befalls the man who is mean in buying such things. All that I have in
this world, save my land, is this horse and ten gold pieces and I give
them to thee, and I would I had more.” So I took his horse, but I gave
him two gold pieces for his journey as fare-gold, and so he went his
way.
‘But I rode on, unthinking and wondering whether I had done wisely, yet
hoping hard as did Gautrek when he fought the bear. When, following
a road, I came upon a horse which had been hard ridden, with bloody
sides. It seemed to be dying, and yet anon, a furlong further in the
woods, I found a noble knight, lying by a brook, who seemed in as evil
case as the horse, for he was sore-bruised and could hardly move, and
barely speak.
‘Then I asked him what it meant and he replied in pain:
‘“For two days I have fled before a band of foemen who will be here
anon. And they seek my life.”
‘Then I gave him to drink from thy flask, O master, and verily it was a
marvellous thing to behold how it revived him. For he rose up and said:
‘“Had I thy horse I might even yet escape. There are men who would
fight thee for it, but thou hast, I think, saved me with thy wine and
I will do naught in dishonour. But if thou lovest God and hast man’s
faith in truth, I pray thee lend me thy steed, and it will be no loss
to thee.”
‘As he spoke I heard far away a sound as of a mountain brook, and I
knew it was men riding at full speed, and as it became like a clatter
of hail and wind, I cried:
‘“Take another drink of wine and mount my horse in the names of Odin
and Christ, and ride for thy life!”
‘And he did, but paused to draw a ring from his finger and say:
‘“Three days’ ride to the west lies the castle of my father the Earl of
Ellaborne. If thou canst, carry to him what is in the mail on my horse.
Show him this ring, and repeat the word Truth three times.”
‘And with that he was off like an arrow and he had good cause to ride,
for ere I could have counted a hundred, there came a band of riders
fierce as wolves, who asked me if I had seen a knight pass that way.
Now they had not seen the foundered horse, for they came by another
path. And not being minded that they should slay the knight, I delayed
them while I could, giving them to drink, and then showed them the
wrong road, for between a lie and a die, or a man’s life, there’s short
choice.
‘Now when I returned to the horse, I, being somewhat learned in such
matters, found him in better case than I deemed. And having poured wine
down his throat, and cared for him, and given him rest, he was soon in
good case to ride. And there was in the mails much gold, and certain
parchments which I had lore enough to discern were great state matters
for the king, and I saw that I had come into affairs of life and death
for all the land.
‘And minding the proverb: “He must be a thin blade who would slip
between great stones,” I went by the loneliest ways, in dark valleys
and woodlands wild, till I got to Ellaborne Castle. And there was
mourning and all were in dire distress, weeping and heart-sunken,
because the old lord had heard his son was slain. But when I arrived
with the horse, which was known to all, there was mighty to-do, and
great questioning, but I spoke word to none, till I was brought before
the great earl, and it was pitiful to see how broken and sorrowful he
seemed.
‘“And thou hast come to prove to me that my son was truly slain, hast
thou not,” he inquired, “since thou hast brought his horse?”
‘“Nay,” I replied, “by Odin and Frey who brings fortune! I know he
escaped alive and well, for when I last saw him he was galloping away
on a safe road, mounted on the best steed in Northumbria, with his
pursuers on the wrong track.
‘“Man!” cried the earl, “if what thou sayest be sooth, and if thou
didst aid him to escape, and saved his life, then, by God’s glory, thou
shalt have castle and lands--if thou canst prove it.”
‘“For the proof, O my lord,” I answered, “here are the papers and gold.”
‘“Ah, the papers!” cried the earl. “By the splendour of the Virgin,
though I love my son better than my own life, I had liefer he had
died than that those papers had been found by the enemy. What is thy
name?--Eadward--know that this day thou hast saved England!”
“‘The proof, my lord,” I said, as I gave him the ring, “is this--and
the words, _Truth, Truth, Truth_! And know of a truth, for I will swear
it in any shrine, that I did not save thy son’s life for gold, or fee,
or aught promised or hoped for, save the price of my horse, nor would I
have stuck at that to keep a goodly knight from being murdered.”
‘“True as gold art thou,” said the old lord, “and of good blood, for
now I know thou art the grandson of Aeolfric, who was noble, but poor
as he was learned.”
‘Then he heard the whole tale from me and said:
‘“Thou hast this day built up the fortune of thy house. And if the king
do not raise thee to honour, I will.”
