THE
CREAM
OF THE
JEST
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=BOOKS BY MR. CABELL=
NOVELS:
THE CREAM OF THE JEST
THE SOUL OF MELICENT
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER’S NECK
THE CORDS OF VANITY
THE EAGLE’S SHADOW
TALES:
THE CERTAIN HOUR
CHIVALRY
THE LINE OF LOVE
GALLANTRY
VERSES:
FROM THE HIDDEN WAY
GENEALOGIES:
BRANCH OF ABINGDON
BRANCHIANA
THE MAJORS AND THEIR MARRIAGES
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[Illustration]
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THE
CREAM
OF THE
JEST
═══════════════
A Comedy of Evasions
═══════════════
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
“_Le pays où je voulais aller, tu m’y as mené en songe, cette nuit, et
tu étais belle ... ah! que tu étais belle!... Mais, comme je n’ai aimé
que ton ombre, tu me dispenseras, chère tête, de remercier ta réalité._”
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1917
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+Copyright, 1917, by+
ROBERT M. MCBRIDE & CO.
─────────
─────────
Published September, 1917
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
LOUISA NELSON
“_At me ab amore tuo diducet
nulla senectus._”
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Contents
BOOK FIRST
I INTRODUCES THE AGELESS WOMAN 3
II WHEREIN A CLERK APPRAISES A 11
FAIR COUNTRY
III OF THE DOUBLE-DEALER’S TRAFFIC 15
WITH A KNAVE
IV HOW THE DOUBLE-DEALER WAS OF 19
TWO MINDS
V TREATS OF MAUGIS D’AIGREMONT’S 23
POTTAGE
VI JOURNEYS END: WITH THE 26
CUSTOMARY UNMASKING
BOOK SECOND
I OF A TRIFLE FOUND IN TWILIGHT 37
II BEYOND USE AND WONT FARES THE 40
ROAD TO STORISENDE
III OF IDLE SPECULATIONS IN A 49
LIBRARY
IV HOW THERE WAS A LIGHT IN THE 55
FOG
V OF PUBLISHING: WITH AN 61
UNLIKELY APPENDIX
VI SUGGESTING THEMES OF UNIVERSAL 72
APPEAL
VII PECULIAR CONDUCT OF A 80
PERSONAGE
VIII OF VAIN REGRET AND WONDER IN 93
THE DARK
BOOK THIRD
I THEY COME TO A HIGH PLACE 103
II OF THE SIGIL AND ONE USE OF IT 107
III TREATS OF A PRELATE AND, IN 110
PART, OF PIGEONS
IV LOCAL LAWS OF NEPHELOCOCCYGIA 118
V OF DIVERS FLESHLY RIDDLES 125
VI IN PURSUIT OF A WHISPER 130
VII OF TRUISMS: TREATED REASONABLY 136
BOOK FOURTH
I ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS OF 143
PIETY
II DEALS WITH PEN SCRATCHES 150
III BY-PRODUCTS OF RATIONAL 156
ENDEAVOR
IV “EPPER SI MUOVE” 163
V EVOLUTION OF A VESTRYMAN 172
BOOK FIFTH
I OF POETIC LOVE: TREATED WITH 195
POETIC INEFFICIENCY
II CROSS-PURPOSES IN SPACIOUS 210
TIMES
III HORVENDILE TO ETTARRE: AT 217
WHITEHALL
IV HORVENDILE TO ETTARRE: AT 222
VAUX-LE-VICOMTE
V HORVENDILE TO ETTARRE: IN THE 226
CONCIERGERIE
VI OF ONE ENIGMA THAT THREATENED 232
TO PROVE ALLEGORICAL
VII TREATS OF WITCHES, MIXED 239
DRINKS, AND THE WEATHER
BOOK SIXTH
I SUNDRY DISCLOSURES OF THE 249
PRESS
II CONSIDERATIONS TOWARD SUNSET 254
III ONE WAY OF ELUSION 258
IV PAST STORISENDE FARES THE ROAD 262
OF USE AND WONT
V WHICH MR. FLAHERTY DOES NOT 269
QUITE EXPLAIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface
MUCH has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the
disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary
writers; and Mr. Froser’s _Biography_ contains all it is necessary to
know as to the facts of Kennaston’s life. Yet most readers of the
_Biography_, I think, must have felt that the great change in Kennaston
no long while after he “came to forty year”—this sudden, almost
unparalleled, conversion of a talent for tolerable verse into the
full-fledged genius of _Men Who Loved Alison_—stays, after all,
unexplained....
Hereinafter you have Kennaston’s own explanation. I do not know but that
in hunting down one enigma it raises a bevy; but it, at worst, tells
from his standpoint honestly how this change came about.
You are to remember that the tale is pieced together, in part from
social knowledge of the man, and in part from the notes I made as to
what Felix Kennaston in person told me, bit by bit, a year or two after
events the tale commemorates. I had known the Kennastons for some while,
with that continual shallow intimacy into which chance forces most
country people with their near neighbors, before Kennaston ever spoke
of—as he called the thing—the sigil. And, even then, it was as if with
negligence he spoke, telling of what happened—or had appeared to
happen—and answering my questions, with simply dumbfounding personal
unconcern. It all seemed indescribably indecent: and I marveled no
little, I can remember, as I took my notes....
Now I can understand it was just that his standard of values was no
longer ours nor really human. You see—it hardly matters through how
dependable an agency—Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of
flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that
especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any
particular importance.
