But infirm old Alfgar went onward without heeding any of them, for so strong was the magic which Ettarre had put upon him that all these who were the fairest of the women of this world no longer seemed desirable.
Chapter XIII. What a Boy Thought
AT THE gate of the garden, beside the lingham post which stood there in eternal erection, sat a young boy who was diverting himself by whittling, with a small green-handled knife, a bit of cedar-wood into the quaint shaping which that post had. His hair was darkly red: and now, as he regarded Alfgar with brown and wide-set eyes, the face of this boy was humorously grave, and he nodded now, as the complacent artist nods who looks upon his advancing work and finds all to be near his wishes.
“Time has indeed laid hold of you with both hands,” said this boy,” and the touch of time does more than the club of Hercules. It is not the Alfgar who had the pre-eminent name that I am seeing, but only a frail and blinded and deaf vagabond.”
“Nevertheless,” said Alfgar, and even now he spoke in that grave and lordly manner which once had from a throne annoyed the more human of his hearers, “nevertheless, I have not departed from the old way of Ecben.”
“I know that way,” the boy replied. “It is a pretty notion to have but one king and one god and, above both of them, one lady. Oh, yes, it is a most diverting notion, and a very potent drug, to believe that these three are holy and all-important. I too have got diversion from that notion, in my day. . . .”
The boy shook his red curls. He said, shruggingly:
“But no toy lasts forever. And out of that notion also time has taken the old nobleness and the fine strength.”
Then Alfgar asked, “But what do you do here who wait in this gray place like a sentinel?”
The boy replied:” I do that which I do in every place. Here also, at the gateway of that garden into which time has not yet entered, I fight with time my ever-losing battle, because to do that diverts me.”
He smiled: but Alfgar did not smile.
“To be seeking always for diversion, sir,” said Alfgar, with a king’s frankness,” is but a piddling way of living.”
“Ah, but then,” the boy answered him,” I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons,—with gestures and with attitudes and with wholly charming phrases; with tears, and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of all lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart’s desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the might of my own folly.”
“I do not understand these foolish sayings,” Alfgar returned. “Yet I take you to be that Horvendile who is the eternal playfellow of my lady in domnei—”
“But I,” the boy answered, “I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time’s toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself.”
Alfgar said: “This also is but a piddling way of talking. I must frankly tell you, Messire Horvendile, if but for your own good, that such frivolousness is very unbecoming in an immortal.”
The boy laughed, without any mirth, at this old vagabond’s old notions. “Then I must tell you,” said Horvendile, “that my immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays—as yet—more strong than is the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers may not ever hope to win Ettarre. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Ettarre in the moment that I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take. . . .”
But Horvendile laughed at that, too, still without any gaiety. He then added:
“So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time—as yet—remains powerless.”
“But I, sir, go to take my desires, as becomes an honest chevalier,” said Alfgar, resolutely, as the infirm old King now passed beyond this fribbling and insane immortal.
The boy replied to him: “That very well may be. Yet how does that matter, either,—by and by—in a world wherein the saga of every man leads to the same Explicit?”
But Horvendile got no answer to this question, at this season, nor at any other season. So—by and by—he gave this question a fine place among those other platitudes which he had slightly re-gilded.
PART FOUR: Of Alfgar in a Garden
“The Gods Provide for Him that Holds to his Faith.”
Chapter XIV. We Encounter Dawn
IT IS told that all loveliness endured in this garden whereinto time had not yet entered. It is told that, advancing very wearily through the first glow of dawn, Alfgar now passed into the spring of a year which was not registered upon any almanac. Here youth, as always, lived for the passing moment: the difference here was that the moment did not pass. And it is told also that this ever-abiding moment was that moment wherein the spring dawn promises a day more fair than any day may ever be, and when the young leaves whisper in their merry prophesying of more than a century of summers may by any chance fulfil.
But Alfgar was no longer in the prime of his youth. To every side of him, through the first glow of dawn, young persons walked in couples, and they were glad because they knew that the world was their plaything, and that their love was a wholly unexampled love which the dark daughters of Dvalinn, even those three Norns who weave the fate of all the living, regarded respectfully; and which the oncoming years all labored to reward with never-ending famousness and contentment. They, who were young, knew that time was but a bearer of resplendent gifts; they knew that their love was eternal; they knew also that they themselves were far more remarkable and more glorious than any other pair of lovers which had ever existed: and, as they walked there in couples, they mentioned all these facts.
But Alfgar walked alone: and of necessity, he looked at these youngsters with the eyes which time had given him; and it was with the ears which time had given him that he heard these chattering, moonstruck, gangling young half-wits talk their nonsense.
In no great while, however, as the infirm old King reflected, these silly children would be self-respecting men and women, and this bleating and this pawing at one another would happily be put aside for warfare and housework and other sensible matters. Those interlocked young hands would soon be parted, the one hand to kill honorably, with fine sword strokes, in a wellbred melee of gentlemen, and the other hand to scrub stew-pans and wash diapers. And that would be an excellent outcome: for, to old Alfgar’s finding, the unrestrainedness of these semi-public endearments was, in its way, an indignity to human intelligence.
Chapter XV. How the King Triumphed
THEN Alfgar saw a woman who walked alone, upon a gravelled walkway, beneath the maples and the sycamore-trees of this garden. She came toward the old wanderer, and a jangling and a skirling noise came with her, so that Alfgar knew this was indeed Ettarre. He heard again that music which sought and could not find its desire in any quarter of earth.
But the ears which time had given him got no delight from this music. It seemed, to this decrepit king of men, an adolescent and morbid music. He did not like these unhappy noises which seemed to doubt and question. It was better to have about you much merrier noises than were these noises, in the while that yet remained for an aging frail old fellow to be hearing any noises at all.