“You must remember the price you paid to win back Dame Niafer from paradise. As truth, and not the almanac, must estimate these things you are now nearer fifty-six.”
“Well,” Manuel said, stoutly, “I do not regret it, and for Niafer’s sake I am willing to become a hundred and six. But certainly it is hard to think of myself as an old fellow on the brink of the scrap-pile.”
“Oho, you are not yet so old, Count Manuel, but that Suskind’s power is greater than the power of the child: and besides, there is a way to break the power of the child. Death has merely scratched small wrinkles, very lightly, with one talon, to mark you as his by and by. That is all as yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, who were once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire, for there remains in you a leaven even today. Yes, yes, though you deny her today, you will be entreating her tomorrow, and then it may be she will punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you are obstinate, for it is at this time I run about the September world collecting my sister’s revenues, and her debtors are very numerous.”
And with that the boy, still smiling gravely, slipped out of the third window into the gray sweet-smelling dusk, and little Melicent said, “But, Father, why did that queer sad boy want me to be climbing out of the window with him?”
“So that he might be kind to you, my dear, as he estimates kindness.”
“But why did the sad boy want a piece of my hair?” asked Melicent; “and why did he cut it off with his big shiny shears, while you were writing, and he was playing with me?”
“It was to pay a price,” says Manuel.
He knew now that the Alf charm was laid on his loved child, and that this was the price of his junketings. He knew also that Suskind would never remit this price.
Then Melicent demanded, “And what makes your face so white?”
“It must be pale with hunger, child: so I think that you and I had better be getting to our dinner.”
XXXVIII
Farewell to Suskind
But after dinner Dom Manuel came alone into the Room of Ageus, and equipped himself as the need was, and he climbed out of the charmed window for the last time. His final visit to the depths was horrible, they say, and they relate that of all the deeds of Dom Manuel’s crowded lifetime the thing that he did on this day was the most grim. But he won through all, by virtue of his equipment and his fixed heart. So when Dom Manuel returned he clasped in his left hand a lock of fine straw-colored hair, and on both his hands was blood let from no human veins.
He looked back for the last time into the gray depths. A crowned girl rose beside him noiselessly, all white and red, and she clasped her bloodied lovely arms about him, and she drew him to her hacked young breasts, and she kissed him for the last time. Then her arms were loosed from about Dom Manuel, and she fell away from him, and was swallowed by the gray sweet-scented depths.
“And so farewell to you, Queen Suskind,” says Count Manuel. “You who were not human, but knew only the truth of things, could never understand our foolish human notions. Otherwise you would never have demanded the one price I may not pay.”
“Weep, weep for Suskind!” then said Lubrican, wailing feebly in the gray and April-scented dusk; “for it was she alone who knew the secret of preserving that dissatisfaction which is divine where all else falls away with age into the acquiescence of beasts.”
“Why, yes, but unhappiness is not the true desire of man,” says Manuel. “I know, for I have had both happiness and unhappiness, and neither contented me.”
“Weep, weep for Suskind!” then cried the soft and delicate voice of Hinzelmann: “for it was she that would have loved you, Manuel, with that love of which youth dreams, and which exists nowhere upon your side of the window, where all kissed women turn to stupid figures of warm earth, and all love falls away with age into the acquiescence of beasts.”
“Oh, it is very true,” says Manuel, “that all my life henceforward will be a wearying business because of long desires for Suskind’s love and Suskind’s lips and the grave beauty of her youth, and for all the high-hearted dissatisfactions of youth. But the Alf charm is lifted from the head of my child, and Melicent will live as Niafer lives, and it will be better for all of us, and I am content.”
From below came many voices wailing confusedly. “We weep for Suskind. Suskind is slain with the one weapon that might slay her: and all we weep for Suskind, who was the fairest and the wisest and the most unreasonable of queens. Let all the Hidden Children weep for Suskind, whose heart and life was April, and who plotted courageously against the orderings of unimaginative gods, and who has been butchered to preserve the hair of a quite ordinary child.”
Then said the Count of Poictesme: “And that young Manuel who was in his day a wilful champion, and who fretted under ordered wrongs, and who went everywhither with a high head a-boasting that he followed after his own thinking and his own desire—why, that young fellow also is now silenced and dead. For the well-thought-of Count of Poictesme must be as the will and the faith and as the need of others may dictate: and there is no help for it, and no escape, and our old appearances must be preserved upon this side of the window in order that
