The Cream of the Jest Page 2

  “And I am pointing out a way, messire, by which you may reasonably hope to deal with Sir Guiron—ho, and with the Counts Emmerick and Perion, and with Ettarre also—precisely as you elect.”

  Then Maugis spoke wearily. “I must trust you, I suppose. But I have no lively faith in my judgments nowadays. I have played fast and loose with too many men, and the stench of their blood is in my nostrils, drugging me. I move in a half-sleep, and people’s talking seems remote and foolish. I can think clearly only when I think of how tender is the flesh of Ettarre. Heh, a lovely flashing peril allures me, through these days of fog, and I must trust you. Death is ugly, I know; but life is ugly too, and all my deeds are strange to me.”

  The clerk was oddly moved. “Do you not know I love you as I never loved Guiron?”

  “How can I tell? You are an outlander. Your ways are not our ways,” says the brigand moodily. “And what have I to do with love?”

  “You will talk otherwise when you drink in the count’s seat, with Ettarre upon your knee,” Horvendile considered. “Observe, I do not promise you success! Yet I would have you remember it was by very much this same device that Count Perion won the sister of Ettarre.”

  “Heh, if we fail,” replies Maugis, “I shall at least have done with remembering …” Then they settled details of the business in hand.

  Thus Horvendile returned to Storisende before twilight had thickened into nightfall. He came thus to a place different in all things from the haggard outlaw’s camp, for Count Emmerick held that night a noble revel. There was gay talk and jest and dancing, with all other mirth men could devise.

  V

  How the Double-Dealer Was of Two Minds

  It was deep silent night when Horvendile came into the room where Ettarre slept. “Out, out!” cried Horvendile. “Let us have more light here, so that men may see the beauty men die for!” He went with a torch from lamp to lamp, kindling them all.

  Ettarre stood between the bed-curtains, which were green hangings worked with birds and beasts of the field, each in his proper colors. The girl was robed in white; and upon her breast gleamed the broken sigil of Scoteia, that famed talisman which never left her person. She wore a scarlet girdle about her middle, and her loosened yellow hair fell heavy about her. Her fine proud face questioned the clerk in silence, without any trace of fear.

  “We must wait now,” says Horvendile, “wait patiently for that which is to follow. For while the folk of Storisende slept—while your fair, favored lover slept, Ettarre, and your stout brothers Emmerick and Perion slept, and all persons who are your servitors and well-wishers slept—I, I, the puppet-shifter, have admitted Maugis d’Aigremont and his men into this castle. They are at work now, hammer-and-tongs, to decide who shall be master of Storisende and you.”

  Her first speech you would have found odd at such a time. “But, oh, it was not you who betrayed us, Horvendile—not you whom Guiron loved!”

  “You forget,” he returned, “that I, who am without any hope to win you, must attempt to view the squabbling of your other lovers without bias. It is the custom of omnipotence to do that, Ettarre. I have given Maugis d’Aigremont an equal chance with Sir Guiron. It is the custom of omnipotence to do that also, Ettarre. You will remember the tale was trite even in Job’s far time that the sweetmeats of life do not invariably fall to immaculate people.”

  Then, as if on a sudden, Dame Ettarre seemed to understand that the clerk’s brain had been turned through his hopeless love for her. She wondered, dizzily, how she could have stayed blind to his insanity this long, recollecting the inconsequence of his acts and speeches in the past; but matters of heavier urgency were at hand. Here, with this apparent madman, she was on perilous ground; but now had arisen a hideous contention without; and the shrieks there, and the clash of metal there, spoke with rude eloquence of a harborage even less desirable.

  “Heaven will defend the right!” Ettarre said bravely.

  “I am not so sure that heaven has any finger in this pie. An arras hides all. It will lift presently, and either Good or Evil, either Guiron or Maugis, will come through that arras as your master. I am not certain as yet which one I shall permit to enter; and the matter rests with me, Ettarre.”

  “Heaven will defend the right!” Ettarre said bravely.

