—“came never knight but he found
strange adventures, be jabers. Of a truth it
doth indeed, fair lord, albeit ’tis passing hard
to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but
better speed with usage. And then they rode
to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the
eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she
was threescore winter of age or more—”
“The damsel was?”
“Even so, dear lord—and her hair
was white under the garland—”
“Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like
as not—the loose-fit kind, that go up and
down like a portcullis when you eat, and fall out
when you laugh.”
“The second damsel was of thirty winter of age,
with a circlet of gold about her head. The third
damsel was but fifteen year of age—”
Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and
the voice faded out of my hearing!
Fifteen! Break—my heart! oh, my lost
darling! Just her age who was so gentle, and
lovely, and all the world to me, and whom I shall
never see again! How the thought of her carries
me back over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time,
a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when
I used to wake in the soft summer mornings, out of
sweet dreams of her, and say “Hello, Central!”
just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me
with a “Hello, Hank!” that was music of
the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three
dollars a week, but she was worth it.
I could not follow Alisande’s further explanation
of who our captured knights were, now—I
mean in case she should ever get to explaining who
they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts
were far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of
the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and
then, I merely noted in a vague way that each of these
three knights took one of these three damsels up behind
him on his horse, and one rode north, another east,
the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again
and lie, after year and day. Year and day—and
without baggage. It was of a piece with the
general simplicity of the country.
The sun was now setting. It was about three
in the afternoon when Alisande had begun to tell me
who the cowboys were; so she had made pretty good
progress with it—for her. She would
arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not
a person who could be hurried.
We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground;
a huge, strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers
and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and
whose whole majestic mass was drenched with splendors
flung from the sinking sun. It was the largest
castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the
one we were after, but Sandy said no. She did
not know who owned it; she said she had passed it
without calling, when she went down to Camelot.
MORGAN LE FAY