But to tell of his thoughts, is to anticipate. Hereinafter you have them
full measure and, such as it is, his story. You must permit that I begin
it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff. For I
commence at Storisende, in the world’s youth, when the fourth Count
Emmerick reigned in Poictesme, having not yet blundered into the
disfavor of his papal cousin Adrian VII.... With such roundabout gambits
alone can some of us approach—as one fancy begets another, if you
will—to proud assurance that life is not a blind and aimless business;
not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that we ourselves may
(by-and-by) be strong and excellent and wise.
Such, in any event, is the road that Kennaston took, and such the goal
to which he was conducted. So, with that goal in view, I also begin
where he began, and follow whither the dream led him. Meanwhile, I can
but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human
dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.
RICHARD FENTNOR HARROWBY.
_Montevideo 14 April 1917._
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_Book First_
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“Give place, fair ladies, and begone,
Ere pride hath had a fall!
For here at hand approacheth one
Whose grace doth stain you all.
“Ettarre is well compared
Unto the Phœnix kind,
Whose like was never seen or heard,
That any man can find.”
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I
Introduces the Ageless Woman
THE tale tells how Count Emmerick planned a notable marriage-feast for
his sister La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des Rocques. The tale relates
that, in honor of this wedding, came from Nacumera, far oversea, Count
Emmerick’s elder sister Dame Melicent and her husband the Comte de la
Forêt, with an outlandish retinue of pagan slaves that caused great
wonder. All Poictesme took holiday. The tale narrates how from Naimes to
Lisuarte, and in the wild hill-country back of Perdigon, knights made
ready for the tournament, traveling toward Storisende in gay silken
garments such as were suited to these new times of peace. The highways
in those parts shone with warriors, riding in companies of six or eight,
wearing mantles worked in gold, and mounted upon valuable horses that
glittered with new bits and housings. And the tale tells, also, how they
came with horns sounding before them.
Ettarre watched from the turrets of Storisende, pensively. Yet she was
happy in these days. “Indeed, there is now very little left this side of
heaven for you to desire, madame,” said Horvendile the clerk, who stood
beside her at his service.
“No, there is nothing now which troubles me, Horvendile, save the
thought of Maugis d’Aigremont. I cannot ever be sure of happiness so
long as that man lives.”
“So, so!” says Horvendile—“ah, yes, a master-villain, that! He is foiled
for the present, and in hiding, nobody knows where; but I, too, would
not wonder should he be contriving some new knavery. Say what you may,
madame, I cannot but commend his persistency, however base be his
motives; and in the forest of Bovion, where I rescued you from his
clutches, the miscreant spoke with a hellish gusto that I could have
found it in my heart to admire.”
Ettarre had never any liking for this half-scoffing kind of talk, to
which the clerk was deplorably prone. “You speak very strangely at
times, Horvendile. Wickedness cannot ever be admirable; and to praise
it, even in jest, cannot but be displeasing to the Author of us all.”
“Eh, madame, I am not so sure of that. Certainly, the Author of those
folk who have figured thus far in your history has not devoted His
talents to creating perfect people.”
She wondered at him, and showed as much in the big blue eyes which had
troubled so many men’s sleep. “Since time began, there has lived no
nobler person or more constant lover than my lord Guiron.”
“Oh, yes, Sir Guiron, I grant you, is very nearly immaculate,” said
Horvendile; and he yawned.
“My friend, you have always served him faithfully. We two cannot ever
forget how much we have owed in the past to your quick wits and shrewd
devices. Yet now your manner troubles me.”
Dame Ettarre spoke the truth, for, knowing the man to be unhappy—and
suspecting the reason of his unhappiness, too—she would have comforted
him; but Horvendile was not in a confiding mood. Whimsically he says:
“Rather, it is I who am troubled, madame. For envy possesses me, and a
faint teasing weariness also possesses me, because I am not as Sir
Guiron, and never can be. Look you, they prepare your wedding-feast now,
your former sorrows are stingless; and to me, who have served you
through hard seasons of adversity, it is as if I had been reading some
romance, and had come now to the last page. Already you two grow
shadowy; and already I incline to rank Sir Guiron and you, madame, with
Arnaud and Fregonde, with Palmerin and Polinarda, with Gui and
Floripas—with that fair throng of noted lovers whose innocuous mishaps
we follow with pleasant agitation, and whom we dismiss to eternal
happiness, with smiling incredulity, as we turn back to a workaday
world. For it is necessary now that I return to my own country, and
there I shall not ever see you any more.”
Ettarre, in common with the countryside, knew the man hopelessly loved
her; and she pitied him to-day beyond wording. Happiness is a famed
breeder of magnanimity. “My poor friend, we must get you a wife. Are
there no women in your country?”
“Ah, but there is never any woman in one’s own country whom one can
love, madame,” replies Horvendile shrewdly. “For love, I take it, must
look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite
understood. Now, I have been so unfortunate as to find the women of my
country lacking in reticence. I know their opinions concerning
everything—touching God and God’s private intentions, and touching me,
and the people across the road—and how these women’s clothes are
adjusted, and what they eat for breakfast, and what men have kissed
them: there is no room for illusion anywhere. Nay, more: I am familiar
with the mothers of these women, and in them I see quite plainly what
these women will be some twenty years from this morning; there is not
even room for hope. Ah, no, madame; the women of my country are the
pleasantest of comrades, and the helpfullest of wives: but I cannot
conceal it from myself that, after all, they are only human beings; and
therefore it has never been possible for me to love any one of them.”
