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.
The largest of these smiling gods was broad-browed and great-eyed, with very long black hair and a thick beard: the robe he wore was fashioned out of five hundred and forty and three goatskins, and with his left hand he carried a spear of flickering fire. The second god was clothed in red, striped with fine flickering lines of white, and in his yellow hair were two white plumes: between the thumb and the forefinger of his left hand he held a white bull, as yet only partially eaten. But the third god was copper-colored, and he was by so much the least of the divine three that, now he also sat cross-legged upon the ground, his head rose but a little way above the taller locust-trees of the garden. About his head flew swallows. He was naked save that wrapped everywhere around his body was a darkly gleaming snake which whispered into the ear of its master with an ever flickering tongue.
Such were the appearances of Kuri and of Uwardowa and of Kogi, who were the supreme gods of Rorn. And each of them was smiling now that Alfgar had won to his heart’s desire. It was a great joy to Alfgar to see that these gods bore toward him no grudge. Instead, each god had lifted up his right hand, in blessing and in forgiveness.
Then these gods arose and went away laughingly. The power was not yet gone out of them.
It was in this way that the garden between dawn and sunrise was emptied of all living creatures save Ettarre and Horvendile, and that at their feet you saw, still faintly simmering, that which the forgiveness of the gods of Rorn had left of King Alfgar.
PART FIVE: Of Horvendile and Ettarre
“Nor do They Get from their Playing any Joy.”
Chapter XX. We Regard Other Wanderers
THE gods provide for him that holds to his faith,” said Horvendile, with a slow smiling. “These jealous and rather pig-headed Heavenly Ones have very smoothly rounded off our playing with this tall, over-faithful fooclass="underline" and so the saga of King Alfgar, after all, ends neatly enough.”
But Ettarre did not smile. “This man was better and more fine than we are. I would that I could weep for this brave outcast king of men whose folly was more noble than is our long playing. . . . Dear Horvendile, and why may you give me no human heart?”
The eternal artist looked very sadly toward her who was the pulse of all his dreams’ desire, in the while that she waited there beyond the blackened and ruined body of King Alfgar. “And why may you give me no happiness, Ettarre, such as—in this tall fool’s one moment,—we gave to him?”
Thereafter Horvendile parted from the witch-woman, but not for long. For all happiness must end with death, and all that which is human must die. But Horvendile and his Ettarre, who are not either happy nor quite human, may not, their legend tells us, ever die, nor have they yet parted from each other for the last time.