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 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 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 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 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 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 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.'
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 would 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,' says 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 untroubled: '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 says Dame Melicent, nodding her shriveled old head: 'When I was young, and was served by nimbler senses and desires, and was housed in brightly colored flesh, there were a host of men to love 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
