HIS LOVE STORY

By

MARIE VAN VORST

Author of First Love, The Girl From His Town The Broken Bell, etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1913 The Bobbs-Merrill Company

To Monsieur le Capitaine Dadvisard de la Cavalerie Française Paris, 1912

CONTENTS

Chapter

I A Serious Event II Julia Redmond III A Second Invitation IV The Dog Pays V The Golden Autumn VI Ordered Away VII A Soldier's Dog VIII Homesick IX The Fortunes of War X Together Again XI A Sacred Trust XII The News From Africa XIII One Dog's Day XIV An American Girl XV Julia's Romance XVI The Duke in Doubt XVII Out of the Desert XVIII Two Lovely Women XIX The Man in Rags XX Julia Decides XXI Master and Friend XXII Into the Desert XXIII Two Love Stories XXIV The Meeting XXV As Handsome Does XXVI Congratulations XXVII Valor in Retrospect XXVIII Happiness

HIS LOVE STORY

CHAPTER I A SERIOUS EVENT

Le Comte de Sabron, in the undress uniform of captain in the —— Cavalry, sat smoking and thinking.... What is the use of being thirty years old with the brevet of captain and much distinction of family if you are a poor man—in short, what is the good of anything if you are alone in the world and no one cares what becomes of you?

He rang his bell, and when his ordonnance appeared, said sharply:

"Que diable is the noise in the stable, Brunet? Don't you know that when I smoke at this hour all Tarascon must be kept utterly silent?"

Tarascon is never silent. No French meridional town is, especially in the warm sunlight of a glorious May day.

"The noise, mon Capitaine," said Brunet, "is rather melancholy."

"Melancholy!" exclaimed the young officer. "It's infernal. Stop it at once."

The ordonnance held his kepi in his hand. He had a round good-natured face and kind gray eyes that were used to twinkle at his master's humor and caprices.

"I beg pardon, mon Capitaine, but a very serious event is taking place."

"It will be more serious yet, Brunet, if you don't keep things quiet."

"I am sorry to tell, mon Capitaine, that Michette has just died."

"Michette!" exclaimed the master. "What relation is she of yours, Brunet?"

"Ah, mon Capitaine," grinned the ordonnance, "relation! None! It is the little terrier that Monsieur le Capitaine may have remarked now and then in the garden."

Sabron nodded and took his cigarette out of his mouth as though in respect for the deceased.

"Ah, yes," he said, "that melancholy little dog! Well, Brunet!"

"She has just breathed her last, mon Capitaine, and she is leaving behind her rather a large family."

"I am not surprised," said the officer.

"There are six," vouchsafed Brunet, "of which, if mon Capitaine is willing, I should like to keep one."

"Nonsense," said Sabron, "on no account. You know perfectly well, Brunet, that I don't surround myself with things that can make me suffer. I have not kept a dog in ten years. I try not to care about my horses even. Everything to which I attach myself dies or causes me regret and pain. And I won't have any miserable little puppy to complicate existence."

"Bien, mon Capitaine," accepted the ordonnance tranquilly. "I have given away five. The sixth is in the stable; if Monsieur le Capitaine would come down and look at it...."

Sabron rose, threw his cigarette away and, following across the garden in the bland May light, went into the stable where Madame Michette, a small wire-haired Irish terrier had given birth to a fine family and herself gone the way of those who do their duty to a race. In the straw at his feet Sabron saw a rat-like, unprepossessing little object, crawling about feebly in search of warmth and nourishment, uttering pitiful little cries. Its extreme loneliness and helplessness touched the big soldier, who said curtly to his man:

"Wrap it up, and if you don't know how to feed it I should not be surprised if I could induce it to take a little warm milk from a quill. At all events we shall have a try with it. Fetch it along to my rooms."

And as he retraced his steps, leaving his order to be executed, he thought to himself: The little beggar is not much more alone in the world than I am! As he said that he recalled a word in the meridional patois: Pitchouné, which means "poor little thing."

"I shall call it Pitchouné," he thought, "and we shall see if it can't do better than its name suggests."

He went slowly back to his rooms and busied himself at his table with his correspondence. Among the letters was an invitation from the Marquise d'Esclignac, an American married to a Frenchman, and the great lady of the country thereabouts.

"Will you not," she wrote, "come to dine with us on Sunday? I have my niece with me. She would be glad to see a French soldier. She has expressed such a wish. She comes from a country where soldiers are rare. We dine at eight."

