Chapter XIII: Part 13

Until the dawn crept through the windows Claire René lay upon the hearth by the dying fire, sobbing through her sleep. The first light of day made her remember Jacques. He would be waiting! He had promised to go, to walk to the post with her letter. She looked at the dark closet under the stairs. She thought of the three wreaths; if she could make wreaths, she could make letters! She bounded to her feet; she seized the last of the paper and the bitten pencil; she struggled with the letters; she wrote: "Dear Great Man: My brothers----"

A step in the still room startled her. Grand'mère was coming from her room, fully dressed. Claire René flew to her side, but Madame Populet stood erect; she walked alone to her chair by the window. Claire René knelt beside her, and the hands that were laid on her head had a new firmness in their pressure. And grand'mère was smiling!

Claire René thought: "She is happy this morning; she feels in the air the gladness. I will make her a hot brew when I come back from Jacques."

She wrapped a dark cloak about her shoulders; in her hand was tightly clasped the half-written paper and the pencil. At the doorway she turned and called: "Good-by, grand'mère. Good-by."

Madame Populet was still smiling; her face was turned toward the forest and, through the sweeping willow over the window, sunbeams laid their fingers on the sightless eyes.

Two hours later Claire René walked through the forest singing. Her arms were full of scarlet leaves and branches of holly berries. She wanted to carry all the beautiful things she saw back to the cottage, to make the place a bower, where she and grand'mère and Clément and Fernand and Alphonse could kneel and thank the good God that they were again together.

All the world was kind on this morning. Jacques had been waiting for her at the door of his wooden hut. He had helped her with the letter. He had set out straightway to the post. Claire René had stooped and kissed the feet that had so many miles to go.

Jacques had cried out: "Ma petite, you hope too far."

But Claire René's mind and heart were a flood of joy; she had no place for doubt, no time for sorrow. She came out of the forest and stood looking at the tiny, crumbling house. No longer was she afraid of the silence. In but a short time her three brothers would fill the air with laughter; they would carry her on their backs around the house and into the forest, and grand'mère would stand waiting and smiling--and perhaps scolding; who could tell?

She pushed her way through the doorway. The berries and leaves made a tall screen about her; she could barely see grand'mère in her chair by the window. She laid the branches on the hearth.

"There!" she said. "That's good."

Grand'mère was very quiet in her chair by the window. Her hands were folded over her breast. There was something between her still fingers.

Claire René looked again, and then she screamed.

Madame Populet's eyes were open; they were fixed on the thin blue-and-white envelope clasped in her hands. Claire René pressed her fingers into her temples; she was afraid to speak aloud.

She whispered: "The third telegram!"

Who had brought it? Who had given it to grand'mère? Why was she so still? Why were her eyes open, without seeing? Claire René wanted to scream again; but instead, she made her feet take her to the chair by the window; she made her fingers pull the thin envelope from between the stiff fingers. Grand'mère's hands were cold. Her silence was more terrible than any silence Claire René had known before. The glazed, open eyes looked as if they hurt; she closed the lids with the tips of her fingers. She had seen dead birds in the forest and she knew that grand'mère was now like them.

The telegram was better burned in the fire; there it could bring no more sorrow. She watched the thin paper curl and smolder among the smoking embers of last night's blaze. She looked again toward the still figure by the window. If grand'mère was dead, why did she stay on the earth? Why didn't the Holy Mother send an angel to carry her away into the heaven of the good God?

Claire René began to tremble. What if the angels were too tired to come, were as faint and hungry as she! What, then, would become of grand'mère?

Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would be very angry to find her so cold and still and dead; they would be, perhaps, as angry to find her gone away to heaven. But grand'mère had so much of sorrow here on earth; Claire René thought the room was growing very dark; she flung her arms above her head and faintly screamed. But there was no one to hear. She fell on the hearthstone beside the red berries and the red leaves.

There was scarcely a breath left in her body when Jacques found her at dusk.

Three days later she opened her eyes in her little bed beside grand'mère's bed. Grand'mère's bed was smooth and high and white. Claire René was puzzled.

She called: "Grand'mère!"

From the outer room the voice of Jacques replied: "Yes, ma petite; I am here."

He came and put his arms about her; she laid her head against his rough coat, but her eyes were turned toward the empty bed. She was trying to remember.

Presently she sat up and asked: "Did the angel come and take grand'mère and carry her to the Holy Mother in heaven?"

Jacques crossed his heart. "Yes, ma petite," he said.

Faintly Claire René smiled and faintly she questioned: "But, my brothers?"

Jacques turned his troubled eyes away. She must wait, he said; when she was strong they would talk of many things. He told her that he had brought food to make her well, and that on the first warm day he would himself carry her out into the sunshine of the forest; there she would again run and sing and be like a happy, bright bird.

In the days that followed Claire René never spoke of grand'mère; she never spoke of her three brothers. She lay in her bed and stared about the quiet room. The silence was different, now that grand'mère was gone. Everything was different.

Jacques gave her food and care, and every day he said: "In only a little time you will be strong again, ma petite."

