garment, and however time-frayed or dull-hued or stained by horrible
misuse that garment may seem to be, the wearer of that garment is no
less fair than I, could any man see her quite clearly. Horvendile, were
that not true, could our great Author find anywhere a woman’s body which
wickedness and ugliness controlled unchecked, all the big stars which
light the universe, and even the tiny sun that our earth spins about,
would be blown out like unneeded candles, for the Author’s labor would
have been frustrated and misspent.”
“Yes; I know now that this is true.... See, Ettarre! Yonder woman is
furtively coloring her cheeks with a little wet red rag. She does not
wish to seem pale—or is it that she wishes to look her best?—in the
moment of death.... Ettarre, my love for you whom I could not ever find,
was not of earth, and I could not transfer it to an earthly woman. The
lively hues, the lovely curvings and the fragrant tender flesh of
earth’s women were deft to cast their spells; but presently I knew this
magic was only of the body. It might be I was honoring divinity; but it
was certain that even in such case I was doing so by posturing before my
divinity’s effigy in tinted clay. Besides, it is not possible to know
with any certainty what is going on in the round glossy little heads of
women. ‘I hide no secrets from you, because I love you,’ say they?—eh,
and their love may be anything from a mild preference to a flat lie. And
so, I came finally to concede that all women are creatures of like
frailties and limitations and reserves as myself, and I was most
poignantly lonely when I was luckiest in love. Once only, in my life in
the flesh, it seemed to me that a woman, whom I had abandoned, held in
her hand the sigil visibly. That memory has often troubled me, Ettarre.
It may be that this woman could have given me what I sought everywhere
in vain. But I did not know this until it was too late, until the chance
and the woman’s life alike were wasted.... And so, I grew apathetic,
senseless and without any spurring aspiration, seeing that all human
beings are so securely locked in the prison of their flesh.”
“When immortals visit earth it is necessary they assume the appearance
of some animal. Very long ago, as we have seen, Horvendile, that secret
was discovered, which so many myths veil thinly: and have we not
learned, too, that the animal’s fleshly body is a disguise which it is
possible to put aside?”
“That knowledge, so fearfully purchased at the Sabbat, still troubles
me, Ettarre.... Monsieur le Prince, I regret the circumstance, but—as
you see—my snuff-box is quite empty. Ah, but yes, as you very justly
observe, rappee, repose and rationality are equally hard to come by in
these mad days.... Is that not droll, Ettarre? This unvenerable old
Prince de Gâtinais—once Grand Duke of Noumaria, you remember—has been
guilty in his career of every iniquity and meanness and cowardice: now,
facing instant death, he finds time to think of snuff and
phrase-making.... But—to go back a little—I had thought the Sabbat would
be so different! One imagined there would be cauldrons, and hags upon
prancing broomsticks, and a black goat, of course—”
“How much more terrible it is—and how beautiful!”
“Yet—even now I may not touch you, Ettarre.”
“My friend, all men have striven to do that; and I have evaded each one
of them at the last, and innumerable are the ways of my elusion. There
is no man but has loved me, no man that has forgotten me, and none but
has attempted to express that which he saw and understood when I was
visible.”
“Do I not know? There is no beauty in the world save those stray hints
of you, Ettarre. Canvas and stone and verse speak brokenly of you
sometimes; all music yearns toward you, Ettarre, all sunsets whisper of
you, and it is because they waken memories of you that the eyes of all
children so obscurely trouble and delight us. Ettarre, your unattainable
beauty tears my heart. There is nothing, nothing in me that does not cry
out for love of you. And it is the cream of a vile jest that I am
forbidden ever to win quite to you, ever to touch you, ever to see you
even save in my dreams!”
“Already this dream draws toward an end, my poor Horvendile.”
And he saw that the great doors—which led to death—were unclosing: and
beyond them he saw confusedly a mob of red-capped men, of malignant
frenzied women, of wide-eyed little children, and the staid officials,
chatting pleasantly among themselves, who came to fetch that day’s tale
of those condemned to the guillotine. But more vividly Kennaston saw
Ettarre and how tenderly she smiled, in thin wintry sunlight, as she
touched Kennaston upon the breast, so that the dream might end and he
might escape the guillotine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
Of One Enigma that Threatened to Prove Allegorical
THEN again Kennaston stood alone before a tall window, made up of many
lozenge-shaped panes of clear glass set in lead framework. He had put
aside one of the two great curtains—of a very fine stuff like gauze,
stitched over with transparent glittering beetle-wings, and embroidered
with tiny seed pearls—which hung before this window.
