was nothing between you and the sky. You were continually noting such a
hackneyed matter as the sky. You saw it no longer as dome-shaped, but
as, quite obviously now, an interminable reach of space. You saw the
huge clouds passing in this hollowness, each inconceivably detached and
separate as one cloud would pass tranquilly above and behind the other,
sometimes at right angles, sometimes travelling in just the opposite
direction. It troubled you to have nothing between you and a space
that afforded room for all those currents of air to move about in, so
freely, so utterly without any obstruction. It made a Puysange seem
small. And at night the stars also no longer appeared tidily affixed to
the sky, as they appeared to be when viewed from Bellegarde or Paris:
the stars seemed larger here, more meltingly luminous, and they glowed
each in visible isolation, with all that space behind them. It had not
ever before occurred to Florian that the sky could be terrible: and he
began somewhat to understand the notions of the gray-haired porter who
had watched this sky from Brunbelois, night after night, alone.
And Florian remembered Brunbelois as being a silvery and rustling
place. A continuous wind seemed to come up from the west. The forests
rising about you everywhere except in the west were never still, you
saw all day the gray under side of the leaves twinkling restlessly, and
you heard always their varying but incessant murmur. And small clouds
too were always passing, borne by this incessant wind, very close to
you, drifting through the porches of the castle, trailing pallidly
over the grass, and veiling your feet sometimes, so that you stood
knee-deep in a cloud: and the sunlight was silvery rather than golden.
And under this gentle but perpetual wind the broad lake glittered
ceaselessly with silver sparklings.
Moreover, the grass here was thick with large white blossoms, which
grew singly upon short stalks without any leaves, and these white
flowers nodded in an unending conference. They loaned the very
ground here an unstable silveriness, for these flowers were not ever
motionless. Sometimes they seemed to nod in sleepy mutual assent,
sometimes the wind, in strengthening, would provoke them to the
appearance of expressing diminutively vigorous indignation. And
humming-birds were continually flashing about: these were too small
for you to perceive their coloring, they went merely as gleams. And
white butterflies fluttered everywhither as if in an abstracted light
reconnoitering for what they could not find. And you were always seeing
large birds high in the air, drifting and wheeling, as it seemed, in an
endless searching for what they never found.
[Illustration:
Caption surrounded by a garland: He did not move, but lay quite still,
staring upward.
_See page 136_
The image.]
So Florian remembered, afterward, in the main, the highness and the
silveriness and the instability of the place that he now went about
exultingly with nothing left to wish for. He hardly remembered,
afterward, what he and Melior did or talked of, during the days wherein
Brunbelois prepared for their wedding: time and events, and people too,
seemed to pass like bright shining vapors; all living swam in a haze of
happiness. Florian now thought little of logic, he thought nothing of
precedent; he thrust aside the implications of his depressing discovery
as to his patron saint: he stayed in everything light-headedly
bewildered through hourly contemplation of that unflawed loveliness
which he had for a quarter of a century desired. He was contented now;
he went unutterably contented by that beauty which he in childhood
had, however briefly, seen, and which nothing had since then availed
ever quite to put out of his mind. He could not, really, think about
anything else. He cared about nothing else.
Still, even now, he kept some habit of circumspection: no man should
look to be utterly naīf about his fifth wife. So when St. Hoprig
contrived to talk in private with Melior, down by the lake’s border,
Florian, for profoundly logical reasons, had followed Hoprig. Florian,
for the same reasons, stood behind the hedge and listened.
“It is right that you should marry the champion who rescued us all,”
said the voice of Hoprig, “for rules ought to be respected. But I
am still of the opinion that nobody could have disposed of so many
monsters without being an adept at sorcery.”
“Why, then, it seems to me that we ought to be very grateful for the
sorcery by which we profit,” said the sweet voice of Melior. “For, as I
so often think—”
“As goes the past, perhaps. The future is another matter. It is most
widely another matter, for us two in particular.”
“You mean that as his wife I must counsel my husband to avoid all evil
courses—”
“Yes, of course, I mean that. Your duty is plain enough, since a wife’s
functions are terrestrial. But I, madame! I am, it appears, this young
man’s patron saint, and upon his behavior depends my heavenly credit.
