The garden of resurrection

by E. Temple Thurston

It seemed as if my words were turning her to stone. She did not move. There must have been some apprehension already in her mind, for she sat there silently, asking no questions, as one who is nerving herself for the inevitable falling of a blow that long has been hanging over her. It was then I hesitated most of all, for suddenly there had come to me a picture of her in tears. I have never, as you may well suppose, made a woman cry in my life. No woman has ever come to me in trouble, and for the moment I mistrusted myself, wondering what I should do if she wept.

"You must be very brave," I said again, and then I told her everything; all that I had heard that night at supper when the glasses were tinkling and the violins played their everlasting melodies of forgetfulness.

Until that story was finished, I dared not look at her. It was enough to hear the silence with which she listened. Every word I uttered had the sound of some dead thing falling into the fathomless depth of still water. I had not the courage to watch her face, seeing them vanish out of sight as they sunk one by one into her heart. I guessed what misery she felt, what utter despair had come to her as she listened to the bitter end. When I had finished, I turned and looked into her eyes.

"When you know little of it," said I, "the world is like that. Either you must know nothing, or you must know all."

She was fumbling with the veil in her lap. Her little fingers were picking at the threads of it as though there were the tangle of her life, if she could but unravel it. Presently she looked up and met my eyes.

"Why did you come all this way to tell me that?" she whispered, and there was such reproach in her voice as made me wish to God I had never spoken.

"Isn't it better that you should know," said I, "better than staying here in this prison with those two old women for gaolers, never seeing the proper light of day except by such subterfuge as you've had to make use of this morning?"

For another moment or two she was silent again; then suddenly she crushed the veil passionately in her hands. "I don't believe it's true!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't him you saw. It was some one like him, but it wasn't him. He's always promised he'd come back and marry me. We're going to live in London and he's going to take me to theatres. Oh—there are a thousand things we're going to do when we're married. I'm going to see the world. And he's told me over and over again that he loves me. It wasn't him you saw. It was some one like him."

She could have persuaded herself to that belief had I allowed her, driving it again and again into her mind until the facts had become unrecognizable. But I had fulfilled my duty to Destiny so far. There could be no meaning in it if I turned back now.

"You forget the story," I said, "the story of Clarissa and the gown of canary-colored satin. Your sitting here now with me is a proof that he was the man I saw. Don't deceive yourself into any belief to make yourself happy for the moment. Give him up—he'll only make you miserable; he's only thinking of marrying you because of what he will get by you. Give him up, go back to Dominica, break your heart for a month or two if you must. It'll heal again. You're in love with love, far more than you're in love with him. You don't know it perhaps. How should you! Are you twenty yet? Twenty and a day—not more. How should you know who's worth loving and who is not? Every girl and every boy falls in love with love, and many a lover must come and go before a girl shall learn which one is worth the beating of her heart. Go back, my dear child, to that home of yours in the sun, where you can dress yourself in all those colors that make you happy; go back and love your love, with an aching heart if you like, until there comes along some better man than he is. You don't know him—you don't know anything about him. In that little island of yours, I've no doubt he seemed a hero for Romance. But there's no Romance about him here. All that I say comes coldly from my head. You are only thinking with your heart and, of course, you don't believe a word I've told you. But think again, am I not a far better judge than you? Think again and keep on thinking. I know, but you only feel."