Arms and the Woman

E-text prepared by Al Haines
A Romance
HAROLD MacGRATH
New York Doubleday Page & Company 1905 Copyright, 1899, by S. S. Mcclure Co. Copyright, 1899, by Doubleday and Mcclure Co.
To her, that is to say, to the hand that rocked the cradle.
The first time I met her I was a reporter in the embryonic state and she was a girl in short dresses. It was in a garden, surrounded by high red brick walls which were half hidden by clusters of green vines, and at the base of which nestled earth-beds, radiant with roses and poppies and peonies and bushes of lavender lilacs, all spilling their delicate ambrosia on the mild air of passing May. I stood, straw hat in hand, wondering if I had not stumbled into some sweet prison of flowers which, having run disobedient ways in the past, had been placed here by Flora, and forever denied their native meadows and wildernesses. And this vision of fresh youth in my path, perhaps she was some guardian nymph. I was only twenty-two—a most impressionable age. Her hair was like that rare October brown, half dun, half gold; her eyes were cool and restful, like the brown pools one sees in the heart of the forests, and her lips and cheeks cozened the warm vermilion of the rose which lay ever so lightly on the bosom of her white dress. Close at hand was a table upon which stood a pitcher of lemonade. She was holding in her hand an empty glass. As my eyes encountered her calm, inquiring gaze, my courage fled precipitately, likewise the object of my errand. There was a pause; diffidence and embarrassment on my side, placidity on hers.
Well, sir? said she, in a voice the tone of which implied that she could readily understand her presence in the garden, but not mine.
As I remember it, I was suddenly seized with a great thirst.
I should like a glass of your lemonade, I answered, bravely laying down the only piece of money I possessed.
Her stern lips parted in a smile, and my courage came back cautiously, that is to say, by degrees. She filled a glass for me, and as I gulped it down I could almost detect the flavor of lemon and sugar.