Said Niafer, impatiently, "Do you intend to keep me here forever under these dark twinkling trees, with your thin little talking, while Manuel stays unhappy through his want of me?"

And Misery answered nothing as he departed from Niafer, for a season.

Such were the happenings in the vision witnessed by Dom Manuel (as Dom Manuel afterward declared) while he sat playing upon the flageolet.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXIII

Manuel Gets His Desire

Now the tale tells that all this while, near the gray hut in Dun Vlechlan, the earthen image of Niafer lay drying out in the November sun; and that gray Dom Manuel--no longer the florid boy who had come into Dun Vlechlan,--sat at the feet of the image, and played upon a flageolet the air which Suskind had taught him, and with which he had been used to call young Suskind from her twilit places when Manuel was a peasant tending swine. Now Manuel was an aging n.o.bleman, and Niafer was now a homeless ghost, but the tune had power over them, none the less, for its burden was young love and the high-hearted time of youth; so that the melody which once had summoned Suskind from her low red-pillared palace in the doubtful twilight, now summoned Niafer resistlessly from paradise, as Manuel thriftily made use of the odds and ends which he had learned from three women to win him a fourth woman.

The spirit of Niafer entered at the mouth of the image. Instantly the head sneezed, and said, "I am unhappy." But Manuel kept on playing. The spirit descended further, bringing life to the lungs and the belly, so that the image then cried, "I am hungry." But Manuel kept on playing. So the soul was drawn further and further, until Manuel saw that the white image had taken on the colors of flesh, and was moving its toes in time to his playing; and so knew that the entire body was informed with life.

He cast down the flageolet, and touched the breast of the image with the ancient formal gestures of the old Tuyla mystery, and he sealed the mouth of the image with a kiss, so that the spirit of Niafer was imprisoned in the image which Manuel had made. Under his lips the lips which had been Misery's cried, "I love." And Niafer rose, a living girl just such as Manuel had remembered for more than a whole year: but with that kiss all memories of paradise and all the traits of angelhood departed from her.

"Well, well, dear snip," said Manuel, the first thing of all, "now it is certainly a comfort to have you back again."

Niafer, even in the rapture of her happiness, found this an unimpa.s.sioned greeting from one who had gone to unusual lengths to recover her companionship. Staring, she saw that Manuel had all the marks of a man in middle life, and spoke as became appearances. For it was at the price of his youth that Manuel had recovered the woman whom his youth desired: and Misery had subtly evened matters by awarding an aging man the woman for whose sake a lad had fearlessly served Misery.

There was no longer any such lad, for the conquered had destroyed the conqueror.

Then, after a moment's consideration of this tall gray stranger, Niafer also looked graver and older. Niafer asked for a mirror: and Manuel had none.

"Now but certainly I must know at once just how faithfully you have remembered me," says Niafer.

He led the way into the naked and desolate November forest, and they came to the steel-colored Wolflake hard by the gray hut: and Niafer found she was limping, for Manuel had not got her legs quite right, so that for the rest of her second life she was lame. Then Niafer gazed for a minute, or it might be for two minutes, at her reflection in the deep cold waters of the Wolflake.

"Is this as near as you have come to remembering me, my dearest!" she said, dejectedly, as she looked down at Manuel's notion of her face. For the appearance which Niafer now wore she found to be very little like that which Niafer remembered as having been hers, in days wherein she had been tolerably familiar with the Lady Gisele's mirrors; and it was a grief to Niafer to see how utterly the dearest dead go out of mind in no long while.

"I have forgotten not one line or curve of your features," says Manuel, stoutly, "in all these months, nor in any of these last days that have pa.s.sed as years. And when my love spurred me to make your image, Niafer, my love loaned me unwonted cunning. Even by ordinary, they tell me, I have some skill at making images: and while not for a moment would I seem to boast of that skill, and not for worlds would I annoy you by repeating any of the complimentary things which have been said about my images,--by persons somewhat more appreciative, my dear, of the toil and care that goes to work of this sort,--I certainly think that in this instance n.o.body has fair reason to complain."

She looked at his face now: and she noted what the month of living with Beda, with whom a day is as a year, had done to the boy's face which she remembered. Count Manuel's face was of remodeled stuff: youth had gone out of it, and the month of years had etched wrinkles in it, success had hardened and caution had pinched and self-complacency had kissed it. And Niafer sighed again, as they sat reunited under leafless trees by the steel-colored Wolflake.

"There is no circ.u.mventing time and death, then, after all," said Niafer, "for neither of us is now the person that ascended Vraidex. No matter: I love you, Manuel, and I am content with what remains of you: and if the body you have given me is to your will it is to my will."

But now three rascally tall ragged fellows, each blind in one eye, and each having a thin peaked beard, came into the opening before the gray hut, trampling the dead leaves there as they shouted for Mimir. "Come out!" they cried: "come out, you miserable Mirmir, and face those three whom you have wronged!"

Dom Manuel rose from the bank of the Wolflake, and went toward the shouters. "There is no Mimir," he told them, "in Dun Vlechlan, or not at least in this peculiarly irrational part of the forest."