But something in his eyes kept her from speaking about Clément and Fernand and Alphonse. Often she thought about the telegrams upstairs in the high, white bed. She wondered if Jacques had found them there. Once she heard him walking on the floor above. He was there a long time, and when he came down his voice was queer and deep and his eyes were hidden behind a mist.

He never spoke any more about the "Great Man from America." Jacques was like grand'mère; he was old, he was full of sorrow. Claire René was afraid to ask about her letter; she thought about it each day.

But on the morning she was carried to Clément's chair by the chimney corner, she felt a great gladness spring in her heart. Yes; they would come soon--her three brothers. To-morrow she would be strong enough to walk alone to the dark closet under the stairs and look again at the three wreaths on the highest shelf.

Claire René smiled in her sleep that night; she dreamed of laughter in the house, of strong young arms about her, of quick steps and bright eyes.

Once she awoke and must have called out, for Jacques was kneeling beside her bed.

"Poor little one," he said, "you call, but there is only old Jacques to come."

Claire René put out her hand and let it rest on the old man's head. "Dear Jacques," she whispered, "always I will love you."

The sun was streaming through the tiny house the next morning. Jacques had left Claire René sitting in the warm light of the open doorway while he went to bring wood from the forest. There were no birds singing from the leafless trees, but Claire René saw a sparrow hopping about on the bright brown earth of the garden patch. She was wishing she had a great piece of white fat to hang out on a tree for the bird's winter food; wishing there were crumbs to leave on the window ledge, as grand'mère used to do.

She was wishing so hard about so many things that she failed to see three men coming out of the forest. They were tall and straight and fair, and their eyes were as blue as the sky above their heads. Their clothes were the color of pale brown sand and on their heads were jaunty caps of the selfsame color.

Jacques was with them; he was making a great many motions with his hands. They were all walking very slowly and talking very fast.

As they neared the house Jacques pointed to Claire René, and the three strange men held back. Jacques came slowly forward. The sound of his step on the hard ground interrupted Claire René's reverie; she looked up and around. She saw the three men standing at attention beyond the garden gate.

She threw back the heavy cloak wrapped about her; the thin folds of her calico dress hung limply from her sunken shoulders, and above the wasted child body the sun spun circles of gold in her tangled hair. She made a slight quivering start toward Jacques, which passed into a rigid stare toward the three figures beyond.

She was unaware when Jacques put a caressing, supporting arm about her and said: "Listen, my child."

The three men were coming forward. One of them had a letter in his hand. With kind eyes and bared heads they stood before the straining gaze of Claire René.

"The letter is for you, ma petite." Jacques voice was infinitely tender; the added pressure of his arm made Claire René conscious of his presence; she suddenly clung to him and buried her face in his coat sleeve. He went on to say: "The letter is for Claire René--from the 'Great Man from America'!"

The tangled head shook in the angle of his arm. Claire René was crying.

The tallest of the three men handed the letter to Jacques; he wiped his eyes and turned his head away. The others shifted in position and tightly folded their arms across their broad chests.

Jacques read:

_To Mademoiselle Claire René_: The soil of France now covers the
bodies of your three brothers, Clément and Fernand and Alphonse
Populet. The soil of France covers the Croix de Guerre upon their
breasts. The sons of France, and of America, hold forever in their
hearts the memory of their honor. We are all one family now--France
and America--and so I send to you three brothers--not in place of,
but in the stead of those others. They come to give you love and
service in the name of America.

Claire René slowly moved apart from Jacques. She stood alone with head erect and taut arms by her sides. She hesitated a moment, then came forward and held out her hands.

"Bonjour, messieurs," she said.

The tallest of the three men covered her hands with his own. "Little friend," he said, "we can't make you forget your brothers; we want to help you remember them. We want to do some of the things for you that they used to do, and we want you to do a lot of things for us. We are pretty big, it is true, but we need a little girl like you to sort of keep us in order. We want to take you right along with us this very day--to a place where we can care for you, and----"

But Claire René slipped with electric swiftness to Jacques' side; from his sheltering arm she made declaration: "Never! I stay here with Jacques--always." Then struggling against emotion she added with finality: "I thank you, messieurs."

The tall man lingered with his thoughts a moment before he spoke; he was standing close to Claire René and made as though to lay his hand upon her hair, but drew back and said that they were all pretty good cooks and that they were very, very hungry.

At this Claire René threw a frightened, wistful glance at Jacques.

The tall man interrupted hastily. He said they had brought food with them, and would she allow them to prepare it?

Claire René nodded her head; her eyes looked beyond her questioner--out into the lonely forest.

Jacques presently lifted her into his arms and carried her within the house. With reverence he placed her in grand'mère's chair by the window. Her ears were filled with distant echoes; her sight was blurred; speech had gone from her lips. As through a dark curtain she saw the figures moving about the room; far away she heard the clatter and the talk and sometimes laughter.

After a long time Jacques came and held some steaming coffee to her lips. He made her drink and drink again; a pink flush crept into her cheeks; shyly she met the glances from the eyes of those three fair, kind faces. Then her own eyes filled with tears and she lowered her head.

