Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE LINE OF LOVE
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
1921
TO
ROBERT GAMBLE CABELL I
"He loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
And of his port as meek as is a mayde,
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, unto no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knyght."
_Introduction_
The Cabell case belongs to comedy in the grand manner. For fifteen years
or more the man wrote and wrote--good stuff, sound stuff, extremely
original stuff, often superbly fine stuff--and yet no one in the whole of
this vast and incomparable Republic arose to his merit--no one, that is,
save a few encapsulated enthusiasts, chiefly somewhat dubious. It would
be difficult to imagine a first-rate artist cloaked in greater obscurity,
even in the remotest lands of Ghengis Khan. The newspapers, reviewing
him, dismissed him with a sort of inspired ill-nature; the critics of a
more austere kidney--the Paul Elmer Mores, Brander Matthewses, Hamilton
Wright Mabies, and other such brummagem dons--were utterly unaware of
him. Then, of a sudden, the imbeciles who operate the Comstock Society
raided and suppressed his "Jurgen," and at once he was a made man. Old
book-shops began to be ransacked for his romances and extravaganzas--many
of them stored, I daresay, as "picture-books," and under the name of the
artist who illustrated them, Howard Pyle. And simultaneously, a great
gabble about him set up in the newspapers, and then in the literary
weeklies, and finally even in the learned reviews. An Englishman, Hugh
Walpole, magnified the excitement with some startling _hochs_; a single
_hoch_ from the Motherland brings down the professors like firemen
sliding down a pole. To-day every literate American has heard of Cabell,
including even those presidents of women's clubs who lately confessed
that they had never heard of Lizette Woodworth Reese. More of his books
are sold in a week than used to be sold in a year. Every flapper in the
land has read "Jurgen" behind the door; two-thirds of the grandmothers
east of the Mississippi have tried to borrow it from me. Solemn _Privat
Dozenten_ lecture upon the author; he is invited to take to the
chautauqua himself; if the donkeys who manage the National Institute of
Arts and Letters were not afraid of his reply he would be offered its
gilt-edged ribbon, vice Sylvanus Cobb, deceased. And all because a few
pornographic old fellows thrust their ever-hopeful snouts into the man's
tenth (or was it eleventh or twelfth?) book!
Certainly, the farce must appeal to Cabell himself--a sardonic mocker,
not incapable of making himself a character in his own _revues_. But I
doubt that he enjoys the actual pawing that he has been getting--any more
than he resented the neglect that he got for so long. Very lately, in the
midst of the carnival, he announced his own literary death and burial,
and even preached a burlesque funeral sermon upon his life and times.
Such an artist, by the very nature of his endeavors, must needs stand
above all public-clapper-clawing, pro or con. He writes, not to please
his customers in general, nor even to please his partisans in particular,
but to please himself. He is his own criterion, his own audience, his own
judge and hangman. When he does bad work, he suffers for it as no holy
clerk ever suffered from a gnawing conscience or Freudian suppressions;
when he does good work he gets his pay in a form of joy that only artists
know. One could no more think of him exposing himself to the stealthy,
uneasy admiration of a women's club--he is a man of agreeable exterior,
with handsome manners and an eye for this and that--than one could
imagine him taking to the stump for some political mountebank or getting
converted at a camp-meeting. What moves such a man to write is the
obscure, inner necessity that Joseph Conrad has told us of, and what
rewards him when he has done is his own searching and accurate judgment,
his own pride and delight in a beautiful piece of work.
At once, I suppose, you visualize a somewhat smug fellow, loftily
complacent and superior--in brief, the bogus artist of Greenwich Village,
posturing in a pot-hat before a cellar full of visiting schoolmarms, all
dreaming of being betrayed. If so, you see a ghost. It is the curse of
the true artist that his work never stands before him in all its imagined
completeness--that he can never look at it without feeling an impulse to
add to it here or take away from it there--that the beautiful, to him, is
not a state of being, but an eternal becoming. Satisfaction, like the
praise of dolts, is the compensation of the aesthetic cheese-monger--the
popular novelist, the Broadway dramatist, the Massenet and Kipling, the
Maeterlinck and Augustus Thomas. Cabell, in fact, is forever fussing over
his books, trying to make them one degree better. He rewrites almost as
pertinaciously as Joseph Conrad, Henry James, or Brahms. Compare "Domnei"
in its present state to "The Soul of Melicent," its first state, circa
1913. The obvious change is the change in title, but of far more
importance are a multitude of little changes--a phrase made more musical,
a word moved from one place to another, some small banality tracked down
and excised, a brilliant adjective inserted, the plan altered in small
ways, the rhythm of it made more delicate and agreeable. Here, in "The
Line of Love," there is another curious example of his high capacity for
revision. It is not only that the book, once standing isolated, has been
brought into the Cabellian canon, and so related to "Jurgen" and "Figures
of Earth" at one end, and to the tales of latter-day Virginia at the
other; it is that the whole texture has been worked over, and the colors
made more harmonious, and the inner life of the thing given a fresh
energy. Once a flavor of the rococo hung about it; now it breathes and
moves. For Cabell knows a good deal more than he knew in 1905. He is an
artist whose work shows constant progress toward the goals he aims
at--principally the goal of a perfect style. Content, with him, is always
secondary. He has ideas, and they are often of much charm and
plausibility, but his main concern is with the manner of stating them. It
is surely not ideas that make "Jurgen" stand out so saliently from the
dreadful prairie of modern American literature; it is the magnificent
writing that is visible on every page of it--writing apparently simple
and spontaneous, and yet extraordinarily cunning and painstaking. The
current notoriety of "Jurgen" will pass. The Comstocks will turn to new
imbecilities, and the followers of literary parades to new marvels. But
it will remain an author's book for many a year.
