And Even Now

MP3 Audio CD. And Even Now

A RELIC 1918.

Yesterday I found in a cupboard an old, small, battered portmanteau
which, by the initials on it, I recognised as my own property. The
lock appeared to have been forced. I dimly remembered having forced it
myself, with a poker, in my hot youth, after some journey in which I had
lost the key; and this act of violence was probably the reason why the
trunk had so long ago ceased to travel. I unstrapped it, not without
dust; it exhaled the faint scent of its long closure; it contained
a tweed suit of Late Victorian pattern, some bills, some letters, a
collar-stud, and--something which, after I had wondered for a moment or
two what on earth it was, caused me suddenly to murmur, ‘Down below, the
sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’

Strange that these words had, year after long year, been existing in
some obscure cell at the back of my brain!--forgotten but all the while
existing, like the trunk in that cupboard. What released them, what
threw open the cell door, was nothing but the fragment of a fan; just
the butt-end of an inexpensive fan. The sticks are of white bone,
clipped together with a semicircular ring that is not silver. They are
neatly oval at the base, but variously jagged at the other end. The
longest of them measures perhaps two inches. Ring and all, they have no
market value; for a farthing is the least coin in our currency. And yet,
though I had so long forgotten them, for me they are not worthless. They
touch a chord... Lest this confession raise false hopes in the reader, I
add that I did not know their owner.

I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by moonlight, and her name was
Ange’lique. She was graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but nineteen
years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me favo