“And am I not, then, a human being, poor Horvendile?”
There was a tinge of mischief in the query; but beauty very often makes
for lightheadedness, both in her that has and in him that views it; nor
between Ind and Thule was there any lovelier maid than Ettarre. Smiling
she awaited his answer; the sunlight glorified each delicate clarity of
color in her fair face, and upon her breast gleamed the broken sigil of
Scoteia, that famed talisman which never left her person. “And am I not,
then, a human being?” says she.
Gravely Horvendile answered: “Not in my eyes, madame. For you embody all
that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange
purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count
Emmerick’s third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving
woman long worshiped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets.”
Horvendile meditated for a while. “Assuredly, it was you of whom blind
Homer dreamed, comforting endless night with visions of your beauty, as
you sat in a bright fragrant vaulted chamber weaving at a mighty loom,
and embroidering on tapestry the battles men were waging about Troy
because of your beauty; and very certainly it was to you that Hermes
came over fields of violets and parsley, where you sang magic rhymes,
sheltered by an island cavern, in which cedar and citron-wood were
burning—and, calling you Calypso, bade you release Odysseus from the
spell of your beauty. Sophocles, too, saw you bearing an ewer of bronze,
and treading gingerly among gashed lamentable corpses, lest your loved
dead be dishonored; and Sophocles called you Antigonê, praising your
valor and your beauty. And when men named you Bombyca, Theocritus also
sang of your grave drowsy voice and your feet carven of ivory, and of
your tender heart and all your honey-pale sweet beauty.”
“I do not remember any of these troubadours you speak of, my poor
Horvendile; but I am very certain that if they were poets they, also,
must in their time have talked a great deal of nonsense.”
“And as Mark’s Queen,” says Horvendile, intent on his conceit, “you
strayed with Tristran in the sunlit glades of Morois, that high forest,
where many birds sang full-throated in the new light of spring; as
Medeia you fled from Colchis; and as Esclairmonde you delivered Huon
from the sardonic close wiles of heathenry, which to you seemed
childish. All poets have had these fitful glimpses of you, Ettarre, and
of that perfect beauty which is full of troubling reticences, and so, is
somehow touched with something sinister. Now all these things I likewise
see in you, Ettarre; and therefore, for my own sanity’s sake, I dare not
concede that you are a human being.”
The clerk was very much in earnest. Ettarre granted that, insane as his
talk seemed to her; and the patient yearning in his eyes was not
displeasing to Ettarre. Her hand touched his cheek, quickly and lightly,
like the brush of a bird’s wing.
“My poor Horvendile, you are in love with fantasies. There was never any
lady such as you dream of.” Then she left him.
But Horvendile remained at the parapet, peering out over broad rolling
uplands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Wherein a Clerk Appraises a Fair Country
HORVENDILE peered out over broad rolling uplands.... He viewed a noble
country, good to live in, rich with grain and metal, embowered with tall
forests, and watered by pleasant streams. Walled cities it had, and
castles crowned its eminencies. Very far beneath Horvendile the leaded
roofs of these fortresses glittered in sunlight, for Storisende guards
the loftiest part of the province.
And the people of this land—from its lords of the high, the low, and the
middle justice, to the sturdy whining beggars at its cathedral
doors—were not all unworthy of this fair realm. Undoubtedly, it was a
land, as Horvendile whimsically reflected, wherein human nature kept its
first dignity and strength; and wherein human passions were never in a
poor way to find expression with adequate speech and action.
Now, from the field below, a lark rose singing joyously. Straight into
the air it rose, and was lost in the sun’s growing brilliance; but you
could hear its singing; and then, as suddenly, the bird dropped to
earth. No poet could resist embroidery on such a text.
Began Horvendile straightway: “_Quan vey la laudeta mover_”—or in other
wording:
“When I behold the skylark move in perfect joy toward its love the sun,
and, growing drunk with joy, forget the use of wings, so that it topples
from the height of heaven, I envy the bird’s fate. I, too, would taste
that ruinous mad moment of communion, there in heaven, and my heart
dissolves in longing.
“Ailas! how little do I know of love!—I, who was once deluded by the
conceit that I was all-wise in love. For I am unable to put aside desire
for a woman whom I must always love in vain. She has bereft me of hope.
She has robbed me of my heart, of herself, and of all joy in the world,
and she has left me nothing save dreams and regrets.
“Never have I been able to recover my full senses since that moment when
she first permitted me to see myself mirrored in her bright eyes. Hey,
fatal mirrors! which flattered me too much! for I have sighed ever since
I beheld my image in you. I have lost myself in you, like Narcissus in
his fountain.”
Thus he lamented, standing alone among the turrets of Storisende. Now a
troop of jongleurs was approaching the castle—gay dolls, jerked by
invisible wires, the vagabonds seemed to be, from this height.
“More merry-makers for the marriage-feast. We must spare no appropriate
ceremony. And yonder Count Emmerick is ordering the major-domo to
prepare peacocks stuffed with beccaficoes, and a pastry builded like a
palace. Hah, my beautiful fantastic little people, that I love and play
with, and dispose of just as I please, it is time your master shift
another puppet.”
