Chapter XIII: Part ELEVEN: The Book of Remnants

“When Wages are Paid, Work is Over.”

46.
The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins

GERALD now was wandering among thick luminous gray mists, on a gray way which led through long quieted places. It led him to a weather-beaten pavilion of badly stained and tattered cloth which once had been flesh-colored.

Within this pavilion was a masked skeleton. The gleaming bones sat upright, and in unmarred order, in a gilded chair. A fan lay in the lap of this skeleton, a fan that was painted with the gay amours of Harlequin and Columbine, which Pierrot was observing, wistfully, through a gap in a yew-hedge: and the skeleton wore a little black velvet carnival mask, which covered all the upper front part of the skull, about the eye-sockets.

And beyond that was a castle, whose exterior was overlaid with cracked and peeling black-and-gold lacquer work. This castle was empty everywhere of any inhabitant. Gerald passed through its courtyard and about many large rooms and corridors, all hung with faded, very ancient tapestries. He encountered nobody. Then he came to the inmost tower, builded of horn, and so into the room which had been the bedchamber of the lord of that castle, and he perceived the reason why not even mice nor spiders dared to dwell in that place.

Afterward Gerald came to a dragon’s den. But the dragon was dead long ago, and the cupboards of that den were as empty as had been the castle of Vraidex, except for a pepper cruet and a salt cruet, both of time-blackened silver, and a light golden semi-circular crown inset with emeralds such as blonde princesses were used to wear in that dragon’s heyday.

Thence Gerald passed to a jousting ground, and that too was tenantless and fallen into decay. In the paved place where knights had tilted against one another lay at random nineteen broken spears and three tarnished shields. In the ladies’ gallery Gerald found only a chamber pot. The hangings of this gallery were discolored and torn, but you could yet see that these hangings had been of black cloth embroidered with small rearing silver horses.

And Gerald came also to a green pasture through which flowed unruffled a deep stream of still water. This pasture was strewn everywhere with many curious objects. He noted a crozier, and a wheel, and a camel-hair shirt, and a huge gridiron, and a copper dish containing the breasts of a young woman. He found in that pasture also a porcelain box of ointment, and a great saw, and a blue hat, and a large iron comb, which like the saw had long-dried blood upon its teeth, and a palm branch, and two enormous, very rusty keys marked with the monogram S. P.

Then Gerald passed where three crosses lay overturned.

And beyond that the way was yet more murky. To this hand and the other hand Gerald could just dimly divine the ruined porticos and domes and pylons of incredibly ancient buildings: he seemed to go among obelisks and many-storied square towers. But all was very gray and dubious. He wandered now in a cloudiness wherein not anything was indisputable.

He passed across a narrow bridge beneath which showed a dark and sluggish river. In that water Gerald could see moving, many-colored figures which were not strange to him. For Evasherah was there, and Evaine, and Evarvan, and Evadne also, smiling at him now for the last time, and he could see how notably they had all resembled one another. And yet one more woman was there, a blue-clad woman in a crown just such as Maya had worn before she became his wife, but the face of this woman Gerald could not clearly discern.

And upon the farther bank of the dark river one sat among a herd of black swine, and the eyes of all these swine gleamed meditatively at Gerald through their ragged white lashes. The man arose: and Gerald saw this swine-driver was that same young red-haired Horvendile who was Lord of the Marches of Antan.

Then Horvendile began to speak.

47.
How Horvendile Gave Up the Race

HORVENDILE spoke of the race of Manuel, and of the joy, and the vexation, too, which the antics of this so inadequate race had been to Horvendile. And it was of Merlin that Gerald was thinking now, for it seemed to him that here was yet another poet who did not any longer delight to shape and to play with puppets, because Horvendile was saying:

“Now I abandon a race whose needs are insatiable. For tall Manuel lived always wanting what he had not ever found, and never, quite, knowing what thing it was which he wanted, and without which he might not ever be contented. And Jurgen also, after Heaven’s very best had been done to grant him what he sought for, could reply only that he was Jurgen who sought he knew not what. And all their descendants have been like these maddening two in this at least, all seeking after they could not say what. Nobody can do anything for such a race! For their needs have stayed insatiable: their journeying has been, in every land and in every time, a foiled journeying: and in the end, in the inevitable unvarying end, each one of you treads that gray quiet way of ruins which leads hither and to no other place.”

