Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XXXIII

  Now Manuel Prospers

  They of Poictesme narrate fine tales as to the deeds that Manuel theRedeemer performed and incited in the days of his reign. They tell alsomany things that seem improbable, and therefore are not included in thisbook: for the old songs and tales incline to make of Count Manuel'sheydey a rare golden age.

  So many glorious exploits are, indeed, accredited to Manuel and to thewarriors whom he gathered round him in his famous Fellowship of theSilver Stallion,--and among whom, Holden and courteous Anavalt and Coththe Alderman and Gonfal and Donander had the pre-eminence, where allwere hardy,--that it is very difficult to understand how so brief awhile could have continued so many doings. But the tale-tellers ofPoictesme have been long used to say of a fine action,--not falsely, butmisleadingly,--"Thus it was in Count Manuel's time," and the tribute byand by has been accepted as a dating. So has chronology been hacked tomake loftier his fame, and the glory of Dom Manuel has been a magnetthat has drawn to itself the magnanimities of other days and years.

  But there is no need here to speak of these legends, about the deedswhich were performed by the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion, becausethese stories are recorded elsewhere. Some may be true, the others arecertainly not true; but it is indisputable that Count Manuel grewsteadily in power and wealth and proud repute. Miramon Lluagor stillserved him, half-amusedly, as Dom Manuel's seneschal; kings now wereManuel's co-partners; and the former swineherd had somehow become thefair and trusty cousin of emperors. And Madame Niafer, the great Count'swife, was everywhere stated, without any contradiction from her, to bedaughter to the late Soldan of Barbary.

  Guivric the Sage illuminated the tree which showed the glorious descentof Dame Niafer from Kaiumarth, the first of all kings, and the first toteach men to build houses: and this tree hung in the main hall ofStorisende. "For even if some errors may have crept in here and there,"said Dame Niafer, "it looks very well."

  "But, my dear," said Manuel, "your father was not the Soldan of Barbary:instead, he was the second groom at Arnaye, and all this lineage is apreposterous fabrication."

  "I said just now that some errors may have crept in here and there,"assented Dame Niafer, composedly, "but the point is, that the thingreally looks very well, and I do not suppose that even you deny that."

  "No, I do not deny that this glowing mendacity adds to the hall'sappearance."

  "So now, you see for yourself!" said Niafer, triumphantly. And afterthat her new ancestry was never questioned.

  And in the meanwhile Dom Manuel had sent messengers over land and sea tohis half-sister Math at Rathgor, bidding her sell the mill for what itwould fetch. She obeyed, and brought to Manuel's court her husband andtheir two boys, the younger of whom rose later to be Pope of Rome.Manuel gave the miller the vacant fief of Montors; and thereafter youcould nowhere have found a statelier fine lady than the CountessMatthiette de Montors. She was still used to speak continually of whatwas becoming to people of our station in life, but it was with a largedifference; and she got on with Niafer as well as could be expected, butno better.

  And early in the summer of the first year of Manuel's reign (just afterDom Manuel fetched to Storisende the Sigel of Scoteia, as the spoils ofhis famous fight with Oriander the Swimmer), the stork brought to Niaferthe first of the promised boys. For the looks of the thing, this childwas named, not after the father whom Manuel had just killed, but afterthe Emmerick who was Manuel's nominal father: and it was this Emmerickthat afterward reigned long and notably in Poictesme.

  So matters went prosperously with Dom Manuel, and there was nothing totrouble his peace of mind, unless it were some feeling of responsibilityfor the cult of Sesphra, whose worship was now increasing everywhereamong the nations. In Philistia, in particular, Sesphra was nowworshipped openly in the legislative halls and churches, and all otherreligion, and all decency, was smothered under the rituals of Sesphra.Everywhere to the west and north his followers were delivering windydiscourses and performing mad antics, and great hurt came of it all byand by. But if this secretly troubled Dom Manuel; the Count, here aselsewhere, exercised to good effect his invaluable gift for holding histongue.

  Nor did he ever speak of Freydis either, though it is recorded that whennews came of the end which she had made in Teamhair under the oppressionof the Druids and the satirists, Dom Manuel went silently into the Roomof Ageus, and was not seen any more that day. That in such solitude hewept is improbable, for his hard vivid eyes had forgotten this way ofexercise, but it is highly probable that he remembered many things, andfound not all of them to his credit.

