The garden of resurrection

by E. Temple Thurston

"We're trying to find somebody," said I. "Somebody who—oh—what's it matter?"

"But why do we want to find her so much," he insisted, "if it doesn't matter?"

At that, suddenly, I realized something. I became aware of the fact that the questions I found in Dandy's eyes were only an expression of the thoughts harboring in my own mind. It was not he who asked them; it was I who asked myself. In that curly black head of his were probably no other ideas than memories of battles long past, of moments of the chase when he was bounding over the heather on those cliffs in Ireland. Or maybe it was only the affection of a dog for the man who treats him well. But all that searching interrogation was nothing more nor less than what I wanted to know myself.

It was I who asked myself why we should need so much to find her. Therefore, when I came upon this startling discovery, it brought me to the understanding of what I had not dared permit myself to realize before. I needed so much to find her because I needed her so much myself. I, who had talked so easily about the folly of plunging myself in love, was by now bitterly its slave. And so, as I came to review the events of the past months, I was made conscious that Bellwattle had spoken the truth from the very first. Indeed, I had known nothing of it till now. For when you begin by falling in love with a gown of canary-colored satin, it takes you some time before you come to be aware of it. And nothing less than this was what happened to me. The loneliness of that child in Ireland had drawn me to her. And now that I had seen her, even only those two times, I felt in the deepest heart of me that I was the man to make her happy.

This is the true conceit of love I suppose, that I who am so disfigured should for one moment imagine such a thing. As I looked at myself in the mirror which the taxi provided, I, too, was amazed that such a thought could enter my head. But it was the truth. There was no getting away from it, and as such it must be suffered with what courage I could muster to bear it.

If only I could find her and hear from her own lips that she was happy, I knew that I should be content. Married or unmarried, surely it made but little difference to me. She had prayed God she would never see me again. If once I might hear from her that she had found her place again in the sun, then, as far as I was concerned, her prayer should be answered, I would never see her again.

By this time we had reached the number in Phillimore Gardens. The taxi pulled up when, telling Dandy to stay there quietly till I returned, I hurried up the steps and rang the bell.

"Is Mrs. Farringdon in?" I inquired of the maid.

She said she was, whereupon, having taken my card, I was shown into just such a drawing-room as I should have imagined the Miss Fennells furnishing, with taste acquired by a visit to London. I had begun counting the cushions and photographs when the good lady came in. She is Miss Teresa over again, with just that difference of expression which marriage makes to the confidence in a woman's eyes. For if you are a woman, I believe, and reach the age which poor Miss Teresa has attained, there comes into your eyes, whether you will it or not, the look of watching for some phantom thing which never rides the seas upon your actual horizon. You know it is there, because you hope it is there. Maybe it is the disappointed spirit of maternity which has waited so long upon the road that its eyes are tired of watching.

With just the look of confidence in place of this Mrs. Farringdon was a repetition of Miss Teresa. She bowed to me stiffly as she came into the room, half closing the door with that unconscious sense of self-protection which is natural to the less prepossessing of her sex.