“Yet,” said Ettarre, “yet, as the strength of a man’s mortal body fails, so do his desires perish also. It is a thing more sad than any other thing which men know about, that under the touch of time even they who serve with the most ardor men’s highest fancies must lose, a little by a little, all hunger and all faith as to that which is beyond and above them.”
He now looked somewhat wistfully into this girl’s quite nicely colored and shaped face which was, to him, so like the face of any other young woman who has good health. The gaunt old man flung back his head. His white hair fluttered about in the dawn wind, untidily, and the palely colored eyes of the tricked wanderer had a vexed and tormented shining, in the while that he said:
“It is not a true thing which you are speaking. For I retain my faith in that which is beyond and above me. I have lost the desire and the vision: but I retain my faith. I retain my faith in that beauty which I may not see, and in that music which I may not hear ever any more, and in that dream which has betrayed me. And I am content.”
The girl answered: “You are strangely obstinate. And I could never let anyone remain content.”
With that she clasped for one moment his withered hands between her hands, and the witch-woman said, very tenderly:
“Most brave and steadfast, and most foolish, of all them who have followed after Ettarre, the gods do well to smile at your strange and fond imaginings. And yet, tall king of men, the gods provide for him that holds to his faith.”
She touched his ears. Her finger tips fell lightly upon his wrinkled eyelids.
Chapter XVII. The Changing of Alfgar
ALL things were changed for Alfgar. He was not any longer a frail and aged person, now that contentment had gone out of him. For all his stoical, enforced contentment had now made room for joy, because his youth had returned to him; and in that garden, now, exulted that Alfgar who had been foremost among the champions of Ecben, the Alfgar who had been the most powerful of kings and the most ardent of lovers and the most knightly of chevaliers.
All things were changed for Alfgar. He noted, with roving and imperious young eyes, that lilies abounded to each side of him, and that in this garden many climbing white roses also were lighted by the clear and tempered radiancy of early dawn. White rabbits were frisking about King Alfgar. He saw that all the world was lovely, and that time was friendly to all lovers. He heard a music which was not of this world, and it still sought and could not find its desire in any quarter of earth. But now was intermingled with this music the sound of doves that called to their mates; and in this music he found, now, no doubtfulness and no discontent, but only the dear promise of a life which presently would be created out of the resistless might of this music’s yearning, and which would be more noble than had been any life yet known to human kind.
All things were changed for Alfgar, who grasped with strong hands the hands of the most lovely of the women who are not quite of this world. For this was visibly that ever-young Ettarre whom very long ago the magic of a poet’s love and the wizardry of mathematics had fetched from out of the Waste Beyond the Moon, to be the delight and the ruin of many human lovers less fortunate than Alfgar had been, and to elude them eternally. But Alfgar she could not elude, he knew, because of those strong hands which held her hands securely.
“The gods provide,” said Alfgar, joyously, “for him that holds to his faith!”
So was it that all things were changed for Alfgar through the touch of the witch-woman who had drawn him out of the set ways of life into the garden between dawn and sunrise, and whose magic is more great than is the magic of time.
Chapter XVIII. As to Another Marriage Feast
FROM all quarters of the garden came the young lovers, two by two, in high rejoicing. They rejoiced because, once more, the gray Norns had regarded respectfully the importance of a sincere love-affair, and because the oncoming years were again laboring to reward the steadfastness of true love with never-ending fame and contentment. They cried aloud to Alfgar, with friendly smiles and with gay caperings,—
“The gods provide for him that holds to his faith!”
Then they all praised Alfgar cordially. Each couple said, indeed, with the most sympathizing kind of politeness, that Alfgar and his appointed lady in domnei were more remarkable and more glorious than any other pair of lovers which had ever existed, saving only one pair,—which pair no couple was so egotistic as to mention outright.
They that had served Ettarre came also, all those maimed poets whose living she had ruined. And they said:
“Hail and farewell, Ettarre! Because of you, we could be contented with no woman. We turned away from that frank and wholesome world wherein frank, wholesome maidens walked amiably along sunlit ways. We perceived that the younger females of our kind were pleasant to the touch and were agreeably tinted. But we turned away, we blundered into more murky places, and we got deep scarrings there, because these maids were not as was that witch-woman whom we had seen and might not forget. As moths flitter after torches, so did we pursue your lost loveliness, to our own hurt.”
And these poets said also:
“Because of your music, we could get no delight from the music of our verses nor from any melody that is of this world. We were enamored of a music which no words might entrap nor cage. There was a music which had no fault in it, as we well knew, because we had heard such music once, for too brief a while. But no man who lived upon earth might recapture that music. The cradle-songs of the fond mothers who bore us were less dear than was that music. The pipes and the organs and the fiddles made no such music. We heard the trumpets and the harps and the clarions; we heard the church bells; and we were not comforted.”
Then these poets said:
“Because of you, we lived among mankind as exiles. The emperors and the captains perceived that we did not regard their famousness as a weighty matter. The priests and the well-thought-of sages perceived that in the while they instructed us our minds were upon a mystery, and that our thinking cherished a legend which was not their legend. So the strong derided us, and said lightly that we were wit-stricken: but, in their troubled hearts, they hated us. For we went among them as men who had drunk wine from a goblet of fairy gold: the wholesome fare of earth may not content such men: and to all human kind they become abhorrent.”
Whereafter these maimed poets cried out very fondly:
“Yet we who never found contentment in any hour of our living, all we who followed after you to our own hurt, we would have nothing changed. That loveliness which we saw once and then lost forever, and that music which we heard just once and might not ever hear again, were things more fine than is contentment. Hail and farewell, Ettarre!”
Such was the speaking of these poets, and so was it that they all made ready for the marriage feast of Alfgar the High King and Ettarre the most fair of those women who are not quite of this world.
Chapter XIX. The Way It Ended
AND Horvendile came likewise. As he had done in Alfgar’s dream, so now did this red-headed boy smile without any mirth; and he laid the hand of Ettarre in the hand of Alfgar, in the while that this boy was speaking a word of power.
Then Alfgar grasped exultingly, with his strong arms, the wife that he had won, and his lips touched her lips. It was in that instant the young face of Horvendile became white and drawn. It is not well to give where one desires.
And in that same instant also the maimed servitors of Ettarre were gone, and all the beautiful and merry young lovers passed in a many-colored mistiness. But to these had succeeded a wonder-working even more amiable, for in this garden three immortals now sat watching over Alfgar friendlily.