By author, of course, I mean artist--not mere artisan. It was certainly
not surprising to hear that Maurice Hewlett found "Jurgen" exasperating.
So, too, there is exasperation in Richard Strauss for plodding
music-masters. Hewlett is simply a British Civil Servant turned author,
which is not unsuggestive of an American Congressman turned philosopher.
He has a pretty eye for color, and all the gusto that goes with
beefiness, but like all the men of his class and race and time he can
think only within the range of a few elemental ideas, chiefly of a
sentimental variety, and when he finds those ideas flouted he is
horrified. The bray, in fact, revealed the ass. It is Cabell's
skepticism that saves him from an Americanism as crushing as Hewlett's
Briticism, and so sets him free as an artist. Unhampered by a mission,
happily ignorant of what is commended by all good men, disdainful of the
petty certainties of pedagogues and green-grocers, not caring a damn
what becomes of the Republic, or the Family, or even snivelization
itself, he is at liberty to disport himself pleasantly with his nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns,
arranging them with the same free hand, the same innocent joy, the same
superb skill and discretion with which the late Jahveh arranged carbon,
nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in the sublime form
of the human carcass. He, too, has his jokes. He knows the arch effect
of a strange touch; his elaborate pedantries correspond almost exactly
to the hook noses, cock eyes, outstanding ears and undulating Adam's
apples which give so sinister and Rabelaisian a touch to the human
scene. But in the main he sticks to more seemly materials and designs.
His achievement, in fact, consists precisely in the success with which
he gives those materials a striking newness, and gets a novel vitality
into those designs. He takes the ancient and mouldy parts of speech--the
liver and lights of harangues by Dr. Harding, of editorials in the New
York _Times_, of "Science and Health, with a Key to the Scriptures," of
department-store advertisements, of college yells, of chautauqual
oratory, of smoke-room anecdote--and arranges them in mosaics that
glitter with an almost fabulous light. He knows where a red noun should
go, and where a peacock-blue verb, and where an adjective as darkly
purple as a grape. He is an imagist in prose. You may like his story and
you may not like it, but if you don't like the way he tells it then
there is something the matter with your ears. As for me, his experiments
with words caress me as I am caressed by the tunes of old Johannes
Brahms. How simple it seems to manage them--and how infernally difficult
it actually is!
H. L. MENCKEN.
_Baltimore, October 1st, 1921_.
_Contents_
CHAPTER
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY
I THE EPISODE CALLED THE WEDDING JEST
II THE EPISODE CALLED ADHELMAR AT PUYSANGE
III THE EPISODE CALLED LOVE-LETTERS OF FALSTAFF
IV THE EPISODE CALLED "SWEET ADELAIS"
V THE EPISODE CALLED IN NECESSITY'S MORTAR
VI THE EPISODE CALLED THE CONSPIRACY OF ARNAYE
VII THE EPISODE CALLED THE CASTLE OF CONTENT
VIII THE EPISODE CALLED IN URSULA'S GARDEN
IX THE EPISODE CALLED PORCELAIN CUPS
X THE ENVOI CALLED SEMPER IDEM
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY
_"In elect utteraunce to make memoriall,
To thee for souccour, to thee for helpe I call,
Mine homely rudeness and dryghness to expell
With the freshe waters of Elyconys well."_
MY DEAR MRS. GRUNDY: You may have observed that nowadays we rank the
love-story among the comfits of literature; and we do this for the
excellent reason that man is a thinking animal by courtesy rather
than usage.
Rightly considered, the most trivial love-affair is of staggering import.
Who are we to question this, when nine-tenths of us owe our existence to
a summer flirtation? And while our graver economic and social and psychic
"problems" (to settle some one of which is nowadays the object of all
ponderable fiction) are doubtless worthy of most serious consideration,
you will find, my dear madam, that frivolous love-affairs, little and
big, were shaping history and playing spillikins with sceptres long
before any of these delectable matters were thought of.
Yes, even the most talked-about "questions of the day" are sometimes
worthy of consideration; but were it not for the kisses of remote years
and the high gropings of hearts no longer animate, there would be none to
accord them this same consideration, and a void world would teeter about
the sun, silent and naked as an orange. Love is an illusion, if you
will; but always through this illusion, alone, has the next generation
been rendered possible, and all endearing human idiocies, including
"questions of the day," have been maintained.
