HORSECHESTNUT
Compilers’ Note
Thesubjoined paper, so happily cast in narrative form, could not have been omitted from this compilation without gravely lessening at once the charm and value of the work; its inclusion, however, has been arranged only after extraordinary efforts on the part, not only of the compilers, but also, they are happy to testify, on that of the talented author herself—a figure as impressive and delightful among antiquers as her name, among critics and patrons of the modern American novel, is authoritative and inspiring. Her charming little story, although read by her in person at the March session of the Academy, in 1923, seemed for a time to be impossible of republication here; her contract with her publisher, a personof highly developed commercial instincts, restrains her from publishing through any other channel, and in the face of united persuasion on the part of Professor Kilgallen and the author herself, this gentleman has stood firmly on the precise letter of his bargain. Fortunately, however, the advice of counsel was procured, with the result that the compilers are permitted to reproduce the paper, although denied the pleasure and privilege of accrediting it to the author by name.
This prohibition would cause them a distress far more acute, nevertheless, were they not wholly confident that the identity of the author will be transparently evident to every antiquer and to all lovers of her colorful literary art.
Theroom was subtly instinct with—James Femms admitted to an inchoate, egocentric admonition—default. Tormented by an awareness of distress, alien, vicarious, yet poignantly perceptible, his consciousness opposed, almost with petulance, his endeavors to confine it to—in fulfilment of his trust and purpose—spleening.
Loss; separation; sundering—the words formed themselves in characters feathery and funereal as the cross-stitch letter of a Garfield wall-motto; they contrived to make themselves, above the florid, valiant persuasions of the auctioneer, audible. There was, James Femms informed himself, even an overtone, as of an adscititious dolor, inexpressible by any clumsy symbolism of syllables; he seemed, indeed, to experience, at second-hand, those first lingual explorations, incredulous and baffled, of the wistful void where but the ache and memory of the tooth remain.
James Femms put forth the power of his will against his habit of thinking in such intorted, raffled inversions as these. Confronted by a problem, he resolved to ratiocinate straightforwardly, in a manner as candidly unintricate as the spleened finials of theporte-chapeauxwhich, at the moment, engaged the brazen eloquence of the vendor. He would not think, he decided, in the style of an Empire girandole, but in the direct and honest simplicity of, say, that spleened and half-groined becket.
This was James Femms, not as he had been, but as he had come to be, a man colored by the years, so that his glass—a walnut caracole, wonderfullywoodmarked—seemed to invest him with a patina, so that, indeed, he resembled one of those Victorian antiques, ornately ruinous, which were the dominant, as it were, of his existence. His passion for the lost art of the period had come to affect him in cunning, secret ways, to inform his spirit with a cold flame of rebellion against himself and his environment; he detested his body, designed, he reflected bitterly, after the Roycroft manner and as innocent of decorative values; he abandoned, in his moments of surrender, the artless names which had been foisted on his helpless infancy; he ceased to think of himself as James Femms, and softened, mellowed, ornamented the harsh, stern sounds with Gallic fancies. In his dreams he became a figure of romance, pinch-waisted, nobly whiskered, an illustration from a time-stained page of “Godey’s Lady’s-Book,” a man who could bear, with corseted grace, a name like Jambes des Femmes!
He became, for the time being, this Jambes des Femmes; he looked about him with the very elegance and grace of a des Femmes. The salon, he observed, was filled by people for whom Jambes des Femmes must feel no more than a gently supercilious distaste;there were faces familiar enough to James Femms: Kitchler, the bulbous, raffish dealer, one sienna eye cocked contemptuously at theporte-chapeaux, a fleshpot finger lifted in token of a careless bid; there were others as foreign to the mood of Jambes des Femmes—sly, chaffering professionals and the inevitable scattering of amateurs. Here, he concluded, there was no one capable of setting up in him those telepathic vibrations of which, baffled and distrait, he was obstinately aware.
His glance moved back to theporte-chapeaux. He had examined it, of course, before the sale and decided, with a lingering regret, to make no offer for it. Horsechestnut—he discarded the coarse term; James Femms must use it, when he spoke, but Jambes des Femmes might think in more gracious wise:noisette à cheval—it was a fine piece, des Femmes admitted, a magnificent affair, save for but the one fatal defect. And he had always, he reflected, adorednoisette à cheval.
Again he was pervaded by the haunting awareness of an elusive, poignant melancholy. His eyes moved to the spurious becket—to the discerning scrutiny of James Femms a palpable counterfeit, a thing soobvious and crude that even Kitchler, with the three originals to scream their warning, might have noticed it—not even hand-wrought groining, des Femmes pronounced, a clumsy fraud, grouted, at a guess, and bench-gammoned to trick the eye of ignorance!
It seemed to des Femmes that his atrabilious depression found its focus here. He lifted himself to see more clearly; was it—could it be—that he felt the yearning of those sundered parts, the shame and longing of theporte-chapeauxfor that ravished becket? Had his sympathy, his passion fornoisette à chevalrefined his perceptions to a delicacy so incredible, so splendid? He dallied wistfully with the thought and put it from him. Not even Jambes des Femmes could have attained a receptivity so exquisite.
Suddenly, as the voice of the auctioneer became premonitory, James Femms moved in his chair. He remembered Sonoff!
As if hours instead of years were overlaid upon the recollection he could see thatporte-chapeauxin Sonoff’sentresol, its lovely amber tone warmed by the crimson wall! It was Sonoff’s!
Jambes des Femmes saw him, as he had been—Sonoffthe debonair, high on the crest of his wave, Sonoff, the greatest artist of his time! And now—abruptly, ineludibly, came the thought—and now, even the art was dead!
Dead. Since that day of Sonoff’s greatness men had been born, lived out their lives, died, without knowing that the art had ever lived! Jambes des Femmes tasted the bitterness of it; he saw Sonoff, behind the greatrâtelierof bells, his hands flashing like the lustres ofbobècheson a girandole, from the elfin-tinkling tinniness of the soprano to the rugent clamor of the bass! Sonoff, a Russian, had taught the Swiss their place!
“Grandes fromages,” Sonoff would say. “Let them yodel!”
And now—!
Sonoff, beggared, reduced to the shrewd torment of testing the timbre of telephone bells for a niggard pittance, and Sonoff’sporte-chapeaux, degraded and disfigured by that pinchbeck becket, going, for the last, third time to Kitchler!
James Femms lifted his catalogue.