Yet other gossip came too from the court at Bellegarde and Storisende, as to how Manuel’s oldest daughter, Madame Melicent, was now betrothed to King Theodoret, and how upon the eve of her marriage she had disappeared out of Poictesme: and she was next heard of as living in unchristian splendor far oversea, as—if you elected to put it more gracefully than Coth did,—as the wife of Miramon Lluagor’s son and murderer, Demetrios.
“Why not?” said Coth. “Why should not snub-nosed Miramon’s swarthy lad be having his wenches when convenient? Parricide is no bar to fornication. They are sins committed with quite different weapons. And, for the rest, all sons are intent to do what this one has succeeded in doing. How, for that matter, did Dom Manuel, that famous Redeemer of yours, deal with his own father Oriander the Swimmer?”
That, it was hastily explained to Coth by his wife Azra, was but a part of the great Redeemer’s abnegation and self-denial. That was the atonement, and the immolation of his only beloved father, in order to expiate the gross sins of Poictesme—
“To expiate the sins of one person by killing another person,” replied Coth, “is not an atonement. It is nonsense.”
Well, but, it was furthermore explained, this atonement was a great and holy mystery; and, as such, it should be approached with reverence rather than mere rationality. Yet this high mystery of the atonement must undoubtedly symbolize the fact that, in order to attain perfection, Manuel had put off the ties of his flesh—
To which Coth answered, staring moodily at his wife Azra: “I saw that fight. He put off those ties of his flesh, and Oriander’s head from his body, with such pleasure as Manuel showed in no other combat. And all sons are like him. Have we not a son? Why do you keep pestering me?”
“I only meant—”
“Stop contradicting me!” But very swiftly Coth added, with a sort of gulp, “—my dear.”
For Coth was changing. He hunted no more, he had closed up his bear-pit. He seemed to prefer to be alone. Azra would very often find him huddled in his chair, not doing anything, but merely thinking: and then he would glare at her ferociously, without speaking; and she would go away from him, without speaking, because she also thought too frequently about their son for her own comfort.
Chapter XXXII. Time Gnaws At All
Emmerick came of age, and Madame Niafer’s rule was over, men said, because the Count would be swayed in all things by his cousin, the Bishop Ayrart of Montors, the same that afterward was Pope.
“The young church rat drives out the old one,” said Coth. “Now limping Niafer must learn to do without a night-light and to sleep without a halo on her pillow.”
But Ayrart’s supremacy was not for long, and Holy Holmendis remained about the court, after all, because, at just this time, lean Holden the Brave appeared at Storisende with a beautiful young gray-eyed stranger whom he introduced as the widow of Elphanor, King of Kings. People felt that for this Radegonde thus to be surviving her husband by more than thirteen centuries was a matter meritorious of explanation, but neither she nor Holden offered any.
The history of the love which had been between Radegonde and Holden is related elsewhere [2]: at this time it remained untold. But now, at this love’s ending, Radegonde found favor in the small greedy eyes of Count Emmerick, and she married him, nor was there ever at any season thereafter during the lifetime of Radegonde a question as to what person, howsoever flightily, ruled over Poictesme and Emmerick. And Radegonde—after a very prettily worded but frank proviso as to the divine right of princes, which rendered them and their wives responsible to Heaven directly, and to nobody else, as she felt sure dear Messire Holmendis quite understood,—Radegonde thereafter favored Holmendis and his wonder-working reforms, among the appropriate class of people, because she considered that his halo was distinctly decorative, and that a practicing saint about the court lent it, as she phrased the matter, an air.
Coth heard of these things; and he nodded his great dome-shaped head complacently enough. “A tree may be judged by its fruit. Now in England Dom Manuel’s long-legged bastard by Queen Alianora has returned his young wife to the nursery. He is to-day, they tell me,—in the approved fashion of all sons,—junketing about foreign courts with the Lord of Bulmer’s daughter. He, in brief, while the Barons steal England from him, is intent upon begetting his own bastards—”
“But you also, my husband—”
“Do you stop deafening me with your talk about irrelevant matters! In Philistia, Dom Manuel’s most precious bantling by Queen Freydis is working every manner of pagan iniquity, and has brought about the imprisonment, in infamous Antan, of his own mother, after having lived with her for some while in incest—”
“Nevertheless—”
“Azra, you have, as I tell you for your own good, a sad habit, and a very ill-bred habit also, of interrupting people, and that habit is quite insufferable. A tree, I repeat to you, may be judged by its fruit! Everybody knows that. Now, in our Poictesme, the increase of Dom Manuel’s body has, thus far, produced two strumpets and a guzzling cuckold—”
“But, even so—”
“You are talking nonsense. A tree, I say to you, may be judged by its fruit! I consider this exhibit very eloquently convincing as to the true nature of our Redeemer.”
Azra now answered nothing. And Coth fell to looking at his motto, rather gloomily.
“It was not that I meant,” he said, heroically, by and by, “to be rude, my dear. But I do hate a fool, and, in particular, an obstinate fool.”
Here too it must be recorded that upon the night of Radegonde’s marriage old Holden had the ill taste to die. That it was by his own hand, nobody questioned, but the affair was hushed up: and Count Emmerick’s married life thus started with gratifyingly less scandal than it culminated in.
Coth heard of this thing also. He looked at his motto, he recalled the love which he had borne for Holden in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody: and he mildly wondered that Holden, at his age, should still be clinging to the fallacy that one wench was much more desirable than another. By and large, thought Coth, they had but one use, for which any one of them would serve, if you still cared for such kickshaws. For himself, he was growing abstemious; and as often as not, found it rather a nuisance when any of his vassals married, and the Alderman of St. Didol was expected to do his seignorial duty by the new-made wife. Things everywhere were dwindling and deteriorating.
Even the great Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was wearing away, thus steadily, under the malice and greed of time. Donander of Evre was to-day the only one of Manuel’s barons who yet rode about the world, now and then, in search of good fighting and fine women. All the best of the fellowship were gone from life: the hypocrites and the fools alone remained, Coth estimated modestly. For he and that boy Donander were, at least, not hypocrites. . . .
And very often, too, Coth would look at his wife Azra, and would remember the girl that she had been in the times when Coth had not yet given over loving anybody. He rather liked her now. It was a felt loss that she no longer had the spirit to quarrel with anything like the fervor of their happier days: not for two years or more had Azra flung a really rousing taunt or even a dinner plate in his direction: and Coth pitied the poor woman’s folly in for an instant bothering about that young scoundrel of a Jurgen, who had set up as a poet, they said, and—in the company, one heard, of a grand duchess,—was rampaging everywhither about Italy, with never a word for his parents. Coth, now, did not worry over such ingratitude at alclass="underline" not less than twenty times a day he pointed out to his wife that he, for one, never wasted a thought upon the lecherous runagate.