Love, then, is no trifle. And literature, mimicking life at a
respectful distance, may very reasonably be permitted an occasional
reference to the corner-stone of all that exists. For in life "a
trivial little love-story" is a matter more frequently aspersed than
found. Viewed in the light of its consequences, any love-affair is of
gigantic signification, inasmuch as the most trivial is a part of
Nature's unending and, some say, her only labor, toward the peopling of
the worlds.
She is uninventive, if you will, this Nature, but she is tireless.
Generation by generation she brings it about that for a period weak men
may stalk as demigods, while to every woman is granted at least one hour
wherein to spurn the earth, a warm, breathing angel. Generation by
generation does Nature thus betrick humanity, that humanity may endure.
Here for a little--with the gracious connivance of Mr. R. E. Townsend,
to whom all lyrics hereinafter should be accredited--I have followed
Nature, the arch-trickster. Through her monstrous tapestry I have traced
out for you the windings of a single thread. It is parti-colored, this
thread--now black for a mourning sign, and now scarlet where blood has
stained it, and now brilliancy itself--for the tinsel of young love
(if, as wise men tell us, it be but tinsel), at least makes a
prodigiously fine appearance until time tarnish it. I entreat you, dear
lady, to accept this traced-out thread with assurances of my most
distinguished regard.
The gift is not great. Hereinafter is recorded nothing more weighty than
the follies of young persons, perpetrated in a lost world which when
compared with your ladyship's present planet seems rather callow.
Hereinafter are only love-stories, and nowadays nobody takes love-making
very seriously....
And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take Vesuvius
very seriously; it was merely an eligible spot for a _fête champêtre_.
And when gaunt fishermen first preached Christ about the highways, depend
upon it, that was not taken very seriously, either. _Credat Judaeus_; but
all sensible folk--such as you and I, my dear madam--passed on with a
tolerant shrug, knowing "their doctrine could be held of no sane man."
* * * * *
APRIL 30, 1293--MAY 1, 1323
"_Pus vezem de novelh florir pratz, e vergiers reverdezir rius e fontanas
esclarzir, ben deu quascus lo joy jauzir don es jauzens_."
It would in ordinary circumstances be my endeavor to tell you, first of
all, just whom the following tale concerns. Yet to do this is not
expedient, since any such attempt could not but revive the question as to
whose son was Florian de Puysange?
No gain is to be had by resuscitating the mouldy scandal: and, indeed,
it does not matter a button, nowadays, that in Poictesme, toward the end
of the thirteenth century, there were elderly persons who considered the
young Vicomte de Puysange to exhibit an indiscreet resemblance to Jurgen
the pawnbroker. In the wild youth of Jurgen, when Jurgen was a
practising poet (declared these persons), Jurgen had been very intimate
with the former Vicomte de Puysange, now dead, for the two men had much
in common. Oh, a great deal more in common, said these gossips, than the
poor vicomte ever suspected, as you can see for yourself. That was the
extent of the scandal, now happily forgotten, which we must at outset
agree to ignore.
All this was in Poictesme, whither the young vicomte had come a-wooing
the oldest daughter of the Comte de la Forêt. The whispering and the
nods did not much trouble Messire Jurgen, who merely observed that he
was used to the buffets of a censorious world; young Florian never heard
of this furtive chatter; and certainly what people said in Poictesme did
not at all perturb the vicomte's mother, that elderly and pious lady,
Madame Félise de Puysange, at her remote home in Normandy. The
principals taking the affair thus quietly, we may with profit emulate
them. So I let lapse this delicate matter of young Florian's paternity,
and begin with his wedding._
CHAPTER I
_The Episode Called The Wedding Jest_
1. _Concerning Several Compacts_
It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how love began
between Florian de Puysange and Adelaide de la Forêt. They tell also how
young Florian had earlier fancied other women for one reason or another;
but that this, he knew, was the great love of his life, and a love which
would endure unchanged as long as his life lasted.
And the tale tells how the Comte de la Forêt stroked a gray beard, and
said, "Well, after all, Puysange is a good fief--"
"As if that mattered!" cried his daughter, indignantly. "My father, you
are a deplorably sordid person."
"My dear," replied the old gentleman, "it does matter. Fiefs last."
So he gave his consent to the match, and the two young people were
married on Walburga's Eve, on the day that ends April.
And they narrate how Florian de Puysange was vexed by a thought that was
in his mind. He did not know what this thought was. But something he had
overlooked; something there was he had meant to do, and had not done: and
a troubling consciousness of this lurked at the back of his mind like a
small formless cloud. All day, while bustling about other matters, he had
groped toward this unapprehended thought.
Now he had it: Tiburce.
The young Vicomte de Puysange stood in the doorway, looking back into the
bright hall where they of Storisende were dancing at his marriage feast.
His wife, for a whole half-hour his wife, was dancing with handsome
Etienne de Nérac. Her glance met Florian's, and Adelaide flashed him an
especial smile. Her hand went out as though to touch him, for all that
the width of the hall severed them.