Snow covered the expanse of house-tops without, and the sky without was
glorious with chill stars. That white city belonged to him, he knew,
with a host of other cities. He was the strongest of kings. People
dreaded him, he knew; and he wondered why any one should esteem a frail
weakling such as he to be formidable. The hand of this great king—his
own hand, that held aside the curtain before him—was shriveled and
colorless as lambs’ wools. It was like a horrible bird-claw.
(“_But then I have the advantage of remembering the twentieth century,”
he thought, fleetingly, “and all my contemporaries are superstitious
ignorant folk. It is strange, but in this dream I appear to be an old
man. That never happened before._”)
A remote music resounded in his ears, and cloying perfumes were about
him....
“I want to be happy. And that is impossible, because there is no
happiness anywhere in the world. I, a great king, say this—I, who am
known in unmapped lands, and before whom nations tremble. For there are
but three desirable things in life—love and power and wisdom: and I, the
king, have sounded the depths of these, and in none is happiness.”
Despairing words came to him now, and welled to his lips, in a sort of
chaunt:
“I am sad to-night, for I remember that I once loved a woman. She was
white as the moon; her hair was a gold cloud; she had untroubled eyes.
She was so fair that I longed for her until my heart was as the heart of
a God. But she sickened and died: worms had their will of her, not I. So
I took other women, and my bed was never lonely. Bright poisonous women
were brought to me, from beyond the sunset, from the Fortunate Islands,
from Invallis and Planasia even; and these showed me nameless
endearments and many curious perverse pleasures. But I was not able to
forget that woman who was denied me because death had taken her: and I
grew a-weary of love, for I perceived that all which has known life must
suffer death.
“There was no people anywhere who could withstand my armies. We traveled
far in search of such a people. My armies rode into a country of great
heat and endless sands, and contended with the Presbyter’s brown
horsemen, who fought with arrows and brightly painted bows; and we slew
them. My armies entered into a land where men make their homes in the
shells of huge snails, and feed upon white worms which have black heads;
and we slew them. My armies passed into a land where a people that have
no language dwell in dark caves under the earth, and worship a stone
that has sixty colors; and we slew them, teaching ruthlessly that all
which has known life must suffer death.
“Many stiff-necked kings, still clad in purple and scarlet and wearing
gold crowns—monarchs whose proud faces, for all that these men were my
slaves, kept their old fashion and stayed changeless as the faces of
statues—such were my lackeys: and I burned walled cities. Empires were
my playthings, but I had no son to inherit after me. I had no son—only
that dead horrible mangled worm, born dead, that I remember seeing very
long ago where the woman I loved lay dead. That would have been my son
had the thing lived—a greater and a nobler king than I. But death willed
otherwise: the life that moved in me was not to be perpetuated: and so,
the heart in my body grew dried and little and shriveled, like a parched
pea: for I perceived that all which has known life must suffer death.
“Then I turned from warfare, and sought for wisdom. I learned all that
it is permitted any man to know—oh, I learned more than is permissible.
Have I not summoned demons from the depths of the sea, and at the Sabbat
have I not smitten haggard Gods upon the cheek? Yea, at Phigalia did I
not pass beneath the earth and strive with a terrible Black Woman, who
had the head of a horse, and wrest from her what I desired to know? Have
I not talked with Morskoi, that evil formless ruler of the Sea-Folk, and
made a compact with him? And has not even Phobetor, whose real name may
not be spoken, revealed to me his secrets, at a paid price of which I do
not care to think, now I perceive that all which has known life must
suffer death?