You will readily conceive I thus have especial reason to worry over
the possibility that Messire de Puysange may be addicted to diabolic
practises.”
“Is it certain, my poor Hoprig, that you are actually a Christian
saint? For, really, when one comes to think—!”
“There seems no doubt of it. I have tried a few miracles in private,
and they come off as easily as old sandals. It appears that, now I am a
saint, I enjoy, by approved precedents, all thaumaturgic powers, with
especial proficiency in blasting, cursing and smiting my opponents with
terrible afflictions; and have moreover the gift of tongues, of vision
and of prophecy, and the power of expelling demons, of healing the
sick, and of raising the dead. The situation is extraordinary, and I
know not what to do with so many talents. Nor can anybody tell me here.
In consequence, I must go down into this modern world of which Messire
de Puysange brings such remarkable reports, and there I can instruct
myself as to the requirements of my new dignity.”
“So you will leave Brunbelois with us, I suppose, and then we shall
all—”
“I do not say that: I do not promise you my company. Probably I shall
establish a hermitage somewhere, once I have seen something of this
later world, and shall live in that hermitage as becomes a Christian
saint. Here, you conceive, everyone knows me too well. Quite apart from
the conduct of my private affairs,—in which I could not anticipate
that sanctity might be looked for,—people would be remembering how I
preached against these Christian doctrines, exposed them by every rule
of logic, and exterminated their upholders. There would be a depressing
atmosphere of merriment. But down yonder, I daresay, I might manage
tolerably well.”
“I hope you will let depraved women alone,” said the voice of Melior,
“because, as you ought with proper shame to remember—”
“My princess, let us not over-rashly sneer at depraved women. They
very often have good hearts, they have attested their philanthropy in
repeated instances, and I have noticed that the deeper our research
into their private affairs, the more amiable we are apt to find their
conduct. In any case, as touches myself, a saint is above all carnal
stains and, I believe, diseases also. But it was about other matters
I wished to speak with you. I am, I repeat, suspicious of this future
husband of yours. Sorcerers have an ill way with their wives, and
deplorable habits with their children; and your condition, in view of
your fine health and youth, may soon be delicate. I shall ask for a
revelation upon these points. Whatever impends, though, I shall be at
hand to watch over you both.”
“So you will establish your hermitage at Bellegarde? For in that event—”
“Again, madame, you go too fast. I do not know about that either. In
the environs of Bellegarde, they tell me, is a church devoted to my
worship, and Messire de Puysange considers—inexplicably, I think,—that
it might unsettle the faith of my postulants to have me appear among
them. It seems more to the point that this Bellegarde is a retired
place in the provinces, with no gaming parlors, and, Messire de
Puysange assures me, but one respectable brothel—”
“Then Bellegarde would not suit you—” “No, of course not: for I would
find ampler opportunities to put down the wicked, and to implant good
seed, in large cities, which are proverbially the haunts of vice. In
any case, do you take this ring. It was presented to me as a token of
not unearned esteem and admiration, by a lady who had hitherto found
men contemptible: and at my request—tendered somewhat hastily, but
to the proper authorities,—this ring has been endowed with salutary
virtues. The one trait of the holy ring which concerns us just now
is its recently acquired habit of giving due warning whenever danger
threatens its wearer. Dear me, now, how complete would have been my
relaxation if only in my pagan days I had possessed such a talisman
to put on whenever I undressed for bed! In any case, should the ring
change, then do you invoke me.”
“And you will come with your miracles and your blightings and your
blastings! My poor Hoprig, I think you do Messire de Puysange a great
wrong, but I will keep the ring, for all that. Because, while you may
be utterly mistaken, and no doubt hope you are as much as I do, still,
the ring is very handsome: and, besides, as I so often think—”
“Do not be telling me your thoughts just now,” replied the voice of the
saint, “for I can hear the bugle calling us to supper. There is another
precaution I would recommend, a precaution that I will explain to you
this evening, after we have eaten and drunk,” said Hoprig, as they went
away together.
Florian, after waiting a discreet while, came from behind the hedge.
Florian looked rather thoughtful as he too walked toward the castle.
