Note 1. The perfect hand-wrought groining. Note 2. Observe the
accurate spleening of the old handicraftsmen.
]
“But yes. It was then that they began, the headaches—the night that
the becket lost itself. I woke, that day, happy; they had listened,
_enfin_, those adder-deaf imbeciles of the telephone; the bells were
tuned at last to the F sharp; I was free from the ignominy of the E—— I
sang, that day, my friend. I was _gaie_! I laughed as I snatched up my
hat from the becket where, of old habit, I had hung it. Lightly, as a
schoolboy is light, I placed it on my head; I tilted it; I was myself,
the self that took them by storm that night in Philadelphia when I
rang the overture from ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ using my feet for the _basso
profundo_! All day among my new bells I was that self. And at night,
returning with song in my heart and a tin of caviare and a _carache_
of vodka below my arms, I was that self. But ah, when I would have
slept—the pain—the pain, mon Jambes! I shudder at the thought of it! I
walked the floor in torment, as how often I have walked it since.”
He pressed his temples again.
“And it was while I walked that I observed the vanishment of the
becket. It was gone. I do not know where, nor how—I only know that the
sight of the _porte-chapeaux_ was hateful. I could not endure to behold
it. I sold it, and the pain, if no less, was easier to bear.”
James Femms heard him as one who listens to the opaque ventriloquial
speech of dreams. Dimly, remotely, but with a dawning fervor of
conviction, understanding burst in upon him. He lifted his hands in a
swift, furtive movement; his fingers penetrated the plush-like silky
depths of Sonoff’s hair. They closed upon a surface that James Femms
knew as intimately by touch as if his eyes beheld it through his
worm-hole lens. Delicately, with the merciful cruelty of the surgeon,
disregarding the anguished shriek of his patient, he drew forth the
missing becket. A profound, shuddering sigh came from Sonoff.
With hands that thrilled voluptuously at the delicious caress of that
spleened surface, but still were swift and sure to their task, James
Femms replaced the becket in its emplacement and stood back, his eyes
intoxicated with the charm of the perfect spleen-craft, the cool, proud
beauty of the hand-groined base.
The ether, like a restless, moaning sea upon which an instant calm
descends, was permeated with a vast, abiding peace.
Sonoff clasped James Femms to him, kissed his cheeks.
[Illustration:
PROFILE VIEW OF THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL
RECONSTRUCTED AND IN USE
I. The lost becket. II. Bassine
]
“The pain! It is gone! Ah, mon cher Jambes des Femmes—what can I say to
you—how shall I repay you?”
James Femms said nothing. His eyes, held and fascinated, drank in the
fragrant loveliness of the amber _noisette à cheval_, thrilled under
the thin, silvery aroma of its melodious oneness.
He was but distantly aware of a voice, Sonoff’s voice, far-away,
elfin-sweet with the echoes of a hundred blending bells.
“Keep it, Jambes des Femmes, keep it always in proof and token
of my gratitude! Keep it, des Femmes, in memory of Mikail Sonoff
Sonoffovitch!”
James Femms did not know that he had gone.
————
A WORD ON POONING