upset and grieved to know the thing which her husband had so long hid
away from her; and Ninzian began to feel rather ashamed of not having
trusted her with this secret, now it was discovered. At all events, he
would try what being reasonable might do.
“Darling,” said he, with patient rationality, “no sensible wife will
ever pry into what her husband may have been or done before she married
him. Her concern is merely with his misdemeanors after that ceremony;
and, I think, you have had no heavy reason to complain. Nobody can for
one moment assert that in Poictesme I have not led an appallingly
upright and immaculate existence.”
She said, indignantly: “You had fear of Holmendis! You came all this
long way to do your devil work, and then had not the pluck to face him!”
Ninzian found this just near enough the truth to be irritating. So he
spoke now with airy condescension.
“Precious, it is true the lean man can work miracles, but then, without
desiring to appear boastful, I must tell you that I have mastery of a
more venerable and blacker magic. Oh, I assure you, he could not have
exorcised or excommunicated or tried any other of his sacerdotal
trick-work upon me without sweating for it! Still, it seemed better to
avoid such painful scenes: for when one has trouble with these saints
the supporters of both sides are apt to intervene; the skies are
blackened and the earth shakes, and whirlwinds and meteors and
thunderbolts and seraphim upset things generally: and it all seems
rather boisterous and old-fashioned. So it really did appear more
sensible, and in better taste, to respect, at all events during his
lifetime, the well-meaning creature’s religious convictions—in which you
share, I know, my pet,—and, well!” said Ninzian, with a shrug, “to
temporize! to keep matters comfortable all around, you understand, my
darling, by evincing a suitable interest in church work and in whatever
else appeared expected of the reputable in my surroundings.”
But Balthis was not to be soothed. “Ninzian, this is a terrible thing
for me to be learning! There was never a husband who better knew his
place, and the only baby you ever upset me with is at the pawnbroker’s,
and Holy Church has not ever had a more loyal servitor—”
“No,” Ninzian said, quietly.
“—But you have been a hideous demon in deep hell, and the man that I
have loved is a false seeming, and the moment St. Holmendis ascends to
bliss you mean to go on with your foul iniquities. That is foolish of
you, because of course I would never permit it. But, even so—! Oh,
Ninzian, my faith and my happiness are buried now in the one grave, now
that all ends between us!”
Ninzian asked, still very quietly: “And do you think I will leave you,
my Balthis, because of some disarranged fresh earth? Could any handful
of dirt have parted us when because of my great love for you I fought
the seven knights at Évre—”
“What chance had the poor fellows against a devil!”
“It is the principle of the thing, my darling,—as well as the
mathematics. Also, as I was going on to observe, you would never have
been flinging mud in my face when for your sake I overthrew Duke Oribert
and his deplorable custom of the cat and the serpent, and cast the
Spotted Dun of Lorcha down from a high hill.”
She answered without pity: “You will be lucky to get out of this mud
with a whole skin. For it is on this evening of the month that St.
Holmendis hears my confession, and I must confess everything, and you
know as well as I do of his devastating miracles.”
Ninzian, having thus failed in his appeal to the better qualities of his
wife, forthwith returned to soliciting her powers of reason.
“Balthis, my sweet, now, after all, what complaint have you against me?
You cannot help feeling that the no doubt ill-advised rebellion in which
I was concerned in youth, unarithmeticable æons before this Earth was
thought of, took place quite long enough ago to be forgotten. Besides,
you know by experience that I am only too easily guided by others, that
I have never learned, as you so eloquently phrase it, to have any
backbone. And I do not really see, either, how you can want to punish me
to-day for iniquities which, you grant, I have not ever committed,
but—so you assume, without any warrant known to me—have just vaguely
thought of committing by and by, and it may be, not for years to come—my
adorable pouting darling—because this stringy Holmendis seems tough as
whit-leather—”
Ninzian’s stammered talking died away. He saw there was no moving her.
“No, Ninzian, I simply cannot stand having a husband who walks like a
bird, and is liable to be detected the next time it rains. It would be
on my mind day and night, and people would say all sorts of things. No,
Ninzian, it is quite out of the question. I will get your things
together at once, and you can go to hell or over to that giggling
ill-bred friend of yours at the pawnbroker’s nasty shop, just as you
elect: and I leave it to your conscience if, after the way I have worked
and slaved for you, you had the right to play this wrong and treachery
upon me.”
