possible reason why you should especially value this child. It may
be no more repulsive looking than other babies: that is a point upon
which I cannot pretend to speak with authority. But it is certainly
not in itself an attractive animal. And your acquaintance with it,
dating only from this morning, is far too brief to have permitted the
forming of any personal attachment. For the rest, this bargain with
Monsieur Janicot is an affair in which I have given my word. I can say
no more. It is in your power, of course, to summon my patron saint,
who, from what I know of him, will probably attempt to coerce me into
rank dishonesty; and in that case the issue remains doubtful. The
most probable outcome—need I say?—in view of his boasted proficiency
in blasting, cursing and smiting, seems my annihilation. Would you,
madame, who are of royal blood and are born of a race that is more than
human,—would you have me, on that account, hold back in an affair in
which my honor is involved?”
“Why, Florian, since you are asking my advice, I think it is not quite
nice to speak of the power of a saint as being at all doubtful. We both
know perfectly well that he would resent any impudence from you with a
palsy or an advanced case of leprosy or perhaps a thunderbolt, and make
things most unpleasant for everybody. And besides, it is just as well
to avoid the subject of doubtfulness, because after talking with your
other wives, I confess, Florian, that I have the very gravest doubts as
to what you are planning to have become of me.”
“You will vanish, madame, after the usual custom of your race. I am
sure I do not know whither the Léshy usually vanish.”
“I decline to vanish. Now that I am a Christian, Florian, I should
think that even you would know I must decline to take any part in any
such silly and irreligious proceedings—”
To which he answered patiently, “But I have given my word, madame.”
And still this obstinate woman clung to her pretence that he was
behaving irrationally. She said, with an effect of being almost sorry
for him:
“My poor Florian! now but let us be perfectly friendly about this. I am
disposed to bear no malice, because, as I so often think, what is the
odds? In the long run, I mean—”
“Madame, it is my misfortune never quite to know what you mean.”
“Why, I mean that we all make mistakes, and that it is to be expected,
and the least said about it, the soonest mended. Besides, as I was
telling you, I do not know of course who it was that first set women
upon a pedestal, and even if I did, I would be willing to overlook his
mistakes too—”
“But you have not been telling me about this over-imaginative unmarried
person! You were talking about malice and vanishing—”
“—Still, I certainly would not thank him, because I have had to pay for
that mistake, even more heavily than women do now. Ah, Florian, as I so
often think, it is always the woman who pays! For, you conceive, in my
first life, back at Brunbelois, I mean, in those perfectly awful days
of chivalry, I used to be worshipped, or at least that was what it came
to in practise, as a symbol of heavenly excellence—”
Florian said, with an attempt at gallantry, “I can well imagine—”
“Oh, it was without any actually personal application, you understand:
it was just that all ladies were regarded in that light. It was
considered that in making women Heaven had revealed the full extent
of Heaven’s powers. So they made us sit upon uncomfortable thrones at
their tournaments—”
“But,” Florian protested, “these honorable and extremely picturesque
customs—”
“My dear, that is all very well! but they used to last for a week
sometimes. And there we would have to sit, from six to seven hours a
day, with canopies but no cushions, and with no toilet conveniences,
and with nothing whatever to do except to watch them sticking and
poking and chopping one another in order to show how they respected
us,—though I could never understand just how that came in, because my
back hurt me too much, apart from my other troubles—”
“But as a symbol—” This horrible woman seemed resolved to leave him no
one last shred of his dream.
