LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1884, 8 March 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HOW GEORGETTE KEPT TRYST. It was a feta day at Versailles, and the palace and grounds were crowded with the holiday makers from Paris. A golden September afternoon was waning to its close. The autumn sunshine, low, but clear, lay in long shafts of light across the quaint and formal gardens, and glittered in the spray of the innumerable fountains, tossing, falling, splashing, sparkling on every side. The air was full of the laughing, liquid sound. The crowd had gathered thickly round the Grandes Eaux that is, the giant jets in the ‘Basin of Neptune,' and ‘Apollo,’ leaving the remoter parts of the grounds comparatively deserted. In one of the loneliest of the green and shady alleys a young couple were slowly sauntering. The girl was dressed with the dainty neatness characteristic of a Parisian ouvriere of the be - ter class, and had taken off her hat, !n order to decorate it with a spray of ivy, while her companion held her parasol and watched her in admiring silence. The sunshine touched her wavy brown hair with gleams of gold, and brought a tinge of red to the deli ate v>allor of her face, a face whio ’', in repose, hsd a look of patient melancholy, as if already life’s shadows had f allen upon it. But when, glancing up from her task, she met her lover’s eyes, it brightened all over with a smile so sadden and sweet that he was dazzled. ‘Georgette, how lovely you are?’ The remark seemed to escape him involuntarily. * It is my hat, not my face, you aye to adnvre if yi u please,’ she returned, with a demure little glance at him, as she put it on again. ‘ Look, doesn’t the ivy make a pretty trimming ?’ “Charming; the frame is worthy of tin picture, Suppose we sic down on the grass here for a few moments that I may admire it at my leisure!’ ‘ Yet, 1.1 us. I am so fond of this place,’ she responded. It was a narrow walk, shat in by trees and quaint clipped hedges, with grass under foot and leaves overhead, green, shady, solitary. Near where they sat was a little fountain, and the statue of a water-nymph in. a mossy

marble basin. The murmurs of the crowd reached them vaguely, mingled with the rushing of water and the music of a distant band.

* You love this spot t so do I,’ said [the young man, as he stretched himself on the grass at her side. ‘lt was in this very avenue, my darling, when the leaves were young, that you spoke the three words that made me the happiest man in France.’ ‘ Did it really make you happy to know that I loved you, Elienne? lam so glad,’ the girl replied, letting her hand rest for a moment on his dark curls. ‘But my love can never be to you, my dear, what yours is to me, because you have never known what it is to be utterly alone and uncared for, as I was till I met you, six months ago.’ *My poor little dove 1’ he murmured, raising her hands to his lips. "What a happy inspiration it was of mine,’ he went od, after a moment’s pause, *to take lodgings in the dear, dull old house in the Rue des Ecoles—little I dreamed that I should meet my fate under that roof I Do you know that it was your voice that decided me to take the rooms V ‘ My voice ! ’

* When the concierge showed them to me you were singing over year work in the story above. I asked him whose was that exquisite voice, like a chime of silver bells. It was a little flower-maker, au sixieme, he told me, whom the neighbors called ‘ Miss Nightingale,’ and it was worth five francs a month extra, he assured me, to have her for a fellow-lodger.’ Gorgette laughed aud blushed. ‘ What a compliment from old Podevin !’ * I quits agreed with him, and we came to terms on the spot. I found that my musical neighbor had a face that matched her voice, and if ever there was a case of love at first sight it was mine. Georgette. My heart went out to you, dear, from the moment when first your sweet, shy, blue eyes met mine. ‘

‘And mine to you,’ she whispered. ‘ls that true ? Then why did you take such trouble to avoid me, little coquette ?’ ‘ Now that is ungrateful. Was I not —’ * You were the kindest and most obliging of neighbors, I admit,’ he interrupted ; * but you were as shy as a bird. I aeliom caught a glimpse of you except we met by chance on the stairs, and then sometimes, instead of stopping to speak, you would dart past me like a flash of light.’ ‘My time was more valuable than yours, yon see,’ she explained. ‘ I work in earnest, while you only play at work. You need not look dignified, you know it is the truth. If you had no other resource but your pen, no rich relations in the background who —” ‘ You forget that I cut myself adrift from them two years ago, when I gave up the profession they had chosen for me, and turned from the sandy desert of the law into the flowery fields of literature. From their point of view I have committed social suicide; they have formally washed their hands of me.’

His companions face clouded. ‘ What would they say if they knew that that you were betrothed to a common work girl ? ’ she asked, with a troubled smile. ? f * They do know it, ’ ho answered quietly. ‘ I wrote to my father some days ago.’ She started, and the colour rushed to her face.