And Balthis said also: “For it is a great wrong and treachery which you
have played upon me, Ninzian of Yair, getting from me such love as men
will not find the equal of in any of the noble places of this world
until the end of life and time. This is a deep wound that you have given
me. Upon your lips were wisdom and pleasant talking, there was
kindliness in the gray eyes of Ninzian of Yair, your hands were strong
at sword-play, and you were the most generous of companions all through
the daytime and in the nighttime too. These things I delighted in, these
things I regarded: I did not think of the low mire, I could not see what
horrible markings your passing by had left to this side and to that
side.”
Then Balthis said: “Let every woman weep with me, for I now know that to
every woman’s loving is this end appointed. There is no woman that gives
all to any man, but that woman is wasting her substance at bed and board
with a greedy stranger, and there is no wife who escapes the bitter hour
in which that knowledge smites her. So now let us touch hands, and now
let our lips too part friendlily, because our bodies have so long been
friends, the while that we knew nothing of each other, Ninzian of Yair,
on account of the great wrong and treachery which you have played upon
me.”
Thus speaking, Balthis kissed him. Then she went into the house that was
no longer Ninzian’s home.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_52._
_Remorse of a Poor Devil_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NINZIAN sat on a stone bench which was carved at each end with a
crouching sphinx, and he waited there while the sunlight died away
behind the poplars. The moment could not but seem to anybody pregnant
with all danger. Holmendis was coming, and Holmendis would very soon be
hearing the confession of Balthis, and these saints were over-often the
prey of an excitability which damaged their cause.
That impetuous Holmendis was quite as apt as not to resort out of hand
to unbridled miracle-working, and with the fires of Heaven to annihilate
his leading fellow laborer in every exercise of altruistic
intermeddling,—without pausing, rationally, to reflect what an
annihilation the resultant scandal would be to Holmendis’ own party of
reform and uplift. Holmendis would no doubt be sorry afterward: but he
would get no sympathy from Ninzian.
And, meanwhile, Ninzian loved his wife so greatly that prolonged
existence without her did not tempt him. His wife, whoever she might be,
had always seemed peculiarly dear to Ninzian. And now, as he looked back
upon the exceeding love which he had borne his wife, in Nineveh and
Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Rome and Byzantium, and in all other
cities that bred fine women, and as he weighed the evanescence of this
love which was evading him after these few thousand years, it seemed to
Ninzian a pitiable thing that his season of earthly contentment should
thus be cut off in its flower and withered untimelily.
And his conscience troubled him, too. For the fiend had not been
entirely candid with his Balthis, and Poictesme was not by any means the
stage of the complaisant easy-going fellow’s primal failure. So he now
forlornly thought of how utterly he had failed in his mission upon
Earth, ever since he first came to Mount Kaf to work evil among men, in
the time of King Tchagi, a great while before the Deluge; and he
considered with dismay the appalling catalogue of virtuous actions into
which these women had betrayed him.
For always the cause of Ninzian’s downfall had been the same: he would
get to talking indiscretion to some lovely girl or another, just through
his desire to be agreeable to everybody, and his devilish eloquence
would so get the better of her that the girl would invariably marry him
and ruthlessly set about making her husband a well-thought-of citizen.
Nor did it avail him to argue. Women nowhere appeared to have any
sympathy with Ninzian’s appointed labor upon Earth: they seemed to have
an instinctive bent toward Heaven and the public profession of every
virtue. Just as in the case of that poor Miramon Lluagor, Ninzian
reflected, Ninzian’s wife also did not care two straws about her
husband’s career and the proper development of his talents.
Then Ninzian on a sudden recollected the cause of the disturbance which
had been put upon his living. He drew his dagger, and, squatting on the
paved walkway, he scratched out that incriminating footprint.
