The Princess Pourquoi (collection)/The Clever Necromancer
THE CLEVER NECROMANCER
THE
CLEVER NECROMANCER
ONCE, a long, long, long, long, long time ago, there was a city by the sea, and it was called Marmorante. Little gray mists floated down the gray streets, past the tall gray houses with carven windows and doors; pale, silvery fogs wrapped tower and spire, and oftentimes low, dark clouds hung sullenly for days together over gabled roofs and dull red chimneys; nor could the bravest winds that blew nor the swiftest golden sunbeams drive mist and cloud and fog away.
In Marmorante lived all manner of folk: a duke, a count, two marquises, and several squires; there were merchants many, with white-sailed ships that cut the waves; there were wool-combers and flax-beaters and haberdashers and marketmen; but most of all there were women: countesses, duchesses, and stately marchionesses; wives of merchants, wool-combers, haberdashers, flax-beaters,—women, women, women, maidens innumerable, and hosts of little girls. There were little girls with flaxen ringlets, little girls with long braids of yellow hair; dark-haired, slender maidens, maidens with white arms, maidens with blue eyes, brown eyes, or gray—every kind of maiden that ever lived, in life or in story.
Life went on quietly in the city by the sea. In the gray mornings count and countess talked amicably together in their great hall, and wool-carder and his wife gossiped cheerily as they rolled and carded the white fleece; in the gray afternoons Sir Knight walked in the castle garden among the flowers with my lady, and the butcher's 'prentice met his maid by the postern door: by embroidery frame and spinning-wheel, by tiring-room and kitchen spit, all was gray peace.
Then one day, when the clouds hung low, a raven croaked above the castle wall; black rooks cawed dismally with hints of coming disaster; and bats, mistaking clouded noon for night, flew out with squeaks and gibberings at noonday—yet nothing happened. Peasants' carts came creaking, as was their wont, to the city gate, with blue-smocked Jean or yellow-trousered Pierrot driving roan mare or piebald steed, and bringing bags of grain and great rolls of tanned skins to market. Old women with their flower baskets on their arms came nodding and courtesying, giving hollyhock or rose for toll to the porter, who would not say them nay because of their skinny arms and hungry faces. At last came one who was not of the line of sun-browned farmers, withered dames, or ruddy boys who drove in flocks of sheep.
It was a man, tall and long, and thin of face, clad in doublet and hose of sober drab, and he had naught with him save three small, transparent bags or bladders, one rose-colored, one purple, and one yellow, which seemed to be filled with but empty air.
"What bringest hither?" asked the porter, in a surly voice.
"Naught save my rattle," answered the tall man in drab; and with that he struck the bags together, so that there came out a tinkling sound wondrous cunning and small.
"Is danger therein?" said the man at the gate, holding back. "Mayhap they go off, like powder, and do harm."
Then the tall man smiled a strange, three-cornered smile, for his chin was long and protruding, and strained his lips that way.
"Ay," he confessed, "they go off, but they do no hurt;" then he paid his penny toll and went unmolested in. The porter stood long, with arms akimbo, and looked after him.
"’T is some fool," said the porter, and went back to his mug of ale.
The sad-hued man went on through the narrow streets that let in only a strip of the sky's blue, and anon he came to the open market-place, where little was doing that day, for the flowers were wilted, and the vegetables for the most part gone; only the lambs that were left bleated piteously now and then. The stranger sprang upon a counter where wheat had been sold, and he struck his little bags together, so that they rattled merrily as he called aloud:—
"Come, hear, hear, hear! Come, hear the words of wisdom I shall say, the greatest words that shall ever meet your ears. Come, hear, hear, hear! To-day I speak, and to-morrow I may not: 't is the chance of a lifetime, and not to be overlooked. Come, hear, hear, hear!"
Now with the rattling of the bags, and the rattling of the man's voice, many people came running hither: squire and 'prentice and count, marchioness and merchant's lady, and the cook from the castle, all hurrying toward the empty sound. Soon a great crowd was gathered, of men and of maidens, of women with white wimples and folded kerchiefs, and of little girls with yellow hair.
