Part 31

The servants bore in, on silver platters, small chickens garnished with sugar and rose-water, a sort of galantine, tarts of almonds and honey, caramels of pine-seed. From the gallery overhead came the tinkle of a rota, a kind of guitar. The musician produced a whimsical tune suggesting a picnic of lords and ladies in the garden of an antique villa, where trick fountains, masked by blossoms, drenched the unwary with streams of water. But in the chimney of the great, cold fireplace behind my back the wind still growled its threats; the voice of Nature still menaced these audacious mortals, who were celebrating the humiliation of her laws.

Beyond the candle-light the beauty of Fiammetta di Foscone became blinding. In her there was no sign of an unnatural preservation, as, for example, in a flower that has been sustained, yet subtly altered, by imprisonment in ice. Nor did her countenance show in the least that glaze of time which changes, without abating, the fairness of marble goddesses surviving for us from remote ages of esthetic victory. But wait; she was not an animated statue, nor any product of nature other than flesh and blood! And the flesh, the glance, the whole person of this creature from another era, expressed a glorious young womanhood. I was lost in admiration, pity, and dread. For over this shining miracle hovered the shadow of disaster. One could not forget the countless menaces surrounding her.

If she should grasp the truth, if all of a sudden she should realize her disaccordance with the world of mortals, what would happen to her before our eyes? Would she succumb instantly? Or would she first shrivel into some appalling monstrosity? This deception could not last forever. Might it not end to-night?

Did the others have similar premonitions?

Their smiles seemed tremulous and wan, their movements constrained and timorous. All their efforts at gaiety were impeded by the inertia of fear. At every speech the lips of Lina and Laura quivered, the hands of Leonello and Leonardo were clenched in a nervous spasm. Antonio controlled himself only by the most heroic efforts.

What a price to pay for an illusion of happiness that was destined to a ghastly end! Yet I would still have paid that heavy price exacted from Antonio.

Fiammetta di Foscone became infected by our nervousness. At one moment her mirth was feverish; at another, a look of vague uneasiness crossed her face. Was our secret gradually penetrating to her subconscious mind? Was she to learn the fact, and perish of it, not because of bungling word or action on our part, but merely from the unwitting transmission of our thoughts?

The others redoubled their travesty of merriment. They voiced the gossip of a vanished society; the politics, fashions, and scandals of old Florence. One heard the names of noble families long since extinct, accounts of historic escapades related as if they had happened yesterday. Fiammetta recovered her animation.

Her dewy eyes turned to Antonio. Her fingers caressed her betrothal-ring, which was like the wedding-ring of the twentieth century. And in this hall tricked out with lies, amid these guests and servants who were the embodiment of falsehood, an oppressing atmosphere of dread was clarified, for a moment, by the strength and delicacy of her love.

They discussed the virtues of the Muses, the plagiarisms of Petrarch, the wonders of astrology. Her uneasiness revived. In a voice more musical than the rota in the gallery, she asked:

"My dear friends, would you attribute to some planetary influence a feeling of strangeness that I receive at times, even from the air? I demand of you whether the air does not have an unfamiliar smell to-night?"

There was a freezing moment of silence.

"It is this great wind," muttered Leonardo, "that has brought us new air from afar."

"Every place has its smell," was Leonello's contribution. "It is natural that the Castle of Manzecca should smell differently from the Castle of Foscone."

Antonio thanked his friends with an eloquent look.

"True," she assented, pensively, "every spot, every person, is surrounded by its especial ether, produced by its peculiar activity. This house, not only in its smell, but in its tenor of life, and even in its food, differs vastly from my own house, which, nevertheless, is just across the hills."

Antonio drained his goblet at a gulp. He got out the words:

"We are provincial, we Manzecca. Like a race apart."

"All old families, jealous of their integrity, are the same," ventured Laura, who looked, nevertheless, as if she were about to faint.

"Or maybe," mused Fiammetta, "it is because I have been ill that things perplex me, and sometimes startle me by an effect of strangeness. There are moments when even the stars look odd to me, and when the countryside, viewed from the tower above us, is bewildering. In one direction I see woods where I should have expected meadows; in another direction, fields where I should have expected woods. But then, I now view the countryside from a tower other than my own, and see in a new aspect that landscape with which I thought myself so well acquainted. Does that explain it?"

How touching, how pitiable, was her expression, half arch, half pleading, and so beautiful! "Oh, lovely and terrible prodigy!" I thought, "draw back; banish those thoughts; or, rather, no longer think at all--for you are on the edge of the abyss!"