The tallest of the three men came behind her chair and spoke gently, close to her ear: "Our great and good commander, who sent us here, will be very unhappy if you do not come. You see, he wanted the sister of Clément and Fernand and Alphonse Populet to be a sister to some of his own boys. It would help us a great deal, you know; we're pretty lonely too--sometimes."

The collaboration in the faces of his friends seemed to put an instant end to his effort and, as if an unspoken command were given, they all sat down and made a prompt finish to the meal.

With no word on her lips Claire René watched from Grand'mère's chair by the window. About her, figures moved like dim marionettes; they cleared the table; they polished the copper pans; they sat in the chimney corner and puffed blue circles of smoke above their heads.

Dimly she saw all this, but clearly she saw the inside of a great man's mind. She, Claire René, had work to do; she was called--for France!

Long, slanting shadows from the sinking sun were streaking the wall of the whitewashed room with slender, forklike fingers. Jacques and the three men were knotted in talk beside the ruddy fire glow. Claire René braced herself with a sharp sigh. No soldier ever went into battle with a more self-made courage than hers.

Unseen, unnoticed, noiselessly she made her pilgrimage across the room. In the dark closet, under the stairs, she reached for the wreaths. With quick, short breath she gathered them in her arms. One moment she lowered her head while her lips touched the faded crackling flowers. The compact was sealed; her sacrifice was ready.

In that attitude she passed swiftly within the circle about the fireplace. She came like a spirit of Peace with the wreaths in her arms. Over and above the serenity in her face there dawned a joyous expectancy. Yes; she could trust les Américains!

On each reverent, bowed head she placed her wreath; and when she had finished, without tremor in her voice she said: "My brothers!"

FOOTNOTE:

[17] Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921, by Ethel Dodd Thomas.

THE ROMAN BATH[18]

#By# JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT

From _Scribner's Magazine_

Ralph Tuckerman had landed that day in Liverpool after a stormy winter voyage, his first across the Atlantic. The ship had slowly come up the Mersey in a fog, and the special boat train had dashed through the same dense atmosphere to the home of fogs and soot, London, and in the whole journey to his hotel the young American had seen nothing of the mother country but telegraph-poles scudding through opacity on the railway journey, and in London the loom of buildings and lights dimly red through the fog.

Although he had no acquaintances among the millions of dwellers in the city, he did not feel lonely in the comfortable coffee room of his hotel, where a cannel-coal fire flickered. The air of the room was surcharged with pungent fumes of the coal smoke which had blackened the walls and ceilings, and had converted the once brilliant red of a Turkey carpet into a dingy brown, but the young American would not have had the air less laden with the characteristic odor of London, or the carpet and walls less dingy if he had had a magician's wand.

The concept of a hotel in his native city of Chicago was a steel structure of many stories, brilliantly lighted and decorated, supplied with a lightning elevator service running through the polished marble halls which swooned in a tropical atmosphere of steam heat emanating from silvered radiators. So it was no wonder that the young man felt more at home in this inn in old London than he had ever felt in an American caravansary.

The shabby waiter who had served him at dinner appeared to him to be a true representation of the serving-man who had eaten most of David Copperfield's chops, and drained the little boy's half pint of port when he went up to school. It may be that Tuckerman's age protected him from any such invasion of his viands, but in justice to the serving-man it seems probable that he would have cut off his right hand rather than been disrespectful to a guest at dinner.

After the cloth was removed, Tuckerman ordered a half-pint decanter of port out of regard for the memory of Dickens, and, sipping it, looked about with admiration at the room with its dark old panels. Comfortable as he felt, after his dinner, he could not help regretting that he had not had with him his old friends Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and Traddles to share his enjoyment--the guests whom Copperfield entertained when "Mr. Micawber with more shirt collar than usual and a new ribbon to his eyeglass, Mrs. Micawber with a cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel, Traddles carrying the parcel and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm" arrived at David's lodgings and were so delightfully entertained. He wished that he could see "Micawber's face shining through a thin cloud of delicate fumes of punch," so that at the end of the evening Mr. and Mrs. Micawber would feel that they could not "have enjoyed a feast more if they had sold a bed to pay for it."

These cheery spirits seemed to come back to him from the charming paradise where they live to delight the world for all time, and it seemed to him that he could distinctly hear Mr. Micawber saying: "We twa have rin about the brae, And pu'd the gowans fine," observing as he quoted: "I am not exactly aware what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at them if it had been possible."

His modest modicum of port would have seemed a poor substitute to the congenial Micawber for the punch.

Finally he went up to bed, delighted to be given a bedroom candle in a brass candlestick, and to find on his arrival there that the plumber had never entered its sacred precincts, for a hat tub on a rubber cloth awaited the can of hot water, which would be lugged up to him in the morning; the four-post bedstead with its heavy damask hangings, the cushioned grandfather's chair by the open fireplace, the huge mahogany wardrobe and the heavy furniture--all were of the period of 1830. Back to such a room Mr. Pickwick had tried to find his way on the memorable night when he so disturbed the old lady whose chamber he had unwittingly invaded.