Sunset was approaching. The entire heavens, not merely the west, had
taken on a rose-colored glare. Unbelievably white clouds were passing
very rapidly, overhead but not far-off, like scurrying trails of swans’
down and blown powder puffs. The air was remarkably cool, with rain
in it. The diffused radiancy of this surprising sunset loaned the
gravelled walkway before him a pink hue: the lawns about him, where the
grass was everywhere intermingled with white blossoms, had, in this
roseate glowing which flooded all, assumed a coldly livid tinge. To
Florian’s left hand, piled clouds were peering over the mountain like
monstrous judges, in tall powdered wigs, appraising the case against
someone in Florian’s neighborhood.
He shrugged, but his look of thoughtfulness remained. It was distinctly
upsetting to have one’s patron saint, in place of contriving absolution
for the past,—a function which that recreant Hoprig had never, after
all, attended to,—now absolutely planning mischief for the future.
_10._
_Who Feasted at Brunbelois_
Florian had been married so often that he had some claim to be
considered a connoisseur of weddings: and never, he protested, had
assembled to see him married a more delightful company than the
revellers who came from every part of Acaire now that the magic was
lifted from these woods.
Acaire was old, it had been a forest since there was a forest anywhere:
and all its denizens came now to do honor to the champion who had
released them from their long sleeping. The elves came, in their blue
low-crowned hats; the gnomes, in red woolen clothes; and the kobolds,
in brown coats that were covered with chips and sawdust. The dryads and
other tree spirits of course went verdantly appareled: and after these
came fauns with pointed furry ears, and the nixies with green teeth and
very beautiful flaxen hair, and the duergar, whose loosely swinging
arms touched the ground when they walked, and the queer little rakhna,
who were white and semi-transparent like jelly, and the Bush Gods that
were in Acaire the oldest of living creatures and had quite outlived
their divinity. From all times and all mythologies they came, and they
made a tremendous to-do over Florian and the might which had rescued
them from their centuries of sleeping under Mélusine’s enchantment.
He bore his honors very modestly. But Florian delighted to talk with
these guests, who came of such famous old families: and they told him
strange tales of yesterday and of the days before yesterday, and it
seemed to him that many of these stories were not quite logical. Few
probabilities thrived at Brunbelois. Meanwhile the Elm Dwarfs danced
for him, pouring libations from the dew pools; the Strömkarl left its
waterfall in the forest, to play very sweetly for Florian upon the
golden harp whose earlier music had been more dangerous to hear; and
the Korrid brought him tribute in the form of a purse containing hair
and a pair of scissors. And it was all profoundly delightful.
“I approve of the high place,” said Florian, upon the morning of his
marriage: “for here I seem to go about a more heroic and more splendid
world than I had hoped ever to inhabit.”
“Then, why,” asked Helmas, “do you not remain at Brunbelois, instead
of carrying off my daughter to live in that low sort of place down
yonder? Why do you two not stay at Brunbelois, and be the King and
Queen here after I am gone?”
Florian looked down from the porch where they were waiting the while
that Queen Pressina finished dressing. From this porch Florian could
see a part of the modern world, very far beneath them. He saw the
forests lying like dark flung-by scarves upon the paler green of
cleared fields; he saw the rivers as narrow shinings. In one place,
very far beneath them, a thunderstorm was passing like—of all things,
on this blissful day,—a drifting bride’s-veil. Florian saw it twinkle
with a yellow glow, then it was again a floating small white veil. And
everywhere the lands beneath him bathed in graduations of vaporous
indistinction. Poictesme seemed woven of blue smokes and of green
mists. It afforded no sharp outline anywhere as his gazing passed
outward toward the horizon. And there all melted bafflingly into a
pearl-colored sky: the eye might not judge where, earth ending, heaven
began in that bright and placid radiancy.
It was droll to see this familiar, everyday, quite commonplace
Poictesme in that guise, to see it as so lovely, when one knew what
sort of men and women were strutting and floundering through what sort
of living down there. It would be pleasant to remain here at high
Brunbelois, and to be a king of the exalted old time that lingered here
and nowhere else in all the world. But Florian remembered his bargain
with brown Janicot, and he knew that in this high place it could
not be performed: and it was as if with the brightness of Florian’s
day-dreaming already mingled the shining of the sword with which
Florian was to carry out his part of the bargain. Flamberge awaited him
somewhere in those prosaic lowlands of 1723, down yonder.