Antonio spoke with difficulty:

"Dearest one, do not pain me by mentioning that illness of yours. Do not pain yourself by dwelling on it in your mind. The past with all its misfortunes is gone forever. Let us live in the present and contemplate a future full of bliss."

A quivering sigh of assent and relief went round the supper-table. But Fiammetta protested:

"I should not care to forget the past. It contained too much happiness. The hours at twilight, when I waited on the platform of the Castle of Foscone, and you clambered up the wall, are not for oblivion! Do you remember, Antonio, how you once brought with you a bunch of little damask roses, which you tossed up to me while clinging to the masonry? Those roses became my treasure. The sweetest one of them I locked in a tiny silver box which I kept always by me. That box came with me from the Castle of Foscone. The key is lost; but you shall open it with your dagger, and learn how I have cherished an emblem of that past which you ask me to forget."

With a rare smile, she drew from the bosom of her gown a very small coffer of silver, its chiseling worn smooth by innumerable caresses. Poor soul! it was in her bosom that she had cherished this pretty little box, more cruelly fatal than a viper.

Antonio, his jaws sagging, rose half-way out of his chair, then sank back, speechless and livid. Unaware, eager, and imperious, Fiammetta demanded:

"A dagger!"

Too late Antonio managed to put out a shaking hand in protest. Already a fool of a servant had presented his dirk to her. In a twinkling--before we could stop her--Fiammetta had pried back the lid.

The silver box, its oxidized interior as black as ink, contained, in place of the damask rose that had bloomed in the year fifteen hundred, only a few grains of dust.

* * * * *

There was no sound except from the wind, which yelled its devilish glee round the castle and in the chimney of the fireplace.

She had risen to her feet. In her eyes, peering at the little coffer, bewilderment gave place to dismay. But in our faces she found a consternation far surpassing hers.

"Only dust?"

Antonio distorted his mouth in a vain effort to speak. At last, with a frantic oath, he swept the silver box into the fireplace, where it fell amid the brush-wood and inflammable rubbish piled ready for lighting under the big logs.

Fiammetta had tried to stop him. Under her clutching hand, his fur-trimmed sleeve had slipped up, exposing his forearm. She was staring at his forearm.

"The scar?" she whispered. "Was it not here, when you raised your arm to shield yourself against them, that you caught the first knife-thrust? How long does it take for such a scar to pass entirely away?"

Lina and Laura sank back in their chairs. Leonello averted his face. Leonardo turned away. Again Antonio tried to speak. The terror that held us in its grip was communicated to Fiammetta di Foscone.

Her countenance became bloodless. Her teeth chattered. She murmured:

"What is happening to me? I am so cold!"

She sank down, amid billows of violet-colored silk, between Antonio's arms, before the fireplace. Her veil, confined by the band of pearls and amethysts, did not seem as white as her skin.

There was a hysterical babble of voices:

"She is dead! No, she has swooned! Bring vinegar! Rub her hands! Light the fire!"

Then ensued a jostling of guests and servants, who crowded forward to poke a dozen lighted candles at the brush-wood. In the midst of this confusion Fiammetta sat before the hearth, her eyes half closed, her head rolling against Antonio's shoulder, her throat, framed by the little ruff, palpitating like the breast of an expiring dove. She was in the throes of the emotions that had been at last transferred from our minds to hers and that she was doubtless on the point of comprehending.

The brush-wood caught fire. At that flicker her eyelids opened. She leaned forward. Under the brush-wood, already writhing in flames, was the fragment of a modern Italian newspaper. One plainly saw the title, part of a head-line, and the date.

Fiammetta di Foscone read the date.

As Antonio and I, between us, lifted her into a chair, she kept repeating to herself, in a soft, incredulous voice, the date. And so badly had our wits been paralyzed by this catastrophe, that none of us could find one lying word to utter.

Antonio knelt before her, his arms clasping her knees, his head bowed. He was weeping as if she were already dead. Her hands slowly stole forth to close around his face and lift it up.

"Whatever it is," she breathed, "I still have you."

As she gazed, half lifeless, but still fairer than an untinted statue, at his face, all at once her eyes became enormous. Pushing him from her, she stood bolt-upright at one movement, with a heart-rending scream:

"A stranger!"

That scream was still resounding from the rafters when we saw her fleeing across the hall, her head thrown back, her arms outspread, her white veil and violet draperies floating behind her. Her jewels glittered like the last sparkle of a splendid dream that has been doomed to swift extinction. She vanished through the doorway leading to the tower staircase.

