dark Lucifer was shaking his head. “Surkrag, in abstract reason you may
be right: but warfare is not conducted by reason, and to surrender
anything to the Adversary, though it were no more than Earth and its
inhabitants, would be a dangerous example.”
“Come, prince, do you think how many first class constellations there
are to strive for, made up of stars that are really desirable
possessions! Turn that fine mind of yours to considerations worthy of
it, sir! Consider Cassiopeia, and the Bull, and the dear little
Triangle! and do you think about Orion, containing such sidereal
masterpieces as Bellatrix and Betelgeuse and Rigel, and the most
magnificent nebula known anywhere! Do you think also about that very
interesting triple sun which is called Mizar, in the Great Bear, a
veritable treasure for any connoisseur! and do you let me have this
Earth to amuse me!”
Now Lucifer did not answer at once. The bats were out by this time,
zigzagging about the garden: the air was touched with the scent of
dew-drenched roses: and somewhere in the dusk a nightingale had
tentatively raised its thrilling, long-drawn, plaintive voicing of
desire. All everywhere about the two fiends was most soothing. And the
Angel of Darkness laughed without a trace left in his manner of that
earlier reserve.
“No, no, old wheedler! one cannot neglect the tiniest point, in the
great game. Besides, I have my pride, I confess it, and to behold Earth
given over entirely to good would vex me. Yet, after all, I can detect
no unforgivable beneficence in your continuing to live virtuously here
with your seraglio for such a while as the planet may last. These little
holidays even freshen one for work. So, if you like, I will summon
Amaimon or Baälzebub, or perhaps Succor-Benoth would enjoy the sport,
and they will dispose of this two-penny saint.”
But Ninzian seemed hesitant. “My prince, I am afraid that some of those
officious archangels would be coming too; and one thing might lead to
another, and my wife would not at all like having any supernal battlings
in her own garden, among her favorite rose-bushes. No, as I always say,
it is much better to avoid these painful scenes.”
“Your wife!” said Lucifer, in high astonishment, “and is it that thin
faded pious wretch you are considering! Why, but your wife has
repudiated you! She has caught just your trick of treacherousness, and
so she has betrayed you to that flint-hearted saint!”
Ninzian in the dusk made bold to smile....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_56._
_Economics of Ninzian_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NINZIAN in the dusk made bold to smile at this sort of bachelor talk.
Lucifer really would be a bit more broad-minded, a shade less notably
naïve, if only the dear fellow had not stayed always so stubbornly
prejudiced against marriage, merely because it was a sacrament. All that
was required, alike to perfect him in some real knowledge of human
nature and to secure everybody’s well-being everywhere, Ninzian
reflected, was for Lucifer just once to marry some capable woman....
So Ninzian smiled. But Ninzian did not need to say anything, for at this
moment Balthis came to the door, and—not being able in the twilight to
see the Prince of Darkness,—she called out that supper was getting
stone-cold on the table, and that she really wished Ninzian would try to
be a little more considerate, especially when they had company.
And Ninzian, rising, chuckled. “My wife has been like that since Sidon
was a village. Time and again she has found me out; and never yet has
she let me off with a public exposure. Oh, if I could explain it, I
would perhaps care less for her. In part, I think, it means that she
loves me: in part, I fear—upon looking back,—it means that no really
conscientious person cares to entrust the proper punishment of her
husband to anybody else. Of course, all that is merely theory. What is
certain is that my wife’s confession has been conducted tactfully, and
that you and I are going in to talk solemn nonsense with St. Holmendis.”
But Lucifer once more was shaking his head. He said, with firmness:
“No, Surkrag. No, I am not squeamish, but I have no use for saints.”
“Well, prince, I would not be over-hasty to agree with you. For
Holmendis has some invaluable points. He is perfectly sincere, for one
thing, and for another, he is energetic, and for a third, he never
pardons any one who differs with him. Of course, he is all for having
men better than they were intended to be, and with his tales about that
second coming of Manuel he does frighten people.... For they have been
altering that legend, my prince, considerably. Nowadays, it is not only
glory and prosperity which Manuel is to bring back with him. He is to
return also, it seems, with a large cargo of excruciate punishments for
all persons who differ in any way with the notions of Holmendis and
Niafer.”