‘But the king treated me nobly, and the end thereof was that I am a
belted knight, and lord of castles and broad lands, for I went into the
war, and fate favoured me, and now I have wealth and fame. And I have
wedded a niece of the Earl of Ellaborne, whom I love better for herself
than for her possessions. All of which, Master, I owe to thee; and
thanks are all I can give to such a mighty master of fate as thou art,
but if I could give thee my life I would.’
‘I believe thee, my son,’ replied Flaxius. ‘But what became of the
young earl?’
‘He saved himself, and we are now as brothers. Yea,’ he continued
with a smile, ‘to him alone have I confided the holy secret of the
Miraculous Bottle.’
‘God-a-mercy,’ exclaimed Flaxius; ‘’tis well there’s not a headache in
a hogshead of it, else I trow ye had toped yourselves into Hela, or up
to Valhall. To fancy two young Norse-Saxons with an unlimited well of
wine is terrible!
‘But, let us drink!’
* * * * *
‘_Hæc fabula docet_--this fable teaches,’ annotated the master, ‘a
marked moral lesson, which is greatly needed at this present day, and
which no man has as yet taught. It befell about thirty years ago, when
people began to doubt the ancient doctrine of so much pudding here on
earth for so much piety, always punctually paid, that divers young
scape-graces of the press, who wished to appear, as Verdant Greens
always do, interestingly wicked and sceptical, began to write _comicas
fabulas_ or merry tales, wherein the little good boys all came to
grief; as, for instance, how Master Benjamin Benevolence gave his penny
to an old nigger and earned a whipping from his mother for so doing.’
These writers left out of sight the great fact, that, because there may
not be a Moral Providence which keeps a book account to a farthing with
all mortals, it still by no means follows that there is no decency,
honour, or honesty, or moral retribution left among mankind, as their
immensely funny tales would lead the heedless to believe. For, bad
as this world may be, there are still gentlemen extant, in dealing
with whom the current moral standards of Mark Lane, Houndsditch, Wall
Street, the Stock Exchange, and similar dens of sharps and sharks may
well be laid aside. There are still men who reciprocate generosity
with generosity, and the ‘devilish shrewd’ fellow is to them a natural
object of aversion. Because they know that he who cannot be _done_ will
infallibly _do_ his best friend in the long run; and the man who is
cheat-proof is a miraculous exception if he be not a cheat himself. In
short, that it is more creditable to be taken in than to take others
in, the which statement, when made by me to a young lady from Toronto,
was received with the astonished remark, ‘Well, that _is_ a new idea!’
Now it befell the young hero of this tale, or Eadward, to have to
deal with only honest or honourable men, and he did exactly what was
right under every circumstance, the result being that he was promptly
rewarded, showing that virtue is not always punished, as current
literature inculcates. And if there were one hundredth part of the
pains taken to teach youth the vast superiority of honour to wealth,
which there is to stimulate them to acquire the latter, then we should
indeed find far more gentlemen in the world, and, in due proportion,
due reward for decency. And there is many a millionaire who would give
half his money to be a gentleman, a man of true honesty and nobility of
soul; but there was never yet one who was truly of the latter who would
exchange aught with the former. For whatever the vast multitude of
howling cads may think, the gentleman is the superior in that in which
he _ought_ to excel; and this superiority or moral mastery is better
worth having than carriages, opera-box, and a fashionable family,--who
wish you were dead for your money.
And this lesson--that there may be circumstances in life when the sharp
game is not the best, and when the very shrewdest would come to grief,
unless guided by natural generosity and nobility--deserves to be deeply
studied by the world in general, and sharp Americans in particular, to
judge by my personal experiences of both.
And I would that the novelist and literary man, and all who write
for the public, would teach this thing in spirit and in truth, if
they can with real sympathy, and not go on for ever as most--ay, the
very utmost of the most do--preaching it in a formal, listless, ‘be
virtuous and you will be happy’ way, while they depict the advantages
of wealth and the merest mammon varnished with fashion and style,
with all the gush and fire and power of art which they possess. But a
book written with earnestness, setting forth _genially_ that _honneur
passe richesse_, is as yet among the curiosities, yea, the _rariora_
of literature. There is indeed no lack of authors who say this thing,
and who think perhaps they mean it; but they do not send it home to the
heart, nor prove it, nor illustrate it, so as to awaken in the mind of
the reader a deep sympathy for honour as compared to wealth. No, not
one, as they should and perhaps could do.
