Guivric, that this Kalki will not come in our day, and that we shall not
ever behold his complete glory? I cry a lament for that Kalki who will
some day bring back to their appointed places high faith and very ardent
loves and hatreds; and who will see to it that human passions are never
in a poor way to find expression with adequate speech and action. Ohé, I
cry a loud lament for Kalki! The little silver effigies which his
postulants fashion and adore are well enough: but Kalki is a horse of
another color.”
“I did not come into this accursed place to talk about horses and
nightmares,” replied Guivric, “but to attend to the righting of the
wrongs contrived by one Glaum-Without-Bones, who is at odds with me, and
who has perverted my saga.”
Now Horvendile reflected for an instant. He said, “You have then, after
so many years, come of your own will into the East, just as I
prophesied, to face the most pitiable and terrible of all things?”
Guivric answered, guardedly, “I cannot permit my saga to be perverted.”
Horvendile said then: “Nevertheless, I consider the saga of no lord of
the Silver Stallion to be worth squabbling over. Your sagas in the end
must all be perverted and engulfed by the great legend about Manuel. No
matter how you may strive against that legend, it will conquer: no
matter what you may do and suffer, my doomed Guivric, your saga will be
recast until it conforms in everything to the legend begotten by the
terrified imaginings of a lost child. For men dare not face the universe
with no better backing than their own resources; all men that live, and
that go perforce about this world like blundering lost children whose
rescuer is not yet in sight, have a vital need to believe in this
sustaining legend about the Redeemer: and the wickedness and the
foolishness of no man can avail against the foolishness and the fond
optimism of mankind.”
“These aphorisms,” Guivric conceded, “may be judicious, they may be
valuable, they may even have some kernel somewhere of rational meaning.
But, in any case, they do not justify my living’s having been upset and
generally meddled with by a lecherous and immodest Sylan who goes about
wearing not even a skeleton.”
Horvendile replied: “I can see no flaw in your way of living. You are
the chief of Emmerick’s barons now that Anavalt is gnawed bones in
Elfhame: you have wealth and rather more than as much power as Emmerick
himself, now that your son is Emmerick’s brother-in-law, and poor
Emmerick is married to a widow. You are a well-thought-of thaumaturgist,
and you are, indeed, excelled in your art by nobody since Miramon
Lluagor’s death. And you have also, they tell me, a high name for wisdom
and for learning now that Kerin has gone down under the earth. What more
can anybody ask?”
“I ask for much more than for this sort of cautious and secondary
excellence.” Guivric seemed strangely desperate. He spoke now, with a
voice which was not in anything prim and wary, saying, “I ask for the
man whom I can hate, for the priest whom I can believe, and for the
woman whom I can love!”
But Horvendile shook his red curls, and he smiled a little cruelly.
“Successful persons, my poor careful Guivric, cannot afford to have any
of these luxuries. And one misses them. I know. The Sylan too is, in his
crude and naïve way, a successful person. He is now almost human. He
cherishes phantoms, therefore, and I suspect these phantoms have been
troubling you with their nonsense, since it is well known that all
illusions haunt the corridors of this mischancy place into which
phantoms alone may enter.”
“Yet I have entered it,” Guivric pointed out.
“Yes,” Horvendile said, non-committally.
“And I now enter,” Guivric stated, “to the heart of it, to match my
thaumaturgies against the Sylan’s magic.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_40._
_Economics of Glaum-Without-Bones_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THEN Guivric passed through this door likewise; and so, with glowing
feet and with an odor of funereal spices, Guivric came into the room in
which was the Sylan. Glaum-Without-Bones looked up from his writing,
tranquilly. Glaum said nothing: he merely smiled. All was quiet.
Guivric noticed a strange thing, and it was that this room was hung with
brown and was furnished with books and pictures which had a familiar
seeming. And then he saw that this room was in everything like the brown
room at Asch in which now for so many years he had conducted his studies
and his thaumaturgies; and that in this mischancy place, for all his
arduous traveling beyond the Country of Widows and the fearful Isle of
the Ten Carpenters and the high Wall of the Sassanid, here you still
saw, through well-known windows, the familiar country about Asch and the
gleaming of the Duardenez river, and beyond this the long plain of
Amneran and the tall Forest of Acaire. And Guivric saw that this
Glaum-Without-Bones, who sat there smiling up at Guivric, from under a
cap of owl feathers, had in everything the appearance of the aging man
who had so long sat in this room; and that Glaum-Without-Bones did not
differ in anything from Guivric the Sage.