So impressed was the young American with his transference to the past that his stem-winding watch seemed an anachronism when he came to attend to it for the night.

He settled down into the big armchair by the fire, having taken from his valise three books which he had selected for his travelling companions: "Baedeker's London Guide," "The Pickwick Papers," and "David Copperfield." The latter was in a cheap American edition which he had bought with his schoolboy's savings; a tattered volume which he knew almost by heart; which, when he took it up, opened at that part of David's "Personal History and Experience" where his aunt tells him of her financial losses, and where he dreamed his dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, and, as he read, this paragraph flew out at his eye:

"There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the streets out of the Strand--it may be there still--in which I have had many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quickly as I could, and leaving Peggotty to look after my Aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it, and then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk treatment might freshen my wits a little."

Ralph's sleep in the old bed was unquiet. He was transported back into the England of the old coaching days, and found himself seated on the box-seat of the Ipswich coach, next a stout, red-faced, elderly coachman, his throat and chest muffled by capacious shawls, who said to him:

"If ever you are attacked with the gout, just you marry a widder as had got a good loud woice with a decent notion of using it, and you will never have the gout agin!" Then suddenly the film of the smart coach, with passengers inside and out, faded away, and Ralph found himself drinking hot brandy and water with Mr. Pickwick, in a room of a very homely description, apparently under the special patronage of Mr. Weller and other stage coachmen, for there sat the former smoking with great vehemence. The vision flashed out into darkness.

Then came deep, early morning sleep from which a sharp knock at his door aroused him, and a valet entered with a hot-water can and a cup of tea, saying: "Beg pardon, sir, eight o'clock, sir, thank you, sir."

Ralph's first inclination was to say "_Thank you_," but he restrained himself from this in time to save upsetting the foundations of British social life, and instead he asked:

"What kind of a morning is it?"

"Oh, sir, thank you, sir, if I should say that it is a nasty morning, sir, I should be telling the truth indeed, foggy and raining, sir, thank you, sir."

All the time he was quietly taking up Ralph's clothes, which were scattered in convulsions around the room.

"Shall I not unpack your box, sir?" asked the valet.

Ralph stopped from sipping his tea to nod assent, and the man proceeded with the unpacking with a hand which practice had made perfect.

"This is my first morning in London," observed Ralph. The valet pretended not to hear him, being unwilling to engage in any line of conversation which by any chance could take him out of the station in life to which he had been called.

"What is your name?" finally asked the American.

"Postlethwaite, sir, but I answer to the name of 'Enery."

"Well, 'Enery, did you ever hear of a Roman bath in a little street off the Strand?"

"A Roman bath, sir, in a little street off the Strand, sir? No, sir, thank you, sir, my word, sir, the Italians never take baths, sir."

"They used to take them, 'Enery, and my guide-book says that there is one of theirs to this day in Strand Lane."

The valet was silent as he continued his unpacking and arranging of Tuckerman's clothes, and the latter felt a little uncomfortable as this proceeding went on, for he was conscious of the inadequacy of his outfit, not only in the eyes of an English servant, but in his own, for he had purposely travelled "light," intending to replenish his wardrobe in London; but the well-trained servant treated the worn-out suits and frayed shirts with the utmost outward respect as he folded them up and put them away in the clothes-press.

An hour later, on the top of a 'bus, Ralph sat watching the complicated movement of traffic in the London streets, directed by the helmeted policemen. It was before the days of the motor-car, an endless stream of omnibuses, drays, hansoms, and four-wheelers, even at that early hour in the morning was pouring through the great artery of the heart of the world. This first ride on a London 'bus and the sights of the street traffic were inspiring, but familiar to the mind's eye of the young American. The Thames, alive with barges and steamers, the smoke-stained buildings, the processions of clerks, the crossing and sweepers, the smart policemen, the cab-drivers, the draymen, he knew from Leech's drawings, and he was on his way, marvellous to relate, to the oldest work of man in the city, in which the water flowed as it had been flowing ever since London was Londineum.

He got off the 'bus at Strand Lane and found a little way down the street the building he was looking for. It was a commonplace brick structure, the exterior giving no hint of its contents. A notice was posted on the black entrance door, stating the hours at which the bath was open to visitors. Ralph found out that he had fifteen minutes to wait before he could plunge head foremost into the pool. He walked somewhat impatiently up and down the street, finding the waiting unpleasant, for although it was not raining hard, the mist was cold and disagreeable. After a few turns, he came up to the door again and there found a young gentleman, dressed in a long surtout, reading the notice; the stranger turned about as Ralph approached; his face was smooth-shaven, his eyes large and melancholy, his whimsical, sensitive mouth was upcurved at the corners, his waving chestnut hair was longer than was then the fashion, the soft felt hat was pulled down over his forehead as if to ward off the fog. He swung to and fro with his right hand a Malacca joint with a chiselled gold head.

He bowed politely to Ralph, remarking:

"So you, too, are waiting for a plunge into the waters of the Holywell?"

"You are right, sir; I guess that we shall find the Roman bath cold this morning."

"You are an American, are you not?"