“Well, for that matter,” Gerald said, “it seems that you too, Horvendile, have some engagement in this hog wallow.”

“I endeavor, in point of fact, to become familiar with this last stretch of limbo, against the time of my own possible need not ever to be remembered anywhere.”

“—And for my part, I came of my own choice and in self-protection,” Gerald continued, with his chin well up. “For I must tell you, Horvendile, that I have had little peace since our last meeting.”

Then Gerald (putting out of mind those attendant, very hungry looking pigs) related the epic of his journeying, without reserving anything out of false modesty, now that he talked with a confrère. He told of how he had descended into the underwater palace of the Princess Evasherah and of the orgies which he had shared in. He spoke, a bit contritely, of the amorous excesses he had been led into by the wives and the three hundred and fifty-odd concubines of Glaum during their master’s absence. With unconcealed embarrassment he told of how the people of Lytreia had endeavored to detain him in their temple, to reign there as their tribal god, because they found his nose to be so much more majestic than the idol they hitherto had worshipped. He confessed to his dalliance with the enamored Fox-Spirit. He frankly admitted that he had not behaved well in seducing Evarvan and then deserting her after her marvelous beauty had become to him an old story. He told of how Queen Freydis had come repeatedly to him with the most generous proffers of her realm and person; and he spoke of this matter with visible compunction, because he could not deny that after three or four bouts he had repulsed the infatuated poor lady rather rudely.

In fine, said Gerald, since every man ought honestly to acknowledge his own weaknesses, he could get no real peace in the Marches of Antan. So at the last he had stolen away, into this quiet, gray untroubled place, of his own accord, just to be rid of so many persons who took unfair advantage of his over-amiable and fiery nature....

And Horvendile, at the end of Gerald’s repentant narrative, observed: “I comprehend. You have been, in brief, the devil of a fellow and a sad rip among the ladies.”

“Oh, but you wrong me! Such a suspicion is very horrifying and quite unjust! No, it is merely that not even Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, is immune to over-constant temptation.”

And at that, Horvendile shrugged. “A god with so many fine titles is not to be argued with. In any case, do you be of good cheer, for even after all these regrettable amours, and beyond the mire that my swine delight in, the Princess still awaits you.”

“But in what place?” said Gerald, “and how is she called?”

“She awaits in every place so long as youth remains—”

“Upon my word, now, Horvendile, but that is the truth, and a rather plaguing truth!”

“—However, this especial Princess is called, as it chances, Evangeline—”

“Oh, come!” said Gerald, “come now, but really, my dear fellow—!”

“—And at your first sight of her you will be enraptured. For this Princess Evangeline is so surpassingly lovely that she excels all the other women your gaze has ever beheld—”

“I know,” said Gerald. “Her face is the proper shape, it is appropriately colored everywhere, and it is surmounted with an adequate quantity of hair.”

“—Nor,” Horvendile went on, with rising enthusiasm, “is it possible to find any defect in her features—”

“No: for, doubtless, the colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes are nicely matched, and her nose stands just equidistant between them. Beneath this is her mouth; and she has also a pair of ears.”

“In fine,” said Horvendile, with his hands aflourish above his attendant pigs, “the Princess is young, she exhibits no absolute deformity anywhere, and your enamored glance will therefore perceive in her no fault, because of that magic which in the Marches of Antan the Two Truths exercise over all vigorous young persons.”

“You very movingly depict a woman of extraordinary and, I have not the least doubt, resistless charm. Nevertheless, I cannot any longer be wandering about a place wherein there are only two truths, and where the magic of these Two Truths is forever meddling with my young body, for the gods of the Marches of Antan do not content me.”

Then Horvendile replied: “Men have found many gods. But these gods pass. They descend into Antan, and they do not return. One god and one goddess alone do not pass. They remain eternally, if but to weave eternally a mist about the seeing and the thinking of the young, and thus to secure the existence of yet other young persons within a month or so.”

