The Cream of the Jest

"It was, instead, for the great generality, who combine a taste for travel with a dislike for leaving home, that books were by the luckiest hit invented, to confound the restrictions of geography and the almanac. In consequence, from the Ptolemies to the Capets, from the twilight of a spring dawn in Sicily to the uglier shadow of Montfaucon's gibbet, there intervenes but the turning of a page, a choice between Theocritus and Villon. From the Athens of Herodotus to the Versailles of St.-Simon, from Naishapur to Cranford, it is equally quick traveling. All times and lands that ever took the sun, indeed, lie open, equally, to the explorer by the grace of Gutenberg; and transportation into Greece or Rome or Persia or Chicago, equally, is the affair of a moment. Then, too, the islands of Avalon and Ogygia and Theleme stay always accessible, and magic casements open readily upon the surf of Sea-coast Bohemia. For the armchair traveler alone enjoys enfranchisement of a chronology, and of a geography, that has escaped the wear-and-tear of ever actually existing.

"Peregrination in the realms of gold possesses also the quite inestimable advantage that therein one's personality is contraband. As when Dante makes us free of Hell and Heaven, it is on the fixed condition of our actual love and hate of divers Renaissance Italians, whose exploits in the flesh require to-day the curt elucidation of a footnote, just so, admission to those high delights whereunto Shelley conducts is purchased by accrediting to clouds and skylarks – let us sanely admit – a temporary importance which we would never accord them unbiased. The traveler has for the half-hour exchanged his personality for that of his guide: such is the rule in literary highways, a very necessary traffic ordinance: and so long as many of us are, upon the whole, inferior to Dante or Shelley – or Sophocles, or Thackeray, or even Shakespeare – the change need not make entirely for loss…"

Yes, it is lightly phrased; but, after all, it is only another way of confessing that his books afforded Kennaston an avenue to forgetfulness of that fat pasty fellow whom Kennaston was heartily tired of being. For one, I find the admission significant of much, in view of what befell him afterward.

And besides – so Kennaston's thoughts strayed at times – these massed books, which his predecessor at Alcluid had acquired piecemeal through the term of a long life, were a part of that predecessor's personality. No other man would have gathered and have preserved precisely the same books, and each book, with varying forcefulness, had entered into his predecessor's mind and had tinged it. These parti-colored books, could one but reconstruct the mosaic correctly, would give a candid portrait of "your Uncle Henry in Lichfield," which would perhaps surprise all those who knew him daily in the flesh. Of the fact that these were unusual books their present owner and tentative explorer had no doubt whatever. They were perturbing books.

Now these books by their pleasant display of gold-leaf, soberly aglow in lamplight, recalled an obscure association of other tiny brilliancies; and Felix Kennaston recollected the bit of metal he had found that evening.

Laid by the lamp, it shone agreeably as Kennaston puckered his protruding brows over the characters with which it was inscribed. So far as touched his chances of deciphering them, he knew all foreign languages were to him of almost equal inscrutability. French he could puzzle out, or even Latin, if you gave him plenty of time and a dictionary; but this inscription was not in Roman lettering. He wished, with time-dulled yearning, that he had been accorded a college education…

IV

How There Was a Light in the Fog

AS she came toward him through the fog, "How annoying it is," she was saying plaintively, "that these moors are never properly lighted."

"Ah, but you must not blame Ole-Luk-Oie," he protested. "It is all the fault of Beatricê Cenci…"

Then Kennaston knew he had unwittingly spoken magic words, for at once, just as he had seen it done in theaters, the girl's face was shown him clearly in a patch of roseate light. It was the face of Ettarre.

"Things happen so in dreams," he observed. "I know perfectly well I am dreaming, as I have very often known before this that I was dreaming. But it was always against some law to tell the people in my nightmares I quite understood they were not real people. To-day in my daydream, and here again to-night, there is no such restriction; and lovely as you are, I know that you are just a daughter of sub-consciousness or of memory or of jumpy nerves or, perhaps, of an improperly digested entrée."

"No, I am real, Horvendile – but it is I who am dreaming you."

"I had not thought to be a part of any woman's dream nowadays… Why do you call me Horvendile?"

She who bore the face of Ettarre pondered momentarily; and his heart moved with glad adoration.

"Now, by the beard of the prophet! I do not know," the girl said, at last.