"I am, and therefore, sir, I am a seeker after the curious and ancient things of this city; it is my first morning in London."

"May I ask how you found out about this ancient bath? It is but little known, even to old Londoners. I often come here for a plunge, but I seldom find any other bathers here."

"Well, sir, I came across an allusion to it in 'David Copperfield,' just before I retired last night, and I looked up the locality in my guide-book."

"'David Copperfield'!" exclaimed the young man with a low whistle, and he started off upon a walking up and down as if to keep himself warm while waiting.

A moment later the heavy black door of the bathhouse was opened, and the bath attendant stepped out on the threshold, looking out into the rain; a dark-haired, heavily built man, with coarse features, a tight, cruel mouth; if he had not been dressed in rough, modern working clothes, he might well have been a holdover from the days of the Roman occupation.

"The admission is two shillings," announced the attendant as he showed the American into a dressing-room, and as the latter was paying his fee he saw the other visitor glide into a dressing-room adjoining his.

The bath was small, dark, and disappointing in appearance to the man from overseas, to whom the term "Roman bath" had conveyed an impression of vast vaulted rooms, and marble-lined swimming-pools. The bath itself was long enough for a plunge, but too small for a swim, and a hasty diver would be in danger of bumping his head on the bottom. The bricks at the side were laid edgewise, and the floor of the bath was of brick covered with cement. At the point where the water from the Holywell Spring flowed in, Ralph could see the old Roman pavement. The water in the bath was clear, but it was dark and cold looking.

As Ralph stood at the edge, reluctant to spring in, he saw the young Englishman dart from his dressing-room like a graceful sprite and make a beautiful dive into the pool. His slender body made no splash, but entered the water like a beam of light, refracting as he swam a stroke under water.

In a trice his face appeared above the surface, with no ripple or disturbance of the water.

"I feel better already," he called out. "I passed such a terrible night, almost as bad as poor Clarence's. How miserable I was last night when I lay down! I need not go into details. A loss of property; a sudden misfortune had upset my hopes of a career and of happiness.

"It was difficult to believe that night, so long to me, could be short for any one else. This consideration set me thinking, and thinking of an imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away until that became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune, and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance without taking the least notice of me."

"I too dreamed the night through," thought Ralph. "And am I dreaming now?"

"I dreamed of poverty in all sorts of shapes. I seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I was ragged, now I ran out of my office in a nightgown and boots, now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs of a poor man's scanty bread, and, still more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bedclothes. But come, my friend, plunge in, for if you passed any such night as mine, the clear cold water of Holywell Spring has marvellous healing properties, and it will freshen your wits for whatever the day may bring for them to puzzle over."

As he spoke he drew himself up on the opposite side of the bath from Ralph, and watched the latter as he took a clumsy header, his body striking the water flat, and sending great splashes over the room. When Ralph, recovering from his rude entrance into the water, looked for the other bather, he was gone. The cold water did not invite a protracted immersion, so that Ralph scrambled hastily out of it, and after a rub with a harsh towel, put on his clothes; then he noticed that the door of the stranger's cubicle was open; he looked into it to say good-by to his chance acquaintance, but it was empty, and in the corner he saw the Malacca cane with the gold head. He picked it up and carefully examined it; the head was of gold in the form of a face, eyes wide open, spectacles turned up on the forehead.

"Great Cæsar's ghost!" exclaimed Ralph, "Old Marley!"

The attendant just then appeared, Ralph handed him the cane, saying: "I found this cane in the other gentleman's dressing-room." The attendant stared at him and said gruffly:

"None of your larks, sir; there wasn't no other gentleman, and that's no cane; its my cleaning mop that I get under the seats with."

FOOTNOTE:

[18] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by John T. Wheelwright.

AMAZEMENT[19]

#By# STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN

From _Harper's Magazine_

There is sometimes melancholy in revisiting after years of absence, a place where one was joyous in the days of youth. That is why sadness stole over me on the evening of my return to Florence.

To be sure, the physical beauties of the Italian city were intact. Modernity had not farther encroached upon the landmarks that had witnessed the birth of a new age, powerful, even violent, in its individualism. From those relics, indeed--from the massive palaces, the noble porches, the monuments rising in the public squares--there still seemed to issue a faint vibration of ancient audacity and force. It was as if stone and bronze had absorbed into their particles, and stored through centuries, the great emotions released in Florence during that time of mental expansion called the Renaissance.

But this integrity of scene and influence only increased my regrets. Though the familiar setting was still here, the familiar human figures seemed all departed. I looked in vain for sobered versions of the faces that had smiled, of old, around tables in comfortable cafés, in an atmosphere of youthful gaiety, where at any moment one might be enmeshed in a Florentine prank that Boccaccio could not have bettered.

One such prank rose, all at once, before my minds eye, and suddenly, in the midst of my pessimism, I laughed aloud.

I recalled the final scene of that escapade, which I myself had managed to devise. The old café had rung with a bellow of delight; the victim, ridiculous in his consternation, had rushed at me howling for vengeance. But the audience, hemming him in, had danced 'round him singing a ribald little song. The air was full of battered felt hats, coffee spoons, lumps of sugar, and waving handkerchiefs. Out on the piazza the old cab-horses had pricked up their ears; the shopkeepers had run to their doorways; the police had taken notice. It was not every day that the champion joker among us was caught in such a net as he delighted to spread.

