James Branch Cabell
The Way Of Ebcen
A Comedietta Involving a Gentleman
by
James Branch Cabell
“I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and show thyself a man; and keep the charge of thy god, to walk in his way and preserve his testimonies.”
New York
Robert M. McBride & Company
1929
COPYRIGHT, 1929
BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1929
(First Impression)
Printed in the United States of America By the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Massachusetts
For
Robert M. McBride
this brief and somewhat tragic tale, to
commemorate our long and rather
comical association
Synopsis
From Antan behind the moon delay
What line of hidden white-robed life, beyond
Old Jurgen’s judging, in that Eve’s high wand
Taboos all music, if but as eagles may?
Figures of love, these sonnets’ souls repay
Proud earth with gallantry; and rivet Eve
With something about merchants—to reprieve
With silver, and with jewels, Ecben’s way.
Grandfathers wake, with prayer-books and cords,
The cream of chivalry; and stallions rightly
Deride the shadow of a lineage, lords
To domnei’s straws of vanity; while nightly
The jest of Lichfield moves toward place and power
The certain town’s end of a neck’s last hour.
Words for the Intending Reader
NOBODY will think, I hope, that I pretend to have invented this story. Those who are familiar with the earlier works of Felix Kennaston will of course recognize that one encounters hereinafter the Norrovian legend upon which is based The King’s Quest. There has never been, though, so far as I am aware, any prose version made in English; and in taking over this story from Garnier’s anthology, Kennaston necessarily introduced many and frequent changes prompted by the demands of Spenserian verse. Moreover, Kennaston—with, as I think, unwisdom—has toiled to prettify the tale throughout, and to point, a bit laboriously, an apologue which in the story’s original form simply does not exist. I may at least assert that in The Way of Ecben (which “teaches “nothing whatever) I have clung rigorously to the queer legend’s restrained, and quite unfigurative, first shaping.
—This, too, under some duress. The tale is so brief that in recording it the temptation was ever present to pad here and there, and to enlarge upon one or another detail, with the wholly pardonable design of rewarding each possible purchaser with the average amount of reading-matter to be found in the average novel of commerce. ... But in the outcome I have resisted that ever-present temptation. For Gamier knew his business; the thing as it stands is properly proportioned: and symmetry is, after all, one of the seven great auctorial virtues.
Richmond-in-Virginia
April, 1929
PART ONE: Of Alfgar in His kingdom
“What the King Wishes, the Law Wills.”
Chapter I. The Warring for Ettaine
IT IS an old tale which tells of the fighting between Alfgar, the King of Ecben, and Ulf, the King of Rorn. Their enmity took hold of them because they both desired that daughter of Thordis who was called Ettaine.
Two kings desired her because of all the women of this world Ettaine was the most beautiful. It was the blue of her eyes, that had the brightness of the spring sky when there is no cloud anywhere between heaven and the heads of men, which caused the armies of Rorn and of Ecben to meet like thunder clouds. Blood was spilled everywhere because of that red which was in the lips of Ettaine. The golden flaming of her hair burned down into black cinders the towns of Rorn and of Ecben.
Ulf’s fort at Meivod, it is true, withstood all besiegers: but Druim fell, then Tarba. Achren also was taken: its fields were plowed up and planted with salt. Then Ulf captured Sorram, through undermining its walls. But Alfgar took Garian by storm, and he burned this city likewise, after carrying from it a quantity of crossbows and tents and two wagon loads of silver.
There was thus no quietness anywhere in that part of the world, because of the comeliness of Ettaine. For two kings desired her: and her color and her shaping thus became a lofty moral issue, with a rich flowering of tumult and of increased taxes, and of corruption and of swift death everywhere, and of many very fine patriotic orations.
Then, in the fourth year of the fighting, the unexampled heroism and the superb ideals of the men of Ecben, which one half of these orations had talked about, were handsomely rewarded by the deafness of Cormac. This Cormac of the Twin Hills led a third of the armies of Rorn. He was paid the price of his deafness: for three maidens without any blemish in their bodies, and for four bags of blue turquoises, and for the silver which King Alfgar had captured at Garian, this Cormac became deaf to the other half of these orations, now that he betrayed the unexampled heroism and the superb ideals of the men of Rorn.
There was never a more gallant butchering than the patriots of Ecben then gave to the trapped patriots of Rorn under the elm-trees of the ravine at Strathgor. King Ulf alone was spared out of that ruined army where every other fighting-man lay in two halves, like the orations which had delighted them.
So was it that the victory fell to Alfgar. None now withstood him. All that his heart desired he had, and he furthermore had all the forests and the cities and the sleek pastures of Rorn. Ulf, who was not any longer a king, prayed to his gods from out of a well guarded dungeon. And everywhere in Ecben, from green Pen Loegyr to the gaunt hills of Tagd, the barons and their attendants rode toward the King’s house in Sorram, and all made ready for the marriage feast of Alfgar the high king and Ettaine the most fair of the women of this world.
Chapter II. Of Their Love-talk
AT THE King’s house in Sorram was a hedged garden, with flagstones in the middle of it, about a little fountain: and there King Alfgar and Ettaine would sit and talk in the clear April weather.
“Ettaine of the blue eyes,” King Alfgar used to say, “it is not right that your two eyes should be my mirrors. In each of them I find myself. A tiny image of me is set up in their brightness.”
“Delight of both my eyes,” Ettaine would reply to him,” in my heart also is that image set up.”
King Alfgar said: “Ettaine of the red lips, it is not right that your lips should be making for me any music so dear. Some god will be peering out of heaven at my happiness, and a jealousy of me will be troubling that lonely god who has not any such fine music in his heaven.”
“For no god and for no heaven whatever,” the fair girl answered, “would I be leaving the Alfgar that has the pre-eminent name and is the darling of the women of Ecben. For in his strong arms is my only heaven.”