Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances

by James Branch Cabell

  XXXVII

  Opinions of Hinzelmann

  Now the tale tells that on Michaelmas morning little Melicent, being ina quiet mood that time, sat with her doll in the tall chair by the thirdwindow of Ageus while her father wrote at his big table. He was pausingbetween phrases to think and to bite at his thumb-nail, and he was sointent upon this letter to Pope Innocent that he did not notice the slowopening of the third window: and Melicent had been in conference withthe queer small boy for some while before Dom Manuel looked upabstractedly toward them. Then Manuel seemed perturbed, and he calledMelicent to him, and she obediently scrambled into her father's lap.

  There was silence in the Room of Ageus. The queer small boy sat leaningback in the chair which little Melicent had just left. He sat with hislegs crossed, and with his gloved hands clasping his right knee, as helooked appraisingly at Melicent. He displayed a beautiful sad face, withcurled yellow hair hanging about his shoulders, and he was dressed in avermilion silk coat: at his left side, worn like a sword, was a vastpair of shears. He wore also a pointed hat of four interblended colors,and his leather gloves were figured with pearls.

  "She will be a woman by and by," the strange boy said, with a soft anddelicate voice, "and then she too will be coming to us, and we willprovide fine sorrows for her."

  "No, Hinzelmann," Count Manuel replied, as he stroked the roundstraw-colored head of little Melicent. "This is the child of Niafer. Shecomes of a race that has no time to be peering out of dubious windows."

  "It is your child too, Count Manuel. Therefore she too, between now andher burial, will be wanting to be made free of my sister Suskind'skingdom, as you have been made free of it, at a price. Oh, verycertainly you have paid little as yet save the one lock of your grayhair, but in time you will pay the other price which Suskind demands. Iknow, for it is I who collect my sister Suskind's revenues, and when theproper hour arrives, believe me, Count Manuel, I shall not be askingyour leave, nor is there any price which you, I think, will not bepaying willingly."

  "That is probable. For Suskind is wise and strange, and the grave beautyof her youth is the fulfilment of an old hope. Life had become a tediousmatter of much money and much bloodshed, but she has restored to me thegold and crimson of dawn."

  "So, do you very greatly love my sister Suskind?" says Hinzelmann,smiling rather sadly.

  "She is my heart's delight, and the desire of my desire. It was she forwhom, unwittingly, I had been longing always, since I first went awayfrom Suskind, to climb upon the gray heights of Vraidex in my longpursuit of much wealth and fame. I had seen my wishes fulfilled, and mydreams accomplished; all the godlike discontents which ennobled my youthhad died painlessly in cushioned places. And living had come to be ahabit of doing what little persons expected, and youth was gone out ofme, and I, that used to follow with a high head after my own thinkingand my own desires, could not any longer very greatly care for anything.Now I am changed: for Suskind has made me free once more of the Countryof the Young and of the ageless self-tormenting youth of the gray depthswhich maddened Ruric, but did not madden me."

  "Look you, Count Manuel, but that penniless young nobody, Ruric theclerk, was not trapped as you are trapped. For from the faith of othersthere is no escape upon this side of the window. World-famous Manuel theRedeemer has in this place his luck and prosperity to maintain until theorderings of unimaginative gods have quite destroyed the Manuel thatonce followed after his own thinking. For even the high gods here notewith approval that you have become the sort of person in whom the godsput confidence, and so they favor you unscrupulously. Here all ispre-arranged for you by the thinking of others. Here there is no escapefor you from acquiring a little more wealth to-day, a little moremeadowland to-morrow, with daily a little more applause and honor andenvy from your fellows, along with always slowly increasing wrinkles anddulling wits and an augmenting paunch, and with the smug approval ofeverybody upon earth and in heaven. That is the reward of those personswhom you humorously call successful persons."

  Dom Manuel answered very slowly, and to little Melicent it seemed thatFather's voice was sad.

