husband would not stir up any scandal about me.”
Kerin scratched his white head. “Yes, that,” said Kerin, “that seems
reasonable, according to the best of my knowledge. And the word
‘knowledge’ reminds me, Saraïde, that you sent me in search of knowledge
as to why life is given to human beings, so that you might in the light
of this knowledge appropriately dispose of your youth. Well, I have
solved your problem, and the answer is, Nobody knows. For I have
acquired all knowledge. All that any man has ever known, I am now
familiar with, from the medicinal properties of the bark aabec to the
habits of the dragonfly called zyxomma: but no man, I find, has ever
known for what purpose life was given him, nor what ends he may either
help or hinder in any of his flounderings about earth and water.”
“I remember,” Saraïde said now, as if in a faint wonder. “I wanted,
once, when I was young and when the eye of no man went over me without
lingering, then I wanted to know the truth about everything. Yet the
truth does not really matter to the young, who are happy; and who in any
case have not the shrewdness nor the power to change anything: and it
all seems strange and unimportant now. For you have been a long time
gone, my Kerin, and I have lived through many years, with many and many
a companion, in the great while that you have been down yonder getting
so much knowledge from the bird who has the true wisdom.”
“Of whatever bird can you be talking?” said Kerin, puzzled. “Oh, yes,
now I also remember! But, no, there is nothing in that old story, my
darling, and there is no Zhar-Ptitza in the Well of Ogde. Instead, there
is a particularly fine historical and scientific library: and from it I
have acquired all knowledge, and have thus happily solved your problem.
Nor is that the end of the tale: for you wanted not merely knowledge but
truth also, and in consequence I have found out for you the one thing
which—according to Abraham’s divine collaborator, in a moment of
remarkable and, I suppose, praiseworthy candor,—is wholly true. And that
truth I have neatly copied out for you upon this bit of paper—”
But there was really no understanding these women who despatched you
upon hazardous and quite lengthy quests. For Saraïde had interrupted him
without the least sign of such delight and satisfaction, or even of
pride in her husband’s exploits, as would have seemed only natural. And
Saraïde said:
“The truth does not matter to the aged. Of what good is the truth to you
or to me either, now that all the years of our youth are gone, and
nothing in our living can be changed?”
“Well, well!” observed Kerin, comfortably, and passing over her defects
in appreciation, “so the most of our lifetime has slipped by since I
slipped over that well-curbing! But how time flies, to be sure! Did you
say anything, my dear?”
“I groaned,” replied Saraïde, “to have you back again with your frayed
tags of speech and the desolation of your platitudes: but that does not
matter either.”
“No, of course not: for all is well, as they say, that ends well. So out
with your talisman, and let us quicken the golden shining which will
attest the truth I have fetched back to you!”
She answered rather moodily: “I have not that talisman any longer. A man
wanted it. And I gave it to him.”
“Since generosity is a virtue, I have no doubt that you did well. But to
what man, Saraïde, did you give the jewel that in youth you thought was
priceless?”
“Does that matter, now? and, indeed, how should I remember? There have
been so many men, my Kerin, in the tumultuous and merry years that are
gone by forever. And all of them—” Here Saraïde breathed deeply. “Oh,
but I loved them, my Kerin!”
“It is our Christian duty to love our neighbors. So I do not doubt that,
here again, you have done well. Still, one discriminates, one is guided,
even in philanthropy, by instinctive preferences. And therefore I am
wondering for what especial reason, Saraïde, did you love these
particular persons?”
“They were so beautiful,” she said, “so young, so confident in what was
to be, and so pitiable! And now some of them are gone away into the
far-off parts of earth, and some of them are gone down under the earth
in their black narrow coffins, and the husks of those that remain
hereabouts are strange and staid and withered and do not matter any
longer. Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from
one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and
there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over
books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors
in it: and I have loved their youth and their high-heartedness, and
their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their
own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited
them,—while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!”
“Still, if you will remember, my darling, it was you yourself who said,
as you no doubt recall, just as you shoved me—”
“Well! I say now that I have loved too utterly these irrational fine
things to have the heart, even now, to disbelieve in them, entirely: and
I am content.”
