that aspire to possess love utterly, fall into folly. This is forbidden:
you cannot. The lover, beholding that fusing move as a golden-hued
goddess, accessible, kindly and priceless, wooes and ill-fatedly wins
all the substance. The golden-hued shadow dims in the dawn of his
married life, dulled with content, and the shadow vanishes. So there
remains, for the puzzled husband's embracing, flesh which is fair and
dear, no doubt, yet is flesh such as his; and talking and talking and
talking; and kisses in all ways desirable. Love, of a sort, too remains,
but hardly the love that was yesterday's."
Now the unfinished design came out of the fireplace, and climbed up
Miramon's leg, still faintly whimpering. He looked at it meditatively,
then twisted off the creature's head and dropped the fragments into his
waste-basket.
Miramon sighed. He said:
"This is the cry of all husbands that now are or may be
hereafter,--'What has become of the girl that I married? and how should
I rightly deal with this woman whom somehow time has involved in my
doings? Love, of a sort, now I have for her, but not the love that was
yesterday's--'"
While Miramon spoke thus, the two lads were looking at each other
blankly: for they were young, and their understanding of this matter was
as yet withheld.
Then said Miramon:
"Yes, he is wiser that shelters his longing from any such surfeit. Yes,
he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the substance, wisely
regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow which, if you grasp at
it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will follow, gilding all life with
its glory, and keeping always one woman young and most fair and most
wise, and unwon; and keeping you always never contented, but armed with
a self-respect that no husband manages quite to retain in the face of
being contented. No, for love is an instant's fusing of shadow and
substance, fused for that instant only, whereafter the lover may harvest
pleasure from either alone, but hardly from these two united."
"Well," Manuel conceded, "all this may be true; but I never quite
understood hexameters, and so I could not ever see the good of talking
in them."
"I always do that, Manuel, when I am deeply affected. It is, I suppose,
the poetry in my nature welling to the surface the moment that
inhibitions are removed, for when I think about the impending severance
from my dear wife I more or less lose control of myself--You see, she
takes an active interest in my work, and that does not do with a
creative artist in any line. Oh, dear me, no, not for a moment!" says
Miramon, forlornly.
"But how can that be?" Niafer asked him.
"As all persons know, I design the dreams of men. Now Gisèle asserts
that people have enough trouble in real life, without having to go to
sleep to look for it--"
"Certainly that is true," says Niafer.
"So she permits me only to design bright optimistic dreams and edifying
dreams and glad dreams. She says you must give tired persons what they
most need; and is emphatic about the importance of everybody's sleeping
in a wholesome atmosphere. So I have not been permitted to design a fine
nightmare or a creditable terror--nothing morbid or blood-freezing, no
sea-serpents or krakens or hippogriffs, nor anything that gives me a
really free hand,--for months and months: and my art suffers. Then, as
for other dreams, of a more roguish nature--"
"What sort of dreams can you be talking about, I wonder, Miramon?"
The magician described what he meant. "Such dreams also she has quite
forbidden," he added, with a sigh.
"I see," said Manuel: "and now I think of it, it is true that I have not
had a dream of that sort for quite a while."
"No man anywhere is allowed to have that sort of dream in these
degenerate nights, no man anywhere in the whole world. And here again my
art suffers, for my designs in this line were always especially vivid
and effective, and pleased the most rigid. Then, too, Gisèle is always
doing and telling me things for my own good--In fine, my lads, my wife
takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out
for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my
clutches," said Miramon, fretfully.
"It is difficult to explain to you, Manuel, just now, but after you have
been married to Gisèle for a while you will comprehend without any
explaining."
"Now, Miramon, I marvel to see a great magician controlled by a woman
who is in his power, and who can, after all, do nothing but talk."
Miramon for some while considered Manuel, rather helplessly. "Unmarried
men do wonder about that," said Miramon. "At all events, I will summon
her, and you can explain how you have conquered me, and then you can
take her away and marry her yourself, and Heaven help you!"
"But shall I explain that it was you who gave me the resistless sword?"
"No, Manuel: no, you should be candid within more rational limits. For
you are now a famous champion, that has crowned with victory a righteous
cause for which many stalwart knights and gallant gentlemen have made
the supreme sacrifice, because they knew that in the end the right must
conquer. Your success thus represents the working out of a great moral
principle, and to explain the practical minutiae of these august
processes is not always quite respectable. Besides, if Gisèle thought I
wished to get rid of her she would most certainly resort to comments of
which I prefer not to think."