“Ah, the old story! It is really astounding,” Lucifer commented, in
frank wonder, “how one finds everywhere this legend of the Redeemer in
just this form. It seems an instinct with the creatures.”
“Well, but,” said Ninzian, tolerantly, “it gives them something to look
forward to. It promises to gratify all their congenital desires,
including cruelty. And, above all, it prevents their going mad, to
believe that somebody somewhere is looking out for them. In any
event,—as I was saying,—this gaunt Holmendis does frighten Poictesme
into a great deal of public piety. Still, there are always corners and
bedrooms and other secluded places, in which one strikes a balance, as
it were; and abstinence and fear make wonderful appetizers: so that, in
the long run of affairs, I doubt if you have anywhere upon Earth any
more serviceable friends than are these saints who will put up with
nothing short of their own especial sort of perfection.”
Lucifer was not convinced. “It is proper of course that you should
attempt to exculpate your friend and associate during the last twenty
years. Nevertheless, all these extenuatory sayings, about the
viciousness of virtue, are the habitual banalities of boyhood; and no
beardless cynic, even when addicted to verse, has ever yet been
permanently injured by them.”
“But,” Ninzian returned, “but here, I am not merely theorizing. I speak
with rather high authority. For you will be remembering, prince, that,
by the rules of our game, when any mortal has gained a hundred followers
for you, Jahveh is penalized to put him upon the same footing as the
rest of us. And, well, sir! you may see here in the mud, just where I
jostled Holmendis from the walkway—”
Lucifer made luminous his finger-tips, and held them like five candles
to the saint’s footprint. The Angel of Darkness bowed thereafter, with
real respect, toward heaven.
“Our Adversary, to do Him justice, keeps an honest score. Come, Surkrag,
now this is affecting! This very touchingly recalls that the great game
is being played by the dear fellow with candor and fine sportsmanship.
Meanwhile I must most certainly have supper with you; and the great game
is far from over, since I yet make a fourth with the fanatic, the woman
and the hypocrite.”
“Ah, prince,” said Ninzian, a little shocked, as they went into his
sedate snug home, “should you not say more tactfully, with us three
leaders of reform?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK NINE
ABOVE PARADISE
“_He was caught up into paradise; and heard unspeakable words._”
—II CORINTHIANS, xii, 4.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_57._
_Maugis Makes Trouble_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW the tale speaks of the rebellion of Maugis, who was the son of
Donander of Évre, the Thane of Aigremont. For Count Manuel’s youngest
child, Ettarre, born after her father’s passing, was now come to the
full flowering of her strange beauty: and it was at this time—with the
result that two young gentlemen went out of their wits, four killed
themselves, and seven married,—that Ettarre was betrothed to Guiron des
Rocques, of the famous house of Gâtinais. And it was at this time also
that young Maugis d’Aigremont resorted to a more stirring solace than
might be looked for in imbecility or death or a vicarious bedfellow. He
seized and carried off Ettarre. His company of ten was pursued by Count
Emmerick and Guiron with twenty followers; and after a skirmish in
Bovion the girl was recaptured unharmed.
But Maugis escaped. And after that he went into open rebellion against
Count Emmerick’s authority, and occupied those fastnesses in the
Taunenfels which Othmar Black-Tooth had once held for a long while
against the assaults of Count Manuel himself.
History in fine appeared to honor banality by repeating itself, with the
plain difference that gaunt Maugis was equally a great captain and a
great lover and in every way more formidable than Othmar had been,
whereas Emmerick, elsewhere than at a banquet, was not formidable at
all. Moreover, Emmerick in these days lacked even any stronger kinsman
to lean upon, for his brother-in-law Heitman Michael was now in Muscovy,
the young Count of Montors was dead, and Ayrart de Montors had removed
to the court of King Theodoret. Emmerick had, thus, to lead his troops
only Fauxpas de Nointel and that unreasonable Guiron, who expected
Emmerick himself to lead them.