So Horvendile descended, still poetizing: “_Pus ab mi dons no m pot
valer_”—or in other wording:
“Since nothing will avail to move my lady—not prayers or righteous
claims or mercy—and she desires my homage now no longer, I shall have
nothing more to say of love. I must renounce love, and abjure it
utterly. I must regard her whom I love as one no longer living. I must,
in fine, do that which I prepare to do; and afterward I must depart into
eternal exile.”
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III
Of the Double-Dealer’s Traffic With a Knave
HORVENDILE left the fortress, and came presently to Maugis d’Aigremont.
Horvendile got speech with this brigand where he waited encamped in the
hill-country of Perdigon, loth to leave Storisende since it held Ettarre
whom he so much desired, but with too few adherents to venture an
attack.
Maugis sprawled listless in his chair, wrapped in a mantle of soiled and
faded green stuff, as though he were cold. In his hand was a naked
sword, with which moodily he was prodding the torn papers scattered
about him. He did not move at all, but his somber eyes lifted.
“What do you plan now, Horvendile?”
“Treachery, messire.”
“It is the only weapon of you scribblers. How will it serve me?”
Then Horvendile spoke. Maugis sat listening. Above the swordhilt the
thumb of one hand was stroking the knuckles of the other carefully. His
lean and sallow face stayed changeless.
Says Maugis: “It is a bold stroke—yes. But how do I know it is not some
trap for me?”
Horvendile shrugged, and asked: “Have I not served you constantly in the
past, messire?”
“You have suggested makeshifts very certainly. And to a pretty pass they
have brought me! Here I roost like a starved buzzard, with no recreation
save to watch the turrets of Storisende on clear afternoons.”
“Where Ettarre prepares to marry Sir Guiron,” Horvendile prompted.
“I think of that.... She is very beautiful, is she not, Horvendile? And
she loves this stately kindly fool who carries his fair head so high and
has no reason to hide anything from her. Yes, she is very beautiful,
being created perfect by divine malice that she might be the ruin of
men. So I loved her: and she did not love me, because I was not worthy
of her love. And Guiron is in all things worthy of her. I cannot ever
pardon him that, Horvendile.”
“And I am pointing out a way, messire, by which you may reasonably hope
to deal with Sir Guiron—ho, and with the Counts Emmerick and Perion, and
with Ettarre also—precisely as you elect.”
Then Maugis spoke wearily. “I must trust you, I suppose. But I have no
lively faith in my judgments nowadays. I have played fast and loose with
too many men, and the stench of their blood is in my nostrils, drugging
me. I move in a half-sleep, and people’s talking seems remote and
foolish. I can think clearly only when I think of how tender is the
flesh of Ettarre. Heh, a lovely flashing peril allures me, through these
days of fog, and I must trust you. Death is ugly, I know; but life is
ugly too, and all my deeds are strange to me.”
The clerk was oddly moved. “Do you not know I love you as I never loved
Guiron?”
“How can I tell? You are an outlander. Your ways are not our ways,” says
the brigand moodily. “And what have I to do with love?”
“You will talk otherwise when you drink in the count’s seat, with
Ettarre upon your knee,” Horvendile considered. “Observe, I do not
promise you success! Yet I would have you remember it was by very much
this same device that Count Perion won the sister of Ettarre.”
“Heh, if we fail,” replies Maugis, “I shall at least have done with
remembering....” Then they settled details of the business in hand.
Thus Horvendile returned to Storisende before twilight had thickened
into nightfall. He came thus to a place different in all things from the
haggard outlaw’s camp, for Count Emmerick held that night a noble revel.
There was gay talk and jest and dancing, with all other mirth men could
devise.
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IV
How the Double-Dealer Was of Two Minds
IT was deep silent night when Horvendile came into the room where
Ettarre slept. “Out, out!” cried Horvendile. “Let us have more light
here, so that men may see the beauty men die for!” He went with a torch
from lamp to lamp, kindling them all.
Ettarre stood between the bed-curtains, which were green hangings worked
with birds and beasts of the field, each in his proper colors. The girl
was robed in white; and upon her breast gleamed the broken sigil of
Scoteia, that famed talisman which never left her person. She wore a
scarlet girdle about her middle, and her loosened yellow hair fell heavy
about her. Her fine proud face questioned the clerk in silence, without
any trace of fear.
“We must wait now,” says Horvendile, “wait patiently for that which is
to follow. For while the folk of Storisende slept—while your fair,
favored lover slept, Ettarre, and your stout brothers Emmerick and
Perion slept, and all persons who are your servitors and well-wishers
slept—I, I, the puppet-shifter, have admitted Maugis d’Aigremont and his
men into this castle. They are at work now, hammer-and-tongs, to decide
who shall be master of Storisende and you.”
Her first speech you would have found odd at such a time. “But, oh, it
was not you who betrayed us, Horvendile—not you whom Guiron loved!”
“You forget,” he returned, “that I, who am without any hope to win you,
must attempt to view the squabbling of your other lovers without bias.
It is the custom of omnipotence to do that, Ettarre. I have given Maugis
d’Aigremont an equal chance with Sir Guiron. It is the custom of
omnipotence to do that also, Ettarre. You will remember the tale was
trite even in Job’s far time that the sweetmeats of life do not
invariably fall to immaculate people.”