“Yes, yes, my dear, we two may both well be content. For we at last can
settle down and live serenely in this place, without undue indulgence in
philanthropy; and we two alone will know the one truth which is wholly
true.”
“Good Lord!” said Saraïde; and added, incoherently, “But you were always
like that!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_48._
_The Golden Shining_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THEY went then, silently, from the twilight into the darkness of the
house which had been their shared home in youth, and in which now there
was no youth and no sound and no assured light anywhere. Yet a glow of
pallidly veiled embers, not quite extinct where all else seemed dead,
showed where the hearth would be. And Saraïde said:
“It is droll that we have not yet seen each other’s faces! Give me your
foolish paper, Kerin of my heart, that I may put it to some use and
light this lamp.”
Kerin, a bit disconsolately, obeyed: and Saraïde touched the low red
embers with the paper which told about the one thing which is wholly
true. The paper blazed. Kerin saw thus speedily wasted the fruit of
Kerin’s long endeavor. Saraïde had lighted her lamp. The lamp cast
everywhither now a golden shining: and in its clear soft yellow
radiancy, Saraïde was putting fresh wood upon the fire, and making tidy
her hearth.
After that necessary bit of housework she turned to her husband, and
they looked at each other for the first time since both were young.
Kerin saw a bent, dapper, not unkindly witch-woman peering up at him,
with shrewd eyes, over the handle of her broom. But through the burning
of that paper, as Kerin saw also, their small eight-sided home had
become snug and warm and cozy looking, it even had an air of durability:
and Kerin laughed, with the thin, easy, neighing laughter of the aged.
For, after all, he reflected, it could benefit nobody ever to
recognize—either in youth or in gray age or after death—that time, like
an old envious eunuch, must endlessly deface and maim, and make an end
of, whatever anywhere was young and strong and beautiful, or even cozy;
and that such was the one truth which had ever been revealed to any man,
assuredly. Saraïde, for that matter, seemed to have found out for
herself, somewhere in philanthropic fields, the one thing which was
wholly true; and she seemed, also, to prefer to ignore it, in favor of
life’s unimportant, superficial, familiar tasks.... Well, and Saraïde,
as usual, was in the right! It was the summit of actual wisdom to treat
the one thing which was wholly true as if it were not true at all. For
the truth was discomposing, and without remedy, and was too chillingly
strange ever to be really faced: meanwhile, in the familiar and the
superficial, and in temperate bodily pleasures, one found a certain
cheerfulness....
He temperately kissed his wife, and he temperately inquired, “My
darling, what is there for supper?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_49._
_They of Nointel_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THUS, then, it was that, in the November following Guivric’s encounter
with the Sylan, Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, to become yet
another convert to the great legend of Manuel.
Kerin was converted almost instantaneously. For when the news of Kerin’s
return was public, Holmendis soon came that way, performing very
devastating miracles en route among the various evil and ambiguous
spirits which yet lurked in the rural districts of Poictesme. The saint
was now without any mercy imprisoning all such detected immortals right
and left, in tree-trunks and dry wells and consecrated bottles, and
condemning them in such exiguous sad quarters to await the holy Morrow
of Judgment. With Holmendis, as his coadjutor in these praiseworthy
labors, traveled the appearance of Guivric the Sage.
And when St. Holmendis and Glaum-Without-Bones (in Guivric’s stolen
body) had talked to Kerin of Nointel about the great cult of Manuel the
Redeemer which had sprung up during Kerin’s pursuit of knowledge
underground, and had showed him the holy sepulchre at Storisende and
Manuel’s bright jewel-encrusted effigy, and had told about Manuel’s
ascent into heaven, then old Kerin only blinked, with mild, considerate,
tired eyes.
“It is very likely,” Kerin said, “since it was Manuel who gave to us of
Poictesme our law that all things must go by tens forever.”
“Now, what,” said Glaum, in open but wholly amiable surprise, “has that
to do with it?”
