Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XXVI

  Deals with the Stork

  Now Manuel, driven out of Poictesme, went with his wife to Novogath,which had been for some seven years the capital of Philistia. QueenStultitia, the sixtieth of that name to rule, received them friendlily.She talked alone with Manuel for a lengthy while, in a room that waswalled with glazed tiles of faience and had its ceiling incrusted withmoral axioms, everywhere affixed thereto in a light lettering of tin, soas to permit of these axioms being readily changed. Stultitia sat at abronze reading-desk: she wore rose-colored spectacles, and at her feetdozed, for the while, her favorite plaything, a blind, small, very fatwhite bitch called Luck.

  The Queen still thought that an alliance could be arranged against DukeAsmund as soon as public sentiment could be fomented in Philistia, butthis would take time. "Have patience, my friend!" she said, and that waseasy saying for a prosperous great lady sitting comfortably crowned andspectacled in her own palace, under her own chimneys and skylights andcampaniles and domes and towers and battlements.

  But in the mean while Manuel and Niafer had not so much as a cowshedwherein to exercise this recommended virtue. So Manuel made inquiries,and learned that Queen Freydis had taken up her abode on Sargyll, mostremote of the Red Islands.

  "We will go to Freydis," he told Niafer.

  "But, surely, not after the way that minx probably believes you treatedher?" said Niafer.

  Manuel smiled the sleepy smile that was Manuel. "I know Freydis betterthan you know her, my dear."

  "Yes, but can you depend upon her?"

  "I can depend upon myself, and that is more important."

  "But, Manuel, you have another dear friend in England; and in England,although the Lord knows I never want to lay eyes on her, we might atleast be comfortable--"

  Manuel shook his head: "I am very fond of Alianora, because sheresembles me as closely as it is possible for a woman to resemble a man.That makes two excellent reasons--one for each of us, snip,--why we hadbetter not go into England."

  So, in their homeless condition, they resolved to set out forSargyll,--"to visit that other dear friend of yours," as Niafer put it,in tones more eloquent than Manuel seemed quite to relish.

  Dame Niafer, though, now began to complain that Manuel was neglectingher for all this statecraft and fighting and speech-making and privateconference with fine ladies; and she began to talk again about what apity it was that she and Manuel would probably never have any childrento be company for Niafer. Niafer complained rather often nowadays, aboutdetails which are here irrelevant: and she was used to lament with everyappearance of sincerity that, in making the clay figure for Niafer tolive in, Manuel should have been so largely guided by the elsewhereestimable qualities of innocence and imagination. It frequently put her,she said, to great inconvenience.

  Now Manuel had been inquiring about this and that and the other sincehis arrival in Novogath, and so Manuel to-day replied with lordlyassurance. "Yes, yes, a baby or two!" says Manuel. "I think myself thatwould be an excellent idea, while we are waiting for Queen Stultitia tomake up her subjects' minds, and have nothing else in particular todo--"

  "But, Manuel, you know perfectly well--"

  "--And I am sufficiently versed in the magic of the Apsarasas to be ableto summon the stork, who by rare good luck is already indebted to me--"

  "What has the stork to do with this?"

  "Why, it is he who must bring the babies to be company for you."

  "But, Manuel," said Niafer, dubiously, "I do not believe that the peopleof Rathgor, or of Poictesme either, get their babies from the stork."

  "Doubtless, like every country, they have their quaint local customs. Wehave no concern, however with these provincialities just now, for we arein Philistia. Besides, as you cannot well have forgotten, our maindependence is upon the half-promised alliance with Queen Stultitia, whois, as far as I can foresee, my darling, the only monarch anywherelikely to support us."

  "But what has Queen Stultitia to do with my having a baby?"

  "Everything, dear snip. You must surely understand it is most importantfor one in my position to avoid in any way offending the sensibilitiesof the Philistines."

  "Still, Manuel, the Philistines themselves have babies, and I do not seehow they could have conceivably objected to my having at any rate a verysmall one if only you had made me right--"

  "Not at all! nobody objects to the baby in itself, now that you are amarried woman. The point is that the babies of the Philistines arebrought to them by the stork; and that even an allusion to thepossibility of misguided persons obtaining a baby in any other way thesePhilistines consider to be offensive and lewd and lascivious andobscene."

  "Why, how droll of them! But are you sure of that, Manuel!"

  "All their best-thought-of and most popular writers, my dear, areunanimous upon the point; and their Seranim have passed any number oflaws, their oil-merchants have founded a guild, especially to prosecutesuch references. No, there is, to be sure, a dwindling sect which favorsputting up with what babies you may find in the cabbage patch, but allreally self-respecting people when in need of offspring arrange to bevisited by the stork."

  "It is certainly a remarkable custom, but it sounds convenient if youcan manage it," said Niafer. "What I want is the baby, though, and ofcourse we must try to get the baby in the manner of the Philistines, ifyou know that manner, for I am sure I have no wish to offend anybody."