So Emmerick wavered; he made terms; he even winked at Guiron’s capture
by the pirates of Caer Idryn, in order to be rid of this troublesome
posturer who insisted upon dragging Emmerick into so much uncomfortable
fighting: and Maugis, since these terms did not include his possession
of Ettarre, soon broke them. Thus the warring that now arose in
Poictesme, between Maugis’ lust and Count Emmerick’s supineness, dragged
on for many wearying fevered years.
Then Madame Melicent returned from oversea with her second husband, the
Comte de la Fôret, a gentleman who remarkably lacked patience with
brigands and with shilly-shallying. This Perion de la Fôret took charge
of matters, with such resolution that out of hand Guiron was rescued
from his captivity, Maugis was overpowered and killed, the Ettarre whom
he had desired to his own hurt was married to Guiron, and Count Emmerick
gave a banquet in honor of the event. Such was this Perion’s
impetuosity.
It is of these matters that the tale speaks in passing. For the tale now
is of Donander of Évre, who was the father of Maugis, and who would not
break faith with that Emmerick who, howsoever unworthily, sat in the
place of that great master whom Donander had been privileged to serve
even in this mortal life. For Donander was the only one of the lords of
the Silver Stallion who accepted with joy and with unbounded faith the
legend of Manuel, and who in all his living bore testimony to it.
This Donander of Évre had been the youngest of the fellowship, he was at
this time but newly made a widower while yet in his forties, and
whatsoever he lacked in brilliance of wit he atoned for with his
hardiness in battle. Yet in this war he chose not to display his
prowess, since the fighting was between the son of Dom Manuel and the
son of Donander himself. He chose instead exile.
First, though, he went to Storisende; and, standing beside the holy
sepulchre, he looked up for some while at the serene great effigy of
Manuel, poised there in eternal watchfulness over Donander’s native
land, and bright with all the jewels of the world. Donander knelt and
prayed in this sacred place, as he knew, for the last time. Then
Donander, without any complaining, and without any grieving now for his
wife’s death, went out of Poictesme, a landless man; and he piously took
service under Prince Balein of Targamon (the same that twenty years ago
had wooed Queen Morvyth, a little before the evil times of her long
imprisonment and the cutting off of her head), who now was harrying the
pagan Northmen.
Thus it was that Donander also at the last went out of Poictesme, not by
his own election, to encounter the most strange of all the dooms which
befell the lords of the Silver Stallion after the passing of Dom Manuel.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_58._
_Showing that Even Angels May Err_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THIS doom began its workings in the long field below Rathgor, when
Palnatoki rode forth and made his brag. “I am the champion of the
Ænseis. In the Northland there is nobody mightier than I; and if a
mightier person live elsewhere, it is not yet proven. Who is there in
this place will try a fall with me?”
Behind him the pagan army waited, innumerable, and terrible, and
deplorably ill-mannered. These shouted now:
“We cry a holmgang. Who will fight with Red Palnatoki, that is overlord
of the Swan’s bath, and that slew the giants in Noenhir?”
Then from the opposed ranks came clanking, and shining in full armor,
Donander of Évre. And he said:
“I, howsoever unworthy, messire, am the person who will withstand you. I
also have fought before this morning. Under Count Manuel’s banner of the
Silver Stallion I have done what I might. That much I will again do here
to-day, and upon every day between this day and the holy Morrow of
Judgment.”
After that the Christian army shouted: “There is none mightier than
Donander! Also, he is very gratifyingly modest.”
But Palnatoki cried out scornfully: “Your utmost will not avail this
morning! Behind me musters all the might of the Ænseis, that are the
most high of gods above Lærath, and their strength shall be shown here
through me.”
“Behind the endeavors of every loyal son of the Church,” Donander said,
“are the blessed saints and the bright archangels.”
“Indeed, Donander, that may very well be the truth,” replied Red
Palnatoki. “The old gods and the gods of Rome have met to-day; and we
are their swords.”
“Your gods confess their weakness, Messire Palnatoki, by picking the
better weapon,” Donander answered him, courteously.