He was none too soon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_53._
_Continuation of Appalling Pieties_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
HE was none too soon, because Ninzian rose from this erasement just in
time to bump into no other than the energetic tough flesh of Holy
Holmendis, who in the cool of the evening was coming up the walkway; and
indeed, in rising, Ninzian jostled against the saint rather roughly. So
Ninzian apologized for his clumsiness, and explained that he was going
fishing the next day, and was digging for worms: and Ninzian was in a
bad taking, for he could not know how much this peppery and
over-excitable saint from out of Philistia had seen or suspected, or
might be up to the very next moment with one or another bull-headed
miracle.
But Holy Holmendis said friendlily that no bones were broken, and he
went on, with the soul-chilling joviality of the clergy, to make some
depressing joke about fishers of men. “And that is why I am here,” said
the saint, “for this evening Dame Balthis is to confess to me whatever
matters may be on her conscience.”
“Yes, yes,” said Ninzian, fondly, “but we both know, my dear and honored
friend, that Balthis has a particularly tender conscience, a conscience
which is as sensitive to the missteps of others as a sore toe.”
“That is how everybody’s conscience ought to be,” returned the saint:
and he went on to speak of the virtuous woman who is a crown to her
husband. And he made a contrast between the fine high worth of Balthis
and the shamelessness of that bad beggar-woman upon whom, just outside
the gate, the saint had put apoplexy and divine fire for speaking
over-lightly of the second coming of Manuel.
Ninzian fidgeted. He of course said sympathizingly that he would send
some servants to remove the blasted carcass, and that it ought to be a
lesson, and that there was no telling what the world was coming to
unless right-thinking persons took strong steps through the proper
channels. Nevertheless, he did not like the hard, pinched little mouth
and glittering, very pale blue eyes of this gaunt saint; and the nimbus
about the thick white hair of Holy Holmendis was beginning to shine
brighter and brighter as the dusk of evening thickened. Ninzian found it
uncomfortable to be alone with this worker of miracles; piety is in all
things so unpredictable: and Ninzian was unfeignedly glad when Balthis
came out of the loved house that was no longer Ninzian’s home, and when
Balthis held open the door for Holmendis to enter where Ninzian might
not come any more.
Yet, so tenacious is the charitableness of women, that even now, as
Holmendis went in, Dame Balthis tried to speak, for the last time,
sensibly and kindly with her husband.
“Pig with the head of a mule,” she said, in a lowered tone, “do you stop
looking at me like a sick calf, and go away! For I must confess in what
a state of sin I have been living, as a devil’s wife, and I have little
faith in your black magic, and you know as well as I do that there is no
telling what blasted tree-trunk or consecrated bottle or something of
that sort he may seal you up in until the holy Morrow of Judgment,
precisely as he has done all those other evil spirits.”
Ninzian replied, “I shall not ever leave you of my free will.”
“But, Ninzian, it is as if I were putting you into the bottle, myself!
For if I do not tell that spiteful old bag of bones”—she crossed
herself,—“I mean, that beloved and blessed saint, why, he would never
have the sense, or rather, I intended to say that his faith in his
fellow creatures is too great and admirable for him ever to suspect you,
and so you just see how it is!”
“Yes, my most cruel love,” said Ninzian, “it is quite as if you yourself
were thrusting me into a brazen bottle, for all that you know how
dependent I am on open-air exercise, and as if you were setting to it
the unbreakable seal of Sulieman-ben-Daoud with your own dear hands.
But, nevertheless—!”
He took her hand, and gallantly he kissed her finger-tips.
At that she boxed his jaws. “You need not think to make a fool of me!
no, not again, not after all these years! Oh, but I will show you!”
Then Balthis also went into the house where the gaunt saint was making
ready to hear her mensual confession.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_54._
_Magic That was Rusty_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
POOR-SPIRITED, over-easy-going Ninzian sat upon the stone bench, an
outcast now in his own garden: and he thought for a while about the
pitiless miracles with which this Holmendis had harried the fairies and
the elves and the salamanders and the trolls and the calcars and the
succubæ and all the other amiable iniquities of Poictesme; and about the
saint’s devastating crusades against moral laxity and free-thinking and
the curt conclusions which he had made with his ropes and his fires to
the existence of mere heresy. It seemed uncomfortably likely that in
dealing with a devil this violent and untactful Holmendis would go to
even greater lengths, and would cast off all compunction, if somehow
Ninzian could not get the better of him.
