at all, for you ought to be in bed with the newborn child, as is the
custom with the mothers of Philistia."
"What nonsense!" says Niafer, "when I have to be changing every one of
the pink bows on Melicent's caps for blue bows."
"Still, Niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating the
Philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your having a
baby."
Niafer grumbled, but obeyed. She presently lay in the golden bed of
Freydis: then Manuel duly looked at the contents of the small heaving
bundle at Niafer's side: and whether or no he scaled the conventional
peaks of emotion was nobody's concern save Manuel's. He began, in any
event, to talk in the vein which fathers ordinarily feel such high
occasions to demand. But Niafer, who was never romantic nowadays, merely
said that, anyhow, it was a blessing it was all over, and that she
hoped, now, they would soon be leaving Sargyll.
"But Freydis is so kind, my dear," said Manuel, "and so fond of you!"
"I never in my life," declared Niafer, "knew anybody to go off so
terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the first
time I saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her snake eyes at
you. As for being fond of me, I trust her exactly as far as I can see
her."
"Yet, Niafer, I have heard you declare, time and again--"
"But if you did, Manuel, one has to be civil."
Manuel shrugged, discreetly. "You women!" he observed, discreetly.
"--As if it were not as plain as the nose on her face--and I do not
suppose that even you, Manuel, will be contending she has a really good
nose,--that the woman is simply itching to make a fool of you, and to
have everybody laughing at you, again! Manuel, I declare I have no
patience with you when you keep arguing about such unarguable facts!"
Manuel, exercising augmented discretion, now said nothing whatever.
"--And you may talk yourself black in the face, Manuel, but nevertheless
I am going to name the child Melicent, after my own mother, as soon as a
priest can be fetched from the mainland to christen her. No, Manuel, it
is all very well for your dear friend to call herself a gray witch, but
I do not notice any priests coming to this house unless they are
especially sent for, and I draw my own conclusions."
"Well, well, let us not argue about it, my dear."
"Yes, but who started all this arguing and fault-finding, I would like
to know!"
"Why, to be sure I did. But I spoke without thinking. I was wrong. I
admit it. So do not excite yourself, dear snip."
"--And as if I could help the child's not being a boy!"
"But I never said--"
"No, but you keep thinking it, and sulking is the one thing I cannot
stand. No, Manuel, no, I do not complain, but I do think that, after all
I have been through with, sleeping around in tents, and running away
from Northmen, and never having a moment's comfort, after I had
naturally figured on being a real countess--" Niafer whimpered sleepily.
"Yes, yes," says Manuel, stroking her soft crinkly hair.
"--And with that silky hell-cat watching me all the time,--and looking
ten years younger than I do, now that you have got my face and legs all
wrong,--and planning I do not know what--"
"Yes, to be sure," says Manuel, soothingly: "you are quite right, my
dear."
So a silence fell, and presently Niafer slept. Manuel sat with hunched
shoulders, watching the wife he had fetched back from paradise at the
price of his youth. His face was grave, his lips were puckered and
protruded. He smiled by and by, and he shook his head. He sighed, not as
one who is grieved, but like a man perplexed and a little weary.
Now some while after Niafer was asleep, and when the night was fairly
advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. Manuel
went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping
gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish
lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like
shining fleas. These approached the river bank, and gathered there. Then
the assembled lights began to come toward the house. You could now see
these lights were carried by dwarfs who had the eyes of owls and the
long beaks of storks. These dwarfs were jumping and dancing about
Freydis like an insane body-guard.
Freydis walked among them very remarkably attired. Upon her head shone
the uraeus crown, and she carried a long rod of cedar-wood topped with
an apple carved in bluestone, and at her side came the appearance of a
tall young man.
So they all approached the house, and the young man looked up fixedly at
the unlighted window, as though he were looking at Manuel. The young man
smiled: his teeth gleamed in the blue glare. Then the whole company
entered the house, and from Manuel's station at the window you could see
no more, but you could hear small prancing hoof-beats downstairs and the
clattering of plates and much whinnying laughter. Manuel was plucking
irresolutely at his grizzled short beard, for there was no doubt as to
the strapping tall young fellow.
