Part 2 (1/2)

”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 a.s.serting 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 gra.s.s-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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.body 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.”