Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XXXIV

  Farewell to Alianora

  Now Dom Manuel takes ship and goes into England: and for what happenedthere we have no authority save the account which Dom Manuel rendered onhis return to his wife.

  Thus said Dom Manuel:

  He went straight to Woodstock, where the King and Queen then were. AtWoodstock Dom Manuel was handsomely received, and there he passed themonth of September--

  (_"Why need you stay so long, though?" Dame Niafer inquired.

  "Well," Manuel explained, "one thing led to another, as it were."

  "H'm!" Niafer remarked._)

  He had presently a private talk with the Queen. How was she dressed? Asnear as Manuel recalled, she wore a green mantle fastened in front witha square fermoir of gems and wrought gold; under it, a close fittinggown of gold-diapered brocade, with tight sleeves so long that they halfcovered her hands, something like mitts. Her crown was of floriatedtrefoils surmounting a band of rubies. Of course, though, they mighthave been only garnets--

  (_"And where was it that she dressed up in all this finery to talk withyou in private?"

  "Why, at Woodstock, naturally."

  "I know it was at Woodstock, but whereabouts at Woodstock?"

  "It was by a window, my dear, by a window with panes of white glass andwooden lattices and a pent covered with lead."

  "Your account is very circumstantial, but where was the window?"

  "Oh, now I understand you! It was in a room."

  "What sort of room?"

  "Well, the walls were covered with gay frescoes from Saxon history; thefireplace was covered with very handsomely carved stone dragons; and thefloor was covered with new rushes. Indeed, the Queen has one of theneatest bedrooms I have ever seen."

  "Ah, yes," said Niafer: "and what did you talk about during the timethat you spent in your dear friend's bedroom?"_)

  Well, he found all going well with Queen Alianora (Dom Manuel continued)except that she had not yet provided an heir for the English throne, andit was this alone which was troubling her. It was on account of thisthat she had sent for Count Manuel.

  "It is considered not to look at all well, after three years ofmarriage," the Queen told him, "and people are beginning to say a numberof unkind things."

  "It is the common fate of queens," Dom Manuel replies, "to be exposed tothe criticism of envious persons."

  "No, do not be brilliant and aphoristic, Manuel, for I want you to helpme more practically in this matter."

  "Very willingly will I help you if I can. But how can I?"

  "Why, you must assist me in getting a baby,--a boy baby, of course."

  "I am willing to do all that I can, because certainly it does not lookwell for you to have no son to be King of England. But how can I, of allpersons, help you in this affair?"

  "Now, Manuel, after getting three children you surely ought to know whatis necessary!"

  Dom Manuel shook a gray head. "My children came from a source which isexhausted."

  "That would be deplorable news if I believed it, but I am sure that ifyou will let me take matters in hand I can convince you to thecontrary--"

  "Well, I am open to conviction."

  "--Although I scarcely know how to begin, because I know that you willthink this hard on you--"

  He took her hand. Dom Manuel admitted to Niafer without reserve thathere he took the Queen's hand, saying: "Do not play with me any longer,Alianora, for you must see plainly that I am now eager to serve you. Sodo not be embarrassed, but come to the point, and I will do what I can."

  "Why, Manuel, both you and I know perfectly well that, even with yourDorothy ordered, you still hold the stork's note for another girl andanother boy, to be supplied upon demand, after the manner of thePhilistines."

  "No, not upon demand, for the first note has nine months to run, and theother falls due even later. But what has that to do with it?"

  "Now, Manuel, truly I hate to ask this of you, but my need is desperate,with all this criticizing and gossip. So for old time's sake, and forthe sake of the life I gave you as a Christmas present, through tellingmy dear father an out-and-out story, you must let me have that firstpromissory note, and you must direct the stork to bring the boy baby tome in England, and not to your wife in Poictesme."

  So that was what Dame Alianora had wanted.

  (_"I knew that all along" observed Dame Niafer,--untruthfully, butadhering to her general theory that it was better to appear omniscientin dealing with one's husband._)

  Well, Dom Manuel was grieved by the notion of being parted from hischild prior to its birth, but he was moved alike by his former fondnessfor Alianora, and by his indebtedness to her, and by the obligation thatwas on him to provide as handsomely as possible for his son. Nobodycould dispute that as King of England, the boy's station in life wouldbe immeasurably above the rank of the Count of Poictesme's youngerbrother. So Manuel made a complaint as to his grief and as to Niafer'sgrief at thus prematurely losing their loved son--

  (_"Shall I repeat what I said, my dear?"

  "No, Manuel, I never understand you when you are trying to be highflownand impressive."_)

  Well, then, Dom Manuel made a very beautiful complaint, but in theoutcome Dom Manuel consented to this sacrifice.

  He would not consent, though, to remain in England, as Alianora wantedhim to do.

  "No," he said, nobly, "it would not look at all well for you to betaking me as your lover, and breaking your marriage-vows to love nobodybut the King. No, Alianora, I will help you to get the baby you need,inasmuch as I am indebted to you for my life and have two babies tospare, but I am not willing to have anything to do with the breaking ofyour marriage-vows, because it is a crime which is forbidden by the HolyScriptures, and of which Niafer would certainly hear sooner or later."