But now into the room came the magician's wife, Gisèle.
"She is, certainly, rather pretty," said Niafer, to Manuel.
Said Manuel, rapturously: "She is the finest and loveliest creature that
I have ever seen. Beholding her unequalled beauty, I know that here are
all the dreams of yesterday fulfilled. I recollect, too, my songs of
yesterday, which I was used to sing to my pigs, about my love for a far
princess who was 'white as a lily, more red than roses, and resplendent
as rubies of the Orient,' for here I find my old songs to be applicable,
if rather inadequate. And by this shabby villain's failure to appreciate
the unequalled beauty of his victim I am amazed."
"As to that, I have my suspicions," Niafer replied. "And now she is
about to speak I believe she will justify these suspicions, for Madame
Gisèle is in no placid frame of mind."
"What is this nonsense," says the proud shining lady, to Miramon
Lluagor, "that I hear about your having been conquered?"
"Alas, my love, it is perfectly true. This champion has, in some
inexplicable way, come by the magic weapon Flamberge which is the one
weapon wherewith I can be conquered. So I have yielded to him, and he is
about, I think, to sever my head from my body."
The beautiful girl was indignant, because she had recognized that,
magician or no, there is small difference in husbands after the first
month or two; and with Miramon tolerably well trained, she had no
intention of changing him for another husband. Therefore Gisèle
inquired, "And what about me?" in a tone that foreboded turmoil.
The magician rubbed his hands, uncomfortably. "My dear, I am of course
quite powerless before Flamberge. Inasmuch as your rescue appears to
have been effected in accordance with every rule in these matters, and
the victorious champion is resolute to requite my evil-doing and to
restore you to your grieving parents, I am afraid there is nothing I can
well do about it."
"Do you look me in the eye, Miramon Lluagor!" says the Lady Gisèle. The
dreadful prince of the seven madnesses obeyed her, with a placating
smile. "Yes, you have been up to something," she said, "And Heaven only
knows what, though of course it does not really matter."
Madame Gisèle then looked at Manuel "So you are the champion that has
come to rescue me!" she said, unhastily, as her big sapphire eyes
appraised him over her great fan of gaily colored feathers, and as
Manuel somehow began to fidget.
Gisèle looked last of all at Niafer. "I must say you have been long
enough in coming," observed Gisèle.
"It took me two days, madame, to find and catch a turtle," Niafer
replied, "and that delayed me."
"Oh, you have always some tale or other, trust you for that, but it is
better late than never. Come, Niafer, and do you know anything about
this gawky, ragtag, yellow-haired young champion?"
"Yes, madame, he formerly lived in attendance upon the miller's pigs,
down Rathgor way, and I have seen him hanging about the kitchen at
Arnaye."
Gisèle turned now toward the magician, with her thin gold chains and the
innumerable brilliancies of her jewels flashing no more brightly than
flashed the sapphire of her eyes. "There!" she said, terribly: "and you
were going to surrender me to a swineherd, with half the hair chopped
from his head, and with the shirt sticking out of both his ragged
elbows!"
"My dearest, irrespective of tonsorial tastes, and disregarding all
sartorial niceties, and swineherd or not, he holds the magic sword
Flamberge, before which all my powers are nothing."
"But that is easily settled. Have men no sense whatever! Boy, do you
give me that sword, before you hurt yourself fiddling with it, and let
us have an end of this nonsense."
Thus the proud lady spoke, and for a while the victorious champion
regarded her with very youthful looking, hurt eyes. But he was not
routed.
"Madame Gisèle," replied Manuel, "gawky and poorly clad and young as I
may be, so long as I retain this sword I am master of you all and of the
future too. Yielding it, I yield everything my elders have taught me to
prize, for my grave elders have taught me that much wealth and broad
lands and a lovely wife are finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs.
So, if I yield at all, I must first bargain and get my price for
yielding."
