Figures of Earth
by
James Branch Cabell

Part 3 out of 5




"Oh, heavens!" said Manuel, "but I am embracing a monomaniac. Dear
Freydis, whatever I might say would be perforce the same old words that
have been whispered by millions of men to many more millions of women,
and my love for you is a quite unparalleled thing which ought not to be
travestied by any such shopworn apparel."

"Now again you must be putting me off with solemn joking in that light
high voice, and there is no faithfulness in that voice, and its talking
troubles me."

"I speak as I feel. I love you, Freydis, and I tell you so, but I cannot
be telling it over and over again every quarter of the hour."

"Oh, but very certainly this big squinting boy is the most unloquacious
and the most stubborn brute that ever lived!"

"And would you have me otherwise?"

"No, that is the queer part of it. But it is a grief to me to wonder if
you foresaw as much."

"I!" says Manuel, jovially. "But what would I be doing with any such
finespun policies? My dear, until you comprehend I am the most frank and
downright creature that ever lived you do not begin to appreciate me."

"I know you are, big boy. But still, I wonder," Freydis said, "and the
wondering is a thin little far-off grief."

[Illustration]




XVII


Magic of the Image-Makers


It was presently noised abroad that Queen Freydis of Audela had become a
human woman; and thereafter certain enchanters came to Upper Morven, to
seek her counsel and her favor and the aid of Schamir. These were the
enchanters, Manuel was told, who made images, to which they now and then
contrived--nobody seemed to know quite how, and least of all did the
thaumaturgists themselves,--to impart life.

Once Manuel went with Freydis into a dark place where some of these
magic-workers were at labor. By the light of a charcoal fire, clay
images were ruddily discernible; before these the enchanters moved
unhumanly clad, and doing things which, mercifully perhaps, were veiled
from Manuel by the peculiarly perfumed obscurity.

As Manuel entered the gallery one of the magic-workers was chaunting
shrilly in the darkness below. "It is the unfinished Rune of the
Blackbirds," says Freydis, in a whisper.

Below them the troubled wailing continued:

"--Crammed and squeezed, so entombed (on some wager I hazard), in spite
of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion that lean-faced Rajah
dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta. Dared you break the crust
and bullyrag 'em--hot, fierce and angry, what wide beaks buzz plain
Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot! Yet, singing, they sing as no white
bird does (where none rears phoenix) as near perfection as nature gets,
or, if scowls bar platitude, notes for which there is no rejection in
banks whose coinage--oh, neat!--is gratitude."

Said, in the darkness, another enchanter:

"But far from their choiring the high King sat, in a gold-faced vest and
a gold-laced hat, counting heaped monies, and dreaming of more francs
and sequins and Louis d'or. Meanwhile the Queen on that fateful night,
though avowing her lack of all appetite, was still at table, where,
rumor said, she was smearing her seventh slice of bread (thus each
turgescible rumor thrives at court) with gold from the royal hives.
Through the slumberous pare, under arching trees, to her labors went
singing the maid Denise--"

A third broke in here, saying:

"And she sang of how subtle and bitter and bright was a beast brought
forth, that was clad with the splendor and light of the cold fair ends
of the north, like a fleshly blossom more white than augmenting tempests
that go, with thunder for weapon, to ravage the strait waste fastness of
snow. She sang how that all men on earth said, whether its mistress at
morn went forth or waited till night,--whether she strove through the
foam and wreckage of shallow and firth, or couched in glad fields of
corn, or fled from all human delight,--that thither it likewise would
roam."

Now a fourth began:

"Thus sang Denise, what while the siccant sheets and coverlets that
pillowed kingly dreams, with curious undergarbs of royalty, she neatly
ranged: and dreamed not of that doom which waited, yet unborn, to strike
men dumb with perfect awe. As when the seventh wave poises, and sunlight
cleaves it through and through with gold, as though to gild oncoming
death for him that sees foredoomed--and, gasping, sees death high and
splendid!--while the tall wave bears down, and its shattering makes an
end of him: thus poised the sable bird while one might count one, two,
and three, and four, and five, and six, but hardly seven--"

So they continued; but Manuel listened to no more. "What is the meaning
of all this?" he asked, of Freydis.

"It is an experimental incantation," she replied, "in that it is a bit
of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not yet been found:
but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and then this rune
will live perpetually, surviving all those rhymes that are infected with
thought and intelligent meanings such as are repugnant to human nature."

"Are words, then, so important and enduring?"

"Why, Manuel, I am surprised at you! In what else, pray, does man differ
from the other animals except in that he is used by words?"

"Now I would have said that words are used by men."

"There is give and take, of course, but in the main man is more
subservient to words than they are to him. Why, do you but think of such
terrible words as religion and duty and love, and patriotism and art,
and honor and common-sense, and of what these tyrannizing words do to
and make of people!"

"No, that is chop-logic: for words are only transitory noises, whereas
man is the child of God, and has an immortal spirit."

"Yes, yes, my dearest, I know you believe that, and I think it is
delightfully quaint and sweet of you. But, as I was saying, a man has
only the body of an animal to get experiences in, and the brain of an
animal to think them over with, so that the thoughts and opinions of the
poor dear must remain always those of a more or less intelligent animal.
But his words are very often magic, as you will comprehend by and by when
I have made you the greatest of image-makers."

"Well, well, but we can let that wait a bit," said Manuel.

And thereafter Manuel talked with Freydis, confessing that the
appearance of these magic-workers troubled Manuel. He had thought it, he
said, an admirable thing to make images that lived, until he saw and
considered the appearance of these habitual makers of images. They were
an ugly and rickety, short-tempered tribe, said Manuel: they were
shiftless, spiteful, untruthful, and in everyday affairs not far from
imbecile: they plainly despised all persons who could not make images,
and they apparently detested all those who could. With Manuel they were
particularly high and mighty, assuring him that he was only a prosperous
and affected pseudo-magician, and that the harm done by the self-styled
thaumaturgist was apt to be very great indeed. What sort of models,
then, were these insane, mud-moulding solitary wasps for a tall lad to
follow after? And if Manuel acquired their arts (he asked in
conclusion), would he acquire their traits?

"The answer is perhaps no, and not impossibly yes," replied Freydis.
"For by the ancient Tuyla mystery they extract that which is best in
them to inform their images, and this is apt to leave them empty of
virtue. But I would have you consider that their best endures, whereas
that which is best in other persons is obliterated on some battle-field
or mattress or gallows That is why I have been thinking that this
afternoon--"

"No, we will let that wait a bit, for I must turn this over in my mind,"
said Manuel, "and my mature opinion about this matter must be expressed
later."

But while his thoughts were on the affair his fingers made him droll
small images of ten of the image-makers, which he set aside unquickened.
Freydis smiled at these caricatures, and asked when Manuel would give
them life.

"Oh, in due time," he said, "and then their antics may be diverting. But
I perceive that this old Tuyla magic is practised at great price and
danger, so that I am in no hurry to practise any more of it. I prefer to
enjoy that which is dearer and better."

"And what can be dearer and better?"

"Youth," Manuel answered, "and you."

Queen Freydis was now a human woman in all things, so this reply
delighted her hearing if not her reason. "Do these two possessions
content you, king of my heart?" she asked him very fondly.

"No," Manuel said, gazing out across Morven at the cloud-dappled ridges
of the Taunenfels, "nor do I look ever to be contented in this world of
men."

"Indeed the run of men are poor thin-minded creatures, Manuel--"

He answered, moodily:

"But I cannot put aside the thought that these men ought to be my
fellows and my intimates. Instead, I who am a famed champion go daily in
distrust, almost in fear, of these incomprehensible and shatter-pated
beings. To every side there is a feeble madness over-busy about
long-faced nonsense from which I recoil, who must conceal this shrinking
always. There is no hour in my life but I go armored in reserve and in
small lies, and in my armor I am lonely. Freydis, you protest deep love
for this well-armored Manuel, but what wisdom will reveal to you, or to
me either, just what is Manuel? Oh, but I am puzzled by the impermanence
and the loneliness and the impotence of this Manuel! Dear Freydis, do
not love my body nor my manner of speaking, nor any of the ways that I
have in the flesh, for all these transiencies are mortgaged to the
worms. And that thought also is a grief--"

"Let us not speak of these things! Let us not think of anything that is
horrid, but only of each other!"

"But I cannot put aside the thought that I, who for the while exist in
this mortgaged body, cannot ever get out to you. Freydis, there is no
way in which two persons may meet in this world of men: we can but
exchange, from afar, despairing friendly signals, in the sure knowledge
they will be misinterpreted. So do we pass, each coming out of a strange
woman's womb, each parodied by the flesh of his parents, each passing
futilely, with incommunicative gestures, toward the womb of a strange
grave: and in this jostling we find no comradeship. No soul may travel
upon a bridge of words. Indeed there is no word for my foiled huge
desire to love and to be loved, just as there is no word for the big,
the not quite comprehended thought which is moving in me at this moment.
But that thought also is a grief--"

Manuel was still looking at the changing green and purple of the
mountains and at the tall clouds trailing northward. The things that he
viewed yonder were all gigantic and lovely, and they seemed not to be
very greatly bothering about humankind.

Then Freydis said: "Let us not think too much, dear, in our youth. It is
such a waste of the glad time, and of the youth that will not ever be
returning--"

"But I cannot put aside the thought that it will never be the true
Manuel whom you will love or even know of, nor can I dismiss the
knowledge that these human senses, through which alone we may obtain any
knowledge of each other, are lying messengers. What can I ever be to you
except flesh and a voice? Nor is this the root of my sorrowing, dear
Freydis. For I know that my distrust of all living creatures--oh, even
of you, dear Freydis, when I draw you closest,--must always be as a wall
between us, a low, lasting, firm-set wall which we can never pull down.
And I know that I am not really a famed champion, but only a forlorn and
lonely inmate of the doubtful castle of my body; and that I, who know
not truly what I am, must die in this same doubt and loneliness, behind
the strong defences of posturing and bluntness and jovial laughter which
I have raised for my protecting. And that thought also is a grief."