  Said Manuel: "Certainly, I think there is no escape for me upon thisside of the window of Ageus. A bond was put upon me to make a figure inthis world, and I discharged that obligation. Then came another and yetanother obligation to be discharged. And now has come upon me a geaswhich is not to be lifted either by toils or by miracles. It is the geaswhich is laid on every person, and the life of every man is as my life,with no moment free from some bond or another. Heh, youth vauntswindily, but in the end nobody can follow after his own thinking and hisown desire. At every turn he is confronted by that which is expected,and obligation follows obligation, and in the long run no champion canbe stronger than everybody. So we succumb to this world's terribleunreason, willy-nilly, and Helmas has been made wise, and Ferdinand hasbeen made saintly, and I have been made successful, by that which wasexpected of us, and by that which none of us had ever any real chance toresist in a world wherein all men are nourished by their beliefs."

  "And does not success content you?"

  "Ah, but," asked Manuel slowly, just as he had once asked Horvendile inManuel's lost youth, "what is success? They tell me I have succeededmarvelously in all things, rising from low beginnings, to become themost lucky and the least scrupulous rogue alive: yet, hearing men'sapplause, I sometimes wonder, for I know that a smaller-hearted creatureand a creature poorer in spirit is posturing in Count Manuel's highcushioned places than used to go afield with the miller's pigs."

  "Why, yes, Count Manuel, you have made endurable terms with this worldby succumbing to its foolishness: but do you take comfort, for that isthe one way open to anybody who has not rightly seen and judged the endsof this world. At worst, you have had all your desires, and you havemade a very notable figure in Count Manuel's envied station."

  "But I starve there, Hinzelmann, I dry away into stone, and this enviedliving is reshaping me into a complacent idol for fools to honor, andthe approval of fools is converting the heart and wits of me into thestony heart and wits of an idol. And I look back upon my breathless oldendeavors, and I wonder drearily, 'Was it for this?'"

  "Yes," Hinzelmann said: and he shrugged, without ever putting off thatsad smile of his. "Yes, yes, all this is only another way of saying thatBeda has kept his word. But no man gets rid of Misery, Count Manuel,except at a price."

  They stayed silent for a while. Count Manuel stroked the roundstraw-colored head of little Melicent. Hinzelmann played with the smallcross which hung at Hinzelmann's neck. This cross appeared to be wovenof plaited strings, but when Hinzelmann shook the cross it jingled likea bell.

  "Yet, none the less," says Hinzelmann, "here you remain. No, certainly,I cannot understand you, Count Manuel. As a drunkard goes back to thedestroying cask, so do you continue to return to your fine home atStorisende and to the incessant whispering of your father's father, forall that you have but to remain in Suskind's low red-pillared palace tobe forever rid of that whisper and of this dreary satiating of humandesires."

  "I shall of course make my permanent quarters there by and by," CountManuel said, "but not just yet. It would not be quite fair to my wifefor me to be leaving Storisende just now, when we are getting in thecrops, and when everything is more or less upset already--"

  "I perceive you are still inventing excuses, Count Manuel, to put offyielding entire allegiance to my sister."

  "No, it is not that, not that at all! It is only the upset condition ofthings, just now, and, besides, Hinzelmann, the stork is to bring us thelast girl child the latter part of next week. We are to call herEttarre, and I would like to have a sight of her, of course--In fact, Iam compelled to stay through mere civility, inasmuch as the Queen ofPhilistia is sending the very famous St. Holmendis especially tochristen this baby. And it would be, Hinzelmann, the height of rudenessfor me to be leaving home, just now, as though I wanted to avoid hisvisit--"

  Hinzelmann still smiled rather sadly. "Last mo
nth you could not come tous because your wife was just then outworn with standing in the hotkitchen and stewing jams and marmalades. Dom Manuel, will you come whenthe baby is delivered and this Saint has been attended to and all thecrops are in?"