Then, as if on a sudden, Dame Ettarre seemed to understand that the
clerk’s brain had been turned through his hopeless love for her. She
wondered, dizzily, how she could have stayed blind to his insanity this
long, recollecting the inconsequence of his acts and speeches in the
past; but matters of heavier urgency were at hand. Here, with this
apparent madman, she was on perilous ground; but now had arisen a
hideous contention without; and the shrieks there, and the clash of
metal there, spoke with rude eloquence of a harborage even less
desirable.
“Heaven will defend the right!” Ettarre said bravely.
“I am not so sure that heaven has any finger in this pie. An arras hides
all. It will lift presently, and either Good or Evil, either Guiron or
Maugis, will come through that arras as your master. I am not certain as
yet which one I shall permit to enter; and the matter rests with me,
Ettarre.”
“Heaven will defend the right!” Ettarre said bravely.
And at that the arras quivered and heaved, so that its heavy
embroideries were converted into a welter of shimmering gold, bright in
the glare of many lamps, sparkling like the ocean’s waters at sunset;
and Horvendile and Ettarre saw nothing else there for a breathless
moment, which seemed to last for a great while. Then, parting, the arras
yielded up Maugis d’Aigremont.
Horvendile chuckled.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
Treats of Maugis D’Aigremont’s Pottage
MAUGIS came forward, his eyes fixed hungrily upon Ettarre. “So a long
struggle ends,” he said, very quiet. “There is no virtue left, Ettarre,
save patience.”
“While life remains I shall not cease to shriek out your villainy. O
God, men have let Guiron die!” she wailed.
“I will cause you to forget that death is dreadful, Ettarre!”
“I need no teacher now.... And so, Guiron is dead and I yet live! I had
not thought that would be possible.” She whispered this. “Give me your
sword, Maugis, for just a little while, and then I will not hate you any
longer.”
The man said, with dreary patience: “Yes, you would die rather than
endure my touch. And through my desire of you I have been stripped of
wealth and joy and honor, and even of hope; through my desire of you I
have held much filthy traffic, with treachery and theft and murder,
traffic such as my soul loathed: and to no avail! Yes, I have been
guilty of many wickednesses, as men estimate these matters; and yet, I
swear to you, I seem to myself to be still that boy with whom you used
to play, when you too were a child, Ettarre, and did not hate me. Heh,
it is very strange how affairs fall out in this world of ours, so that a
man may discern no aim or purpose anywhere!”
“Yet it is all foreplanned, Maugis.” Horvendile spoke thus.
“And to what end have you ensnared me, Horvendile?” says Maugis, turning
wearily. “For the attack on Storisende has failed, and I am dying of
many wounds, Horvendile. See how I bleed! Guiron and Perion and Emmerick
and all their men are hunting me everywhere beyond that arras, and I am
frightened, Horvendile—even I, who was Maugis, am frightened!—lest any
of them find me here. For I desire now only to die untroubled. Oh,
Horvendile, in an ill hour I trusted you!”
As knave and madman, Ettarre saw the double-dealer and his dupe confront
each other. In the haggard face of Maugis, no longer evil, showed only
puzzled lassitude. In the hand of Horvendile a dagger glittered; and his
face was pensive.
“My poor Maugis, it is not yet time I make my dealings plain to you. It
suffices that you have served my turn, Maugis, and that of you I have no
need any longer. You must die now, Maugis.”
Ettarre feared this frozen madman, she who was by ordinary fearless.
Ettarre turned away her face, so that she might not see the two men
grapple. Without, the uproar continued—for a long while, it seemed. When
she looked again it was, by some great wonder-working, to meet Guiron’s
eyes and Guiron’s lips.
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VI
Journeys End: With the Customary Unmasking
“MY love, Ettarre, they have not harmed you?”
“None has harmed me, Guiron. Oh, and you?”
“Maugis is dead,” he answered joyously.
“See, here he lies, slain by brave Horvendile. And the rogues who
followed Maugis are all killed or fled. Our woes are at an end, dear
love.”
Then Ettarre saw that Horvendile indeed waited beside the dead body of
Maugis d’Aigremont. And the clerk stayed motionless while she told
Guiron of Horvendile’s baleful work.
Sir Guiron then said: “Is this true speech, Horvendile?”
“It is quite true I have done all these things, messire,” Horvendile
answered quietly.
“And with what purpose?” said Sir Guiron, very sadly; for to him too it
seemed certain that such senseless treachery could not spring from
anything but madness, and he had loved Horvendile.
“I will tell you,” Horvendile replied, “though I much fear you will not
understand—” He meditated, shook his head, smiling. “Indeed, how is it
possible for me to make you understand? Well, I blurt out the truth.
There was once in a land very far away from this land—in my country—a
writer of romances. And once he constructed a romance which, after a
hackneyed custom of my country, purported to be translated from an old
manuscript written by an ancient clerk—called Horvendile. It told of
Horvendile’s part in the love-business between Sir Guiron des Rocques
and La Beale Ettarre. I am that writer of romance. This room, this
castle, all the broad rolling countryside without, is but a portion of
my dream, and these places have no existence save in my fancies. And
you, messire—and you also, madame—and dead Maugis here, and all the
others who seemed so real to me, are but the puppets I fashioned and
shifted, for a tale’s sake, in that romance which now draws to a close.”
He paused; and Sir Guiron sighed. “My poor Horvendile!” was all he said.
