Chapter D: O M

_Cy gist Achilles Gvibert de Chevigny, fils de
Pierre Gvibert, Escvier, Sievr de Chevigny, Conseiller,
Secretair dv Roy, Maison, Covronne deFrance
et de Dame Clavde Gviet Gallard dela
Paroisse Sainct Andre dela ville de Paris, le qvel
Achille av sortir del’ Accademie, et des
movsquetaires dv Roy, vovlovst faire le voiage
DItalie et sen retovrnant deRome en France, estant
tombe malade Alivovrne, povr changer dair, se fit
porter en cette ville de Pise, ov, apres avoir recev les
saincts sacremens ordonnez par nostre mere saincte
Eglise, il movrvt, et fvst enterre en ce saint liev, le
XXI: iovr Daovst MDCLXXIV: agee de XXVI: ans.
Priez Diev povr le salvt de son ame.
Fait par le tres cher amy dela nation, et
Maison de France, Labbe Gaetani archidiacre de cediocese._

For a moment they were silent. In the stillness of that sequestered place the forgotten story seemed to live again. Then Martin put his finger to the stone:

“See!” he exclaimed. “It was the twenty-first of August. And to-day is the twenty-first!”

His companion turned her eyes to his, with a curious smile.

“And I came to show you! If I had any qualms about _les convenances_ I have none now.”

They were silent again, looking at each other and at the white tablet. There was something in the little coincidence which seemed to Martin strangely significant.

“‘_Lequel Achille voulut faire le voyage d’Italie._’ How near it makes him seem, poor boy! I did not think of there being trippers then,” he said with a smile. “There was no Shelley; not even a Goethe and a Mignon--two hundred and thirty-three years ago!”

She made no reply at first. Then she said, softly:

“I wonder how it was with Dame Claude. There were other things that lacked then, beside your poets. It must have taken time for the Abbé Gaetani’s letter to get to Paris.”

“However it was then, it happily makes no difference now,” returned Martin. A rising elation filled him--out of the utter unexpectedness of this meeting, out of its picturesqueness, out of the infinity of possibilities which it might promise. He was accordingly amazed at the vehemence with which his companion turned upon him.

“Why do you say that?” she exclaimed. “You who brought me here, and on this day! Have you forgotten the gateway by the river? Now is not the time. The time was when the horseman clattered up the cobble-stones of St. André and into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Chevigny; when Dame Claude seized the packet from the page at the door and ran with it to the _secretaire du roi_; when he broke the seal, read the first lines of the Abbé Gaetani, went white to the lips, looked at Dame Claude, and turned away. It was then that it made a difference. It was then that nothing else made a difference. Things come, and then other things come. Time is only a chain to hold us to them--or away from them. It is mere chance whether it breaks all at once or by degrees....”

Martin watched her keenly as she spoke, white in the shadow of the cloister, her hair dark against the wan frescoes. There was a curious contrast between the vivid modern figure and those faded images of a life so dim and far away. And recalling the palace gate he wondered what there might be of consistency or inconsistency between what she said so lightly then and what she said so intensely now. And why? Where had she been, what had she done, yesterday, all the other days that went before their chance meeting by the Arno?

She stopped, as if reading in his eyes. She touched the white stone softly.

“Good-bye, poor Achille,” she said--“you and your twenty-six years.”

She did not speak again as they passed on. But at one of the openings into the green quadrangle a sudden impulse seized her. She stepped down into the grass and picked some crimson-tipped daisies growing there. Then she went back and laid them on top of the tablet, adding:

“That is for Dame Claude, who was not here all those years ago to-day.”