‘ And he—has he answered your letter ? what did he say V ‘ What did he not say, rather ? ’ returned Etienne, laughing, ‘ You don’t expect me to repeat it all I hope? Why do you look so soared, child ? You know that nothing he can say —nothing that any one can say or do would make me give you up.’ * I know. But—but perhaps it is selfish ef me to let you sacrifice your prospects for my sake,’ she faltered, looking at him in wistful doubt. ‘Perhaps some day you will regret— ’ ‘ Georgette,’ he interrupted reproachfully, ‘ have you so little faith in my love 1 have yon so soon forgotten all I said to you under there very trees, when we plighted our troth ?’

‘ How could I forget ? ' ‘ Then trust me, dearest, and do not fear the future. It comes to us smiling, with both hands full of blessings.’ ‘Ah, do not expect too much from it, Etienne. ’

‘ Well, if it only brings me bread and cheese, and you, I shall be contented,’ ho returned.

* Contented without fame or riches ? ’ she questioned, smiling, ‘ I thought you were ambitious ? ’

•So I was once - but there is no room for ambition in a heart that is full to the brim of love. After all,’ he added philosophically, ‘ what happier should I be for riches or renown ? I have set up my tent in the pleasant land of Bohemia, where there is no shame in a shabby coat, where poverty is picturesque, and even starvation has its political side.’

Georgette raised her eyebrows. ‘ It is plain that whoever first said so never felt it, ’ she commenced, dryly. Something in her tone made her companion look round at her face.

‘Georgette, how you said that! One would almost think that you —’ ‘ That I bad known that poetical pain myself?’ she added, with a smile half-sad, half-ironical. ‘Perhaps I have. You see I have only these— ’ holding up her hands—- * to keep the wolf from the door, and if work fails me for a time he peeps in. Ah, he is not the least “poetical,” I assure you, but the ugliest monster yon can imagine.’ She shuddered, then broke into a laugh. * You look as startled as If you saw him at this moment peeping over my shoulder. Why do you talk of such horrors. Etienne? let us change the subject.’ Etienne was silent. A curious chill crept over him ; a sudden shadow seemed to have fallen on the bright day. There was a jarring sense of incong p uity in the association of Ge irgette with such grim realities as want and hardship. He looked at the sweet, courageous face, the fragile figure, the delicate litt'e hands that had been forced to fight so hard a battle for bare existence, and his heart swelled with pity and a generous sort of shame as he contrasted his easy, indolent life with hers.

He seized her fingers and covered them with kisses. ‘Dear, brave little hands! I never loved them so well. Thank heaven, they will not have to toil much longer.’ She smiled, and passed her hand over his hair again. • So when I share your tent in the pleasant land of Bohemia I shall have nothing to do all day but count my fingers?’ «You will have nothing to do but to love me and be happy.’ < Aimer, chanter - voila ma vie!’ she broke into melody as naturally as a bird sings. ‘ But do yon know that it is getting late ?’ she added, looking round. And indeed while they have been talking the golden afternoon had crept away. Shadows were lengthening on the slopes, and in the ferny hollows of the park, it was already dusk. Presently all the fountains ceased, and there was a sudden hush and stillness in the air ; a sense of coolness, freshness, moisture; an odour of wet earth and grass. The water in the 1 Basin of Neptune* subsided into stillness, though its surface was still fretted with ripples like a miniature sea, and the great metal groups of Neptune and Amphitrit?, Proteus, and the strange seamonsters dripped and glistened in the last rays of the setting sun. An hour later Georgette and her lover left the grounds, and made their way to the station, where a train was just starting for Pans. It was pleasant to be borne swiftly through the wide, dusky landscape, alongside of the sweet Heine, dimly shining in the starlight; past Saint Clord and Snreanes, with their pretty villas buried in foliage; past Puteiux with its market gardens, and Asnieres with its flotilla of pleasure boats, till the lights began to sparkle round them, the vague white glare of the e’ectric light showing where the Place de I’Opcra lay; the long lines of lamps on tho exterior boulevards stretching away in apparently endless perspective on every side. Then came the loitering walk homeward along the brilliant streets, where all Paris seemed to Ve sitting outside the cafes taking in cigar and • chassa’ —over the Pont Neuf, where they paused to look at the moon in the river, and bo into the labyrinth of quaint, old-world streets of the classic Quartier Latin. , , ~ It was nine o’clock when they reached the Rue des Fooles. . . As they passed tho concierge s den, the latter, a snuffy old man in a Holland apron and tasaeled smoking-cap, put cut his head and called them back. «A letter for yon, Ma’amsello Georgette. Came by tho mid-day post A man's writing,’ he added, as he handed it to her.

‘ 1 have no gentlemen correspondents. Monsieur Podevin. ’ It’s a gentleman’s writing, anyhow,’ her repeated. She scrutinized the direction with a puzzled look, then shrugged her shoulders and put the letter into her pocket. 0| r o h* rtrntin-ufd )