Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship by James Branch Cabell (top 100 books to read txt) 📕

I think the boy must be the more like Perion. I think she must be very happy when she lifts that boy into her lap."

Thus Melicent; and her full-blooded husband was not much more light-hearted. He went away from Nacumera shortly, in a shaking rage which robbed him of his hands' control, intent to kill and pillage, and, in fine, to make all other persons share his misery.

23.

How Demetrios Cried Farewell

And then one day, when the proconsul had been absent some six weeks, Ahasuerus fetched Dame Melicent into the Court of Stars. Demetrios lay upon the divan supported by many pillows, as though he had not ever stirred since that first day when an unfettered Melicent, who was a princess then, exulted in her youth and comeliness.

"Stand there," he said, and did not move at all, "that I may see my purchase."

And presently he smiled, though wryly. Demetrios said next:

"Of my own will I purchased misery. Yea, and death also. It is amusing…. Two days ago, in a brief skirmish, a league north of Calonak, the Prankish leader met me hand to hand. He has endeavoured to do this for a long while. I also wished it. Nothing could be sweeter than to feel the horse beneath me wading in his blood, I thought.. Ey, well, he dismounted me at the first encounter, though I am no weakling. I cannot understand quite how it happened. Pious people will say some deity was offended, but, for my part, I think my horse stumbled. It does not seem to matter now. What really matters, more or less, is that it would appear the man broke my backbone as one snaps a straw, since I cannot move a limb of me."

"Seignior," said Melicent, "you mean that you are dying!"

He answered, "Yes; but it is a trivial discomfort, now I see that it grieves you a little."

She spoke his name some three times, sobbing. It was in her mind even then how strange the happening was that she should grieve for Demetrios.

"O Melicent," he harshly said, "let us have done with lies! That Frankish captain who has brought about my death is Perion de la Forêt. He has not ever faltered in the duel between us since your paltry emeralds paid for his first armament.—Why, yes, I lied. I always hoped the man would do as in his place I would have done. I hoped in vain. For many long and hard-fought years this handsome maniac has been assailing Nacumera, tirelessly. Then the water-demon's daughter, that strange and wayward woman of Brunbelois, attempted to ensnare him. And that too was in vain. She failed, my spies reported—even Dame Mélusine, who had not ever failed before in such endeavours."

"But certainly the foul witch failed!" cried Melicent. A glorious change had come into her face, and she continued, quite untruthfully, "Nor did I ever believe that this vile woman had made Perion prove faithless."

"No, the fool's lunacy is rock, like yours. En cor gentil domnei per mort no passa, as they sing in your native country…. Ey, how indomitably I lied, what pains I took, lest you should ever know of this! And now it does not seem to matter any more…. The love this man bears for you," snarled Demetrios, "is sprung of the High God whom we diversely worship. The love I bear you is human, since I, too, am only human." And Demetrios chuckled. "Talk, and talk, and talk! There is no bird in any last year's nest."

She laid her hand upon his unmoved hand, and found it cold and swollen. She wept to see the broken tyrant, who to her at least had been not all unkind.

He said, with a great hunger in his eyes:

"So likewise ends the duel which was fought between us two. I would salute the victor if I could. … Ey, Melicent, I still consider you and Perion are fools. We have a not intolerable world to live in, and common-sense demands we make the most of every tidbit this world affords. Yet you can find in it only an exercising-ground for infatuation, and in all its contents—pleasures and pains alike—only so many obstacles for rapt insanity to override. I do not understand this mania; I would I might have known it, none the less. Always I envied you more than I loved you. Always my desire was less to win the love of Melicent than to love Melicent as Melicent loved Perion. I was incapable of this. Yet I have loved you. That was the reason, I believe, I put aside my purchased toy." It seemed to puzzle him.

"Fair friend, it is the most honourable of reasons. You have done chivalrously. In this, at least, you have done that which would be not unworthy of Perion de la Forêt." A woman never avid for strained subtleties, it may be that she never understood, quite, why Demetrios laughed.

He said:

"I mean to serve you now, as I had always meant to serve you some day. Ey, yes, I think I always meant to give you back to Perion as a free gift. Meanwhile to see, and to writhe in seeing your perfection, has meant so much to me that daily I have delayed such a transfiguration of myself until to-morrow." The man grimaced. "My son Orestes, who will presently succeed me, has been summoned. I will order that he conduct you at once into Perion's camp—yonder by Quesiton. I think I shall not live three days."

"I would not leave you, friend, until—"

His grin was commentary and completion equally. Demetrios observed:

"A dead dog has no teeth wherewith to serve even virtue. Oh, no, my women hate you far too greatly. You must go straightway to this Perion, while Demetrios of Anatolia is alive, or else not ever go."

She had no words. She wept, and less for joy of winning home to Perion at last than for her grief that Demetrios was dying. Woman-like, she could remember only that the man had loved her in his fashion. And, woman-like, she could but wonder at the strength of Perion.