  (_"Oh, Manuel, you did not say that!"

  "My dear, those were my exact words. And why not?"

  "That was putting it sensibly of course, but it would have sounded muchbetter if you had expressed yourself entirely upon moral grounds. It ismost important, Manuel, as I am sure I have told you over and overagain, for people in our position to show a proper respect for moralityand religion and things of that sort whenever they come up in theconversation; but there is no teaching you anything except by bitterexperience, which I sincerely hope may be spared you, and one might aswell be arguing with a brick wall, and so you may go on"_)

  Well, the Queen wept and coaxed, but Manuel was firm. So Manuel spentthat night in the Queen's room, performing the needful incantations, andarranging matters with the stork, and then Dom Manuel returned home. Andthat--well, really that was all.

  Such was the account which Dom Manuel rendered his wife. "And upon thewhole, Niafer, I consider it a very creditable stroke of business, foras King of England the child will enjoy advantages which we could neverhave afforded him."

  "Yes," said Niafer, "and what does that dear friend of yours look likenowadays?"

  "--Besides, should the boy turn out badly our grief will be considerablylessened by the circumstance that, through never seeing this son ofours, our affection for him will never be inconveniently great."

  "There is something in that, for already I can see that Emmerickinherits his father's obstinacy, and it naturally worries me, but whatdoes the woman look like nowadays?"

  "--Then, even more important than these considerations--."

  "Nothing is more important, Manuel, in this very curious soundingaffair, than the way that woman looks nowadays."

  "Ah, my dear," says Manuel, diplomatically, "I did not like to speak ofthat, I confess, for you know these blondes go off in their appearanceso quickly--"

  "Of course they do, but still--"

  "--And it not being her fault, after all, I did not like to tell youabout Dame Alianora's looking so many years older than you do, sinceyour being a brunette gives you an unfair advantage to begin with."

  "Ah, it is not that," said Niafer, still rather grim-visaged, butobviously mollified. "It
is the life she is leading, with her witchcraftand her familiar spirits and that continual entertaining and excitement,and everybody tells me she has already taken to dyeing her hair."

  "Oh, it had plainly had something done to it," says Manuel, lightly."But it is a queen's duty to preserve such remnants of good looks as shepossesses."

  "So there, you see!" said Niafer, quite comfortable again in her mindwhen she noted the careless way in which Dom Manuel spoke of the Queen.

  A year or two earlier Dame Niafer would perhaps have been moved tojealousy: now her only concern was that Manuel might possibly be led tomake a fool of himself and to upset their manner of living. With everycontented wife her husband's general foolishness is an axiom, andprudent philosophers do not distinguish here between cause and effect.

  As for Alianora's wanting to take Manuel as a lover, Dame Niafer foundthe idea mildly amusing, and very nicely indicative of those washed-out,yellow-haired women's intelligence. To be harboring romantic notionsabout Manuel seemed to Manuel's wife so fantastically out of reason thatshe half wished the poor creature could without scandal be afforded achance to find out for herself all about Manuel's thousand and onefinicky ways and what he was in general to live with.

  That being impossible, Niafer put the crazy woman out of mind, and beganto tell Manuel about what had happened, and not for the first timeeither, while he was away, and about just how much more she was going tostand from Sister Math, and about the advantages of a perfectly plainunderstanding for everybody concerned. And with Niafer that was the endof Count Manuel's discharging of his obligation to Alianora.

  Of course there were gossips who said this, that and the other. Someasserted that Manuel's tale in itself contained elements ofimprobability: others declared that Queen Alianora, who was far deeplierversed in the magic of the Apsarasas than was Dom Manuel, could just aswell have summoned the stork without his assistance. It was true thestork was under no especial obligations to Alianora: even so, said thesegossips, it would have looked far better, and a queen could not be tooparticular, and it simply showed you about these foreign Southern women;and although they of course wished to misjudge no one, there was nosense in pretending to ignore what everybody practically knew to be afact, and was talking about everywhere, and some day you would see foryourself.

  But after all, Dom Manuel and the Queen were the only persons qualifiedto speak of these matters with authority, and this was Dom Manuel'saccount of them. For the rest, he was sustained against tittle-tattle bythe knowledge that he had performed a charitable deed in England, forthe Queen's popularity was enhanced, and all the English, butparticularly their King, were delighted, by the fine son which the storkduly brought to Alianora the following June.

  Manuel never saw this boy, who afterward ruled over England and was ahighly thought-of warrior, nor did Dom Manuel ever see Queen Alianoraany more. So Alianora goes out of the story, to bring long years ofmisery and ruining wars upon the English, and to Dom Manuel no morebeguilements. For they say Dom Manuel could never resist her, because ofthat underlying poverty in the correct emotions which, as some say, DomManuel shared with her, and which they hid from all the world excepteach other.