Where were they, all my jolly young men and women? Maturity, matrimony, perhaps still other acts of fate, had scattered them. Here and there a grizzled waiter let fall the old names with a shrug of perplexity, then hastened to answer the call of a rising generation as cheerful as if it were not doomed, also, to dispersion and regrets.

Then, too, in returning I had been so unfortunate as to find Florence on the verge of spring.

The soft evening air was full of a sweetness exhaled by the surrounding cup of hills. From baskets of roses, on the steps of porticoes, a fragrance floated up like incense round the limbs of statues, which were bathed in a golden light by the lamps of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which was gone.

"After all," I thought, "it is better not to find one of the old circle. We should make each other miserable by our reminiscences."

No sooner had I reflected thus than I found myself face to face with Antonio.

Antonio was scarcely changed. His dark visage was still vital with intelligence, still keen and strange from the exercise of an inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his eyes, which formerly had sparkled with the wit of youth, there was more depth and a hint of somberness. He had become a celebrated satirist.

"What luck!" he cried, embracing me with sincere delight. "But to think that I should have to run into you on the street!"

"I asked for you everywhere."

"In the old places? I never go to them. You have not dined? Nor I. Here, let us take this cab."

He hurried me off to a restaurant of the suburbs. Under the starry sky we sat down at a table beside a sunken garden, in which nightingales were trying their voices among the blossoms, whose perfume had been intensified by dew.

It was an old-time dinner, at least, that Antonio provided; but, alas! those others were not there to eke out the illusion of the past. To each name, as I uttered it, Antonio added an epitaph. This one had gone to bury himself in the Abruzzi hills. That one had become a professor at Bologna. Others, in vanishing, had left no trace behind them.

"And Leonello, who was going to surpass Michael Angelo?"

"Oh," my friend responded, "Leonello is still here, painting his pictures. Like me, he could not live long beyond the air of Florence."

Antonio, in fact, could trace his family back through Florentine history into the Middle Ages.

"Is Leonello the same?" I pursued. "Always up to some nonsense? But you were not much behind him in those insane adventures."

"Take that to yourself," Antonio retorted. "I recall one antic, just before you left us--" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed, looking at me in gloomy speculation, while, in the depths of his eyes, one seemed to see his extraordinary intelligence perplexed and baffled. "That war of wit is surely over. The old days are gone for good. Let us make the best of it." And he asked me what I had been doing.

I made my confession. In those years I had become fascinated by psychic phenomena--by the intrusion into human experience of weird happenings that materialism could not very well explain. Many of these happenings indicated, at least to my satisfaction, not only future existences, but also previous ones. I admitted to Antonio that, since I was in Italy again, I intended to investigate the case of a Perugian peasant girl who, though she had never been associated with educated persons, was subject to trances in which she babbled the Greek language of Cleopatra's time, and accurately described the appearance of pre-Christian Alexandria.

"I am writing a book on such matters," I concluded. "You, of course, will laugh at it----"

His somber eyes, which had been watching me intently, became blank for a time, then suddenly gave forth a flash.

"I? Laugh because you have been enthralled by weirdness?" he cried, as one who, all at once, has been profoundly moved. Yet laugh he did, in loud tones that were almost wild with strange elation. "Pardon me," he stammered, passing a trembling hand across his forehead. "You do not know the man that I have become of late."

What had my words called to his mind? From that moment everything was changed. The weight of some mysterious circumstances had descended upon Antonio, overwhelming, as it seemed to me, the pleasure that he had found in this reunion. Through the rest of the dinner he was silent, a prey to that dark exultancy, to that uncanny agitation.

This silence persisted while the cab bore us back into the city.

In the narrow streets a blaze of light from the open fronts of cook-shops flooded the lower stories of some palaces which once on a time had housed much fierceness and beauty, treachery and perverse seductiveness. Knowing Antonio's intimate acquaintance with those splendid days, I strove to rouse him by congenial allusions. His preoccupation continued; the historic syllables that issued from my lips were wasted in the clamor of the street. Yet when I pronounced the name of one of those bygone belles, Fiammetta Adimari, he repeated slowly, like a man who has found the key to everything:

"Fiammetta!"

"What is it, Antonio? Are you in love?"

He gave me a piercing look and sprang from the cab. We had reached the door of his house.

Antonio's bachelor apartment was distinguished by handsome austerity. The red-tiled floors reflected faintly the lights of antique candelabra, which shed their luster also upon chests quaintly carved, bric-à-brac that museums would have coveted, and chairs adorned with threadbare coats of arms. Beside the mantelpiece hung a small oil-painting, as I thought, of Antonio himself, his black hair reaching to his shoulders, and on his head a hat of the Renaissance.

"No," said he, giving me another of his strange looks, "it is my ancestor, Antonio di Manzecca, who died in the year fifteen hundred."