“With observations to that same general effect,” Gerald answered, “I am not unfamiliar. But let us make the thing complete! Do you now voice, here in your murky pigsty, one or another long-winded restatement of the fact that time disastrously affects all organic material. You will then, I think, have summed up the entire philosophy of the Marches of Antan. Perhaps it is a true philosophy. Nevertheless, that philosophy is a morbid materialism such as does not amuse me, who am a self-respecting citizen of the United States of America. No: I had far rather play with a beautiful idea than with one utterly lacking in seductiveness. So I prefer to think that the gods and the dreams of men pass to a noble and a worthy goal—”

It was then that Horvendile sighed, a bit despondently. “Ah, Gerald, but how may you presume to speak of such matters, who did not attain to Antan?”

“My friend,” replied Gerald, affably, “I was too wise to risk any such indiscretion. No: I did not enter into my appointed kingdom; and I have destroyed it. Therefore it must remain, so long as I remain, whatever I choose to imagine it. I retain the privilege of playing with a beautiful idea, in just the proper half-remorseful frame of mind which begets the most luxuriant fancies—”

“But—” Horvendile began.

“No, my dear fellow, you are quite wrong.”

Horvendile said, “Still—”

“Yes, there is something in that, at first glance, yet it does not really touch the root of the matter.”

Horvendile protested, “I was but going to say—”

“I know! I perfectly comprehend your argument. And I admit that you phrase it forcefully. The trouble is that you are wrong in your underlying principle.”

Horvendile said, “However—”

“Yes, but not always,” Gerald stated. “For the one way for a poet to appreciate the true loveliness of a place is not ever to go to it. No, Horvendile, a poet is not to be fobbed off with facts. No matter what the surrounding facts might be, all poets from Prometheus to Jurgen have preferred a beautiful idea to play with. So a logical poet will always destroy his appointed kingdom, because in this way only can he convert it into a beautiful idea. Therefore for me, who am a poet of sorts, to have entered into my appointed kingdom would have been woefully shiftless. I would have had henceforward only one kingdom. But, as it is, I can remake the destroyed place several times a day, in my imaginings, and can every time rebuild it more beautifully. I have thus a thousand kingdoms, each one of them more lovely than the other. To-day it will be Evasherah who awaits me there, among all the splendor and the perfume and the sunlit lewdness of the most ancient East: to-morrow the sweet singing of feathery-legged Evadne will summon me to a quite different Antan, which then will be a sea-engirdled, low-lying tropic island: but the day after that, far more idyllic lures will be recalling me to that pastel-colored, pastoral and rather populous Antan which is inhabited by all the many dreams that I had in youth, and is to be made my strictly personal heaven by the pure lips of Evarvan. Whereas, upon yet other occasions,—when my turn of mind takes on a more scholastic turn,—I shall know that in Antan awaits me each paragraph of the profound, wide erudition of Evaine.... But more often, Horvendile, I shall think of yet another woman and of a boy child, who were not wonderful in anything, but who for a while seemed mine. And I shall believe that these two wait for me, in a much more prosaic Antan; and I shall know that no magic, howsoever mightier than the less aspiring dreams of my manhood, can afford to me anything more dear.... For all that one needs, Horvendile, I have had. Antan could boast of nothing more desirable, to me, than that which I have had. So now not any power can ever quell my thankfulness for those illusions which have made sport with me for my allotted while. And I cry out defiantly, among your waiting swine, in this gray place of endless ruining, I am content...!”

Then Horvendile replied: “A fool with so many fine words at his tongue’s tip, a fool also is not to be argued with. For it is a foolishness beyond any describing, to believe that Antan can be destroyed by you or by anybody else. Ah, no! your kingdom awaited you, poor Gerald: but you faltered, you fell away into domesticity,—and you talked! Now it is the Master Philologist who, through the might of that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished, has removed your kingdom from your reach, and from your seeing, and even from your quite whole-hearted belief, forever. Now it is your only comfort to poultice your failure with such foolish phrases. And now also it is I who tell you that for such faltering and for such failure, and for such phrases, there is possible but one answer.”

Thereafter Horvendile gave Gerald a queer word of power, and Horvendile took out of his pocket a little mirror three inches square. You heard in the duskiness a flapping of small vigorous wings. Then three white pigeons stood among the swine, at the feet of Horvendile. He did what was requisite: and Gerald thus came straightway into a place which was not unfamiliar.