  And at that the arras quivered and heaved, so that its heavy embroideries were converted into a welter of shimmering gold, bright in the glare of many lamps, sparkling like the ocean’s waters at sunset; and Horvendile and Ettarre saw nothing else there for a breathless moment, which seemed to last for a great while. Then, parting, the arras yielded up Maugis d’Aigremont.

  Horvendile chuckled.

  VI

  Treats of Maugis d’Aigremont’s Pottage

  Maugis came forward, his eyes fixed hungrily upon Ettarre. “So a long struggle ends,” he said, very quiet. “There is no virtue left, Ettarre, save patience.”

  “While life remains I shall not cease to shriek out your villainy. O God, men have let Guiron die!” she wailed.

  “I will cause you to forget that death is dreadful, Ettarre!”

  “I need no teacher now. … And so, Guiron is dead and I yet live! I had not thought that would be possible.” She whispered this. “Give me your sword, Maugis, for just a little while, and then I will not hate you any longer.”

  The man said, with dreary patience: “Yes, you would die rather than endure my touch. And through my desire of you I have been stripped of wealth and joy and honor, and even of hope; through my desire of you I have held much filthy traffic, with treachery and theft and murder, traffic such as my soul loathed: and to no avail! Yes, I have been guilty of many wickednesses, as men estimate these matters; and yet, I swear to you, I seem to myself to be still that boy with whom you used to play, when you too were a child, Ettarre, and did not hate me. Heh, it is very strange how affairs fall out in this world of ours, so that a man may discern no aim or purpose anywhere!”

  “Yet it is all foreplanned, Maugis.” Horvendile spoke thus.

  “And to what end have you ensnared me, Horvendile?” says Maugis, turning wearily. “For the attack on Storisende has failed, and I am dying of many wounds, Horvendile. See how I bleed! Guiron and Perion and Emmerick and all their men are hunting me everywhere beyond that arras, and I am frightened, Horvendile—even I, who was Maugis, am frightened!—lest any of them find me here. For I desire now only to die untroubled. Oh, Horvendile, in an ill hour I trusted you!”

  As knave and madman, Ettarre saw the double-dealer and his dupe confront each other. In the haggard face of Maugis, no longer evil, showed only puzzled lassitude. In the hand of Horvendile a dagger glittered; and his face was pensive.

  “My poor Maugis, it is not yet time I make my dealings plain to you. It suffices that you have served my turn, Maugis, and that of you I have no need any longer. You must die now, Maugis.”

  Ettarre feared this frozen madman, she who was by ordinary fearless. Ettarre turned away her face, so that she might not see the two men grapple. Without, the uproar continued—for a long while, it seemed. When she looked again it was, by some great wonder-working, to meet Guiron’s eyes and Guiron’s lips.

  VII

  Journey’s End: With the Customary Unmasking

  “My love, Ettarre, they have not harmed you?”

  “None has harmed me, Guiron. Oh, and you?”

  “Maugis is dead,” he answered joyously. “See, here he lies, slain by brave Horvendile. And the rogues who followed Maugis are all killed or fled. Our woes are at an end, dear love.”

  Then Ettarre saw that Horvendile indeed waited beside the dead body of Maugis d’Aigremont. And the clerk stayed motionless while she told Guiron of Horvendile’s baleful work.

  Sir Guiron then said: “Is this true speech, Horvendile?”

  “It is quite true I ha
ve done all these things, messire,” Horvendile answered quietly.

  “And with what purpose?” said Sir Guiron, very sadly; for to him too it seemed certain that such senseless treachery could not spring from anything but madness, and he had loved Horvendile.

