avenue of poplars and the rising hills beyond. All was as it had been
yesterday, and as all had been since, nearly three years ago, Count
Manuel first entered Storisende. All was precisely as it had been,
except, to be sure, that until yesterday Dom Manuel's table had stood by
the farthest window. He could not remember that until to-day this window
had ever been opened, because since his youth had gone out of him Count
Manuel was becoming more and more susceptible to draughts.
"It is certainly very curious," Dom Manuel said, aloud, when he had
finished with his papers.
He was again approaching the very curious window when his daughter
Melicent, now nearly three years old, came noisily, and in an
appallingly soiled condition, to molest him. She had bright beauty
later, but at three she was one of those children whom human powers
cannot keep clean for longer than three minutes.
Dom Manuel kept for her especial delectation a small flat paddle on his
writing-table, and this he now caught up.
"Out of the room with you, little pest!" he blustered, "for I am busy."
So the child, as was her custom, ran back into the hallway, and stood
there, no longer in the room, but with one small foot thrust beyond the
doorsill, while she laughed up at her big father, and derisively stuck
out a tiny curved red tongue at the famed overlord of Poictesme. Then
Dom Manuel, as was his custom, got down upon the floor to slap with his
paddle at the intruding foot, and Melicent squealed with delight, and
pulled back her foot in time to dodge the paddle, and thrust out her
other foot beyond the sill, and tried to withdraw that too before it was
spanked.
So it was they gave over a quarter of an hour to rioting, and so it was
that grave young Ruric found them. Count Manuel rather sheepishly arose
from the floor, and dusted himself, and sent Melicent into the buttery
for some sugar cakes. He told Ruric what were the most favorable terms
he could offer the burgesses of Narenta, and he gave Ruric the signed
requisitions.
Presently, when Ruric had gone, Dom Manuel went again to the farthest
window, opened it, and looked out once more. He shook his head, as one
who gives up a riddle. He armed himself, and rode over to Perdigon,
whither sainted King Ferdinand had come to consult with Manuel about
contriving the assassination of the Moorish general, Al-Mota-wakkil.
This matter Dom Manuel deputed to Guivric the Sage; and so was rid of
it.
In addition, Count Manuel had on hand that afternoon an appeal to the
judgment of God, over some rather valuable farming lands; but it was
remarked by the spectators that he botched the unhorsing and severe
wounding of Earl Ladinas, and conducted it rather as though Dom Manuel's
heart were not in the day's business. Indeed, he had reason, for while
supernal mysteries were well enough if one were still a hare-brained
lad, or even if one set out in due form to seek them, to find such
mysteries obtruding themselves unsought into the home-life of a
well-thought-of nobleman was discomposing, and to have the windows of
his own house playing tricks on him seemed hardly respectable.
All that month, too, some memory appeared to trouble Dom Manuel, in the
back of his mind, while the lords of the Silver Stallion were busied in
the pursuit of Othmar and Othmar's brigands in the Taunenfels: and as
soon as Dom Manuel had captured and hanged the last squad of these
knaves, Dom Manuel rode home and looked out of the window, to find
matters unchanged.
Dom Manuel meditated. He sounded the gong for Ruric. Dom Manuel talked
with the clerk about this and that. Presently Dom Manuel said: "But one
stifles here. Open that window."
The clerk obeyed. Manuel at the writing-table watched him intently. But
in opening the window the clerk had of necessity stood with his back
toward Count Manuel, and when Ruric turned, the dark young face of Ruric
was impassive.
Dom Manuel, playing with the jeweled chain of office about his neck,
considered Ruric's face. Then Manuel said: "That is all. You may go."
But Count Manuel's face was troubled, and for the rest of this day he
kept an eye on Ruric the young clerk. In the afternoon it was noticeable
that this Ruric went often, on one pretext and another, into the Room of
Ageus when nobody else was there. The next afternoon, in broad daylight,
Manuel detected Ruric carrying into the Room of Ageus, of all things, a
lantern. The Count waited a while, then went into the room through its
one door. The room was empty. Count Manuel sat down and drummed with his
fingers upon the top of his writing-table.
After a while the third window was opened. Ruric the clerk climbed over
the sill. He blew out his lantern.