Florian remembered presently to smile back at her. Then he went out of
the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace.
A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's secrecy.
The moon this night, afloat in a luminous gray void, somehow reminded
Florian of a glistening and unripe huge apple.
The foliage about him moved at most as a sleeper breathes, while Florian
descended eastward through walled gardens, and so came to the graveyard.
White mists were rising, such mists as the witches of Amneran
notoriously evoked in these parts on each Walburga's Eve to purchase
recreations which squeamishness leaves undescribed.
For five years now Tiburce d'Arnaye had lain there. Florian thought of
his dead comrade and of the love which had been between them--a love more
perfect and deeper and higher than commonly exists between men--and the
thought came to Florian, and was petulantly thrust away, that Adelaide
loved ignorantly where Tiburce d'Arnaye had loved with comprehension.
Yes, he had known almost the worst of Florian de Puysange, this dear lad
who, none the less, had flung himself between Black Torrismond's sword
and the breast of Florian de Puysange. And it seemed to Florian unfair
that all should prosper with him, and Tiburce lie there imprisoned in
dirt which shut away the color and variousness of things and the
drollness of things, wherein Tiburce d'Arnaye had taken such joy. And
Tiburce, it seemed to Florian--for this was a strange night--was
struggling futilely under all that dirt, which shut out movement, and
clogged the mouth of Tiburce, and would not let him speak; and was
struggling to voice a desire which was unsatisfied and hopeless.
"O comrade dear," said Florian, "you who loved merriment, there is a
feast afoot on this strange night, and my heart is sad that you are not
here to share in the feasting. Come, come, Tiburce, a right trusty
friend you were to me; and, living or dead, you should not fail to make
merry at my wedding."
Thus he spoke. White mists were rising, and it was Walburga's Eve.
So a queer thing happened, and it was that the earth upon the grave
began to heave and to break in fissures, as when a mole passes through
the ground. And other queer things happened after that, and presently
Tiburce d'Arnaye was standing there, gray and vague in the moonlight as
he stood there brushing the mold from his brows, and as he stood there
blinking bright wild eyes. And he was not greatly changed, it seemed to
Florian; only the brows and nose of Tiburce cast no shadows upon his
face, nor did his moving hand cast any shadow there, either, though the
moon was naked overhead.
"You had forgotten the promise that was between us," said Tiburce; and
his voice had not changed much, though it was smaller.
"It is true. I had forgotten. I remember now." And Florian shivered a
little, not with fear, but with distaste.
"A man prefers to forget these things when he marries. It is natural
enough. But are you not afraid of me who come from yonder?"
"Why should I be afraid of you, Tiburce, who gave your life for mine?"
"I do not say. But we change yonder."
"And does love change, Tiburce? For surely love is immortal."
"Living or dead, love changes. I do not say love dies in us who may hope
to gain nothing more from love. Still, lying alone in the dark clay,
there is nothing to do, as yet, save to think of what life was, and of
what sunlight was, and of what we sang and whispered in dark places when
we had lips; and of how young grass and murmuring waters and the high
stars beget fine follies even now; and to think of how merry our loved
ones still contrive to be, even now, with their new playfellows. Such
reflections are not always conducive to philanthropy."
"Tell me," said Florian then, "and is there no way in which we who are
still alive may aid you to be happier yonder?"
"Oh, but assuredly," replied Tiburce d'Arnaye, and he discoursed of
curious matters; and as he talked, the mists about the graveyard
thickened. "And so," Tiburce said, in concluding his tale, "it is not
permitted that I make merry at your wedding after the fashion of those
who are still in the warm flesh. But now that you recall our ancient
compact, it is permitted I have my peculiar share in the merriment, and I
may drink with you to the bride's welfare."
"I drink," said Florian, as he took the proffered cup, "to the welfare of
my beloved Adelaide, whom alone of women I have really loved, and whom I
shall love always."
"I perceive," replied the other, "that you must still be having your
joke."
Then Florian drank, and after him Tiburce. And Florian said, "But it is a
strange drink, Tiburce, and now that you have tasted it you are changed."
"You have not changed, at least," Tiburce answered; and for the first
time he smiled, a little perturbingly by reason of the change in him.
"Tell me," said Florian, "of how you fare yonder."
So Tiburce told him of yet more curious matters. Now the augmenting mists
had shut off all the rest of the world. Florian could see only vague
rolling graynesses and a gray and changed Tiburce sitting there, with
bright wild eyes, and discoursing in a small chill voice. The appearance
of a woman came, and sat beside him on the right. She, too, was gray, as
became Eve's senior: and she made a sign which Florian remembered, and it
troubled him.
Tiburce said then, "And now, young Florian, you who were once so dear to
me, it is to your welfare I drink."
"I drink to yours, Tiburce."
Tiburce drank first: and Florian, having drunk in turn, cried out, "You
have changed beyond recognition!"
"You have not changed," Tiburce d'Arnaye replied again. "Now let me tell
you of our pastimes yonder."