Now Manuel was as Freydis had not ever seen him. She wondered at him,
she was perturbed by this fine lad's incomprehensible dreariness, with
soft red willing lips so near: and her dark eyes were bent upon him with
a beautiful and tender yearning which may not be told.

"I do not understand you, my dearest," said she, who was no longer the
high Queen of Audela, but a mortal woman. "It is true that all the world
about us is a false seeming, but you and I are real and utterly united,
for we have no concealments from each other. I am sure that no two
people could be happier than we are, nor better suited. And certainly
such morbid notions are not like you, who, as you said yourself, only
the other day, are naturally so frank and downright."

Now Manuel's thoughts came back from the clouds and the green and purple
of the mountains. He looked at her very gravely for an instant or two.
He laughed morosely. He said, "There!"

"But, dearest, you are strange and not yourself--

"Yes, yes!" says Manuel, kissing her, "for the moment I had forgotten to
be frank and downright, and all else which you expect of me. Now I am my
old candid, jovial, blunt self again, and I shall not worry you with
such silly notions any more. No, I am Manuel: I follow after my own
thinking and my own desire; and if to do that begets loneliness I must
endure it"

[Illustration]




XVIII


Manuel Chooses


"But I cannot understand," said Freydis, on a fine day in September,
"how it is that, now the power of Schamir is in your control, and you
have the secret of giving life to your images, you do not care to use
either the secret or the talisman. For you make no more images, you are
always saying, 'No, we will let that wait a bit,' and you do not even
quicken the ten caricatures of the image-makers which you have already
modeled."

"Life will be given to these in due time," said Manuel, "but that time
is not yet come. Meanwhile, I avoid practise of the old Tuyla mystery
for the sufficing reason that I have seen the result it has on the
practitioner. A geas was upon me to make a figure in the world, and so I
modeled and loaned life to such a splendid gay young champion as was to
my thinking and my desire. Thus my geas, I take it, is discharged, and a
thing done has an end. Heaven may now excel me by creating a larger
number of living figures than I, but pre-eminence in this matter is not
a question of arithmetic--"

"Ah, yes, my squinting boy has all the virtues, including that of
modesty!"

"Well, but I have seen my notion embodied, seen it take breath, seen it
depart from Morven in all respects, except for a little limping--which,
do you know, I thought rather graceful?--in well-nigh all respects, I
repeat, quite indistinguishable from the embodied notions of that master
craftsman whom some call Ptha, and others Jahveh, and others Abraxas,
and yet others Koshchei the Deathless. In fine, I have made a figure
more admirable and significant than is the run of men, and I rest upon
my laurels."

"You have created a living being somewhat above the average, that is
true: but then every woman who has a fine baby does just as much--"

"The principle is not the same," said Manuel, with dignity.

"And why not, please, big boy?"

"For one thing, my image was an original and unaided production, whereas
a baby, I am told, is the result of more or less hasty collaboration.
Then, too a baby is largely chance work, in that its nature cannot be
exactly foreplanned and pre-determined by its makers, who, in the glow
of artistic creation, must, I imagine, very often fail to follow the
best aesthetic canons."

"As for that, nobody who makes new and unexampled things can make them
exactly to the maker's will. Even your image limped, you remember--"

"Ah, but so gracefully!"

"--No, Manuel, it is only those necromancers who evoke the dead, and bid
the dead return to the warm flesh, that can be certain as to the results
of their sorcery. For these alone of magic-workers know in advance what
they are making."

"Ah, this is news! So you think it is possible to evoke the dead in some
more tangible form than that of an instructive ghost? You think it
possible for a dead girl--or, as to that matter, for a dead boy, or a
defunct archbishop, or a deceased ragpicker,--to be fetched back to live
again in the warm flesh?"

"All things are possible, Manuel, at a price."

Said Manuel:

"What price would be sufficient to re-purchase the rich spoils of Death?
and whence might any bribe be fetched? For all the glowing wealth and
beauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing beside
his treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which--even
this also!--belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet.
Presently this hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, is
added to the heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest in the old
time.

"Now there is garnered such might and loveliness and wisdom as human
thinking cannot conceive of. An emperor is made much of here when he has
conquered some part of the world, but Death makes nothing of a world of
emperors: and in Death's crowded store-rooms nobody bothers to estimate
within a thousand thousand of how many emperors, and tzars and popes and
pharaohs and sultans, that in their day were adored as omnipotent, are
there assembled pellmell, along with all that was worthiest in the old
time.

"As touches loveliness, not even Helen's beauty is distinguishable among
those multitudinous millions of resplendent queens whom one finds
yonder. Here are many pretty women, here above all is Freydis, so I do
not complain. But yonder is deep-bosomed Semiramis, and fair-tressed
Guenevere, and Magdalene that loved Christ, and Europa, the bull's
laughing bride, and Lilith, whose hot kiss made Satan ardent, and a many
other ladies by whose dear beauty's might were shaped the songs which
cause us to remember all that was worthiest in the old time.

"As wisdom goes, here we have prudent men of business able to add two
and two together, and justice may be out of hand distinguished from
injustice by an impanelment of the nearest twelve fools. Here we have
many Helmases a-cackling wisely under a goose-feather. But yonder are
Cato and Nestor and Merlin and Socrates, Abelard sits with Aristotle
there, and the seven sages confer with the major prophets, and yonder is
all that was worthiest in the old time.

"All, all, are put away in Death's heaped store-rooms, so safely put
away that opulent Death may well grin scornfully at Life: for everything
belongs to Death, and Life is only a mendicant scratching at his sores
so long as Death permits it. No, Freydis, there can be no bribing Death!
For what bribe anywhere has Life to offer which Death has not already
lying disregarded in a thousand dusty coffers along with all that was
worthiest in the old time?"

Freydis replied: "One thing alone. Yes, Manuel, there is one thing only
which all Death's ravishings have never taken from Life, and which has
not ever entered into Death's keeping. It is through weighing this fact,
and through doing what else is requisite, that the very bold may bring
back the dead to live again in the warm flesh."

"Well, but I have heard the histories of presumptuous men who attempted
to perform such miracles, and all these persons sooner or later came to
misery."

"Why, to be sure! to whom else would you have them coming?" said
Freydis. And she explained the way it was.

Manuel put many questions. All that evening he was thoughtful, and he
was unusually tender with Freydis. And that night, when Freydis slept,
Dom Manuel kissed her very lightly, then blinked his eyes, and for a
moment covered them with his hand. Standing thus, the tall boy queerly
moving his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it
more supple.

Then he armed himself. He took up the black shield upon which was
painted a silver stallion. He crept out of their modest magic home and
went down into Bellegarde, where he stole him a horse, from the stables
of Duke Asmund.

And that night, and all the next day, Dom Manuel rode beyond Aigremont
and Naimes, journeying away from Morven, and away from the house of
jasper and porphyry and violet and yellow breccia, and away from
Freydis, who had put off immortality for his kisses. He travelled
northward, toward the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, where the leaves were
aglow with the funereal flames of autumn: for the summer wherein Dom
Manuel and Freydis had been happy together was now as dead as that
estranged queer time which he had shared with Alianora.

[Illustration]




XIX


The Head of Misery


When Manuel had reached the outskirts of the forest he encountered there
a knight in vermilion armor, with a woman's sleeve wreathed about his
helmet: and, first of all, this knight demanded who was Manuel's lady
love.

"I have no living love," said Manuel, "except the woman whom I am
leaving without ceremony, because it seems the only way to avoiding
argument."

"But that is unchivalrous, and does not look well."

"Very probably you are right, but I am not chivalrous. I am Manuel. I
follow after my own thinking, and an obligation is upon me pointing
toward prompt employment of the knowledge I have gained from this
woman."

"You are a rascally betrayer of women, then, and an unmanly scoundrel."

"Yes, I suppose so, for I betrayed another woman, in that I permitted
and indeed assisted her to die in my stead; and so brought yet another
bond upon myself, and an obligation which is drawing me from a homelike
place and from soft arms wherein I was content enough," says Manuel,
sighing.

But the chivalrous adventurer in red armor was disgusted. "Oh, you tall
squinting villain knight of the silver stallion, I wonder from whose
court you can be coming, where they teach no better behavior than
woman-killing, and I wonder what foul new knavery you can be planning
here."

"Why, I was last in residence at Raymond Berenger's court," says Manuel:
"and since you are bent on knowing about my private affairs, I come to
this forest in search of Beda, or Kruchina, or whatever you call the
Misery of earth in these parts."

"Aha, and are you one of Raymond Berenger's friends?"

"Yes, I suppose so," says Manuel, blinking,--"yes, I suppose so, since I
have prevented his being poisoned."

"This is good hearing, for I have always been one of Raymond Berenger's
enemies, and all such of his friends as I have encountered I have
slain."

"Doubtless you have your reasons", said Manuel, and would have ridden
by.

But the other cried furiously, "Turn, you tall fool! Turn, cowardly
betrayer of women!"

He came upon Manuel like a whirlwind, and Manuel had no choice in the
matter. So they fought, and presently Manuel brought the vermilion
knight to the ground, and, dismounting, killed him. It was noticeable
that from the death-wound came no blood, but only a flowing of very fine
black sand, out of which scrambled and hastily scampered away a small
vermilion-colored mouse.

Then Manuel said, "I think that this must be the peculiarly irrational
part of the forest, to which I was directed, and I wonder what may have
been this scarlet squabbler's grievance against King Raymond Berenger?"

Nobody answered, so Manuel remounted, and rode on.

Count Manuel skirted the Wolflake, and came to a hut, painted gray, that
stood clear of the ground, upon the bones of four great birds' feet.
Upon the four corners of the hunt were carved severally the figures of a
lion, a dragon, a cockatrice and an adder, to proclaim the miseries of
carnal and intellectual sin, and of pride, and of death.