"You are braver than I," Count Manuel said, "it may be. It is certain
you are younger. Once, Ruric, I would not have lured any dark and
prim-voiced young fellow into attempting this adventure, but would have
essayed it myself post-haste. Well, but I have other duties now, and
appearances to keep up: and people would talk if they saw a
well-thought-of nobleman well settled in life climbing out of his own
windows, and there is simply no telling what my wife would think of it"
The clerk had turned, startled, dropping his lantern with a small crash.
His hands went jerkily to his smooth chin, clutching it. His face was
white as a leper's face, and his eyes now were wild and glittering, and
his head was drawn low between his black-clad shoulders, so that he
seemed a hunchback as he confronted his master. Another queer thing
Manuel could notice, and it was that a great lock had been sheared away
from the left side of Ruric's black hair.
"What have you learned," says Manuel, "out yonder?"
"I cannot tell you," replied Ruric, laughing sillily, "but in place of
it, I will tell you a tale. Yes, yes, Count Manuel, I will tell you a
merry story of how a great while ago our common grandmother Eve was
washing her children one day near Eden when God called to her. She hid
away the children that she had not finished washing: and when the good
God asked her if all her children were there, with their meek little
heads against His knees, to say their prayers to Him, she answered, Yes.
So God told her that what she had tried to hide from God should be
hidden from men: and He took away the unwashed children, and made a
place for them where everything stays young, and where there is neither
good nor evil, because these children are unstained by human sin and
unredeemed by Christ's dear blood."
The Count said, frowning: "What drunken nonsense are you talking at
broad noon? It is not any foolish tatter of legend that I am requiring
of you, my boy, but civil information as to what is to be encountered
out yonder."
"All freedom and all delight," young Ruric told him wildly, "and all
horror and all rebellion."
Then he talked for a while. When Ruric had ended this talking, Count
Manuel laughed scornfully, and spoke as became a well-thought-of
nobleman.
Ruric whipped out a knife, and attacked his master, crying, "I follow
after my own thinking and my own desires, you old, smug, squinting
hypocrite!"
So Count Manuel caught Ruric by the throat, and with naked hands Dom
Manuel strangled the young clerk.
"Now I have ridded the world of much poison, I think," Dom Manuel said,
aloud, when Ruric lay dead at Manuel's feet. "In any event, I cannot
have that sort of talking about my house. Yet I wish I had not trapped
the boy into attempting this adventure, which by rights was my
adventure. I did not always avoid adventures."
He summoned two to take away the body, and then Manuel went to his
bedroom, and was clothed by his lackeys in a tunic of purple silk, and a
coronet was placed on his gray head, and the trumpets sounded as Count
Manuel sat down to supper. Pages in ermine served him, bringing Manuel's
food upon gold dishes, and pouring red wine and white from golden
beakers into Manuel's gold cup. Skilled music-men played upon viols and
harps and flutes while the high Count of Poictesme ate richly seasoned
food and talked sedately with his wife.
They had not fared thus when Manuel had just come from herding swine,
and Niafer was a servant trudging on her mistress' errands, and when
these two had eaten very gratefully the Portune's bread and cheese. They
had not any need to be heartened with rare wines when they endured so
many perils upon Vraidex and in Dun Vlechlan because of their love for
each other. For these two had once loved marvelously. Now minstrels
everywhere made songs about their all-conquering love, which had derided
death; and nobody denied that, even now, these two got on together
amicably.
But to-night Dame Niafer was fretted, because the pastry-cook was young
Ruric's cousin, and was, she feared, as likely as not to fling off in a
huff on account of Dom Manuel's having strangled the clerk.
"Well, then do you raise the fellow's wages," said Count Manuel.
"That is easily said, and is exactly like a man. Why, Manuel, you surely
know that then the meat-cook, and the butler, too, would be demanding
more, and that there would be no end to it."
"But, my dear, the boy was talking mad blasphemy, and was for cutting my
throat with a great horn-handled knife."
"Of course that was very wrong of him," said Dame Niafer, comfortably,
"and not for an instant, Manuel, am I defending his conduct, as I trust
you quite understand. But even so, if you had stopped for a moment to
think how hard it is to replace a servant nowadays, and how unreliable
is the best of them, I believe you would have seen how completely we are
at their mercy."
