Rosemary: A Christmas story

								

There had been a time when he had fancied it would be a wonderful thing
to see the Riviera. He had thought what it would be like to be a rich
man, and bring a certain girl here for a moon of honey and roses.
She was the most beautiful girl in the world, or he believed her so,
which is exactly the same thing; and he had imagined the joy of walking
with her on just such a terrace as this Casino terrace where he was
walking now, alone. She would be in white, with one of those long ermine
things that women call stoles; an ermine muff (the big, "granny" kind
that swallows girlish arms up to the dimples in their elbows) and a hat
which they would have bought together in Paris.
They would have bought jewels, too, in the same street where they found
the hat; the Rue de la Paix, which she had told him she longed to see.
And she would be wearing some of the jewels with the white dress--just a
few, not many, of course. A string of pearls (she loved pearls) a
swallow brooch (he had heard her say she admired those swallow brooches,
and he never forgot anything she said); with perhaps a sapphire-studded
buckle on her white suéde belt. Yes, that would be all, except the
rings, which would lie hidden under her gloves, on the dear little hands
whose nails were like enamelled rose leaves.
When she moved, walking beside him on the terrace, there would be a
mysterious silky whisper and rustle, something like that you hear in the
woods, in the spring, when the leaves are crisp with their pale green
youth, and you shut your eyes, listening to the breeze telling them the
secrets of life.
There would be a fragrance about the white dress and the laces, and
ermine, and the silk things that you could not see,--a fragrance as
mysterious as the rustling, for it would seem to belong to the girl, and
not to have come from any bottle, or bag of sachet powder. A sweet,
fresh, indefinable fragrance, like the smell of a tea rose after rain.
They would have walked together, they two, and he would have been so
proud of her, that every time a passer-by cast a glance of admiration at
her face, he would feel that he could hardly keep in a laugh of joy, or
a shout, "She is mine--she is mine."
But he had been poor in the old days, when from far away he had thought
of this terrace, and the moon of honey and roses, and love. It had all
been a dream, then, as it was now; too sweet ever to come true.
He thought of the dream, and of the boy who had dreamed it, half
bitterly, half sadly, on this his first day in the place of the dream.
He was rich--as rich as he had seen himself in the impossible picture,
and it would have been almost too easy to buy the white dress, and the
ermine, and the pearls. But there was no one for whom he would have been
happy to buy them. The most beautiful girl in the world was not in his
world now; and none other had had the password to open the door of his
heart since she had gone out, locking it behind her.