Part 90 (1/2)

”I know what it is,” she faltered. ”You need not tell me. My heart tells me!”

I led her to a chair, and explained how and where it had been found. I even told her of the little empty nest from which the young birds had long since flown away. In this tiny incident there was something pathetic that soothed her; so, presently, when she left off weeping, we examined the table together.

It was a quaint, fragile, ricketty thing, with slender twisted legs of black wood, and a cloth-covered top that had once been green, but now retained no vestige of its original color. This cloth top was covered with slender slits of various shapes and sizes, round, square, s.e.xagonal, and so forth, which, being pressed with the finger, fell inwards and disclosed little hiding-places sunk in the well of the table; but which, as soon as the pressure was removed, flew up again by means of concealed springs, and closed as neatly as before.

”This is strange,” said Hortense, peering into one of the recesses. ”I have found something in the table! Look--it is a watch!”

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her, and carried it to the window. Blackened and discolored as it was, I recognised it instantly.

It was my own watch--my own watch of which I was so boyishly vain years and years ago, and which I had lost so unaccountably on the night of the Chevalier's performance! There were my initials engraved on the back, amid a forest of flourishes, and there on the dial was that identical little Cupid with the cornucopia of flowers, which I once thought such a miracle of workmans.h.i.+p! Alas! what a mighty march old Time had stolen upon me, while that little watch was standing still!

”Oh, Heaven!--oh, husband!”

Startled from my reverie more by the tone than the words, I turned and saw Hortense with a packet of papers in her hand--old, yellow, dusty papers, tied together with a piece of black ribbon.

”I found them there--there--there!” she faltered, pointing to a drawer in the table which I now saw for the first time. ”I chanced to press that little k.n.o.b, and the drawer flew out. Oh, my dear father!--see, Basil, here are his patents of n.o.bility--here is the certificate of my birth--here are the t.i.tle-deeds of the manor of Sainte Aulaire! This alone was wanted to complete our happiness!”

”We will keep the table, Hortense, all our lives!” I explained, when the first agitation was past.

”As sacredly,” replied she, ”as it kept this precious secret!”

My task is done. Here on my desk lies the piled-up ma.n.u.script which has been my companion through so many pleasant hours. Those hours are over now. I may lay down my pen, and put aside the whispering vine-leaves from my cas.e.m.e.nt, and lean out into the sweet Italian afternoon, as idly as though I wore to the climate and the manner born.

The world to-day is only half awake. The little white town, crouched down by the ”beached margent” of the bay, winks with its glittering windows and dozes in the suns.h.i.+ne. The very cicalas are silent. The fishermen's barques, with their wing-like sails all folded to rest, rock lazily at anchor, like sea-birds asleep. The cork-trees nod languidly to each other; and not even yonder far-away marble peaks are more motionless than that cloud which hangs like a white banner in the sky.

Hus.h.!.+ I can almost believe that I hear the drowsy was.h.i.+ng of the tide against the ruined tower on the beach.