For it does not occur to you, O dearly beloved, that all these infinite
scenes of flirtation in Belgravia or Cameliadom, showing how She would,
and then wouldn’t, and then was _incomprise_, and anon capricious or
top-lofty-minded, or interesting and mysterious-miserable, and how He,
_pauvre malheureux_! with his gnawed moustachios and dreadful devotion,
are all nothing but the direct results of too much money and its
consequent idleness or _ennui_. And the other ways of plot-making, and
interesting the reader, are, with few exceptions indeed, all cakes from
the same dough. Therefore am I reminded of the French author’s recipe
for a novel: ‘_Commencez toujours avec un million_.’
And as it seems to me that literature for the multitude can hardly sink
lower than it has done into this swamp of wealth of late years, I have
hope that it will ere long begin to rise.
FLAXIUS AND ASMODEUS
Out of mere mischief and mockery grew evil, even as Loki from playing
boyish tricks became the devil. To do evil is one thing, to study and
understand it is another, but in all ages men have confused the two.
’TWAS on a Syrian summer afternoon, therefore a warm one, that Flaxius
sat in the silent solitude of a ruined city of most ancient days, in
Midian, a place wherein the satyr has not even yet met the English
tourist, nor the Egipani, or demons of the lonely wildnesses, been
called to stand and deliver statistics to the German _savant_.
He sat on a wedge-inscripted stone, about a young bird’s flight from
what had been of yore a purple-lined palace of sweet sin, but so
tremendous in its majesty, even in decay and decency, that the sternest
Puritan who ever iconoclasted a cathedral would have thought twice ere
ravishing this House of Baal.
‘Beauty,’ said Flaxius, ‘may be its own excuse for being--very
naughty--but grandeur, even when touching in its old decay, is more
than an excuse; it is a vindication for the sins, however great, of all
who are possessed of it. And they were great in glory and splendour!
How great the men were who dwelt here in the olden golden time! and how
little idea has any man on earth in this age of small things, of what
it was to live in greatness, though it were in great delusions.’
As he said this--’twas in the first dimness of twilight--a breeze began
to stir the palms and he heard the hoot of an owl, which was re-echoed
far and far away by the monotonous and much more unmusical song of some
Arab peasant at his plough.
‘I would like to know,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘whether the song of the owl
portends the death of that _peasant_ or the song of the peasant the
death of the owl? Methinks the owl has the worst of it, for the
ploughman hoots fifty per cent. more horribly. Now, of the nine
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine divinations invented by Kai
Umarat, the first of the Magi, and first born of Adam, can I not find
one here at hand to settle the weighty question?’
As he said this, while idly digging in the sand with his staff, he
struck something hard, which shining, seemed to be of bronze. The sage
picked it up and found he had unearthed an axe of the richest and
deepest green _patina_.
‘Just the thing,’ thought Flaxius. ‘Thou comest, as Germans say, “unto
the call.” It was by Axiomancy or the balanced axe that the ancients
were wont to decide a question--halfpence to toss not having been
then invented; and I can bear Pliny out in his assertion that the
game was extremely fashionable. In neolithic days they drew a circle,
bisected it with a line, put the _kelt_ in the middle, and made it
spin, inferring from the way it pointed when at rest whether Yes or
No had been vouchsafed. The thing still exists as a little game among
American Red Indians. They spun on their axes, _unde nomen derivatur_.
The Romans hung the hatchet with a cord; and if I remember aright,
Francesco della Torre Biana[2] declares that the fall of Jerusalem was
thus predicted. I wonder who predicted it?’
Whether it was from the ground, or the tombs, or the ruins, or the
great palm-tree was not apparent, but there was heard a hollow sound
like no earthly voice, but a sound as of wings. There was a mocking
tone in it which said:
‘_I_, with that axe which thou holdest in thy hand.’
‘And who in the name of Desolation art _thou_ who dwellest here in
solitude?’ inquired Flaxius.
And the voice replied:
‘Aschmodai.’
‘What! Asmodeus, the Devil on two Sticks! Well, old friend, I was a
fool to put the question, for I now remember (and Wierus has said it)
that thou art the demon of all games and gambling. I would fain see
thee again. What ho, _Chammadai!_ _Sidonai!_ _Aschmodai_, appear! In
the name of thy master Am-oimon!’
‘Thou forgettest,’ replied the Voice, more mockingly than before, ‘that
according to the _Pseudomonarchia Dæmonum_, he who invokes Asmodeus
must stand firmly on his legs and call loudly.’