"After her!" some one shouted.

Antonio was first; but at the doorway he stumbled, and Leonello, who was second, fell over him. Vaulting their bodies, I gained the circular staircase that ascended to the tower. I heard Antonio bawling after me:

"She will throw herself from the roof!"

The staircase was black, and the wind whistled down its well. At each landing the heavy doors on either side banged open and shut. From overhead there descended a long wail, maybe her voice, or maybe one of the countless voices of the storm. As I neared the top, a door through which I had just passed blew shut with a deafening report. I emerged upon the roof of the tower in a torrent of rain. The roof was empty.

I peered over the low battlements. Close below me swayed the tops of cypress-trees; beneath them everything was lost in the obscurity of the night. Soon, however, the darkness was lighted by torches which began to dart to and fro among the trees. By those fitful gleams I made out the crouching backs of men, the livery of the Manzecca with its black and vermilion device, helmets and sword-hilts, and finally upturned faces that appeared ruddy in the torch-light, though I knew that in reality they must be pallid. They called up to me, but the wind whipped their voices away. I made signs that she was not on the tower. The faces disappeared; again the torches wandered among the trees. Now and then I heard a shout, the barking of the greyhound, and a woman--perhaps old Nuta--in hysterics.

I began to descend the staircase. The last door through which I had passed was so tightly wedged, from its slamming, that I could not open it. I sat down on the steps to wait till the others should miss me.

What thoughts!

"Can it be true? Yes, it has happened, and I have seen the end of it! This will kill Antonio. But then, none of us will ever be the same again."

I was sure that my hair had turned white.

And she? A vast wave of pity and longing swept over me and whirled me away into the depths of despair.

Now, I told myself, they have found her. And I fell to shuddering again. Now they have brought her in, unless what they saw, when they found her, scattered them, raving, through the woods. Now they are trying to soothe Antonio, perhaps to wrench a weapon from his hand. Now surely they have noticed my absence.

I cannot imagine what impulse made me rise, at last, and try the door again. At my first touch it swung open.

Descending the staircase, I re-entered the hall.

* * * * *

They were all seated at the supper-table, which was now decorated with flowers, with baskets of fruit, with plates of bonbons, and with favors in the form of dolls tricked out like little ladies of the Renaissance. The servants wore tail-coats and white-cotton gloves. Leonello and Leonardo, Lina and Laura, even Antonio, had on the evening-dress appropriate to the twentieth century. But my brain reeled indeed when I saw Fiammetta, her hair done in the last Parisian style, her low-neck gown the essence of modern chic.

The company looked at me with tolerant smiles.

"Well," exclaimed Antonio, "you have certainly taken your time! We waited ages for you, then decided that the food was spoiling, and fell to. There is your place, old fellow. I'll have the relishes brought back."

I dropped into my chair with a thud. Leonardo, reaching in front of Lina, took the fabric of my antique costume between thumb and finger.

"Very _recherché_," was his comment. "Do you wear it for a whim?"

"He is soaking wet," announced Lina, compassionately. "I think he has been looking at the garden."

"A botanist!" cried Laura, clapping her hands. "Will you give me some advice, signore? What is the best preservative for damask roses?"

"Water them with credulity," Leonello suggested.

And they all burst out laughing in my face, with the exception of the beautiful Fiammetta.

Antonio, rising and bowing to me, spoke as follows:

"My friend, the sixteenth century bequeathed to us Florentines a little of its cheerful cruelty and something of its pleasure in vendettas. Casting your thoughts into a less remote past, you may retrieve an impression of your last performance before your departure from the Florence of our youth. Need I describe that performance? Its details were conceived and executed with much talent. It made me, who was its butt, the laughing stock of our circle for a month. Did we children of Boccaccio impart to you that knack for practical joking? Remember that the pupil does not always permanently abash his teacher. But come, let us make a lasting peace now. If after all these years I managed to catch you off your guard, you will never again catch me so. Let us forget our two chagrins in drinking to this pleasant night, which, though I fancy the fact has escaped you, happens to be the First of April."

While I was still trying to master my feelings, he added:

"I have forgotten to explain that Lina is the wife of Leonello, our new Michael Angelo, who did that portrait of me in the wig and costume of the Renaissance. Laura, on the other hand, is the wife of Leonardo. As for our heroine, Fiammetta, she is the bride of your unworthy Antonio. She has been so gracious as to marry me between two of her theatrical seasons; in fact, we are here on our honeymoon. Why the deuce have you never married? A wife might keep you out of many a laughable predicament."

