“They were so beautiful,” she said, “so young, so confident in what was to be, and so pitiable! And now some of them are gone away into the far-off parts of earth, and some of them are gone down under the earth in their black narrow coffins, and the husks of those that remain hereabouts are strange and staid and withered and do not matter any longer. Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors in it: and I have loved their youth and their high-heartedness, and their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited them,—while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!”
“Still, if you will remember, my darling, it was you yourself who said, as you no doubt recall, just as you shoved me—”
“Well! I say now that I have loved too utterly these irrational fine things to have the heart, even now, to disbelieve in them, entirely: and I am content.”
“Yes, yes, my dear, we two may both well be content. For we at last can settle down and live serenely in this place, without undue indulgence in philanthropy; and we two alone will know the one truth which is wholly true.”
“Good Lord!” said Saraide; and added, incoherently, “But you were always like that!”
Chapter XLVIII. The Golden Shining
They went then, silently, from the twilight into the darkness of the house which had been their shared home in youth, and in which now there was no youth and no sound and no assured light anywhere. Yet a glow of pallidly veiled embers, not quite extinct where all else seemed dead, showed where the hearth would be. And Saraide said:
“It is droll that we have not yet seen each other’s faces! Give me your foolish paper, Kerin of my heart, that I may put it to some use and light this lamp.”
Kerin, a bit disconsolately, obeyed: and Saraide touched the low red embers with the paper which told about the one thing which is wholly true. The paper blazed. Kerin saw thus speedily wasted the fruit of Kerin’s long endeavor. Saraide had lighted her lamp. The lamp cast everywhither now a golden shining: and in its clear soft yellow radiancy, Saraide was putting fresh wood upon the fire, and making tidy her hearth.
After that necessary bit of housework she turned to her husband, and they looked at each other for the first time since both were young. Kerin saw a bent, dapper, not unkindly witch-woman peering up at him, with shrewd eyes, over the handle of her broom. But through the burning of that paper, as Kerin saw also, their small eight-sided home had become snug and warm and cozy looking, it even had an air of durability: and Kerin laughed, with the thin, easy, neighing laughter of the aged.
For, after all, he reflected, it could benefit nobody ever to recognize—either in youth or in gray age or after death—that time, like an old envious eunuch, must endlessly deface and maim, and make an end of, whatever anywhere was young and strong and beautiful, or even cozy; and that such was the one truth which had ever been revealed to any man, assuredly. Saraide, for that matter, seemed to have found out for herself, somewhere in philanthropic fields, the one thing which was wholly true; and she seemed, also, to prefer to ignore it, in favor of life’s unimportant, superficial, familiar tasks. . . . Well, and Saraide, as usual, was in the right! It was the summit of actual wisdom to treat the one thing which was wholly true as if it were not true at all. For the truth was discomposing, and without remedy, and was too chillingly strange ever to be really faced: meanwhile, in the familiar and the superficial, and in temperate bodily pleasures, one found a certain cheerfulness. . . .
He temperately kissed his wife, and he temperately inquired, “My darling, what is there for supper?”
Chapter XLIX. They of Nointel
Thus then, it was that, in the November following Guivric’s encounter with the Sylan, Kerin of Nointel came back into Poictesme, to become yet another convert to the great legend of Manuel.
Kerin was converted almost instantaneously. For when the news of Kerin’s return was public, Holmendis soon came that way, performing very devastating miracles en route among the various evil and ambiguous spirits which yet lurked in the rural districts of Poictesme. The Saint was now without any mercy imprisoning all such detected immortals right and left, in tree-trunks and dry wells and consecrated bottles, and condemning them in such exiguous sad quarters to await the holy Morrow of Judgment. With Holmendis, as his coadjutor in these praiseworthy labors, traveled the appearance of Guivric the Sage.
And when St. Holmendis and Glaum-Without-Bones (in Guivric’s stolen body) had talked to Kerin of Nointel about the great cult of Manuel the Redeemer which had sprung up during Kerin’s pursuit of knowledge underground, and had showed him the holy sepulchre at Storisende and Manuel’s bright jewel-encrusted effigy, and had told about Manuel’s ascent into heaven, then old Kerin only blinked, with mild, considerate, tired eyes.
“It is very likely,” Kerin said, “since it was Manuel who gave to us of Poictesme our law that all things must go by tens forever.”
“Now, what,” said Glaum, in open but wholly amiable surprise, “has that to do with it?”
“I have learned that a number of other persons have entered alive into heaven. I allude of course to Enoch, whose smell the cherubim found so objectionable that they recoiled from him a distance of five thousand, three hundred and eighty miles. I allude also to Elijah; to Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; to Hiram, King of Tyre; to Ebed Melek the Ethiop; to Jabez, the son of Prince Jehuda; to Bathia, the daughter of a Pharaoh; to Sarah, the daughter of Asher; and to Yoshua, the son of Levi, who did not go in by the gateway, but climbed over the wall. And I consider it quite likely that Dom Manuel would elect to make of this company, as he did of everything else, a tenth.”
Thereafter Holmendis said, rather dubiously, “Well—!” And Holmendis talked again of Manuel. . . .
“That too seems likely enough,” Kerin agreed. “I have learned that these messengers from the gods to our race upon earth are sent with commendable regularity every six hundred years. The Enoch of whom I was speaking but a moment since was the first of them, in the six-hundredth year after Adam. Then, as the happy upshot of a love affair between a Mongolian empress and a rainbow, came into this world Fo-hi, six hundred years after Enoch’s living; and six hundred years after the days of Fo-hi was Brighou sent to the Hindoos. At the same interval of time or thereabouts have since come Zoroaster to the Persians, and Thoth the Thrice Powerful to the Egyptians, and Moses to the Jews, and Lao Tseu to the men of China, and Paul of Tarsus to the Gentiles, and Mohammed to the men of Islam. Mohammed flourished just six hundred years before our Manuel. Yes, Messire Holmendis, it seems likely enough that, here too, Manuel would elect to make a tenth.”
Then pious gentle old Glaum-Without-Bones began to speak with joy and loving reverence about the glories of Manuel’s second coming. . . .
“No doubt, dear Guivric: for I have learned that all the great captains are coming again,” said Kerin, almost wearily. “There is Arthur, there is Ogier, there is Charlemagne, there is Barbarossa, there is Finn, the son of Cumhal,—there is in every land, in fine, a foreknowledge of that hero who will return at his appointed time and bring with him all glory and prosperity. Prince Siddartha also is to return, and Saoshyant, and Alexander of Macedon, and Satan too, for that matter, is expected to return, for his last fling, a little before the holy Morrow of Judgment. Therefore, I consider it not unlikely that, here again, Dom Manuel may elect to make a tenth.”