Sabron looked at the letter and its fine clear handwriting. Its wording was less formal than a French invitation is likely to be, and it gave him a sense of cordiality. He had seen, during his rides, the beautiful lines of the Château d'Esclignac. Its turrets surely looked upon the Rhone. There would be a divine view from the terraces. It would be a pleasure to go there. He thought more of what the place would be than of the people in it, for he was something of a hermit, rather a recluse, and very reserved.

He was writing a line of acceptance when Brunet came in, a tiny bundle in his hand.

"Put Pitchouné over there in the sunlight," ordered the officer, "and we shall see if we can bring him up by hand."

CHAPTER II JULIA REDMOND

He remembered all his life the first dinner at the Château d'Esclignac, where from the terrace he saw the Rhone lying under the early moonlight and the shadows falling around the castle of good King René.

As he passed in, his sword clanking—for he went in full dress uniform to dine with the Marquise d'Esclignac—he saw the picture the two ladies made in their drawing-room: the marquise in a very splendid dress (which he never could remember) and her niece, a young lady from a country whose name it took him long to learn to pronounce, in a dress so simple that of course he never could forget it! He remembered for a great many years the fall of the ribbon at her pretty waist, the bunch of sweet peas at her girdle, and he always remembered the face that made the charm of the picture.

Their welcome to him was gracious. The American girl spoke French with an accent that Sabron thought bewilderingly charming, and he put aside some of his reserve and laughed and talked at his ease. After dinner (this he remembered with peculiar distinctness) Miss Redmond sang for him, and although he understood none of the words of the English ballad, he learned the melody by heart and it followed with him when he left. It went with him as he crossed the terrace into the moonlight to mount his horse; it went home with him; he hummed it, and when he got up to his room he hummed it again as he bent over the little roll of flannel in the corner and fed the puppy hot milk from a quill.

This was a painstaking operation and required patience and delicacy, both of which the big man had at his finger-tips. The tune of Miss Redmond's song did for a lullaby and the puppy fell comfortably to sleep while Sabron kept the picture of his evening's outing contentedly in his mind. But later he discovered that he was not so contented, and counted the hours when he might return.

He shortly made a call at the Château d'Esclignac with the result that he had a new picture to add to his collection. This time it was the picture of a lady alone; the Marquise d'Esclignac doing tapestry. While Sabron found that he had grown reticent again, he listened for another step and another voice and heard nothing; but before he took leave there was a hint of a second invitation to dinner.

The marquise was very handsome that afternoon and wore yet another bewildering dress. Sabron's simple taste was dazzled. Nevertheless, she made a graceful picture, one of beauty and refinement, and the young soldier took it away with him. As his horse began to trot, at the end of the alley, near the poplars at the lower end of the rose terrace he caught a glimpse of a white dress (undoubtedly a simpler dress than that worn by Madame d'Esclignac).

CHAPTER III A SECOND INVITATION

"I don't think, mon Capitaine, that it is any use," Brunet told his master.

Sabron, in his shirt-sleeves, sat before a table on which, in a basket, lay Michette's only surviving puppy. It was a month old. Sabron already knew how bright its eyes were and how alluring its young ways.

"Be still, Brunet," commanded the officer. "You do not come from the south or you would be more sanguine. Pitchouné has got to live."

The puppy's clumsy adventuresome feet had taken him as far as the highroad, and on this day, as it were in order that he should understand the struggle for existence, a bicycle had cut him down in the prime of his youth, and now, according to Brunet, "there wasn't much use!"

Pitchouné was bandaged around his hind quarters and his adorable little head and forepaws came out of the handkerchief bandage.

"He won't eat anything from me, mon Capitaine," said Brunet, and Sabron ceremoniously opened the puppy's mouth and thrust down a dose. Pitchouné swallowed obediently.

Sabron had just returned from a long hard day with his troops, and tired out as he was, he forced himself to give his attention to Pitchouné. A second invitation to dinner lay on his table; he had counted the days until this night. It seemed too good to be true, he thought, that another picture was to add itself to his collection! He had mentally enjoyed the others often, giving preference to the first, when he dined at the château; but there had been a thrill in the second caused by the fluttering of the white dress down by the poplar walk.

To-night he would have the pleasure of taking in Miss Redmond to dinner.