I remembered that somewhere in the hills north of the city there was a dilapidated stronghold called the Castle of Manzecca. Behind those walls, in the confusion of the Middle Ages, Antonio's family had developed into a nest of rural tyrants. Those old steel-clad men of the Manzecca had become what were called "Signorotti"--lords of a height or two, swooping down to raid passing convoys, waging petty wars against the neighboring castles, and at times, like bantams, too arrogant to bear in mind the shortness of their spurs, defying even Florence. In the end, as I recalled the matter, Florence had chastened the Manzecca, together with all the other lordlings of that region. The survivors had come to live in the city, where, through these hundreds of years, many changes of fortune had befallen them. My friend Antonio was their last descendant.

"But," I protested, examining the portrait, "your resemblance to this Antonio of the Renaissance could not possibly be closer."

Instead of replying, he sat down, rested his elbow on his knees, and pressed his fists against his temples. Presently I became aware that he was laughing, very softly, but in such an unnatural manner that I shivered.

I grew alarmed. It was true that in our years of separation Antonio's physical appearance had not greatly changed; but what was the meaning of this mental difference? Was his mind in danger of some sinister overshadowing? Were these queer manners the symptoms of an incipient mania? It is proposed that genius is a form of madness. Was the genius of Antonio, in its phenomenal development, on the point of losing touch with sanity? As my thoughts leaped from one conjecture to another, the tiled room took on the chill that pervades a mausoleum. From the bowl on the table the petals of a dying rose fell in a sudden cascade, like a dismal portent.

"The Castle of Manzecca," I ventured, merely to break the silence, "is quite ruined, I suppose?"

"No, the best part of it still stands. I have had some rooms restored."

"You own it?"

"I bought it back a year ago. It is there that I----" He buried his face in his hands.

"Antonio," I said, "you are in some great trouble."

"It is not trouble," he answered, in smothered tones. "But why should I hesitate to make my old friend, whose mind does not reject weirdness, my confidant? I warn you, however, that it will be a confidence weird enough to make even your experience in such matters seem tame. Go first to Perugia. Examine the peasant girl who chatters of ancient Alexandria. Return to my house one week from to-night, at dusk, and you shall share my secret."

He rose, averted his face, and went to throw himself upon a couch, or porch-bed, another relic, its woodwork covered with faded paint and gilt, amid which one might trace the gallants of the sixteenth century in pursuit of nymphs--an allegory of that age's longing for the classic past. I left him thus, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, oblivious of my farewell.

Poor Antonio! What a return to Florence!

A week from that night, at dusk, I returned. At Perugia I had filled a pocket-book with notes on the peasant girl's trances. The spell of those strange revelations was yet on me, but at Antonio's door I felt that I stood on the threshold of a still more agitating disclosure.

My knock was answered by Antonio himself, his hat on his head and a motorcoat over his arm. He seemed burning with impatience.

"You have your overcoat? Good." And he locked the door on the outside.

We stepped into a limousine, which whirled us away through the twilight. The weather made one remember that even in Florence the merging of March and April could be violent. To-night masses of harsh-looking clouds sped across the sky before an icy wind from the mountains. A burial-party, assembled at a convent gate, had their black robes fluttering, their waxen torches blown out.

"Death!" muttered Antonio, with a sardonic grimace. "And they call it unconquerable!"

As we paused before a dwelling-house, two men emerged upon the pavement. They were Leonello, the artist, and another friend of the old days, named Leonardo. The unusual occasion constrained our greetings. The newcomers, after pressing my hand, devoted themselves with grave solicitude to Antonio.

He burst forth at them like a man whose nervous tension is nearly unendurable:

"Yes, hang it all! I am quite well. Why the devil will you persist in coddling me?"

Leonello and Leonardo gave me a mournful look.

We now stopped at another door, where there joined us two ladies unknown to me. Both were comely, with delicate features full of sensibility. Neither, I judged, had reached the age of thirty. In the moment of meeting--a moment notable for a stammering of incoherent phrases, a darting of sidelong looks at Antonio, a general effect of furtiveness and excitement--no one remembered to present me to these ladies. However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity for this adventure.

The silence, and the tension of all forms, continued even when we left the city behind us and found ourselves speeding northward along a country road.

"Northward. To the Castle of Manzecca, then?" I asked myself.

The rays from our lamps revealed the trees all bending toward the south. The wind pressed against our car, as if to hold us back from the revelation awaiting us ahead, in the midst of the black night, whence this interminable whistling moan pervaded nature. Rain dashed against the glass. Through the blurred windows the lights of farms appeared, to be instantly engulfed by darkness. Then everything vanished except the illuminated streak of road. We seemed to be fleeing from the known world, across a span of radiance that trembled over an immeasurable void, into the supernatural.

The limousine glided to a standstill.

"Here we abandon the car."

We entered the kitchen of a humble farm-house. Strings of garlic hung from the ceiling, and on the floor lay some valises.

As the ladies departed into another room, Antonio mastered his emotion and addressed me.