Therefore, as became a man of honor, Florian said, resolutely: “No,
your majesty, my kingdom may not be of this world. For my duty lies
yonder in that other world, wherein I at least shall yet have many
months of happiness before that happens which must happen.”
“So you are counting upon many months of happiness,” the King observed.
“Your frame of mind, my son-in-law, is so thoroughly what it should be
that to me it is rather touching.”
“A pest! and may one ask just what, exactly, moves your majesty toward
sadness?”
“The reflection that there is no girl anywhere but has in her much of
her mother,” the King answered, darkly. “But my dear wife is already
dressed, I perceive, and is waiting for us, after having detained us
hardly two hours. So let us be getting to the temple.”
“Very willingly!” said Florian. He wondered a little at the blindness
of fathers, but he was unutterably content. And straightway he and
Melior were married, in the queer underground temple of the Peohtes,
according to the marriage rites of Llaw Gyffes.
Melior wore that day upon her lovely head a wreath of thistles, and
about her middle a remarkable garment of burnished steel fastened with
a small padlock: in her hand she carried a distaff, flax and a spindle.
And the marriage ceremony of the Peohtes, while new to Florian, proved
delightfully simple.
First Melior and Florian were given an egg and a quince pear: he handed
her the fruit, which she ate, and the seeds of which she spat out; he
took from her the egg and broke it. Holy Hoprig, who had tendered his
resignation as the high-priest of Llaw Gyffes, but whose successor had
not yet been appointed, then asked the bridegroom a whispered question.
Florian was astonished, and showed it. But he answered, without
comment, “Well, let us say, nine times.”
Hoprig divided a cake into nine slices, and placed these upon the
altar. Afterward Hoprig cut the throat of a white hen, and put a little
of its blood upon the feet of Melior and Florian. The trumpets sounded
then, as King Helmas came forward, and gave Florian a small key.
PART TWO
_THE END OF LIGHT WINNING_
“_En femme, comme en tout, je veux suivre ma mode....
Et j’ay beny le Ciel d’avoir trouvé mon faict,
Pour me faire une femme au gré de mon souhait_.”
_11._
_Problems of Beauty_
It was conceded even by the younger and most charming ladies of the
neighborhood that the new Duchess of Puysange was quite good looking.
The gentlemen of Poictesme appeared, literally, to be dazzled by any
prolonged consideration of Melior’s loveliness: otherwise, as Florian
soon noted, there was no logical accounting for the discrepancy in
their encomia. Enraptured pæeans upon her eyes, for example, he found
to differ amazingly and utterly in regard to such an important factor
as the color of these eyes. This was, at mildest, a circumstance
provocative of curiosity.
Florian therefore listened more attentively to what people said of
his wife; and he discovered that his fellows’ ecstasies over Melior’s
hair and shape and complexion were not a whit less inconsistent. These
envious babblers were at one in acclaiming as flawless the beauty which
he had intrepidly fetched down from the high place: but in speaking
of any constituent of this loveliness they seemed not to be talking of
the same woman. Either her perfection actually did dazzle men so that
they were bewilderedly aware of much such a beguiling and intoxicating
brightness as Florian, on looking back, suspected Melior to have been
in his own eyes before he married her, or else the appearance of this
daughter of the Léshy was not to all persons the same. Well, this was
queer: but it was not important. Florian at least was in no doubt of
his wife’s appearance nor of his right to glory in it.
So Florian tended to let this riddle pass unchallenged, and to quarrel
with nothing, for Florian was very happy.
He could not have said when or why awoke the teasing question if,
after all, this happiness was greater than or different from that
which he had got of Aurélie or Hortense or Marianne or Carola? Being
married to a comparative stranger was, as always, pleasant; it was,
in fact, delightful: but you had expected, none the less, of the
love which had miraculously triumphed over time and all natural laws
some sharper tang of bliss than ordinarily flavored your honeymoons.
Still, at thirty-five, you were logical about the usual turning-out
of expectations. And you were content: and Melior was beautiful; and
among the local nobility this new Duchess of Puysange had made friends
everywhere, and she was everywhere admired, however puzzlingly men
seemed to word their praise of her loveliness.