“It is not possible for you to believe me, of course. And it may be that
I, too, am only a figment of some greater dream, in just such case as
yours, and that I, too, cannot understand. It may be the very cream of
the jest that my country is no more real than Storisende. How could I
judge if I, too, were a puppet? It is a thought which often troubles
me....”
Horvendile deliberated, then spoke more briskly. “At all events, I must
return now to my own country, which I do not love as I love this bright
fantastic tiny land that I created—or seemed to create—and wherein I
was—or seemed to be—omnipotent.”
Horvendile drew a deep breath; and he looked downward at the corpse he
had bereft of pride and daring and agility. “Farewell, Maugis! It would
be indecorous, above all in omnipotence, to express anything save
abhorrence toward you: yet I delighted in you as you lived and moved;
and it was not because of displeasure with you that I brought you to
disaster. Hence, also, one might evolve a heady analogue....”
Guiron was wondering what he might do in accord with honor and with
clemency. He did not stir as Horvendile came nearer. The clerk showed
very pitiful and mean beside this stately champion in full armor, all
shining metal, save for a surcoat of rose-colored stuff irregularly
worked with crescents of silver.
“Farewell, Sir Guiron!” Horvendile then said. “There are no men like you
in my country. I have found you difficult to manage; and I may confess
now that I kept you so long imprisoned at Caer Idryn, and caused you to
spend so many chapters oversea in heathendom, mainly in order that I
might weave out my romance here untroubled by your disconcerting and
rather wooden perfection. But you are not the person to suspect ill of
your creator. You are all that I once meant to be, Guiron, all that I
have forgotten how to be; and for a dead boy’s sake I love you.”
“Listen, poor wretch!” Sir Guiron answered, sternly; “you have this
night done horrible mischief, you have caused the death of many
estimable persons. Yet I have loved you, Horvendile, and I know that
heaven, through heaven’s inscrutable wisdom, has smitten you with
madness. That stair leads to the postern on the east side of the castle.
Go forth from Storisende as quickly as you may, whilst none save us
knows of your double-dealings. It may be that I am doing great wrong;
but I cannot forget I have twice owed my life to you. If I must err at
all hazards, I prefer to err upon the side of gratitude and mercy.”
“That is said very like you,” Horvendile replied. “Eh, it was not for
nothing I endowed you with sky-towering magnanimity. Assuredly, I go,
messire. And so, farewell, Ettarre!” Long and long Horvendile gazed upon
the maiden. “There is no woman like you in my country, Ettarre. I can
find no woman anywhere resembling you whom dreams alone may win to. It
is a little thing to say that I have loved you; it is a bitter thing to
know that I must live among, and pursue, and win, those other women.”
“My poor Horvendile,” she answered, very lovely in her compassion, “you
are in love with fantasies.”
He held her hand, touching her for the last time; and he trembled. “Yes,
I am in love with my fantasies, Ettarre; and, none the less, I must
return into my own country and abide there always....”
As he considered the future, in the man’s face showed only puzzled
lassitude; and you saw therein a quaint resemblance to Maugis
d’Aigremont. “I find my country an inadequate place in which to live,”
says Horvendile. “Oh, many persons live there happily enough! or, at
worst, they seem to find the prizes and the applause of my country worth
striving for whole-heartedly. But there is that in some of us which gets
no exercise there; and we struggle blindly, with impotent yearning, to
gain outlet for great powers which we know that we possess, even though
we do not know their names. And so, we dreamers wander at adventure to
Storisende—oh, and into more perilous realms sometimes!—in search of a
life that will find employment for every faculty we have. For life in my
country does not engross us utterly. We dreamers waste there at loose
ends, waste futilely. All which we can ever see and hear and touch
there, we dreamers dimly know, is at best but a portion of the truth,
and is possibly not true at all. Oh, yes! it may be that we are not
sane; could we be sure of that, it would be a comfort. But, as it is, we
dreamers only know that life in my country does not content us, and
never can content us. So we struggle, for a tiny dear-bought while, into
other and fairer-seeming lands in search of—we know not what! And, after
a little”—he relinquished the maiden’s hands, spread out his own hands,
shrugging—“after a little, we must go back into my country and live
there as best we may.”
A whimsical wise smile now visited Ettarre’s lips. Her hands went to her
breast, and presently one half the broken sigil of Scoteia lay in
Horvendile’s hand. “You will not always abide in your own country,
Horvendile. Some day you will return to us at Storisende. The sign of
the Dark Goddess will prove your safe-conduct then if Guiron and I be
yet alive.”
Horvendile raised to his mouth the talisman warmed by contact with her
sweet flesh. “It may be you will not live for a great while,” he says;
“but that will befall through no lack of loving pains on your creator’s
part.”
Then Horvendile left them. In the dark passage-way he paused, looking
back at Guiron and Ettarre for a heart-beat. Guiron and Ettarre had
already forgotten his existence. Hand-in-hand they stood in the bright
room, young, beautiful and glad. Silently their lips met.
Horvendile closed the door, and so left Storisende forever. Without he
came into a lonely quiet-colored world already expectant of dawn’s
occupancy. Already the tree-trunks eastward showed like the black bars
of a grate. Thus he walked in twilight, carrying half the sigil of
Scoteia....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Book Second_
══════════════════════
“Whate’er she be—
That inaccessible She
That doth command my heart and me:
“Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
“Let her full glory,
My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fictions—but her story.”