“I have learned that a number of other persons have entered alive into
heaven. I allude of course to Enoch, whose smell the cherubim found so
objectionable that they recoiled from him a distance of five thousand,
three hundred and eighty miles. I allude also to Elijah; to Eliezer, the
servant of Abraham; to Hiram, King of Tyre; to Ebed Melek the Ethiop; to
Jabez, the son of Prince Jehuda; to Bathia, the daughter of a Pharaoh;
to Sarah, the daughter of Asher; and to Yoshua, the son of Levi, who did
not go in by the gateway, but climbed over the wall. And I consider it
quite likely that Dom Manuel would elect to make of this company, as he
did of everything else, a tenth.”
Thereafter Holmendis said, rather dubiously, “Well—!” And Holmendis
talked again of Manuel....
“That too seems likely enough,” Kerin agreed. “I have learned that these
messengers from the gods to our race upon earth are sent with
commendable regularity every six hundred years. The Enoch of whom I was
speaking but a moment since was the first of them, in the six-hundredth
year after Adam. Then, as the happy upshot of a love affair between a
Mongolian empress and a rainbow, came into this world Fo-hi, six hundred
years after Enoch’s living; and six hundred years after the days of
Fo-hi was Brighou sent to the Hindoos. At the same interval of time or
thereabouts have since come Zoroaster to the Persians, and Thoth the
Thrice Powerful to the Egyptians, and Moses to the Jews, and Lao Tseu to
the men of China, and Paul of Tarsus to the Gentiles, and Mohammed to
the men of Islam. Mohammed flourished just six hundred years before our
Manuel. Yes, Messire Holmendis, it seems likely enough that, here too,
Manuel would elect to make a tenth.”
Then pious gentle old Glaum-Without-Bones began to speak with joy and
loving reverence about the glories of Manuel’s second coming....
“No doubt, dear Guivric: for I have learned that all the great captains
are coming again,” said Kerin, almost wearily. “There is Arthur, there
is Ogier, there is Charlemagne, there is Barbarossa, there is Finn, the
son of Cumhal,—there is in every land, in fine, a foreknowledge of that
hero who will return at his appointed time and bring with him all glory
and prosperity. Prince Siddartha also is to return, and Saoshyant, and
Alexander of Macedon, and Satan too, for that matter, is expected to
return, for his last fling, a little before the holy Morrow of Judgment.
Here again, therefore, I consider it quite likely that Dom Manuel may
elect to make a tenth.”
In short, the old fellow took Poictesme’s epiphany almost too calmly....
Glaum was satisfied, on the ground that a conversion was a conversion,
and an outing for all the angels in heaven. But it was apparent that
Holy Holmendis did not quite like the posture of affairs.... You could
not, of course, detect in this incurious receptiveness any skepticism;
nor could a person who went ten times too far in the way of faith be,
very rationally, termed an unbeliever. It was, rather, as if Kerin
viewed the truth without joy: it was as if Kerin had, somehow, become
over-familiar with the sublime truths about Manuel the Redeemer some
while before he heard them; and so, was hearing them, now at long last,
without the appropriate upliftedness and flow of spirits. Kerin merely
accepted these tremendous truths; and seemed upon the whole to be more
interested in life’s unimportant, superficial, familiar tasks, and in
his food.
Holmendis must have felt that the desiderata here were intangible. In
any event, he shook his aureoled head; and, speaking in the tongue of
his native Philistia, he said something to Glaum-Without-Bones—which
Glaum could not at all understand,—about “the intelligentsia,
so-called.” But Holmendis did not resort to any dreadful miracle by
which old Kerin might have been appalled into a more proper excitement
and joyousness....
Yet it was a very unbounded joy, and a joy indeed at which all beholders
wondered, to Kerin of Nointel, when he saw and embraced the fine son,
named Fauxpas, who had been born to Saraïde during the fifth year of
Kerin’s studies underground. For Kerin’s studies had informed him that
such remarkably prolonged gestations are the infallible heralds of one
or another form of greatness,—a fact evinced by the birth of Osiris and
of several other gods and of all elephants,—and he deduced that his son
would in some way or another rise to worldly preëminence.