With that he talked of exceedingly curious matters. And Florian began to
grow dissatisfied, for Tiburce was no longer recognizable, and Tiburce
whispered things uncomfortable to believe; and other eyes, as wild as
his, but lit with red flarings from behind, like a beast's eyes, showed
in the mists to this side and to that side, for unhappy beings were
passing through the mists upon secret errands which they discharged
unwillingly. Then, too, the appearance of a gray man now sat to the left
of that which had been Tiburce d'Arnaye, and this newcomer was marked so
that all might know who he was: and Florian's heart was troubled to note
how handsome and how admirable was that desecrated face even now.
"But I must go," said Florian, "lest they miss me at Storisende, and
Adelaide be worried."
"Surely it will not take long to toss off a third cup. Nay, comrade, who
were once so dear, let us two now drink our last toast together. Then go,
in Sclaug's name, and celebrate your marriage. But before that let us
drink to the continuance of human mirth-making everywhere."
Florian drank first. Then Tiburce took his turn, looking at Florian as
Tiburce drank slowly. As he drank, Tiburce d'Arnaye was changed even
more, and the shape of him altered, and the shape of him trickled as
though Tiburce were builded of sliding fine white sand. So Tiburce
d'Arnaye returned to his own place. The appearances that had sat to his
left and to his right were no longer there to trouble Florian with
memories. And Florian saw that the mists of Walburga's Eve had departed,
and that the sun was rising, and that the graveyard was all overgrown
with nettles and tall grass.
He had not remembered the place being thus, and it seemed to him the
night had passed with unnatural quickness. But he thought more of the
fact that he had been beguiled into spending his wedding-night in a
graveyard, in such questionable company, and of what explanation he could
make to Adelaide.
2. _Of Young Persons in May_
The tale tells how Florian de Puysange came in the dawn through flowering
gardens, and heard young people from afar, already about their maying.
Two by two he saw them from afar as they went with romping and laughter
into the tall woods behind Storisende to fetch back the May-pole with
dubious old rites. And as they went they sang, as was customary, that
song which Raimbaut de Vaqueiras made in the ancient time in honor of
May's ageless triumph.
Sang they:
"_May shows with godlike showing
To-day for each that sees
May's magic overthrowing
All musty memories
In him whom May decrees
To be love's own. He saith,
'I wear love's liveries
Until released by death_.'
"_Thus all we laud May's sowing,
Nor heed how harvests please
When nowhere grain worth growing
Greets autumn's questing breeze,
And garnerers garner these--
Vain words and wasted breath
And spilth and tasteless lees--
Until released by death._
"_Unwillingly foreknowing
That love with May-time flees,
We take this day's bestowing,
And feed on fantasies
Such as love lends for ease
Where none but travaileth,
With lean infrequent fees,
Until released by death_."
And Florian shook his sleek black head. "A very foolish and pessimistical
old song, a superfluous song, and a song that is particularly out of
place in the loveliest spot in the loveliest of all possible worlds."
Yet Florian took no inventory of the gardens. There was but a happy sense
of green and gold, with blue topping all; of twinkling, fluent, tossing
leaves and of the gray under side of elongated, straining leaves; a sense
of pert bird noises, and of a longer shadow than usual slanting before
him, and a sense of youth and well-being everywhere. Certainly it was
not a morning wherein pessimism might hope to flourish.
Instead, it was of Adelaide that Florian thought: of the tall, impulsive,
and yet timid, fair girl who was both shrewd and innocent, and of her
tenderly colored loveliness, and of his abysmally unmerited felicity in
having won her. Why, but what, he reflected, grimacing--what if he had
too hastily married somebody else? For he had earlier fancied other women
for one reason or another: but this, he knew, was the great love of his
life, and a love which would endure unchanged as long as his life lasted.
3. _What Comes of Marrying Happily_
The tale tells how Florian de Puysange found Adelaide in the company of
two ladies who were unknown to him. One of these was very old, the other
an imposing matron in middle life. The three were pleasantly shaded by
young oak-trees; beyond was a tall hedge of clipped yew. The older women
were at chess, while Adelaide bent her meek golden head to some of that
fine needlework in which the girl delighted. And beside them rippled a
small sunlit stream, which babbled and gurgled with silver flashes.
Florian hastily noted these things as he ran laughing to his wife.
"Heart's dearest--!" he cried. And he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had
risen with a faint wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she
were puzzled and alarmed a very little.
"Such an adventure as I have to tell you of!" says Florian then.
"But, hey, young man, who are you that would seem to know my daughter so
well?" demands the lady in middle life, and she rose majestically from
her chess-game.
Florian stared, as he well might. "Your daughter, madame! But certainly
you are not Dame Melicent."
At this the old, old woman raised her nodding head. "Dame Melicent? And
was it I you were seeking, sir?"
Now Florian looked from one to the other of these incomprehensible
strangers, bewildered: and his eyes came back to his lovely wife, and his
lips smiled irresolutely. "Is this some jest to punish me, my dear?"
But then a new and graver trouble kindled in his face, and his eyes
narrowed, for there was something odd about his wife also.