  So matters went prosperously with gray Manuel; he had lofty palaces andfair woods and pastures and ease and content, and whensoever he wentinto battle attended by his nine lords of the Silver Stallion, hisadversaries perished; he was esteemed everywhere the most lucky and theleast scrupulous rogue alive: to crown all which the stork brought byand by to Storisende the second girl, whom they named Dorothy, forManuel's mother. And about this time too, came a young poet from England(Ribaut they called him, and he met an evil end at Coventry not longthereafter), bringing to Dom Manuel, where the high Count sat at supper,a goose-feather.

  The Count smiled, and he twirled the thing between his fingers, and hemeditated. He shrugged, and said: "Needs must. But for her ready wit, myhead would have been set to dry on a silver pike. I cannot well ignorethat obligation, if she, as it now seems, does not intend to ignore it."

  Then he told Niafer he must go into England.

  Niafer looked up from the marmalade with which she was finishing off hersupper, to ask placidly, "And what does that dear yellow-haired friendof yours want with you now?"

  "My dear, if I knew the answer to that question it would not benecessary for me to travel oversea."

  "It is easy enough to guess, though," Dame Niafer said darkly, although,in point of fact, she too was wondering why Alianora should have sentfor Manuel; "and I can quite understand how in your sandals you prefernot to have people know about such doings, and laughing at youeverywhere, again."

  Dom Manuel did not reply; but he sighed.

  "--And if any importance whatever were attached to my opinion in thishouse I might be saying a few things; but, as it is, it is much moreagreeable, all around, to let you go your own hard-headed way and findout by experience that what I say is true. So now, Manuel, if you do notmind, I think we had better be talking about something else a littlemore pleasant."

  Dom Manuel still did not say anything. The time, as has been noted, wasjust after supper, and as the high Count and his wife sat over theremnants of this meal, a minstrel was making music for them.

  "You are not very cheerful company, I must say," Niafer observed, in awhile, "although I do not for a moment doubt your yellow-haired friendwill find you gay enough--"

  "No, Niafer, I am not happy to-night."

  "Yes, and whose fault is it? I told you not to take two helpings of thatbeef."

  "No, no, dear snip, it is not indigestion, but rather it is that music,which is plaguing me."

  "Now, Manuel, how can music bother anybody! I am sure the boy plays hisviolin very nicely indeed, especially when you consider his age."

  Said Manuel:

  "Yes, but the long low sobbing of the violin, troubling as the vaguethoughts begotten by that season wherein summer is not yet perished fromthe earth, but lingers wanly in the tattered shrines of summer, speaksof what was and of what might have been. A blind desire, the same whichon warm moonlit nights was used to shake like fever in the veins of aboy whom I remember, is futilely plaguing a gray fellow with the graywraiths of innumerable old griefs and with small stinging memories oflong-dead delights. Such thirsting breeds no good for staid and agingmen, but my lips are athirst for lips whose loveliness no longer existsin flesh, and I thirst for a dead time and its dead fervors to bereviving, so that young Manuel may love again.

  "To-night now surely somewhere, while this music sets uncertain andprobing fingers to healed wounds,
an aging woman, in everything astranger to me, is troubled just thus futilely, and she too rememberswhat she half forgets. 'We that of old were one, and shuddered heart toheart, with our young lips and our souls too made indivisible,'--thusshe is thinking, as I think--'has life dealt candidly in leaving us topotter with half measures and to make nothing of severed lives thatshrivel far apart?' Yes, she to-night is sad as I, it well may be; but Icannot rest certain of this, because there is in young love a glory sobedazzling as to prevent the lover from seeing clearly hisco-worshipper, and therefore in that dear time when we served lovetogether I learned no more of her than she of me.

  "Of all my failures this is bitterest to bear, that out of so muchgrieving and aspiring I have gained no assured knowledge of the womanherself, but must perforce become lachrymose over such perished tinselsas her quivering red lips and shining hair! Of youth and love is thereno more, then, to be won than virginal breasts and a small white bellyyielded to the will of the lover, and brief drunkenness, and afterwardsuch puzzled yearning as now dies into acquiescence, very much as thelong low sobbing of that violin yonder dies into stillness now the songis done?"

  So it was that gray Manuel talked in a half voice, sitting thereresplendently robed in gold and crimson, and twiddling between hisfingers a goose-feather.

  "Yes," Niafer said, presently, "but, for my part, I think he plays verynicely indeed."

  Manuel gave an abrupt slight jerking of the head. Dom Manuel laughed."Dear snip," said he, "come, honestly now, what have you been meditatingabout while I talked nonsense?"

  "Why, I was thinking I must remember to look over your flannels thefirst thing to-morrow, Manuel, for everybody knows what that dampEnglish climate is in autumn--"

  "My dearest," Manuel said, with grave conviction, "you are the archetypeand flawless model of all wives."