══════════════════════
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
Of a Trifle Found in Twilight
THUS he walked in twilight, regretful that he must return to his own
country, and live another life, and bear another name than that of
Horvendile.... It was droll that in his own country folk should call him
Felix, since Felix meant “happy”; and assuredly he was not pre-eminently
happy there.
At least he had ended the love-business of Ettarre and Guiron happily,
however droll the necessitated makeshifts might have been.... He had
very certainly introduced the god in the car, against Horatian
admonition, had wound up affairs with a sort of transformation scene....
It was, perhaps, at once too hackneyed and too odd an ending to be
æsthetically satisfactory, after all.... Why, beyond doubt it was. He
shrugged his impatience.
“Yet—what a true ending it would be!” he reflected. He was still walking
in twilight—for the time was approaching sunset—in the gardens of
Alcluid. He must devise another ending for this high-hearted story of
Guiron and Ettarre.
Felix Kennaston smiled a little over the thought of ending the romance
with such topsy-turvy anti-climaxes as his woolgathering wits had
blundered into; and, stooping, picked up a shining bit of metal that lay
beside the pathway. He was conscious of a vague notion he had just
dropped this bit of metal.
“It is droll how all great geniuses instinctively plagiarize,” he
reflected. “I must have seen this a half-hour ago, when I was walking up
and down planning my final chapters. And so, I wove it into the tale as
a breast-ornament for Ettarre, without ever consciously seeing the thing
at all. Then, presto! I awake and find it growing dark, with me
lackadaisically roaming in twilight clasping this bauble, just as I
imagined Horvendile walking out of the castle of Storisende carrying
much such a bauble. Oh, yes, the processes of inspiration are as
irrational as if all poets took after their mothers.”
This bit of metal, Kennaston afterward ascertained, was almost an exact
half of a disk, not quite three inches in diameter, which somehow had
been broken or cut in two. It was of burnished metal—lead, he
thought—about a sixteenth of an inch in thickness; and its single
notable feature was the tiny characters with which one surface was
inscribed.
Later Felix Kennaston was destined to puzzle over his inability to
recollect what motive prompted him to slip this glittering trifle into
his pocket. A trifle was all that it seemed then. He always remembered
quite clearly how it sparkled in the abating glare of that day’s
portentous sunset; and how the tree-trunks westward showed like the
black bars of a grate, as he walked slowly through the gardens of
Alcluid. Alcluid, be it explained, was the queer name with which Felix
Kennaston’s progenitors had seen fit to christen their fine country home
near Lichfield.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Beyond Use and Wont Fares the Road to Storisende
KENNASTON was to recall, also, that on this evening he dined alone with
his wife, sharing a taciturn meal. He and Kathleen talked of very
little, now, save the existent day’s small happenings, such as having
seen So-and-so, and of So-and-so’s having said this-or-that, as
Kennaston reflected in the solitude of the library. But soon he was
contentedly laboring upon the book he had always intended to write some
day.
Off and on, in common with most high-school graduates, Felix Kennaston
had been an “intending contributor” to various magazines,
spasmodically bartering his postage-stamps for courteously-worded
rejection-slips. Then, too, in the old days before his marriage, when
Kennaston had come so near to capturing Margaret Hugonin and her big
fortune, the heiress had paid for the printing of _The King’s Quest_
and its companion enterprises in rhyme, as well as the prose _Defence
of Ignorance_—wide-margined specimens of the far-fetched decadence
then in vogue, and the idol of Kennaston’s youth, when he had
seriously essayed the parlor-tricks of “stylists.”
And it was once a familiar story how Marian Winwood got revenge on Felix
Kennaston, when he married Kathleen Saumarez, by publishing, in a
transparent guise of fiction, all the love-letters he had written Miss
Winwood; so that Kennaston might also have claimed to be generally
recognized as the actual author of her _Epistles of Ananias_, which
years ago created some literary stir.
* * * * *
But this book was to be different from any of his previous compositions.
To paraphrase Felix Kennaston’s own words (as recorded in the “Colophon”
to _Men Who Loved Alison_), he had determined in this story lovingly to
deal with an epoch and a society, and even a geography, whose comeliness
had escaped the wear-and-tear of ever actually existing. He had
attempted a jaunt into that “happy, harmless Fable-land” which is
bounded by Avalon and Phæacia and Sea-coast Bohemia, and the contiguous
forests of Arden and Broceliande, and on the west of course by the
Hesperides, because he believed this country to be the one possible
setting for a really satisfactory novel, even though its byways can
boast of little traffic nowadays. He was completing, in fine, _The Audit
at Storisende_—or, rather, _Men Who Loved Alison_, as the book came
afterward to be called.
Competent critics in plenty have shrugged over Kennaston’s pretense
therein that the romance is translated from an ancient manuscript. But
to Kennaston the clerk Horvendile, the fictitious first writer of the
chronicle and eye-witness of its events, was necessary. No doubt it
handicapped the story’s progress, so to contrive matters that one
subsidiary character should invariably be at hand when important doings
were in execution, and should be taken more or less into everyone’s
confidence—but then, somehow, it made the tale seem real.