‘Well,’ replied the Magian, ‘I am seated firmly _sur mon séant_, which
will do just as well, _sans cérémonie_ among old friends, and since
thou hearest me it is loud enough. Come forth, I say!’
And, lo! there came forth from the doorway of the ruined temple an
unearthly form, in appearance awful and appalling, but so strangely
mingled with the grotesque, a demon with the laughing nightmare, that
the wisdom of this our age, and all its art of pen or pencil would have
failed to depict it.
It paused in silence, seeming like a statue, and when the Magian
himself spoke, it was not in words but with Thought to the arch-demon
of delusion and of mockery:
‘I see thee as thou art, O Spirit, who wert once mighty to impose on
man in so many forms, O stupendous scarecrow of the past, and its
jester withal, for the day is well-nigh gone by when mankind at large
can grasp thy paradoxes! Yea, they are rapidly becoming a vexation, or
a bore, or a trifle, as the idol of the past becomes the nursery toy of
the present.
‘Truly, there was a time when Dante and Milton and many more were,
to every word, living truths for all who read them, and the form was
animated with the idea. Now, the Inferno burns no more, Pandemonium
and Theism and Satan are all mere senile fables. What remains is the
art of the poet--nothing more--a beautiful, petrified figure--very
beautiful--but--dead. And thy spirit, O Daemon, in its best meaning,
still lives in Aristophanes and Shakespeare and Chaucer, and Rabelais
and Villon; but the comprehension of it is dying--dying fast, O
Daemon!--and ere long they too will be petrifactions, wearing indeed
the outward semblance of what they were, but from them life will be
gone. Men think that they still enjoy the poet in spirit and in truth,
but what they really enjoy is only their own criticisms and sense of
vain intelligence--and with _that_ the signs of death begin. For where
intelligence and self-knowledge awaken, feeling for that which is
without us ceases. It was never meant that man should enjoy at once the
two extremes of pleasure--even as the Catholic moral casuist determined
that man could not combine the extreme of passionate love with the holy
sweetness of relationship. Yes, the humour and absurdity, and wild
contrast which was the deepest problem in human nature, become before
criticism a poor shadowy thing. And thus endeth the first lesson. Let
me look a while longer into thy eyes, O Daemon, and find a second.’
And yet anon to Flaxius, as he gazed on the form, it was as if he were
looking through some wondrous arch into a Vanity fairy-land, and,
advancing, saw at every step newer and stranger arches, richly and
wildly adorned; through which, as in a marvellous vista, he beheld
Infernos, Paradises, Fiddler’s Greens, Edens, Tom Tiddler’s grounds,
convents. These he knew were lupanars, witch-burnings at which holy men
sang hymns to God, martyrdoms for smoke, or the toss of a farthing,
millions killed in battles for quarrels about things which had no
existence, men and women tortured to death for not believing in nothing
but a farce--ages following ages, all mad with lies against Nature.
And busy in it all was the spirit Aschmodai or Asmodeus, whose business
it is on earth to turn chance to mischief, to inspire all the manias
and follies and delusions which make men fools in every way, and awaken
in them vanity and error. And it was no wonder that, as he beheld him,
something like a vision or a song swept through the soul of Flaxius.
For this was He
‘Who grappled once with mighty Solomon,
And cast him from his throne, and then in turn
Was fettered heavily and made to work
On the great temple of Jerusalem,
To which he gave its last magnificence
Beyond the monarch’s hope, yet jeered at all;
Yea, at his chains as at his victory;
And who, as he was borne in fetters thus,
When all men deemed him sunk in deep despair,
Burst out a-laughing. “Wherefore art thou glad?”
Inquired a sage. He answered, “Lo, I laughed,
Because I saw a conjurer in the street,
Who promised unto all his dupes to tell
Where buried treasure lay, yet never knew
That such a treasure lay beneath his feet,
Even as he spoke during his conjuring.”
He too it was of old who tempted Job:
Nay, there are Rabbis who maintain to-day
’Twas he who as the Serpent tempted Eve,
Not out of evil but from mockery,
Deeming the Tree and all a mighty joke,
The farce primæval, out of which has grown
A thousand-farcèd series which men call
The History of Man--which were indeed
A mighty jest to devils, as the frogs
Were to the boys of old--and might be too
Unto the baratrachians, were not
The pebbles which are cast, so sharp and large,
Yes, in a thousand times ten thousand forms,
As mocking devil, or as god supreme,
Asmodeus is known unto the world.’