Guivric spoke first. He said:
“This is a strong magic. This is a sententious magic. They had warned me
that I would here face my own destruction, that I would here face the
most pitiable and terrible of all things: and I face here that which I
have made of life, and life of me. I shudder; I am conscious of every
appropriate sentiment. Nevertheless, sir, I must venture the suggestion
that mere, explicit allegory as a form of art is somewhat obsolete.”
Glaum-Without-Bones replied: “What have I to do with forms of art? My
need was of a form of flesh and blood. I had need of a human body and of
human ties and of a human saga of the Norn’s most ruthless weaving. We
Sylans have our powers and our privileges, but we are not the children
of any god; and so, when we have lived out our permitted centuries, we
must perish utterly unless we can contrive to become human. Therefore I
had sore need of all human discomforts, so that a soul might sprout in
me under oppression and chastening, and might, upon fair behavior, be
preserved in eternal bliss, and not ever perish as we Sylans perish.”
“Everybody has heard of these familiar facts about you Sylans,” returned
Guivric, impatiently, “and it is your stealing, in this shabby fashion,
of my own particular human ties that I consider unheard-of—”
“Yes, yes,” said Glaum, with some complacence, “that was done through a
rare magic, and through a strong magic, and through a magic against
which there is no remedy.”
“That we shall see about! For what has happened to me is not fair—”
“Of course it is not,” Glaum assented. “The doom which is now upon you
is no fairer than the doom which was upon me yesterday, to perish
utterly like a weed or an old tom-cat.”
“—And so I have come hither to match my resistless thaumaturgies against
your piddling magic, and to compel you to restore to me your
pilferings—”
“I shall restore to you,” Glaum stated, “nothing. And I have taken all.
Your saga is now my saga, your castles are my castles, your son is my
son, and your body is my body. Inside that body I intend to live
self-mortifyingly and virtuously, for some ten years or so; and then
that body will die: but by that time a soul will have sprouted in me, an
immortal soul which, you may be certain, I shall keep stainless, because
I at least know how to appreciate such a remunerative bit of property.
Thus, when your tomb becomes my tomb, that soul will of course ascend to
eternal bliss.”
“But what,” said Guivric, scornfully, “what if I do not consent to be
robbed of the salvation assured to me by sixty years of careful and
respectable living? and what if I compel you—?”
“I think that, in your sorry case, you should not speak of compelling
anybody to do anything. Nor is it altogether my doing that your house is
now the Sylan’s House. Self-centered and self-righteous man, you had no
longer any strength nor real desires, but only many little habits.
Nothing at all solid remained really yours, not even when I first set
about my magicking. Oho, and then you were an easy prey! and the human
ties you held so lightly slipped very lightly away from you who had so
long been living without any love or hatred or belief. For throughout
that over-comfortable while the strength and the desire had been oozing
out of you, and all your living wore thin. I had only to complete the
emaciation. And in consequence”—Glaum gestured, rather gracefully, with
Guivric’s long thin hands,—“in consequence, you go as a phantom.”
Guivric saw this was regrettably true. He saw it was as a slight grayish
mist, through which he was looking down unhindered at the familiar rug
behind him, that he now wavered and undulated in the midst of this room
in which he had for so many years pursued his studies without a hint of
such levity. Yet nothing was changed. Guivric of Perdigon still sat
there, behind the oak table with copper corners. Guivric of Perdigon
kept his accustomed place, palpable and prim and wary, as vigorous as
could be hoped for at his age, and honored and well-to-do, and, in fine,
with nothing left to ask for, as men estimate prosperity.
And the living of this Guivric was reasonably assured of going on like
that, for year after year, quite comfortably, and with people everywhere
applauding, and with nothing anywhere alluring you toward any rash
excesses in the way of emotion. It was from this established and
looked-up-to sort of living that a nefarious Sylan was planning to oust
Guivric the Sage; and to leave Guivric a mere phantom, a thing as
transitory and as disreputable—and of course, in a manner of speaking,
as free too, and as lusty and as ageless,—as the Sylan’s self had been
only yesterday.... For those abominable thieves and ravishers of maidens
did not grow old and vigorless and tired: instead, when the appointed
hour had struck, they vanished....