"Come, hear, hear, hear!" repeated the man, in slow singsong, watching the people with his narrow blue eyes which were rimmed with red; then, so swiftly that none could see, he bent his head and touched his lips to the transparent bags. He spoke, and lo! a miracle, for out of his mouth came a beautiful, iridescent mist of words that floated and floated and broke against the gray fog, and rested across the eyes of an elderly woman who stood buxom and comely, and fell like a halo upon the fair hair of a young girl standing bareheaded in the sun, and flashed like an opal, flickered like a flame, so that at last the whole market-place was full of floating color; yet all that the man had said was, "Be good and you will be happy," with variations.
"A necromancer!" said the red-faced butcher under his breath.
"A prophet!" cried the countess, as a floating bit of the colored mist lighted on her lips.
"I never heard such truth," said the fair-haired maiden, with a bar of iridescent cloud across her eyes.
Watching and silent the Necromancer stood, the three-cornered smile upon his lips. They prayed him to do his trick again, but he shook his head and would not.
"To-morrow," he said, "at two p. m.;" and he smiled at the shower of golden coin that rained into his bell-crowned hat.
When they were sure that nothing more was forthcoming, they went marveling away; but all about the silvery fog that clung to the steeples, and the gray mists that lay along the streets, and the clouds that hung sullenly above, still hovered little rosy flecks of flame and hints of rainbow color.
Day after day the Necromancer stood in the market-place, and put his lips secretly to his colored bags, and spoke. He had searched all the copy-books of the kingdom, and had taken familiar truths, such as: "The good die young;" "To be selfish is to be miserable;" "Haste makes waste;" "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush;" and he clothed them in rainbow colors and breathed his mist about them, so that they stalked in beauty wonderful and strange, and the folk who listened did not know their own ideas when they met them face to face, because of the garment of many-colored words in which they came. Then the women went mad throughout the city, mad for the loud-sounding voice and the rattle of the bags, rose-colored, purple, and yellow. By her broidery frame the Countess Angélique forgot to draw green thread of silk through the dim web, and in her lap her white hands lay idle. Walking to and fro by her spinning-wheel, little Jeanne wove into the blue yarn the glittering phrases of yesterday, so that the strands tangled and knotted at the spindle. Margot, the cook, forgot her chickens roasting on the spit, but turned and turned them by the glowing coals till they were burned and black; and Joan the butcher's wife could no longer tell haunch of venison from flitch of bacon, but greeted customers with a vacant stare, for her mind was quite gone, gone the way of the wind, after the wonderful bits of colored fog.
Now the fair-haired maid who had stood awed in the market-place on the day when the enchanter came was a rich merchant's daughter, and her given name was Blanche. She was betrothed to one Hugh of a neighboring city, and he came often to Marmorante, lodging always at the sign of the Red Dragon. Thus had been his wooing, as he stood one day with the maid and her father by the lattice that looked forth on the street.
"Wilt have me?" he asked, and the words cost him much, for he was a man of plain speech, and oft of no speech at all.
The maid stood in the sunshine and looked upon him, and he thought her a goodly sight. Green was her gown, and cut square at the throat, and with it the color of her eyes seemed green, and he knew not if her hand or her neck were whiter.
"I could give thee white velvet to thy train," he stammered, and the old man, her father, stood and watched.
"Dost love me?" asked the maid, for she was one that had heard old ballads sung; and the man opened wide his honest eyes.
"Ay, surely, else had I not asked thee to wife."
"Then will I wed thee," said the maid, and the wooer stood gazing at her, not daring the kiss that was in his mind.
"’T is a good chaffer," said young Hugh. "We shall get on rarely together;" and thereafter, as heretofore, he had no eyes for aught save the maiden's face. All this was a month agone, and to-day, when he came again, the maid would have it that he must needs go forth with her to the marketplace to listen to this wonder; and he followed, willing enough, for he would have gone into the very dragon's teeth after the hem of her gown. Howsoever, the thought of going to listen to mere speech seemed to him but folly.