Then she told him all about her second waiting-woman, while Manuel said,
"Yes," and "I never heard the like," and "You were perfectly right, my
dear," and so on, and all the while appeared to be thinking about
something else in the back of his mind.
XXXVI
Excursions from Content
Thereafter Count Manuel could not long remain away from the window
through which Ruric had climbed with a lantern, and through which Ruric
had returned insanely blaspheming against law and order.
The outlook from this window was somewhat curious. Through the two other
windows of Ageus, set side by side with this one, and in appearance
similar to it in all respects, the view remained always unchanged, and
just such as it was from the third window so long as you looked through
the thick clear glass. But when the third window of Ageus was opened,
all the sunlit summer world that you had seen through the thick clear
glass was gone quite away, and you looked out into a limitless gray
twilight wherein not anything was certainly discernible, and the air
smelt of spring. It was a curious experience for Count Manuel, thus to
regard through the clear glass his prospering domains and all the
rewards of his famous endeavors, and then find them vanished as soon as
the third window was opened. It was curious, and very interesting; but
such occurrences make people dubious about things in which, as everybody
knows, it is wisdom's part to believe implicitly.
Now the second day
after Ruric had died, the season now being June, Count Manuel stood at
the three windows, and saw in the avenue of poplars his wife, Dame
Niafer, walking hand in hand with little Melicent. Niafer, despite her
lameness, was a fine figure of a woman, so long as he viewed Niafer
through the closed window of Ageus. Dom Manuel looked contentedly enough
upon the wife who was the reward of his toil and suffering in Dun
Vlechlan, and the child who was the reward of his amiability and
shrewdness in dealing with the stork, all seemed well so long as he
regarded them through the closed third window.
His hand trembled somewhat as he now opened this window, to face gray
sweetly-scented nothingness. But in the window glass, you saw, the
appearance of his flourishing gardens remained unchanged: and in the
half of the window to the right hand were quivering poplars, and Niafer
and little Melicent were smiling at him, and the child was kissing her
hand to him. All about this swinging half of the window was nothingness;
he, leaning out, and partly closing this half of the window, could see
that behind the amiable picture was nothingness: it was only in the old
glass of Ageus that his wife and child appeared to live and move.
Dom Manuel laughed, shortly. "Hah, then," says he, "that tedious dear
nagging woman and that priceless snub-nosed brat may not be real. They
may be merely happy and prosaic imaginings, hiding the night which alone
is real. To consider this possibility is troubling. It makes for even
greater loneliness. None the less, I know that I am real, and certainly
the grayness before me is real. Well, no matter what befell Ruric
yonder, it must be that in this grayness there is some other being who
is real and dissatisfied. I must go to seek this being, for here I
become as a drugged person among sedate and comfortable dreams which are
made doubly weariful by my old master's whispering of that knowledge
which was my father's father's."
Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the
round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, "I am Lubrican, and I
come to guide you if you dare follow."
"I have always thought that 'dare' was a quaint word," says Manuel, with
the lordly swagger which he kept for company.
So he climbed out of the third window of Ageus. When later he climbed
back, a lock had been sheared from the side of his gray head.
Now the tale tells that thereafter Dom Manuel was changed, and his
attendants gossiped about it. Dame Niafer also was moved to mild
wonderment over the change in him, but did not think it very important,
because there is never any accounting for what a husband will do.
Besides, there were other matters to consider, for at this time
Easterlings came up from Piaja (which they had sacked) into the
territories of King Theodoret, and besieged Megaris, and the harried
King had sent messengers to Dom Manuel.
"But this is none of my affair," said Manuel, "and I begin to tire of
warfare, and of catching cold by sleeping on hard-won battle-fields."
"You would not take cold, as I have told you any number of times,"
declared Niafer, "if you would eat more green vegetables instead of
stuffing yourself with meat, and did not insist on overheating yourself
at the fighting. Still, you had better go."
"My dear, I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Yes, you had better go, for these Easterlings are notorious pagans--"
"Now other persons have been pagans once upon a time, dear snip--"
"A great many things are much worse, Manuel," says Niafer, with that
dark implication before which Dom Manuel always fidgeted, because there
was no telling what it might mean. "Yes, these Easterlings are quite
notorious pagans, and King Theodoret has at least the grace to call
himself a Christian, and, besides, it will give me a chance to get your
rooms turned out and thoroughly cleaned."