Then Demetrios said:

"I must depart into a doubtful exile. I have been powerful and valiant, I have laughed loud, I have drunk deep, but heaven no longer wishes Demetrios to exist. I am unable to support my sadness, so near am I to my departure from all I have loved. I cry farewell to all diversions and sports, to well-fought battles, to furred robes of vair and of silk, to noisy merriment, to music, to vain-gloriously coloured gems, and to brave deeds in open sunlight; for I desire—and I entreat of every person—only compassion and pardon.

"Chiefly I grieve because I must leave Melicent behind me, unfriended in a perilous land, and abandoned, it may be, to the malice of those who wish her ill. I was a noted warrior, I was mighty of muscle, and I could have defended her stoutly. But I lie broken in the hand of Destiny. It is necessary I depart into the place where sinners, whether crowned or ragged, must seek for unearned mercy. I cry farewell to all that I have loved, to all that I have injured; and so in chief to you, dear Melicent, I cry farewell, and of you in chief I crave compassion and pardon.

"O eyes and hair and lips of Melicent, that I have loved so long, I do not hunger for you now. Yet, as a dying man, I cry to the clean soul of Melicent—the only adversary that in all my lifetime I who was once Demetrios could never conquer. A ravening beast was I, and as a beast I raged to see you so unlike me. And now, a dying beast, I cry to you, but not for love, since that is overpast. I cry for pity that I have not earned, for pardon which I have not merited. Conquered and impotent, I cry to you, O soul of Melicent, for compassion and pardon.

"Melicent, it may be that when I am dead, when nothing remains of Demetrios except his tomb, you will comprehend I loved, even while I hated, what is divine in you. Then since you are a woman, you will lift your lover's face between your hands, as you have never lifted my face, Melicent, and you will tell him of my folly merrily; yet since you are a woman, you will sigh afterward, and you will not deny me compassion and pardon."

She gave him both—she who was prodigal of charity. Orestes came, with Ahasuerus at his heels, and Demetrios sent Melicent into the Women's Garden, so that father and son might talk together. She waited in this place for a half-hour, just as the proconsul had commanded her, obeying him for the last time. It was strange to think of that.

* * * * *

It was not gladness which Melicent knew for a brief while. Rather, it was a strange new comprehension of the world. To Melicent the world seemed very lovely.

Indeed, the Women's Garden on this morning lacked nothing to delight each sense. Its hedges were of flowering jessamine; its walkways were spread with new sawdust tinged with crocus and vermilion and with mica beaten into a powder; and the place was rich in fruit-bearing trees and welling waters. The sun shone, and birds chaunted merrily to the right hand and to the left. Dog-headed apes, sacred to the moon, were chattering in the trees. There was a statue in this place, carved out of black stone, in the likeness of a woman, having enamelled eyes and three rows of breasts, with the lower part of her body confined in a sheath; and upon the glistening pedestal of this statue chameleons sunned themselves with distended throats. Round about Melicent were nodding armaments of roses and gillyflowers and narcissi and amaranths, and many violets and white lilies, and other flowers of all kinds and colours.

To Melicent the world seemed very lovely. Here was a world created by Eternal Love that people might serve love in it not all unworthily. Here were anguishes to be endured, and time and human frailty and temporal hardship—all for love to mock at; a sea or two for love to sever, a man-made law or so for love to override, a shallow wisdom for love to deny, in exultance that these ills at most were only corporal hindrances. This done, you have earned the right to come—come hand-in-hand—to heaven whose liege-lord was Eternal Love.

Thus Melicent, who knew that Perion loved her.

She sat on a stone bench. She combed her golden hair, not heeding the more coarse gray hairs which here and there were apparent nowadays. A peacock came and watched her with bright, hard, small eyes; and he craned his glistening neck this way and that way, as though he were wondering at this other shining and gaily coloured creature, who seemed so happy.

She did not dare to think of seeing Perion again. Instead, she made because of him a little song, which had not any words, so that it is not possible here to retail this song.

Thus Melicent, who knew that Perion loved her.

24.

How Orestes Ruled

Melicent returned into the Court of Stars; and as she entered, Orestes lifted one of the red cushions from Demetrios' face. The eyes of Ahasuerus, who stood by negligently, were as expressionless as the eyes of a snake.

"The great proconsul laid an inconvenient mandate upon me," said Orestes. "The great proconsul has been removed from us in order that his splendour may enhance the glories of Elysium."

She saw that the young man had smothered his own father in the flesh as Demetrios lay helpless; and knew thereby that Orestes was indeed the son of Demetrios.

"Go," this Orestes said thereafter; "go, and remember I am master here."

Said Melicent, "And by which door?" A little hope there was as yet.

But he, as half in shame, had pointed to the entrance of the Women's
Garden. "I have no enmity against you, outlander. Yet my mother desires
to talk with you. Also there is some bargaining to be completed with
Ahasuerus here."

Then Melicent knew what had prompted the proconsul's murder. It seemed unfair Callistion should hate her with such bitterness; yet Melicent remembered certain thoughts concerning Dame Mélusine, and did not wonder at Callistion's mania half so much as did Callistion's