"From the North, your Majesty," replied the boy.

"Fair scion of the North, I will swear you have no lies upon your lips.

What is your name?"

"Norman, if it please your Majesty."

"And are you Knight?"

"I am but squire, your Majesty."

"Then, my deliverer, since for years no one has cared for my ruined Majesty, save this, my last, my oldest, my only courtier, for my leech I count not; since you alone have proffered your service to a deserted and broken King, I am filled with good intentions towards you and propose to bestow upon you now at this moment the ancient and honourable distinction of knighthood, that you may bear me homage. Once more, will you swear to serve me faithfully?"

"Oh, certainly," said Norman, the more uncomfortable in that there was something rather n.o.ble about the King's madness.

"Then kneel," said the King, rising, as he said the words, in all his battered splendour, with the deep seriousness of a young child at play.

Solemnly and almost gracefully, with the wooden sword that a wise supervision allowed him, he dubbed Norman Knight, according to the famous custom of chivalry, which even in England is not quite dead.

"Rise, Sir Norman," he cried exultantly. "I have long waited for you, my deliverer and friend, for you and for this hour. I have no doubt of your valour: I have every confidence in your success. And as soon as the Dragon is killed the spell will be broken: as soon as the spell is broken my courtiers will return: as soon as my courtiers return their wives will come with them, and troops of beautiful women will kiss my hand. Every morning I will hunt to the sound of the horn--up the valley, down the valley, after the wild boar. Every evening we will eat his succulent flesh in this my ancestral hall. We will fill this room with pageantry yet, and hold such a feast as this cracked ceiling has not supervised for many a long year. And we will put cushions on this uncomfortable throne, and gild it over so as to have it more in keeping with our state and dignity. On the day you kill the Dragon, Knight of the North, all; the cathedral bells shall ring and the fountains shall run with wine, and the populace will shout and brandish flowers all day and wave lanterns all the night. But, ah...."

The voice dropped from ecstasy to fear and went on in a muddled murmur:

"But kill that Dragon soon, Knight of the North. Go out to him soon, go out this evening, before dusk. I would not pa.s.s another night like yesternight, with his eyes staring in through my head. He is a basilisk: his glance is death: go quickly. O go quickly--leave my presence--slay that dreadful beast!"

"We will go and slay him at once," replied the old man. "Come, young Englishman," he added in an aside, "I am willing enough to take the hint. I have no taste for this spectacle."

"Above all," the King cried after them, "bring me his head." As they turned and looked back from the door they saw that the King had again collapsed into his throne, and was again working his lips in silence.

Not till they were out in the garden again did Norman speak.

"What does it all mean? Who are you, and what have you shown me?" asked the lad. "This morning the world was as ordinary as a sixpenny magazine: and now my head is turning, and I am walking not like a man in a dream, but, what is worse, like a man in a painted picture. Those flowers are fatal and those walls fantastic. Quick, tell me, what does it all mean?

The sunshine is grimacing."

"You have seen," said the stranger, "the Secret of the Picturesque. For now we must talk up on a higher plane."

"d.a.m.n the higher plane: tell me who you are. But there, do you think I didn't know it all the time? You can be none other but that...."

"Not a word," said his companion, cutting him dead short. "You did not know it till now, when I intended to let you know. By '_it_' I mean either the Secret of the Picturesque or what you meant by '_it_.'

Besides, it's not true that I am this or am that; that depends on what I am."

"Puzzle me no longer: talk plain sense," implored Norman.

"Surely my words are plain enough. What is it you want to know?"

"Your name and history."

"I have no name, but my friends are allowed to call me the Old Man. My history is a dead secret. But if you are in earnest and willing to talk on the higher plane, I will explain to you the meaning of my remark about the Secret of the Picturesque."

"I am willing," said Norman in desperate bewilderment, and eager to hear any explanation about anything.

His guide seemed as mad as the King and needed humouring no less.

"Come to this bench then," said the Old Poet, "and I will ill.u.s.trate my meaning with a fable of my own composition."