“Well, well!” said Guivric, and he now flickered into a sitting posture,
more companionably. “This sort of eviction from every human tie is
unexpected and high-handed and deplorable and so on. But we ought, even
when all else is being lost, to retain composure.”
The Sylan let him talk....
And Guivric went on: “So, you are indissuadably resolved, at the cost of
any possible conflict between my thaumaturgies and your magic, to leave
me just a disembodied intelligence! Do you know, Messire Glaum, I cannot
quite regard it as a compliment, that you refuse to take over my
intelligence! Yet you, no doubt, prefer your own intelligence—”
The Sylan let him talk....
But Guivric had paused. For the Sylan’s intelligence had, after all,
enabled Glaum to acquire—through howsoever irregular methods,—the utmost
that a reasonable mind could look for in the way of success and comfort
and of future famousness long after Glaum-Without-Bones had ascended to
the eternal bliss assured by a careful and respectable past. The Sylan’s
intelligence had gained for him the very best that any man could hope
for. There was thus no firm ground, after all, upon which any human
being could disrespect the Sylan’s intelligence.... It was only that
these Sylans, always so regrettably lewd and spry, did not ever grow old
and tired and vigorless: they did not ever, except of their own
volition, become disgustingly smug-looking old prigs: instead when the
appointed hour had struck, they vanished....
“—For your intelligence appears to me a very terrible sort of
intelligence,” Guivric continued, “and I have no doubt that your magic
is upon a plane with it. My little thaumaturgies could have no chance
whatever against such magic and such intelligence. Oh, dear me, no! So I
concede my helplessness, Messire Glaum, without mounting the high and
skittish horse of virtuous indignation. I avoid the spectacle of an
unseemly wrangle between fellow artists: and, in asking you to restore
to me the customary rewards of a thrifty and virtuous and in every way
prosperous existence, I can but appeal to your mercy.”
“I,” said the Sylan, “have none.”
“So I had hoped”—here Guivric coughed. “Anguish, sheer anguish, sir,
deprives me of proper control of my tongue. For I had of course meant to
say,” Guivric continued, upon a more tragic note,—“so I had hoped in
vain! Now every hope is gone. Henceforward you are human, and I am only
an unhonored vague Sylan! Well, it is all very terrible; but nothing can
be done about it, I suppose.”
“Nothing whatever can be done about it,—unless you prefer to court
something worse with those thaumaturgies of yours?”
Guivric was pained. “But, between fellow artists!” he stated. “Oh, no,
dear Glaum, that sort of open ostentatious rivalry, for merely material
gains, seems always rather regrettably vulgar.”
“Why, then, if you will pardon me,” the Sylan submitted, in Guivric’s
most civil manner when dealing with unimportant persons, “I shall ask to
be excused from prolonging our highly enjoyable chat. Some other time,
perhaps— But I really am quite busy this morning: and, besides, our wife
will be coming in here any minute, to call me to dinner.”
“I shall not intrude.” Vaporously arising, Guivric now smiled, with a
new flavor of sympathy. “A rather terrible woman, that, you will find!
And, Lord, how a young Guivric did adore her once! Nowadays she is one
of the innumerous reasons which lead me to question if you have been
quite happily inspired, even with the delights of heaven impendent. You
see, she is certainly going to heaven. And Michael too,—do you know, I
think you will find Michael, also, something of a bore? He expects so
much of his father, and when those expectations seem imperiled he does
look at you so exactly like a hurt, high-minded cow! Now it is you who
will have to live up to his notions, and to the notions of that fond,
fretful, foolish woman, and it is you who will be bothered with an
ever-present sense of something lost and betrayed—! But you will live up
to their idiotic notions, none the less! And I do not doubt that, just
as you say, the oppression and the chastening will be good for you.”
The Sylan answered, sternly, “Poor shallow learned selfish fool! it is
that love and pride, it is their faith and their jealousy to hide away
your shortcomings, it is the things you feebly jeer at, which will
create in me a soul!”