"I have been drinking in queer company," he said. "It must be that my
head is not yet clear. Now certainly it seems to me that you are Adelaide
de la Forêt, and certainly it seems to me that you are not Adelaide."
The girl replied, "Why, no, messire; I am Sylvie de Nointel."
"Come, come," says the middle-aged lady, briskly, "let us make an end to
this play-acting, and, young fellow, let us have a sniff at you. No, you
are not tipsy, after all. Well, I am glad of that. So let us get to the
bottom of this business. What do they call you when you are at home?"
"Florian de Puysange," he answered, speaking meekly enough. This capable
large person was to the young man rather intimidating.
"La!" said she. She looked at him very hard. She nodded gravely two or
three times, so that her double chin opened and shut. "Yes, and you favor
him. How old are you?"
He told her twenty-four.
She said, inconsequently: "So I was a fool, after all. Well, young man,
you will never be as good-looking as your father, but I trust you have an
honester nature. However, bygones are bygones. Is the old rascal still
living? and was it he that had the impudence to send you to me?"
"My father, madame, was slain at the battle of Marchfeld--"
"Some fifty years ago! And you are twenty-four. Young man, your
parentage had unusual features, or else we are at cross-purposes. Let us
start at the beginning of this. You tell us you are called Florian de
Puysange and that you have been drinking in queer company. Now let us
have the whole story."
Florian told of last night's happenings, with no more omissions than
seemed desirable with feminine auditors.
Then the old woman said: "I think this is a true tale, my daughter, for
the witches of Amneran contrive strange things, with mists to aid them,
and with Lilith and Sclaug to abet. Yes, and this fate has fallen before
to men that were over-friendly with the dead."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said the stout lady.
"But, no, my daughter. Thus seven persons slept at Ephesus, from the time
of Decius to the time of Theodosius--"
"Still, Mother--"
"--And the proof of it is that they were called Constantine and Dionysius
and John and Malchus and Marcian and Maximian and Serapion. They were
duly canonized. You cannot deny that this thing happened without
asserting no less than seven blessed saints to have been unprincipled
liars, and that would be a very horrible heresy--"
"Yet, Mother, you know as well as I do--"
"--And thus Epimenides, another excellently spoken-of saint, slept at
Athens for fifty-seven years. Thus Charlemagne slept in the Untersberg,
and will sleep until the ravens of Miramon Lluagor have left his
mountains. Thus Rhyming Thomas in the Eildon Hills, thus Ogier in Avalon,
thus Oisin--"
The old lady bade fair to go on interminably in her gentle resolute
piping old voice, but the other interrupted.
"Well, Mother, do not excite yourself about it, for it only makes your
asthma worse, and does no especial good to anybody. Things may be as you
say. Certainly I intended nothing irreligious. Yet these extended naps,
appropriate enough for saints and emperors, are out of place in one's own
family. So, if it is not stuff and nonsense, it ought to be. And that I
stick to."
"But we forget the boy, my dear," said the old lady. "Now listen, Florian
de Puysange. Thirty years ago last night, to the month and the day, it
was that you vanished from our knowledge, leaving my daughter a forsaken
bride. For I am what the years have made of Dame Melicent, and this is my
daughter Adelaide, and yonder is her daughter Sylvie de Nointel."
"La, Mother," observed the stout lady, "but are you certain it was the
last of April? I had been thinking it was some time in June. And I
protest it could not have been all of thirty years. Let me see now,
Sylvie, how old is your brother Richard? Twenty-eight, you say. Well,
Mother, I always said you had a marvelous memory for things like that,
and I often envy you. But how time does fly, to be sure!"
And Florian was perturbed. "For this is an awkward thing, and Tiburce has
played me an unworthy trick. He never did know when to leave off joking;
but such posthumous frivolity is past endurance. For, see now, in what a
pickle it has landed me! I have outlived my friends, I may encounter
difficulty in regaining my fiefs, and certainly I have lost the fairest
wife man ever had. Oh, can it be, madame, that you are indeed my
Adelaide!"
"Yes, every pound of me, poor boy, and that says much."
"--And that you have been untrue to the eternal fidelity which you vowed
to me here by this very stream! Oh, but I cannot believe it was thirty
years ago, for not a grass-blade or a pebble has been altered; and I
perfectly remember the lapping of water under those lichened rocks, and
that continuous file of ripples yonder, which are shaped like
arrowheads."
Adelaide rubbed her nose. "Did I promise eternal fidelity? I can hardly
remember that far back. But I remember I wept a great deal, and my
parents assured me you were either dead or a rascal, so that tears could
not help either way. Then Ralph de Nointel came along, good man, and made
me a fair husband, as husbands go--"
"As for that stream," then said Dame Melicent, "it is often I have
thought of that stream, sitting here with my grandchildren where I once
sat with gay young men whom nobody remembers now save me. Yes, it is
strange to think that instantly, and within the speaking of any simple
word, no drop of water retains the place it had before the word was
spoken: and yet the stream remains unchanged, and stays as it was when I
sat here with those young men who are gone. Yes, that is a strange
thought, and it is a sad thought, too, for those of us who are old."