Presently you could hear music: it was the ravishing Nis air, which
charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and Manuel did not
make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. He hastily undressed,
knelt for a decorous interval, and climbed vexedly into bed.
XXIX
Sesphra of the Dreams
In the morning Dom Manuel arose early, and left Niafer still sleeping
with the baby. Manuel came down through the lower hall, where the table
was as the revelers had left it. In the middle of the disordered room
stood a huge copper vessel half full of liquor, and beside it was a
drinking-horn of gold. Manuel paused here, and drank of the sweet
heather-wine as though he had need to hearten himself.
He went out into the bright windy morning, and as he crossed the fields
he came up behind a red cow who was sitting upon her haunches, intently
reading a largish book bound in green leather, but at sight of Manuel
she hastily put aside the volume, and began eating grass. Manuel went
on, without comment, toward the river bank, to meet the image which he
had made of clay, and to which through unholy arts he had given life.
The thing came up out of the glistening ripples of brown water, and the
thing embraced Manuel and kissed him. "I am pagan," the thing said, in a
sweet mournful voice, "and therefore I might not come to you until your
love was given to the unchristened. For I was not ever christened, and
so my true name is not known to anybody. But in the far lands where I am
worshipped as a god I am called Sesphra of the Dreams."
"I did not give you any name," said Manuel; and then he said: "Sesphra,
you that have the appearance of Alianora and of my youth! Sesphra, how
beautiful you are!"
"Is that why you are trembling, Manuel?"
"I tremble because the depths of my being have been shaken. Since youth
went out of me, in the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, I have lived through
days made up of small frettings and little pleasures and only half
earnest desires, which moved about upon the surface of my being like
minnows in the shoals of a still lake. But now that I have seen and
heard you, Sesphra of the Dreams, and your lips have touched my lips, a
passion moves in me that possesses all of me, and I am frightened."
"It is the passion which informs those who make images. It is the master
you denied, poor foolish Manuel, and the master who will take no
denial."
"Sesphra, what is your will with me?"
"It is my will that you and I go hence on a long journey, into the far
lands where I am worshipped as a god. For I love you, my creator, who
gave life to me, and you love me more than aught else, and it is not
right that we be parted."
"I cannot go on any journey, just now, for I have my lands and castles
to regain, and my wife and my newborn child to protect."
Sesphra began to smile adorably: you saw that his teeth were strangely
white and very strong. "What are these things to me or you, or to anyone
that makes images? We follow after our own thinking and our own
desires."
"I lived thus once upon a time," said Manuel, sighing, "but nowadays
there is a bond upon me to provide for my wife, and for my child too,
and I have not much leisure left for anything else."
Then Sesphra began to speak adorably, as he walked on the river bank,
with one arm about Dom Manuel. Always Sesphra limped as he walked. A
stiff and obdurate wind was ruffling the broad brown shining water, and
as they walked, this wind buffeted them, and tore at their clothing.
Manuel clung to his hat with one hand, and with the other held to lame
Sesphra of the Dreams. Sesphra talked of matters not to be recorded.
"That is a handsome ring you have there," says Sesphra, by and by.
"It is the ring my wife gave me when we were married," Manuel replied.
"Then you must give it to me, dear Manuel."
"No, no, I cannot part with it."
"But it is beautiful, and I want it," Sesphra said. So Manuel gave him
the ring.
Now Sesphra began again to talk of matters not to be recorded.
"Sesphra of the Dreams," says Manuel, presently, "you are bewitching me,
for when I listen to you I see that Manuel's imperilled lands make such
a part of earth as one grain of sand contributes to the long narrow
beach we are treading. I see my fond wife Niafer as a plain-featured and
dull woman, not in any way remarkable among the millions of such women
as are at this moment preparing breakfast or fretting over other small
tasks. I see my newborn child as a mewing lump of flesh. And I see
Sesphra whom I made so strong and strange and beautiful, and it is as if
in a half daze I hear that obdurate wind commingled with the sweet voice
of Sesphra while you are talking of matters which it is not safe to talk
about."
