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THE GREEN DOOR.

BY MARGUERITE CURTIS.

THIS story is as pretty as it is sad, and as sad as it is happy, and by the time you have mastered that paradoxical saying you will be quite ready to hear all about the Green Door.

I cannot tell you all about it the history is too long and too intimate, and not even the Green Door itself could be brought to divulge all the secrets and the passionate vows to love for ever which have been whispered within its shadow.

Nevertheless the part about the Rector of West Mendip and Mary Wethered is what I say pretty and sad and happy.

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You shall judge for your selves.

It began long before the Rector was made rector of anywhere, before even he was ordained, and Mary Wethered in those days had no streaks of grey in her curly hair. Neither was she, perhaps, as beautiful, although her face was unlined and smooth, and her eyes shone only with the radiance of youth and not the steady flame of a tried and matured soul.

Nevertheless, the story began with inexperience and youth lovers' meeting and parting-and that brings us to Mary's grey hairs and the thin, ascetic figure of the Rector.

The intervening years are

not so long to look back upon as they took to pass.

"Is it a green or a black door?"

Amy the dwarf looked up with a slow smile at the questioner's ignorance.

"'Tis a green door!" she said with a grin; "tis allays called the green door."

"It looks black," said Mary Wethered.

"Tid'n, then; 'tis green! 'Tis a'most like moss when the zun shines on 'en."

"I've never seen the sun shine on it," said Mary Wethered.

"Huh! you haven't been here long enough. There's days," Amy swept her arm in a comprehensive circle, "when the zun do start froliczome like up there beyond the church, and come round with the wind and strike full against the green door. Us do get some o' they days in January to times, but they're most certain to begin after the day o' o' Valentine; not o' nights tho'." Amy rocked herself to and fro in grotesque, inaudible mirth.

"Why?" said Mary curiously.

"That 'ud be tellin'," said Amy mysteriously.

"Yes?" said Mary. Nonplussed, Amy looked up at her sideways. ""Tis at the green door," she said, "that they do all meet!" "Who are 'they'?"

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No view there of a noble avenue of trees, and she looked upward at the high stone wall no opportunity here either of seeing.

"How did you manage to see?" she repeated.

'Why, all the courting which was visible from the couples,' said Amy. "You opposite side. can see them in the daytime often enough, but then they're single 'tis a maid at that end," her finger pointed past the quadrangle enclosing the village on up the slope of highroad leading to the blacksmith's shop, "and a man down here," she nodded her head at the door; "but when the zun do cease shinin' on the green door," she smiled a little wistful smile of pleasure, "and the night do fall down peaceful, they meet close to it fast enough, and then they do wander off down one o' the lanes."

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"Up to the Rect'ry," said Amy indifferently. "Tis the Rector's private entrance. ha'in't never been through ut, but Mary Simonds what lived to the Rector as parlourmaid told me there was another door and a long stately avenue of trees up above a little path; so I thought I'd look and see. 'Tisn't much of it," she said discontentedly.

"How did you manage to see?" said Mary with amusement. Into her mind there sprang with the question the memory of the gaunt and grim grey stone house standing like a barracks on a little eminence among the pine-trees,

"I scrambled to the top of the wall; round there by the school-house ut do sort of hang over, and you can come out on the top-you couldn't, of course," eyeing the town lady's attenuated form with scorn, "but I did."

"And what did you see?" said Mary.

"A thin windey path, some gurt beech - trees and primroses, and another little green door, and something else too," and her voice dropped to the mysterious.

In her week's stay in West Mendip Mary had learned the way to manage the girl with whom she talked: now she said nothing, just stayed with inquiring, candid eyes on her face.

"I stayed up there until evenin'," said Amy, "when I saw the Rector come down; he walks exactly," she rose lumberingly from her seat and marched along the bit of road, holding up an imaginary cassock from before nervous, hurried feet, and mincing from side to side in an exaggeration of a walk Mary had once known,-"exactly," she went on, "like Mary Ann Bridport when she goes round with the tracts. He didn't know I seed un," she added daringly.

"I should think not," Mary said severely.

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Amy tells me it is certain to be out after February 14th; it shines then on the green door. I've been teasing her -telling her 'twas black."

A spot of colour burnt on Mrs Shore's cheeks.

""Tis green, right enough," she said seriously. "I mind when 't were painted, 'bout three years back; the Rector's mighty partic'lar 'bout havin' his place kep' in order."

"What is his name?" said Mary.

"Lor, Miss! you bin here a week an' never 'eard that? Mr Holmes we do call 'un-the Rev. Jonathan Holmes."

She rolled the full title round her tongue with unction.

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXVI.

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"No, Miss, he b'aint an ordinary man neither-very kind and pitiful and lovin' to all young folks and children, but just a hater, Miss, of women! I zed to un' once,he did come and stand inside so friendly - like when Amy hurt her foot, inquiring for her, tho' Libby she's his fav'rite, as you might say,I zed to un': 'Mr Holmes,' I zed, 'Amy and Libby they'll be growin' up one of these days, and what'll you do then, zur? Be you goin' to drop 'em like a hot coal?' He didn't say much, you know, Miss; just wrinkled wrinkled up his eyes and kind o' laughed, and then he said politely, 'No need to talk about that yet, Mrs Shore. Good day!' An' 'e went shakin' off down the road laughin'."