Here Manuel tethered his horse to a holm-oak. He raised both arms,
facing the East.

"Do you now speed me!" cried Manuel, "ye thirty Barami! O all ye powers
of accumulated merit, O most high masters of Almsgiving, of Morality, of
Relinquishment, of Wisdom, of Fortitude, of Patience, of Truth, of
Determination, of Charity, and of Equanimity! do all you aid me in my
encounter with the Misery of earth!"

He piously crossed himself, and went into the hut. Inside, the walls
were adorned with very old-looking frescoes that were equally innocent
of perspective and reticence: the floor was of tessellated bronze. In
each corner Manuel found, set upright, a many-storied umbrella of the
kind used for sacred purposes in the East: each of these had a silver
handle, and was worked in nine colors. But most important of all, so
Manuel had been told, was the pumpkin which stood opposite to the
doorway.

Manuel kindled a fire, and prepared the proper kind of soup: and at
sunset he went to the window of the hut, and cried out three times that
supper was ready.

One answered him, "I am coming."

Manuel waited. There was now no sound in the forest: even the few birds
not yet gone south, that had been chirping of the day's adventures, were
hushed on a sudden, and the breeze died in the tree-tops. Inside the hut
Manuel lighted his four candles, and he disposed of one under each
umbrella in the prescribed manner. His footsteps on the bronze flooring,
and the rustling of his garments as he went about the hut doing what was
requisite, were surprisingly sharp and distinct noises in a vast silence
and in an illimitable loneliness.

Then said a thin little voice, "Manuel, open the door!"

Manuel obeyed, and you could see nobody anywhere in the forest's dusk.
The twilit brown and yellow trees were still as paintings. His horse
stood tethered and quite motionless, except that it was shivering.

One spoke at his feet. "Manuel, lift me over the threshold!"

Dom Manuel, recoiling, looked downward, and in the patch of candlelight
between the shadows of his legs you could see a human head. He raised
the head, and carried it into the hut. He could now perceive that the
head was made of white clay, and could deduce that the Misery of earth,
whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina, had come to him.

"Now, Manuel," says Misery, "do you give me my supper."

So Manuel set the head upon the table, and put a platter of soup before
the head, and fed the soup to Misery with a gold spoon.

When the head had supped, it bade Manuel place it in the little bamboo
cradle, and told Manuel to put out the lights. Many persons would not
have fancied being alone in the dark with Misery, but Manuel obeyed. He
knelt to begin his nightly prayer, but at once that happened which
induced him to desist. So without his usual divine invocation, Dom
Manuel lay down upon the bronze floor of the hut, beneath one of the
tall umbrellas, and he rolled up his russet cloak for a pillow.
Presently the head was snoring, and then Manuel too went to sleep. He
said, later, that he dreamed of Niafer.

[Illustration]




XX


The Month of Years


In the morning, after doing the head's extraordinary bidding, Manuel
went to feed his horse, and found tethered to the holm-oak the steed's
skeleton picked clean. "I grieve at this," said Manuel, "but I consider
it wiser to make no complaint." Indeed, there was nobody to complain to,
for Misery, after having been again lifted over the threshold, had
departed to put in a day's labor with the plague in the north.

Thereafter Manuel abode in this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest, serving Misery for, as men in cheerier places were estimating
the time, a month and a day. Of these services it is better not to
speak. But the head was pleased by Manuel's services, because Misery
loves company: and the two used to have long friendly talks together
when Manuel's services and Misery's work for that day were over.

"And how came you, sir, to be thus housed in a trunkless head?" asked
Manuel, one time.

"Why, when Jahveh created man on the morning of the sixth day, he set
about fashioning me that afternoon from the clay which was left over.
But he was interrupted by the coming of the Sabbath, for Jahveh was in
those days, of course, a very orthodox Jew. So I was left incomplete,
and must remain so always."

"I deduce that you, then, sir, are Heaven's last crowning work, and the
final finishing touch to creation."

"So the pessimists tell me," the clay head assented, with a yawn. "But I
have had a hard day of it, what with the pestilence in Glathion, and
wars between the Emperor and the Milanese, and all those October colds,
so we will talk no more philosophy."

Thus Manuel served the head of Misery, for a month of days and a day. It
was a noticeable peculiarity of this part of the forest--a peculiarity
well known to everybody, though not quite unanimously explained by the
learned,--that each day which one spent therein passed as a year, so
that Dom Manuel in appearance now aged rapidly. This was unfortunate,
especially when his teeth began to fail him, because there were no
dentists handy, but his interest in the other Plagues which visited this
forest left Manuel little time wherein to think about private worries.
For Beda was visited by many of his kindred, such as Mitlan and Kali and
Thragnar and Pwyll and Apepi and other evil principles, who were
perpetually coming to the gray hut for family reunions, and to rehearse
all but one of the two hundred and forty thousand spells of the Capuas.
And it was at this time that Manuel got his first glimpse of Sclaug,
with whom he had such famous troubles later.

So sped the month of days that passed as years. Little is known as to
what happened in the gray hut, but that perhaps is a good thing. Dom
Manuel never talked about it. This much is known, that all day the clay
head would be roving about the world, carrying envious reports, and
devouring kingdoms, and stirring up patriotism and reform, and
whispering malefic counsel, and bringing hurt and sorrow and despair and
evil of every kind to men; and that in the evening, when at sunset
Phobetor took over this lamentable work, Beda would return contentedly
to Dun Vlechlan, for Manuel's services and a well-earned night's rest.
On most evenings there was unspeakable company, but none of these stayed
overnight. And after each night passed alone with Misery, the morning
would find Manuel older looking.

"I wonder, sir, at your callousness, and at the cheery way in which you
go about your dreadful business," said Manuel, once, after he had just
cleansed the dripping jaws.

"Ah, but since I am all head and no heart, therefore I cannot well pity
the human beings whom I pursue as a matter of allotted duty."

"That seems plausible," says Manuel, "and I perceive that if appearances
are to be trusted you are not personally to blame. Still, I cannot but
wonder why the world of men should thus be given over to Misery if
Koshchei the Deathless, who made all things as they are, has any care
for men."

"As to what goes on overhead, Manuel, you must inquire of others. There
are persons in charge, I know, but they have never yet permitted Misery
to enter into their high places, for I am not popular with them, and
that is the truth."

"I can understand that, but nevertheless I wonder why Misery should have
been created to feed upon mankind."

"Probably the cows and sheep and chickens in your barnyards, and the
partridges and rabbits in your snares, and even the gasping fish upon
your hook, find time to wonder in the same way about you, Dom Manuel."

"Ah, but man is the higher form of life--"

"Granting that remarkable assumption, and is any man above Misery? So
you see it is logical I should feed on you."

"Still, I believe that the Misery of earth was devised as a trial and a
testing to fit us for some nobler and eternal life hereafter."

"Why in this world should you think that?" the head inquired, with real
interest.

"Because I have an immortal spirit, sir, and--"

"Dear me, but all this is very remarkable. Where is it, Manuel?"

"It is inside me somewhere, sir."

"Come, then, let us have it out, for I am curious to see it."

"No, it cannot get out exactly, sir, until I am dead."

"But what use will it be to you then?" said Misery: "and how can you,
who have not ever been dead, be certain as to what happens when one is
dead?"

"Well, I have always heard so, sir."

The head shook itself dubiously. "Now from whom of the Leshy, I wonder,
can you have been hearing such fantastic stories? I am afraid somebody
has been making fun of you, Manuel."

"Oh, no, sir, this is a tenet held by the wisest and most admirable of
men."

"I see: it was some other man who told you all these drolleries about
the eternal importance of mankind," the head observed, with an
unaccountable slackening of interest. "I see: and again, you may notice
that the cows and the sheep and the chickens, also, resent extinction
strenuously."

"But these are creatures of the earth, sir, whereas there is about at
any rate some persons a whiff of divinity. Come now, do you not find it
so?"

The head looked graver. "Yes, Manuel, most young people have in them a
spark which is divine, but it is living that snuffs this out of all of
you, by and large, without bothering Grandfather Death to unpeel spirits
like bananas. No, the most of you go with very little spirit, if any,
into the grave, and assuredly with not enough spirit to last you
forever. No, Manuel, no, I never quarrel with religion, because it is
almost the strongest ally I have, but these religious notions rather
disgust me sometimes, for if men were immortal then Misery would be
immortal, and I could never survive that."

"Now you are talking nonsense, sir," said Manuel, stoutly, "and of all
sorts of nonsense cynical nonsense is the worst."

"By no means," replied the head, "since, plainly, it is far worse
nonsense to assert that omnipotence would insanely elect to pass
eternity with you humans. No, Manuel, I am afraid that your queer
theory, about your being stuffed inside with permanent material and so
on, does not very plausibly account for either your existence or mine,
and that we both stay riddles without answers."

"Still, sir," said Manuel, "inasmuch as there is one thing only which
all death's ravishings have never taken from life, and that thing is the
Misery of earth--"

"Your premiss is indisputable, but what do you deduce from this?"

Manuel smiled slowly and sleepily. "I deduce, sir, that you, also, who
have not ever been dead, cannot possibly be certain as to what happens
when one is dead. And so I shall stick to my own opinion about the life
to come."

"But your opinion is absurd, on the face of it."

"That may very well be, sir, but it is much more comfortable to live
with than is your opinion, and living is my occupation just now. Dying I
shall attend to in its due turn, and, of the two, my opinion is the more
pleasant to die with. Thereafter, if your opinion be right, I shall
never even know that my opinion was wrong: so that I have everything to
gain, in the way of pleasurable anticipations anyhow, and I have nothing
whatever to lose, by clinging to the foolish fond old faith which my
fathers had before me," said Manuel, as sturdily as ever.

"Yes, but how in this world--?"

"Ah, sir," says Manuel, still smiling, "in this world men are nourished
by their beliefs; and it well may be that, yonder also, their sustenance
is the same."