“No doubt—” Then Guivric went on hastily, and in a tone of cordial
encouragement. “Oh, yes, my dear fellow, there is not a doubt of it! and
I am sure you will find the birth-pangs well rewarded. Heaven, everybody
tells me, is a most charming place. Meanwhile, if you do not mind, just
for a minute, pray do not contort my face so unbecomingly until after I
am quite gone! To see what right-thinking and a respectably inflated
impatience with frivolity can make of my face, and has so often made of
my face,” reflected Guivric, as he luxuriously drifted out of the
familiar window like a smoke, “is even now a little humiliating. But,
then, the most salutary lessons are invariably the most shocking.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_41._
_The Gratifying Sequel_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THUS the true Guivric passed beyond the knowledge of men: and the false
Guivric gathered up his papers and took off his cap of owl feathers and
prepared for dinner.
The wife and the son of Guivric from that time forth delighted in his
affection and geniality: and it was observed, for another wonder, that
Guivric of Perdigon had, with increasing age, graduated from a cool
reserve about religious matters into very active beneficence and piety.
The legend of Manuel had nowhere, now, a more fervent adherent and
expounder, because Glaum nourished his sprouting soul with every sort of
religious fertilizer. Nor was his loving-kindness confined to talking
about itself, for the good works of Glaum were untiring and remarkably
free-handed, since he had everything to gain by being liberal with
Guivric’s property.
The old gentleman thus became a marked favorite with Holy Holmendis: and
indeed it was Glaum who at this time, when Guivric’s ancient comrade
Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, chiefly assisted Holmendis in
converting Kerin to the great legend of Manuel.
In fine, Glaum lived, without detection, in Guivric’s body; and
preserved it in unquestioned virtue, since a well-to-do nobleman is,
after sixty, subject to very few temptations which cannot be gratified
quietly without scandal. He died in the assurance of a blessed
resurrection, which he no doubt attained.
As for the true Guivric, nothing more was ever quite definitely known of
him. It was remarked, however, that for many years thereafter an amorous
devil went invisibly about the hill country behind Perdigon. The girls
of Valnères and Ogde reported that by three traits alone could the
presence of this demon be detected: for one thing, he diffused a sweet
and poignant odor, not unlike that of an embalmer’s spiceries; and, for
another, the soles of his feet had been observed, after dusk, to be
luminous. A third infallible sign of his being anywhere near you they,
with blushes and some giggling, declined to reveal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK SEVEN
WHAT SARAÏDE WANTED
“_None shall want her mate._”
—ISAIAH, xxxiv, 16.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_42._
_Generalities at Ogde_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW the tale tells that it was in the winter after Guivric’s encounter
with the Sylan that Kerin of Nointel returned into Poictesme to become
yet another convert to the great legend of Manuel; and tells also of how
for the first time men learned why and in what fashion Kerin had gone
out of Poictesme.
Therefore the tale harks back to very ancient days, in the May month
which followed the passing of Manuel, and the tale speaks of a season
wherein it appeared to Kerin of Nointel that he could understand his
third wife no better than he had done the others. But for that perhaps
unavoidable drawback to matrimony, he was then living comfortably enough
with this Saraïde, whom many called a witch, in her ill-spoken-of,
eight-sided home beside the notorious dry Well of Ogde. This home was
gray, with a thatched roof upon which grew abundant mosses and many
small wild plants; a pair of storks nested on the gable; and elder-trees
shaded all.
It was a very quiet and peaceful place, in which, so Kerin estimated,
two persons might well have lived in untroubled serenity, now that the
Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was disbanded, and a younger Kerin’s
glorious warfaring under Dom Manuel was done with forever.
Mild-mannered, blinking Kerin, for one, did not regret Dom Manuel’s
passing. The man had kept you fighting always, whether it was with the
Easterlings or the Northmen, or with Othmar Black-Tooth or with old
yellow Sclaug or with Manuel’s father, blind Oriander. It was a life
which left you no time whatever for the pursuit of any culture. Kerin
liked fighting, within moderation, with persons of admitted repute. But
Kerin, after four years of riding into all quarters of the earth at the
behest of this never-resting Manuel, was heartily tired of killing
strangers in whom Kerin was in no way interested.
So, upon the whole, it was a relief to be rid of Manuel and to be able
once more to marry, and to settle down at Ogde in the eight-sided house
under the elder-trees. Yet, even in this lovely quietude, the tale
repeats, the third wife of Kerin seemed every night to bother herself,
and in consequence her husband, about a great many incomprehensible
matters.
