sorceries unknown to the Apsarasas, there is no questioning that, after
the miracles you wrought with Helmas and Ferdinand: even so, I too have
a neat hand at magic, and it is not right for you to be treating me as
though I were the dirt under your feet. And I endure it! It is that
which puzzles me, it makes me wonder at myself, and my sole comfort is
that, at any rate, this wonderful Niafer of yours is dead and done
with."
Manuel sighed. "Yes, Niafer is dead, and these images also are dead
things, and both these facts continually trouble me. Nothing can be done
about Niafer, I suppose, but if only I could give some animation to
these images I think the geas upon me would be satisfied."
"Such a desire is blasphemous, Manuel, for the Eternal Father did no
more than that with His primal sculptures in Eden."
Dom Manuel blinked his vivid blue eyes as if in consideration. "Well,
but," he said, gravely, "but if I am a child of God it is only natural,
I think, that I should inherit the tastes and habits of my Father. No,
it is not blasphemous, I think, to desire to make an animated and lively
figure, somewhat more admirable and significant than that of the average
man. No, I think not. Anyhow, blasphemous or not, that is my need, and I
must follow after my own thinking and my own desire."
"If that desire were satisfied," asks Alianora, rather queerly, "would
you be content to settle down to some such rational method of living as
becomes a reputable sorcerer and king?"
"I think so, for a king has no master, and he is at liberty to travel
everywhither, and to see the ends of this world and judge them. Yes, I
think so, in a world wherein nothing is certain."
"If I but half way believed that, I would endeavor to obtain Schamir."
"And what in the devil is this Schamir?"
"A slip of the tongue," replied Alianora, smiling. "No, I shall have
nothing to do with your idiotic mud figures, and I shall tell you
nothing further."
"Come now, pettikins!" says Manuel. And he began coaxing the Princess of
Provence with just such cajoleries as the big handsome boy had formerly
exercised against the peasant girls of Rathgor.
"Schamir," said Alianora, at last, "is set in a signet ring which is
very well known in the country on the other side of the fire. Schamir
has the appearance of a black pebble; and if, after performing the proper
ceremonies, you were to touch one of these figures with it the figure
would become animated."
"Well, but," says Manuel, "the difficulty is that if I attempt to pass
through the fire in order to reach the country behind it, I shall be
burned to a cinder, and so I have no way of obtaining this talisman."
"In order to obtain it," Alianora told him, "one must hard-boil an egg
from the falcon's nest, then replace it in the nest, and secrete oneself
near by with a crossbow, under a red and white umbrella, until the
mother bird, finding one of her eggs resists all her endeavors to infuse
warmth into it, flies off, and plunges into the nearest fire, and
returns with this ring in her beak. With Schamir she will touch the
boiled egg, and so restore the egg to its former condition. At that
moment she must be shot, and the ring must be secured, before the falcon
can return the talisman to its owner. I mean, to its dreadful owner, who
is"--here Alianora made an incomprehensible sign,--"who is Queen Freydis
of Audela."
"Come," said Manuel, "what is the good of my knowing this in the dead of
winter! It will be months before the falcons are nesting again."
"Manuel, Manuel, there is no understanding you! Do you not see how badly
it looks for a grown man, and far more for a famed champion and a potent
sorcerer, to be pouting and scowling and kicking your heels about like
that, and having no patience at all?"
"Yes, I suppose it does look badly, but I am Manuel, and I follow--"
"Oh, spare me that," cried Alianora, "or else, no matter how much I may
love you, dearest, I shall box your jaws!"
"None the less, what I was going to say is true," declared Manuel, "and
if only you would believe it, matters would go more smoothly between
us."
[Illustration]
XI
Magic of the Apsarasas
Now the tale tells how, to humor Alianora, Count Manuel applied himself
to the magic of the Apsarasas. He went with the Princess to a high
secret place, and Alianora, crying sweetly, in the famous old fashion,
"Torolix, Ciccabau, Tio, Tio, Torolililix!" performed the proper
incantations, and forthwith birds came multitudinously from all quarters
of the sky, in a descending flood of color and flapping and whistling
and screeching.
The peacock screamed, "With what measure thou judgest others, thou shalt
thyself be judged."
Sang the nightingale, "Contentment is the greatest happiness."