When they came to the open place, and he saw what was there, his eyes opened wide, and he whistled softly for sheer amazement, for never yet had he seen so great a concourse gathered together. There were women in velvet and in satin, women in homespun and in blue jean, even women in rags; and there were maidens as many and as lovely as the leaves upon the maple tree when it turns to rosy color in the fall, maidens dull or bright of hair as the case might be, but always bright of eye and of cheek. Far and near they gathered, crowding close together; many stood on bench or on counter, straining white necks forward; and all the windows that looked upon the market were crowded with fair faces. Presently, with long and pensive stride, came the lean man in drab; and as he came, honest Hugh heard the sudden, sharp breathing of the maid at his side, and felt her lean forward as if she were one quivering ear.
What followed puzzled the young man sorely. It was one of the great days of the Necromancer: forth from his mouth came a violet speech in the form of a bubble, and it floated over the heads of the people in lovely changing shades that ranged all the way from deep purple to the palest tint that is not yet white. Midway across the gray cloud it burst, and its gleaming bits drifted hither and yon, and the speaker smiled as he saw the eager fingers raised to catch the tiny vapors which melted as soon as touched. Forth came another and another; it was a day of loveliest froth. Anon came a speech of the color of gold that shimmered and shone in the sunlight, and burst into sparkles a thousand ways, and so golden bubble followed golden bubble. All the little girls with floating hair or yellow braids ran after them, with hands lifted high to catch them before they burst, and the least maids wept because the taller ones caught more than they.
Young merchant Hugh stood watching, with his hand upon his chin.
"’T is a strange sight," he murmured to himself. "Jugglers enow have I seen in the East, and many of their devices have I learned, but I have seen naught like this."
Then he turned to his betrothed.
"Dost know the trick, Blanche?" he asked, but when he saw her face, he knew that there was somewhat amiss with his words. All awed was she, and in her eyes was the look of one who had seen a vision; and, glancing about, he saw that the other women and maids wore the same expression. He came home pondering, having noted the shower of coin that had fallen into the Necromancer's hat; nor could he understand, for he gave ever good measure for the gold that was given him. Also he was sore troubled, for his betrothed had no words for him, only looks of high disdain.
"Well, daughter," said the old merchant, as the two came in, "what saith the prophet to-day?"
"Oh!" cried the maiden, "all was wonderful and full of beauty. Each day is his discourse more marvelous than yesterday's."
"But what was it all about?" he asked, laying his hand upon her hair, for he was tender of her.
"How could I presume to tell?" she asked, with a grieved red lip. "’T was too wonderful to put into words;" and she swept from the room, with no glance for her lover.
Young merchant Hugh, to whom the very rushes on which the maiden stepped were dear because of his great speechless love, gazed after her, jealous of the look upon her face, and cruelly wounded by her scorn.
"I will find out the trick," said the young man to himself, between set teeth; and he was one who ever made good his words.
Now the maiden Blanche was glad when her lover begged to go forth with her the next day and the next, at two p.m.
"Mayhap he may learn something of this wondrous speech," she said wistfully, thinking to herself that it would be sweet to be wooed in violet words and words of the color of gold. When he bent shyly to kiss her before they went, with lips that trembled for the great love they might not say, she drew stiffly back, nor would she thereafter permit touch or caress, and much she spoke of the joy of a maiden's life that would leave time free for thought; yet she took him gladly with her for a week of days. Ever he listened, as one spellbound, nor once removed his glance from the Necromancer's face; and he was keen of eye, and wont in traffic to detect word or look of fraud, and he saw what no one else had seen.
"I have it!" he cried, and he slapped his fist upon the palm of his left hand. "Those be bags of many-colored words that he hath with him, and he but sucks them up and breathes them forth."
That day he sent his sweetheart home with Dame Cartelet, that lived hard by, and was as besotted as she on the man with the magic words; then he went and lay in wait in the street through which the Necromancer passed each day in going home; and as he waited, he turned back his velvet cuffs, and felt lovingly of the muscle of shoulder and arm. So it was not long before a tall man in drab went running through the narrow streets on the outskirts of the town, crying and wringing his hands, and the rattling bags of rose color, and purple, and gold were gone from his neck.
"Oh, my vocabulary!" he wailed. "Oh, my bags, my bags, my bags! What am I but a man undone without my bag of adjectives!"