"He still has that funny, shaky walk, then," said Mary.

The next instant she could have bitten out her tongue for using that word "still," but Mrs Shore passed it unnoticed.

"He do tremble when he's movin', Miss, like as if his feet was hung on wires; spite o' that, he's a fine, upstandin' gentleman."

Mrs Shore withdrew, and Mary was left by herself. She noticed, half unconsciously, yet with that intensity with which one does notice minor details in any time of stress, that the under part of the currant-bushes in the little garden was covered with green lichen, while the tops pointed upward with a certain gallant erectness, as if preparing for the coming of spring.

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went the shrubs outside a cottage threw a black and purple patch of shadow on to to the road. Mary's eyes sought hungrily for these darkened patches. When she came to them she

The carrier's cart lumbering by on the turnpikeroad, and after it the sound of a bicycle-bell, muffled on the misty, dank air, was carried to her faintly.

On other days, with the delightful and petty curiosity to which she had given herself up on first coming to West Mendip, she would have gone to the little window and looked down the road to see the rider, but now the sound drew her back to the thoughts she had unconsciously evaded.

She had come in sanctuary from the first stages of a mortal illness to the very village over which her old lover was spiritual president. She had half guessed it in that moment when Amy had imitated the Rector's walk, but who would have imagined that Jonathan would end his days in a house of the appearance of Rectory!

In the old days they had planned either a city livinga house outwardly gloomy and grimy, within full of colour and delight-or some sweet old rectory away in the country, under the brow of a hill swept by gentle winds, covered with creepers coloured by the sun. No great, grim house on a wind-swept hill-top.

She sighed perhaps here he had merged their two ideals gloom without, gaiety within. Then she remembered that, although his eyes still twinkled, Jonathan hated women.

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paused and walked slowly, then sped onward, a frail, black-garbed shadow herself, through the moonlight. She walked quickly, passing the green door almost at a run, but with heightened senses she was aware of a blotch of deeper darkness within its overhanging shadow. Some village lovers already occupied its friendly shade. She walked on and on down the winding lane, her heart beating quickly, but not more quickly than it had beaten all the afternoon, as her daring plan had been thought of, deliberated, resolved upon. When she retraced her steps, her light and delicate footsteps ringing out with a subtle difference from those of other wayfarers, the lovers near the green door shrank back breathlessly, then once more continued their low-toned conversation as she passed from sight and mind. Perhaps the ears of love are slightly deafened; had the two listened they would have known that she had paused just twenty yards beyond them and walked on tiptoe to the bit of wall of which Amy had spoken.

It overhung the corner by the school - house, and somewhere Amy had said she had climbed it. What had been done could be done again. Mary searched anxiously for some foothold in the wall, and finding a loosened stone commenced the ascent with in

trepid courage. When she denly the church bells rang reached the top, breathless, out. What for? She had been in West Mendip less than a week, she did not know if the bell-ringers were practising or ringing for a week-night service. She huddled herself a little closer together trying to keep the wind from her chest. And as she did so she was aware of another sound,rasping and scraping and grinding in the wall beneath her feet. Some one else was coming up, that was certain. It was equally certain that it was impossible for her to hide. She turned apprehensive eyes upon the determined face of Amy the dwarf.

more bruised and battered than she would have considered possible, she sat still for an instant and looked with troubled eyes down the road. Lights gleamed from the windows. A man crossed the green carrying buckets of water. One of them clinked against the hard ground as he put it down to talk to a friend. The oilman's voice, loud and raucous, filled the neighbourhood with noise as he advertised his wares. But up here all was quiet. Mary realised that in the shade of the trees, uncovered now and bare, but still drooping over the top of the wall on which she sat, she could not be seen. She drew a long breath of relief and looked about her with interest. A few yards away on her right the wall ended in the green door which had had so much to do with village history. Beneath her a broad path, little more than a path, but yet giving the impression somehow of stateliness and dignity, ran up a gentle slope between the trees that sheltered her to another wall. She could see nothing but that, and the roof-tops of the Rectory. Beyond the wall she could imagine trim lawns, sloping banks, flower - beds, empty now, but in the spring filled to overflowing. Around the house a low verandah perhaps, on to which uncurtained windows threw a ruddy light, but none of this could she see. Now that she was on the top of the wall she almost repented her temerity; and then sud

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"I zee'd you," said Amy briefly, and she too huddled down watching beside her mother's lodger.

Mary regarded her coolly. Of course in an unenviable position it was well she was ready to take the upper hand.

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Why did you follow me?" she said.

"Because I thought you'd fall off," said Amy.

But Mary probed the inconsistency of the speech with sharpness.

"That was not the reason," she said; "you wanted to know why I came. Well, I came to watch, to see what you saw."

"Hush!" said Amy.

What appeared to be a hole in the wall at the other end opened. Mary saw now that it was a door, that second green door of which Amy had spoken; and for a moment she had a glimpse of those things which she had imagined,-lighted windows, sloping lawns. Then the light was

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