The turtle-dove called, "It were better for some created things that
they had never been created."
The peewit chirped, "He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none
for himself."
The stork said huskily, "The fashion of this world passeth away."
And the wail of the eagle was, "Howsoever long life may be, yet its
inevitable term is death."
"Now that is virtually what I said," declared the stork, "and you are a
bold-faced and bald-headed plagiarist."
"And you," replied the eagle, clutching the stork's throat, "are a dead
bird that will deliver no more babies."
But Dom Manuel tugged at the eagle's wing, and asked him if he really
meant that to hold good before this Court of the Birds. And when the
infuriated eagle opened his cruel beak, and held up one murderous claw,
to make solemn oath that indeed he did mean it, and would show them too,
the stork very intelligently flew away.
"I shall not ever forget your kindness, Count Manuel," cried the stork,
"and do you remember that the customary three wishes are always yours
for the asking."
"And I too am grateful," said the abashed eagle,--"yes, upon the whole,
I am grateful, for if I had killed that long-legged pest it would have
been in contempt of the court, and they would have set me to hatching
red cockatrices. Still, his reproach was not unfounded, and I must think
up a new cry."
So the eagle perched on a rock, and said tentatively, "There is such a
thing as being too proud to fight." He shook his bald head disgustedly,
and tried, "The only enduring peace is a peace without victory," but
that did not seem to content him either. Afterward he cried out, "All
persons who oppose me have pygmy minds," and "If everybody does not do
exactly as I order, the heart of the world will be broken": and many
other foolish things he repeated, and shook his head over, for none of
these axioms pleased the eagle, and he no longer admired the pedagogue
who had invented them.
So in his worried quest for a saying sufficiently orotund and
meaningless to content his ethics, and to be hailed with convenience as
a great moral principle, the eagle forgot all about Count Manuel: but
the stork did not forget, because in the eyes of the stork the life of
the stork is valuable.
The other birds uttered various such sentiments as have been recorded,
and all these, they told Manuel, were accredited sorceries. The big
yellow-haired boy did not dispute it, he rarely disputed anything: but
the droop to that curious left eye of his was accentuated, and he
admitted to Alianora that he wondered if such faint-hearted smug little
truths were indeed the height of wisdom, outside of religion and public
speaking. Then he asked which was the wisest of the birds, and they told
him the Zhar-Ptitza, whom others called the Fire-Bird.
Manuel induced Alianora to summon the Zhar-Ptitza, who is the oldest and
the most learned of all living creatures, although he has thus far
learned nothing assuredly except that appearances have to be kept up.
The Zhar-Ptitza came, crying wearily, "Fine feathers make fine birds."
You heard him from afar.
The Zhar-Ptitza himself had every reason to get comfort out of this
axiom, for his plumage was everywhere the most brilliant purple, except
that his neck feathers were the color of new gold, and his tail was blue
with somewhat longer red feathers intermingled. His throat was wattled
gorgeously, and his head was tufted, and he seemed a trifle larger than
the eagle. The Fire-Bird brought with him his nest of cassia and sprigs
of incense, and this he put down upon the lichened rocks, and he sat in
it while he talked with Manuel.
The frivolous question that Manuel raised as to his clay figures, the
Zhar-Ptitza considered a very human bit of nonsense: and the wise
creature said he felt forced to point out that no intelligent bird would
ever dream of making images.
[Illustration: HE WAS DRYING OUT IN THE SUN]
"But, sir," said Manuel, "I do not wish to burden this world with any
more lifeless images. Instead, I wish to make in this world an animated
figure, very much as, they say, a god did once upon a time--"
"Come, you should not try to put too much responsibility upon Jahveh,"
protested the Zhar-Ptitza, tolerantly, "for Jahveh made only one man,
and did not ever do it again. I remember the making of that first man
very clearly, for I was created the morning before, with instructions to
fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, so I saw the whole
affair. Yes, Jahveh did create the first man on the sixth day. And I
voiced no criticism. For of course after working continuously for nearly
a whole week, and making so many really important things, no creative
artist should be blamed for not being in his happiest vein on the sixth
day."
"And did you happen to notice, sir," asks Manuel, hopefully, "by what
method animation was given to Adam?"