He turned now from Gisèle to Niafer. "Dear snip," said Manuel, "you too
must have your say in my bargaining, because from the first it has been
your cleverness that has saved us, and has brought us two so high. For
see, at last I have drawn Flamberge, and I stand at last at the doubtful
summit of Vraidex, and I am master of the hour and of the future. I have
but to sever the wicked head of this doomed magician from his foul body,
and that will be the end of him--"
"No, no," says Miramon, soothingly, "I shall merely be turned into
something else, which perhaps we had better not discuss. But it will not
inconvenience me in the least, so do you not hold back out of mistaken
kindness to me, but instead do you smite, and take your well-earned
reward."
"Either way," submitted Manuel, "I have but to strike, and I acquire
much wealth and sleek farming-lands and a lovely wife, and the swineherd
becomes a great nobleman. But it is you, Niafer, who have won all these
things for me with your cleverness, and to me it seems that these
wonderful rewards are less wonderful than my dear comrade."
"But you too are very wonderful," said Niafer, loyally.
Says Manuel, smiling sadly: "I am not so wonderful but that in the hour
of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. Look you, Niafer, I
had thought I would be changed when I had become a famous champion, but
for all that I stand posturing here with this long sword, and am master
of the hour and of the future, I remain the boy that last Thursday was
tending pigs. I was not afraid of the terrors which beset me on my way
to rescue the Count's daughter, but of the Count's daughter herself I am
horribly afraid. Not for worlds would I be left alone with her. No, such
fine and terrific ladies are not for swineherds, and it is another sort
of wife that I desire."
"Whom then do you desire for a wife," says Niafer, "if not the loveliest
and the wealthiest lady in all Rathgor and Lower Targamon?"
"Why, I desire the cleverest and dearest and most wonderful creature in
all the world," says Manuel,--"whom I recollect seeing some six weeks
ago when I was in the kitchen at Arnaye."
"Ah, ah! it might be arranged, then. But who is this marvelous woman?"
Manuel said, "You are that woman, Niafer."
Niafer replied nothing, but Niafer smiled. Niafer raised one shoulder a
little, rubbing it against Manuel's broad chest, but Niafer still kept
silence. So the two young people regarded each other for a while, not
speaking, and to every appearance not valuing Miramon Lluagor and his
encompassing enchantments at a straw's worth, nor valuing anything save
each other.
"All things are changed for me," says Manuel, presently, in a hushed
voice, "and for the rest of time I live in a world wherein Niafer
differs from all other persons."
"My dearest," Niafer replied, "there is no sparkling queen nor polished
princess anywhere but the woman's heart in her would be jumping with joy
to have you looking at her twice, and I am only a servant girl!"
"But certainly," said the rasping voice of Gisèle, "Niafer is my
suitably disguised heathen waiting-woman, to whom my husband sent a
dream some while ago, with instructions to join me here, so that I might
have somebody to look after my things. So, Niafer, since you were
fetched to wait on me, do you stop pawing at that young pig-tender, and
tell me what is this I hear about your remarkable cleverness!"
Instead, it was Manuel who proudly told of the shrewd devices through
which Niafer had passed the serpents and the other terrors of sleep. And
the while that the tall boy was boasting, Miramon Lluagor smiled, and
Gisèle looked very hard at Niafer: for Miramon and his wife both knew
that the cleverness of Niafer was as far to seek as her good looks, and
that the dream which Miramon had sent had carefully instructed Niafer as
to these devices.
"Therefore, Madame Gisèle," says Manuel, in conclusion, "I will give you
Flamberge, and Miramon and Vraidex, and all the rest of earth to boot,
in exchange for the most wonderful and clever woman in the world."
And with a flourish, Manuel handed over the charmed sword Flamberge to
the Count's lovely daughter, and he took the hand of the swart,
flat-faced servant girl.
"Come now," says Miramon, in a sad flurry, "this is an imposing
performance. I need not say it arouses in me the most delightful sort of
surprise and all other appropriate emotions. But as touches your own
interests, Manuel, do you think your behavior is quite sensible?"
Tall Manuel looked down upon him with a sort of scornful pity. "Yes,
Miramon: for I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking and my own
desire. Of course it is very fine of me to be renouncing so much wealth
and power for the sake of my wonderful dear Niafer: but she is worth the
sacrifice, and, besides, she is witnessing all this magnanimity, and
cannot well fail to be impressed."
Niafer was of course reflecting: "This is very foolish and dear of him,
and I shall be compelled, in mere decency, to pretend to corresponding
lunacies for the first month or so of our marriage. After that, I hope,
we will settle down to some more reasonable way of living."
