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By Root 5061 0

but he smelled more like Neptune than ever and clumps of hair grew out of his ears and nostrils before he could remember to clip them. His neckties were stained with food and cigarette ash, and yet, when the night winds woke him and he lay in bed and traced their course around the dark compass, he still remembered what it was to feel young and strong. Deluded by this thread of cold air he would rise in his bed thinking passionately of boats, trains and deep-breasted women, or of some image—a wet pavement plastered with yellow elm leaves—that seemed to represent requital and strength. I will climb the mountain, he thought. I will kill the tiger! I will crush the serpent with my heel! But the fresh winds died with the morning dusk. There was a pain in his kidney. He could not get back to sleep and he would limp and cough through another day. His sons did not write him.

On the day before the Topaze opened as a gift shop, Leander paid a call on Honora. They sat in her parlor.

“Would you like some whisky?” Honora asked.

“Yes, please,” Leander said.

“There isn’t any,” Honora said. “Have a cookie.”

Leander glanced down at the plate of cookies and saw they were covered with ants. “I’m afraid ants have gotten into your cookies, Honora,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Honora said. “I know you have ants at the farm, but I’ve never had ants in this house.” She picked up a cookie and ate it, ants and all.

“Are you going to Sarah’s tea?” Leander asked.

“I don’t have time to spend in gift shops,” Honora said. “I’m taking piano lessons.”

“I thought you were taking painting lessons,” Leander said.

“Painting!” Honora said scornfully. “Why I gave up my painting in the spring. The Hammers were in some financial difficulty so I bought their piano from them and now Mrs. Hammer comes and gives me a lesson twice a week. It’s very easy.”

“Perhaps it runs in the family.” Leander said. “Remember Justina?”

“Justina who?” Honora asked.

“Justina Molesworth,” Leander said.

“Why, of course I remember Justina.” Honora said. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“I meant that she played the piano in the five and ten,” Leander said.

“Well, I have no intention of playing the piano in the five and ten,” Honora said. “Feel that refreshing breeze,” she said.

“Yes,” Leander said. (There was no breeze at all.)

“Sit in the other chair,” she said.

“I’m quite comfortable here, thank you,” Leander said.

“Sit in the other chair,” Honora said. “I’ve just had it reupholstered. Although,” she said as Leander obediently changed from one chair to the other, “you won’t be able to see out of the window from there and perhaps you were better off where you were.”

Leander smiled, remembering that to talk with her, even when she was a young woman, had made him feel bludgeoned. He wondered what her reasons were. Lorenzo had written somewhere in his journal that if you met the devil you should cut him in two and go between the pieces. It would describe Honora’s manner although he wondered if it wasn’t the fear of death that had determined her crabwise progress through life. It could have been that by side-stepping those things that, through their force—love, incontinence and peace of mind—throw into our faces the facts of our mortality she might have uncovered the mystery of a spirited old age.

“Will you do me a favor, Honora?” he asked.

“I won’t go to Sarah’s tea if that’s what you want,” she said. “I’ve told you I have a music lesson.”

“It isn’t that,” Leander said. “It’s something else. When I die I want Prospero’s speech said over my grave.”

“What speech is that?” Honora asked.

“Our revels now are ended,” Leander said, rising from has chair. “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.” He declaimed, and his declamatory style was modeled partly on the Shakespearians of his youth, partly on the bombast and singsong of prize-ring announcements and partly on the style of the vanished horsecar and trolley-car conductors who had made an incantation of the place names along their routes. His voice soared and he illustrated the