“Hail, friend!” said Gerald, “And what business draws you to the city of all marvels?”
Then a regrettable thing happened; for the young horseman pretended not to have heard Gerald, and as the boy passed he looked investigatively about Mispec Moor, and he pretended not to have seen Gerald, who stood within a few feet of him.
He was a notably handsome boy, too, in a blue coat and a golden yellow waistcoat, with a tall white stock and ruffles about his throat. His hair seemed red: and Gerald noted, moreover, the lazy and mildly humorous, half-mocking gaze with which this boy regarded Mispec Moor, as he rode by unhurriedly toward Antan, without any pausing, and Gerald noted in particular the very lovely smiling of this boy’s so amply curved and rather womanish mouth, as the boy went by upon the horse which was astonishingly like Kalki.
Yes, he had quite the air of a gentleman: and it was a great pity that this young whippersnapper had not the manners of a gentleman also, Gerald reflected, as Gerald stood there, feeling unwarrantably snubbed, and blinking behind his rose-colored spectacles. .
36. Tannhauser’s Troubled Eyes
AND upon yet another day Gerald talked with the comely but now aged knight Tannhauser, as this famous myth passed by, in full armor, upon his journey into Antan.
“There,” said Tannhauser, “there I may find again, it may be, the fair Dame Venus and all the brave and high-hearted sinners who would not compromise with the narrow and cruel ways of respectable persons.”
“My friend,” said Gerald, mildly, “there is considerable virtue to be found, here and there, among respectable persons. There is even a virtue in compromise.”
And Tannhauser shouted: “That I deny! All my life denies that, and so long as my name lives I am that lie’s denial! For it was the good and the respectable who betrayed me. I found pride and worldliness and a lack of cordiality to exist among the bourgeoisie and even among those professional churchmen who should have been the first to sustain and guide a repentant sinner. And so I turned again to that frankly pagan beauty which is hateful to pious and small-minded persons.”
Then this resplendent gray-haired myth spoke heatedly of his own life history and of how his love for this frankly pagan beauty had led him into the hollow mountain called the Horselberg, to live there as the lover of Dame Venus in all manner of frankly pagan pleasure-seeking; and of how, after seven years of frankly pagan recreations, when repentance smote him, abetted by the frailties of middle age, it was among the leading church members, and in the heart of the very head of the church, that he had found no sympathy. Therefore Tannhauser was returning to those frankly pagan recreations, so far at least as they were consistent with late middle life, because he was disgusted by those whining anti-hypocritical, cruel church members.
And Gerald listened. He remembered how in the Mirror of Caer Omn he for a while had been Tannhauser. Yet it was a queer thing, and a circumstance which made Gerald suspect time to be changing him, somehow, who used to be such a tremendous iconoclast, that now this old rebellious myth,—which represented yet another of Gerald’s discarded personalities,—appeared to Gerald remarkably over-colored and rather pitiably foolish. For here was a story which led to wrong conclusions. It ended by depicting a god at loggerheads with the head of his own church: and it begot, somewhat inevitably, those loud sneers at the bourgeois virtues, and those denunciations of people who, after all, had done nothing worse than to live quiet and common-sense lives which Tannhauser was now declaiming, and which to Gerald appeared unutterably childish. There was no conceivable reason why a well-thought-of pope should be hobnobbing with and coddling a broken-down old lecher just come out of a superior brothel. In fact, in reproving Pope Urban so publicly, Heaven had been, to Gerald’s finding, rather tactless, and had violated the esprit de corps which ought to be preserved among the fellow workers in every church. And in any case, Tannhauser’s present reflections upon religion were not such as Gerald, now that he had become a god, could listen to with approval.
Still, Gerald did listen: and Gerald smiled, friendlily enough.
“I know, I know!” said Gerald. “I know, friend, all about you. When you repented of evil-doing,—and, really, you did take your time about that,—then you turned hopefully to religion, but, alas! you were repelled by its ministers. You found them to be human beings subject to human frailties. You found that—in Heaven’s eyes, anyhow,—even a pope might make a mistake. And so, quite naturally, you proceeded to drown the surprise and horror awakened by this discovery in out-and-out debauchery and in cutting reflections upon all pew-renters. For your discovery was revolutionary; no doubt the stars were shaken in their courses, to observe a human being making a mistake; and you also must have found the spectacle extremely trying. Still, you in this way became useful to romantic art.”
Then Gerald said: “Lord, man, but what a following you have had! and what a number of people have got harmless pleasure out of developing the discovery which Tannhauser first made, that inconsistency and mean-spiritedness may be found among the clergy and the churchgoers! You will thus continue to be a benefactor of your kind for centuries, I have not a doubt. Yet I sometimes fancy that inconsistency and mean-spiritedness may be found even among recognizedly depraved persons who do not go to any church at all. I find that every religion cows a number of its devotees into a thrifty-minded practice of generally beneficent virtues. The average of desirable qualities in the congregation of every church appears to me, after all, quite perceptibly higher than is that average among the regular customers of any brothel or the clients of the public hangman. I do not deny that my discovery also is, from any aesthetic standpoint, revolutionary. I confess that it is nowhere represented in romance, as yet, and that no conceivable realist can ever regard such a grotesque fancy with anything save loathing. But I believe that some day an intrepid handling of this daring theme will prodigally repay some very great innovator, and will become useful to romantic art.”
And Gerald said also: “Moreover, you remain quite invaluable as a pretext and a palliation whenever youth hungers for its fling. Only, I must dare point out, my dear sir, that your second century-long fling was, by the best people, unavoidably, felt to be excessive. All of us, more or less, have had our flings: even so, a fling needs to be conducted, and above all to be wound up, with some discretion. It ought to be high-hearted and lyrical in every feature: it ought especially to have the briefness of the lyric. And it ought not, no, it really ought not, to wind up in the Horselberg. Now I, too, my friend, for example, have had my fling. But I have had it in a quiet, self-controlled and gentlemanly way, without overdoing the thing. Thereafter I settled down,—just temporarily, to be sure, but still I have settled down,—in no lewd and feverish Horselberg, but here, where a contented husband risks no further chance of becoming useful to romantic art.”
“It is possible for one to exist, but not for anybody to live, here!” replied Tannhauser, scornfully, as his wild gaze swept over the still stretches of Mispec Moor.
“Allow me!” said Gerald, with the tiniest of smiles; and he perched his rose-colored spectacles upon the beaked high nose of Tannhauser.
There was a pause. And Tannhauser sighed.
“I see,” said the knight then, “a quiet little home of your own, in the country, with your wife and with the kiddies, too, I daresay. And with fresh vegetables, of course, right out of your own garden.”