The Count said, frowning: “What drunken nonsense are you talking at broad noon? It is not any foolish tatter of legend that I am requiring of you, my boy, but civil information as to what is to be encountered out yonder.”
“All freedom and all delight,” young Ruric told him wildly, “and all horror and all rebellion.”
Then he talked for a while. When Ruric had ended this talking, Count Manuel laughed scornfully, and spoke as became a well-thought-of nobleman.
Ruric whipped out a knife, and attacked his master, crying, “I follow after my own thinking and my own desires, you old, smug, squinting hypocrite!”
So Count Manuel caught Ruric by the throat, and with naked hands Dom Manuel strangled the young clerk.
“Now I have ridded the world of much poison, I think,” Dom Manuel said, aloud, when Ruric lay dead at Manuel’s feet. “In any event, I cannot have that sort of talking about my house. Yet I wish I had not trapped the boy into attempting this adventure, which by rights was my adventure. I did not always avoid adventures.”
He summoned two to take away the body, and then Manuel went to his bedroom, and was clothed by his lackeys in a tunic of purple silk, and a coronet was placed on his gray head, and the trumpets sounded as Count Manuel sat down to supper. Pages in ermine served him, bringing Manuel’s food upon gold dishes, and pouring red wine and white from golden beakers into Manuel’s gold cup. Skilled music-men played upon viols and harps and flutes while the high Count of Poictesme ate richly seasoned food and talked sedately with his wife.
They had not fared thus when Manuel had just come from herding swine, and Niafer was a servant trudging on her mistress’ errands, and when these two had eaten very gratefully the Portune’s bread and cheese. They had not any need to be heartened with rare wines when they endured so many perils upon Vraidex and in Dun Vlechlan because of their love for each other. For these two had once loved marvelously. Now minstrels everywhere made songs about their all-conquering love, which had derided death; and nobody denied that, even now, these two got on together amicably.
But tonight Dame Niafer was fretted, because the pastry-cook was young Ruric’s cousin, and was, she feared, as likely as not to fling off in a huff on account of Dom Manuel’s having strangled the clerk.
“Well, then do you raise the fellow’s wages,” said Count Manuel.
“That is easily said, and is exactly like a man. Why, Manuel, you surely know that then the meat-cook, and the butler, too, would be demanding more, and that there would be no end to it.”
“But, my dear, the boy was talking mad blasphemy, and was for cutting my throat with a great horn-handled knife.”
“Of course that was very wrong of him,” said Dame Niafer, comfortably, “and not for an instant, Manuel, am I defending his conduct, as I trust you quite understand. But even so, if you had stopped for a moment to think how hard it is to replace a servant nowadays, and how unreliable is the best of them, I believe you would have seen how completely we are at their mercy.”
Then she told him all about her second waiting-woman, while Manuel said, “Yes,” and “I never heard the like,” and “You were perfectly right, my dear,” and so on, and all the while appeared to be thinking about something else in the back of his mind.
XXXVI
Excursions from Content
Thereafter Count Manuel could not long remain away from the window through which Ruric had climbed with a lantern, and through which Ruric had returned insanely blaspheming against law and order.
The outlook from this window was somewhat curious. Through the two other windows of Ageus, set side by side with this one, and in appearance similar to it in all respects, the view remained always unchanged, and just such as it was from the third window so long as you looked through the thick clear glass. But when the third window of Ageus was opened, all the sunlit summer world that you had seen through the thick clear glass was gone quite away, and you looked out into a limitless gray twilight wherein not anything was certainly discernible, and the air smelt of spring. It was a curious experience for Count Manuel, thus to regard through the clear glass his prospering domains and all the rewards of his famous endeavors, and then find them vanished as soon as the third window was opened. It was curious, and very interesting; but such occurrences make people dubious about things in which, as everybody knows, it is wisdom’s part to believe implicitly.
Now the second day after Ruric had died, the season now being June, Count Manuel stood at the three windows, and saw in the avenue of poplars his wife, Dame Niafer, walking hand in hand with little Melicent. Niafer, despite her lameness, was a fine figure of a woman, so long as he viewed Niafer through the closed window of Ageus. Dom Manuel looked contentedly enough upon the wife who was the reward of his toil and suffering in Dun Vlechlan, and the child who was the reward of his amiability and shrewdness in dealing with the stork, all seemed well so long as he regarded them through the closed third window.
His hand trembled somewhat as he now opened this window, to face gray sweetly-scented nothingness. But in the window glass, you saw, the appearance of his flourishing gardens remained unchanged: and in the half of the window to the right hand were quivering poplars, and Niafer and little Melicent were smiling at him, and the child was kissing her hand to him. All about this swinging half of the window was nothingness; he, leaning out, and partly closing this half of the window, could