“Yea, by the Hoofs of the Goat! it seems to me that I have done these
things; yet how may I be sure? For I have learned, too, that all man’s
senses lie to him, that nothing we see or hear or touch is truthfully
reported, and that the visible world at best stands like an island in an
uncharted ocean which is a highway, none the less, for much alien
traffic. Yet, it seems to me that I found means whereby the universe I
live in was stripped of many veils. It seems to me that I do not regret
having done this.... But presently I shall be dead, and all my
dearly-purchased, wearily-earned wisdom must lie quiet in a big stone
box, and all which has known life must suffer death.
“For death is mighty, and against it naught can avail: it is terrible
and strong and cruel, and a lover of bitter jests. And presently,
whatever I have done or learned or dreamed, I must lie helpless where
worms will have their will of me, and neither the worms nor I will think
it odd. For all which has known life must suffer death.”
A remote music resounded in his ears, and cloying perfumes were about
him. Turning, he saw that the walls of this strange room were of
iridescent lacquer, worked with bulls and apes and parrots in raised
gold: black curtains screened the doors: and the bare floor was of
smooth sea-green onyx. A woman stood there, who did not speak, but only
waited. At length he knew what terror was, for terror possessed him
utterly; and yet he was elated.
“You have come, then, at last....”
“To you at last I have come as I come to all men,” she answered, “in my
good hour.” And Ettarre’s hands, gleaming and half-hidden with jewels,
reached toward his hands, so gladly raised to hers; and the universe
seemed to fold about him, just as a hand closes.
* * * * *
Was it as death she came to him in this dream?—as death made manifest as
man’s liberation from much vain toil? Kennaston, at least, preferred to
think his dreams were not degenerating into such hackneyed crude
misleading allegories. Or perhaps it was as ghost of the dead woman he
had loved she came, now that he was age-stricken and nearing death, for
in this one dream alone he had seemed to be an old man.
Kennaston could not ever be sure; the broken dream remained an enigma;
but he got sweet terror and happiness of the dream, for all that,
tasting his moment of inexplicable poignant emotion: and therewith he
was content.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII
Treats of Witches, Mixed Drinks, and the Weather
MEANWHILE, I used to see Kennaston nearly every day.... Looking back, I
recollect one afternoon when the Kennastons were calling on us. It was
the usual sort of late-afternoon call customarily exchanged by country
neighbors....
“We have been intending to come over for ever so long,” Mrs. Kennaston
explained. “But we have been in such a rush, getting ready for the
summer—”
“We only got the carpets up yesterday,” my wife assented. “Riggs just
kept promising and promising, but he did finally get a man out—”
“Well, the roads are in pretty bad shape,” I suggested, “and those vans
are fearfully heavy—”
“Still, if they would just be honest about it,” Mrs. Kennaston
bewailed—“and not keep putting you off—No, I really don’t think I ever
saw the Loop road in worse condition—”
“It’s the long rainy spell we ought to have had in May,” I informed her.
“The seasons are changing so, though, nowadays that nobody can keep up
with them.”
“Yes, Felix was saying only to-day that we seem no longer to have any
real spring. We simply go straight from winter into summer.”
“I was endeavoring to persuade her,” Kennaston amended, “that it was
foolish to go away as long as it stays cool as it is.”
“Oh, yes, _now_!” my wife conceded. “But the paper says we are in for a
long heat period about the fifteenth. For my part, I think July is
always our worst month.”
“It is just that you feel the heat so much more during the first warm
days,” I suggested.
“Oh, no!” my wife said, earnestly; “the nights are cool in August, and
you can stand the days. Of course, there are apt to be a few mosquitoes
in September, but not many if you are careful about standing water—”
“The drain-pipe to the gutter around our porch got stopped somehow, last
year”—this Kennaston contributed, morosely—“and we had a terrible time.”
“—Then there is always so much to do, getting the children started at
school,” my wife continued—“everything under the sun needed at the last
moment, of course! And the way they change all the school-books every
year is simply ridiculous. So, if I had my way, we would always go away
early, and be back again in good time to get things in shape—”
“Oh, yes, if we could have our way!”—Mrs. Kennaston could not deny
that—“but don’t your servants always want August off, to go home? I know
ours do: and, my dear, you simply don’t dare say a word.”