But at this moment came Reeri (a little crimson naked man, having the
head of a monkey) with his cock in one hand and his gnarled club in the
other. Necessarily the Blood Demon's arrival put an end to their
talking, for that turn.

[Illustration]




XXI


Touching Repayment


So Count Manuel's youth went out of him as he became more and more
intimate with Misery, and an attachment sprang up between them, and the
two took counsel as to all Manuel's affairs. They often talked of the
royal ladies whom Manuel had loved and loved no longer.

"For at one time," Manuel admitted, "I certainly fancied myself in love
with the Princess Alianora, and at another time I was in love with Queen
Freydis. And even now I like them well enough, but neither of these
royal ladies could make me forget the slave girl Niafer whom I loved on
Vraidex. Besides, the Princess and the Queen were fond of having their
own way about everything, and they were bent on hampering me with power
and wealth and lofty station and such other obstacles to the following
of my own thinking and my own desires. I could not endure the eternal
arguing this led to, which was always reminding me, by contrast, of the
quiet dear ways of Niafer and of the delight I had in the ways of
Niafer. So it seemed best for everyone concerned for me to break off
with Freydis and Alianora."

"As for these women," the head estimated, "you may be for some reasons
well rid of them. Yet this Alianora has fine eyes and certain powers."

"She is a princess of the Apsarasas," Manuel replied, "and therefore she
has power over the butterflies and the birds and the bats, and over all
creatures of the air. I know, because she has disclosed to me some of
the secrets of the Apsarasas. But over her own tongue and temper the
Princess Alianora has no power and no control whatever, and if I had
married her she would have eventually pestered me into being a king, and
giving my life over to politics and the dominion of men."

"This Freydis, too, has beautiful black hair--and certain powers--"

"She was once Queen of Audela, and therefore she retains power over all
figures of earth. I know, because she has disclosed to me some of the
secrets of Audela. But the worst enemy of Freydis also goes in red, and
is housed by the little white teeth of Freydis, for it was this enemy
that betrayed her: and if I had married her she would have coaxed me, by
and by, into becoming a great maker of images, and giving my life over
to such arts."

Misery said: "You have had love from these women, you have gained power
and knowledge from these women. Therefore you leave them, to run after
some other woman who can give you no power and knowledge, but only a
vast deal of trouble. It is not heroic, Manuel, but it is human, and
your reasoning is well fitted to your time of life."

"It is true that I am young as yet, sir--"

"No, not so very young, for my society is maturing you, and already you
are foreplanning and talking the follies of a man in middle life."

"No matter what my age may come to be, sir, I shall always remember that
when I first set up as a champion, and was newly come from living
modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs, I loved the slave girl
Niafer. She died. I did not die. Instead, I relinquished Niafer to
Grandfather Death, and at that price I preserved my own life and
procured a recipe through which I have prospered unbelievably, so that I
am today a nobleman with fine clothes and lackeys, and with meadow-lands
and castles of my own, if only I could obtain them. So I no longer go
ragged at the elbows, and royal ladies look upon me favorably, and I
find them well enough. But the joy I took in Niafer is not to be found
in any of these things."

"That too is an old human story," the head said, "and yours is a
delusion that comes to most men in middle life. However, for a month of
years you have served me faithfully, except for twice having failed to
put enough venom in my soup, and for having forgotten to fetch in any
ice that evening the Old Black One was here. Still, nobody is perfect;
your time of service is out; and I must repay you as need is. Will you
have happiness, then, and an eternal severance between you and me?"

"I have seen but one happy person," Manuel replied. "He sat in a dry
ditch, displaying vacant glittering eyes, and straws were tangled in his
hair, but Tom o' Bedlam was quite happy. No, it is not happiness I
desire."

The head repeated: "You have served me. I repay, as need is, with the
payment you demand. What is it you demand?"

Dom Manuel said, "I demand that Niafer who was a slave girl, and is now
a ghost in her pagan paradise."

"Do you think, then, that to recall the dead is possible?"

"You are cunning, sir, but I remember what Freydis told me. Will you
swear that Misery cannot bring back the dead?"

"Very willingly I will swear to it, upon all the most authentic relics
in Christendom."

"Ah, yes, but will you rest one of your cold hard pointed ears
against"--here Manuel whispered what he did not care to name
aloud,--"the while that you swear to it."

"Of course not," Misery answered, sullenly: "since every troubled ghost
that ever gibbered and clanked chains would rise confronting me if I
made such an oath. Yes, Manuel, I am able to bring back the dead, but
prudence forces me to lie about my power, because to exercise that power
to the full would be well-nigh as ruinous as the breaking of that
pumpkin. For there is only one way to bring back the dead in flesh, and
if I follow that way I shall lose my head as all the others have done."

"What is that to a lover?" says Manuel.

The head sighed, and bit at its white lips. "An oath is an oath to the
Leshy. Therefore do you, who are human, now make profitable use of the
knowledge and of the power you get from those other women by breaking
oaths! And as you have served me, so will I serve you."

Manuel called black eagles to him, in the manner the Princess Alianora
had taught, and he sent them into all parts of the world for every sort
of white earth. They obeyed the magic of the Apsarasas, and from Britain
they brought Dom Manuel the earth called leucargillon, and they brought
glisomarga from Enisgarth, and eglecopala from the Gallic provinces, and
argentaria from Lacre Kai, and white earth of every description from all
parts of the world.

Manuel made from this earth, as Queen Freydis had taught him how to do,
the body of a woman. He fashioned the body peculiarly, in accordance
with the old Tuyla mystery, and the body was as perfect as Manuel could
make it, in all ways save that it had no head.

Then Manuel sent a gold-crested wren into Provence: it entered through
an upper window of the King's marmoreal palace, and went into the
Princess Alianora's chamber, and fetched hence a handkerchief figured
with yellow mulberries and wet with the tears which Alianora had shed in
her grieving for Manuel. And Dom Manuel sent also a falcon, which
returned to him with Queen Freydis' handkerchief. That was figured with
white fleurs-de-lis, and that too was drenched with tears.

Whereupon, all being in readiness, Misery smiled craftily, and said:

"In the time that is passed I have overthrown high kings and prophets,
and sorcerers also, as when Misery half carelessly made sport of
Mithridates and of Merlin and of Moses, in ways that ballad-singers
still delight to tell of. But with you, Dom Manuel, I shall deal
otherwise, and I shall disconcert you by and by in a more quiet fashion.
Hoh, I must grapple carefully with your love for Niafer, as with an
antagonist who is not scrupulous, nor very sensible, but who is
exceedingly strong. For observe: you obstinately desire this perished
heathen woman, who in life, it well may be, was nothing remarkable.
Therefore you have sought Misery, you have dwelt for a month of years
with terror, you have surrendered youth, you are planning to defy death,
you are intent to rob the deep grave and to despoil paradise. Truly your
love is great."

Manuel said only, "An obligation is upon me, for the life of Niafer was
given to preserve my life."

"Now I, whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina, and whom for the
present your love has conquered--I it is, alone, who can obtain for you
this woman, because in the long run I overcome all things and persons.
Life is my province, and the birth cry of every infant is an oath of
allegiance to me. Thus I am overlord where all serve willy-nilly except
you, who have served of your own will. And as you have served me, so
must I serve you."

Manuel said, "That is well"

"It is not so well as you think, for when you have this Niafer I shall
return to you in the appearance of a light formless cloud, and I shall
rise about you, not suddenly but a little by a little. So shall you see
through me the woman for love of whom your living was once made
high-hearted and fearless, and for whose sake death was derided, and
paradise was ransacked: and you will ask forlornly, 'Was it for this?'
Throughout the orderly, busied, unimportant hours that stretch between
your dressing for the day and your undressing for the night, you will be
asking this question secretly in your heart, while I pass everywhither
with you in the appearance of a light formless cloud, and whisper to you
secretly."

"And what will you whisper to me?"

"Not anything which you will care to repeat to anybody anywhere. Oh, you
will be able to endure it, and you will be content, as human contentment
goes, and my triumph will not be public. But, none the less, I shall
have overthrown my present conqueror, and I shall have brought low the
love which terror and death did not affright, and which the laws of
earth could not control; and I, whom some call Beda, and others
Kruchina, will very terribly attest that the ghost of outlived and
conquered misery is common-sense."

"That is to-morrow's affair," replied Dom Manuel "To-day there is an
obligation upon me, and my dealings are with to-day."

Then Manuel bound the clay head of Misery in the two handkerchiefs which
were wet with the tears of Alianora and of Freydis. When the cock had
crowed three times, Dom Manuel unbound the head, and it was only a
shapeless mass of white clay, because of the tears of Freydis and
Alianora.

Manuel modeled in this clay, to the best of his ability, the head of
Niafer, as he remembered her when they had loved each other upon
Vraidex: and after the white head was finished he fitted it to the body
which he had made from the other kinds of white earth. Dom Manuel robed
this body in brown drugget such as Niafer had been used to wear in and
about the kitchen at Arnaye, and he did the other things that were
requisite, for this was the day of All Saints when nothing sacred ought
to be neglected.

[Illustration]



XXII


Return of Niafer


Now the tale tells how Dom Manuel sat at the feet of the image and
played upon a flageolet. There was wizardry in the music, Dom Manuel
said afterward, for he declared that it evoked in him a vision and a
restless dreaming that followed after Misery.

So this dreaming showed that when Misery was dispossessed of the earth
he entered (because Misery is unchristian) into the paradise of the
pagans, where Niafer, dead now for something over a year, went
restlessly in bliss: and Misery came shortly afterward to Niafer, and
talked with her in a thin little voice. She listened willingly to this
talk of Manuel and of the adventures which Niafer had shared with
Manuel: and now that she remembered Manuel, and his clear young face and
bright unequal eyes and his strong arms, she could no longer be even
moderately content in the paradise of the pagans.