"Yes, that is the way it is, Manuel, and the way it should be, and the
way it always will be as long as life is spared to you, now. So let us
go into the house, and write droll letters to King Helmas and Raymond
Bérenger and Queen Stultitia, in reply to the fine offers they have been
making you."
They came back into the empty banquet-hall. This place was paved with
mother of pearl and copper; six porphyry columns supported the
musicians' gallery. To the other end were two alabaster urns upon green
pedestals that were covered with golden writing in the old Dirgham.
Here Manuel cleared away the embossed silver plates from one corner of
the table. He took pen and ink, and Sesphra told him what to write.
Sesphra sat with arms folded, and as he dictated he looked up at the
ceiling. This ceiling was of mosaic work, showing four winged creatures
that veiled their faces with crimson and orange-tawny wings; suspended
from this ceiling by bronze chains hung ostrich eggs, bronze lamps and
globes of crystal.
"But these are very insulting replies," observed Dom Manuel, when he had
finished writing, "and they will make their recipients furious. These
princes, Sesphra, are my good friends, and they are powerful friends,
upon whose favor I am dependent."
"Yes, but how beautiful these replies are worded! See now, dear Manuel,
how divertingly you have described King Helmas' hideous nose in your
letter to King Helmas, and how trenchant is that paragraph about the
scales of his mermaid wife--"
"I admit that passage is rather droll--"
"--And in your letter to the pious Queen Stultitia that which you say
about the absurdities of religion, here, and the fun you make of her
spectacles, are masterpieces of paradox and of very exquisite prose--"
"Those bits, to be sure, are quite neatly put--"
"--So I must see to it that these replies are sent, to make people
admire you everywhere."
"Yet, Sesphra, all these princes are my friends, and their goodwill is
necessary to me--"
"No, Manuel. For you and I will not bother about these stupid princes
any more, nor will you need any friends except me; for we will go to
this and that remote strange place, and our manner of living will be
such and such, and we will do so and so, and we will travel everywhither
and see the ends of this world and judge them. And we will not ever be
parted until you die."
"What will you do then, dear Sesphra?" Manuel asks him fondly.
"I shall survive you, as all gods outlive their creators. And I must
depute the building of your monument to men of feeble minds which have
been properly impaired by futile studies and senility. That is the way
in which all gods are doomed to deal with their creators: but that need
not trouble us as yet."
"No," Manuel said, "I cannot go with you. For in my heart is enkindling
such love of you as frightens me."
"It is through love men win to happiness, poor lonely Manuel."
Now when Manuel answered Sesphra there was in Manuel's face trouble and
bewilderment. And Manuel said:
"Under your dear bewitchments, Sesphra, I confess that through love men
win to sick disgust and self-despising, and for that reason I will not
love any more. Now breathlessly the tall lads run to clutch at stars,
above the brink of a drab quagmire, and presently time trips them--Oh,
Sesphra, wicked Sesphra of the Dreams, you have laid upon me a magic so
strong that, horrified, I hear the truth come babbling from long-guarded
lips which no longer obey me, because of your dear bewitchments.
"Look you, adorable and all-masterful Sesphra, I have followed noble
loves. I aspired to the Unattainable Princess, and thereafter to the
unattainable Queen of a race that is more fine and potent than our race,
and afterward I would have no less a love than an unattainable angel in
paradise. Hah, I must be fit mate for that which is above me, was my
crying in the old days; and such were the indomitable desires that one
by one have made my living wonderful with dear bewitchments.
"The devil of it was that these proud aims did not stay unattained!
Instead, I was cursed by getting my will, and always my reward was
nothing marvelous and rare, but that quite ordinary figure of earth, a
human woman. And always in some dripping dawn I have turned with
abhorrence from myself and from the sated folly that had hankered for
such prizes, which, when possessed, showed as not wonderful in anything,
and which possession left likable enough, but stripped of dear
bewitchments.
"No, Sesphra, no: men are so made that they must desire to mate with
some woman or another, and they are furthermore so made that to mate
with a woman does not content their desire. And in this gaming there is
no gain, because the end of loving, for everybody except those lucky
persons whose love is not requited, must always be a sick disgust and a
self-despising, which the wise will conduct in silence, and not talk
about as I am talking now under your dear bewitchments."