"No, he was drying out in the sun when I first saw him, with Gabriel
sitting at his feet, playing on a flageolet: and naturally I did not pay
any particular attention to such foolishness."
"Well, well, I do not assert that the making of men is the highest form
of art, yet, none the less, a geas is upon me to make myself a very
splendid and admirable young man."
"But why should you be wasting your small portion of breath and
strength? To what permanent use could one put a human being even if the
creature were virtuous and handsome to look at? Ah, Manuel, you have not
seen them pass, as I have seen them pass in swarms, with their wars and
their reforms and their great causes, and leaving nothing but their
bones behind them."
"Yes, yes, to you, at your age, who were old when Nineveh was planned,
it must seem strange; and I do not know why my mother desired that I
should make myself a splendid and admirable young man. But the geas is
upon me."
The Zhar-Ptitza sighed. "Certainly these feminine whims are not easily
explained. Yet your people have some way of making brand-new men and
women of all kinds. I am sure of this, for otherwise the race would have
been extinct a great while since at the rate they kill one another. And
perhaps they do adhere to Jahveh's method, and make fresh human beings
out of earth, for, now I think of it, I have seen the small, recently
completed ones, who looked exactly like red clay."
"It is undeniable that babies do have something of that look," assented
Manuel. "So then, at least, you think I may be working in the proper
medium?"
"It seems plausible, because I am certain your people are not
intelligent enough to lay eggs, nor could, of course, such an impatient
race succeed in getting eggs hatched. At all events, they have
undoubtedly contrived some method or other, and you might find out from
the least foolish of them about that method."
"Who, then, is the least foolish of mankind?"
"Probably King Helmas of Albania, for it was prophesied by me a great
while ago that he would become the wisest of men if ever he could come
by one of my shining white feathers, and I hear it reported he has done
so."
"Sir," said Manuel, dubiously, "I must tell you in confidence that
the feather King Helmas has is not yours, but was plucked from the wing
of an ordinary goose."
"Does that matter?" asked the Zhar-Ptitza. "I never prophesied, of
course, that he actually would find one of my shining white feathers,
because all my feathers are red and gold and purple."
"But how can there be any magic in a goose-feather?"
"There is this magic, that, possessing it, King Helmas has faith in, and
has stopped bothering about, himself."
"Is not to bother about yourself the highest wisdom?"
"Oh, no! Oh, dear me, no! I merely said it is the highest of which man
is capable."
"But the sages and philosophers, sir, that had such fame in the old
time, and made the maxims for you birds! Why, did King Solomon, for
example, rise no higher than that?"
"Yes, yes, to be sure!" said the Zhar-Ptitza, sighing again, "now that
was a sad error. The poor fellow was endowed with, just as an
experiment, considerable wisdom. And it caused him to perceive that a
man attains to actual contentment only when he is drunk or when he is
engaged in occupations not very decorously described. So
Sulieman-ben-Daoud gave over all the rest of his time to riotous living
and to co-educational enterprises. It was logic, but it led to a most
expensive seraglio and to a very unbecoming appearance, and virtually
wrecked the man's health. Yes, that was the upshot of one of you being
endowed with actual wisdom, just as an experiment, to see what would
come of it: so the experiment, of course, has never been repeated. But
of living persons, I dare assert that you will find King Helmas
appreciably freed from a thousand general delusions by his one delusion
about himself."
"Very well, then," says Manuel. "I suspect a wilful paradox and a forced
cynicism in much of what you have said, but I shall consult with King
Helmas about human life and about the figure I have to make in the
world."
So they bid each other farewell, and the Zhar-Ptitza picked up his nest
of cassia and sprigs of incense, and flew away with it: and as he rose
in the air the Zhar-Ptitza cried, "Fine feathers make fine birds."
"But that is not the true proverb, sir," Manuel called up toward the
resplendent creature, "and such perversions too, they tell me, are a
mark of would-be cleverness."
"So it may seem to you now, my lad, but time is a very transforming
fairy. Therefore do you wait until you are older," the bird replied,
from on high, "and then you will know better than to doubt my cry or to
repeat it."
