The Man of Iron

by Richard Dehan

Of his dreary three days' journey in charge of the string of country carts containing the exiles, who were permitted to travel to Versailles via the Porte Charenton, Brie-Comte-Robert, and Corbeil, Lord Henry afterward penned a Narrative. Which literary effort, printed, bound in cloth of a soothing green, and adorned with a Portrait of the Author, the young man bestowed upon his friends.

Perhaps you can see the blue eyes of Juliette peering between the frost flowers encrusting the window of her bedroom on the second floor, which commanded a view of the garden of the Rue de Provence.

She had, upon the previous evening, received an intimation from the Minister that she would be permitted to take exercise regularly in the garden between the hours of nine and ten. Thus with a throbbing heart, she dressed the shining tresses so long concealed under Madame Charles Tessier's chenille net and white shawl, and arrayed herself in the plain black silk skirt and bodice that we have seen once previously—looped over a cloth petticoat of the same mourning hue. She sought for, found, and put on the gray velvet jacket trimmed with Persian lambskin, and the little gray toque that matched it, despoiled of its azure feather. These things, with many others, had been packed away in a trunk and stowed in the attic now occupied by Madame Potier, when Mademoiselle had departed for Belgium under the charge of Madame Tessier.

She wound a white silk scarf about her throat, tied on a veil, and found herself wishing for a knot of violets to brighten the pale, somberly clad reflection in the looking-glass.... Color ... and her Colonel's grave lying under the first-fallen snow.... She blushed deep rose for very shame of her own vanity, and then in all conscience the picture was bright enough.

The pleasance, like the rest of the world, lay under a mantle of sparkling whiteness. The orderlies and grooms had already cleared and scraped the paths in the vicinity of the house. The ring of the shovels and the swish of the brooms might be heard in the distance. Mademoiselle sighed, thinking of Jean Jacques Potier.

Then timidly she stole down by the back staircase and passed through the hall door into a world all glittering. The keen air was as exhilarating as champagne. It breathed on her cheeks, and renewed the roses that had bloomed there when she had frowned at the girl in the mirror. The frost kissed her eyes, and they sparkled like sapphire-tinted icicles. She tripped down the short curved avenue, passed the gardener's cottage, and turned into the kitchen garden. Not that she was looking for anybody there.

All through the autumn and winter in a sheltered corner had bloomed a large standard rose tree of the hardy, late-flowering kind. The storms of October had passed over and left its fragrant pink blooms unscathed, the bitter winds and night frosts of November had done no more than brown the edges of an outer petal. The tree in its fragrance and beauty, and its strange immunity from hurt of wind and weather, had been an unfailing source of pleasure to Juliette. When an overblown flower shed its leaves, she had gathered up and kept them. When a new bud plumped and bravely unfolded, her heart had known a delicate thrill of joy.

So Mademoiselle went on into the kitchen garden, whose paths had not been cleared of snow. There was her tree—standing in its corner, but buried to the lower branches in a drift that had formed in this sheltered angle of the southward wall.

The roses had met their match at last. Drooping and yellow, sodden and heavy, they had no more courage or hope to give away. Juliette kissed both her hands to them, in farewell, and turned to encounter P. C. Breagh.

The green baize apron and other integuments of the late Jean Jacques Potier had been replaced by the old brown Norfolk suit so often mentioned in these pages. It had been sedulously brushed and his linen was scrupulously white, and he had bestowed infinite pains upon the knot of the black silk, loose-ended tie. His cropped hair would grow again, and his broad red smear of eyebrow was echoed on his upper lip by a young but decidedly red mustache with rather fuzzy corners. The pleasant lips smiled at sight of her, and a hot flame leaped into the gray-and-amber eyes. Her own could not be likened to sapphire icicles now. They were tender, and her long upper lip was haunted by flying smiles that came, and vanished, and came again.