Then Sesphra smiled a little, saying, "And yet, poor Manuel, there is,
they tell me, no more uxorious husband anywhere."
"I am used to her," Manuel replied, forlornly, "and I suppose that if
she were taken away from me again I would again be attempting to fetch
her back. And I do not like to hurt the poor foolish heart of her by
going against her foolish notions. Besides, I am a little afraid of her,
because she is always able to make me uncomfortable. And above all, of
course, the hero of a famous love-affair, such as ours has become, with
those damned poets everywhere making rhymes about my fidelity and
devotion, has to preserve appearances. So I get through each day,
somehow, by never listening very attentively to the interminable things
she tells me about. But I often wonder, as I am sure all husbands
wonder, why Heaven ever made a creature so tedious and so unreasonably
dull of wit and so opinionated. And when I think that for the rest of
time this creature is to be my companion I usually go out and kill
somebody. Then I come back, because she knows the way I like my toast."
"Instead, dear Manuel, you must go away from this woman who does not
understand you--"
"Yes," Manuel said, with grave conviction, "that is exactly the
trouble."
"--And you must go with me who understand you all through. And we will
travel everywhither, so that we may see the ends of this world and judge
them."
"You tempt me, Sesphra, with an old undying desire, and you have laid
strong enchantments on me, but, no, I cannot go with you."
The hand of Sesphra closed upon the hand of Manuel caressingly.
Manuel said: "I will go with you. But what will become of the woman and
the child whom I leave behind me unfriended?"
"That is true. There will be nobody to look out for them, and they will
perish miserably. That is not important, but perhaps upon the whole it
would be better for you to kill them before we depart from Sargyll."
"Very well, then," says Manuel, "I will do that, but you must come up
into the room with me, for I cannot bear to lose sight of you."
Now Sesphra smiled more unrestrainedly, and his teeth gleamed. "I shall
not ever leave you now until you die."
[Illustration]
XXX
Farewell to Freydis
They went upstairs together, into the room with scarlet hangings, and to
the golden bed where, with seven sorts of fruit properly arranged at the
bedside, Dom Manuel's wife Niafer lay asleep. Manuel drew his dagger.
Niafer turned in her sleep, so that she seemed to offer her round small
throat to the raised knife. You saw now that on the other side of the
golden bed sat Queen Freydis, making a rich glow of color there, and in
her lap was the newborn naked child.
Freydis rose, holding the child to her breast, and smiling. A devil
might smile thus upon contriving some new torment for lost souls, but a
fair woman's face should not be so cruel. Then this evil joy passed from
the face of Freydis. She dipped her fingers into the bowl of water with
which she had been bathing the child, and with her finger-tips she made
upon the child's forehead the sign of a cross.
Said Freydis, "Melicent, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
Sesphra passed wildly toward the fireplace, crying, "A penny, a penny,
twopence, a penny and a half, and a halfpenny!" At his call the fire
shot forth tall flames, and Sesphra entered these flames as a man goes
between parted curtains, and instantly the fire collapsed and was as it
had been. Already the hands of Freydis were moving deftly in the Sleep
Charm, so that Niafer did not move. Freydis to-day was resplendently
robed in flame-colored silk, and about her dark hair was a circlet of
burnished copper.
Manuel had dropped his dagger so that the point of it pierced the floor,
and the weapon stood erect and quivering. But Manuel was shaken for a
moment more horribly than shook the dagger: you would have said he was
convulsed with horror and self-loathing. So for an instant he waited,
looking at Dame Niafer, who slept untroubled, and at fiery-colored
Freydis, who was smiling rather queerly: and then the old composure came
back to Manuel.
"Breaker of all oaths," says Freydis, "I must tell you that this Sesphra
is pagan, and cannot thrive except among those whose love is given to
the unchristened. Thus he might not come to Sargyll until the arrival of
this little heathen whom I have just made Christian. Now we have only
Christian terrors here; and again your fate is in my hands."
Dom Manuel looked grave. "Freydis," he said, "you have rescued me from
very unbecoming conduct. A moment more and I would have slain my wife
and child because of this Sesphra's resistless magic."
