Mr. Amidon, seeing it, plunged back into the shelter from which he had tumbled, and lay there trembling—trembling, forsooth, because, instead of summer, it seemed winter; for Elm Springs Junction, it appeared to be a moving train on some unknown road, going God knew where; and for Florian Amidon, in his outing suit, it had the appearance of a somnambulistic wretch in his night-clothes, who was addressed by the unfamiliar porter as Mr. Brassfield!
[1] Editorial Note: As reflecting light on the personal characteristics of Mr. Florian Amidon, whose remarkable history is the turning-point of this narrative, we append a brief note by his college classmate and lifelong acquaintance, the well-known Doctor J. Galen Urquhart, of Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. The note follows:
"At the time when the following story opens, Mr. Florian Amidon was about thirty years of age. Height, five feet ten and three-quarters inches; weight, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. For general constitutional and pathological facts, see Sheets 2 to 7, inclusive, attached hereto. Subject well educated, having achieved distinction in linguistic, philological and literary studies in his university. (See Sheet 1, attached.) Neurologically considered, family history of subject (see Sheets 8 and 10) shows nothing abnormal, except that his father, a chemist, wrote an essay opposing the atomic theory, and a cousin is an epileptic. I regard these facts as significant. Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to be a man of strong will-power end self-control. The following facts may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society; stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements, the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of great mobility of facial expression; anteroposterior sway marked and occasionally anterosinistral, and greatly augmented so as to approach Romberg symptom on closure of eyes, but no ataxic evidences in locomotion. Taking the external malleolus as the datum, the vertical and lateral pedal oscillation——"
The editor regrets to say that space forbids any further incorporation of Doctor Urquhart's very illuminating note at this place. It may appear at some time as a separate essay or volume.
II
THE RIDDLE OF RAIMENT AND DATES
From his eyne did the glamour of Faerie pass
And the Rymour lay on Eildon grass.
He lay in the heather on Eildon Hill;
He gazed on the dour Scots sky his fill.
His staff beside him was brash with rot;
The weed grew rank in his unthatch'd cot:
"Syne gloaming yestreen, my shepherd kind,
What hath happ'd this cot we ruin'd find?"
"Syne gloaming yestreen, and years twice three,
Hath wind and rain therein made free;
Ye sure will a stranger to Eildon be,
And ye know not the Rymour's in Faerie!"
—The Trewe Tale of Trewe Thomas.
As Mr. Amidon sensed the forward movement of the train in which he so strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the thing he had still suspected as a nightmare was true. Where were all the weeks of summer and autumn? And (question of some pertinency!) where was Florian Amidon?
He groped about for his clothes. They were strange in color and texture, but, in such judgment as he could form while dressing in his berth, they fitted. He never could bear to go half-dressed to the toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully appareled—in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie. Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock especially for him. He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into the clothes of some other man—and that other one of much less quiet and old-fashioned tastes in dress. It made him feel as if it were he who had made the run to Canada with the bank's funds—furtive, disguised, slinking.
He looked in the pockets of the coat like an amateur pickpocket, and found some letters. He gazed at them askance, turning them over and over, wondering if he ought to peep at their contents. Then he put them back, and went into the smoking-room, where, finding himself alone, he turned up his vest as if it had been worn by somebody else whom he was afraid of disturbing, and looked at the initials on the shirt-front. They were not "F. A.," as they ought to have been, but "E. B."! He wondered which of the bags were his. Pressing the button, he summoned the porter.
"George," said he, "bring my luggage in here."
And then he wondered at his addressing the porter in that drummer-like way—he was already acting up to the smart suit—or down; he was in doubt as to which it was.
The bags, when produced, showed those metal slides, sometimes seen, concealing the owner's name. Sweat stood on Florian's brow as he slipped the plate back and found the name of Eugene Brassfield, Bellevale, Pennsylvania! A card-case, his pocketbook, all his linen and his hat—all articles of expensive and gentlemanly quality, but strange to him—disclosed the same name or initials, none of them his own. In the valise he found some business letterheads, finely engraved, of the Brassfield Oil Company, and Eugene Brassfield's name was there set forth as president and general manager.
"Great heaven!" exclaimed Florian, "am I insane? Am I a robber and a murderer? During this time which has dropped out of my life, have I destroyed and despoiled this gentleman, and—and run off in his clothes? I must denounce myself!"
The porter came, and, by way of denouncing himself, Mr. Amidon clapped his waistcoat shut and buttoned it, snapped the catches of the bags, and pretended to busy himself with the letters in his pockets; and in doing so, he found in an inside vest-pocket a long thin pocket-book filled with hundred-dollar bills, and a dainty-looking letter. It was addressed to Mr. Eugene Brassfield, was unstamped, and marked, "To be Read En Route."
There was invitation, there was allurement, in the very superscription. Clearly, it seemed, he ought to open and examine these letters. They might serve to clear up this mystery. He would begin with this.
"My darling!" it began, without any other form of address—and was not this enough, beloved?—
"My own darling! I write this so that you may have something of me, which you can see and touch and kiss as you are borne farther and farther from me. Distance unbridged is such a terrible thing—any long distance; and more than our hands may reach and clasp across is interstellar space to me. You said last night that all beauty, all sweetness, all things delectable and enticing and fair, all things which allure and enrapture, are so bound up in little