"But, Mother, of course the stream remains unchanged," agreed Dame
Adelaide. "Streams always do except after heavy rains. Everybody knows
that, and I can see nothing very remarkable about it. As for you,
Florian, if you stickle for love's being an immortal affair," she added,
with a large twinkle, "I would have you know I have been a widow for
three years. So the matter could be arranged."
Florian looked at her sadly. To him the situation was incongruous with
the terrible archness of a fat woman. "But, madame, you are no longer the
same person."
She patted him upon the shoulder. "Come, Florian, there is some sense in
you, after all. Console yourself, lad, with the reflection that if you
had stuck manfully by your wife instead of mooning about graveyards, I
would still be just as I am to-day, and you would be tied to me. Your
friend probably knew what he was about when he drank to our welfare, for
we would never have suited each other, as you can see for yourself. Well,
Mother, many things fall out queerly in this world, but with age we learn
to accept what happens without flustering too much over it. What are we
to do with this resurrected old lover of mine?"
It was horrible to Florian to see how prosaically these women dealt with
his unusual misadventure. Here was a miracle occurring virtually before
their eyes, and these women accepted it with maddening tranquillity as an
affair for which they were not responsible. Florian began to reflect that
elderly persons were always more or less unsympathetic and inadequate.
"First of all," says Dame Melicent, "I would give him some breakfast. He
must be hungry after all these years. And you could put him in
Adhelmar's room--"
"But," Florian said wildly, to Dame Adelaide, "you have committed the
crime of bigamy, and you are, after all, my wife!"
She replied, herself not untroubled: "Yes, but, Mother, both the cook and
the butler are somewhere in the bushes yonder, up to some nonsense that I
prefer to know nothing about. You know how servants are, particularly on
holidays. I could scramble him some eggs, though, with a rasher. And
Adhelmar's room it had better be, I suppose, though I had meant to have
it turned out. But as for bigamy and being your wife," she concluded more
cheerfully, "it seems to me the least said the soonest mended. It is to
nobody's interest to rake up those foolish bygones, so far as I can see."
"Adelaide, you profane equally love, which is divine, and marriage, which
is a holy sacrament."
"Florian, do you really love Adelaide de Nointel?" asked this terrible
woman. "And now that I am free to listen to your proposals, do you wish
to marry me?"
"Well, no," said Florian: "for, as I have just said; you are no longer
the same person."
"Why, then, you see for yourself. So do you quit talking nonsense about
immortality and sacraments."
"But, still," cried Florian, "love is immortal. Yes, I repeat to you,
precisely as I told Tiburce, love is immortal."
Then says Dame Melicent, nodding her shriveled old head: "When I was
young, and was served by nimbler senses and desires, and was housed in
brightly colored flesh, there were a host of men to love me. Minstrels
yet tell of the men that loved me, and of how many tall men were slain
because of their love for me, and of how in the end it was Perion who won
me. For the noblest and the most faithful of all my lovers was Perion of
the Forest, and through tempestuous years he sought me with a love that
conquered time and chance: and so he won me. Thereafter he made me a fair
husband, as husbands go. But I might not stay the girl he had loved, nor
might he remain the lad that Melicent had dreamed of, with dreams
be-drugging the long years in which Demetrios held Melicent a prisoner,
and youth went away from her. No, Perion and I could not do that, any
more than might two drops of water there retain their place in the
stream's flowing. So Perion and I grew old together, friendly enough;
and our senses and desires began to serve us more drowsily, so that we
did not greatly mind the falling away of youth, nor greatly mind to note
what shriveled hands now moved before us, performing common tasks; and we
were content enough. But of the high passion that had wedded us there was
no trace, and of little senseless human bickerings there were a great
many. For one thing"--and the old lady's voice was changed--"for one
thing, he was foolishly particular about what he would eat and what he
would not eat, and that upset my housekeeping, and I had never any
patience with such nonsense."
"Well, none the less," said Florian, "it is not quite nice of you to
acknowledge it."
Then said Dame Adelaide: "That is a true word, Mother. All men get
finicky about their food, and think they are the only persons to be
considered, and there is no end to it if once you begin to humor them. So
there has to be a stand made. Well, and indeed my poor Ralph, too, was
all for kissing and pretty talk at first, and I accepted it willingly
enough. You know how girls are. They like to be made much of, and it is
perfectly natural. But that leads to children. And when the children
began to come, I had not much time to bother with him: and Ralph had his
farming and his warfaring to keep him busy. A man with a growing family
cannot afford to neglect his affairs. And certainly, being no fool, he
began to notice that girls here and there had brighter eyes and trimmer
waists than I. I do not know what such observations may have led to when
he was away from me: I never inquired into it, because in such matters
all men are fools. But I put up with no nonsense at home, and he made me
a fair husband, as husbands go. That much I will say for him gladly: and
if any widow says more than that, Florian, do you beware of her, for she
is an untruthful woman."
