Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances Read online

  I

  How Manuel Left the Mire

  They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were ascommon as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly inattendance upon the miller's pigs. They tell also that Manuel wascontent enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him.

  Meanwhile in all the environs of Rathgor, and in the thatched villagesof Lower Targamon, he was well liked: and when the young people gatheredin the evening to drink brandy and eat nuts and gingerbread, nobodydanced more merrily than Squinting Manuel. He had a quiet way with thegirls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity whichcaused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool. Then, too,young Manuel was very often detected smiling sleepily over nothing, andhis gravest care in life appeared to be that figure which Manuel hadmade out of marsh clay from the pool of Haranton.

  This figure he was continually reshaping and realtering. The figurestood upon the margin of the pool; and near by were two stones overgrownwith moss, and supporting a cross of old worm-eaten wood, whichcommemorated what had been done there.

  One day, toward autumn, as Manuel was sitting in this place, and lookinginto the deep still water, a stranger came, and he wore a fierce longsword that interfered deplorably with his walking.

  "Now I wonder what it is you find in that dark pool to keep you staringso?" the stranger asked, first of all.

  "I do not very certainly know," replied Manuel "but mistily I seem tosee drowned there the loves and the desires and the adventures I hadwhen I wore another body than this. For the water of Haranton, I musttell you, is not like the water of other fountains, and curious dreamsengender in this pool."

  "I speak no ill against oneirologya, although broad noon is hardly thebest time for its practise," declared the snub-nosed stranger. "But whatis that thing?" he asked, pointing.

  "It is the figure of a man, which I have modeled and re-modeled, sir,but cannot seem to get exactly to my liking. So it is necessary that Ikeep laboring at it until the figure is to my thinking and my desire."

  "But, Manuel, what need is there for you to model it at all?"

  "Because my mother, sir, was always very anxious for me to make a figurein the world, and when she lay a-dying I promised her that I would doso, and then she put a geas upon me to do it."

  "Ah, to be sure! but are you certain it was this kind of figure shemeant?"

  "Yes, for I have often heard her say that, when I grew up, she wanted meto make myself a splendid and admirable young man in every respect. Soit is necessary that I make the figure of a young man, for my mother wasnot of these parts, but a woman of Ath Cliath, and so she put a geasupon me--"

  "Yes, yes, you had mentioned this geas, and I am wondering what sort ofa something is this geas."

  "It is what you might call a bond or an obligation, sir, only it is ofthe particularly strong and unreasonable and affirmative and secret sortwhich the Virbolg use."

  The stranger now looked from the figure to Manuel, and the strangerdeliberated the question (which later was to puzzle so many people) ifany human being could be as simple as Manuel appeared. Manuel at twentywas not yet the burly giant he became. But already he was a gigantic andflorid person, so tall that the heads of few men reached to hisshoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high featured and blond, havinga narrow small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and the chest of astallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so thatthe stupendous boy at his simplest appeared to be winking theinformation that he was in jest.

  All in all, the stranger found this young swineherd ambiguous; and therewas another curious thing too which the stranger noticed about Manuel.

  "Is it on account of this geas," asked the stranger, "that a great lockhas been sheared away from your yellow hair?"

  In an instant Manuel's face became dark and wary. "No," he said, "thathas nothing to do with my geas, and we must not talk about that"

  "Now you are a queer lad to be having such an obligation upon your head,and to be having well-nigh half the hair cut away from your head, and tobe having inside your head such notions. And while small harm has evercome from humoring one's mother, yet I wonder at you, Manuel, that youshould sit here sleeping in the sunlight among your pigs, and be givingyour young time to improbable sculpture and stagnant water, when thereis such a fine adventure awaiting you, and when the Norns areforetelling such high things about you as they spin the thread of yourliving."

  "Hah, glory be to God, friend, but what is this adventure?"

  "The adventure is that the Count of Arnaye's daughter yonder has beencarried off by a magician, and that the high Count Demetrios offers muchwealth and broad lands, and his daughter's hand in marriage, too, to thelad that will fetch back this lovely girl."

  "I have heard talk of this in the kitchen of Arnaye, where I sometimessell them a pig. But what are such matters to a swineherd?"

  "My lad, you are to-day a swineherd drowsing in the sun, as yesterdayyou were a baby squalling in the cradle, but to-morrow you will beneither of these if there by any truth whatever in the talking of theNorns as they gossip at the foot of their ash-tree beside the door ofthe Sylan's House."

  Manuel appeared to accept the inevitable. He bowed his brightly coloredhigh head, saying gravely: "All honor be to Urdhr and Verdandi andSkuld! If I am decreed to be the champion that is to rescue the Count ofArnaye's daughter, it is ill arguing with the Norns. Come, tell me now,how do you call this doomed magician, and how does one get to him tosever his wicked head from his foul body?"

  "Men speak of him as Miramon Lluagor, lord of the nine kinds of sleepand prince of the seven madnesses. He lives in mythic splendor at thetop of the gray mountain called Vraidex, where he contrives all mannerof illusions, and, in particular, designs the dreams of men."

  "Yes, in the kitchen of Arnaye, also, such was the report concerningthis Miramon: and not a person in the kitchen denied that this Miramonis an ugly customer."

  "He is the most subtle of magicians. None can withstand him, and nobodycan pass the terrible serpentine designs which Miramon has set to guardthe gray scarps of Vraidex, unless one carries the more terrible swordFlamberge, which I have here in its blue scabbard."

  "Why, then, it is you who must rescue the Count's daughter."

  "No, that would not do at all: for there is in the life of a championtoo much of turmoil and of buffetings and murderings to suit me, who ama peace-loving person. Besides, to the champion who rescues the LadyGisele will be given her hand in marriage, and as I have a wife, I knowthat to have two wives would lead to twice too much dissension to suitme, who am a peace-loving person. So I think it is you who had bettertake the sword and the adventure."

  "Well," Manuel said, "much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife arefiner things to ward than a parcel of pigs."

  So Manuel girded on the charmed scabbard, and with the charmed sword hesadly demolished the clay figure he could not get quite right. ThenManuel sheathed Flamberge, and Manuel cried farewell to the pigs.

  "I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to dievalorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man hasbut one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs,to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to dischargemy geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, mypigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits ofearth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them whilemy life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged:and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even goodbacon."

  "So much rhetoric for the pigs," says the stranger, "is well enough, andlikely to please them. But come, is there not some girl or another towhom you should be saying good-bye with other things than words?"

  "No, at first I thought I would also bid farewell to Suskind, who issometimes friendly with me in the twilight wood, but upon reflection itseems better not to. For Suskind would probably weep, and exa
ct promisesof eternal fidelity, and otherwise dampen the ardor with which I looktoward to-morrow and the winning of the wealthy Count of Arnaye's lovelydaughter."

  "Now, to be sure, you are a queer cool candid fellow, you young Manuel,who will go far, whether for good or evil!"

  "I do not know about good or evil. But I am Manuel, and I shall followafter my own thinking and my own desires."

  "And certainly it is no less queer you should be saying that: for, aseverybody knows, that used to be the favorite byword of your namesakethe famous Count Manuel who is so newly dead in Poictesme yonder."

  At that the young swineherd nodded, gravely. "I must accept the omen,sir. For, as I interpret it, my great namesake has courteously made wayfor me, in order that I may go far beyond him."

  Then Manuel cried farewell and thanks to the mild-mannered, snub-nosedstranger, and Manuel left the miller's pigs to their own devices by thepool of Haranton, and Manuel marched away in his rags to meet a fatethat was long talked about.