The Cream of the Jest James Branch Cabell (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📖

“It is not possible for you to believe me, of course. And it may be that I, too, am only a figment of some greater dream, in just such case as yours, and that I, too, cannot understand. It may be the very cream of the jest that my country is no more real than Storisende. How could I judge if I, too, were a puppet? It is a thought which often troubles me.⁠ ⁠…”

Horvendile deliberated, then spoke more briskly. “At all events, I must return now to my own country, which I do not love as I love this bright fantastic tiny land that I created⁠—or seemed to create⁠—and wherein I was⁠—or seemed to be⁠—omnipotent.”

Horvendile drew a deep breath; and he looked downward at the corpse he had bereft of pride and daring and agility. “Farewell, Maugis! It would be indecorous, above all in omnipotence, to express anything save abhorrence toward you: yet I delighted in you as you lived and moved; and it was not because of displeasure with you that I brought you to disaster. Hence, also, one might evolve a heady analogue.⁠ ⁠…”

Guiron was wondering what he might do in accord with honor and with clemency. He did not stir as Horvendile came nearer. The clerk showed very pitiful and mean beside this stately champion in full armor, all shining metal, save for a surcoat of rose-colored stuff irregularly worked with crescents of silver.

“Farewell, Sir Guiron!” Horvendile then said. “There are no men like you in my country. I have found you difficult to manage; and I may confess now that I kept you so long imprisoned at Caer Idryn, and caused you to spend so many chapters oversea in heathendom, mainly in order that I might weave out my romance here untroubled by your disconcerting and rather wooden perfection. But you are not the person to suspect ill of your creator. You are all that I once meant to be, Guiron, all that I have forgotten how to be; and for a dead boy’s sake I love you.”

“Listen, poor wretch!” Sir Guiron answered, sternly; “you have this night done horrible mischief, you have caused the death of many estimable persons. Yet I have loved you, Horvendile, and I know that heaven, through heaven’s inscrutable wisdom, has smitten you with madness. That stair leads to the postern on the east side of the castle. Go forth from Storisende as quickly as you may, whilst none save us knows of your double-dealings. It may be that I am doing great wrong; but I cannot forget I have twice owed my life to you. If I must err at all hazards, I prefer to err upon the side of gratitude and mercy.”

“That is said very like you,” Horvendile replied. “Eh, it was not for nothing I endowed you with sky-towering magnanimity. Assuredly, I go, messire. And so, farewell, Ettarre!” Long and long Horvendile gazed upon the maiden. “There is no woman like you in my country, Ettarre. I can find no woman anywhere resembling you whom dreams alone may win to. It is a little thing to say that I have loved you; it is a bitter thing to know that I must live among, and pursue, and win, those other women.”

“My poor Horvendile,” she answered, very lovely in her compassion, “you are in love with fantasies.”

He held her hand, touching her for the last time; and he trembled. “Yes, I am in love with my fantasies, Ettarre; and, none the less, I must return into my own country and abide there always.⁠ ⁠…”

As he considered the future, in the man’s face showed only puzzled lassitude; and you saw therein a quaint resemblance to Maugis d’Aigremont. “I find my country an inadequate place in which to live,” says Horvendile. “Oh, many persons live there happily enough! or, at worst, they seem to find the prizes and the applause of my country worth striving for wholeheartedly. But there is that in some of us which gets no exercise there; and we struggle blindly, with impotent yearning, to gain outlet for great powers which we know that we possess, even though we do not know their names. And so, we dreamers wander at adventure to Storisende⁠—oh, and into more perilous realms sometimes!⁠—in search of a life that will find employment for every faculty we have. For life in my country does not engross us utterly. We dreamers waste there at loose ends, waste futilely. All which we can ever see and hear and touch there, we dreamers dimly know, is at best but a portion of the truth, and is possibly not true at all. Oh, yes! it may be that we are not sane; could we be sure of that, it would be a comfort. But, as it is, we dreamers only know that life in my country does not content us, and never can content us. So we struggle, for a tiny dear-bought while, into other and fairer-seeming lands in search of⁠—we know not what! And, after a little”⁠—he relinquished the maiden’s hands, spread out his own hands, shrugging⁠—“after a little, we must go back into my country and live there as best we may.”

A whimsical wise smile now visited Ettarre’s lips. Her hands went to her breast, and presently one half the broken sigil of Scoteia lay in Horvendile’s hand. “You will not always abide in your own country, Horvendile. Some day you will return to us at Storisende. The sign of the Dark Goddess will prove your safe-conduct then if Guiron and I be yet alive.”

Horvendile raised to his mouth the talisman warmed by contact with her sweet flesh. “It may be you will not live for a great while,” he says; “but that will befall through no lack of loving pains on your creator’s part.”

Then Horvendile left them. In the dark passageway he paused, looking back at Guiron and Ettarre for a heartbeat. Guiron and Ettarre had