The newly married pair had journeyed uneventfully from Brunbelois to
Florian’s home. The mute hairy persons brought Melior’s trunks in their
cart; and St. Hoprig too came with them through Acaire, but no further.
Florian had at last persuaded him of how untactful it would be for
Hoprig to disrupt a simple and high-hearted faith that had thrived for
so many hundred years, by appearing at Bellegarde in person. Florian
had pointed out the attendant awkwardnesses, for the fetich no less
than for the devotees. And Hoprig, upon reflection, had conceded that
for a saint in the prime of life there were advantages in travelling
incognito.
So the holy man left them at the edge of the forest. “We shall meet
again, my children,” the saint had said, with a smile, just as he
vanished like a breaking bubble. It seemed to Florian that his heavenly
patron had become a little ostentatious with miracles, but Florian
voiced no criticism. Still, he considered the evanishment of the two
hairy persons and their monstrous goats, an evanishment quite privately
conducted in the stable to which they had withdrawn after uncarting
Melior’s trunks, to be in much better taste.
But Florian picked no open fault with Hoprig nor with anyone, for
Florian was content enough just now. He began to see that his notions
about Melior had been a trifle extravagant, that the strange loveliness
which he had been adoring since boyhood was worn by a creature whose
brilliance was of the body rather than of the intellect: however, he
had not married her in order to discuss philosophy; and, with practise,
it was easy enough to pretend to listen without really hearing her.
All this was less worrying, less imminent, than the trouble he seemed
in every likelihood about to have with his brother, on account of
Raoul’s damnable wife. For Madame Marguerite de Puysange, as Florian
now heard, was infuriated by his failure to appear at Storisende upon
the twentieth of July, the day upon which he had been due to marry
her sister: nor by learning that he had married somebody else was the
unconscionable virago soothed. She considered a monstrous affront
had been put upon them all, a deduction which Florian granted to be
truly drawn, if that mattered. What certainly mattered was that the
lean woman had no living adult male relatives. She would be at her
husband to avenge this affront by killing Florian: and dear, plastic,
good-natured Raoul so hated to deny anybody anything that the result
of her coaxing and tears and nagging would probably be a decided
nuisance....
“That ring with the three diamonds in it,” Florian had said, “is
deplorably old-fashioned—”
“Yes, I suppose it is, sweetheart: but it was given me by a dear
friend, and you know the sort of things they pick out, and, besides, I
like to have it keeping me in mind of how ridiculously the best-meaning
people may be sometimes,” his Melior had answered,—very happily, and
nuzzling a very wonderfully soft cheek against his cheek.
So he had let the matter stand....
It was a nuisance, too, this news which Florian had received as to the
great Cardinal Dubois, whom Florian had promised—as he regretted now to
remember, in carelessly loose terms,—to offer as a Christmas present
to Janicot. It appeared that during Florian’s stay at Brunbelois the
over-gallant cardinal had been compelled to submit to an operation
which deprived him of two cherished possessions and shortly afterward
of his life. His death was a real grief to Florian, not as in itself
any loss, but because, with Dubois interred at St. Roch, the greatest
man living in France when Christmas came would be the Duc d’Orléans.
Florian had long been fond of Philippe d’Orléans, and Florian loathed
the thought of making a present of his friend’s life to a comparatively
slight and ambiguous acquaintance like Janicot. There seemed no way
out of it, however, for Florian had in this matter given his word.
But he regretted deeply that he had thus recklessly promised the
greatest man in the kingdom instead of specifically confining himself
to that selfish Dubois, who could without real self-denial have lived
until December, and who could so easily have furthered everybody’s
well-being by restricting his amours to ladies of such known piety and
wholesomeness and social position as made them appropriate playfellows
for a high prince of the Church.
But all this was spilt milk. What it came to in the upshot was that
Florian, through his infatuation for Melior, was already in a fair way
to lose his most intimate and powerful friend and his only legitimate
brother. It was a nuisance, for Florian disliked annoying either one of
them, and thus to be burdened with the need of bereaving yourself of
both appeared a positive imposition. But we cannot have all things as
we desire them in this world, his common-sense assured him: and, in the
main, as has been said, the incidental disappointments, now that he had
attained his life’s desire, were tepid and not really very deep.