“Then, wife,” said Miramon, “then why are you perpetually meddling with what you do not understand?”
“I think,” Ninzian observed at once, for Ninzian too was married, “I think that I had best be going.”
But Giseie’s attention was reserved for her husband. “I meddle, as you so very politely call it, because you have no sense of what is right and proper, and no sense of morals, and no sense of expediency, and, in fact, no sense at all.”
Miramon said, “Now, dearest—!”
Ninzian was hastily picking up his hat.
And Gisele continued, with that resistless and devastating onflow which is peculiar to tidal waves and the tongue of her who speaks for her husband’s own good.
“Women everywhere,” Gisele generalized, “have a hard time of it: but in particular do I pity the woman that is married to one of you moonstruck artists. She has not half a husband, she has but the tending of a baby with long legs—”
“It is so much later than I thought, that really now—” observed Ninzian, ineffectively.
“—And I might have had a dozen husbands—”
Miramon said, “But, surely, no woman of your well-known morality, my darling—”
“—I might, as you very well remember, have married Count Manuel himself—”
“I know. I can recall how near you came to marrying him. He was a dull, a cold-blooded and a rather dishonest clodhopper: but the luck of Manuel Pig-Tender did not ever desert him,” said Miramon, sighing, “not even then!”
“I say, I might have had my pick of a dozen really prominent and looked-up-to warriors, who would have had the decency to remember our anniversary and my birthday, and in any event would never have been in the house twenty-four hours a day! Instead, here I am tied to a muddle-head who fritters away his time contriving dreams that nobody cares about one way or the other! And yet, even so—”
“And yet, even so—as you were no doubt going on to observe, my dearest,—even so, since your soliloquy pertains to matters in which our guest could not conceivably be interested—”
“—And yet,” said Gisele, with a heavier and a deadlier emphasis, “even so, if only you would be sensible about your silly business I could put up with the inconvenience of having you underfoot every moment. People need dreams to help them through the night, and nobody enjoys a really good dream more than I do when I have time for it, with the million and one things that are put upon me. But dreams ought to be wholesome—”
“My darling, now, as a matter of esthetics, as a mere point of fact—”
“—But dreams ought to be wholesome, they ought to be worth while, they ought to teach an uplifting moral, and certainly they ought not to be about incomprehensible thin nonsense that nobody can half way understand. They ought, in a word, to make you feel that the world is a pretty good sort of place, after all—”
“But, wife, I am not sure that it is,” said Miramon, mildly.
“Then, the more shame to you! and the very least you can do is to keep such morbid notions to yourself, and not be upsetting other people’s repose with them!”
“I employ my natural gift, I express myself and none other. The rose-bush does not put forth wheat, nor flax either,” returned the magician, with a tired shrug. “In fine, what would you have?”
“A great deal it means to you,—you rose-bush!—what I prefer! But if I had my wish your silly dream-making would be taken away from you so that we might live in some sort of reputable and common-sense way.”
All the while that she reasoned sensibly and calmly with her husband for his own good, Gisele had feverishly been dusting things everywhere, just to show what a slave she was to him, and because it irritated Miramon to have his personal possessions thus dabbed at and poked about: and now, as she spoke, Gisele slapped viciously with her scouring-rag at the black cross. And a thing happened, to behold which would have astonished the innumerous mages and the necromancers and the enchanters who had given over centuries to searching for the cantrap which would release the bees of Toupan. For now without any exercise of magic the scouring-rag swept from the stone one of the insects. Koshchei, who made all things as they are, had decreed, they report, that these bright perils could be freed only in the most obvious way, because he knew this would be the last method attempted by any learned person.
Then for an instant the walls of the ivory tower were aquiver like blown veils. And the bee passed glitteringly to the window and through the clear glass of the closed window, leaving a small round hole there, as the creature went to join its seven fellows in the Pleiades.
Chapter XIV. The Changing That Followed
Now, when this eighth bright bee had joined its seven fellows in the Pleiades, then Toupan, afloat in the void, unclosed his ancient unappeasable eyes. Jacy returned to his aforetime estate in the moon: all plants and trees everywhere were withered, and the sea also lost its greenness, and there were no more emeralds. And the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds were troubled, and They cried out to Koshchei who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to remain in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Koshchei, for reasons of his own, did not reply.
Then Jacy. whispered to Toupan: “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan! now is the hour that Koshchei falls. For among the things that are there stays no verdancy anywhere, and without green things nobody can keep health and strength.”
Toupan answered: “I am diminished. My bones have become like silver, and my members have turned into gold, and my hair is like lapis-lazuli.”
“Thine eyes remain unchanged,” said the slow whispering of Jacy. “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, against the work of Koshchei, who has blasphemed against the Old Ones, and who has created things as they are.”
“Though he acknowledge both of these misdoings, why need my eyes be troubled,—as yet?”
Then Jacy said, “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, so that we Old Ones may rejoice in the dreadfulness of thy overlooking!”
Toupan answered: “I was before the Old Ones. My soul was before thought and time. It is the soul of Shu, it is the soul of Khnemu, it is the soul of Heh: it is the soul of Night and of Desolation, and there is a thinking about my soul which looks out of the eyes of every serpent. My soul alone keeps any knowledge of that dark malignity which everywhere encompasses the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Why need my soul be troubled, therefore,—as yet?”
But Jacy said again: “Give aid now to the Old Ones! Already thy bees go forth, that shall rest upon all bushes, and already no verdancy remains. Send forth thine eyes now, also, in which there is the knowledge denied to Koshchei!”
And Toupan answered: “The time of my release is not yet at hand. Nevertheless, between now and a while, when yet another bee is loosed, I shall bestir my soul, I will send forth my eyes, so that all may perceive the dreadfulness of my overlooking.”
At that the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds cried out again to Koshchei.
Then Koshchei answered Them: “Have patience! When Toupan is released I perish with You. Meanwhile I have made all things as they are.”
Chapter XV. Disastrous Rage of Miramon
Now also, when this eighth bright bee had joined its fellows in the Pleiades, in that same instant Miramon Lluagor, as he stood appalled in his ivory tower, was aware of a touch upon his forehead, as if a damp sponge were passing over it. Then he perceived that, with the petulant voicing of his damnable wife’s desire, he had forthwith forgotten the secret of his preeminence.
Something he could yet recall, they say, of the magic of the Purin and the cast stones, of the Horse and the Bull of the Water, and most of the lore of the Apsarasas and the Faidhin remained to him. He could still make shift, he knew, to control the roving Lamboyo, to build the fearful bridge of the White Ladies, or to contrive the dance of the Korred. He retained his communion with Necksa and Paralda, those sovereign Elementaries. He kept his mastery of the Shedeem who devastate, of the Shehireem who terrify, and of the Mazikeen who destroy. Nor had he lost touch with the Stewards of Heaven,—of whom at this period Och had the highest power and was customarily summoned by Miramon Lluagor, for a brief professional consultation, every Sunday morning at sunrise.