With these amenities discharged, they fought. Nowhere upon earth could
have been found a pair of more stalwart warriors: each had no equal
anywhere existent between seas and mountains save in his adversary: so
neatly were they matched indeed that, after a half-hour of incredible
battling, it was natural enough they should kill each other
simultaneously. And then the unfortunate error occurred, just as each
naked soul escaped from the dying body.
For now out of the north came Kjalar, the fair guide of pagan warriors
to eternal delights in the Hall of the Chosen; and from the zenith sped,
like a shining plummet, Ithuriel to fetch the soul of the brave champion
of Christendom to the felicities of the golden city walled about with
jasper of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Both emissaries had been attending
the combat until the arrival of their part therein; both, as seasoned
virtuosi of warfare, had been delighted by this uncommonly fine fight:
and in their pleased excitement they somehow made the error of
retrieving each the other’s appointed prey. It happened thus that the
soul of Donander of Évre fared northward, asleep in the palm of Kjalar’s
hand, while Ithuriel conveyed the soul of Red Palnatoki to the heaven of
Jahveh.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_59._
_The Conversion of Palnatoki_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
ITHURIEL’S blunder, it is gratifying to record, did not in the outcome
really matter. For Christendom just then was at heated odds over points
of theology not very clearly understood in Jahveh’s heaven, where in
consequence no decisions were hazarded upon the merits of the
controversy; and the daily invoices of Christian champions and martyrs
of all sects were being admitted to blessedness as fast as they murdered
one another.
Moreover, Red Palnatoki was, by the articles of his stern Nordic creed,
a fatalist. When he discovered what had happened, and the strange
salvation which had been put upon him, his religion therefore assured
him that this too had been predestined by the wayward Norns, and he
piously made no complaining. The eternal life which he had inherited,
with no fighting in it for the present, and no stronger drink than milk,
was not up to human expectation, but the tall sea-rover had long ago
found out that few things are. Meanwhile he could, at any rate, look
forward to that promised last great battle, when those praiseworthy
captains Gog and Magog (with, as Palnatoki understood it, a considerable
company of fine fighting-men), would attack the four-square city, and
when Palnatoki would have again a chance really to enjoy himself in
defending the camp of the saints.
And meanwhile too, he was interested in those girls. It seemed at best
to any one with his religious rearing quite unaccountable to find women
in heaven, and this especial pair appeared to Palnatoki a remarkably
quaint choice for exceptional favoritism. He could only deduce they had
got in through some error similar to that which had procured his own
admission, particularly as he saw no other women anywhere about.
And Palnatoki reflected that the enceinte lady, with eagle’s wings and
the crown of little stars, whom the presumably pet dragon followed
everywhere with touching devotion, could not for as yet some months
repay cultivating. But that very pretty brunette, with the golden cup
and all those splendid clothes and with the placard on her forehead, who
had just ridden by upon that seven-headed scarlet monster, rather took
Palnatoki’s fancy. That girl was not, you could see, a prude; she had
come very near winking at him, if she, indeed, had not actually winked
in the moment she glanced back: so that the Great Whore of Babylon
(which, as they told him, was this second lady’s name) gave him, upon
the whole, something else to look forward to.
Without any sulking under his halo, Palnatoki bent resolutely to his
first harp-lesson; and, in place of protests, civilly voiced alleluias.
For, with two fine to-morrows to look forward to, Palnatoki was content
enough. And in Jahveh’s heaven, therefore, all went agreeably, and as
smoothly as Red Palnatoki at just this point goes out of this story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_60._
_In the Hall of the Chosen_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
WHEN Donander of Évre awoke in the Northern paradise, he also was
content enough. It was a strange and not what you could call a cozy
place, this gold-roofed hall with its five hundred and forty mile-wide
doors: and the monsters, in the likeness of a stag and of a she-goat,
which straddled above the building perpetually feeding upon the lower
leaves of the great tree called Lærath, seemed to Donander preëminently
outlandish creatures, animals under whose bellies no really considerate
persons would have erected a residence. Yet, like Palnatoki, Donander of
Évre was an old campaigner, who could be tolerably comfortable anywhere.