"See, mon Capitaine," said Brunet, "the poor little fellow can't swallow it."

The water trickled out from either side of Pitchouné's mouth. The sturdy terrier refused milk in all forms, had done so since Sabron weaned him; but Sabron now returned to his nursery days, made Brunet fetch him warm milk and, taking the quill, dropped a few drops of the soothing liquid, into which he put a dash of brandy, down Pitchouné's throat. Pitchouné swallowed, got the drink down. gave a feeble yelp, and closed his eyes. When he opened them the glazed look had gone.

The officer hurried into his evening clothes and ordered Brunet, as he tied his cravat, to feed the puppy a little of the stimulant every hour until he should return. Pitchouné's eyes, now open, followed his handsome master to the door. As Sabron opened it he gave a pathetic yelp which made the capitaine turn about.

"Believe me, mon Capitaine," said the ordonnance with melancholy fatality, "it is no use. If I am left with Pitchouné it will be to see him die. I know his spirit, mon Capitaine. He lives for you alone."

"Nonsense," said the young officer impatiently, drawing on his gloves.

Pitchouné gave a plaintive wail from the bandages and tried to stir.

"As for feeding him, mon Capitaine," the ordonnance threw up his hands, "he will be stiff by the time..."

But Sabron was half-way down the stairs. The door was open, and on the porch he heard distinctly a third tenderly pathetic wail.

* * * * * * *

That evening the Marquise d'Esclignac read aloud to her niece the news that the Count de Sabron was not coming to dinner. He was "absolutely desolated" and had no words to express his regret and disappointment. The pleasure of dining with them both, a pleasure to which he had looked forward for a fortnight, must be renounced because he was obliged to sit up with a very sick friend, as there was no one else to take his place. In expressing his undying devotion and his renewed excuses he put his homage at their feet and kissed their hands.

The Marquise d'Esclignac, wearing another very beautiful dress, looked up at her niece, who was playing at the piano.

"A very poor excuse, my dear Julia, and a very late one."

"It sounds true, however. I believe him, don't you, ma tante?"

"I do not," said the marquise emphatically. "A Frenchman of good education is not supposed to refuse a dinner invitation an hour before he is expected. Nothing but a case of life and death would excuse it."

"He says a Very sick friend.'"

"Nonsense," exclaimed the marquise.

Miss Redmond played a few bars of the tune Sabron had hummed and which more than once had soothed Pitchouné, and which, did she know, Sabron was actually humming at that moment.

"I am rather disappointed," said the young girl, "but if we find it is a matter of life and death, ma tante, we will forgive him?"

The Marquise d'Esclignac had invited the Count de Sabron because she had been asked to do so by his colonel, who was an old and valued friend. She had other plans for her niece.

"I feel, my dear," she answered her now, "quite safe in promising that if it is a question of life and death we shall forgive him. I shall see his colonel to-morrow and ask him pointblank."

Miss Redmond rose from the piano and came over to her aunt, for dinner had been announced.

"Well, what do you think," she slipped her hand in her aunt's arm, "really, what do you think could be the reason?"

"Please don't ask me," exclaimed the Marquise d'Esclignac impatiently. "The reasons for young men's caprices are sometimes just as well not inquired into."

If Sabron, smoking in his bachelor quarters, lonely and disappointed, watching with an extraordinary fidelity by his "sick friend," could have seen the two ladies at their grand solitary dinner, his unfilled place between them, he might have felt the picture charming enough to have added to his collection.

CHAPTER IV THE DOG PAYS

Pitchouné repaid what was given him.

He did not think that by getting well, reserving the right for the rest of his life to a distinguished limp in his right leg, that he had done all that was expected of him. He developed an ecstatic devotion to the captain, impossible for any human heart adequately to return. He followed Sabron like a shadow and when he could not follow him, took his place on a chair in the window, there to sit, his sharp profile against the light, his pointed ears forward, watching for the uniform he knew and admired extravagantly.

Pitchouné was a thoroughbred, and every muscle and fiber showed it, every hair and point asserted it, and he loved as only thoroughbreds can. You may say what you like about mongrel attachments, the thoroughbred in all cases reserves his brilliancy for crises.

Sabron, who had only seen Miss Redmond twice and thought about her countless times, never quite forgave his friend for the illness that kept him from the château. There was in Sabron's mind, much as he loved Pitchouné, the feeling that if he had gone that night...