"You lie," they said, "for even though you have hitched a body to your head we recognize you." They looked at Niafer, and all three laughed cruelly. "Was it for this hunched, draggled, mud-faced wench that you left us, you squinting old villain? And have you so soon forgotten the vintner's parlor at Neogreant, and what you did with the gold plates?"

"No, I have not forgotten these things, for I never knew anything about them," said Manuel.

Said one of the knaves, twirling fiercely his moustachios: "Hah, shameless Mimir, do you look at me, who have known you and your blind son Oriander, too, to be unblushing knaves for these nine centuries!

Now, I suppose, you will be denying the affair of the squirrel also?"

"Oh, be off with your nonsense!" says Manuel, "for I have not yet had twenty-two years of living, and I never saw you before, and I hope never to see you again."

But they all set upon him with cutla.s.ses, so there was nothing remaining save to have out his sword and fight. And when each of these one-eyed persons had vanished curiously under his death-wound, Manuel told Niafer it was a comfort to find that the month of years had left him a fair swordsman for all that his youth was gone; and that he thought they had better be leaving this part of the high woods of Dun Vlechlan, wherein unaccountable things took place, and all persons behaved unreasonably.

"Were these wood-spirits unreasonable," asks Niafer, "in saying that the countenance and the body you have given me are ugly?"

"My dear," replied Manuel, "it was their saying that which made me try to avoid the conflict, because it does not look well, not even in dealing with demons, to injure the insane."

"Manuel, and can it be you who are considering appearances?"

Dom Manuel said gravely: "My dealings with Misery and with Misery's kindred have taught me many things which I shall never forget nor very willingly talk about. One of these teachings, though, is that in most affairs there is a middle road on which there is little traffic and comparatively easy going. I must tell you that the company I have been in required a great deal of humoring, for of course it is not safe to trifle with any evil principle. No, no, one need not absolutely and openly defy convention, I perceive, in order to follow after one's own thinking," says Manuel, shrewdly, and waggling a gray beard.

"I am so glad you have learned that at last! At least, I suppose, I am glad," said Niafer, a little wistfully, as she recalled young Manuel of the high head.

"But, as I was saying, I now estimate that these tattered persons who would have prevented my leaving, as well as the red fellow that would have hindered my entering, this peculiarly irrational part of the forest, were spiritual intruders into Misery's domain whom Misery had driven out of their wits. No, Niafer, I voice no criticism, because with us two this Misery of earth, whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina, has dealt very handsomely. It troubles me to suspect that he was also called Mimir; but of this we need not speak, because a thing done has an end, even a killed grandfather. Nevertheless, I think that Dun Vlechlan is unwholesome, and I am of the opinion that you and I will be more comfortable elsewhere."

"But must we go back to looking after pigs, dear Manuel, or are you now too old for that?"

Dom Manuel smiled, and you saw that he retained at least his former lordliness. "No, now that every obligation is lifted, and we are reunited, dear snip, I can at last go traveling everywhither, so that I may see the ends of this world and judge them. And we will do whatever else we choose, for, as I must tell you, I am now a n.o.bleman with lackeys and meadowlands and castles of my own, if only I could obtain possession of them."

"This is excellent hearing," said Niafer, "and much better than pig-stealing, and I am glad that the world has had sense enough to appreciate you, Manuel, and you it. And we will have rubies in my coronet, because I always fancied them. Now do you tell me how it all happened, and what I am to be called countess of. And we will talk about that traveling later, for I have already traveled a great distance today, but we must certainly have rubies."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXIV

Three Women

So Manuel put on his armor, and with Manuel telling as much as he thought wise of the adventures which he had encountered while Niafer was dead, they left this peculiarly irrational part of the forest, and fared out of the ruined November woods; and presently, in those barren fields that descend toward the sand dunes of Quentavic, came face to face with Queen Freydis and the Princess Alianora, where these two royal ladies and many other fine people rode toward the coast.

Alianora went magnificently this morning, on a white horse, and wearing a kirtle of changeable green like the sea's green in sunlight: her golden hair was bound with a gold frontlet wherein were emeralds.

Freydis, dark and stately, was in crimson embroidered with small gold stars and ink-horns: a hooded falcon sat on her gloved wrist.

Now Freydis and Alianora stared at the swarthy, flat-faced, limping peasant girl in brown drugget that was with Count Manuel. Then Alianora stared at Freydis.

"Is it for this dingy cripple," says Alianora, with her proud fine face all wonder, "that Dom Manuel has forsaken us and has put off his youth?

Why, the girl is out and out ugly!"

"Our case is none the better for that," replied Freydis, the wise Queen, whose gazing rested not upon Niafer but on Manuel.

"Who are those disreputable looking, bold-faced creatures that are making eyes at you?" says Niafer.

And Manuel, marveling to meet these two sorceresses together, replied, as he civilly saluted them from a little distance, "Two royal ladies, who would be well enough were it not for their fondness for having their own way."