Nor was to discover himself among pagans a novel experience, since in
his mortal life Donander had ridden at adventure in most corners of the
world, and rather more than half of his finest enemies and of his
opponents in many delightful encounters had been infidels.
“Excepting always their unfortunate religious heresies,” he was used to
concede, “I have no fault to pick with heathen persons, whom in the
daily and nocturnal affairs of life I have found quite as friendly and
companionable as properly baptized ladies.”
In fine, he got on well enough with the flaxen-haired spirits of these
Northern kings and skalds and jarls and vikingar. They stared, and some
guffawed, when he fitted out a little shrine, in which Donander prayed
decorously, every day at the correct hours, for the second coming of
Manuel and for the welfare of Donander’s soul upon the holy Morrow of
Judgment. Yet, after all, these boreal ghosts conceded, in paradise if
anywhere a man should be permitted utterly to follow his own tastes,
even in imaginative eschatology. And when they talked their really
pathetic nonsense about being the guests of Sidvrar the Weaver and
Constrainer, and about living forever through his bounty thus happily in
the Hall of the Chosen, it was Donander’s turn to shrug. Even had there
been no other discrepancies, everybody knew that heaven had, not five
hundred and forty golden gates, but only twelve entrances, each carved
from a single pearl and engraved with the name of a tribe of Israel.
“Besides,” Donander asked, “who is this Weaver and Constrainer?
Certainly, I never heard of him before.”
“He is the King and Father of the Ænseis,” they told him. “He is
overlord of that unimaginable folk who dwell in Ydalir; and who do not
kill their deformed and weakling children, as we were used to do, but
instead cast from the ivory ramparts of Ydalir all such degenerate
offspring, to be the gods of races who are not blond and Nordic.”
Donander, as a loyal son of the Church, could only shake his head over
such nonsense, and the innumerous other errors by which these heathen
were being misled to everlasting ruin. Aloud, Donander repeated his
final verdict as to the pretensions of this Sidvrar, by saying again, “I
never heard of him.”
Nevertheless, Donander went without real discontent among the pleasures
of paradise, and he joined in all the local sports. In common with the
other dead, he ate the flesh of the inexhaustible boar, and with them he
drank of the strong mead which sustained them in perpetual tipsiness.
And he sedately rode out with the others every morning into the meadows
where these blessed pagan lords fought joyously among themselves until
midday. At noon a peal of thunder would sound, the slain and wounded
warriors were of a sudden revivified and cured of their hurts, and were
reunited to whatsoever arms and heads and legs the contestants had lost
in their gaming: and the company would return fraternally to the
gold-roofed hall, where they ate and drank and made their brags until
they slept.
“Yet perhaps our banquets might, messieurs,” Donander had suggested,
after a century or so of these rough-and-ready pleasures, “be not
unadvantageously seasoned with the delights of feminine companionship,
if only for dessert?”
“But it is one of our appointed blessings to have done with women and
their silly ways,” cried out the vikingar, “now that we have entered
paradise.”
And Donander, who had always been notable for his affectionate nature,
and who had served vigorously so many ladies par amours, seemed grieved
to hear a saying so unchivalrous. Still, he said nothing.
Thus much time passed; and the worlds were changed: but in the eyes of
Donander of Évre, as in the eyes of all who feasted in the Hall of the
Chosen, there was no knowledge nor any fear of time, because these
blessed dead lived now in perpetual tipsiness. And, as befitted a loyal
son of the Church, Donander, without any complaining, in the
surroundings which Heaven out of Heaven’s wisdom had selected for him,
awaited the second coming of Manuel and the holy Morrow of Judgment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_61._
_Vanadis, Dear Lady of Reginlief_
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
THEN, from the highest part of this paradise, and from the unimaginable
yew-vales of Ydalir which rise above the topmost branches of the tree
called Lærath, descended blue-robed Vanadis, the lady of Reginlief, dear
to the Ænseis. She had disposed of five inefficient husbands, in
impetuous mythological manners, but still a loneliness and a desire was
upon her; and with the eternal optimism of widowhood she came to look
for a sixth husband among these great-thewed heroes who jeered at women
and their wiles.