So Ninzian decided to stay upon the safe side of accident, by destroying
the fellow out of hand. Ninzian took from his pocket the stone ematille,
and he broke off a branch from a rose-bush. With the flowering rose
branch Ninzian traced a largish circle about his sleek person, saying,
“I infernalize unto myself the circumference of nine feet about me.”
Here the sign of Sargatanet was repeated by him thrice. Then Ninzian
went on, “From the east, Glavrab; from the west, Garron; from the
north—”
He paused. He scratched his head. The boreal word of power was Cabinet
or Cabochon or Capricorn or something of that kind, he knew: but what it
was exactly was exactly what Ninzian had forgotten. He would have to try
something else.
Ninzian therefore turned to the overthrowing of Holmendis by cold and by
heat. Ninzian said:
“I invoke thee who art in the empty wind, terrible, invisible,
all-potent contriver of destruction and bringer of desolation. I upraise
before thee that rod from which proceeds the life abhorrent to thee. I
invoke thee through thy veritable name, in virtue of which thou canst
not refuse to hear,—JOERBET-JOPAKER-BETH-JOBOLCHOSETH—”
But there he gave it up. That dreadful, jaw-cracking obscene appellation
had, Ninzian recollected, eleven more sections: but in bewildered
Ninzian’s mind they were all jumbled and muddled and hopelessly
confused.
After that a rather troubled High Bailiff rearranged his clothing; and
he now tried to get in touch with Nebiros, the Field-Marshal and
Inspector General of Hell. But again Ninzian was in his magic deplorably
rusty.
“_Agla, Tagla, Malthon, Oarios_—” he rattled off, handily enough,—and
once more he bogged in an appalling stretch of unrememberably difficult
words. Black magic was not an accomplishment in which you could stay
expert without continual practice; and Ninzian had regrettably neglected
all infernal arts for the last five centuries and over.
So in this desperate pinch he turned perforce to a simple abecedary
conjuration such as mere wizards used; and the High Bailiff of Upper
Ardra said, rather shame-facedly, “Prince Lucifer, most dreadful master
of all the Revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the
adjuration which I address to thy mighty minister, Lucifugé Rofocalé,
being desirous to make a pact with him—”
And Ninzian got through this invocation at least, quite nicely, though
he a trifle bungled the concluding words from the Grand Clavicle.
This conjuration, however, worked a bit too well. For instead of the
hoped-for appearance of genial old Lucifugé Rofocalé endurably
disinfected of his usual odor, now came to Ninzian, from among the
sweet-smelling rose-bushes, the appearance of a proud gentleman in gold
and sable: and a rather perturbed Ninzian bowed very low before his
liege-lord, Lucifer, Prince over all the Fallen Angels.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_55._
_The Prince of Darkness_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THE newcomer paused for an instant, as if he were reading what was in
the troubled mind of Ninzian, and then he said: “I see. Surkrag, whom
mortals hereabouts call Ninzian! O unfaithful servant, now must you be
punished for betraying the faith I put in you. Now is your requital
coming swiftly from this ravening saint, who will dispose of you without
mercy. For your conjuring would disgrace a baby in diapers; you have
forgotten long ago what little magic you ever knew; and when this
Holmendis gets hold of you with one hand and exorcises you with the
other, there will be hardly a cinder left.”
So did Ninzian know himself to stand friendlessly, between the wrath of
evil and the malignity of holiness, both bent upon his ruin. He said,
“Have patience, my prince!”
But Lucifer answered sternly: “My patience is outworn. No, Surkrag,
there is no hope for you, and you become shameless in perfidy as
steadily you go from good to better. Once you would have scorned the
least deviation from the faith you owe me: but a little by a little you
have made compromises with virtue, through your weak desire to live
comfortably with your wives, and this continual indulgence of women’s
notions is draining from you the last drop of wickedness. Not fifty
centuries ago you would have been shocked by a kindly thought. Twenty
centuries back and you at least retained a proper feeling toward the
Decalogue. Now you assist in all reforms and build churches without a
blush. For is there nowadays, my deluded, lost Surkrag! in candor, is
there any virtue howsoever exalted, is there a single revolting decency
or any form of godliness, before which your gorge rises? No, my poor
friend: you came hither to corrupt mankind, and instead they have made
you little worse than human.”