"What we must do, and what I must ask you to promise, may at first seem to you ridiculous," he said. "Yet your acceptance of my conditions is a matter of life or death, not to any one here present, but to another, whom we are about to visit. What I require is this: you are to put on, as we shall, the costumes in these valises, which are after the fashion of the early sixteenth century. Indeed, when our journey is resumed, there must be about us nothing to suggest the present age. Moreover, I must have your most earnest promise that when we reach our destination you will refrain from giving the least hint, by word or action, that the sixteenth century has passed away. If you feel unable to carry out this deception, we must leave you here. The slightest blunder would be fatal."

No sooner had Antonio uttered these words than he turned in a panic to Leonello and Leonardo.

"Am I wrong to have brought him?" he demanded, distractedly. "Can I depend on him at every point? You two, and Laura and Lina, know what it would mean if he should make a slip."

Much disturbed, I declared that I wished for nothing better than to return to Florence at once. But Leonardo restrained me, while Leonello, patting Antonio's shoulder in reassurance, responded:

"Trust him. You do his quick wit an injustice."

Finally Antonio, with a heavy sigh, unlocked the valises.

Hitherto I had associated masquerade with festive expectations, but nothing could have been less festive than the atmosphere in which we donned those costumes. They were rich, accurate, and complete. The wigs of flowing hair were perfectly deceptive. The fur-trimmed surcoats and the long hose were in fabrics suggestive of lost weaving arts. Each dagger, buckle, hat-gem, and finger-ring, was a true antique. Even when the two ladies appeared, in sumptuous Renaissance dresses, their coiffures as closely in accordance with that period as their expanded silhouettes, no smile crossed any face.

"Are we all--" began Antonio. His voice failed him. Muffled in thick cloaks, we faced the blustery night again.

Behind the farm-house stood horses, saddled and bridled in an obsolete manner. Our small cavalcade wound up a hillside path, which, in the darkness, the beasts felt out for themselves. One became aware of cypress-trees on either hillside, immensely tall, to judge by the thickness of their trunks. More and more numerous became these trees, as was evident from the lamentation of their countless branches. In its groan, the forest voiced to the utmost that melancholy which the imaginative mind associates with cypresses in Italy, where they seemed always to raise their funereal grace around the sites of vanished splendors.

We were ascending one of the hills that lie scattered above Florence toward the mountains, and that were formerly all covered with these solemn trees.

But the wind grew even stronger as we neared the summit. Above us loomed a gray bulk. The Castle of Manzecca reluctantly unveiled itself, bleak, towering, impressive in its decay--a ruin that was still a fortress, and that time had not injured so much as had its mortal besiegers; the last of whom had died centuries ago. A gate swung open. Our horses clattered into a courtyard which abruptly blazed with torches.

In that dazzle all the omens of our journey were fulfilled. We found ourselves, as it appeared, not only in a place embodying another age, but in that other age itself.

The streaming torches revealed shock-headed servitors of the Renaissance, their black tunics stamped in vermilion, front and back, with a device of the Manzecca. By the steps glittered the spear-points of a clump of men-at-arms whose swarthy and rugged faces remained impassive under flattened helmets. But as we dismounted a grey-hound came leaping from the castle, and in the doorway hovered an old maid-servant. To her Antonio ran straightway, his cape whipping out behind him.

"Speak, Nuta! Is she well?" he demanded.

We followed him into the castle.

It was a spacious hall, paved with stone, its limits shadowy, its core illuminated brilliantly with candles. From the rafters dangled some banners, tattered and queerly designed. Below these, in the midst of the hall--in a mellow refulgence that she herself seemed to give forth--there awaited us a woman glorified by youth and happiness, who pressed her hand to her heart.

She wore a gown of violet-colored silk, the sleeves puffed at the shoulders, the bodice tight across the breast and swelling at the waist, the skirt voluminous. On either side of her bosom, sheer linen, puckered by golden rosettes, mounted to form behind her neck a little ruff. Over her golden hair, every strand of which had been drawn back strictly from her brow, a white veil was clasped, behind her ears, by a band of pearls and amethysts cut in cabuchon.

Still, she was remarkable less for her costume than for the singularity of her charms.

To what was this singularity due? To the intense emotions that she seemed to be harboring? Or to the arrangement of her lovely features, to-day unique, which made one think of backgrounds composed of brocade and armor, the freshly painted canvases of Titian and the dazzling newness of statues by Michael Angelo? As she approached that singularity of hers became still more disquieting, as though the fragrance that enveloped her were not a woman's chosen perfume, but the very aroma of the magnificent past.

Antonio regarded her with his soul in his eyes, then greedily kissed her hands. When the others had saluted her, each of them as much moved as though she were an image in a shrine, Antonio said in a hoarse voice to me:

"I present you to Madonna Fiammetta di Foscone, my affianced bride. Madonna, this gentleman comes from a distant country to pay you homage."

"He is welcome," she answered, in a voice that accorded with her peculiar beauty.

And my bewilderment deepened as I realized that they were speaking not modern Italian, but what I gathered to be the Italian of the sixteenth century.

* * * * *

I found myself with Antonio in a tower-room, whither he had brought me on the ladies' retirement to prepare themselves for supper.