So Manuel, as was his custom, did what Niafer thought best. Manuel
summoned his vassals, and brought together his nine lords of the
Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, and, without making any stir with
horns and clarions, came so swiftly and secretly under cover of night
upon the heathen Easterlings that never was seen such slaughter and
sorrow and destruction as Dom Manuel wrought upon those tall pagans
before he sat down to breakfast.
He attacked from Sannazaro. The survivors therefore fled, having no
choice, through the fields east of Megaris. Manuel followed, and slew
them in the open.
The realm was thus rescued from dire peril, and Manuel was detained for
a while in Megaris, by the ensuing banquets and religious services and
the executions of the prisoners and the nonsense of the King's sister.
For this romantic and very pretty girl had set King Theodoret to
pestering Manuel with magniloquent offers of what Theodoret would do and
give if only the rescuer of Megaris would put aside his ugly crippled
wife and marry the King's lovely sister.
Manuel laughed at him. Some say that Manuel and the King's sister
dispensed with marriage: others accuse Dom Manuel of exhibiting a
continence not very well suited to his exalted estate. It is certain, in
any event, that he by and by returned into Poictesme, with a cold in his
head to be sure, but with fresh glory and much plunder and two new fiefs
to his credit: and at Storisende Dom Manuel found that his rooms had
been thoroughly cleaned and set in such perfect order that he could lay
hands upon none of his belongings, and that the pastry-cook had left.
"It simply shows you!" says Dame Niafer, "and all I have to say is that
now I hope you are satisfied."
Manuel laughed without merriment. "Everything is in a conspiracy to
satisfy me in these sleek times, and it is that which chiefly plagues
me."
He chucked Niafer under the chin, and told her she should be thinking of
what a famous husband she had nowadays, instead of bothering about
pastry-cooks. Then he fell to asking little Melicent about how much she
had missed Father while Father was away, and he dutifully kissed the two
other children, and he duly admired the additions to Emmerick's
vocabulary during Father's absence. And afterward he went alone into the
Room of Ageus.
Thereafter he was used to spend more and more hours in the Room of
Ageus, and the change in Count Manuel was more and more talked about.
And the summer passed: and whether or no Count Manuel had, as some
declared, contracted unholy alliances, there was no denying that all
prospered with Count Manuel, and he was everywhere esteemed the most
lucky and the least scrupulous rogue alive. But, very certainly, he was
changed.
XXXVII
Opinions of Hinzelmann
Now the tale tells that on Michaelmas morning little Melicent, being in
a quiet mood that time, sat with her doll in the tall chair by the third
window of Ageus while her father wrote at his big table. He was pausing
between phrases to think and to bite at his thumb-nail, and he was so
intent upon this letter to Pope Innocent that he did not notice the slow
opening of the third window: and Melicent had been in conference with
the queer small boy for some while before Dom Manuel looked up
abstractedly toward them. Then Manuel seemed perturbed, and he called
Melicent to him, and she obediently scrambled into her father's lap.
There was silence in the Room of Ageus. The queer small boy sat leaning
back in the chair which little Melicent had just left. He sat with his
legs crossed, and with his gloved hands clasping his right knee, as he
looked appraisingly at Melicent. He displayed a beautiful sad face, with
curled yellow hair hanging about his shoulders, and he was dressed in a
vermilion silk coat: at his left side, worn like a sword, was a vast
pair of shears. He wore also a pointed hat of four interblended colors,
and his leather gloves were figured with pearls.
"She will be a woman by and by," the strange boy said, with a soft and
delicate voice, "and then she too will be coming to us, and we will
provide fine sorrows for her."
"No, Hinzelmann," Count Manuel replied, as he stroked the round
straw-colored head of little Melicent. "This is the child of Niafer. She
comes of a race that has no time to be peering out of dubious windows."
"It is your child too, Count Manuel. Therefore she too, between now and
her burial, will be wanting to be made free of my sister Suskind's
kingdom, as you have been made free of it, at a price. Oh, very
certainly you have paid little as yet save the one lock of your gray
hair, but in time you will pay the other price which Suskind demands. I
know, for it is I who collect my sister Suskind's revenues, and when the
proper hour arrives, believe me, Count Manuel, I shall not be asking
your leave, nor is there any price which you, I think, will not be
paying willingly."
"That is probable. For Suskind is wise and strange, and the grave beauty
of her youth is the fulfilment of an old hope. Life had become a tedious
matter of much money and much bloodshed, but she has restored to me the
gold and crimson of dawn."
"So, do you very greatly love my sister Suskind?" says Hinzelmann,
smiling rather sadly.
"She is my heart's delight, and the desire of my desire. It was she for
whom, unwittingly, I had been longing always, since I first went away
from Suskind, to climb upon the gray heights of Vraidex in my long
pursuit of much wealth and fame. I had seen my wishes fulfilled, and my
dreams accomplished; all the godlike discontents which ennobled my youth
had died painlessly in cushioned places. And living had come to be a
habit of doing what little persons expected, and youth was gone out of
me, and I, that used to follow with a high head after my own thinking
and my own desires, could not any longer very greatly care for anything.
Now I am changed: for Suskind has made me free once more of the Country
of the Young and of the ageless self-tormenting youth of the gray depths
which maddened Ruric, but did not madden me."
"Look you, Count Manuel, but that penniless young nobody, Ruric the
clerk, was not trapped as you are trapped. For from the faith of others
there is no escape upon this side of the window. World-famous Manuel the
Redeemer has in this place his luck and prosperity to maintain until the
orderings of unimaginative gods have quite destroyed the Manuel that
once followed after his own thinking. For even the high gods here note
with approval that you have become the sort of person in whom the gods
put confidence, and so they favor you unscrupulously. Here all is
pre-arranged for you by the thinking of others. Here there is no escape
for you from acquiring a little more wealth to-day, a little more
meadowland to-morrow, with daily a little more applause and honor and
envy from your fellows, along with always slowly increasing wrinkles and
dulling wits and an augmenting paunch, and with the smug approval of
everybody upon earth and in heaven. That is the reward of those persons
whom you humorously call successful persons."
Dom Manuel answered very slowly, and to little Melicent it seemed that
Father's voice was sad.
Said Manuel: "Certainly, I think there is no escape for me upon this
side of the window of Ageus. A bond was put upon me to make a figure in
this world, and I discharged that obligation. Then came another and yet
another obligation to be discharged. And now has come upon me a geas
which is not to be lifted either by toils or by miracles. It is the geas
which is laid on every person, and the life of every man is as my life,
with no moment free from some bond or another. Heh, youth vaunts
windily, but in the end nobody can follow after his own thinking and his
own desire. At every turn he is confronted by that which is expected,
and obligation follows obligation, and in the long run no champion can
be stronger than everybody. So we succumb to this world's terrible
unreason, willy-nilly, and Helmas has been made wise, and Ferdinand has
been made saintly, and I have been made successful, by that which was
expected of us, and by that which none of us had ever any real chance to
resist in a world wherein all men are nourished by their beliefs."
"And does not success content you?"
"Ah, but," asked Manuel slowly, just as he had once asked Horvendile in
Manuel's lost youth, "what is success? They tell me I have succeeded
marvelously in all things, rising from low beginnings, to become the
most lucky and the least scrupulous rogue alive: yet, hearing men's
applause, I sometimes wonder, for I know that a smaller-hearted creature
and a creature poorer in spirit is posturing in Count Manuel's high
cushioned places than used to go afield with the miller's pigs."
"Why, yes, Count Manuel, you have made endurable terms with this world
by succumbing to its foolishness: but do you take comfort, for that is
the one way open to anybody who has not rightly seen and judged the ends
of this world. At worst, you have had all your desires, and you have
made a very notable figure in Count Manuel's envied station."
"But I starve there, Hinzelmann, I dry away into stone, and this envied
living is reshaping me into a complacent idol for fools to honor, and
the approval of fools is converting the heart and wits of me into the
stony heart and wits of an idol. And I look back upon my breathless old
endeavors, and I wonder drearily, 'Was it for this?'"
"Yes," Hinzelmann said: and he shrugged, without ever putting off that
sad smile of his. "Yes, yes, all this is only another way of saying that
Béda has kept his word. But no man gets rid of Misery, Count Manuel,
except at a price."