Читать книгу The High Place - James Branch Cabell - Страница 9

VI

Philosophy of the Lower Class

FLORIAN parted from brown Janicot for that while, and mounted his white horse, and rode upward toward the castle of Brunbelois, without further thought of the girl at Storisende whom logic had picked out to be his wife. Florian was followed by the oxcart which Janicot had provided. Florian found all the monsters lying in a witless stupor. So he fearlessly set upon and killed the black bleps and the crested strycophanês and the grey calcar.

He passed on upward, presently to decapitate the eale, which writhed its movable horns very remarkably in dying. Florian went on intrepidly, and despatched the golden-maned and whiskered leucrocotta. The tarandus, farther up the road, proved more troublesome: this monster had, after its sly habit, taken on the colouring of the spot in which it lay concealed, so that it was hard to find: and when found, its hide was so tough as to resist for some while the edge of Florian’s sword. The thin and flabby neck of the catoblepas was in contrast gratifyingly easy to sever: indeed, this was in all respects a contemptible monster, dingily coloured, and in no way formidable now that its eyes were shut.

Florian’s heroic butchery was well-nigh over: so he passed on cheerily to the next turn in the road; and in that place a moment later the bright red mantichora was impotently thrusting out its sting in the death agony, a sudden wind came up from the west, and the posture of the sun was changed.

Having dauntlessly performed these unmatched feats, the champion paused to reward himself with a pinch of snuff. The lid of his snuff-box bore the portrait of his dear friend and patron, Philippe d’Orléans, and it seemed odd to be regarding familiar features in these mischancy uplands. Then Florian refreshed, looked about him. Three incredibly weather-beaten sheep were grazing to his right: to the left he saw, framed by the foliage upon each side of and overhanging the green roadway, the castle of Brumbelois.

Thus one by one did Florian cut off the heads of the seven wardens, with real regret—excepting only when he killed the catoblepas—that his needs compelled him to destroy such colourful and charming monsters. The two remarkably hairy persons, without ever speaking, lifted each enormous head, one by one into, the cart. The party mounted within eyeshot of Brunbelois thus triumphantly. And at Brunbelois, where the old time yet lingered, the hour was not afternoon but early morning: and at the instant Florian slew the mantichora all the persons within the castle had awakened from what they thought was one night’s resting.

Now the first of the awakened Peohtes whom Florian encountered was a milkmaid coming down from Brumbelois with five cows. What Florian could see of her was pleasurably shaped and tinted. He looked long at her.

“To pause now for any frivolous reason,” reflected Florian, “or to disfigure in any way the moment in which I approach my life’s desire, is of course unthinkable——”

Meanwhile the milkmaid looked at Florian. She smiled, and her naturally high colouring was heightened.

“So I do not pause for frivolous reasons. I pause because one must be logical. For, now that I think of it, to rescue people from enchantment is a logical proceeding only when one is certain that this rescuing involves some positive gain to the world. Do you drive on a little way, and wait for me,” said Florian, aloud, to his hirsute attendants, “while I discover from this enticing creature what sort of persons we have resurrected.”

The hairy servants of Janicot obeyed. Florian, very spruce in bottle-green and silver, dismounted from his white horse and, in the ancient roadway now overgrown with grass, held amicable discourse with this age-old milkmaid. She proved at bottom not wholly unsophisticated. And, when they parted, each had been agreeably convinced that the persons of one era are much like those of another.

Florian thus came to the gates of Brunbelois logically reassured that he had done well in reviving such persons, even at the cost of destroying charming monsters and of the labour involved in removing so many heads. He counted smilingly on his fingertips, but such was his pleased abstraction that he miscalculated, and made the total eight.

He found that, now the enchantment was lifted, Brunbelois showed in every respect as a fine old castle of the architecture indigenous to fairy tales. Flags were flying from the turrets; sentinels, delightfully shiny in the early morning sunlight, were pacing the walls, on the look-out for enemies that had died many hundred years ago; and at the gate was a night-porter not yet off duty. This porter wore red garments worked with yellow thistles, and he seemed dejected but philosophic.

“Whence come you, in those queer dusty clothes?” inquired the porter. “And what is your business here?”

“Announce to King Helmas,” said Florian, as he brushed the dust from his bottle-green knees, and saw with regret that nothing could be done about the grass-stains, which possibly had got there when he knelt to cut off the tarandus’ head—“announce to King Helmas that the lord of Puysange is at hand.”

“You are talking, sir,” the porter answered resignedly, “most regrettable nonsense. For the knife is in the collops, the mead is in the drinking horn, the eggs are upon the toast, the minstrels are in the gallery, and King Helmas is having breakfast.”

“None the less, I have important business with him——”

“Equally none the less, nobody may enter at this hour unless he is the son of a king of a privileged country or a craftsman bringing his craft.”

“Parbleu, but that is it, precisely. For I bring in that waggon very fine samples of my craft.”

The porter left his small grilled lodge. He looked at the piled heads of the monsters, he poked them with his finger, and he said mildly, “Why, but did you ever!” Then he returned to the gate.

“Now, my friend,” said Florian, with the appropriate stateliness, “I charge you, by all the colour and ugliness of these samples of my craft, to announce to your king that the lord of Puysange is at the gate with tidings, and with proof, that the enchantment is happily lifted from this castle.”

“So there has been an enchantment. I suspected something of the sort when I came to, after nodding a bit like in the night, and noticed the remarkably thick forest that had grown up everywhere around us.”

Florian observed, to this degraded underling who seemed not capable of appreciating Florian’s fine exploits, “Well, certainly you take all marvels very calmly.”

