The Line of Love | Page 8

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