“That is the great trouble in the country,” I philosophized—“in fact, we
suburbanites are pretty well hag-ridden by our dusky familiars. The
old-time darkies are dying out, and the younger generation is simply
worthless. And with no more sense of gratitude—Why, Moira hired a new
girl last week, to help out upstairs, and—”
“Oh, yes, hag-ridden! like the unfortunate magicians in old stories!”
Kennaston broke in, on a sudden. “We were speaking about such things the
other day, you remember? I have been thinking—You see, every one tells
me that, apart from being a master soapboiler, Mr. Harrowby, you are by
way of being an authority on witchcraft and similar murky
accomplishments?” And he ended with that irritating little noise, that
was nearly a snigger, and just missed being a cough.
“It so often comes over me,” says Moira—which happens to be my wife’s
name—“that Dick, all by himself, is really Harrowby & Sons, Inc.”—she
spoke as if I were some sort of writing-fluid—“and has his products on
sale all over the world. I look on him in a new light, so to speak, when
I realize that daily he is gladdening Calcutta with his soaps,
delighting London with his dentifrice, and comforting Nova Zembla with
his talcum powder.”
“Well, but I inherited all that. It isn’t fair to fling ancestral
soap-vats in my face,” I reminded her. “And yes, I have dabbled a bit in
forces that aren’t as yet thoroughly understood, Mr. Kennaston. I
wouldn’t go so far as to admit to witchcraft, though. Very certainly I
never attended a Sabbat.”
I recollect now how his face changed. “And what in heaven’s name was a
Sabbat?” Then he fidgeted, and crossed his legs the other way.
“Well! it was scarcely heaven’s name that was invoked there, if old
tales are to be trusted. Traditionally, the Sabbat was a meeting
attended by all witches in satisfactory diabolical standing, lightly
attired in smears of various magical ointments; and their vehicle of
transportation to this outing was, of course, the traditional
broomstick. Good Friday,” I continued, seeing they all seemed willing
enough to listen, “was the favorite date for these gatherings, which
were likewise sometimes held on St. John’s Eve, on Walburga’s Eve, and
on Hallowe’en Night. The diversions were numerous: there was feasting,
music, and dancing, with the devil performing obligatos on the pipes or
a cittern, and not infrequently preaching a burlesque sermon. He usually
attended in the form of a monstrous goat; and when—when not amorously
inclined, often thrashed the witches with their own broomsticks. The
more practical pursuits of the evening included the opening of graves,
to despoil dead bodies of finger- and toe-joints, and certain portions
of the winding-sheet, with which to prepare a powder that had strange
uses.... But the less said of that, the better. Here, also, the devil
taught his disciples how to make and christen statues of wax, so that by
roasting these effigies the persons whose names they bore would be
wasted away by sickness.”
“I see,” says Kennaston, intently regarding his fingernails: “they must
have been highly enjoyable social outings, all around.”
“They must have been worse than family reunions,” put in Mrs. Kennaston,
and affected to shudder.
“Indeed, there are certain points of resemblance,” I conceded, “in the
general atmosphere of jealous hostility and the ruthless digging-up of
what were better left buried.”
Then Kennaston asked carelessly, “But how could such absurd
superstitions ever get any hold on people, do you suppose?”
“That would require rather a lengthy explanation—Why, no,” I protested,
in answer to his shrug; “the Sabbat is not inexplicable. Hahn-Kraftner’s
book, or Herbert Perlin’s either, will give you a very fair notion of
what the Sabbat really was—something not in the least grotesque, but
infinitely more awe-inspiring than is hinted by any traditions in
popular use. And Le Bret, whom bookdealers rightly list as ‘curious’—”
“Yes. I have read those books, it happens. My uncle had them, you know.
But”—Kennaston was plainly not quite at ease—“but, after all, is it not
more wholesome to dismiss such theories as fantastic nonsense, even if
they are perfectly true?”
“Why, not of necessity,” said I. “As touches what we call the ‘occult,’
delusion after delusion has been dissipated, of course, and much
jubilant pother made over the advance in knowledge. But the last of his
delusions, which man has yet to relinquish, is that he invented them.
This too must be surrendered with time; and already we are beginning to
learn that many of these wild errors are the illegitimate children of
grave truths. Science now looks with new respect on folk-lore—”
“Mr. Kennaston,” says Moira, laughing, “I warn you, if you start Dick on
his hobbies, he will talk us all to death. So, come into the house, and
I will mix you two men a drink.”
