THE STORY-TELLER. The Lion's Claw,

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STORY-TELLER. The Lion's Claw,

AN END OP THE CENTURY LOVESTORY. Lieutenant Julien de Rhe had returned in a sad slate from his station in Cochin-Ohina. Convalescent, after three month's illness at his mother's home in Touraine, he 4 shivered at the first wintry breath in the autumn air, and was ordered by the doctor to Pau : ' Just what you want — mild but bracing climate.' So in mid-November Julien sat at his sunny window in Hotel Garderes, gazing at the Pyrenees and smoking a cigarette in honour oti his recovery. 'My faith ! Pau is full of pretty women,' he said to himself the first time he went to listen to the military band at the Place Royale. Neither libertine nor iop, the young fellow thrilled with a fresh joy in living as he put on his coat with its shining' three straps, the rosette of the Legion of Honour in the button-hole— the rosette his mother had laid on his bed when he was so ill, and that he thought he would only wear in his coffin. How jolly Pau was, anyhow, with its vast horizon, ita snowy peaks, its brilliant sun, the cosmopolitan crowd where pretty foreigners chat tered all the languages of Europe, like tropic birds in an aviary. A few sad sights, to be sure — the consumptive young Englishman in a Bath chair, wrapped in plaids, with the eyes of a boiled fish, a black taffeta muffler over his mouth. It gave one a shiver, yet man is so selfish — it made Julien remember what a skeleton he had been three months ago, with chocolate rings under his eyes, and here he was cured, tossing silver coins to the beggars and watchingthe hearty little American girls in fly-away white frocks and black gloves and stockings, dancing 'ring-around a-rosy' to the band's quick step. •> + **# Just the frame of mind for falling in love, wasn't it? Which the happy convalescent proceeded to do the first time he set eyes on Mile. Olga Babarine, the belle of the Russian colony, as she dismounted in front of Hotel Gasson — the coup de fondre, in fact. Back from fo -hunting one evening at five, she had slipped from her horse into the arms of the nimblest of the pink-coated adorers ■who rushed for her stirrup. Striking the veranda table with her crop, she had called for a cup of milk, and drunk it off at a draught. Looking like a Primaticcio goddess, her slim figure and copper-coloured hair illuluminated by the flaring sunset, she paused, laughing merrily, a creamy moustache on her short upper lip. Suddenly grave, with a curt imperious nod, she left the red-coats and entered the hotel, tapping 1 her ridinghabit with her whip. Three days later, after many a ' Who is she ? I must know her !' to his acquaintances, Julien got himeelf introduced — not a difficult process — and joined the fair Russian's Waa she a Russian, after all, this intoxicating creature, who rode all day and waltzed all night? Yes, by her putative father, her mother's first husband, Count Babarine. But every on© remembered that at the time of Olgit's birth, her mother — the daughter, by the way, of a New York bauker named Jacobson — was getting a divorce, probably on account of her notorious liaison with a northern prince-royal, some Christian, or Oscar, or other. What was the nationality of a child brought up successively in a Scottish nursery, a Neapolitan convent, a Genevan pensionnat, who had slept half her nights on the cushions of the express, whose memory was a stereoscope in ■which revolved a series of wateringplaces and winter resorts, whither her mother, handsome still in spite of erysipelas, had carried the ennui of a fading coquftte along with her samovar and her pet monkeys ? The odd girl used to say, laughing at ht-r6oif: l I am neither of London, n r of Paris, nor of Vienna, ji"r of Petersburg — I'm of the tabled hoU !' Had she tmy family ? Haruly more so. Her real father, the Oscar or Christian, so often referred to by Mai". Babariue, had been dead some years, and the Russian count, her logai la her, never bothered hia lie id about her. Utterly bankrupt, a wv-ilised Leather- Slacking, who won at <ili the pigeon-matches, hi 3 unerring gun gave him a living. The Countess, in spile o£ periodical attacks of maternal devotion — painfully hollow — was gifted with one of the perfect, absolute, spherical egotisms that never show a flaw; when Olga at eight had almost died of typhoid, Mme. Babariae, of the white hands — for the sake of decency sitting up with her child— did not once forget to put on her gtmta gras. All this Do Xi c learned after enlisting in the Hying equadron that manoeuvred about fair Olga. He began to love the strange girl who let him look straight into her eyes, and who said to him a3 she lit a j)hae.sli cigarette, the day a friend presented him, Ah! You are the sunn who is so much in love with me ? H>w do you do ?' giving him a hearty handshake. Tue sailor, truehearted fellow that ho was, loved her the more as he grew to understand and pity her. For he was right : Olga was fantastic, ill brought up, but neither a flirt nor a Bnob. Feeling, perhaps, the vanity