“It was not the symbolism I objected to, Florian, but the endless
inconvenience. The tournaments were only a part of it; and of course
even after them you could get liniment, and you soon learned not to
drink anything with your breakfast. But they walked off with your
sleeves and handkerchiefs, with or without your leave: and when you go
to put on your gloves, let me tell you, it is most annoying to find
that the other one is several miles away in somebody’s helmet—”
“Now,” Florian said, yet more and more shocked, “you illogically apply
prosaic standards to the entirely poetic attitude of chivalry—”
“Oh, as for their poetry, telling what marvelous creatures they thought
us, they were all over the place with it. That was trying enough in
the day-time: but when it came to being waked up long before dawn,
and prevented from getting a wink of beauty-sleep at night, by their
aubades and serenas about how wonderful you were, I do assure you, it
was really very tiresome—”
“I can see that.” Logic compelled the admission, however repulsive it
was to find a woman blundering into logic. “But, still, madame—”
“Yes, you can see that, Florian, now, because you now comprehend you
have been as foolishly exaggerative as any of them. Florian, you are a
romantic: and from the first that has been the trouble, because it was
that which made you fall in love with your notion of Melior. That was
just what you did, without even having talked with me—”
“Parbleu, but certainly it was without having heard you talk—”
“And as far as it went, it was quite nice of you, Florian, for you
appear even to have imperilled your soul—which, to be sure, must have
been in a rather dangerous way already,—through your desire to have
me for your wife. Nobody thinks of denying that was a very pretty
compliment, but, if you ask me, it was a mistake—”
This seemed to Florian such a masterpiece in the art of understatement
that he said almost sullenly, “We needs must love the highest—”
“Nonsense, Florian, I am far from being the highest. And so, let me
tell you, is any other woman. After a month or two of sleeping with
and mooning around me,—who, you must do me the justice to admit, never
laughed at you once, though I do not deny that I was tempted, for,
Florian, my dear, it seems only fair to tell you that at times you are
simply—! But then, it is not as if other men were very different—”
“Let us,” said Florian,—who was reflecting that he had never really
detested anybody before he met this woman,—“let us turn to more
profitable topics than masculine romanticism—”
“So you made the appalling discovery that I did not belong upon a
pedestal. That was inevitable, though I must say it was not as if I had
endeavored to hide it from you. And you resented it fiercely. That too,
I suppose, was only you romantic men all over, though it was just as
foolish as the mooning. And from what I can gather, you appear to have
been equally rash and—if you do not mind my saying so, dear,—equally
inconsiderate, in your treatment of your other wives. Though, to be
sure, whatever you could see in those women, even at the first—!”
“I am a Puysange. We are ardent—”
“In any event, it is not as if anything could be done about them now.
So, really, Florian, taking one consideration with another, I do not
see why, now that we have talked it over amicably, and you have more
or less explained yourself,—and, I am willing to believe, are quite
properly sorry,—we should not get on tolerably well. And about men I
say nothing, because one does want to be kind, but I doubt if any woman
anywhere really hopes for more than that when she marries.”
Melior had stopped talking. Not that fact alone had roused Florian to
chill amazement. He said, “You plan, madame—?”
“Why, first of all, I plan for both of us to appeal, in a suitably
religious and polite manner, to your patron saint. That is the plain
duty of a Christian. For if this Janicot has any real claim upon the
little darling, you surely must see how much nicer it would be, in
every way, for Hoprig to be working miracles against him instead of
smiting you with something unpleasant. And besides, I do not see how he
can have any real claim—”
Florian resolutely thrust aside the suspicion that this obstinate and
shiny and gross-minded woman was now planning, among other enormities,
to return to living with him. He said only:
“I am astounded. I am grieved. You would have me meanly crawl out of my
bargain by invoking the high powers of Heaven to help me in a swindle,
very much as one hears of dishonest persons repudiating fair debts
through the chicanery of a death-bed repentance. Pardieu, madame! since
you suggest such infamies, and since you will not hear reason, I can
but leave you, to defy this Hoprig to his ugly nose, and to perish, if
necessary, upon his woodpile with untarnished faith.”
He turned sadly from this woman who appeared to have no sense of
logic or honor, not even any elementary notion of fair-dealing. And
as Florian turned, he saw the door open, and through the doorway
came first an armful of faggots and behind it the flushed but still
benevolent face of Hoprig.
_27._
_The Forethought of Hoprig_
“Come now,” said St. Hoprig, as he laid down the wood, “but here is
that abominable ward of mine! and upon the point of defying me too!”
Whereon he shook hands cordially with Florian.
“Ah, but, monsieur,” said Florian, “be logical! We meet as enemies.”
“Frequently,” observed the saint, “that is the speediest way of
reaching a thorough understanding. I suppose that you have come about
your foolish bargain with Janicot.”
“Upon my word,” replied Florian, “but all my business affairs appear to
be well known to everybody upon Morven!”
