Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XVIII

  Manuel Chooses

  "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 youhave the secret of giving life to your images, you do not care to useeither the secret or the talisman. For you make no more images, you arealways saying, 'No, we will let that wait a bit,' and you do not evenquicken the ten caricatures of the image-makers which you have alreadymodeled."

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

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

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

  "You have created a living being somewhat above the average, that istrue: 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, whereasa 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 beexactly foreplanned and pre-determined by its makers, who, in the glowof artistic creation, must, I imagine, very often fail to follow thebest aesthetic canons."

  "As for that, nobody who makes new and unexampled things can make themexactly 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 bidthe dead return to the warm flesh, that can be certain as to the resultsof their sorcery. For these alone of magic-workers know in advance whatthey are making."

  "Ah, this is news! So you think it is possible to evoke the dead in somemore tangible form than that of an instructive ghost? You think itpossible for a dead girl--or, as to that matter, for a dead boy, or adefunct archbishop, or a deceased ragpicker,--to be fetched back to liveagain 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 andbeauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing besidehis treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which--eventhis also!--belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet.Presently this hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, isadded to the heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest in the oldtime.

  "Now there is garnered such might and loveliness and wisdom as humanthinking cannot conceive of. An emperor is made much of here when he hasconquered some part of the world, but Death makes nothing of a world ofemperors: and in Death's crowded store-rooms nobody bothers to estimatewithin a thousand thousand of how many emperors, and tzars and popes andpharaohs and sultans, that in their day were adored as omnipotent, arethere assembled pellmell, along with all that was worthiest in the oldtime.

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

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

  "All, all, are put away in Death's heaped store-rooms, so safely putaway that opulent Death may well grin scornfully at Life: for everythingbelongs to Death, and Life is only a mendicant scratching at his soresso 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 alreadylying disregarded in a thousand dusty coffers along with all that wasworthiest in the old time?"

  Freydis replied: "One thing alone. Yes, Manuel, there is one thing onlywhich all Death's ravishings have never taken from Life, and which hasnot ever entered into Death's keeping. It is through weighing this fact,and through doing what else is requisite, that the very bold may bringback the dead to live again in the warm flesh."

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

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

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

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

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