of her life of pleasure, she judged, and that severely, her fox-hunting adorers and her cotillion partners. All desired her, none esteemed her — not one had made her an offer of marriage. So she pulled them up short if they ventured to sueak too close to her ear in the whirl of the waltz, or pressed too long the hand she held out to them en camarade. Julien, sensitive and discerning, discovered the secret high heartedness of the ' thorough-bred,' as Olga was called. He loved her too for her beauty, of course ; and his head would swim when, at a pause in the 'lance, the auburn-haired goddess, with the black eyes and tea-roso skin, would lean on his arm and intoxicate him with her starry gaze and violet breath. But be loved her above all for her sufferings so proudly hidden. How his hoart ached when ho caught the sombre look Olga turned on her mother at afternoon tea, when Mine. Babarine seated 'with tho light "discreetly behind her, evoked her royal conquests ia northern courts. He would marry her — snatch her out of this poisonous air, take her to his own saintly mother, show her a true family — save her i He sometimes fancied Olga understood bis purpose ; as she hauded him his glass of Russian tea, he thought ho vow and than caught, deep in her eyes, a gentle light that seemed an auswer to his generous pity. ***** ' Yes, mademoiselle, my leave is up next week. I leave Pau tomorrow, and, after a few days with my sister in Touraine, I shall go to Brest ; in a year I shall be at sea again.' They were standing in the hotel writing-room, near the open window, with its palpitating night sky. ' Good-by, then, and lon voyage,'' said Olga in her frank, firm voice. 1 But you must give me a little keepsake — that lion's claw you wear as a watch-charm — a trophy of an African lion-hunt, didn't you tell me ? It appeals to the fierce and free in me, you know.' Julien took off the charm and put it into the girl's fingers. Suddenly grasping her hand in both, of his, ardently : ' I love you — will you be my wife ?' Olga freed herself, keeping the lien's claw; folding her arms, she looked straight at him, apparently unmoved. *No — no — and yet you are the first to love me and to tell me so in that good way. That's why I refuse you.' ' Olga !' cried Julien, in a choked voice. ' Listen to me and I will explain. I am not worthy of you — you would be unhappy with me. You remember your sister's letter that you said you had lost ? Well, I picked it up here and read ifc. She replied to the confidences you had made her of your love for me — a love I had long guessed. Her words showed me the vast difference between a true, simple girl and me. And I saw, too, what a real family is — your family. Be grateful for the mother you have, M. de Bho. I have a mother, too, but I have been forced to judge her. You have seen only her ridiculous sides, but I know her better. She would refuse you my hand because you are only of the gentry and in moderate circumstances. She has decided that either I am to make a brilliant mateh — or — she will find something elee. I know a lot, don't I, for a girl of nineteen ? Horrible, isn't it ? But it's true. That's why last winter we were at Nice, last summer at Scheveningen, now at Pau. That's why we are rolling like trunks from one end of Europe to the other. Mamma was almost a princess-royal, you see ; and from fifteen Pve been given to understand that I was meant for an archduchess, at least, even if a left-handed one. Marry a mere gentleman, almost a bourgeois ! Ah ! you are disgusted and I'm ashamed of myself. Do not protest. Besides, I am expensive and useless, and you don't need me and I wouldn't make you happy — and I don't love you. I docft love anyone; love is in the things that I've always been forbidden. Goodby — get up and go away without a word. But leave mo your lion's claw to remind me of the honest fellow whom I have treated honestly. Adieu.' *****. Three years later, oue stormy night the transport Dv Couedio, back from Senegal, stopped at the Canaries to take on the mail. A package of papers was tossed into the officers' mess. De Rhe, seated there, opened a three weeks' old Paris sheet, and under the heading ' Arrivals,' read tho following linos : — < H. M. tho King of Suabia, in the strictest incognito, as Duke of Augsburg, is once more among us. An unfortunafe incident occurred at the station. The Baronne do Hall, who, accompanied by her mother, Comtesse Babarine, was travelling with His Majesty, suddenly missed an ornament of small value, but to which Mine, de Hall is, it saonis, greatly attached — a lion's claw mounted in a gold circlet. Mme. de Hall has offered two thousand francs for its recovery.' • My dear fellow, you'll miss your watch, if you don't look sharp. ' Thaaks,' said Julien, throwing down the paper and springing up aa in a dream. That night the man at the wheel, alone on the bridge with the young officer, saw Julien pass bis handkerchief several times across his face —

Mtrange, was it not ? Since, though there was a stiff breeze, the spray did not reach them. — Adapted for the San Francisco Argonaut from the French of Francois Coppee.