Thereafter Misery went about the heathens' paradise in the appearance of
a light formless cloud. And the fields of this paradise seemed less
green, the air became less pure and balmy, and the sky less radiant, and
the waters of the paradisal river Eridanus grew muddy. The poets became
tired of hearing one another recite, the heroes lost delight in their
wrestling and chariot racing and in their exercises with the spear and
the bow. "How can anybody expect us to waste eternity with recreations
which are only fitted to waste time?" they demanded.

And the lovely ladies began to find the handsome lovers with whom they
wandered hand in hand through never-fading groves of myrtle, and with
whom they were forever reunited, rather tedious companions.

"I love you," said the lovers.

"You have been telling me that for twelve centuries," replied the
ladies, yawning, "and too much of anything is enough."

"Upon my body, I think so too," declared the lovers. "I said it only out
of politeness and force of habit, and I can assure you I am as tired of
this lackadaisical idiocy as you are."

So everything was at sixes and sevens in this paradise: and when the
mischief-maker was detected, the blessed held a meeting, for it was now
the day of All Souls, on which the dead have privilege.

"We must preserve appearances," said these dead pagans, "and can have
only happy-looking persons hereabouts, for otherwise our paradise will
get a poor name, and the religion of our fathers will fall into
disrepute."

Then they thrust Misery, and Niafer also, out of the pagan paradise,
because Misery clung to Niafer in the appearance of a light formless
cloud, and there was no separating the two.

These two turned earthward together, and came to the river of sweat
called Rigjon. Niafer said to the fiery angel Sandalfon that guards the
bridge there, "The Misery of earth is with me."

Sandalfon saw that this was so, and answered, "My fires cannot consume
the Misery of earth."

They came to Hadarniel, the noisy angel whose, whispering is the
thunder. Niafer said, "The Misery of earth is with me."

Hadarniel replied, "Before the Misery of earth I am silent."

They came to Kemuel and his twelve thousand angels of destruction that
guard the outermost gateway. Niafer said, "The Misery of earth is with
me."

Kemuel answered, "I ruin and make an end of all things else, but for the
Misery of earth I have contrived no ending."

So Misery and Niafer passed all the warders of this paradise: and in a
dim country on the world's rim the blended spirit of Misery and the
ghost of Niafer rose through a hole in the ground, like an imponderable
vapor. They dissevered each from the other in a gray place overgrown
with poplars, and Misery cried farewell to Niafer.

"And very heartily do I thank you for your kindness, now that we part,
and now that, it may be, I shall not ever see you again," said Niafer,
politely.

Misery replied:

"Take no fear for not seeing me again, now that you are about once more
to become human. Certainly, Niafer, I must leave you for a little while,
but certainly I shall return. There will first be for you much kissing
and soft laughter, and the quiet happy ordering of your home, and the
heart-shaking wonder of the child who is neither you nor Manuel, but
both of you, and whose life was not ever seen before on earth: and life
will burgeon with white miracles, and every blossom you will take to be
eternal. Laughing, you will say of sorrow, 'What is it?' And I, whom
some call Beda, and others call Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by
this.

"Then your seeing will have my help, and you will observe that Manuel is
very much like other persons. He will be used to having you about, and
you him, and that will be the sorry bond between you. The children that
have reft their flesh from your flesh ruthlessly, and that have derived
their living from your glad anguish, each day will, be appearing a
little less intimately yours, until these children find their mates.
Thereafter you will be a tolerated intruder into these children's daily
living, and nobody anywhere will do more than condone your coming: you
will weep secretly: and I, whom some call Beda, and others call
Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by this.

"Then I shall certainly return to you, when your tears are dried, and
when you no longer believe what young Niafer once believed; and when,
remembering young Niafer's desires and her intentions as to the disposal
of her life, you will shrug withered shoulders. To go on living will
remain desirable. The dilapidations of life will no longer move you
deeply. Shrugging, you will say of sorrow, 'What is it?' for you will
know grief also to be impermanent. And your inability to be quite
miserable any more will assure you that your goings are attended by the
ghost of outlived and conquered misery: and I, whom some call Beda, and
others call Kruchina, shall be monstrously amused by this."

Said Niafer, impatiently, "Do you intend to keep me here forever under
these dark twinkling trees, with your thin little talking, while Manuel
stays unhappy through his want of me?"

And Misery answered nothing as he departed from Niafer, for a season.

Such were the happenings in the vision witnessed by Dom Manuel (as Dom
Manuel afterward declared) while he sat playing upon the flageolet.

[Illustration]



XXIII

Manuel Gets His Desire


Now the tale tells that all this while, near the gray hut in Dun
Vlechlan, the earthen image of Niafer lay drying out in the November
sun; and that gray Dom Manuel--no longer the florid boy who had come
into Dun Vlechlan,--sat at the feet of the image, and played upon a
flageolet the air which Suskind had taught him, and with which he had
been used to call young Suskind from her twilit places when Manuel was a
peasant tending swine. Now Manuel was an aging nobleman, and Niafer was
now a homeless ghost, but the tune had power over them, none the less,
for its burden was young love and the high-hearted time of youth; so
that the melody which once had summoned Suskind from her low
red-pillared palace in the doubtful twilight, now summoned Niafer
resistlessly from paradise, as Manuel thriftily made use of the odds and
ends which he had learned from three women to win him a fourth woman.

The spirit of Niafer entered at the mouth of the image. Instantly the
head sneezed, and said, "I am unhappy." But Manuel kept on playing. The
spirit descended further, bringing life to the lungs and the belly, so
that the image then cried, "I am hungry." But Manuel kept on playing. So
the soul was drawn further and further, until Manuel saw that the white
image had taken on the colors of flesh, and was moving its toes in time
to his playing; and so knew that the entire body was informed with life.

He cast down the flageolet, and touched the breast of the image with the
ancient formal gestures of the old Tuyla mystery, and he sealed the
mouth of the image with a kiss, so that the spirit of Niafer was
imprisoned in the image which Manuel had made. Under his lips the lips
which had been Misery's cried, "I love." And Niafer rose, a living girl
just such as Manuel had remembered for more than a whole year: but with
that kiss all memories of paradise and all the traits of angelhood
departed from her.

"Well, well, dear snip," said Manuel, the first thing of all, "now it is
certainly a comfort to have you back again."

Niafer, even in the rapture of her happiness, found this an
unimpassioned greeting from one who had gone to unusual lengths to
recover her companionship. Staring, she saw that Manuel had all the
marks of a man in middle life, and spoke as became appearances. For it
was at the price of his youth that Manuel had recovered the woman whom
his youth desired: and Misery had subtly evened matters by awarding an
aging man the woman for whose sake a lad had fearlessly served Misery.
There was no longer any such lad, for the conquered had destroyed the
conqueror.

Then, after a moment's consideration of this tall gray stranger, Niafer
also looked graver and older. Niafer asked for a mirror: and Manuel had
none.

"Now but certainly I must know at once just how faithfully you have
remembered me," says Niafer.

He led the way into the naked and desolate November forest, and they
came to the steel-colored Wolflake hard by the gray hut: and Niafer
found she was limping, for Manuel had not got her legs quite right, so
that for the rest of her second life she was lame. Then Niafer gazed for
a minute, or it might be for two minutes, at her reflection in the deep
cold waters of the Wolflake.

"Is this as near as you have come to remembering me, my dearest!" she
said, dejectedly, as she looked down at Manuel's notion of her face. For
the appearance which Niafer now wore she found to be very little like
that which Niafer remembered as having been hers, in days wherein she
had been tolerably familiar with the Lady Gisele's mirrors; and it was a
grief to Niafer to see how utterly the dearest dead go out of mind in no
long while.

"I have forgotten not one line or curve of your features," says Manuel,
stoutly, "in all these months, nor in any of these last days that have
passed as years. And when my love spurred me to make your image, Niafer,
my love loaned me unwonted cunning. Even by ordinary, they tell me, I
have some skill at making images: and while not for a moment would I
seem to boast of that skill, and not for worlds would I annoy you by
repeating any of the complimentary things which have been said about my
images,--by persons somewhat more appreciative, my dear, of the toil and
care that goes to work of this sort,--I certainly think that in this
instance nobody has fair reason to complain."

She looked at his face now: and she noted what the month of living with
Beda, with whom a day is as a year, had done to the boy's face which she
remembered. Count Manuel's face was of remodeled stuff: youth had gone
out of it, and the month of years had etched wrinkles in it, success had
hardened and caution had pinched and self-complacency had kissed it. And
Niafer sighed again, as they sat reunited under leafless trees by the
steel-colored Wolflake.

"There is no circumventing time and death, then, after all," said
Niafer, "for neither of us is now the person that ascended Vraidex. No
matter: I love you, Manuel, and I am content with what remains of you:
and if the body you have given me is to your will it is to my will."

But now three rascally tall ragged fellows, each blind in one eye, and
each having a thin peaked beard, came into the opening before the gray
hut, trampling the dead leaves there as they shouted for Mimir. "Come
out!" they cried: "come out, you miserable Mirmir, and face those three
whom you have wronged!"

Dom Manuel rose from the bank of the Wolflake, and went toward the
shouters. "There is no Mimir," he told them, "in Dun Vlechlan, or not at
least in this peculiarly irrational part of the forest."

"You lie," they said, "for even though you have hitched a body to your
head we recognize you." They looked at Niafer, and all three laughed
cruelly. "Was it for this hunched, draggled, mud-faced wench that you
left us, you squinting old villain? And have you so soon forgotten the
vintner's parlor at Neogreant, and what you did with the gold plates?"

"No, I have not forgotten these things, for I never knew anything about
them," said Manuel.

Said one of the knaves, twirling fiercely his moustachios: "Hah,
shameless Mimir, do you look at me, who have known you and your blind
son Oriander, too, to be unblushing knaves for these nine centuries!
Now, I suppose, you will be denying the affair of the squirrel also?"

"Oh, be off with your nonsense!" says Manuel, "for I have not yet had
twenty-two years of living, and I never saw you before, and I hope never
to see you again."