  "Well, but Hinzelmann, within a week or two we shall be brewing thisyear's ale, and I have always more or less seen to that--"

  Still Hinzelmann smiled sadly. He pointed with his small gloved handtoward Melicent. "And what about your other enslavement, to this childhere?"

  "Why, certainly, Hinzelmann, the brat does need a father to look out forher, so long as she is the merest baby. And naturally, I have beenthinking about that of late, rather seriously--"

  Hinzelmann spoke with deliberation. "She is very nearly the most stupidand the most unattractive child I have ever seen. And I, you mustremember, am blood brother to Cain and Seth as well as to Suskind."

  But Dom Manuel was not provoked. "As if I did not know the child is inno way remarkable! No, my good Hinzelmann, you that serve Suskind haveshown me strange dear things, but nothing more strange and dear than athing which I discovered for myself. For I am that Manuel whom men callthe Redeemer of Poictesme, and my deeds will be the themes of harperswhose grandparents are not yet born; I have known love and war and allmanner of adventure: but all the sighings and hushed laughter ofyesterday, and all the trumpet-blowing and shouting, and all that I havewitnessed of the unreticent fond human ways of great persons who for thewhile have put aside their state, and all the good that in my day I mayhave done, and all the evil that I have certainly destroyed,--all thisseems trivial as set against the producing of this tousled brat. No, tobe sure, she is backward as compared with Emmerick, or even Dorothy, andshe is not, as you say, an at all remarkable child, though very often, Ican assure you, she does things that would astonish you. Now, forinstance--"

  "Spare me!" said Hinzelmann.

  "Well, but it really was very clever of her," Dom Manuel stipulated,with disappointment. "However, I was going to say that I, who haveharried pagandom, and capped jests with kings, and am now setting termsfor the Holy Father, have come to regard the doings of this ill-bred,selfish, ugly, little imp as more important than my doings. And I cannotresolve to leave her, just yet. So, Hinzelmann, my friend, I think Iwill not thoroughly commit myself, just yet. But after Christmas we willsee about it."

  "And I will tell you the two reasons of this shilly-shallying, CountManuel. One reason is that you are human, and the other reason is thatin your head there are gray hairs."

  "What, can it be," said the big warrior, forlornly, "that I who have notyet had twenty-six years of living am past my prime, and that alreadylife is going out of me?"

  "You must remember the price you paid to win back Dame Niafer fromparadise. As truth, and not the almanac, must estimate these things youare now nearer fifty-six."

  "Well," Manuel said, stoutly, "I do not regret it, and for Niafer's sakeI am willing to become a hundred and six. But certainly it is hard tothink of myself as an old fellow on the brink of the scrap-pile."

  "Oho, you are not yet so old, Count Manuel, but that Suskind's power isgreater than the power of the child: and besides, there is a way tobreak the power of the child. Death has merely scratched small wrinkles,very lightly, with one talon, to mark you as his by and by. That is allas yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, whowere once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire,for there remains in you a leaven even to-day. Yes, yes, though you denyher to-day, you will be entreating her to-morrow, and then it may be shewill punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you areobstinate, for it is at this time I run about the September worldcollecting my sister's revenues, and her debtors are very numerous."

  And with that the boy, still smiling gravely, slipped out of the thirdwindow into the gray sweet-smelling dusk, and little Melicent said,"But, Father, why did that queer sad boy want me to be climbing out ofthe window with him?"

  "So that he might be kind to you, my dear, as he estimates kindness."

  "But why did the sad boy want a piece of my hair?" asked Melicent; "andwhy did he cut it off with his big shiny shears, while you were writing,and he was playing with me?"

  "It was to pay a price," says Manuel.

  He knew now that the Alf charm was laid on his loved child, and thatthis was the price of his junketings. He knew also that Suskind wouldnever remit this price.

  Then Melicent demanded, "And what makes your face so white?"

  "It must be pale with hunger, child: so I think that you and I hadbetter be getting to our dinner."