And we obeyed her, and—somehow—got to talking of the recent
thunderstorms, and getting in our hay, and kindred topics.
* * * * *
Yes, it was much the usual sort of late-afternoon call customarily
exchanged by country neighbors. I remember Moira’s yawning as she closed
the cellarette, and her wondering how Mrs. Kennaston could keep on
rouging and powdering at her age, and why Kennaston never had anything
in particular to say for himself?
“Do you suppose it is because he has a swelled head over his little old
book, or is he just naturally stupid?” she wanted to know.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Book Sixth_
══════════════════════
“Alas! the sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire;
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire:
We cannot learn the cipher
Inscribed upon our cell;
Stars taunt us with a mystery
Which we lack lore to spell.”
══════════════════════
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
Sundry Disclosures of the Press
SUCH as has been described was now Felix Kennaston’s manner of living,
which, as touches utilitarian ends, it might be wiser forthwith to
dismiss as bred by the sickly fancies of an idle man bemused with
unprofitable reading. By day his half of the sigil lay hidden in the
library, under a pile of unused bookplates. But nightly this bit of
metal was taken with him to bed, in order that, when held so as to
reflect the candlelight—for this was always necessary—it might induce
the desired dream of Ettarre; and that, so, Horvendile would be freed of
Felix Kennaston for eight hours uninterruptedly.
In our social ordering Felix Kennaston stayed worthy of consideration in
Lichfield, both as a celebrity of sorts and as the owner of four
bank-accounts; and colloquially, as likewise has been recorded, he was
by ordinary dismissed from our patronizing discussion as having long
been “queer,” and in all probability “a dope-fiend.” In Lichfield, as
elsewhere, a man’s difference from his fellows cannot comfortably be
conceded except by assuming the difference to be to his discredit.
Meanwhile, the Felix Kennaston who owned two motors and had money in
four banks, went with his wife about their round of decorous social
duties; and the same Felix Kennaston, with leisured joy in the task, had
completed _The Tinctured Veil_—which, as you now know, was woven from
the dreamstuff Horvendile had fetched out of that fair country—very far
from Lichfield—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.
Then, just before _The Tinctured Veil_ was published, an accident
happened.
Fate, as always frugal of display, used simple tools. Kennaston, midway
in dressing, found he had no more mouthwash. He went into his wife’s
bathroom, in search of a fresh bottle. Kathleen was in Lichfield for the
afternoon, at a card party; and thus it was brought about that Kennaston
found, lying in the corner of her bathroom press, and hidden by a bottle
of Harrowby’s No. 7 Dental Delight, the missing half of the sigil of
Scoteia—the half which Ettarre had retained. There was no doubt about
it. He held it in his hand.
“Now, that,” said Felix Kennaston, aloud, “is rather curious.”
He went into the library, and lifted the little pile of unused
bookplates; and presently the two pieces of metal lay united upon his
wife’s dressing-table, between the manicure-set and the pincushion,
forming a circle not quite three inches in diameter, just such as he had
seen once upon the brow of Mother Isis, and again in the Didascalion
when Ptolemy of the Fat Paunch was master of Egypt.
“So, Kathleen somehow found the other half. She has had it from the
first.... But naturally I never spoke of Felix Kennaston; it was
forbidden, and besides, the sigil’s crowning grace was that it enabled
me to forget his existence. And the girl’s name in the printed book is
Alison. And Horvendile is such an unimportant character that Kathleen,
reading the tale hastily—I thought she simply skimmed it!—did not
remember that name either; and so, did not associate the dream names in
any way with my book, nor with me.... She too, then, does not know—as
yet.... And, for all that, Kathleen, the real Kathleen, is
Ettarre—‘whatever flesh she may wear as a garment!’.... Or, rather,
Ettarre is to Kathleen as Horvendile—but am I truly that high-hearted
ageless being? Eh, I do not know, for we touch mystery everywhere. I
only know it is the cream of the jest that day by day, while that lean,
busy sharp-eyed stranger, whose hands and lips my own hands and lips
meet daily, because this contact has become a part of the day’s
routine—”