The Angel of Darkness paused. He had spoken, as became such a famous
gentleman, very temperately, without rage, but also without any
concealing of his sorrow and disappointment. And Ninzian answered,
contritely:
“My prince, I have not wholly kept faith, I know. But always the woman
tempted me with the droll notion that our sports ought to open with a
religious service, and so I have been now and then seduced into
marriage. And my wife, no matter what eyes and hair and tint of flesh
she might be wearing at the time, has always been bent upon having her
husband looked up to by the neighbors; and in such circumstances a poor
devil has no chance.”
“So that these women have been your ruin, and even now the latest of
them is betraying your secret to that implacable saint! Well, it is
honest infernal justice, for since the time of Kaïumarth you have gained
me not one follower in this place, and have lived openly in all manner
of virtue when you should have been furthering my power upon Earth.”
Thus speaking, Lucifer took his seat upon the bench. Then Ninzian too
sat down, and Ninzian leaned toward this other immortal, in the
ever-thickening dusk; and Ninzian’s plump face was sad.
“My prince, what does it matter? From the first I have let my fond wife
have her will with me, because it pleased her, and did no real good.
What do these human notions matter, even in so dear a form? A little
while and Balthis will be dead. A little while and there will be no Yair
nor Upper Ardra, and no shining holy sepulchre at Storisende, and all
Poictesme will be forgotten. A little while and this Earth will be an
icecold cinder. But you and I shall still be about our work, still
playing for the universe, with stars and suns for counters. Does it
really matter to you that, for the time this tiny trundling Earth exists
and has women on it, I pause from playing at the great game, to
entertain myself with these happy accidents of nature?”
Lucifer replied: “It is not only your waste of time that troubles me. It
is your shirking of every infernal duty, it is your cherubic lack of
seriousness. Why, do you but think how many thousand women have passed
through your fingers!”
“Yes, like a string of pearls, my prince,” said Ninzian, fondly.
“Is that not childish sport for you that used to contend so mightily in
the great game?”
But Ninzian now was plucking up heart, as the saying is, hand over fist.
“Recall the old days, my prince,” he urged, with the appropriate
emotional quaver, “when we two were only cherubs, with no bodies as yet
sprouted from our little curly heads! Do you recall the merry romps and
the kissing games we had as tiny angel-faces, sporting together so
lovingly among the golden clouds of heaven, without any cares whatever,
and with that collar of wings tickling so drolly one’s ears! and do you
let the memory move you, even to unmerited indulgence. I have contracted
an odd fancy for this inconspicuous sphere of rock and mud, I like the
women that walk glowingly about it. Oh, I concede my taste is
disputable—”
“I dispute nothing, Surkrag. I merely point out that lechery is nowhere
a generally received excuse for good works.”
“Well, but now and then,” said Ninzian, broadmindedly, “the most
conscientious may slip into beneficence. And, in any case, how does it
matter what I do on Earth? Frankly, my prince, I think you take the
place too seriously. For centuries I have watched those who serve you
going about this planet in all manner of quaint guises, in curious masks
which are impenetrable to any one who does not know that your preëminent
servitors tread with the footfall of a bird wherever they pass upon your
errands—”
“Yes, but—” said Lucifer.
“—For ages,” Ninzian continued, without heeding him, “I have seen your
emissaries devote much time and cunning to the tempting of men to commit
wickedness: and to what end? Man rises from the dust: he struts and
postures: he falls back into the dust. That is all. How can this midge
work good or evil? His virtue passes as a thin scolding: the utmost
reach of his iniquity is to indulge in the misdemeanor of
supererogation, by destroying a man or two men, whom time would very
soon destroy in any event. Meanwhile his sympathies incline—I know,—by a
hair-breadth or so, toward Heaven. Yes, but what does it matter? is it
even a compliment to Heaven? Ah, prince, had I the say, I would leave
men to perish in their unimportant starveling virtues, without raising
all this pother over trifles.”