For in the writing it all seemed perfectly real to Felix Kennaston. His
life was rather barren of motive now. In remoter times, when he had
wandered impecuniously from one adventure to another, sponging without
hesitancy upon such wealthy people as his chatter amused, there had
always been exquisite girls to make love to—such girls as the younger
generation did not produce—and the ever-present problem of whence was to
come the fares for to-morrow’s hansoms, in which the younger generation
did not ride. For now hansom cabs were wellnigh as extinct as
velocipedes or sedan-chairs, he owned two motors, and, by the drollest
turn, had money in four banks. As recreation went, he and Kathleen had
in Lichfield their round of decorous social duties; and there was
nothing else to potter with save the writing. And a little by a little
the life he wrote of came to seem to Felix Kennaston more real, and far
more vital, than the life his body was shuffling through aimlessly.
For as Horvendile he lived among such gallant circumstances as he had
always vaguely hoped his real life might provide to-morrow. This
Horvendile, coming unintelligibly to Storisende, and witnessing there
the long combat between Sir Guiron des Rocques and Maugis d’Aigremont
for possession of La Beale Alison—as Kennaston’s heroine is called of
course in the printed book—seems to us in reading the tale no very
striking figure; as in _Rob Roy_ and _Esmond_, it is not to the
narrator, but to the people and events he tells of, that attention is
riveted. But Felix Kennaston, writing the book, lived the life of
Horvendile in the long happy hours of writing, which became longer and
longer; and insensibly his existence blended and was absorbed into the
more colorful life of Horvendile. It was as Horvendile he wrote, seeming
actually at times to remember what he recorded, rather than to
invent....
And he called it inspiration....
So the tale flowed on, telling how Count Emmerick planned a notable
marriage-feast for his sister La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des
Rocques, with vastly different results from those already recorded—with
the results, in fine, which figure in the printed _Men Who Loved
Alison_, where Horvendile keeps his proper place as a more or less
convenient device for getting the tale told.
But to Kennaston that first irrational winding-up of affairs, wherein a
world’s creator was able to wring only contempt and pity from his
puppets—since he had not endowed them with any faculties wherewith to
comprehend their creator’s nature and intent—was always the tale’s real
ending....
* * * * *
So it was that the lonely man lived with his dreams, and toiled for the
vision’s sake contentedly; and we of Lichfield who were most familiar
with Felix Kennaston in the flesh knew nothing then of his mental
diversions; and, with knowledge, would probably have liked him not a bit
the better. For ordinary human beings, as all other normal forms of
life, turn naturally toward the sun, and are at their best thereunder;
but it is the misfortune of dreamers that their peculiar talents find no
exercise in daylight. So we regarded Kennaston with the distrust
universally accorded people who need to be meddling with ideas in a
world which sustains its mental credit comfortably enough with a current
coinage of phrases.
And therefore it may well be that I am setting down his story not all in
sympathy, for in perfect candor I never, quite, liked Felix Kennaston.
His high-pitched voice in talking, to begin with, was irritating: you
knew it was not his natural voice, and found it so entirely senseless
for him to speak thus. Then, too, the nervous and trivial grin with
which he prefaced almost all his infrequent remarks—and the odd little
noise, that was nearly a snigger and just missed being a cough, with
which he ended them—was peculiarly uningratiating in a fat and
middle-aged person; his weak eyes very rarely met yours full-gaze; and
he was continually handling his face or fidgeting with a cigarette or
twisting in his chair. When listening to you he usually nibbled at his
fingernails, and when he talked he had a secretive way of looking at
them.
Such habits are not wholly incompatible with wisdom or generosity, and
the devil’s advocate would not advance them against their possessor’s
canonization; none the less, in everyday life they make against your
enjoying a chat with their possessor: and as for Kennaston’s undeniable
mental gifts, there is no escaping, at times, the gloomy suspicion that
fiddling with pens and ink is, after all, no fit employment for a grown
man.
Felix Kennaston, to fix the word, was inadequate. His books apart, he
was as a human being a failure. Indeed, in some inexpressible fashion,
he impressed you as uneasily shirking life. Certainly he seemed since
his marriage to have relinquished all conversational obligations to his
wife. She had a curious trick of explaining him, before his face—in a
manner which was not unreminiscent of the lecturer in “side-shows”
pointing out the peculiarities of the living skeleton or the
glass-eater; but it was done with such ill-concealed pride in him that I
found it touching, even when she was boring me about the varieties of
food he could not be induced to touch or his finicky passion for saving
every bit of string he came across.
That suggests a minor mystery: many women had been fond of Felix
Kennaston; and I have yet to find a man who liked him even moderately,
to offset the host who marveled, with unseemly epithets, as to what
these women saw in him. My wife explains it, rather enigmatically, that
he was “just a twoser”; and that, in addition, he expected women to look
after him, so that naturally they did. To her superior knowledge of the
feminine mind I can but bow: with the addition (quoting the same
authority) that a “twoser” is a trousered individual addicted to
dumbness in company and the very thrilliest sort of play-acting in
_tête-à-têtes_.
At all events, I never quite liked Felix Kennaston—not even after I came
to understand that the man I knew in the flesh was but a very ill-drawn
likeness of Felix Kennaston. After all, that is the whole sardonic point
of his story—and, indeed, of every human story—that the person you or I
find in the mirror is condemned eternally to misrepresent us in the eyes
of our fellows. But even with comprehension, I never cordially liked the
man; and so, it may well be that his story is set down not all in
sympathy.
With which Gargantuan parenthesis, in equitable warning, I return again
to his story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
Of Idle Speculations in a Library
FELIX KENNASTON did not write very long that night. He fell idly to the
droll familiar wondering how this dull fellow seated here in this
luxurious room could actually be Felix Kennaston....