“What nonsense!” says Niafer, “when I have to be changing every one of the pink bows on Melicent’s caps for blue bows.”
“Still, Niafer, it is eminently necessary for us to be placating the Philistines in all respects, in this delicate matter of your having a baby.”
Niafer grumbled, but obeyed. She presently lay in the golden bed of Freydis: then Manuel duly looked at the contents of the small heaving bundle at Niafer’s side: and whether or no he scaled the conventional peaks of emotion was nobody’s concern save Manuel’s. He began, in any event, to talk in the vein which fathers ordinarily feel such high occasions to demand. But Niafer, who was never romantic nowadays, merely said that, anyhow, it was a blessing it was all over, and that she hoped, now, they would soon be leaving Sargyll.
“But Freydis is so kind, my dear,” said Manuel, “and so fond of you!”
“I never in my life,” declared Niafer, “knew anybody to go off so terribly in their looks as that two-faced cat has done since the first time I saw her prancing on her tall horse and rolling her snake eyes at you. As for being fond of me, I trust her exactly as far as I can see her.”
“Yet, Niafer, I have heard you declare, time and again—”
“But if you did, Manuel, one has to be civil.”
Manuel shrugged, discreetly. “You women!” he observed, discreetly.
“—As if it were not as plain as the nose on her face—and I do not suppose that even you, Manuel, will be contending she has a really good nose—that the woman is simply itching to make a fool of you, and to have everybody laughing at you, again! Manuel, I declare I have no patience with you when you keep arguing about such unarguable facts!”
Manuel, exercising augmented discretion, now said nothing whatever.
“—And you may talk yourself black in the face, Manuel, but nevertheless I am going to name the child Melicent, after my own mother, as soon as a priest can be fetched from the mainland to christen her. No, Manuel, it is all very well for your dear friend to call herself a gray witch, but I do not notice any priests coming to this house unless they are especially sent for, and I draw my own conclusions.”
“Well, well, let us not argue about it, my dear.”
“Yes, but who started all this arguing and faultfinding, I would like to know!”
“Why, to be sure I did. But I spoke without thinking. I was wrong. I admit it. So do not excite yourself, dear snip.”
“—And as if I could help the child’s not being a boy!”
“But I never said—”
“No, but you keep thinking it, and sulking is the one thing I cannot stand. No, Manuel, no, I do not complain, but I do think that, after all I have been through with, sleeping around in tents, and running away from Northmen, and never having a moment’s comfort, after I had naturally figured on being a real countess—” Niafer whimpered sleepily.
“Yes, yes,” says Manuel, stroking her soft crinkly hair.
“—And with that silky hellcat watching me all the time—and looking ten years younger than I do, now that you have got my face and legs all wrong—and planning I do not know what—”
“Yes, to be sure,” says Manuel, soothingly: “you are quite right, my dear.”
So a silence fell, and presently Niafer slept. Manuel sat with hunched shoulders, watching the wife he had fetched back from paradise at the price of his youth. His face was grave, his lips were puckered and protruded. He smiled by and by, and he shook his head. He sighed, not as one who is grieved, but like a man perplexed and a little weary.
Now some while after Niafer was asleep, and when the night was fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. Manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas. These approached the river bank, and gathered there. Then the assembled lights began to come toward the house. You could now see these lights were carried by dwarfs who had the eyes of owls and the long beaks of storks. These dwarfs were jumping and dancing about Freydis like an insane bodyguard.
Freydis walked among them very remarkably attired. Upon her head shone the uraeus crown, and she carried a long rod of cedarwood topped with an apple carved in bluestone, and at her side came the appearance of a tall young man.
So they all approached the house, and the young man looked up fixedly at the unlighted window, as though he were looking at Manuel. The young man smiled: his teeth gleamed in the blue glare. Then the whole company entered the house, and from Manuel’s station at the window you could see no more, but you could hear small prancing hoof-beats downstairs and the clattering of plates and much whinnying laughter. Manuel was plucking irresolutely at his grizzled short beard, for there was no doubt as to the strapping tall young fellow.
Presently you could hear music: it was the ravishing Nis air, which charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and Manuel did not make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. He hastily undressed, knelt for a decorous interval, and climbed vexedly into bed.
XXIX
Sesphra of the Dreams
In the morning Dom Manuel arose early, and left Niafer still sleeping with the baby. Manuel came down through the lower hall, where the table was as the revelers had left it. In the middle of the disordered room stood a huge copper vessel half full of liquor, and beside it was a drinking-horn of gold. Manuel paused here, and drank of the sweet heather-wine as though he