And taking a ma.n.u.script from his pocket, without waiting for a word of acquiescence from Norman, who was getting very hungry, he read as follows:

"There was a man (so majestically made that I knew him at once to be the type of Man) walking along a narrow pathway that led from the valley up towards the hills, following a stream. As he strode along two enchanting girls came flying from the South, poised on dragonfly wings; one of them had a lyre in her hand, which she played merrily, and the other an antique scroll painted over with a mult.i.tude of amusing and delicate figures. The man was obviously pleased at the arrival of these spirits; he rejoiced in their companionship (as who would not?), and they all three sang and laughed together on the way. So intent was he on their diverting frolics that while crossing a narrow bridge of planks he nearly fell over into the river, and as time went on, and the pathway began to ascend the hillside more abruptly, I wondered if he was not beginning to find their company a little tedious. For while one of them buffeted him over the eyes with her playful wings, the other flung her robe, for amus.e.m.e.nt, round his naked body, and embarra.s.sed his movements.

However, he got rid of their teasing very soon, and at a point where the path entered a dense forest and they had no room to spread their wings I saw him laugh at their discomfiture. The track grew no better upon leaving the forest, for it was cut in the side of a precipice. The two maidens flew with weary and trembling wings over the horrible gulf, or else tore their dresses and bruised their feet trying to follow over the rocks. The man was hindered by them still, for he had to help them, and to judge by his slow progress and perpetual stumbling he was no skilled mountaineer. I wondered what miracle had preserved him as I watched his perilous ascent; and finally I saw that his right hand was grasping another hand, which had no visible body.

"Very naturally, when they arrived at a little dell very high up in the mountain, where there was a withered tree and a little moss, the girls implored the man to take a little refreshment. But the man's attention was fixed on the last portion of the ascent, a steep snow slope, at the top of which a black rock rose sheer out of the snow; let into the rock was a glittering bra.s.s door. So he refused to dawdle, and, gripping the hand, he began climbing at once. The women summoned all their courage and followed on foot: they were too tired to fly any more; and now one, and now the other, was glad of their companion's free left arm. At last they came to the door; the mysterious hand touched a spring; the door flew open to divine music and some one bade the traveller enter.

"But he turned away his eyes resolutely from the superb enchantments of the cave, and swore he would go back unless he could take with him the girls of the dragonfly wings, for the sake and memory of their old and sweet companionship. The poor fairies were bedraggled and muddy, their pretty wings hung limply down their backs; they could hardly smile when the man kissed them.

"'They cannot be admitted without initiation,' said the person to whom the hand belonged, 'and they will not endure.'

"'We will endure any pain, if we may only come in with the Man,'

they cried both together, and bent forward trying to pa.s.s in and to penetrate the depths of the cavern with longing looks.

"The hand persuaded the traveller to go inside the cave, and promised that his friends should follow. He obeyed, but taking no notice of its beauties stood listening behind the door. He heard the whistling of a scourge and gasps of pain. Then quiet; the door opened, and there appeared his two companions, yet changed, and with a deep fire in their eyes: and they had eagle pinions in the place of dragonfly wings."

"That is very charming indeed," said Norman. "But does it quite explain your remark?"

"If you were to read Plato with attention," said the old man, "you would acquire the habit of seizing the point of a parable."

"I have read the New Testament."

"But this is philosophy."

"And I am sure," said Norman, "that had Plato written that story you have told me, it would have acquired a great reputation. But as for the connexion of the parable and your remark, I conceive that in both you show a dislike of the picturesque, or pretty considering it the foe of beauty."

"The picturesque, my son, _is_ the beautiful but only a section thereof.

In this fable I have represented it as miniature beauty. The other fable of the picturesque I have no need to write; it is written over the world from the columns of Baalbek to the arches of Tintern and blazed on every stone of Alsander."

"You mean the picturesque which is decaying beauty?"

"I do," said the old man.

"I understand you, venerable Sir, but why are you so pa.s.sionate about it all?"

"Don't you see, boy, I love Alsander with a love a little different from the love of the tourist who comes to photograph the ruins. Oh! I have worked for her; but she is dying, dying, dying like a rose on a sapless tree."

"I am afraid you are right," said Norman, sadly. "After what you have shown me I have no hope for unfortunate Alsander."

"Impudent tourist! Do not dare blaspheme against the Queen of cities!"

growled the old man. There is more hope radiating from a wayside shrine of Alsander than from all the ten-million heretic barns of your greedy North.

But Norman was used by now to these intermittent bursts of fury. "At all events," he rejoined, "Alsander is no place for an Englishman. I have had enough of it. I have to-day seen its last and most tragic secret.

To-morrow I will go."