[Illustration]
XII
Ice and Iron
Then came from oversea the Bishops of Ely and Lincoln, the prior of
Hurle, and the Master of the Temple, asking that King Raymond send one
of his daughters, with a suitable dowry, to be the King of England's
wife. "Very willingly," says Raymond Bérenger; and told them they could
have his third daughter Sancha, with a thousand marks.
"But, Father," said Alianora, "Sancha is nothing but a child. A fine
queen she would make!"
"Still, my dear," replied King Raymond, "you are already bespoke."
"I was not thinking about myself. I was thinking about Sancha's true
welfare."
"Of course you were, my dear, and everybody knows the sisterly love you
have for her."
"The pert little mess is spoilt enough as it is, Heaven knows. And if
things came to the pass that I had to stand up whenever Sancha came into
the room, and to sit on a footstool while she lolled back in a chair the
way Meregrett does, it would be the child's ruin."
Raymond Bérenger said: "Now certainly it will be hard on you to have two
sisters that are queens, and with perhaps little Beatrice also marrying
some king or another when her time comes, and you staying only a
countess, who are the best-looking of the lot."
"My father, I see what you would be at!" cried Alianora, aghast. "You
think it is my duty to overcome my private inclinations, and to marry
the King of England for ruthless and urgent political reasons!"
"I only said, my darling--"
"--For you have seen at once that I owe this great sacrifice to the
future welfare of our beloved Provence. You have noted, with that
keenness which nothing escapes, that with the aid of your wisdom and
advice I would know very well how to manage this high King that is the
master of no pocket handkerchief place like Provence but of England and
of Ireland too."
"Also, by rights, of Aquitaine and Anjou and Normandy, my precious.
Still, I merely observed--"
"Oh, but believe me, I am not arguing with you, my dear father, for I
know that you are much wiser than I," says Alianora, bravely wiping away
big tears from her lovely eyes.
"Have it your own way, then," replied Raymond Bérenger, with outspread
hands. "But what is to be done about you and Count Manuel here?"
The King looked toward the tapestry of Jephthah's sacrifice, beside
which Manuel sat, just then re-altering the figure of the young man with
the loving look of Alianora that Manuel had made because of the urgency
of his geas, and could not seem to get exactly right.
"I am sure, Father, that Manuel also will be self-sacrificing and
magnanimous and sensible about it."
"Ah, yes! but what is to happen afterward? For anyone can see that you
and this squinting long-legged lad are fathoms deep in love with each
other."
"I think that after I am married, Father, you or King Ferdinand or King
Helmas can send Count Manuel into England on some embassy, and I am sure
that he and I will always be true and dear friends without affording any
handle to gossip."
"Oho!" King Raymond said, "I perceive your drift, and it is toward a
harbor that is the King of England's affair, and not mine. My part is to
go away now, so that you two may settle the details of that
ambassadorship in which Dom Manuel is to be the vicar of so many kings."
Raymond Bérenger took up his sceptre and departed, and the Princess
turned to where Manuel was pottering with the three images he had made
in the likeness of Helmas and Ferdinand and Alianora. "You see, now,
Manuel dearest, I am heart-broken, but for the realm's sake I must marry
the King of England."
Manuel looked up from his work. "Yes, I heard. I am sorry, and I never
understood politics, but I suppose it cannot be helped. So would you
mind standing a little more to the left? You are in the light now, and
that prevents my seeing clearly what I am doing here to this upper lip."
"And how can you be messing with that wet mud when my heart is
breaking!"
"Because a geas is upon me to make these images. No, I am sure I do not
know why my mother desired it. But everything which is fated must be
endured, just as we must now endure the obligation that is upon you to
marry the high King of England."
"My being married need not matter very much, after I am Queen, for
people declare this King is a poor spindling creature, and, as I was
saying, you can come presently into England."
Manuel looked at her for a moment or two. She colored. He, sitting at
the feet of weeping Jephthah, smiled. "Well," said Manuel, "I will come
into England when you send me a goose-feather. So the affair is arranged."
"Oh, you are all ice and iron!" she said, "and you care for nothing
except your wet mud images, and I detest you!"