The saint had turned to Melior, with a wise nod. “So, you perceive,
madame, our precautions were justified. Now, my dear son, do not worry
any more about your contract with the powers of evil, but off with your
things, and have some supper with us. For I have excellent news for
you. You were to sacrifice to Janicot the first child that you and
Madame Melior might have, and she was then to vanish. Your bargain is
void, or, rather, the terms have not yet been fulfilled.”
Florian looked forlornly at his wife, then toward the cradle, and he
said, “I fail to perceive the omission, Monsieur Hoprig.”
“Luckily for human society, my son, a great many persons are similarly
obtuse.”
“Ah,” said Florian, “but let us have no daring coruscations of wit
where plain talking is needed.”
“I must tell you, then,” the saint continued, “that, when my suspicions
were aroused at Brunbelois, I communicated with higher powers, and the
Recording Angel obliged me with a fair copy of your first interview
with Janicot. He objected to giving it: but I stood up for my rights
as a saint, and in the end, after some little unpleasantness, he did
give it. One really has to be firm with these angels, I find, in order
to get the least bit of service. After that, at all events, the way
to foil your wicked scheme was clear enough: in fact, it was the one
possible way to prevent, without open scandal, your begetting of a
child upon your wife for deplorable purposes. I advised the Princess to
follow this way, and to make sure before marrying you that you should
win to her embraces a bit too late to be the father of her child.”
“That seems to be unprecedented advice,” said Florian, sternly, “to
have come from a saint of the Calendar.”
He tried, at least, to speak sternly: but a dreadful thought had
smitten him, and Florian knew that he, who had wondered what people
meant when they talked about fear, had done with wondering.
“It was for your own good and eternal salvation,” observed Melior,
“though, to be sure, all men are like that, and, as I often think, the
more you do for them the less they seem to appreciate your trouble—”
Florian said only, “May I inquire, madame, without appearing unduly
intrusive, who was your collaborator in arranging this infant’s début?”
“Why, but of course she received all the necessary assistance,” replied
St. Hoprig, “from me. I never grudge the efforts necessary to a good
action of this sort: and all night long, my son, I labored cheerfully
for your salvation. For it was my plain duty as your celestial patron
to save you, at any cost, from falling into grave sin: and, besides,
it was a matter hardly to be entrusted to any other gentleman without
considerable possibilities of scandal.”
Florian looked from one to the other. “So it was to prevent scandal
that my wife and my patron saint have put together their heads: and
beauty and holiness—they also!—must combine to avoid offending against
the notions of the neighbors. You will permit the remark that here is
ambiguous logic.”
“Ah, but my dear,” replied Melior, “can you with logic deny that we did
it for your own good? So often, when affairs look wrong, if you will
just regard the spirit of the thing—”
“Madame,” said Florian, without unkindliness, “let us not argue about
that. I am sure you were persuaded as to the spirit of the thing, when
no doubt Monsieur Hoprig went into it at full length—”
Yet Florian spoke perturbedly, for in his heart remained despair and
terror. To find that he had been hoodwinked was not a discovery to
upset a person used to the ways of the world and of more wives than
he had ever married: to be hoodwinked was the métier of husbands.
Moreover, reflection had already suggested that the saint had followed
the honorable old tradition of various nations who deputed exactly the
task which Hoprig had spared Florian to their most holy persons.
Florian took snuff. With his chin well up, he inhaled luxuriously....
Yes, Florian reflected, there were priests everywhere,—the Brahmans of
Malabar, the Piaches of the Arawaks, the Dedes of Lycia, the Chodsas
of the Dersim uplands, and the Ankuts of the Esquimaux,—to all these
priests was formally relegated the performing of this task when a woman
was about to marry. Every part of the world wherein mankind remained
unspoiled by civilization, reflected Florian, afforded an exact and
honorable precedent: and he could advance no ground for complaint.
For one was logical. Certain physical reservations were made much of,
to be sure, in Holy Writ and in the sermons preached in convents to
auditories of schoolgirls. And this theory perhaps did no great harm.
But, after all, there was a grain of folly in this theory that to-day’s
letters still in the post contained of necessity more virtuous matter
than did yesterday’s letters, whose seals had been broken. No, let us
be logical about this theory.
