



Produced by David Widger






AFTERWARDS

AND OTHER STORIES

By Ian Maclaren

1898

TO

LADY GRAINGER-STEWART

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS OF LONG AGO AND THE FRIENDS WHO ARE FAR AWAY




AFTERWARDS


I

He received the telegram in a garden where he was gazing on a vision
of blue, set in the fronds of a palm, and listening to the song of the
fishers, as it floated across the bay.

"You look so utterly satisfied," said his hostess, in the high, clear
voice of Englishwomen, "that, I know you are tasting the luxury of
a contrast. The Riviera is charming in December; imagine London, and
Cannes, is Paradise."

As he smiled assent in the grateful laziness of a hard-worked man,
his mind was stung with the remembrance of a young wife swathed in the
dreary fog, who, above all things, loved the open air and the shining of
the sun.

Her plea was that Bertie would weary alone, and that she hated
travelling, but it came to him quite suddenly that this was always the
programme of their holidays--some Mediterranean villa, full of clever
people, for him, and the awful dulness of that Bloomsbury street for
her; or he went North to a shooting-lodge, where he told his best
stories in the smoking-room, after a long day on the purple heather; and
she did her best for Bertie at some watering-place, much frequented on
account of its railway facilities and economical lodgings. Letters of
invitation had generally a polite reference to his wife--"If Mrs.
Trevor