A dawn of gusts, with spurts of disingenuous rain, revived James
Femms; dressing, he avoided the candor of his glass, harried now by a
recurrent thought of Sonoff.
He seemed, indeed, to see the old _sonneur_, abroad in this malicious
weather, his battered _parapluie_, its proper service forgotten,
serving him but as a staff, his garments maculate with party-colored
inlays, his glorious hair unhatted.
Distantly, elusively, James Femms sensed, now, a relationship between
his inchoate mental gropings and that whimsy of Mikail Sonoff. He
knew that the old musician, his ears envenomed by the clack of
telephone bells, suffered hideously from headache, but did he, James
Femms demanded of himself, walk bareheaded in the rains to cool that
throbbing capital, or was it, perhaps, because of some sentiment less
practical—because of some profound attachment to a hat, too deeply
loved, which, lost at last, had moved Sonoff to vow, in this respect,
perpetual celibacy? Or was it...?
James Femms, percipient though he was, must have failed to draw that
gossamer inference; it was an inspiration worthy of the _finesse_ of
Jambes des Femmes himself! He saw, now, with a sudden utter certitude,
that Sonoff bared his splendid finial to the elements because a
hat, any hat, must have revived and deepened his yearning for the
_porte-chapeaux_, the _porte-chapeaux_ of _noisette à cheval_ that
symbolized all the grace and splendor of Sonoff’s ravished youth!
[Illustration:
“HE KNEW THE OLD MUSICIAN SUFFERED FROM HEADACHES, BUT DID HE
WALK BAREHEADED IN THE RAIN TO COOL HIS HEAD OR PERHAPS BECAUSE
OF SOME PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO A HAT HE HAD ONCE OWNED? HAD HE
LOST IT, PERHAPS, AND VOWED NEVER TO HAVE ANOTHER?”
]
And, as if the ghostly emanations of the _porte-chapeaux_ had sought
him out in whatever beggar’s den now harbored his decay, had called
him forth and guided him hereward, Sonoff himself passed before James
Femms’s window, a figure of compassion, a spectacle as insidiously
saddening as that Wagner Palace Car which James Femms had once
beheld degraded to the indignity of a nocturnal, nickel restaurant.
James Femms cried out to him, the sacrifice already made. Sonoff should
have it for his own again, without money and without price!
V
“Headache? And what head would not ache, good little Jambes des Femmes?”
James Femms remembered that it was Sonoff’s quaint pronunciation of his
detested name that had first suggested the thought of changing it, in
his secret meditations, to the softened grace, the Parisian flavor, of
Jambes des Femmes. A rush of gratitude welled in him.
“Sonoff—I have guessed.” He laid his hand horizontally above the pocket
where he carried his priceless stylograph, filigreed in the very flower
of the Rutherford B. Hayes manner. “It is the heart that aches. And I
have found the cure. Come!”
Silently he led the antique _sonneur_ through the _entresol_ and to the
porch.
“There!” He flung his hand in a wide, fine gesture.
Sonoff blinked.
“_Mon porte-chapeaux._” He spoke with no zest, no vestige of his
quondam _joie de vivre_. “I tired of it, Jambes.”
“Take it. I give it back to you!” James Femms repeated the wide arc of
his flourish.
“But I no longer want it.” Sonoff shook his head and raised a hand to
it as if in sudden pain. “I wear no ’at, mon brave Jambes. The pain—ah!”
Again his features were intorted.
“You won’t take it?” James Femms disbelieved. Surging up in his
consciousness, innegable, compelling, he felt that conviction of mute,
poignant yearning for reunity which had obsessed him from the first.
“I cannot. It saddens me to behold it. It stirs, _mon vieux_, memories.
Ah—the pain—the pain.” He pressed spatulate fingers to his temples and
a groan forced passage between his teeth. “It comes back to me at the
sight.”
“It makes your head ache—the _porte-chapeaux_?” James Femms regarded
him incredulously.
[Illustration: