straw-colored head of little Melicent. Hinzelmann played with the small
cross which hung at Hinzelmann's neck. This cross appeared to be woven
of plaited strings, but when Hinzelmann shook the cross it jingled like
a bell.
"Yet, none the less," says Hinzelmann, "here you remain. No, certainly,
I cannot understand you, Count Manuel. As a drunkard goes back to the
destroying cask, so do you continue to return to your fine home at
Storisende and to the incessant whispering of your father's father, for
all that you have but to remain in Suskind's low red-pillared palace to
be forever rid of that whisper and of this dreary satiating of human
desires."
"I shall of course make my permanent quarters there by and by," Count
Manuel said, "but not just yet. It would not be quite fair to my wife
for me to be leaving Storisende just now, when we are getting in the
crops, and when everything is more or less upset already--"
"I perceive you are still inventing excuses, Count Manuel, to put off
yielding entire allegiance to my sister."
"No, it is not that, not that at all! It is only the upset condition of
things, just now, and, besides, Hinzelmann, the stork is to bring us the
last girl child the latter part of next week. We are to call her
Ettarre, and I would like to have a sight of her, of course--In fact, I
am compelled to stay through mere civility, inasmuch as the Queen of
Philistia is sending the very famous St. Holmendis especially to
christen this baby. And it would be, Hinzelmann, the height of rudeness
for me to be leaving home, just now, as though I wanted to avoid his
visit--"
Hinzelmann still smiled rather sadly. "Last month you could not come to
us because your wife was just then outworn with standing in the hot
kitchen and stewing jams and marmalades. Dom Manuel, will you come when
the baby is delivered and this Saint has been attended to and all the
crops are in?"
"Well, but Hinzelmann, within a week or two we shall be brewing this
year's ale, and I have always more or less seen to that--"
Still Hinzelmann smiled sadly. He pointed with his small gloved hand
toward Melicent. "And what about your other enslavement, to this child
here?"
"Why, certainly, Hinzelmann, the brat does need a father to look out for
her, so long as she is the merest baby. And naturally, I have been
thinking about that of late, rather seriously--"
Hinzelmann spoke with deliberation. "She is very nearly the most stupid
and the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you must
remember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well as to Suskind."
But Dom Manuel was not provoked. "As if I did not know the child is in
no way remarkable! No, my good Hinzelmann, you that serve Suskind have
shown me strange dear things, but nothing more strange and dear than a
thing which I discovered for myself. For I am that Manuel whom men call
the Redeemer of Poictesme, and my deeds will be the themes of harpers
whose grandparents are not yet born; I have known love and war and all
manner of adventure: but all the sighings and hushed laughter of
yesterday, and all the trumpet-blowing and shouting, and all that I have
witnessed of the unreticent fond human ways of great persons who for the
while have put aside their state, and all the good that in my day I may
have done, and all the evil that I have certainly destroyed,--all this
seems trivial as set against the producing of this tousled brat. No, to
be sure, she is backward as compared with Emmerick, or even Dorothy, and
she is not, as you say, an at all remarkable child, though very often, I
can assure you, she does things that would astonish you. Now, for
instance--"
"Spare me!" said Hinzelmann.
"Well, but it really was very clever of her," Dom Manuel stipulated,
with disappointment. "However, I was going to say that I, who have
harried pagandom, and capped jests with kings, and am now setting terms
for the Holy Father, have come to regard the doings of this ill-bred,
selfish, ugly, little imp as more important than my doings. And I cannot
resolve to leave her, just yet. So, Hinzelmann, my friend, I think I
will not thoroughly commit myself, just yet. But after Christmas we will
see about it."
"And I will tell you the two reasons of this shilly-shallying, Count
Manuel. One reason is that you are human, and the other reason is that
in your head there are gray hairs."
"What, can it be," said the big warrior, forlornly, "that I who have not
yet had twenty-six years of living am past my prime, and that already
life is going out of me?"
"You must remember the price you paid to win back Dame Niafer from
paradise. As truth, and not the almanac, must estimate these things you
are now nearer fifty-six."
"Well," Manuel said, stoutly, "I do not regret it, and for Niafer's sake
I am willing to become a hundred and six. But certainly it is hard to
think of myself as an old fellow on the brink of the scrap-pile."
"Oho, you are not yet so old, Count Manuel, but that Suskind's power is
greater than the power of the child: and besides, there is a way to
break the power of the child. Death has merely scratched small wrinkles,
very lightly, with one talon, to mark you as his by and by. That is all
as yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, who
were once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire,
for there remains in you a leaven even to-day. Yes, yes, though you deny
her to-day, you will be entreating her to-morrow, and then it may be she
will punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you are
obstinate, for it is at this time I run about the September world
collecting my sister's revenues, and her debtors are very numerous."
And with that the boy, still smiling gravely, slipped out of the third
window into the gray sweet-smelling dusk, and little Melicent said,
"But, Father, why did that queer sad boy want me to be climbing out of
the window with him?"
"So that he might be kind to you, my dear, as he estimates kindness."
"But why did the sad boy want a piece of my hair?" asked Melicent; "and
why did he cut it off with his big shiny shears, while you were writing,
and he was playing with me?"
"It was to pay a price," says Manuel.
He knew now that the Alf charm was laid on his loved child, and that
this was the price of his junketings. He knew also that Suskind would
never remit this price.
Then Melicent demanded, "And what makes your face so white?"
"It must be pale with hunger, child: so I think that you and I had
better be getting to our dinner."
[Illustration]
XXXVIII
Farewell to Suskind
But after dinner Dom Manuel came alone into the Room of Ageus, and
equipped himself as the need was, and he climbed out of the charmed
window for the last time. His final visit to the depths was horrible,
they say, and they relate that of all the deeds of Dom Manuel's crowded
lifetime the thing that he did on this day was the most grim. But he won
through all, by virtue of his equipment and his fixed heart. So when Dom
Manuel returned he clasped in his left hand a lock of fine straw-colored
hair, and on both his hands was blood let from no human veins.
He looked back for the last time into the gray depths. A crowned girl
rose beside him noiselessly, all white and red, and she clasped her
bloodied lovely arms about him, and she drew him to her hacked young
breasts, and she kissed him for the last time. Then her arms were loosed
from about Dom Manuel, and she fell away from him, and was swallowed by
the gray sweet-scented depths.
"And so farewell to you, Queen Suskind," says Count Manuel. "You who
were not human, but knew only the truth of things, could never
understand our foolish human notions. Otherwise you would never have
demanded the one price I may not pay."
"Weep, weep for Suskind!" then said Lubrican, wailing feebly in the gray
and April-scented dusk; "for it was she alone who knew the secret of
preserving that dissatisfaction which is divine where all else falls
away with age into the acquiescence of beasts."
"Why, yes, but unhappiness is not the true desire of man," says Manuel.
"I know, for I have had both happiness and unhappiness, and neither
contented me."
"Weep, weep for Suskind!" then cried the soft and delicate voice of
Hinzelmann: "for it was she that would have loved you, Manuel, with that
love of which youth dreams, and which exists nowhere upon your side of
the window, where all kissed women turn to stupid figures of warm earth,
and all love falls away with age into the acquiescence of beasts."
"Oh, it is very true," says Manuel, "that all my life henceforward will
be a wearying business because of long desires for Suskind's love and
Suskind's lips and the grave beauty of her youth, and for all the
high-hearted dissatisfactions of youth. But the Alf charm is lifted from
the head of my child, and Melicent will live as Niafer lives, and it
will be better for all of us, and I am content."
From below came many voices wailing confusedly. "We weep for Suskind.
Suskind is slain with the one weapon that might slay her: and all we
weep for Suskind, who was the fairest and the wisest and the most
unreasonable of queens. Let all the Hidden Children weep for Suskind,
whose heart and life was April, and who plotted courageously against the
orderings of unimaginative gods, and who has been butchered to preserve
the hair of a quite ordinary child."
Then said the Count of Poictesme: "And that young Manuel who was in his
day a wilful champion, and who fretted under ordered wrongs, and who
went everywhither with a high head a-boasting that he followed after his
own thinking and his own desire,--why, that young fellow also is now
silenced and dead. For the well-thought-of Count of Poictesme must be as
the will and the faith and as the need of others may dictate: and there
is no help for it, and no escape, and our old appearances must be
preserved upon this side of the window in order that we may all stay
sane."
"We weep, and with long weeping raise the dirge for Suskind--!"
"But I, who do not weep,--I raise the dirge for Manuel. For I must
henceforward be reasonable in all things, and I shall never be quite
discontented any more: and I must feed and sleep as the beasts do, and
it may be that I shall even fall to thinking complacently about my death
and glorious resurrection. Yes, yes, all this is certain, and I may not
ever go a-traveling everywhither to see the ends of this world and judge
them: and the desire to do so no longer moves in me, for there is a
cloud about my goings, and there is a whispering which follows me, and I
too fall away into the acquiescence of beasts. Meanwhile no hair of the
child's head has been injured, and I am content."
"Let all the Hidden Children, and all else that lives except the tall
gray son of Oriander, whose blood is harsh sea-water, weep for Suskind!
Suskind is dead, that was unstained by human sin and unredeemed by
Christ's dear blood, and youth has perished from the world. Oh, let us
weep, for all the world grows chill and gray as Oriander's son."
"And Oriander too is dead, as I well know that slew him in my hour. Now
my hour passes; and I pass with it, to make way for the needs of my
children, as he perforce made way for me. And in time these children,
and their children after them, pass thus, and always age must be in one
mode or another slain by youth. Now why this should be so, I cannot
guess, nor do I see that much good comes of it, nor do I find that in
myself which warrants any confidences from the most high controlling
gods. But I am certain that no hair of the child's head has been
injured; and I am certain that I am content."
Thus speaking, the old fellow closed the window.
And within the moment little Melicent came to molest him, and she was
unusually dirty and disheveled, for she had been rolling on the terrace
pavement, and had broken half the fastenings from her clothing: and Dom
Manuel wiped her nose rather forlornly. Of a sudden he laughed and
kissed her. And Count Manuel said he must send for masons to wall up the
third window of Ageus, so that it might not ever be opened any more in
Count Manuel's day for him to breathe through it the dim sweet-scented
air of spring.
[Illustration]
XXXIX
The Passing of Manuel
Then as Dom Manuel turned from the window of Ageus, it seemed that young
Horvendile had opened the door yonder, and after an instant's pensive
staring at Dom Manuel, had gone away. This happened, if it happened at
all, so furtively and quickly that Count Manuel could not be sure of it:
but he could entertain no doubt as to the other person who was
confronting him. There was not any telling how this lean stranger had
come into the private apartments of the Count of Poictesme, nor was
there any need for Manuel to wonder over the management of this
intrusion, for the new arrival was not, after all, an entire stranger to
Dom Manuel.
So Manuel said nothing, as he stood there stroking the round
straw-colored head of little Melicent. The stranger waited, equally
silent. There was no noise at all in the room until afar off a dog began
to howl.
"Yes, certainly," Dom Manuel said, "I might have known that my life was
bound up with the life of Suskind, since my desire of her is the one
desire which I have put aside unsatisfied. O rider of the white horse,
you are very welcome."
The other replied: "Why should you think that I know anything about this
Suskind or that we of the Léshy keep any account of your doings? No
matter what you may elect to think, however, it was decreed that the
first person I found here should ride hence on my black horse. But you
and the child stand abreast. So you must choose again, Dom Manuel,
whether it be you or another who rides on my black horse."
Then Manuel bent down, and he kissed little Melicent. "Go to your
mother, dear, and tell her--" He paused here. He queerly moved his
mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more
supple.
Says Melicent, "But what am I to tell her, Father?"
"Oh, a very funny thing, my darling. You are to tell Mother that Father
has always loved her over and above all else, and that she is always to
remember that and--why, that in consequence she is to give you some
ginger cakes," says Manuel, smiling.
So the child ran happily away, without once looking back, and Manuel
closed the door behind her, and he was now quite alone with his lean
visitor.
"Come," says the stranger, "so you have plucked up some heart after all!
Yet it is of no avail to posture with me, who know you to be spurred to
this by vanity rather than by devotion. Oh, very probably you are as
fond of the child as is requisite, and of your other children too, but
you must admit that after you have played with any one of them for a
quarter of an hour you become most heartily tired of the small squirming
pest."
Manuel intently regarded him, and squinting Manuel smiled sleepily. "No;
I love all my children with the customary paternal infatuation."
"Also you must have your gesture by sending at the last a lying message
to your wife, to comfort the poor soul against to-morrow and the day
after. You are--magnanimously, you like to think,--according her this
parting falsehood, half in contemptuous kindness and half in relief,
because at last you are now getting rid of a complacent and
muddle-headed fool of whom, also, you are most heartily tired."
"No, no," says Manuel, still smiling; "to my partial eyes dear Niafer
remains the most clever and beautiful of women, and my delight in her
has not ever wavered. But wherever do you get these curious notions?"
"Ah, I have been with so many husbands at the last, Count Manuel."
And Manuel shrugged. "What fearful indiscretions you suggest! No,
friend, that sort of thing has an ill sound, and they should have
remembered that even at the last there is the bond of silence."
"Come, come, Count Manuel, you are a queer cool fellow, and you have
worn these masks and attitudes with tolerable success, as your world
goes. But you are now bound for a diversely ordered world, a world in
which your handsome wrappings are not to the purpose."
"Well, I do not know how that may be," replies Count Manuel, "but at all
events there is a decency in these things and an indecency, and I shall
never of my own free will expose the naked soul of Manuel to anybody.
No, it would be no pleasant spectacle, I think: certainly, I have never
looked at it, nor did I mean to. Perhaps, as you assert, some power
which is stronger than I may some day tear all masks aside: but this
will not be my fault, and I shall even then reserve the right to
consider that stripping as a rather vulgar bit of tyranny. Meanwhile I
must, of necessity, adhere to my own sense of decorum, and not to that
of anybody else, not even to the wide experience of one"--Count Manuel
bowed,--"who is, in a manner of speaking, my guest."
"Oh, as always, you posture very tolerably, and men in general will
acclaim you as successful in your life. But do you look back! For the
hour has come, Count Manuel, for you to confess, as all persons confess
at my arrival, that you have faltered between one desire and another,
not ever knowing truly what you desired, and not ever being content with
any desire when it was accomplished."
"Softly, friend! For I am forced to gather from your wild way of talking
that you of the Léshy indeed do not keep any record of our human
doings."
The stranger raised what he had of eyebrows. "But how can we," he
inquired, "when we have so many matters of real importance to look
after?"
Candid blunt Dom Manuel answered without any anger, speaking even
jovially, but in all maintaining the dignity of a high prince assured of
his own worth.
"That excuses, then, your nonsensical remarks. I must make bold to
inform you that everybody tells me I have very positive achievements to
look back upon. I do not care to boast, you understand, and to be forced
into self-praise is abhorrent to me. Yet truthfulness is all important
at this solemn hour, and anyone hereabouts can tell you it was I who
climbed gray Vraidex, and dealt so hardily with the serpents and other
horrific protectors of Miramon Lluagor that I destroyed most of them and
put the others to flight. Thereafter men narrate how I made my own terms
with the terrified magician, according him his forfeited life in
exchange for a promise to live henceforward more respectfully and to
serve under me in the war which I was already planning against the
Northmen. Yes, and men praise me, too, because I managed to accomplish
all these things while I was hampered by having to look out for and
protect a woman."
"I know," said the lean stranger, "I know you somehow got the better of
that romantic visionary half-brother of mine, and made a warrior out of
him: and I admit this was rather remarkable. But what does it matter
now?"
"Then they will tell you it was I that wisely reasoned with King Helmas
until I turned him from folly, and I that with holy arguments converted
King Ferdinand from his wickedness. I restored the magic to the robe of
the Apsarasas when but for me its magic would have been lost
irrevocably. I conquered Freydis, that woman of strange deeds, and
single-handed I fought against her spoorns and calcars and other terrors
of antiquity, slaying, to be accurate, seven hundred and eighty-two of
them. I also conquered the Misery of earth, whom some called Béda, and
others Kruchina, and yet others Mimir, after a very notable battle which
we fought with enchanted swords for a whole month without ever pausing
for rest. I went intrepidly into the paradise of the heathen, and routed
all its terrific warders, and so fetched hence the woman whom I desired.
Thus, friend, did I repurchase that heroic and unchanging love which
exists between my wife and me."
"Yes," said the stranger, "Why, that too is very remarkable. But what
does it matter now?"
"--For it is of common report among men that nothing has ever been able
to withstand Dom Manuel. Thus it was natural enough, men say, that, when
the lewd and evil god whom nowadays so many adore as Sesphra of the
Dreams was for establishing his power by making an alliance with me, I
should have driven him howling and terrified into the heart of a great
fire. For myself, I say nothing; but when the very gods run away from a
champion there is some adequate reason: and of this exploit, and of all
these exploits, and of many other exploits, equally incredible and
equally well vouched for, all person hereabouts will tell you. As to the
prodigies of valor which I performed in redeeming Poictesme from the
oppression of the Northmen, you will find documentary evidence in those
three epic poems, just to your left there, which commemorate my feats in
this campaign--"
"Nobody disputes this campaign also may have been remarkable, and
certainly I do not dispute it: for I cannot see that these doings matter
a button's worth in my business with you, and, besides, I never argue."
"And no more do I! because I abhor vainglory, and I know these affairs
are now a part of established history. No, friend, you cannot destroy my
credit in this world, whereas in the world for which I am bound, you
tell me, they make no account of our doings. So, whether or not I did
these things, I shall always retain, in this world and in the next, the
credit for them, without any need to resort to distasteful boasting. And
that, as I was going on to explain, is precisely why I do not find it
necessary to tell you about these matters, or even to allude to them."
"Oh, doubtless, it is something to have excelled all your fellows in so
many ways," the stranger conceded, with a sort of grudging respect:
"but, I repeat, what does it matter now?"
"And, if you will pardon my habitual frankness, friend, that query with
so constant repetition becomes a trifle monotonous. No, it does not
dishearten me, I am past that. No, I once opened a window, the more
clearly to appraise the most dear rewards of my endeavors--That moment
was my life, that single quiet moment summed up all my living,
and"--here Manuel smiled gravely,--"still without boasting, friend, I
must tell you that in this moment all doubt as to my attested worth went
out of me, who had redeemed a kingdom, and begotten a king, and created
a god. So you waste time, my friend, in trying to convince me of all
human life's failure and unimportance, for I am not in sympathy with
this modern morbid pessimistic way of talking. It has a very ill sound,
and nothing whatever is to be gained by it."
The other answered shrewdly: "Yes, you speak well, and you posture
handsomely, in every respect save one. For you call me 'friend.' Hah,
Manuel, from behind the squinting mask a sick and satiated and
disappointed being spoke there, howsoever resolutely you keep up
appearances."
"There spoke mere courtesy, Grandfather Death," says Manuel, now openly
laughing, "and for the rest, if you again will pardon frankness, it is
less with the contents of my heart than with its continued motion that
you have any proper concern."
"Truly it is no affair of mine, Count Manuel, nor do any of your doings
matter to me. Therefore let us be going now, unless--O most unusual man,
who at the last assert your life to have been a successful and important
business,--unless you now desire some time wherein to bid farewell to
your loved wife and worshipped children and to all your other fine
works."
Dom Manuel shrugged broad shoulders. "And to what end? No, I am Manuel.
I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the
difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is
necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that
there is no help for it."
"Once, Manuel, you feared to travel with me, and you bid Niafer mount in
your stead on my black horse, saying, 'Better she than I.'"
"Yes, yes, what curious things we do when we are boys! Well, I am wiser
now, for since then I have achieved all that I desired, save only to see
the ends of this world and to judge them, and I would have achieved that
too, perhaps, if only I had desired it a little more heartily. Yes, yes,
I tell you frankly, I have grown so used to getting my desire that I
believe, even now, if I desired you to go hence alone you also would
obey me."
Grandfather Death smiled thinly. "I reserve my own opinion. But take it
what you say is true,--and do you desire me to go hence alone?"
"No," says Manuel, very quietly.