“Nothing whatever can be done about it,—unless you prefer to court something worse with those thaumaturgies of yours?”
Guivric was pained. “But, between fellow artists!” he stated. “Oh, no, dear Glaum, that sort of open ostentatious rivalry, for merely material gains, seems always rather regrettably vulgar.”
“Why, then, if you will pardon me,” the Sylan submitted, in Guivric’s most civil manner when dealing with unimportant persons, “I shall ask to be excused from prolonging our highly enjoyable chat. Some other time, perhaps—But I really am quite busy this morning: and, besides, our wife will be coming in here any minute, to call me to dinner.”
“I shall not intrude.” Vaporously arising, Guivric now smiled, with a new flavor of sympathy. “A rather terrible woman, that, you will find! And, Lord, how a young Guivric did adore her once! Nowadays she is one of the innumerous reasons which lead me to question if you have been quite happily inspired, even with the delights of heaven impendent. You see, she is certainly going to heaven. And Michael too,—do you know, I think you will find Michael, also, something of a bore? He expects so much of his father, and when those expectations seem imperiled he does look at you so exactly like a hurt, high-minded cow! Now it is you who will have to live up to his notions, and to the notions of that fond, fretful, foolish woman, and it is you who will be bothered with an ever-present sense of something lost and betrayed. . . . But you will live up to their idiotic notions, none the less! And I do not doubt that, just as you say, the oppression and the chastening will be good for you.”
The Sylan answered, sternly, “Poor shallow learned selfish fool! it is that love and pride, it is their faith and their jealousy to hide away your shortcomings, it is the things you feebly jeer at, which will create in me a soul!”
“No doubt—” Then Guivric went on hastily, and in a tone of cordial encouragement. “Oh, yes, my dear fellow, there is-not a doubt of it! and I am sure you will find the birth-pangs well rewarded. Heaven, everybody tells me, is a most charming place. Meanwhile, if you do not mind, just for a minute, pray do not contort my face so unbecomingly until after I am quite gone! To see what right thinking and a respectably inflated impatience with frivolity can make of my face, and has so often made of my face,” reflected Guivric, as he luxuriously drifted out of the familiar window like a smoke, “is even now a little humiliating. But, then, the most salutary lessons are invariably the most shocking.”
Chapter XLI. The Gratifying Sequel
Thus the true Guivric passed beyond the knowledge of men: and the false Guivric gathered up his papers and took off his cap of owl-feathers and prepared for dinner.
The wife and the son of Guivric from that time forth delighted in his affection and geniality: and it was observed, for another wonder, that Guivric of Perdigon had, with increasing age, graduated from a cool reserve about religious matters into very active beneficence and piety. The legend of Manuel had nowhere, now, a more fervent adherent and expounder, because Glaum nourished his sprouting soul with every sort of religious fertilizer. Nor was his loving-kindness confined to talking about itself, for the good works of Glaum were untiring and remarkably freehanded, since he had everything to gain by being liberal with Guivric’s property.
The old gentleman thus became a marked favorite with Holy Holmendis: and indeed it was Glaum who at this time, when Guivric’s ancient comrade Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, chiefly assisted Holmendis in converting Kerin to the great legend of Manuel.
In fine, Glaum lived, without detection, in Guivric’s body; and preserved it in unquestioned virtue, since a well-to-do nobleman is, after sixty, subject to very few temptations which cannot be gratified quietly without scandal. He died in the assurance of a blessed resurrection, which he no doubt attained.
As for the true Guivric, nothing more was ever quite definitely known of him. It was remarked, however, that for many years thereafter an amorous devil went invisibly about the hill country behind Perdigon. The girls of Valneres and Ogde reported that by three traits alone could the presence of this demon be detected: for one thing, he diffused a sweet and poignant odor, not unlike that of an embalmer’s spiceries; and, for another, the soles of his feet had been observed, after dusk, to be luminous. A third infallible sign of his being anywhere near you they, with blushes and some giggling, declined to reveal.
BOOK SEVEN
WHAT SARAIDE WANTED
“None shall want her mate.”
—Isaiah xxxiv, 16
Chapter XLII. Generalities At Ogde
Now the tale tells that it was in the winter after Guivric’s encounter with the Sylan that Kerin of Nointel returned into Poictesme to become yet another convert to the great legend of Manuel; and tells also of how for the first time men learned why and in what fashion Kerin had gone out of Poictesme.
Therefore the tale harks back to very ancient days, in the May month which followed the passing of Manuel, and the tale speaks of a season wherein it appeared to Kerin of Nointel that he could understand his third wife no better than he had done the others. But for that perhaps unavoidable drawback to matrimony, he was then living comfortably enough with this Saraide, whom many called a witch, in her ill-spoken-of, eight-sided home beside the notorious dry Well of Ogde. This home was gray, with a thatched roof upon which grew abundant mosses and many small wild plants; a pair of storks nested on the gable; and elder-trees shaded all.
It was a very quiet and peaceful place, in which, so Kerin estimated, two persons might well have lived in untroubled serenity, now that the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was disbanded, and a younger Kerin’s glorious warfaring under Dom Manuel was done with forever.
Mild-mannered, blinking Kerin, for one, did not regret Dom Manuel’s passing. The man had kept you fighting always, whether it was with the Easterlings or the Northmen, or with Othmar Black-Tooth or with old yellow Sclaug or with Manuel’s father, blind Oriander. It was a life which left you no time whatever for the pursuit of any culture. Kerin liked fighting, within moderation, with persons of admitted repute. But Kerin, after four years of riding into all quarters of the earth at the behest of this never-resting Manuel, was heartily tired of killing strangers in whom Kerin was in no way interested.
So, upon the whole, it was a relief to be rid of Manuel and to be able once more to marry, and to settle down at Ogde in the eight-sided house under the elder-trees. Yet, even in this lovely quietude, the tale repeats, the third wife of Kerin seemed every night to bother herself, and in consequence her husband, about a great many incomprehensible matters.
Now of the origin of Saraide nothing can here be told with profit and decorum: here it is enough to say that an ambiguous parentage had provided this Saraide with a talisman by which you might know the truth when truth was found. And one of the many things about Kerin’s wife which Kerin could not quite understand, was her constant complaining that she had not found out assuredly the truth about anything, and, in particular, the truth as to Saraide. “I exist,” she would observe to her husband, “and I am in the main as other women. Therefore, this Saraide is very certainly a natural phenomenon. And in nature everything appears to be intended for this, that or the other purpose. Indeed, after howsoever hasty consideration of the young woman known as Saraide, one inevitably deduces that so much of loveliness and wit and aspiration, of color and perfume and tenderness, was not put together haphazardly; and that the compound was painstakingly designed to serve some purpose or another purpose. It is about that purpose I want knowledge.”