He closed his snuff-box. The lid bore the portrait of poor Philippe.
He regretted Philippe, who had been destroyed with no real gain to
anybody. Florian slipped the box into his waistcoat pocket....
Hoprig’s painstaking forethought, then, gave a philosopher no ground
for wonder or dissatisfaction. But none the less, in the heart of
Florian was despair and terror. The terms of his bargain had not been
fulfilled, and the one course open to a gentleman who held by his word
was to go on living with his disenchanted princess for, at the very
least—he estimated, appalled,—another full year.
Florian extended his right hand, dusting the fingers one against the
other. He liked those long white fingers. But this was simply dreadful:
and he would have to speak now, he would have to say something. They
were both waiting. Negligently he straightened the Mechlin ruffles at
his throat....
Then with a riotous surge of joy, he recollected that the current
conventions of society afforded him a colorable pretext to provoke
the saint into annihilating him. As against continuing to live within
earshot of Melior’s insufferable jabbering,—as against a year of hourly
frettings under a gross-minded idiot’s blasphemies against the bright
and flawless shrine of beauty which she inhabited,—the everywhere
betrayed romantic had still the refuge of bodily destruction in this
world and damnation in the next. And all because of a graceful social
convention! all because of one of those fine notions which, precisely
as he had always contended, made human living among the amenities
of civilization so much more comely and more satisfying than was
the existence of such savages as lived ignobly with no guide except
common-sense. The Piaches and the Brahmans and the Ankuts were all
savages, and their obscene notions were wholly abominable.
“Madame,” said Florian, with his best dignity, “whatever the contrast
between the purity of your intentions and of your conduct, I shall
cling to the old simple faith of my ancestors. I am a Puysange. I do
not care for airdrawn abstractions, I do not palter with such dangerous
subtleties as you suggest. I act with the forthright simplicity which
becomes a gentleman, and I avenge my wounded honor.”
Whereupon, with due respect for the possible incandescence of a halo,
Florian struck Hoprig on the jaw.
“Now, holy Michael aid me!” cried the saint, and he closed upon
Florian, straightforwardly, without any miracle-working.
And as Hoprig spoke, there was a great peal of thunder. The crash, with
its long shuddering reverberations was utterly appalling, but Hoprig
was not appalled. Instead, he had drawn away from Florian, and Hoprig
was now smiling deprecatingly.
“Dear me!” the saint observed, “but I am always forgetting. And now, I
suppose, they will be vexed again.”
_28._
_Highly Ambiguous_
And then as the last shaken note of thunder died away, and as Melior
fell to comforting the awakened baby, a tall warrior entered. He
wore the most resplendent of ancient corselets, and embossed greaves
protected his legs, but no helmet hid his flaxen curls. He now laid
down an eight-sided shield, emblazoned argent with a cross gules, and
he rustled his wings rather indignantly.
“Really, Hoprig,” said the new-comer, “this is carrying matters
entirely too far; and you must not summon the princes of Heaven from
their affairs to take part in your fisticuffs.”
“What more can you expect, good Michael, of misguided efforts to make
saints of my people?”
This was a voice which was not unknown to Florian. And he saw that
Janicot too had come,—not in that unreserved condition in which Florian
had last seen him, but discreetly clothed and showing in everything
as the neat burgess of Florian’s first encounter. And it was evident
that this Janicot was not a stranger to St. Michael, either, when the
archangel answered:
“It is well enough for you to grin, but with us the matter is no joke.
This Hoprig has been duly canonized. When he invokes any of us we are
under formal obligations to minister unto him, for he is entitled to
all the perquisites of a saint: and he puts them to most inappropriate
uses. For I must tell you—”
“Come, Monseigneur St. Michael,” observed Hoprig, waving toward
Melior’s back, where she was comforting the mewing baby without the
least attention to anything else,—“come, let us remember that a lady is
present.”
“And for that matter, upon how many nights since you began going about
earth—But I shall say no more upon a topic so painful. It is sufficient
to state that the entire affair is most unsettling, and has displeased
those high in authority. The Church has canonized you, and we have of
course to stand by the Church, with which our relations have for some
while been, in the main, quite friendly. I do not deny that if anything
could have been done about you, just quietly—But we find the Church has
provided no method whatever for removing saints from the Calendar—”
“You might remove him from earth, however,” Janicot suggested,
helpfully. “A thunderbolt is not expensive.”