Meanwhile she regarded Manuel fondly, and quite as though she considered
him to be displaying unusual intelligence.
But Gisèle and Miramon were looking at each other, and wondering: "What
can the long-legged boy see in this stupid and plain-featured girl who
is years older than he? or she in the young swaggering ragged fool? And
how much wiser and happier is our marriage than, in any event, the
average marriage!"
And Miramon, for one, was so deeply moved by the staggering thought
which holds together so many couples in the teeth of human nature that
he patted his wife's hand. Then he sighed. "Love has conquered my
designs," said Miramon, oracularly, "and the secret of a contented
marriage, after all, is to pay particular attention to the wives of
everybody else."
Gisèle exhorted him not to be a fool, but she spoke without acerbity,
and, speaking, she squeezed his hand. She understood this potent
magician better than she intended ever to permit him to suspect.
Whereafter Miramon wiped the heavenly bodies from the firmament, and set
a miraculous rainbow there, and under its arch was enacted for the
swineherd and the servant girl such a betrothal masque of fantasies and
illusions as gave full scope to the art of Miramon, and delighted
everybody, but delighted Miramon in particular. The dragon that guards
hidden treasure made sport for them, the naiads danced, and cherubim
fluttered about singing very sweetly and asking droll conundrums. Then
they feasted, with unearthly servitors to attend them, and did all else
appropriate to an affiancing of deities. And when these junketings were
over, Manuel said that, since it seemed he was not to be a wealthy
nobleman after all, he and Niafer must be getting, first to the nearest
priest's and then back to the pigs.
"I am not so sure that you can manage it," said Miramon, "for, while the
ascent of Vraidex is incommoded by serpents, the quitting of Vraidex is
very apt to be hindered by death and fate. For I must tell you I have a
rather arbitrary half-brother, who is one of those dreadful Realists,
without a scrap of aesthetic feeling, and there is no controlling him."
"Well," Manuel considered, "one cannot live forever among dreams, and
death and fate must be encountered by all men. So we can but try."
Now for a while the sombre eyes of Miramon Lluagor appraised them. He,
who was lord of the nine sleeps and prince of the seven madnesses, now
gave a little sigh; for he knew that these young people were enviable
and, in the outcome, were unimportant.
So Miramon said, "Then do you go your way, and if you do not encounter
the author and destroyer of us all it will be well for you, and if you
do encounter him that too will be well in that it is his wish."
"I neither seek nor avoid him," Manuel replied. "I only know that I must
follow after my own thinking, and after a desire which is not to be
satisfied with dreams, even though they be"--the boy appeared to search
for a comparison, then, smiling, said,--"as resplendent as rubies of the
Orient."
Thereafter Manuel bid farewell to Miramon and Miramon's fine wife, and
Manuel descended from marvelous Vraidex with his plain-featured Niafer,
quite contentedly. For happiness went with them, if for no great way.
[Illustration]
V
The Eternal Ambuscade
Manuel and Niafer came down from Vraidex without hindrance. There was no
happier nor more devoted lover anywhere than young Manuel.
"For we will be married out of hand, dear snip," he says, "and you will
help me to discharge my geas, and afterward we will travel everywhither
and into the last limits of earth, so that we may see the ends of this
world and may judge them."
"Perhaps we had better wait until next spring, when the roads will be
better, Manuel, but certainly we will be married out of hand."
In earnest of this, Niafer permitted Manuel to kiss her again, and young
Manuel said, for the twenty-second time, "There is nowhere any happiness
like my happiness, nor any love like my love."
Thus speaking, and thus disporting themselves, they came leisurely to
the base of the gray mountain and to the old maple-trees, under which
they found two persons waiting. One was a tall man mounted on a white
horse, and leading a riderless black horse. His hat was pulled down
about his head so that his face could not be clearly seen.
Now the companion that was with him had the appearance of a bare-headed
youngster, with dark red hair, and his face too was hidden as he sat by
the roadway trimming his long finger-nails with a small green-handled
knife.
"Hail, friends," said Manuel, "and for whom are you waiting here?"
"I wait for one to ride on this black horse of mine," replied the
mounted stranger. "It was decreed that the first person who passed this
way must be his rider, but you two come abreast. So do you choose
between you which one rides."