"Be that as it may," replied Florian, "it is not quite becoming to speak
thus of your dead husband. No doubt you speak the truth: there is no
telling what sort of person you may have married in what still seems to
me unseemly haste to provide me with a successor: but even so, a little
charitable prevarication would be far more edifying."
He spoke with such earnestness that there fell a silence. The women
seemed to pity him. And in the silence Florian heard from afar young
persons returning from the woods behind Storisende, and bringing with
them the May-pole. They were still singing.
Sang they:
"_Unwillingly foreknowing
That love with May-time flees,
We take this day's bestowing,
And feed on fantasies_--"
4. _Youth Solves It_
The tale tells how lightly and sweetly, and compassionately, too, then
spoke young Sylvie de Nointel.
"Ah, but, assuredly, Messire Florian, you do not argue with my pets
quite seriously! Old people always have some such queer notions. Of
course love all depends upon what sort of person you are. Now, as I see
it, Mama and Grandmama are not the sort of persons who have real
love-affairs. Devoted as I am to both of them, I cannot but perceive they
are lacking in real depth of sentiment. They simply do not understand or
care about such matters. They are fine, straightforward, practical
persons, poor dears, and always have been, of course, for in things like
that one does not change, as I have often noticed. And Father, and
Grandfather Perion, too, as I remember him, was kind-hearted and
admirable and all that, but nobody could ever have expected him to be a
satisfactory lover. Why, he was bald as an egg, the poor pet!"
And Sylvie laughed again at the preposterous notions of old people. She
flashed an especial smile at Florian. Her hand went out as though to
touch him, in an unforgotten gesture. "Old people do not understand,"
said Sylvie de Nointel, in tones which took this handsome young fellow
ineffably into confidence.
"Mademoiselle," said Florian, with a sigh that was part relief and all
approval, "it is you who speak the truth, and your elders have fallen
victims to the cynicism of a crassly material age. Love is immortal when
it is really love and when one is the right sort of person. There is the
love--known to how few, alas! and a passion of which I regret to find
your mother incapable--that endures unchanged until the end of life."
"I am so glad you think so, Messire Florian," she answered demurely.
"And do you not think so, mademoiselle?"
"How should I know," she asked him, "as yet?" He noted she had incredibly
long lashes.
"Thrice happy is he that convinces you!" says Florian. And about them,
who were young in the world's recaptured youth, spring triumphed with an
ageless rural pageant, and birds cried to their mates. He noted the red
brevity of her lips and their probable softness.
Meanwhile the elder women regarded each other.
"It is the season of May. They are young and they are together. Poor
children!" said Dame Melicent. "Youth cries to youth for the toys of
youth, and saying, 'Lo, I cry with the voice of a great god!'"
"Still," said Madame Adelaide, "Puysange is a good fief--"
But Florian heeded neither of them as he stood there by the sunlit
stream, in which no drop of water retained its place for a moment, and
which yet did not alter in appearance at all. He did not heed his elders
for the excellent reason that Sylvie de Nointel was about to speak, and
he preferred to listen to her. For this girl, he knew, was lovelier than
any other person had ever been since Eve first raised just such admiring,
innocent, and venturesome eyes to inspect what must have seemed to her
the quaintest of all animals, called man. So it was with a shrug that
Florian remembered how he had earlier fancied other women for one reason
or another; since this, he knew, was the great love of his life, and a
love which would endure unchanged as long as his life lasted.
* * * * *
APRIL 14, 1355--OCTOBER 23, 1356
"_D'aquest segle flac, plen de marrimen,
S'amor s'en vai, son jot teinh mensongier_."
_So Florian married Sylvie, and made her, they relate, a fair husband,
as husbands go. And children came to them, and then old age, and, lastly,
that which comes to all._
Which reminds me that it was an uncomfortable number of years ago, in an
out-of-the-way corner of the library at Allonby Shaw, that I first came
upon_ Les Aventures d'Adhelmar de Nointel. _This manuscript dates from
the early part of the fifteenth century and is attributed--though on no
very conclusive evidence, says Hinsauf,--to the facile pen of Nicolas de
Caen (circa 1450), until lately better known as a lyric poet and
satirist._
_The story, told in decasyllabic couplets, interspersed after a rather
unusual fashion with innumerable lyrics, seems in the main authentic. Sir
Adhelmar de Nointel, born about 1332, was once a real and stalwart
personage, a younger brother to that Henri de Nointel, the fighting
Bishop of Mantes, whose unsavory part in the murder of Jacques van
Arteveldt history has recorded at length; and it is with the exploits of
this Adhelmar that the romance deals, not, it may be, without
exaggeration._
_In any event, the following is, with certain compressions and omissions
that have seemed desirable, the last episode of the_ Aventures. _The tale
concerns the children of Florian and Sylvie: and for it I may claim, at
least, the same merit that old Nicolas does at the very outset; since as
he veraciously declares--yet with a smack of pride:_
_Cette bonne ystoire n'est pas usée,
Ni guère de lieux jadis trouvée,
Ni ècrite par clercz ne fut encore._