There was never another invitation!

"Voyons, mon cher," his colonel had said to him kindly the next time he met him, "what stupidity have you been guilty of at the Château d'Esclignac?"

Poor Sabron blushed and shrugged his shoulders.

"I assure you," said the colonel, "that I did you harm there without knowing it. Madame d'Esclignac, who is a very clever woman, asked me with interest and sympathy, who your 'very sick friend' could be. As no one was very sick according to my knowledge, I told her so. She seemed triumphant and I saw at once that I had put you in the wrong."

It would have been simple to have explained to the colonel, but Sabron, reticent and reserved, did not choose to do so. He made a very insufficient excuse, and the colonel, as well as the marquise, thought ill of him. He learned later, with chagrin, that his friends were gone from the Midi. Rooted to the spot himself by his duties, he could not follow them. Meanwhile Pitchouné thrived, grew, cheered his loneliness, jumped over a stick, learned a trick or two from Brunet and a great many fascinating wiles and ways, no doubt inherited from his mother. He had a sense of humor truly Irish, a power of devotion that we designate as "canine," no doubt because no member of the human race has ever deserved it.

CHAPTER V THE GOLDEN AUTUMN

Sabron longed for a change with autumn, when the falling leaves made the roads golden roundabout the Château d'Esclignac. He thought he would like to go away. He rode his horse one day up to the property of the hard-hearted unforgiving lady and, finding the gate open, rode through the grounds up to the terrace. Seeing no one, he sat in his saddle looking over the golden country to the Rhone and the castle of the good King René, where the autumn mists were like banners floating from the towers.

There was a solitary beauty around the lovely place that spoke to the young officer with a sweet melancholy. He fancied that Miss Redmond must often have looked out from one of the windows, and he wondered which one. The terrace was deserted and leaves from the vines strewed it with red and golden specters. Pitchouné raced after them, for the wind started them flying, and he rolled his tawny little body over and over in the rustling leaves. Then a rabbit, which before the arrival of Sabron had been sitting comfortably on the terrace stones, scuttled away like mad, and Pitchouné, somewhat hindered by his limp, tore after it.

The deserted château, the fact that there was nothing in his military life beyond the routine to interest him now in Tarascon, made Sabron eagerly look forward to a change, and he waited for letters from the minister of war which would send him to a new post.

The following day after his visit to the château he took a walk, Pitchouné at his heels, and stood aside in the highroad to let a yellow motor pass him, but the yellow motor at that moment drew up to the side of the road while the chauffeur got out to adjust some portion of the mechanism. Some one leaned from the yellow motor window and Sabron came forward to speak to the Marquise d'Esclignac and another lady by her side.

"How do you do, Monsieur? Do you remember us?"

(Had he ever forgotten them?) He regretted so very much not having been able to dine with them in the spring.

"And your sick friend?" asked Madame d'Esclignac keenly, "did he recover?"

"Yes," said Sabron, and Miss Redmond, who leaned forward, smiled at him and extended her pretty hand. Sabron opened the motor door.

"What a darling dog!" Miss Redmond cried. "What a bewitching face he has! He's an Irish terrier, isn't he?"

Sabron called Pitchouné, who diverted his attention from the chauffeur to come and be hauled up by the collar and presented. Sabron shook off his reticence.

"Let me make a confession," he said with a courteous bow. "This is my 'very sick friend.' Pitchouné was at the point of death the night of your dinner and I was just leaving the house when I realized that the helpless little chap could not weather the breeze without me. He had been run over by a bicycle and he needed some very special care."

Miss Redmond's hand was on Pitchouné's head, between his pointed ears. She looked sympathetic. She looked amused. She smiled.

"It was a question of 'life and death,' wasn't it?" she said eagerly to Sabron.

"Really, it was just that," answered the young officer, not knowing how significant the words were to the two ladies.

Then Madame d'Esclignac knew that she was beaten and that she owed something and was ready to pay. The chauffeur got up on his seat and she asked suavely:

"Won't you let us take you home, Monsieur Sabron?"

He thanked them. He was walking and had not finished his exercise.

"At all events," she pursued, "now that your excuse is no longer a good one, you will come this week to dinner, will you not?"

He would, of course, and watched the yellow motor drive away in the autumn sunlight, wishing rather less for the order from the minister of war to change his quarters than he had before.

CHAPTER VI ORDERED AWAY