The Garden of Memories

by Henry St. John Cooper

"Yes, I believe it, I know it, it is true."

His lordship, having made a very good dinner, had selected the easiest chair in the room and settled himself down comfortably. Sir Josiah and his friends drifted to the smoking room and their cigars and their talk.

His lordship, taking his ease in his chair, had fallen into a sweet, refreshing slumber, for which he would have to pay presently when bed-time came. Kathleen was singing at the piano with this old friend of hers. Allan looked at them both. He did not quite know what to make of this old friend of Kathleen's, this man Scarsdale. He had not summed him up yet; on the whole he thought he did not much like him. To-night Allan felt in no mood to join his father and his friends, had Sir Josiah been alone it would have been different. Kathleen was interested in her friend. His lordship was asleep, Allan crossed the room quietly, opened a French window, and passed out into the garden.

When a man is face to face with a problem, he must wrestle with it, find an answer to it and act on his own finding. A man who thrusts the thing behind him and leaves it all in the hands of Fate is little better than a coward, and Allan Homewood was no coward.

In this garden he had dreamed a dream and in that dream there had come to him the sweetest little maid on whom the sun had ever shone, and though his eyes had never beheld her before, yet he knew that she came to him as no stranger, but rather as some sweet vision or memory out of a past, which past had never been, in this life at least, and when the dream had gone he had awakened with a feeling of loss that had stayed with him for many days till at last he had managed to banish that feeling.

And now, now a living girl, the very maid of his dreams, had come to him and he had looked at her and known her for the same, and all the old tenderness, the love for her had come welling up in his heart again. And she, strangely, seemed to know him even as he knew her. Had she not called him Allan? Had she not looked at him with that same strange light in her blue eyes as had shone in those of the little maid of his dreams?

"What does it mean?" he whispered. "And what am I to do? Send her away? That would be cruel and unkind, poor little soul." Where had she to go to; why banish her for no fault of her own? And yet how impossible for him to go. But to meet her every day, to see those blue eyes of hers with their strange expression, half pleading, half fearful—to know, for he did know, and must know that this little maid for some strange reason loved him, as he must love her. What should he do? Would Kathleen help him when he told her as tell her he must—yes, he would rely on her sane judgment, on her generous nature, on her sweet womanliness. She would know how to act; he would place it all in Kathleen's hands and all would be well.

He felt relieved to think that he had arrived at some definite conclusion. Kathleen would—he paused suddenly and lifted his head.

From the soft darkness there came to him a sound, the sound of sobbing, as of some child weeping bitterly in its loneliness. It touched him, for he was tender hearted to a fault. Who was it? He went on quickly, yet softly, so as not to frighten or disturb the child. And then he found her, crouching on the stone seat, near the sundial, the slender body bent, the little hands clasped over her face. He knew her at once, he saw the sheen of her hair in the dim light and stood still for a moment, yet the piteous sobbing, the heaving of the shoulders hurt him and he stretched out his hand and touched her gently.

"Betty," he said, "Betty, why are you here and crying, child?"