"Well, but it is a fine steed surely," Manuel said, "and a steed fit for
Charlemagne or Hector or any of the famous champions of the old time."
"Each one of them has ridden upon this black horse of mine," replied the
stranger.
Niafer said, "I am frightened." And above them a furtive wind began to
rustle in the torn, discolored maple-leaves.
"--For it is a fine steed and an old steed," the stranger went on, "and
a tireless steed that bears all away. It has the fault, some say, that
its riders do not return, but there is no pleasing everybody."
"Friend," Manuel said, in a changed voice, "who are you, and what is
your name?"
"I am half-brother to Miramon Lluagor, lord of the nine sleeps, but I am
lord of another kind of sleeping; and as for my name, it is the name
that is in your thoughts and the name which most troubles you, and the
name which you think about most often."
There was silence. Manuel worked his lips foolishly. "I wish we had not
walked abreast," he said. "I wish we had remained among the bright
dreams."
"All persons voice some regret or another at meeting me. And it does not
ever matter."
"But if there were no choosing in the affair, I could make
shift to endure it, either way. Now one of us, you tell me, must depart
with you. If I say, 'Let Niafer be that one,' I must always recall that
saying with self-loathing."
"But I too say it!" Niafer was petting him and trembling.
"Besides," observed the rider of the white horse, "you have a choice of
sayings."
"The other saying," Manuel replied, "I cannot utter. Yet I wish I were
not forced to confess this. It sounds badly. At all events, I love
Niafer better than I love any other person, but I do not value Niafer's
life more highly than I value my own life, and it would be nonsense to
say so. No; my life is very necessary to me, and there is a geas upon me
to make a figure in this world before I leave it."
"My dearest," says Niafer, "you have chosen wisely."
The veiled horseman said nothing at all. But he took off his hat, and
the beholders shuddered. The kinship to Miramon was apparent, you could
see the resemblance, but they had never seen in Miramon Lluagor's face
what they saw here.
Then Niafer bade farewell to Manuel with pitiable whispered words. They
kissed. For an instant Manuel stood motionless. He queerly moved his
mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more
supple. Thereafter Manuel, very sick and desperate looking, did what was
requisite. So Niafer went away with Grandfather Death, in Manuel's
stead.
"My heart cracks in me now," says Manuel, forlornly considering his
hands, "but better she than I. Still, this is a poor beginning in life,
for yesterday great wealth and to-day great love was within my reach,
and now I have lost both."
"But you did not go the right way about to win success in anything,"
says the remaining stranger.
And now this other stranger arose from the trimming of his long
fingernails; and you could see this was a tall, lean youngster (though
not so tall as Manuel, and nothing like so stalwart), with ruddy cheeks,
wide-set brown eyes, and crinkling, rather dark red hair.
Then Manuel rubbed his wet hands as clean as might be, and this boy
walked on a little way with Manuel, talking of that which had been and
of some things which were to be. And Manuel said, "Now assuredly,
Horvendile, since that is your name, such talking is insane talking, and
no comfort whatever to me in my grief at losing Niafer."
"This is but the beginning of your losses, Manuel, for I think that a
little by a little you will lose everything which is desirable, until
you shall have remaining at the last only a satiation, and a weariness,
and an uneasy loathing of all that the human wisdom of your elders shall
have induced you to procure."
"But, Horvendile, can anybody foretell the future? Or can it be that
Miramon spoke seriously in saying that fate also was enleagued to forbid
the leaving of this mountain?"
"No, Manuel, I do not say that I am fate nor any of the Léshy, but
rather it seems to me that I am insane. So perhaps the less attention
you pay to my talking, the better. For I must tell you that this wasted
country side, this mountain, this road, and these old maples, and that
rock yonder, appear to me to be things I have imagined, and that you,
and the Niafer whom you have just disposed of so untidily, and Miramon
and his fair shrew, and all of you, appear to me to be persons I have
imagined; and all the living in this world appears to me to be only a
notion of mine."
"Why, then, certainly I would say, or rather, I would think it
unnecessary to say, that you are insane."
"You speak without hesitation, and it is through your ability to settle
such whimseys out of hand that you will yet win, it may be, to success."
"Yes, but," asked Manuel, slowly, "what is success?"
"In your deep mind, I think, that question is already answered."