who had spilled the precious perfume might be reimbursed for her loss. And It really Is strange how things happen—for if the little girl had not broken that bottle Susan Beverly and Tom Canton never would have been reunited.