The dogs and the children that ran at his heels did not understand, nor did smith and weaver as they stood in their doorways.
"Oh, my other bag, my bag of epithets, of polysyllabic epithets!" cried the fugitive as he ran.
A squealing pig joined the chase, and the men children and maid children who ran after laughed aloud. The women who watched from lattice or stone doorstep were of those who, by means of ten skillfully selected adjectives from the rose-colored bag, and a dozen golden epithets from the bag of yellow, had been made to gape and quiver with the sense of the birth of new truth, yet they failed to recognize the juggler, for iridescent mist and ruddy vapor had vanished from his head and shoulders, and they saw naught save a lean and ugly man fleeing under a gray sky; and, hearing, they yet did not understand his cry of deep dismay.
"Oh, my exclamation points, my lost exclamation points! Oh, my pet hiatus that laid all low when nothing else would avail!"—and so he passed out of their sight, and out of the city of Marmorante.
At the sign of the Red Dragon that afternoon, young merchant Hugh was closely locked in his room. Behind great iron bolts he sat upon a three-legged stool, and worked with the colored, rattling bags.
"’T is well that men have devised this thing," he said, holding a mirror before his face, as he sucked air from the bag of rose; "else could I not see if all goes well." And his heart was well-nigh bursting with joy when he saw that the breath of his mouth was even as the breath of the Necromancer upon the air. Then he slipped downstairs and begged for a cup of ale, and as the maid served him in the kitchen, he blew out a whiff from the bag of gold, and of a sudden her face became as the faces of the women who stood in the market-place under the spell of the juggler, and Hugh was glad.
The next day he hid the bags in a neckerchief of fine silk, and went to the house of his sweetheart, asking to see her; but when she came, it was with a face set and cold, and she paused with the great oaken table between them.
"Hugh," she said, unsmiling, "I have been thinking."
"’T is foolish work for a woman," he answered stoutly.
"That which thou dost say but confirms my thought," she answered, still more coldly. "We cannot be wed; waking and sleeping have I considered this matter, and thus have I resolved."
"Now, why?" cried honest Hugh bluntly.
"We have so little in common," said Blanche.
"Thou shalt have all," he stammered, forgetting, in his hurt, the magic bags. "Why, 't is for thee I send forth all my ships. I will be but thy pensioner."
A shadow of pain passed over the maiden's face.
"I mean not goods nor possessions, nor any manner of vulgar things; 't is of mind and soul I speak, and ours be far apart."
"My goods be not vulgar!" cried young merchant Hugh. "Rare silks and cloths from the East have I, and purest pearls, for thy white throat. No common thing is there in all my store."
Then the little foot of Blanche tapped impatiently on the stone floor.
"’T is of no avail that I try to make thee understand! I say there be depths in my nature that thou mayst not satisfy; also am I full busy this morning and must beg to be excused"—and with that she drew open the heavy oaken door, leaving him in the long room as one dazed.
Then he bethought him of his bags, and drew them out too late, taking a whiff from each as a sob rose in his throat. Suddenly the fair hair of Blanche appeared again in the doorway, and she smiled as a stranger upon him.
"I forgot to say that I wish thee all manner of good, and great prosperity," she said amiably.
Then out of Hugh's mouth came a purple speech, and a speech of the color of gold; and little iridescent mists floated through the air, while a rose-colored bubble rested for a moment on the white eyelids of the maiden. The dull-paneled room was as the breaking of a rainbow; yet all he had said was, "Wilt not wed me, Blanche?" But he said it in rose color and purple and gold.
"What have I done?" cried the maiden sorrowfully; and he rejoiced to see that the look upon her face was as it had been when she had listened to the Necromancer's philosophies and faiths.
Then he turned and smiled, saying: "I love thee, Blanche," and he spoke in the juggler's speech, which made a glory on the maiden's hair, and about her gown of green. With outstretched hands she came toward him, and she laid her head upon his breast, smiling up at him.
"I was mad but now, Hugh," she breathed. "Our two souls be but one."
"Wilt come with me to the market-place this afternoon?" he asked.
"Nay," sighed the maiden. "I care not for the market-place, for I am happy here, where I have found my home."
"I speak there," he said bluffly, "at two p. m."