  “I will tell you,” Horvendile replied, “though I much fear you will not understand—” He meditated, shook his head, smiling. “Indeed, how is it possible for me to make you understand? Well, I blurt out the truth. There was once in a land very far away from this land—in my country—a writer of romances. And once he constructed a romance which, after a hackneyed custom of my country, purported to be translated from an old manuscript written by an ancient clerk—called Horvendile. It told of Horvendile’s part in the love-business between Sir Guiron des Rocques and La Beale Ettarre. I am that writer of romance. This room, this castle, all the broad rolling countryside without, is but a portion of my dream, and these places have no existence save in my fancies. And you, messire—and you also, madame—and dead Maugis here, and all the others who seemed so real to me, are but the puppets I fashioned and shifted, for a tale’s sake, in that romance which now draws to a close.”

  He paused; and Sir Guiron sighed. “My poor Horvendile!” was all he said.

  “It is not possible for you to believe me, of course. And it may be that I, too, am only a figment of some greater dream, in just such case as yours, and that I, too, cannot understand. It may be the very cream of the jest that my country is no more real than Storisende. How could I judge if I, too, were a puppet? It is a thought which often troubles me. …”

  Horvendile deliberated, then spoke more briskly. “At all events, I must return now to my own country, which I do not love as I love this bright fantastic tiny land that I created—or seemed to create—and wherein I was—or seemed to be—omnipotent.”

  Horvendile drew a deep breath; and he looked downward at the corpse he had bereft of pride and daring and agility. “Farewell, Maugis! It would be indecorous, above all in omnipotence, to express anything save abhorrence toward you: yet I delighted in you as you lived and moved; and it was not because of displeasure with you that I brought you to disaster. Hence, also, one might evolve a heady analogue. …”

  Guiron was wondering what he might do in accord with honor and with clemency. He did not stir as Horvendile came nearer. The clerk showed very pitiful and mean beside this stately champion in full armor, all shining metal, save for a surcoat of rose-colored stuff irregularly worked with crescents of silver.

  “Farewell, Sir Guiron!” Horvendile then said. “There are no men like you in my country. I have found you difficult to manage; and I may confess now that I kept you so long imprisoned at Caer Idryn, and caused you to spend so many chapters oversea in heathendom, mainly in order that I might weave out my romance here untroubled by your disconcerting and rather wooden perfection. But you are not the person to suspect ill of your creator. You are all that I once meant to be, Guiron, all that I have forgotten how to be; and for a dead boy’s sake I love you.”

  “Listen, poor wretch!” Sir Guiron answered, sternly; “you have this night done horrible mischief, you have caused the death of many estimable persons. Yet I have loved you, Horvendile, and I know that heaven, through heaven’s inscrutable wisdom, has smitten you with madness. That stair leads to the postern on the east side of the castle. Go forth from Storisende as quickly as you may, whilst none save us knows of your double-dealings. It may be that I am doing great wrong; but I cannot forget I have twice owed my life to you. If I must err at all hazards, I prefer to err upon the side of gratitude and mercy.”

  “That is said very like you,” Horvendile replied. “Eh, it was not for nothing I endowed you with sky-towering magnanimity. Assuredly, I go, messire. And so, farewell, Ettarre!” Long and long Horvendile gazed upon the maiden. “There is no woman like you in my country, Ettarre. I can find no woman anywhere resembling you whom dreams alone may win to. It is a little thing to say that I have loved you; it is a bitter thing to know that I must live among, and pursue, and win, those other women.”

  “My poor Horvendile,” she answered, very lovely in her compassion, “you are in love with fantasies.”

  He held her hand, touching her for the last time; and he trembled. “Yes, I am in love with my fantasies, Ettarre; and, none the less, I must return into my own country and abide there always. …”