Now of the origin of Saraïde nothing can here be told with profit and
decorum: here it is enough to say that an ambiguous parentage had
provided this Saraïde with a talisman by which you might know the truth
when truth was found. And one of the many things about Kerin’s wife
which Kerin could not quite understand, was her constant complaining
that she had not found out assuredly the truth about anything, and, in
particular, the truth as to Saraïde.
“I exist,” she would observe to her husband, “and I am in the main as
other women. Therefore, this Saraïde is very certainly a natural
phenomenon. And in nature everything appears to be intended for this,
that or the other purpose. Indeed, after howsoever hasty consideration
of the young woman known as Saraïde, one inevitably deduces that so much
of loveliness and wit and aspiration, of color and perfume and
tenderness, was not put together haphazardly; and that the compound was
painstakingly designed to serve some purpose or another purpose. It is
about that purpose I want knowledge.”
And Kerin would reply, “As you like, my dear.”
So this young Saraïde, whom many called a witch, had sought, night after
night, for the desired knowledge, in widely various surroundings, from
the clergy, from men of business, from poets, and from fiends; and had
wakened in her talisman every color save only that golden shining which
would proclaim her capture of the truth. This clear soft yellow ray, as
she explained to Kerin, would have to be evoked, if ever, in the night
season, because by day its radiance might pass unnoticed and her
perception of the truth be lost.
Kerin could understand the common-sense of this, at any rate. And so
young Saraïde was unfailingly heartened in all such nocturnal
experiments by the encouragement of her fond husband.
“And do not be discouraged, wife,” he would exhort her, as he was now
exhorting upon this fine spring evening, “for women and their belongings
are, beyond doubt, of some use or another, which by and by will be
discovered. Meanwhile, my darling, what were you saying there is for
supper? For that at least is a matter of real importance—”
But Saraïde said only, in that quick, inconsequential childish way of
hers, “O Kerin of my heart, I do so want to know the truth about this,
and about all other matters!”
“Come, come, Saraïde! let us not despair about the truth, either; for
they tell me that truth lies somewhere at the bottom of a well, and at
virtually the door of our home is a most notable if long dried well. Our
location is thus quite favorable, if we but keep patience. And sooner or
later the truth comes to light, they tell me, also,—out of, it may be,
the darkness of this same abandoned Well of Ogde,—because truth is
mighty and will prevail.”
“No doubt,” said Saraïde: “but throughout all the long while between now
and then, my Kerin, you will be voicing just such sentiments!”
“—For truth is stranger than fiction. Yes, and as Lactantius tells us,
truth will sometimes come even out of the devil’s mouth.”
Saraïde fidgeted. And what now came out of her own angelic mouth was a
yawn.
“Truth is not easily found,” her Kerin continued. “The truth is hard to
come to: roses and truth have thorns about them.”
“Perhaps,” said Saraïde. “But against banalities a married woman has no
protection whatever!”
“Yet truth,” now Kerin went on with his kindly encouragement, “may
languish, but can never perish. Isidore of Seville records the fine
saying that, though malice may darken truth, it cannot put it out.”
“Husband of mine,” said Saraïde, “sometimes I find your wisdom such that
I wonder how I ever came to marry you!”
But Kerin waved aside her tribute modestly. “It is merely that I, too,
admire the truth. For truth is the best buckler. Truth never grows old.
Truth, in the words of Tertullian, seeks no corners. Truth makes the
devil blush.”
“Good Lord!” said Saraïde. And for no reason at all she stamped her
foot.
“—So everybody, in whatsoever surroundings, ought to be as truthful as I
am now, my pet, in observing that this hour is considerably past our
usual hour for supper, and that I have had rather a hard day of it—”
But Saraïde had gone from him, as if in meditation, toward the curbing
about the great and bottomless Well of Ogde. “Among these general
observations, about devils and bucklers and supper time, I find only one
which may perhaps be helpful. Truth lies, you tell me, at the bottom of
a well just such as this well.”
“That is the contention alike of Cleanthes and of Democritos the
derider.”
“May the truth not lie indeed, then, just as you suggested, at the
bottom of this identical well? For the Zhar-Ptitza alone knows the truth
about all things, and I recall an old legend that the bird who has the
true wisdom used to nest in this part of Poictesme.”