"Thou!" and the maiden's laughter rang out like the touch of silver bells, "and of what?"
"Of phases of occult thought," he answered gravely.
"Ay," cried Blanche, and she raised her face to kiss him. "Ay, Hugh, be sure that I shall be there when thou dost talk philosophies."
The young merchant was good as his word, and that afternoon he stood in the market-place upon a counter, rattling the juggler's bags as he waited. As before, men, women, and maidens came, by tens, by twenties, by hundreds, till there was no spot where he could look without meeting a pair of wistful eyes.
"It looks to be but plain Hugh, the merchant," whispered one to another.
"Hath he undertaken to sell his wares here?" asked one.
"He hath choice pearls," whispered a maiden who was not yet wholly given over to occult thought.
But Hugh had begun to speak, and faces of wonder were lifted to him, for he was strong of lung, and the breath from the magic bags went farther than ever before.
"Our friend the Necromancer is indisposed, and I must take his place," he began. "Like him, I have chosen a theme from the depths of human thought; and now, hear! hear! hear!"
Then eloquence poured forth from the man's lips so fast, so full a stream, that the very welkin was rose-tinted, and a great rainbow seemed to overspread the sky. Gray clouds above the tallest spires broke into tints of opal, and all the air shaded into the violet and purple of exclamation points, and of the pet hiatus, which was hard to work, but came well off. Golden glory haunted carven door and window, and words of flame crept around the tracery of arch and gable. Women sobbed for very joy; others wrote madly on their tablets; maidens gasped with red lips slightly opened; never, during the whole lecture season, had come so big a wind from out the bags, and honest Hugh blushed with mingled shame and triumph when he saw the face of his betrothed, for it wore the look of one who had seen the white vision of naked truth.
Following the fashion of the Necromancer, he had taken a maxim, and had dressed it up so that men knew it not, and so that it came forth as revelation. All that he had said from the first to the last was the truth that he knew best: "Honesty is the best policy;" but this was the way in which he had said it, with constantly shifting color:
"Glory awaits the equable! All-hails are the portion of him, who, unswerving, with eyes upon the path ahead, with lofty head erect, perambulates his chosen path through this world's tangled wilderness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though golden cohorts beckon. The goal is for the upright feet. The crown waits.… What matter if the victor be sobbing and breathless, so that he be conqueror?" (Observe the hiatus.) "So saith golden-tongued Plato; so saith heavy-browed Aristotle of persuasive speech; so saith Aulus Gellius, withdrawn in his inner truth, and his brother, Currant Gellius, whose essence clings; so say the holy fathers, subtle Basil, myriad-minded Chrysostom; so saith the copy-book."
When the speech was over, and the bags hidden away, Hugh bore as best he might the tears and congratulations of the women, their murmured plaudits, and inspired looks.
"’T is the first time I have ever failed to give honest measure," he said shamefacedly to himself as they flocked about him.
That night, as he sat with the maiden and her father, he spoke of departing on the morrow with a ship that would sail for Morocco to be gone many months, and his sweetheart came to him, creeping into his arms.
"Do not leave me, Hugh," she pleaded. "It is so far away."
"I must go, little one," he answered, smoothing her fair hair. "Men sit not ever by the fire to hear tabby purr."
"Say them again," she pleaded, "say again the words thou didst speak this morning, that I may have them with me when thou art far away."
"Far in illimitable recesses of time and of space," he began shamefacedly, "before phenomena existed, thy bodiless soul and mine met and mingled as one"—
"Where hast learned that jargon, Hugh?" asked the old merchant, with a loud guffaw.
"Hush!" said Hugh, with loving hands upon the maiden's ears so that she might not hear. "All is fair in love, father!"
But Hugh was still an honest merchant, and never in his long and happy life did he use the stolen vocabulary in bargaining, or to gain dishonest advantage in trade. Only, when the face of Blanche, his wife, grew sad, he would take out the colored bags, which he kept secretly locked in an iron chest, and then the old smiles would come back to her beautiful face, and with them the look of awe wherewith she regarded her husband, as the mist of purple, and the flecks of rose color, and the bubbles of gold, fell on hair and eye and ear.