Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances, James Branch Cabell [reading diary TXT] 📗

"But I cannot understand," said Freydis, on a fine day in September, "how it is that, now the power of Schamir is in your control, and you have the secret of giving life to your images, you do not care to use either the secret or the talisman. For you make no more images, you are always saying, 'No, we will let that wait a bit,' and you do not even quicken the ten caricatures of the image-makers which you have already modeled."

"Life will be given to these in due time," said Manuel, "but that time is not yet come. Meanwhile, I avoid practise of the old Tuyla mystery for the sufficing reason that I have seen the result it has on the practitioner. A geas was upon me to make a figure in the world, and so I modeled and loaned life to such a splendid gay young champion as was to my thinking and my desire. Thus my geas, I take it, is discharged, and a thing done has an end. Heaven may now excel me by creating a larger number of living figures than I, but pre-eminence in this matter is not a question of arithmetic—"

"Ah, yes, my squinting boy has all the virtues, including that of modesty!"

"Well, but I have seen my notion embodied, seen it take breath, seen it depart from Morven in all respects, except for a little limping—which, do you know, I thought rather graceful?—in well-nigh all respects, I repeat, quite indistinguishable from the embodied notions of that master craftsman whom some call Ptha, and others Jahveh, and others Abraxas, and yet others Koshchei the Deathless. In fine, I have made a figure more admirable and significant than is the run of men, and I rest upon my laurels."

"You have created a living being somewhat above the average, that is true: but then every woman who has a fine baby does just as much—"

"The principle is not the same," said Manuel, with dignity.

"And why not, please, big boy?"

"For one thing, my image was an original and unaided production, whereas a baby, I am told, is the result of more or less hasty collaboration. Then, too a baby is largely chance work, in that its nature cannot be exactly foreplanned and pre-determined by its makers, who, in the glow of artistic creation, must, I imagine, very often fail to follow the best aesthetic canons."

"As for that, nobody who makes new and unexampled things can make them exactly to the maker's will. Even your image limped, you remember—"

"Ah, but so gracefully!"

"—No, Manuel, it is only those necromancers who evoke the dead, and bid the dead return to the warm flesh, that can be certain as to the results of their sorcery. For these alone of magic-workers know in advance what they are making."

"Ah, this is news! So you think it is possible to evoke the dead in some more tangible form than that of an instructive ghost? You think it possible for a dead girl—or, as to that matter, for a dead boy, or a defunct archbishop, or a deceased ragpicker,—to be fetched back to live again in the warm flesh?"

"All things are possible, Manuel, at a price."

Said Manuel:

"What price would be sufficient to re-purchase the rich spoils of Death? and whence might any bribe be fetched? For all the glowing wealth and beauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing beside his treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which—even this also!—belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet. Presently this hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, is added to the heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest in the old time.

"Now there is garnered such might and loveliness and wisdom as human thinking cannot conceive of. An emperor is made much of here when he has conquered some part of the world, but Death makes nothing of a world of emperors: and in Death's crowded store-rooms nobody bothers to estimate within a thousand thousand of how many emperors, and tzars and popes and pharaohs and sultans, that in their day were adored as omnipotent, are there assembled pellmell, along with all that was worthiest in the old time.

"As touches loveliness, not even Helen's beauty is distinguishable among those multitudinous millions of resplendent queens whom one finds yonder. Here are many pretty women, here above all is Freydis, so I do not complain. But yonder is deep-bosomed Semiramis, and fair-tressed Guenevere, and Magdalene that loved Christ, and Europa, the bull's laughing bride, and Lilith, whose hot kiss made Satan ardent, and a many other ladies by whose dear beauty's might were shaped the songs which cause us to remember all that was worthiest in the old time.

"As wisdom goes, here we have prudent men of business able to add two and two together, and justice may be out of hand distinguished from injustice by an impanelment of the nearest twelve fools. Here we have many Helmases a-cackling wisely under a goose-feather. But yonder are Cato and Nestor and Merlin and Socrates, Abelard sits with Aristotle there, and the seven sages confer with the major prophets, and yonder is all that was worthiest in the old time.

"All, all, are put away in Death's heaped store-rooms, so safely put away that opulent Death may well grin scornfully at Life: for everything belongs to Death, and Life is only a mendicant scratching at his sores so long as Death permits it. No, Freydis, there can be no bribing Death! For what bribe anywhere has Life to offer which Death has not already lying disregarded in a thousand dusty coffers along with all that was worthiest in the old time?"

Freydis replied: "One thing alone. Yes, Manuel, there is one thing only which all Death's ravishings have never taken from Life, and which has not ever entered into Death's keeping. It is through weighing this fact, and through doing what else is requisite, that the very bold may bring back the dead to live again in the warm flesh."

"Well, but I have heard the histories of presumptuous men who attempted to perform such miracles, and all these persons sooner or later came to misery."

"Why, to be sure! to whom else would you have them coming?" said Freydis. And she explained the way it was.

Manuel put many questions. All that evening he was thoughtful, and he was unusually tender with Freydis. And that night, when Freydis slept, Dom Manuel kissed her very lightly, then blinked his eyes, and for a moment covered them with his hand. Standing thus, the tall boy queerly moving his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more supple.

Then he armed himself. He took up the black shield upon which was painted a silver stallion. He crept out of their modest magic home and went down into Bellegarde, where he stole him a horse, from the stables of Duke Asmund.

And that night, and all the next day, Dom Manuel rode beyond Aigremont and Naimes, journeying away from Morven, and away from the house of jasper and porphyry and violet and yellow breccia, and away from Freydis, who had put off immortality for his kisses. He travelled northward, toward the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, where the leaves were aglow with the funereal flames of autumn: for the summer wherein Dom Manuel and Freydis had been happy together was now as dead as that estranged queer time which he had shared with Alianora.

XIX The Head of Misery

When Manuel had reached the outskirts of the forest he encountered there a knight in vermilion armor, with a woman's sleeve wreathed about his helmet: and, first of all, this knight demanded who was Manuel's lady love.

"I have no living love," said Manuel, "except the woman whom I am leaving without ceremony, because it seems the only way to avoiding argument."

"But that is unchivalrous, and does not look well."

"Very probably you are right, but I am not chivalrous. I am Manuel. I follow after my own thinking, and an obligation is upon me pointing toward prompt employment of the knowledge I have gained from this woman."

"You are a rascally betrayer of women, then, and an unmanly scoundrel."

"Yes, I suppose so, for I betrayed another woman, in that I permitted and indeed assisted her to die in my stead; and so brought yet another bond upon myself, and an obligation which is drawing me from a homelike place and from soft arms wherein I was content enough," says Manuel, sighing.

But the chivalrous adventurer in red armor was disgusted. "Oh, you tall squinting villain knight of the silver stallion, I wonder from whose court you can be coming, where they teach no better behavior than woman-killing, and I wonder what foul new knavery you can be planning here."

"Why, I was last in