But they all set upon him with cutlasses, so there was nothing remaining
save to have out his sword and fight. And when each of these one-eyed
persons had vanished curiously under his death-wound, Manuel told Niafer
it was a comfort to find that the month of years had left him a fair
swordsman for all that his youth was gone; and that he thought they had
better be leaving this part of the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, wherein
unaccountable things took place, and all persons behaved unreasonably.

"Were these wood-spirits unreasonable," asks Niafer, "in saying that the
countenance and the body you have given me are ugly?"

"My dear," replied Manuel, "it was their saying that which made me try
to avoid the conflict, because it does not look well, not even in
dealing with demons, to injure the insane."

"Manuel, and can it be you who are considering appearances?"

Dom Manuel said gravely: "My dealings with Misery and with Misery's
kindred have taught me many things which I shall never forget nor very
willingly talk about. One of these teachings, though, is that in most
affairs there is a middle road on which there is little traffic and
comparatively easy going. I must tell you that the company I have been
in required a great deal of humoring, for of course it is not safe to
trifle with any evil principle. No, no, one need not absolutely and
openly defy convention, I perceive, in order to follow after one's own
thinking," says Manuel, shrewdly, and waggling a gray beard.

"I am so glad you have learned that at last! At least, I suppose, I am
glad," said Niafer, a little wistfully, as she recalled young Manuel of
the high head.

"But, as I was saying, I now estimate that these tattered persons who
would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red fellow that would
have hindered my entering, this peculiarly irrational part of the
forest, were spiritual intruders into Misery's domain whom Misery had
driven out of their wits. No, Niafer, I voice no criticism, because with
us two this Misery of earth, whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina,
has dealt very handsomely. It troubles me to suspect that he was also
called Mimir; but of this we need not speak, because a thing done has an
end, even a killed grandfather. Nevertheless, I think that Dun Vlechlan
is unwholesome, and I am of the opinion that you and I will be more
comfortable elsewhere."

"But must we go back to looking after pigs, dear Manuel, or are you now
too old for that?"

Dom Manuel smiled, and you saw that he retained at least his former
lordliness. "No, now that every obligation is lifted, and we are
reunited, dear snip, I can at last go traveling everywhither, so that I
may see the ends of this world and judge them. And we will do whatever
else we choose, for, as I must tell you, I am now a nobleman with
lackeys and meadowlands and castles of my own, if only I could obtain
possession of them."

"This is excellent hearing," said Niafer, "and much better than
pig-stealing, and I am glad that the world has had sense enough to
appreciate you, Manuel, and you it. And we will have rubies in my
coronet, because I always fancied them. Now do you tell me how it all
happened, and what I am to be called countess of. And we will talk about
that traveling later, for I have already traveled a great distance
today, but we must certainly have rubies."

[Illustration]




XXIV


Three Women


So Manuel put on his armor, and with Manuel telling as much as he
thought wise of the adventures which he had encountered while Niafer was
dead, they left this peculiarly irrational part of the forest, and fared
out of the ruined November woods; and presently, in those barren fields
that descend toward the sand dunes of Quentavic, came face to face with
Queen Freydis and the Princess Alianora, where these two royal ladies
and many other fine people rode toward the coast.

Alianora went magnificently this morning, on a white horse, and wearing
a kirtle of changeable green like the sea's green in sunlight: her
golden hair was bound with a gold frontlet wherein were emeralds.
Freydis, dark and stately, was in crimson embroidered with small gold
stars and ink-horns: a hooded falcon sat on her gloved wrist.

Now Freydis and Alianora stared at the swarthy, flat-faced, limping
peasant girl in brown drugget that was with Count Manuel. Then Alianora
stared at Freydis.

"Is it for this dingy cripple," says Alianora, with her proud fine face
all wonder, "that Dom Manuel has forsaken us and has put off his youth?
Why, the girl is out and out ugly!"

"Our case is none the better for that," replied Freydis, the wise Queen,
whose gazing rested not upon Niafer but on Manuel.

"Who are those disreputable looking, bold-faced creatures that are
making eyes at you?" says Niafer.

And Manuel, marveling to meet these two sorceresses together, replied,
as he civilly saluted them from a little distance, "Two royal ladies,
who would be well enough were it not for their fondness for having their
own way."

"And I suppose you think them handsome!"

"Yes, Niafer, I find them very beautiful. But after looking at them with
aesthetic pleasure, my gaze returns adoringly to the face I have created
as I willed, and to the quiet love of my youth, and I have no occasion
to be thinking of queens and princesses. Instead, I give thanks in my
heart that I am faring contentedly toward the nearest priest with the
one woman in the world who to my finding is desirable and lovely."

"It is very sweet of you to say that, Manuel, and I am sure I hope you
are telling the truth, but my faith would be greater if you had not
rattled it off so glibly."

Then Alianora said: "Greetings, and for the while farewell, to you,
Count Manuel! For all we ride to Quentavic, and thence I am passing over
into England to marry the King of that island."

"Now, but there is a lucky monarch for you!" says Manuel, politely. He
looked at Freydis, who had put off immortality for his kisses, and whom
he had deserted to follow after his own thinking: these re-encounters
are always awkward, and Dom Manuel fidgeted a little. He asked her, "And
do you also go into England?"

She told him very quietly, no, that she was only going to the coast, to
consult with three or four of the water-demons about enchanting one of
the Red Islands, and about making her home there. She had virtually
decided, she told him, to put a spell upon Sargyll, as it seemed the
most desirable of these islands from what she could hear, but she must
first see the place. Queen Freydis looked at him with rather
embarrassing intentness all the while, but she spoke quite calmly.

"Yes, yes," Dom Manuel said, cordially, "I dare say you will be very
comfortable there, and I am sure I hope so. But I did not know that you
two ladies were acquainted."

"Indeed, our affairs are not your affairs," says Freydis, "any longer.
And what does it matter, on this November day which has a thin sunlight
and no heat at all in it? No, that girl yonder has to-day. But Alianora
and I had each her yesterday; and it may be the one or it may be the
other of us three who will have to-morrow, and it may be also that the
disposal of that to-morrow will be remarkable."

"Very certainly," declared Alianora, with that slow, lovely, tranquil
smile of hers, "I shall have my portion of to-morrow. I would have made
you a king, and by and by the most powerful of all kings, but you
followed after your own thinking, and cared more for messing in wet mud
than for a throne. Still, this nonsense of yours has converted you into
a rather distinguished looking old gentleman, so when I need you I shall
summon you, with the token that we know of, Dom Manuel, and then do you
come post-haste!"

Freydis said: "I would have made you the greatest of image-makers; but
you followed after your own thinking, and instead of creating new and
god-like beings you preferred to resurrect a dead servant girl.
Nevertheless, do I bid you beware of the one living image you made, for
it still lives and it alone you cannot ever shut out from your barred
heart, Dom Manuel: and nevertheless, do I bid you come to me, Dom Manuel,
when you need me."

Manuel replied, "I shall always obey both of you." Niafer throughout
this while said nothing at all. But she had her private thoughts, to the
effect that neither of these high-and-mighty trollops was in reality the
person whom henceforward Dom Manuel was going to obey.

So the horns sounded. The gay cavalcade rode on, toward Quentavic. And
as they went young Osmund Heleigh (Lord Brudenel's son) asked for the
gallant King of Navarre, "But who, sire, was that time-battered gray
vagabond, with the tarnished silver stallion upon his shield and the
mud-colored cripple at his side, that our Queens should be stopping for
any conference with him?"

King Thibaut said it was the famous Dom Manuel of Poictesme, who had put
away his youth for the sake of the girl that was with him.

"Then is the old man a fool on every count," declared Messire Heleigh,
sighing, "for I have heard of his earlier antics in Provence, and no
lovelier lady breathes than Dame Alianora."

"I consider Queen Freydis to be the handsomer of the two," replied
Thibaut, "but certainly there is no comparing either of these
inestimable ladies with Dom Manuel's swarthy drab."

"She is perhaps some witch whose magic is more terrible than their
magic, and has besotted this ruined champion?"

"It is either enchantment or idiocy, unless indeed it be something far
higher than either." King Thibaut looked grave, then shrugged. "Oy
Dieus! even so, Queen Freydis is the more to my taste."

Thus speaking, the young King spurred his bay horse toward Queen Freydis
(from whom he got his ruin a little later), and all Alianora's retinue
went westward, very royally, while Manuel and Niafer trudged east. Much
color and much laughter went one way, but the other way went
contentment, for that while.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

PART FOUR


THE BOOK OF SURCHARGE


TO

HUGH WALPOLE




Soe _Manuel made all the Goddes that we call_ mamettes _and_ ydolles,
_that were sett ouer the Subiection of his lyfe tyme: and euery of the
goddes that Manuel wolde carue toilesomelie hadde in hys Bodie a
Blemmishe; and in the mydle of the godes made he one god of the
Philistines._



XXV


Affairs in Poictesme


They of Poictesme narrate how Manuel and Niafer traveled east a little
way and then turned toward the warm South; and how they found a priest
to marry them, and how Manuel confiscated two horses. They tell also how
Manuel victoriously encountered a rather terrible dragon at La Fleche,
and near Orthez had trouble with a Groach, whom he conquered and
imprisoned in a leather bottle, but they say that otherwise the journey
was uneventful.

"And now that every obligation is lifted, and we are reunited, my dear
Niafer," says Manuel, as they sat resting after his fight with the
dragon, "we will, I repeat, be traveling every whither, so that we may
see the ends of this world and may judge them."

"Dearest," replied Niafer, "I have been thinking about that, and I am
sure it would be delightful, if only people were not so perfectly
horrid."

"What do you mean, dear snip?"

