Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/229

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Episodes before Thirty

the three figures passing to and fro and chanting, the strange weird face of the faun, it by the flickering flame from below, startled her so that she stood stock-still on the threshold without a word. The next second she was gone.... What eventually happened to Louis I never knew. Months later he moved to a room up-town. We lost track of one another, and I have no idea how fate behaved to him in after-life. He was thirty-five when he sang the messe noire, hunted snipe, and gave occasional lessons in French and Spanish.

These trivial little memories remain vivid for some reason. To my precious Sundays in Bronx Park, or farther afield when the days grew longer, he came too, and Kay came with him. We shared the teapot and tin mug I still kept hidden behind a boulder, we shared the fire I always made--neither of my companions shared my mood of happiness.... I was glad when they both refused to get up and start at eight, preferring to spend the morning in bed. For months and months I never missed a single Sunday, wet or fine, for these outings were life to me, and I made a rough lean-to that kept the rain off in bad weather.... The car-fare was only 30 cents, both ways; bread and a lump of cheese provided two meals; there were few Sundays when I did not get at least seven or eight hours of intense happiness among the trees and wild stretches of what was to me a veritable Eden of delight.... Nothing experienced in later life, tender or grandiose, neither the splendour of the Alps, the majesty of the Caucasus, the mystery of the desert, the magic of spring in Italy or the grim wonder of the real backwoods which I tasted later too--none of these produced the strange and subtle ecstasy of happiness I found on those Sundays in the wastes of scrubby Bronx Park, a few miles from "Noo York City." ... It was, of course, but the raw material, so to speak, of beauty, which indeed is true always of "scenery" as a whole, but it was possible to find detail which, grouped together, made unforgettable pictures by the score. Though deprived of technique, I could see

the pictures I need never think of painting. The selection

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