Breadth by breadth, work of the day done, or on holidays, they unrolled the bale of old life and regarded the figures, the outer figures and the figures of thought and feeling. Each grew to be to the other a vast and deep and fortunate object of study. She would say, “When you were in France, tell me—” or “What like was thy mother?” And he, “Tell me, Morgen, of thy childhood and thy girlhood.” Her childhood became his and his became hers. The like with girlhood and boyhood. They learned, orb of orb, ocean of ocean, sharing and growing richer by the sharing. “I remember” and “I remember.”
“I was a young girl, just over childness. I was dancing. My father and mother watched. I do not know if they were truly my father and mother, but I called them that. They watched me and they watched the crowd watching. They always did that. If the crowd did not grow warm, then afterwards in the booth they beat me. Oh, they beat me sore! So I always thought into the crowd as it were and willed it as hard as I might, ‘Oh, love my dancing! Oh, love to look at me!’ I thought it so hard that sometimes it seemed that the crowd and I were one, and I beat their flame upward so that they, too, were dancing and liking it. But I remember that day something beat my flame upward, too, far upward and very wide! And the very earth and world was dancing, whirling and rising like a golden ball in air, and great figures sat around, laughing and applauding and crying, ‘You will do! You will do!’”
“Once in Italy, with my master Andrew the Goldsmith, I was walking alone by olive trees and blue sea. The sun was low, there was the greatest beauty! Then gold Apollo walked with me. I saw him in lines of pale gold, and I felt him a great god, calm and happy. Vulcan is for the smiths, but I changed that day to Apollo. Not that I left Vulcan, but Apollo, too. The next month I made for Andrew the Goldsmith a cup which when he looked at he said, ‘Thou’rt accepted!’”
“I remember—”
“When thou rememberest me—and I remember thee—”
“Will we come to remember all?”
Up and down, to and fro in the smiths’ street. Snow was falling, great flakes, softly, smoothly. Jankin looked out of window. “Here cometh a great Blackfriar!”
He walked along the street, a big Dominican out on his travels. Richard Englefield glanced, but did not recognize him, though, a moment afterwards, as he bent to his work, there rose in mind a picture of Montjoy’s hall the day he stood there, bound and gagged, like to burst in his rage and agony. Now he laid hand on graver’s tool and fell to work. He was fashioning a silver dish like a shell. Jankin took his cap and cloak and said good night, for the short day was closing.
Morgen Fay crossed the street in the snow, returning to the house from some errand. Reaching the doorstone, she stood there a little because of delight in the great white flakes. A friar spoke to her, “Eh, my sister, a white Christmas!”