  So Manuel prepared to get a baby in the manner preferred by thePhilistines. He performed the suitable incantation, putting this andthat together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witchesand sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm fromthe old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, withoutany mock-modest mincing of words:

  Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit, Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum Quod faciundum erat cognoscere. Sic Domina Anser._

  Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk and fivecurious objects something like small black stars. With the chalk he drewupon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel walked on one ofthese chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned Niafer to him. Standingthere, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Then he placed the fiveblack stars in a row,--

  * * * * *

  --and went over to the next line.

  The stork having been thus properly summoned, Manuel recalled to thebird the three wishes which had been promised when Manuel saved thestork's life: and Manuel said that for each wish he would take a sonfetched to him by the stork in the manner of the Philistines.

  The stork thought it could be arranged. "Not this morning, though, asyou suggest, for, indebted as I am to you, Dom Manuel, I am also a verybusy bird. No, I have any number of orders that were put in monthsbefore yours, and I must follow system in my business, for you have nonotion what elaborate and exact accounts are frequently required by themarried men that receive invoices from me."

  "Come now," says Manuel, "do you be accommodating, remembering how Ionce saved your life from the eagle, and my wife and I will order allour babies now, and spare you the trouble of keeping any accountswhatever, so far as we are concerned."

  "Oh, if you care to deal with such wholesale irregularity, and have nomore consideration than to keep casting old debts in my bill, I mightstretch a point in order to be rid of you," the stork said, sighing.

  "Now, but surely," Manuel considered, "you might be a little morecheerful about this matter."

  "And why should I, of all the birds that go about the heavens, becheerful?"

  "Well, somehow one expects a reasonable gaiety in you who bring hilarityand teething-rings into so many households--"

  The stork answered:

  "I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and therewith I,they say, bring joy. Now of the joy I bring to the mother let nonespeak, for miracles are not neatly to be caged in sentences, nor istruth always expedient. To the fathe
r I bring the sight of his own life,by him so insecurely held, renewed and strengthened in a tenement notyet impaired by time and folly: he is no more disposed to belittlehimself here than elsewhere; and it is himself that he cuddles in thissmall, soft, incomprehensible and unsoiled incarnation. For, as I bringthe children, they have no evil in them and no cowardice and no guile.

  "I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, when later Ireturn, to those that yesterday were children. And in all ways time hasmarred, and living has defaced, and prudence has maimed, until I grieveto entrust that which I bring to what remains of that which yesterday Ibrought. In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burninggod, but time affects more subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright.Yes, Moloch, being divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but timeis that transfigured cat, an ironist. So living mars and defaces andmaims, and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its preybefore destroying it.

  "I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and I leave themto endure that which is fated. Daily I bring into this world the beautyand innocence and high-heartedness and faith of children: but life hasno employment, or else life has no sustenance, for these fine thingswhich I bring daily, for always I, returning, find the human usages ofliving have extinguished these excellences in those who yesterday werechildren, and that these virtues exist in no aged person. And I wouldthat Jahveh had created me an eagle or a vulture or some other hatefulbird of prey that furthers a less grievous slaying and a moreintelligible wasting than I further."

  To this, Dom Manuel replied, in that grave and matter-of-fact way ofhis: "Now certainly I can see how your vocation may seem, in a manner ofspeaking, a poor investment; but, after all, your business is none of mybusiness, so I shall not presume to criticize it. Instead, let us avoidthese lofty generalities, and to you tell me when I may look for thosethree sons of mine."

  Then they talked over this matter of getting babies, Manuel walking onthe chalk line all the while, and Manuel found he could have, if hepreferred it so, three girls in place of one of the boys, since thedemand for sons was thrice that for daughters. To Niafer it was at onceapparent that to obtain five babies in place of three was a clearbargain. Manuel said he did not want any daughters, they were too muchof a responsibility, and he did not intend to be bothered with them. Hewas very firm and lordly about it. Then Niafer spoke again, and when shehad ended, Manuel wished for two boys and three girls. Thereafter thestork subscribed five promissory notes, and they executed all the otherrequisite formalities.

  "SUMMONS THE STORK"]

  The stork said that by a little management he could let them have one ofthe children within a day or so. "But how long have you two beenmarried?" he asked.

  "Oh, ever so long," said Manuel, with a faint sigh.

  "Why, no, my dearest," said Niafer, "we have been married only sevenmonths."

  "In that event," declared the stork, "you had better wait until monthafter next, for it is not the fashion among my patrons to have mevisiting them quite so early."

  "Well," said Manuel, "we wish to do everything in conformance to thepreferences of Philistia, even to the extent of following suchincomprehensible fashions." So he arranged to have the promised babydelivered at Sargyll, which, he told the stork, would be their addressfor the remainder of the summer.