"You see, Manuel, now that you have fetched me back from paradise,
people will be saying you ought to give me, in exchange for the abodes
of bliss from which I have been summoned, at least a fairly comfortable
and permanent terrestrial residence. Yes, dearest, you know what people
are, and the evil-minded will be only too delighted to be saying
everywhere that you are neglecting an obvious duty if you go wandering
off to see and judge the ends of this world, with which, after all, you
have really no especial concern."

"Oh, well, and if they do?" says Manuel, shrugging lordily. "There is no
hurt in talking."

"Yes, Manuel, but such shiftless wandering, into uncomfortable places
that nobody ever heard of, would have that appearance. Now there is
nothing I would more thoroughly enjoy then to go traveling about at
adventure with you, and to be a countess means nothing whatever to me. I
am sure I do not in the least care to live in a palace of my own, and be
bothered with fine clothes and the responsibility of looking after my
rubies, and with servants and parties every day. But you see, darling, I
simply could not bear to have people thinking ill of my dear husband,
and so, rather than have that happen, I am willing to put up with these
things."

"Oh, oh!" says Manuel, and he began pulling vexedly at his little gray
beard, "and does one obligation beget another as fast as this! Now
whatever would you have me do?"

"Obviously, you must get troops from King Ferdinand, and drive that
awful Asmund out of Poictesme."

"Dear me!" says Manuel, "but what a simple matter you make of it! Shall
I attend to it this afternoon?"

"Now, Manuel, you speak without thinking, for you could not possibly
re-conquer all Poictesme this afternoon--."

"Oh!" says Manuel.

"No, not single-handed, my darling. You would first have to get troops
to help you, both horse and foot."

"My dearest, I only meant--"

"--Even then, it will probably take quite a while to kill off all the
Northmen."

"Niafer, will you let me explain--"

"--Besides, you are miles away from Poictesme. You could not even manage
to get there this afternoon."

Manuel put his hand over her mouth. "Niafer, when I spoke of subjugating
Poictesme this afternoon I was attempting a mild joke. I will never any
more attempt light irony in your presence, for I perceive that you do
not appreciate my humor. Meanwhile I repeat to you, No, no, a thousand
times, no! To be called Count of Poictesme sounds well, it strokes the
hearing: but I will not be set to root and vegetate in a few hundred
spadefuls of dirt. No, for I have but one lifetime here, and in that
lifetime I mean to see this world and all the ends of this world, that I
may judge them. And I," he concluded, decisively, "am Manuel, who follow
after my own thinking and my own desire."

Niafer began to weep. "I simply cannot bear to think of what people will
say of you."

"Come, come, my dear," says Manuel, "this is preposterous."

Niafer wept.

"You will only end by making yourself ill!" says Manuel.

Niafer continued to weep.

"My mind is quite made up," says Manuel, "so what, in God's name, is the
good of this?"

Niafer now wept more and more broken-heartedly. And the big champion sat
looking at her, and his broad shoulders relaxed. He viciously kicked at
the heavy glistening green head of the dragon, still bleeding uglily
there at his feet, but that did no good whatever. The dragon-queller was
beaten. He could do nothing against such moisture, his resolution was
dampened and his independence was washed away by this salt flood. And
they say too that, now his youth was gone, Dom Manuel began to think of
quietness and of soft living more resignedly than he acknowledged.

"Very well, then," Manuel says, by and by, "let us cross the Loir, and
ride south to look for our infernal coronet with the rubies in it, and
for your servants, and for some of your palaces."

So in the Christmas holidays they bring a tall burly squinting
gray-haired warrior to King Ferdinand, in a lemon grove behind the royal
palace. Here the sainted King, duly equipped with his halo and his
goose-feather, was used to perform the lesser miracles on Wednesdays and
Saturdays.

The King was delighted by the change in Manuel's looks, and said that
experience and maturity were fine things to be suggested by the
appearance of a nobleman in Manuel's position. But, a pest! as for
giving him any troops with which to conquer Poictesme, that was quite
another matter. The King needed his own soldiers for his own ends, which
necessitated the immediate capture of Cordova. Meanwhile here were the
Prince de Gatinais and the Marquess di Paz, who also had come with this
insane request, the one for soldiers to help him against the
Philistines, and the other against the Catalans.

"Everybody to whom I ever granted a fief seems to need troops nowadays,"
the King grumbled, "and if any one of you had any judgment whatever you
would have retained your lands once they were given you."

"Our deficiencies, sire," says the young Prince de Gatinais, with
considerable spirit, "have not been altogether in judgment, but rather
in the support afforded us by our liege-lord."

This was perfectly true; but inasmuch as such blunt truths are not
usually flung at a king and a saint, now Ferdinand's thin brows went up.

"Do you think so?" said the King. "We must see about it. What is that,
for example?"

He pointed to the pool by which the lemon-trees were watered, and the
Prince glanced at the yellow object afloat in this pool. "Sire," said de
Gatinais, "it is a lemon which has fallen from one of the trees."

"So you judge it to be a lemon. And what do you make of it, di Paz?" the
King inquired.

The Marquess was a statesman who took few chances. He walked to the edge
of the pool, and looked at the thing before committing himself: and he
came back smiling. "Ah, sire, you have indeed contrived a cunning sermon
against hasty judgment, for, while the tree is a lemon-tree, the thing
that floats beneath it is an orange."

"So you, Marquess, judge it to be an orange. And what do you make of it,
Count of Poictesme?" the King asks now.

If di Paz took few chances, Manuel took none at all. He waded into the
pool, and fetched out the thing which floated there. "King," says big
Dom Manuel, sagely blinking his bright pale eyes, "it is the half of an
orange."

Said the King: "Here is a man who is not lightly deceived by the vain
shows of this world, and who values truth more than dry shoes. Count
Manuel, you shall have your troops, and you others must wait until you
have acquired Count Manuel's powers of judgment, which, let me tell you,
are more valuable than any fief I have to give."

So when the spring had opened, Manuel went into Poictesme at the head of
a very creditable army, and Dom Manuel summoned Duke Asmund to surrender
all that country. Asmund, who was habitually peevish under the puckerel
curse, refused with opprobrious epithets, and the fighting began.

Manuel had, of course, no knowledge of generalship, but King Ferdinand
sent the Conde de Tohil Vaca as Manuel's lieutenant. Manuel now figured
imposingly in jeweled armor, and the sight of his shield bearing the
rampant stallion and the motto _Mundus vult decipi_ became in battle a
signal for the more prudent among his adversaries to distinguish
themselves in some other part of the conflict. It was whispered by
backbiters that in counsel and in public discourse Dom Manuel sonorously
repeated the orders and opinions provided by Tohil Vaca: either way, the
official utterances of the Count of Poictesme roused everywhere the
kindly feeling which one reserves for old friends, so that no harm was
done.

To the contrary, Dom Manuel now developed an invaluable gift for public
speaking, and in every place which he conquered and occupied he made
powerful addresses to the surviving inhabitants before he had them
hanged, exhorting all right-thinking persons to crush the military
autocracy of Asmund. Besides, as Manuel pointed out, this was a struggle
such as the world had never known, in that it was a war to end war
forever, and to ensure eternal peace for everybody's children. Never, as
he put it forcefully, had men fought for a more glorious cause. And so
on and go on, said he, and these uplifting thoughts had a fine effect
upon everyone.

"How wonderfully you speak!" Dame Niafer would say admiringly.

And Manuel would look at her queerly, and reply: "I am earning your
home, my dear, and your servants' wages, and some day these verbal
jewels will be perpetuated in a real coronet. For I perceive that a
former acquaintance of mine was right in pointing out the difference
between men and the other animals."

"Ah, yes, indeed!" said Niafer, very gravely, and not attaching any
particular meaning to it, but generally gathering that she and Manuel
were talking about something edifying and pious. For Niafer was now a
devout Christian, as became a Countess of Poictesme, and nobody anywhere
entertained a more sincere reverence for solemn noises.

"For instance," Dame Niafer continued, "they tell me that these lovely
speeches of yours have produced such an effect upon the Philistines
yonder that their Queen Stultitia has proffered an alliance, and has
promised to send you light cavalry and battering-rams."

"It is true she has promised to send them, but she has not done so."

"None the less, Manuel, you will find that the moral effect of her
approbation will be invaluable; and, as I so often think, that is the
main thing after all--"

"Yes, yes," says Manuel, impatiently, "we have plenty of moral
approbation and fine speaking here, and in the South we have a saint to
work miracles for us, but it is Asmund who has that army of splendid
reprobates, and they do not value morality and rhetoric the worth of an
old finger-nail."

So the fighting continued throughout that spring, and in Poictesme it
all seemed very important and unexampled, just as wars usually appear to
the people that are engaged in them. Thousands of men were slain, to the
regret of their mothers and sweethearts, and very often of their wives.
And there was the ordinary amount of unparalleled military atrocities
and perfidies and ravishments and burnings and so on, and the endurers
took their agonies so seriously that it is droll to think of how
unimportant it all was in the outcome.

For this especial carnage was of supreme and world-wide significance so
long ago that it is now not worth the pains involved to rephrase for
inattentive hearing the combat of the knights at Perdigon--out of which
came alive only Guivric and Coth and Anavalt and Gonfal,--or to speak of
the once famous battle of the tinkers, or to retell how the inflexible
syndics of Montors were imprisoned in a cage and slain by mistake. It no
longer really matters to any living person how the Northmen burned the
bridge of boats at Manneville; nor how Asmund trod upon a burned-through
beam at the disastrous siege of Evre, and so fell thirty feet into the
midst of his enemies and broke his leg, but dealt so valorously that he
got safe away; nor how at Lisuarte unarmored peasants beat off Manuel's
followers with scythes and pitchforks and clubs.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the color
is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they
wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and
their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there,
and grudge the paper needful to record the remarkable method by which
gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre on every chimney in Poictesme.

It is not even possible, nowadays, to put warm interest in those once
notable pots of blazing sulphur and fat and quicklime that were emptied
over the walls of Storisende, to the discomfort of Manuel's men. For
although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high
moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both
sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the
ruin, of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and
general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all
other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been
unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to
say so.