The sad porter replied that, with a reigning family so given to high temper and sorcery, the retainers of Brunbelois were not easily astounded. Something in the shape of an enchantment had been predicted in the kitchen last night, he continued, after the notable quarrel between Madame Mélusine and her father.

“My friend,” said Florian, “that was not last night. You speak of a disastrous family jar in which the milk of human kindness curdled several centuries ago. Since then there has been an enchantment laid upon Brunbelois: and the spell was lifted only to-day.”

“Do you mean, sir, that I am actually several hundred and fifty-two years old?”

“Somewhere in that November neighbourhood,” said Florian. And he steeled himself against the other’s outburst of horror and amazement.

“To think of that now!” said the porter. “I certainly never imagined it would come to that. However, it is always a great comfort to reflect it hardly matters what happens to us, is it not, sir?”

You could not but find, in this stubborn unwillingness to face the magnitude of Florian’s exploits, something horribly prosaic and callous; but, none the less, Florian civilly asked the man’s meaning; and the dejected porter replied:

“It is just a sort of fancying, sir, that one wanders into after watching the stars, as I do in the way of business, night after night. One gets to reading them and to a sort of glancing over of the story that is written in their courses. Yes, sir, one does fall into the habit, injudiciously perhaps, but then there is nothing else much to do. And one does not find there quite, as you might put it, the excitement over the famousness of kings and the ruining of empires that one might reasonably look for. And one does not find anything at all there about porters, I can assure you, sir, because they are not important enough to figure in that story. There is no more writing in the stars about night-porters than there is about bumble-bees; and that is always a great comfort, sir, when one feels low-spirited. Because I would not care to be in that story, myself, for it is not light pleasant reading.”

“A pest! so you inform me, with somewhat the gay levity of an oyster, that you can read the stars!”

The porter admitted dolefully, “One does come to it, sir, in my way of business.”

“And how many chapters, I wonder, are written in the heavens about me?”

The porter looked at Florian for some while. The porter said, now even more dolefully: “I would not be surprised if there was a line somewhere about you, sir. For your planet is Venus, and her people do get written about in an excessive way, there is no denying it. And I would not care to be one of them, myself, but of course there is no accounting for tastes, even if anybody anywhere had any say in the matter.”

“Parbleu, you may be right about my planet,” said Florian, smiling for reasons of his own. “Yet, as an artless veteran of the first and second Pubic Wars, I do not see how you can be certain.”

“Because of your corporature, sir,” replied the porter, “He that is born under this planet is of fair but not tall stature, his complexion being white but tending a little to darkness. He has fine black hair, the brows arched, the face pretty fleshy, a cherry lip, a rolling wandering eye. He has a love-dimple in his cheek, and shows in all as one desirous of trimming and making himself neat and complete in clothes and body. Now these things I see in your corporature and in the fretfulness with which you look at the grass-stains on your knees. So your planet is evident.”

“That is possible, your speech has a fine ring of logic, and logic is less common than hens’ teeth. Upon what sort of persons does this honourable planet attend?”

“If you could call it attending, sir. For I must tell you that these planets have a sad loose way of not devoting their really undivided attention to looking after the affairs of any one particular gentleman, not even when they see him most magnificent in bottle-green and silver.”

“They are as remiss, then, as you are precise. So do you choose your own verb, and tell me——”

“Sir,” replied the porter, “I regret to inform you that the person whom Venus governs is riotous, expensive, wholly given to dissipation and lewd companies of women and boys. He is nimble in entering unlawful beds, he is incestuous, he is an adulterer, he is a mere skip-jack, spending all his means among scandalous loose people: and he is in nothing careful of the things of this life or of anything religious.”

Florian brightened. “That also sounds quite logical—in the main—for you describe the ways of the best-thought-of-persons since the old King’s death. And one of course endeavours not to offend against the notions of one’s neighbours by seeming a despiser of accepted modes. But I must protest to you, my friend, you are utterly wrong in the article of religion——”

“Oh, if you come hither to dispute about religion,” said the porter, “the priests of Llaw Gyffes will attend to you. They love converting people from religious errors, bless you, with their wild horses and their red-hot irons. But, for one, I never argue about religion. You conceive, sir, there is an entire chapter devoted to the subject, in the writing we were just talking over: and I have read that chapter. So I say nothing about religion. I like a bit of fun, myself: but when you find it there, of all places, and on that scale——” Again the dejected porter sighed. “However, I shall say no more. Instead, with your permission, Messire de Puysange, I shall just step in, and send up your news about the enchantment.”

This much the porter did, and Florian was left alone to amuse himself by looking about. Through the gateway he saw into a court paved with cobble-stones. Upon each side of the gate was an octagonal granite tower with iron-barred windows: each tower was three stories in height, and the battlements were coped with some sort of bright red stone.

Then Florian, for lack of other diversion, turned and looked idly down the valley, toward Poictesme. There he saw something rather odd. A mile-long bridge was flung across the west, and over it passed figures. First came the appearance of a bear waddling upon his hind legs, followed by an ape, and then by a huddled creature with long legs. Florian saw also an unclothed woman, who danced as she went: over her head fluttered a bird, and by means of a chain she haled after her a sedentarily disposed pig. An incredibly old man followed, dressed in faded blue, and he carried upon his arm an open basket. Last came a shaggy dog, barking, it seemed, at all.

These figures were like clouds in their station and in their indeterminable colouring and vague outline, but their moving was not like the drifting of clouds: it was the walking of living creatures. Florian for an instant wondered as to the nature and the business of these beings that were passing over and away from Poictesme. He shrugged. He believed the matter to be no concern of one whose interests overhead were all in the efficient hands of Holy Hoprig.