  As he considered the future, in the man’s face showed only puzzled lassitude; and you saw therein a quaint resemblance to Maugis d’Aigremont. “I find my country an inadequate place in which to live,” says Horvendile. “Oh, many persons live there happily enough! or, at worst, they seem to find the prizes and the applause of my country worth striving for wholeheartedly. But there is that in some of us which gets no exercise there; and we struggle blindly, with impotent yearning, to gain outlet for great powers which we know that we possess, even though we do not know their names. And so, we dreamers wander at adventure to Storisende—oh, and into more perilous realms sometimes!—in search of a life that will find employment for every faculty we have. For life in my country does not engross us utterly. We dreamers waste there at loose ends, waste futilely. All which we can ever see and hear and touch there, we dreamers dimly know, is at best but a portion of the truth, and is possibly not true at all. Oh, yes! it may be that we are not sane; could we be sure of that, it would be a comfort. But, as it is, we dreamers only know that life in my country does not content us, and never can content us. So we struggle, for a tiny dear-bought while, into other and fairer-seeming lands in search of—we know not what! And, after a little”—he relinquished the maiden’s hands, spread out his own hands, shrugging—“after a little, we must go back into my country and live there as best we may.”

  A whimsical wise smile now visited Ettarre’s lips. Her hands went to her breast, and presently one half the broken sigil of Scoteia lay in Horvendile’s hand. “You will not always abide in your own country, Horvendile. Some day you will return to us at Storisende. The sign of the Dark Goddess will prove your safe-conduct then if Guiron and I be yet alive.”

  Horvendile raised to his mouth the talisman warmed by contact with her sweet flesh. “It may be you will not live for a great while,” he says; “but that will befall through no lack of loving pains on your creator’s part.”

  Then Horvendile left them. In the dark passageway he paused, looking back at Guiron and Ettarre for a heartbeat. Guiron and Ettarre had already forgotten his existence. Hand-in-hand they stood in the bright room, young, beautiful and glad. Silently their lips met.

  Horvendile closed the door, and so left Storisende forever. Without he came into a lonely quiet-colored world already expectant of dawn’s occupancy. Already the tree-trunks eastward showed like the black bars of a grate. Thus he walked in twilight, carrying half the sigil of Scoteia. …

  Book Second

  “Whate’er she be—

  That inaccessible She

  That doth command my heart and me:

  “Till that divine

  Idea take a shrine

  Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

  “Let her full glory,

  My fancies, fly before ye;

  Be ye my fictions—but her story.”

  VIII

  Of a Trifle Found in Twilight

  Thus he walked in twilight, regretful that he must return to his own country, and live another life, and bear another name than that of Horvendile. … It was droll that in his own country folk should call him Felix, since Felix meant “happy”; and assuredly he was not preeminently happy there.

  At least he had ended the love-business of Ettarre and Guiron happily, however droll the necessitated makeshifts might have been. … He
had very certainly introduced the god in the car, against Horatian admonition, had wound up affairs with a sort of transformation scene. … It was, perhaps, at once too hackneyed and too odd an ending to be aesthetically satisfactory, after all. … Why, beyond doubt it was. He shrugged his impatience.

  “Yet—what a true ending it would be!” he reflected. He was still walking in twilight—for the time was approaching sunset—in the gardens of Alcluid. He must devise another ending for this high-hearted story of Guiron and Ettarre.

  Felix Kennaston smiled a little over the thought of ending the romance with such topsy-turvy anticlimaxes as his woolgathering wits had blundered into; and, stooping, picked up a shining bit of metal that lay beside the pathway. He was conscious of a vague notion he had just dropped this bit of metal.

  “It is droll how all great geniuses instinctively plagiarize,” he reflected. “I must have seen this a half-hour ago, when I was walking up and down planning my final chapters. And so, I wove it into the tale as a breast-ornament for Ettarre, without ever consciously seeing the thing at all. Then, presto! I awake and find it growing dark, with me lackadaisically roaming in twilight clasping this bauble, just as I imagined Horvendile walking out of the castle of Storisende carrying much such a bauble. Oh, yes, the processes of inspiration are as irrational as if all poets took after their mothers.”

  This bit of metal, Kennaston afterward ascertained, was almost an exact half of a disk, not quite three inches in diameter, which somehow had been broken or cut in two. It was of burnished metal—lead, he thought—about a sixteenth of an inch in thickness; and its single notable feature was the tiny characters with which one surface was inscribed.