And that inference proved to be reasonably true, since it was this
Fauxpas de Nointel who led Count Emmerick’s troops for him in the evil
days of Maugis d’Aigremont’s rebellion, and held Poictesme for Manuel’s
son until aid came from the Comte de la Fôret. For twelve years at least
this son of Kerin was thus preëminent among most of his associates, and
twelve years is a reasonable slice out of any man’s life. And the eldest
son of Fauxpas de Nointel was that Ralph who married Madame Adelaide,
the daughter of the Comte de la Fôret, and the granddaughter of Dom
Manuel, and who builded at Nointel the great castle with seven towers
which still endures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK EIGHT
THE CANDID FOOTPRINT
“_They have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed._”
—PSALMS, lxxxix, 51.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_50._
_Indiscretion of a Bailiff_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW the tale tells that upon the day of the birth of the first son
begotten by Count Emmerick, in lawful marriage and with the aid of his
own wife Radegonde, there was such a drinking of healths and toasts as
never before was known at Storisende. The tale speaks of a most notable
banquet, at which twelve dishes were served to every two persons, with a
great plenty of the best wine and beer. In the minstrels’ gallery were
fiddlers, trumpeters and drummers, those who tossed tambourines, and
those who played upon the flute. Ten poets discoursed meanwhile of the
feats of Dom Manuel, and presented in even livelier colors the impendent
achievements of the Redeemer’s second coming into Poictesme with a
ferocious heavenly cortège. And meanwhile also the company drank, and
the intoxication of verse was abetted with red wine and white.
Since the poems were rather long, all this resulted in an entertainment
from which the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra went homeward hiccoughing and
even more than usually benevolent, and without any consciousness of that
misstep which had imperiled his continued stay on earth.
For Ninzian of Yair and Upper Ardra had not wholly broken with the
heroic cenatory ways of the years wherein Dom Manuel ruled over
Poictesme. This seemed the more regrettable because Ninzian, always a
pious and philanthropic person, had otherwise become with age
appropriately staid. He in theory approved of every one of the reforms
enacted everywhere by the Countess Niafer, and confirmed by the Countess
Radegonde; and, in practice, Ninzian was of course a staunch supporter
of his revered and intimate associate, St. Holmendis, in all the
salutary crusades against elves and satyrs and trolls and other
uncanonical survivals from unorthodox mythologies, and against the
free-thinking of persons who questioned the legend of Manuel, and in the
holy man’s hunting down of such demons and stringing up of such
heretics, and in all other devout labors. But there, nevertheless, was
no disputing that the benevolent and florid bailiff of Upper Ardra had
kept a taint of the robustious social customs of Dom Manuel’s worldly
heyday.
It followed that Ninzian evaded none of the toasts at Count Emmerick’s
banquet and left no friend unpledged. Instead, sleek Ninzian drank the
wines of Orléans, of Anjou and of Burgundy; of Auxerre and Beaune, and
of St. Jean and St. Porçain. He drank Malvoisin, and Montrose, and
Vernage, and Runey. He drank the wines of Greece, both Patras and
Farnese; he drank spiced beers; he drank muscatel; and he drank
hypocras. He did not ignore the cider nor the pear cider; to the sweet
white sparkling wine of Volnay he confessed, and he exhibited, an
especial predilection; and he drank copiously, also, of the Alsatian
sherry and of the Hungarian tokay.
Thereafter Ninzian went homeward with a pleasurable at-randomness, for
which—in a so liberal contributor to every pious cause and
persecution,—appropriate allowances were made by St. Holmendis and
everybody else except one person only. Ninzian was married.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_51._
_The Queer Bird_
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THE next evening Ninzian and his wife were walking in the garden. They
were a handsome couple, and the high-hearted love that had been between
them in their youth was a tale which many poets had embroidered. It was
an affection, too, which had survived its consummation with so slight
impairment that Ninzian during the long while since he had promised
eternal fidelity was not known to have begotten but one by-blow. Even
that, as he was careful to explain, was by way of charity: for
well-thought-of rich old Pettipas, the pawnbroker at Beauvillage, had
lived childlessly with his buxom young second wife for nearly three
years before Ninzian, in odd moments, provided this deserving couple
with a young heiress.
But in the main Ninzian preferred his own lean and pietistic wife above
all other women, even so long after he had won her in the heyday of
their adventurous youth. Now they who were in the evening of life were
lighted by a golden sunset as they went upon a flagged walkway, made of
white and blue stones; and to either side were the small glossy leaves
and the crimson flowering of well-tended rose-bushes. They waited thus
for Holy Holmendis, their fellow laborer in multifarious forms of church
work and social betterment, for the saint had promised to have supper
with them. And Balthis (for that was the name of Ninzian’s wife) said,
“Look, my dear, and tell me what is that?”