“It has been considered. But the effect, we believe, would not upon
the whole be salutary. It would discourage the pious in their efforts
toward sanctity to observe that bolt coming from, of all quarters,
heaven. Besides, as a saint, he must, directly after being killed,
ascend to eternal glory. You ought to understand that we would be the
last persons actually to hurry him.”
“I think I see,” said Janicot. “You are bound to stand by the Church as
faithfully as I do, if not through quite the same motives. Now, I hold
no brief for this saint. He has swindled me,—cleverly enough, but with
that lack of common honesty which as a rule lends ambiguity to pious
actions,—out of Madame Melior’s child. I name only the mother, because,
as I understand—?”
He had turned to Florian, and Janicot’s raised eyebrows were
sententious.
Florian answered them, “Yes, Monsieur Janicot; it appears that I have
acquired an increase of grace through works of supererogation.”
“Ah! and I had thought you were ardent! The child, in any event, is a
detail about which there is no hurry. I am not fond of children myself—”
And Florian marvelled. “Then, why—?”
“It is merely that my servants have a use for them. Yes, my servants
make them quite useful, by adding the juice of water parsnip and soot
and cinquefoil and some other ingredients. And I endeavor to supply my
servants’ needs. However!”—and Janicot waved the matter aside,—“when
I am beaten I acknowledge it. The disenchanted princess remains
yours: and I shall have no claim upon you until”—here Janicot smiled
again,—“until the great love between your wife and you has approached a
somewhat more authentic fruition.”
“Monsieur Janicot,” replied Florian, “you set the noble example of
confessing when one is beaten. I was very careful when we made the
compact which secured me this flawlessly beautiful lady as my wife. I
am no longer careful. I cannot live with her for another year, not for
a month, not for a half-hour! As you perceive, at the bare thought I
grow hysterical. I tell you I cannot face the thought that this is the
woman whom I have worshipped so long! I am a broken man, and I repent
of every crime I committed in order to get her. Therefore let us make a
second compact, my dear Monsieur Janicot, a compact by which she will
be taken away from me! And you may name your own terms.”
“Ah, but you are all alike!” sighed Janicot. “You palter and haggle
about the securing of your desires: but once you have your desires,
no price appears too high to rid you of them. I cannot understand my
people, and my failure quite to comprehend them troubles me: yet I
could have told you, Florian, the first day we met, that it would come
to this. But you were that droll creature the romantic, the man who
cherishes superhuman ideals. And I really cannot put up with ideals—”
Janicot ceased from talking half as if in meditation. He now glanced
from one to another of the company with a sort of friendly petulance.
“However, why is everybody looking so solemn? I like to have happy
faces about me.”
“It is well enough for you to philosophize and grin,” Michael
returned, in lordly indignation. “But grinning settles few religious
difficulties, and philosophy muddles them worse than ever. Yet, if
you ask why I look solemn, it is because this saint here has become a
scandal on earth, a nuisance in heaven, and an impossibility in hell.
And after all our conferences we can find no place for him anywhere
to-day.”
“Yet the affair is really very simple,” replied Janicot. “Let Hoprig
and Melior, and their child too, return to Brunbelois and to the old
time before he was a saint. Let them return to the high place and to
the old time that is overpast now everywhere except at Brunbelois. Thus
earth will be rid of your scandal-breeding saint, and Hoprig of his
halo and Florian of his threatened hysteria. And this Melior and this
Hoprig will no longer be real persons, but will once more blend into an
ancient legend of exceeding beauty and holiness. And nobody anywhere
will be dissatisfied. This I suggest because I like to have happy faces
about me, and happy faces everywhere, even in heaven.”
[Illustration:
Caption surrounded by garland: “—And this is the last cloud going
west.”
_See page 291_
The image]
Michael said: “You are subtle. That is not our strong point, of course.
Still, I really do wonder why, after so many conferences, we never
thought of such an obvious solution as to antedate him at Brunbelois.”
And Michael looked at Hoprig.