‘Do not forget,’ said Asmodeus, ‘my last--albeit my weakest and most
stagey and shallow incarnation--the Mephistopheles of Goethe. Yet he
made me say one good thing, when I call myself, “_der Geist der stets
verneint_.” Do you know what _verneint_ means?--for if you do, you know
more than most folk.’
‘I opine,’ said Flaxius, ‘that it means “denies.”’
‘That, and something more,’ laughed Asmodeus. ‘_Verneinen_ meant,
of yore, also to enchant, conjure, bewitch, or humbug. _C’est mon
métier_, I cast a spell on every work of man, and make thereof in time
a mockery--all mockery is denial in the end--denial is the bringing all
to naught.’
‘Truly, from thy point of view thou hast seen rare jests in thy time,
Aschmodai,’ said Flaxius. ‘A history of the world, written by thee,
with comments, would be amusing reading--as would the review thereof in
the _Presbyterian_--and I could find it in my heart to wish a plague on
ye both, did I not know that there are some grains of truth between ye.’
‘Ay, I should catch it hot beyond a doubt,’ replied Asmodeus, ‘for the
less intellect a man has the more he believes in it, and is therefore
the more furious with those who mock the sublime wisdom in whose army
he is a corporal. But what thinkest thou, Flaxius, of Thought?’
‘I read not long ago,’ replied the Sage, ‘an essay by a
she-philosopher, who said that as we ever deeper go into the subtlest
mystery of things, the more impossible it still becomes _not_ to
perceive an action as of mind, working co-relative with natural law.
The good girl left out of sight the small fact that thought and natural
law may be one in Nirvana. It is a marvellous, apparent law that man is
not allowed to solve the problem as yet; could he do so he would settle
down into superstition or atheism--both unprogressive.’
‘Ay,’ quoth Asmodeus, ‘thought and natural law now carry one
another alternately. See the boys in Florence when they play at
_scaricabarile_. One boy, back to back with a rival, locks arms with
him, and so they lift each other up and down.[3] ’Tis a game much
resembling polemics, because in it both of the combatants--whether
lifting or lifted--appear by turns ridiculous.’
‘Ah, well,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it is a vigorous game, and developes
muscle, as does all struggling. Out of peaceful parthenogenesis and
idleness, starvation, and the struggle for life, evolve energy and male
strength, intellect, and will. But, Aschmodai, what thinkest thou more
of Thought.’
‘Though I was one of the very first thoughts ever thought, if not the
first itself, as many think,’ replied the Spirit, ‘the answer to that
question is still unto me a mystery. Yet as we see that in life the
crystal precedes the flower, or organic growth, monsters come before
man, Egyptian pyramids before Greek and Gothic grace, barbarism before
enlightenment, so do I deem that natural law preceded thought and
involuntary action will, which was first, creatingness or a creator.
With the first motion in matter came the first act, in the unorganic
the organic was born;--but how this was it knew not, nor do we know,
O my Flaxius, for truly there is an immense amount of things which it
would be better for man to look after before he afflicts his small
soul with the problem of the egg and the hen. But so long as man shall
make a fool of himself, either as atheist, theist, or agnostic waiting
to see how the fight will turn, so that he, the Mugwump of faith, may
join the conqueror--even so long shall I, Aschmodai, live in glory and
triumph. This trinity has been my very life, even as alchemy drew from
the spirit of the three its _elixir vitæ_. And mighty have been the
mockeries and many the jests which I have drawn from it, nor is the
merriment as yet quite o’er--albeit I know that I am perishing--and
passing with the Triad fast away. Oh, it was glorious to behold the
Jew--the original inventor of man’s vilest vanity, Chauvinism or
national pride, who first created religious oppression, and believed
with Rabbi Jochanan that, “as the best of serpents deserves to have
its head crushed, so the best of Gentiles ought to be killed”--’tis
sweet, I say, to live to hear him raise the martyr’s cry, even as
the Pope is now raising it--“the po-oo-r Pope”--as a prisoner in the
Vatican! Then were the discoverers of the art of Martyrdom avenged
by seeing the humblest among them made the gods of the oppressors;
and so Men all rolled on into time, burning and torturing millions,
especially old women, for the love of Him whose one great doctrine
was mercy, charity, love, and sweetness. Then there were revolts of
the oppressed, and peasants’ wars and gladiators’ revolts, and French
Revolutions--alternate black and white--and in it all hell throve, and
I laughed.’
‘But thou art dying.’