The subjoined paper, so happily cast in narrative form, could not
have been omitted from this compilation without gravely lessening at
once the charm and value of the work; its inclusion, however, has
been arranged only after extraordinary efforts on the part, not only
of the compilers, but also, they are happy to testify, on that of the
talented author herself—a figure as impressive and delightful among
antiquers as her name, among critics and patrons of the modern American
novel, is authoritative and inspiring. Her charming little story,
although read by her in person at the March session of the Academy, in
1923, seemed for a time to be impossible of republication here; her
contract with her publisher, a person of highly developed commercial
instincts, restrains her from publishing through any other channel, and
in the face of united persuasion on the part of Professor Kilgallen
and the author herself, this gentleman has stood firmly on the precise
letter of his bargain. Fortunately, however, the advice of counsel was
procured, with the result that the compilers are permitted to reproduce
the paper, although denied the pleasure and privilege of accrediting it
to the author by name.
This prohibition would cause them a distress far more acute,
nevertheless, were they not wholly confident that the identity of the
author will be transparently evident to every antiquer and to all
lovers of her colorful literary art.
I
The room was subtly instinct with—James Femms admitted to an inchoate,
egocentric admonition—default. Tormented by an awareness of distress,
alien, vicarious, yet poignantly perceptible, his consciousness
opposed, almost with petulance, his endeavors to confine it to—in
fulfilment of his trust and purpose—spleening.
Loss; separation; sundering—the words formed themselves in characters
feathery and funereal as the cross-stitch letter of a Garfield
wall-motto; they contrived to make themselves, above the florid,
valiant persuasions of the auctioneer, audible. There was, James Femms
informed himself, even an overtone, as of an adscititious dolor,
inexpressible by any clumsy symbolism of syllables; he seemed, indeed,
to experience, at second-hand, those first lingual explorations,
incredulous and baffled, of the wistful void where but the ache and
memory of the tooth remain.
James Femms put forth the power of his will against his habit of
thinking in such intorted, raffled inversions as these. Confronted by a
problem, he resolved to ratiocinate straightforwardly, in a manner as
candidly unintricate as the spleened finials of the _porte-chapeaux_
which, at the moment, engaged the brazen eloquence of the vendor. He
would not think, he decided, in the style of an Empire girandole,
but in the direct and honest simplicity of, say, that spleened and
half-groined becket.
This was James Femms, not as he had been, but as he had come to be,
a man colored by the years, so that his glass—a walnut caracole,
wonderfully woodmarked—seemed to invest him with a patina, so that,
indeed, he resembled one of those Victorian antiques, ornately ruinous,
which were the dominant, as it were, of his existence. His passion
for the lost art of the period had come to affect him in cunning,
secret ways, to inform his spirit with a cold flame of rebellion
against himself and his environment; he detested his body, designed,
he reflected bitterly, after the Roycroft manner and as innocent of
decorative values; he abandoned, in his moments of surrender, the
artless names which had been foisted on his helpless infancy; he ceased
to think of himself as James Femms, and softened, mellowed, ornamented
the harsh, stern sounds with Gallic fancies. In his dreams he became a
figure of romance, pinch-waisted, nobly whiskered, an illustration from
a time-stained page of “Godey’s Lady’s-Book,” a man who could bear,
with corseted grace, a name like Jambes des Femmes!
He became, for the time being, this Jambes des Femmes; he looked about
him with the very elegance and grace of a des Femmes. The salon, he
observed, was filled by people for whom Jambes des Femmes must feel no
more than a gently supercilious distaste; there were faces familiar
enough to James Femms: Kitchler, the bulbous, raffish dealer, one
sienna eye cocked contemptuously at the _porte-chapeaux_, a fleshpot
finger lifted in token of a careless bid; there were others as foreign
to the mood of Jambes des Femmes—sly, chaffering professionals and the
inevitable scattering of amateurs. Here, he concluded, there was no
one capable of setting up in him those telepathic vibrations of which,
baffled and distrait, he was obstinately aware.
His glance moved back to the _porte-chapeaux_. He had examined it, of
course, before the sale and decided, with a lingering regret, to make
no offer for it. Horsechestnut—he discarded the coarse term; James
Femms must use it, when he spoke, but Jambes des Femmes might think in
more gracious wise: _noisette à cheval_—it was a fine piece, des Femmes
admitted, a magnificent affair, save for but the one fatal defect. And
he had always, he reflected, adored _noisette à cheval_.
Again he was pervaded by the haunting awareness of an elusive, poignant
melancholy. His eyes moved to the spurious becket—to the discerning
scrutiny of James Femms a palpable counterfeit, a thing so obvious
and crude that even Kitchler, with the three originals to scream
their warning, might have noticed it—not even hand-wrought groining,
des Femmes pronounced, a clumsy fraud, grouted, at a guess, and
bench-gammoned to trick the eye of ignorance!
It seemed to des Femmes that his atrabilious depression found its focus
here. He lifted himself to see more clearly; was it—could it be—that
he felt the yearning of those sundered parts, the shame and longing of
the _porte-chapeaux_ for that ravished becket? Had his sympathy, his
passion for _noisette à cheval_ refined his perceptions to a delicacy
so incredible, so splendid? He dallied wistfully with the thought and
put it from him. Not even Jambes des Femmes could have attained a
receptivity so exquisite.
Suddenly, as the voice of the auctioneer became premonitory, James
Femms moved in his chair. He remembered Sonoff!
As if hours instead of years were overlaid upon the recollection he
could see that _porte-chapeaux_ in Sonoff’s _entresol_, its lovely
amber tone warmed by the crimson wall! It was Sonoff’s!
Jambes des Femmes saw him, as he had been—Sonoff the debonair, high
on the crest of his wave, Sonoff, the greatest artist of his time! And
now—abruptly, ineludibly, came the thought—and now, even the art was
dead!
Dead. Since that day of Sonoff’s greatness men had been born, lived out
their lives, died, without knowing that the art had ever lived! Jambes
des Femmes tasted the bitterness of it; he saw Sonoff, behind the great
_râtelier_ of bells, his hands flashing like the lustres of _bobèches_
on a girandole, from the elfin-tinkling tinniness of the soprano to
the rugent clamor of the bass! Sonoff, a Russian, had taught the Swiss
their place!
“_Grandes fromages_,” Sonoff would say. “Let them yodel!”
And now—!
Sonoff, beggared, reduced to the shrewd torment of testing the
timbre of telephone bells for a niggard pittance, and Sonoff’s
_porte-chapeaux_, degraded and disfigured by that pinchbeck becket,
going, for the last, third time to Kitchler!
James Femms lifted his catalogue.