Says Freydis, still smiling a queer secret smile: "Indeed, there is no
telling into what folly and misery Sesphra would not have led you. For
you fashioned his legs unevenly, and he has not ever pardoned you his
lameness."
"The thing is a devil," Manuel said. "And this is the figure I desired
to make, this is the child of my long dreams and labors! This is the
creature I designed to be more admirable and significant than the drab
men I found in streets and lanes and palaces! Certainly, I have loosed
among mankind a blighting misery which I cannot control at all."
"The thing is you as you were once, gray Manuel. You had comeliness and
wit and youth and courage, and these you gave the image, shaping it
boldly to your proud youth's will and in your proud youth's likeness.
But human pity and any constant love you did not then have to give,
either to your fellows or to the fine figure you made, nor, very
certainly, to me. So you amused yourself by making Sesphra and by making
me that which we are to-day."
Now again showed subtly evil thoughts in the face of this shrewd flaming
woman who had so recently brought about the destruction of King Thibaut,
and of the Duke of Istria, and of those other enamored lords. And Dom
Manuel began to regard her more intently.
In Manuel's sandals the average person would have reflected, long before
this, that Manuel and his wife and child were in this sorcerous place at
the mercy of the whims and the unwholesome servitors of this not very
dependable looking witch-woman. The average person would have
recollected distastefully that unusual panther and that discomfortable
night-porter and the madness which had smitten Duke Asmund's men, and
the clattering vicious little hoofs of the shrill dwarfs; and to the
average person this room would have seemed a desirable place to be many
leagues away from.
But candid blunt Dom Manuel said, with jovial laughter: "You speak as if
you had not grown more adorable every day, dear Freydis, and as though I
would not be vastly flattered to think I had any part in the
improvement. You should not fish thus unblushingly for compliments."
The sombre glitterings that were her eyes had narrowed, and she was
looking at his hands. Then Freydis said: "There are pin-points of sweat
upon the back of your hands, gray Manuel, and so alone do I know that
you are badly frightened. Yes, you are rather wonderful, even now."
"I am not unduly frightened, but I am naturally upset by what has just
happened. Anybody would be. For I do not know what I must anticipate in
the future, and I wish that I had never meddled in this mischancy
business of creating things I cannot manage."
Queen Freydis moved in shimmering splendor toward the fireplace. She
paused there, considerately looking down at the small contention of
flames. "Did you not, though, again create much misery when for your
pleasure you gave life to this girl child? Certainly you must know that
there will be in her life--if life indeed be long spared to her," said
Freydis, reflectively,--"far less of joy than of sorrow, for that is the
way it is with the life of everybody. But all this likewise is out of
your hands. In Sesphra and in the child and in me you have lightly
created that which you cannot control. No, it is I who control the
outcome."
Now a golden panther came quite noiselessly into the room, and sat to
the right of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel.
"Why, to be sure," says Manuel, heartily, "and I am sure, too, that
nobody is better qualified to handle it. Come now, Freydis, just as you
say, this is a serious situation, and something really ought to be done
about this situation. Come now, dear friend, in what way can we take
back the life we gave this lovely fiend?"
"And would I be wanting to kill my husband?" Queen Freydis asked, and
she smiled wonderfully. "Why, but yes, this fair lame child of yours is
my husband to-day,--poor, frightened, fidgeting gray Manuel,--and I love
him, for Sesphra is all that you were when I loved you, Manuel, and when
you condescended to take your pleasure of me."
Now an orange-colored rat came into the room, and sat down upon the
hearth to the left hand of Freydis, and looked at Dom Manuel. And the
rat was is large as the panther.
Then Freydis said: "No, Manuel, Sesphra must live for a great while,
long after you have been turned to graveyard dust: and he will limp
about wherever pagans are to be found, and he will always win much love
from the high-hearted pagans because of his comeliness and because of
his unfading jaunty youth. And whether he will do any good anywhere is
doubtful, but it is certain he will do harm, and it is equally certain
that already he weighs my happiness as carelessly as you once weighed
it."
Now came into the room another creature, such as no madman has ever seen
or imagined, and it lay down at the feet of Freydis, and it looked at
Dom Manuel. Couched thus, this creature yawned and disclosed
unreassuring teeth.