The Business of Life

They moved on in silence to where a man-at-arms stood leaning both clasped hands over the gilded pommel of a sword.

She said quickly: "That sword belongs to parade armour! How stupid to give it to this pikeman! Don't you see? The blade is diamond sectioned; Horn of Solingen's mark is on the ricasse. And, oh, what a wonderful hilt! It is a miracle!"

The hilt was really a miracle; carved in gold relief, Italian renaissance style, the guard centre was decorated with black arabesques on a gold ground; quillons curved down, ending in cupid's heads of exquisite beauty.

The guard was engraved with a cartouche enclosing the Three Graces; and from it sprang a beautiful counter-guard formed out of two lovely Caryatids united. The grip was made of heliotrope amethyst inset with gold; the pommel constructed by two volutes which encompassed a tiny naked nymph with emeralds for her eyes.

"What a masterpiece!" she breathed. "It can be matched only in the Royal Armoury of Madrid."

"Have you been abroad, Miss Nevers?"

"Yes, several times with my father. It was part of my education in business."

He said: "Yours is a French name?"

"Father was French."

"He must have been a very cultivated man."

"Self-cultivated."

"Perhaps," he said, "there once was a de written before 'Nevers.'"

She laughed: "No. Father's family were always bourgeois shopkeepers – as I am."

He looked at the dainty girl beside him, with her features and slender limbs and bearing of an aristocrat.

"Too bad," he said, pretending disillusion. "I expected you'd tell me how your ancestors died on the scaffold, remarking in laudable chorus, 'Vive le Roi!'"

She laughed and sparkled deliciously: "Alas, no, monsieur. But, ma foi! Some among them may have worked the guillotine for Sanson or drummed for Santerre.

"You seem to me to symbolise all the grace and charm that perished on the Place de Grève."

She laughed: "Look again, and see if it is not their Nemesis I more closely resemble."

And as she said it so gaily, an odd idea struck him that she did embody something less obvious, something more vital, than the symbol of an aristocratic régime perishing en masse against the blood-red sky of Paris.

He did not know what it was about her that seemed to symbolise all that is forever young and fresh and imperishable. Perhaps it was only the evolution of the real world he saw in her opening into blossom and disclosing such as she to justify the darkness and woe of the long travail.

She had left him standing alone with Grenville's book open in his hands, and was now examining a figure wearing a coat of fine steel mail, with a black corselet protecting back and breast decorated with horizontal bands.

"Do you notice the difference?" she asked. "In German armour the bands are vertical. This is Milanese, and I think the Negrolis made it. See how exquisitely the morion is decorated with these lions' heads in gold for cheek pieces, and these bands of gold damascene over the skull-piece, that meet to form Minerva's face above the brow! I'm sure it's the Negrolis work. Wait! Ah, here is the inscription! 'P. Iacobi et Fratr Negroli Faciebant MDXXXIX.' Bring me Grenville's book, please."

She took it, ran over the pages rapidly, found what she wanted, and then stepped forward and laid her white hand on the shoulder of another grim, mailed figure.

"This is foot-armour," she said, "and does not belong with that morion. It's neither Milanese nor yet of Augsburg make; it's Italian, but who made it I don't know. You see it's a superb combination of parade armour and war mail, with all the gorgeous design of the former and the smoothness and toughness of the latter. Really, Mr. Desboro, this investigation is becoming exciting. I never before saw such a suit of foot-armour."

"Perhaps it belonged to the catcher of some ancient baseball club," he suggested.

She turned, laughing, but exasperated: "I'm not going to let you remain near me," she said. "You annihilate every atom of romance; you are an anachronism here, anyway."

"I know it; but you fit in delightfully with tournaments and pageants and things – "

"Go up on that ladder and sit!" resolutely pointing.

He went. Perched aloft, he lighted a cigarette and surveyed the prospect.

"Mark Twain killed all this sort of thing for me," he observed.

She said indignantly: "It's the only thing I never have forgiven him."

"He told the truth."

"I know it – I know it. But, oh, how could he write what he did about King Arthur's Court! And what is the use of truth, anyway, unless it leaves us ennobling illusions?"

Ennobling illusions! She did not know it; but except for them she never would have existed, nor others like her that are yet to come in myriads.

Desboro waved his cigarette gracefully and declaimed:

"The knights are dust,
Their good swords bust;
Their souls are up the spout we trust – "

"Mr. Desboro!"

"Mademoiselle?"

"That silly parody on a noble verse is not humorous."

"Truth seldom is. The men who wore those suits of mail were everything that nobody now admires – brutal, selfish, ruthless – "

"Mr. Desboro!"

"Mademoiselle?"

"Are there not a number of such gentlemen still existing on earth?"

"New York's full of them," he admitted cheerfully, "but they conceal what they really are on account of the police."

"Is that all that five hundred years has taught men – concealment?"

"Yes, and five thousand," he muttered; but said aloud: "It hasn't anything to do with admiring the iron hats and clothes they wore. If you'll let me come down I'll admire 'em – "

"No."

"I want to carry your book for you."

"No."