Nonsense Novels | Page 9

clear, that Annerly had been engulfed into the astral world,
carrying with him the money for the transfer of which he had risked his
mundane existence.

The proof of his disappearance was easy to find. As soon as I dared do
so with discretion I ventured upon a few inquiries. The fact that he had
been engulfed while still owing four months' rent for his rooms, and
that he had vanished without even having time to pay such bills as he
had outstanding with local tradesmen, showed that he must have been
devisualised at a moment's notice.
The awful fear that I might be held accountable for his death, prevented
me from making the affair public.
Till that moment I had not realised the risks that he had incurred in our
reckless dealing with the world of spirits. Annerly fell a victim to the
great cause of psychic science, and the record of our experiments
remains in the face of prejudice as a witness to its truth.
III. -- Guido the Gimlet of Ghent: A Romance of Chivalry
IT was in the flood-tide of chivalry. Knighthood was in the pod.
The sun was slowly setting in the east, rising and falling occasionally
as it subsided, and illuminating with its dying beams the towers of the
grim castle of Buggensberg.
Isolde the Slender stood upon an embattled turret of the castle. Her
arms were outstretched to the empty air, and her face, upturned as if in
colloquy with heaven, was distraught with yearning.
Anon she murmured, "Guido"--and bewhiles a deep sigh rent her
breast.
Sylph-like and ethereal in her beauty, she scarcely seemed to breathe.
In fact she hardly did.
Willowy and slender in form, she was as graceful as a meridian of
longitude. Her body seemed almost too frail for motion, while her
features were of a mould so delicate as to preclude all thought of
intellectual operation.

She was begirt with a flowing kirtle of deep blue, bebound with a belt
bebuckled with a silvern clasp, while about her waist a stomacher of
point lace ended in the ruffled farthingale at her throat. On her head she
bore a sugar-loaf hat shaped like an extinguisher and pointing
backward at an angle of 45 degrees.
"Guido," she murmured, "Guido."
And erstwhile she would wring her hands as one distraught and mutter,
"He cometh not."
The sun sank and night fell, enwrapping in shadow the frowning castle
of Buggensberg, and the ancient city of Ghent at its foot. And as the
darkness gathered, the windows of the castle shone out with fiery red,
for it was Yuletide, and it was wassail all in the Great Hall of the castle,
and this night the Margrave of Buggensberg made him a feast, and
celebrated the betrothal of Isolde, his daughter, with Tancred the
Tenspot.
And to the feast he had bidden all his liege lords and vassals-- Hubert
the Husky, Edward the Earwig, Rollo the Rumbottle, and many others.
In the meantime the Lady Isolde stood upon the battlements and
mourned for the absent Guido.
The love of Guido and Isolde was of that pure and almost divine type,
found only in the middle ages.
They had never seen one another. Guido had never seen Isolde, Isolde
had never seen Guido. They had never heard one another speak. They
had never been together. They did not know one another.
Yet they loved.
Their love had sprung into being suddenly and romantically, with all
the mystic charm which is love's greatest happiness.
Years before, Guido had seen the name of Isolde the Slender painted on

a fence.
He had turned pale, fallen into a swoon and started at once for
Jerusalem.
On the very same day Isolde in passing through the streets of Ghent
had seen the coat of arms of Guido hanging on a clothes line.
She had fallen back into the arms of her tire-women more dead than
alive.
Since that day they had loved.
Isolde would wander forth from the castle at earliest morn, with the
name of Guido on her lips. She told his name to the trees. She
whispered it to the flowers. She breathed it to the birds. Quite a lot of
them knew it. At times she would ride her palfrey along the sands of
the sea and call "Guido" to the waves! At other times she would tell it
to the grass or even to a stick of cordwood or a ton of coal.
Guido and Isolde, though they had never met, cherished each the
features of the other. Beneath his coat of mail Guido carried a miniature
of Isolde, carven on ivory. He had found it at the bottom of the castle
crag, between the castle and the old town of Ghent at its foot.
How did he