Leonello hazarded, "He is waiting to marry some lady who can describe, in her trances, the cuisine of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, or the home-life of the Queen of Sheba."

"Do no such thing," Antonio implored me. "And hereafter avoid the supernatural like the plague. May this affair instil into your philosophy of life a little healthy skepticism. There is no better tonic than laughter for one who has caught the malaria of psychical research. But even Nuta, my wife's old dresser at the theater, will tell you that laughter is precious. You have given her to-night the first out-and-out guffaw that she has enjoyed in years. She says it cured her of a crick in the neck."

The fair Fiammetta, however, made a gesture of reproof, then held out her warm hand to me.

"No, Antonio," she protested, "you have not been clever, after all, but wicked. The worst of revenge is this: that it invariably exceeds its object. To what do you owe this triumph? To his solicitude for you, to his trust in you, which you have abused. Also, as I suspect, to his pity for Fiammetta di Foscone, which I have ill repaid. In fine, we owe the success of this trick to the misuse of fine emotions. That was not the custom of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio." And to me, "Will you forgive us?"

All the others looked rather chop-fallen. But Antonio soon recovered. He retorted:

"If you could have seen what an ass he made of me that time, you would not at this moment be holding his hand. Look here, old fellow, she has a sister who rather resembles her, and whose hand I have no objection to your holding as long as you wish. We will introduce you to-morrow. Ah yes, we will make you forgive us, you rascal, before we are done with you!"

FOOTNOTE:

[19] Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Stephen French Whitman.

SHEENER[20]

#By# BEN AMES WILLIAMS

From _Collier's Weekly_

When he was sober the man always insisted that his name was Evans, but in his cups he was accustomed to declare, in a boastful fashion, that his name was not Evans at all. However, he never went farther than this, and since none of us were particularly interested, we were satisfied to call him Evans, or, more often, Bum, for short. He was the second assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establishments, a janitor is a man of power and place, it is not so in a newspaper office. In such institutions, where great men are spoken of irreverently and by their first names, a janitor is a man of no importance. How much less, then, his second assistant. It was never a part of Evans's work, for example, to sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of the broom. But the janitor's first assistant attended to that; and Evans's regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, but which might also have been characterized as a walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were wash-blue, and his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.

Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he was apt to become mysteriously loquacious. And he drank whenever the state of his credit permitted. At such times he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and condescending fashion which we found amusing. "You call me Evans," he would say. "That does well enough, to be sure. Quite so, and all that. Evans! Hah!"

And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with his long, bony countenance always suggested to me a coughing horse. But when he was pressed for details, the man--though he might be weaving and blinking with liquor--put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain families in one of the Midland Counties of England who would welcome him home if he chose to go; but he never named them, and he never chose to go, and we put him down for a liar by the book. All of us except Sheener.

Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a representative of the only thoroughbred people in the world. I have known Sheener for a good many years, and he is worth knowing; also, the true tale of his life might have inspired Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some day. For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enterprise which adversity has taught his people; he had the humility which they have learned by enduring insults they were powerless to resent, and he had the courage and the heart which were his ancient heritage. And--the man Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.

He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have been through a native credulity which failed to manifest itself in his other dealings with the world. I think it more probable that Evans and his pretensions appealed to the love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed believing, as we enjoy lending ourselves to the illusion of the theatre. Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two; a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener's credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a mistake.

"You got that guy wrong," he would say. "He ain't always been a bum. A guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he walks, and all. There's class to him, I'm telling you. Class, bo."

"He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old hound," I told Sheener. "He's got you buffaloed, that's all."

"Pull in your horns; you're coming to a bridge," Sheener warned me. "Don't be a goat all your life. He's a gent; that's what this guy is."

"Then I'm glad I'm a roughneck," I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.

"That's all right," he exclaimed. "That's all right. He ain't had it easy, you know. Scrubbing spittoons is enough to take the polish off any guy. I'm telling you he's there. Forty ways. You'll see, bo. You'll see."

"I'm waiting," I said.

"Keep right on," Sheener advised me. "Keep right on. The old stuff is there. It'll show. Take it from me."

I laughed at him. "If I get you," I said, "you're looking for something along the line of 'Noblesse Oblige.' What?"

"Cut the comedy," he retorted. "I'm telling you, the old class is there. You can't keep a fast horse in a poor man's stable."

"Blood will tell, eh?"

"Take it from me," said Sheener.