"My dearest," Manuel answered placidly, "the trouble is that each of us
desires one particular thing over and above other things. Your desire is
for power and a great name and for a king who will be at once your
mouthpiece, your lackey and your lover. Now, candidly, I cannot spare
the time to be any of these things, because my desire is different from
your desire, but is equally strong. Also, it seems to me, as I become
older, and see more of men and of men's ways, that most people have no
especial desire but only preferences. In a world of such wishy-washy
folk you and I cannot hope to escape being aspersed with comparisons to
ice and iron, but it does not become us to be flinging these venerable
similes in each other's faces."
She kept silence a while. She laughed uneasily. "I so often wonder about
you, Manuel, as to whether inside the big, high-colored, squinting,
solemn husk is living a very wise person or a very unmitigated fool."
"I perceive there is something else which we have in common, for I, too,
often wonder about that."
"It is settled, then?"
"It is settled that, instead of ruling little Arles, you are to be Queen
of England, and Lady of Ireland, and Duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine,
and Countess of Anjou; that our token is to be a goose-feather; and
that, I diffidently repeat, you are to get out of my light and interfere
no longer with the discharge of my geas."
"And what will you do?"
"I must, as always, follow after my own thinking--"
"If you complete the sentence I shall undoubtedly scream."
Manuel laughed good-humoredly. "I suppose I do say it rather often, but
then it is true, and the great trouble between us, Alianora, is that you
do not perceive its truth."
She said, "And I suppose you will now be stalking off to some woman or
another for consolation?"
"No, the consolation I desire is not to be found in petticoats. No,
first of all, I shall go to King Helmas. For my images stay obstinately
lifeless, and there is something lacking to each of them, and none is
the figure I desire to make in this world. Now I do not know what can be
done about it, but the Zhar-Ptitza informs me that King Helmas, since
all doubt of himself has been put out of mind, can aid me if any man
can."
"Then we must say good-bye, though not for a long while, I hope."
"Yes," Manuel said, "this is good-bye, and to a part of my living it is
an eternal good-bye."
Dom Manuel left his images where the old Hebrew captain appeared to
regard them with violent dumb anguish, and Manuel took both of the
girl's lovely little hands, and he stood thus for a while looking down
at the Princess.
Said Manuel, very sadly:
"I cry the elegy of such notions as are possible to boys alone.
'Surely,' I said, 'the informing and all-perfect soul shines through and
is revealed in this beautiful body.' So my worship began for you, whose
violet eyes retain at all times their chill brittle shining, and do not
soften, but have been to me always as those eyes which, they say, a
goddess turns toward ruined lovers who cry the elegy of hope and
contentment, with lips burned bloodless by the searing of passions which
she, immortal, may neither feel nor comprehend. Even so do you, dear
Alianora, who are not divine, look toward me, quite unmoved by anything
except incurious wonder, the while that I cry my elegy.
"I, for love, and for the glamour of bright beguiling dreams that hover
and delude and allure all lovers, could never until to-day behold
clearly what person I was pestering with my notions. I, being blind,
could not perceive your blindness which blindly strove to understand me,
and which hungered for understanding, as I for love. Thus our kisses
veiled, at most, the foiled endeavorings of flesh that willingly would
enter into the soul's high places, but is not able. Now, the game being
over, what is the issue and end of it time must attest. At least we
should each sorrow a little for what we have lost in this gaming,--you
for a lover, and I for love.
"No, but it is not love which lies here expiring, now we part friendlily
at the deathbed of that emotion which yesterday we shared. This emotion
also was not divine; and so might not outlive the gainless months
wherein, like one fishing for pearls in a millpond, I have toiled to
evoke from your heart more than Heaven placed in this heart, wherein
lies no love. Now the crying is stilled that was the crying of
loneliness to its unfound mate: already dust is gathering light and gray
upon the unmoving lips. Therefore let us bury our dead, and having
placed the body in the tomb, let us honestly inscribe above this
fragile, flower-like perished emotion, 'Here lieth lust, not love.'"
Now Alianora pouted. "You use such very ugly words, sweetheart: and you
are talking unreasonably, too, for I am sure I am just as sorry about it
as you are--"
Manuel gave her that slow sleepy smile which was Manuel. "Just," he
said,--"and it is that which humiliates. Yes, you and I are second-rate
persons, Alianora, and we have found each other out. It is a pity. But
we will always keep our secret from the rest of the world, and our
secret will always be a bond between us."
He kissed the Princess, very tenderly, and so left her.