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 needle-work 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!" said Florian then.
"But, hey, young man, who are you that would seem to know my daughter so
well?" demanded the lady in middle life, and 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 Foret, and certainly it seems to me that you are not
Adelaide."
The girl replied:
"Why, no, messire; I am Sylvie de Nointel."
"Come, come," said the middle-aged lady, briskly, "let us have an end of
this play-acting! There has been no Adelaide de la Foret in these parts
for some twenty-five years, as nobody knows better than I. 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 have
been 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 marvellous 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 had 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 swore
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
arrow-heads."
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 held 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 at high water. Everybody knows that,
and I see nothing 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 should 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," said 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 unworried:
"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 said Dame Melicent, nodding her shriveled old head:
"When I was young, and served by nimbler senses and desires, and housed
in brightly colored flesh, there were many men who loved 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 house-keeping, 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--"