Therefore it suffices to report that there was much killing and misery
everywhere, and that in June, upon Corpus Christi day, the Conde de
Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible jocosity which
used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel's forces were defeated and
scattered.

[Illustration]




XXVI


Deals with the Stork


Now Manuel, driven out of Poictesme, went with his wife to Novogath,
which had been for some seven years the capital of Philistia. Queen
Stultitia, the sixtieth of that name to rule, received them friendlily.
She talked alone with Manuel for a lengthy while, in a room that was
walled with glazed tiles of faience and had its ceiling incrusted with
moral axioms, everywhere affixed thereto in a light lettering of tin, so
as to permit of these axioms being readily changed. Stultitia sat at a
bronze reading-desk: she wore rose-colored spectacles, and at her feet
dozed, for the while, her favorite plaything, a blind, small, very fat
white bitch called Luck.

The Queen still thought that an alliance could be arranged against Duke
Asmund as soon as public sentiment could be fomented in Philistia, but
this would take time. "Have patience, my friend!" she said, and that was
easy saying for a prosperous great lady sitting comfortably crowned and
spectacled in her own palace, under her own chimneys and skylights and
campaniles and domes and towers and battlements.

But in the mean while Manuel and Niafer had not so much as a cowshed
wherein to exercise this recommended virtue. So Manuel made inquiries,
and learned that Queen Freydis had taken up her abode on Sargyll, most
remote of the Red Islands.

"We will go to Freydis," he told Niafer.

"But, surely, not after the way that minx probably believes you treated
her?" said Niafer.

Manuel smiled the sleepy smile that was Manuel. "I know Freydis better
than you know her, my dear."

"Yes, but can you depend upon her?"

"I can depend upon myself, and that is more important."

"But, Manuel, you have another dear friend in England; and in England,
although the Lord knows I never want to lay eyes on her, we might at
least be comfortable--"

Manuel shook his head: "I am very fond of Alianora, because she
resembles me as closely as it is possible for a woman to resemble a man.
That makes two excellent reasons--one for each of us, snip,--why we had
better not go into England."

So, in their homeless condition, they resolved to set out for
Sargyll,--"to visit that other dear friend of yours," as Niafer put it,
in tones more eloquent than Manuel seemed quite to relish.

Dame Niafer, though, now began to complain that Manuel was neglecting
her for all this statecraft and fighting and speech-making and private
conference with fine ladies; and she began to talk again about what a
pity it was that she and Manuel would probably never have any children
to be company for Niafer. Niafer complained rather often nowadays, about
details which are here irrelevant: and she was used to lament with every
appearance of sincerity that, in making the clay figure for Niafer to
live in, Manuel should have been so largely guided by the elsewhere
estimable qualities of innocence and imagination. It frequently put her,
she said, to great inconvenience.

Now Manuel had been inquiring about this and that and the other since
his arrival in Novogath, and so Manuel to-day replied with lordly
assurance. "Yes, yes, a baby or two!" says Manuel. "I think myself that
would be an excellent idea, while we are waiting for Queen Stultitia to
make up her subjects' minds, and have nothing else in particular to
do--"

"But, Manuel, you know perfectly well--"

"--And I am sufficiently versed in the magic of the Apsarasas to be able
to summon the stork, who by rare good luck is already indebted to me--"

"What has the stork to do with this?"

"Why, it is he who must bring the babies to be company for you."

"But, Manuel," said Niafer, dubiously, "I do not believe that the people
of Rathgor, or of Poictesme either, get their babies from the stork."

"Doubtless, like every country, they have their quaint local customs. We
have no concern, however with these provincialities just now, for we are
in Philistia. Besides, as you cannot well have forgotten, our main
dependence is upon the half-promised alliance with Queen Stultitia, who
is, as far as I can foresee, my darling, the only monarch anywhere
likely to support us."

"But what has Queen Stultitia to do with my having a baby?"

"Everything, dear snip. You must surely understand it is most important
for one in my position to avoid in any way offending the sensibilities
of the Philistines."

"Still, Manuel, the Philistines themselves have babies, and I do not see
how they could have conceivably objected to my having at any rate a very
small one if only you had made me right--"

"Not at all! nobody objects to the baby in itself, now that you are a
married woman. The point is that the babies of the Philistines are
brought to them by the stork; and that even an allusion to the
possibility of misguided persons obtaining a baby in any other way these
Philistines consider to be offensive and lewd and lascivious and
obscene."

"Why, how droll of them! But are you sure of that, Manuel!"

"All their best-thought-of and most popular writers, my dear, are
unanimous upon the point; and their Seranim have passed any number of
laws, their oil-merchants have founded a guild, especially to prosecute
such references. No, there is, to be sure, a dwindling sect which favors
putting up with what babies you may find in the cabbage patch, but all
really self-respecting people when in need of offspring arrange to be
visited by the stork."

"It is certainly a remarkable custom, but it sounds convenient if you
can manage it," said Niafer. "What I want is the baby, though, and of
course we must try to get the baby in the manner of the Philistines, if
you know that manner, for I am sure I have no wish to offend anybody."

So Manuel prepared to get a baby in the manner preferred by the
Philistines. He performed the suitable incantation, putting this and
that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witches
and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm from
the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, without
any mock-modest mincing of words:

Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit,
Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum
Quod faciundum erat cognoscere. Sic Domina Anser._

Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk and five
curious objects something like small black stars. With the chalk he drew
upon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel walked on one of
these chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned Niafer to him. Standing
there, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Then he placed the five
black stars in a row,--

* * * * *

--and went over to the next line.

The stork having been thus properly summoned, Manuel recalled to the
bird the three wishes which had been promised when Manuel saved the
stork's life: and Manuel said that for each wish he would take a son
fetched to him by the stork in the manner of the Philistines.

The stork thought it could be arranged. "Not this morning, though, as
you suggest, for, indebted as I am to you, Dom Manuel, I am also a very
busy bird. No, I have any number of orders that were put in months
before yours, and I must follow system in my business, for you have no
notion what elaborate and exact accounts are frequently required by the
married men that receive invoices from me."

"Come now," says Manuel, "do you be accommodating, remembering how I
once saved your life from the eagle, and my wife and I will order all
our babies now, and spare you the trouble of keeping any accounts
whatever, so far as we are concerned."

"Oh, if you care to deal with such wholesale irregularity, and have no
more consideration than to keep casting old debts in my bill, I might
stretch a point in order to be rid of you," the stork said, sighing.

"Now, but surely," Manuel considered, "you might be a little more
cheerful about this matter."

"And why should I, of all the birds that go about the heavens, be
cheerful?"

"Well, somehow one expects a reasonable gaiety in you who bring hilarity
and teething-rings into so many households--"

The stork answered:

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and therewith I,
they say, bring joy. Now of the joy I bring to the mother let none
speak, for miracles are not neatly to be caged in sentences, nor is
truth always expedient. To the father I bring the sight of his own life,
by him so insecurely held, renewed and strengthened in a tenement not
yet impaired by time and folly: he is no more disposed to belittle
himself here than elsewhere; and it is himself that he cuddles in this
small, soft, incomprehensible and unsoiled incarnation. For, as I bring
the children, they have no evil in them and no cowardice and no guile.

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, when later I
return, to those that yesterday were children. And in all ways time has
marred, and living has defaced, and prudence has maimed, until I grieve
to entrust that which I bring to what remains of that which yesterday I
brought. In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burning
god, but time affects more subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright.
Yes, Moloch, being divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but time
is that transfigured cat, an ironist. So living mars and defaces and
maims, and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its prey
before destroying it.

"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and I leave them
to endure that which is fated. Daily I bring into this world the beauty
and innocence and high-heartedness and faith of children: but life has
no employment, or else life has no sustenance, for these fine things
which I bring daily, for always I, returning, find the human usages of
living have extinguished these excellences in those who yesterday were
children, and that these virtues exist in no aged person. And I would
that Jahveh had created me an eagle or a vulture or some other hateful
bird of prey that furthers a less grievous slaying and a more
intelligible wasting than I further."

To this, Dom Manuel replied, in that grave and matter-of-fact way of
his: "Now certainly I can see how your vocation may seem, in a manner of
speaking, a poor investment; but, after all, your business is none of my
business, so I shall not presume to criticize it. Instead, let us avoid
these lofty generalities, and to you tell me when I may look for those
three sons of mine."

Then they talked over this matter of getting babies, Manuel walking on
the chalk line all the while, and Manuel found he could have, if he
preferred it so, three girls in place of one of the boys, since the
demand for sons was thrice that for daughters. To Niafer it was at once
apparent that to obtain five babies in place of three was a clear
bargain. Manuel said he did not want any daughters, they were too much
of a responsibility, and he did not intend to be bothered with them. He
was very firm and lordly about it. Then Niafer spoke again, and when she
had ended, Manuel wished for two boys and three girls. Thereafter the
stork subscribed five promissory notes, and they executed all the other
requisite formalities.

[Illustration: "SUMMONS THE STORK"]

The stork said that by a little management he could let them have one of
the children within a day or so. "But how long have you two been
married?" he asked.

"Oh, ever so long," said Manuel, with a faint sigh.

"Why, no, my dearest," said Niafer, "we have been married only seven
months."

"In that event," declared the stork, "you had better wait until month
after next, for it is not the fashion among my patrons to have me
visiting them quite so early."

"Well," said Manuel, "we wish to do everything in conformance to the
preferences of Philistia, even to the extent of following such
incomprehensible fashions." So he arranged to have the promised baby
delivered at Sargyll, which, he told the stork, would be their address
for the remainder of the summer.

[Illustration]



XXVII


They Come to Sargyll


Then Manuel and Niafer put out to sea, and after two days' voyaging they
came to Sargyll and to the hospitality of Queen Freydis. Freydis was
much talked about at that time on account of the way in which King
Thibaut had come to his ruin through her, and on account of her equally


 


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