Ninzian inspected the flower-bed by the side of the walkway, and he
replied, “My darling, it appears to be the track of a bird.”
“But surely there is in Poictesme no fowl with a foot so huge!”
“No. But many migratory monsters pass by in the night, on their way
north, at this time of year: and, clearly, one of some rare species has
paused here to rest. However, as I was telling you, my pet, we have now
in hand—”
“Why, but think of it, Ninzian! The print is as big as a man’s foot!”
“Come, precious, you exaggerate! It is the track of a largish bird,—an
eagle, or perhaps a roc, or, it may be, the Zhar-Ptitza paused here,—but
it is nothing remarkable. Besides, as I was telling you, we have already
in hand, for the edifying of the faithful, a bit of Mary Magdalene’s
haircloth, the left ring-finger of John the Baptist, a suit of Dom
Manuel’s underclothes, and one of the smaller stones with which St.
Stephen was martyred—”
But Balthis, he saw now, was determined not to go on in talk about the
church which Ninzian had builded in honor of Manuel the Redeemer, and
which Ninzian was stocking with very holy relics. Instead, she asserted
with deliberation, “Ninzian, I think it is fully as big as a man’s
foot.”
“Well, be it as you like, my pet!”
“But I will not be put off in that way! Do you tread beside it in the
flower-bed there, and, by comparing the print of your foot with the bird
track, we shall easily see which is the larger.”
Ninzian was not so ruddy as he had been. Yet he said with dignity, and
lightly enough, he hoped:
“Balthis, you are unreasonable. I do not intend to get my sandals all
over mud to settle any such foolish point. The track is just the size of
a man’s foot, or it is much larger than a man’s foot, or it is smaller
than a man’s foot,—it is, in fine, of any size which you prefer. And we
will let that be the end of it.”
“So, Ninzian, you will not tread in that new-digged earth?” said
Balthis, queerly.
“Of course I will not ruin my second-best sandals for any such foolish
reason!”
“You trod there yesterday in your very best sandals, Ninzian, for the
reason that you were tipsy. I saw the print you made there, in broad
daylight, Ninzian, when you had just come from drinking with a blessed
saint himself, and were reeling all over the neat ways of my garden.
Ninzian, it is a fearful thing to know that when your husband walks in
mud he leaves tracks like a bird.”
Now Ninzian was truly penitent for yesterday’s over-indulgence. And
Ninzian said:
“So, you have discovered this foible of mine, after all my carefulness!
That is a great pity.”
Balthis replied, with the cold non-committalness of wives, “Pity or no,
you will now have to tell me the truth about it.”
That task did, in point of fact, seem so appallingly unavoidable that
Ninzian settled down to it, with such airiness as would have warned any
wife in the world exactly how far to trust him.
“Well, my darling, you must know that when I first came into Poictesme,
I came rather unwillingly. Our friend St. Holmendis, I need not tell
you, was, even in the time of Dom Manuel’s incarnation in frail human
flesh, setting such a very high moral tone hereabouts, and the holy man
is so impetuous with his miracles when anybody differs with him on
religious matters, that the prospect was not alluring. But it was
necessary that my prince should have some representative here, as in all
other places. So I came, from—well, from down yonder—”
“I know you came from the South, Ninzian! Everybody knows that. But that
appears to me no excuse whatever for walking like a bird.”
“As if, my dearest, it could give me any pleasure to walk like a bird,
or like a whole covey of birds! To the contrary, I have always found
this small accomplishment in doubtful taste, it exposes one to continual
comment. But very long ago those who had served my prince with especial
distinction were all put upon this footing, in order that true demerit
might be encouraged, and that fine sportsmanship might be preserved, and
so that, also, our adversaries in the great game might be detecting us.”
Now Balthis fixed on him wide, scornful, terrible eyes. After a
breathless while she said:
“Ninzian, I understand. You are an evil spirit, and you came out of hell
in the appearance of a man to work wickedness in Poictesme!”