The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales - Richard Garnett
"But, Pan, how can any one think thoughts without something to think them
with? I never thought of anything that I have not seen, or touched, or
smelt, or tasted, or heard about from some one else. If I think with
nothing, and about nothing, is that thinking, do you think?"
"I think," answered Pan evasively, "that you are a sensationalist, a
materialist, a sceptic, a revolutionist; and if you had not sought the
assistance of a god, I should have said not much better than an atheist. I
also think it is time I thought about some physic for you instead of
metaphysics, which are bad for my head, and for your soul." Saying this,
Pan, with rough tenderness, deposited the almost fainting maiden upon a
couch of fern, and, having supported her head with a bundle of herbs,
leaned his own upon his hand, and reflected with all his might. The
declining sun was now nearly opposite the cavern's mouth, and his rays,
straggling through the creepers that wove their intricacies over the
entrance, chequered with lustrous patches the forms of the dying girl and
the meditating god. Ever and anon, a petal would drop from the flower; this
was always succeeded by a shuddering tremor throughout Iridion's frame and
a more forlorn expression on her pallid countenance: while Pan's jovial
features assumed an expression of deeper concern as he pressed his knotty
hand more resolutely against his shaggy forehead, and wrung his dexter horn
with a more determined grasp, as though he had caught a burrowing idea by
the tail.
"Aha!" he suddenly exclaimed, "I have it!"
"What have you, Pan?" faintly lisped the expiring Iridion.
Instead of replying, Pan grasped a wand that leaned against the wall of his
grot, and with it touched the maiden and the flower. O strange
metamorphosis! Where the latter had been pining in its vase, a lovely girl,
the image of Iridion, lay along the ground with dishevelled hair, clammy
brow, and features slightly distorted by the last struggles of death. On
the ferny couch stood an earthen vase, from which rose a magnificent lily,
stately, with unfractured stem, and with no stain or wrinkle on its
numerous petals.
"Aha!" repeated Pan; "I think we are ready for him now." Then, having
lifted the inanimate body to the couch, and placed the vase, with its
contents, on the floor of his cavern, he stepped to the entrance, and
shading his eyes with his hand, seemed to gaze abroad in quest of some
anticipated visitor.
The boughs at the foot of the steep path to the cave divided, and a figure
appeared at the foot of the rock. The stranger's mien was majestic, but the
fitness of his proportions diminished his really colossal stature to
something more nearly the measure of mortality. His form was enveloped in a
sweeping sad-coloured robe; a light, thin veil resting on his countenance,
mitigated, without concealing, the not ungentle austerity of his marble
features. His gait was remarkable; nothing could be more remote from every
indication of haste, yet such was the actual celerity of his progression,
that Pan had scarcely beheld him ere he started to find him already at his
side.
The stranger, without disturbing his veil, seemed to comprehend the whole
interior of the grotto with a glance; then, with the slightest gesture of
recognition to Pan, he glided to the couch on which lay the metamorphosed
lily, upraised the fictitious Iridion in his arms with indescribable
gentleness, and disappeared with her as swiftly and silently as he had
come. The discreet Pan struggled with suppressed merriment until the
stranger was fairly out of hearing, then threw himself back upon his seat
and laughed till the cave rang.
"And now," he said, "to finish the business." He lifted the transformed
maiden into the vase, and caressed her beauty with an exulting but careful
hand. There was a glory and a splendour in the flower such as had never
until then been beheld in any earthly lily. The stem vibrated, the leaves
shook in unison, the petals panted and suspired, and seemed blanched with a
whiteness intense as the core of sunlight, as they throbbed in anticipation
of the richer existence awaiting them.
Impatient to complete his task, Pan was about to grasp his wand when the
motion was arrested as the sinking beam of the sun was intercepted by a
gigantic shadow, and the stranger again stood by his side. The unbidden
guest uttered no word, but his manner was sufficiently expressive of wrath
as he disdainfully cast on the ground a broken, withered lily, the relic of
what had bloomed with such loveliness in the morning, and had since for a
brief space been arrayed in the vesture of humanity. He pointed imperiously
to the gorgeous tenant of the vase, and seemed to expect Pan to deliver it
forthwith.
"Look here," said Pan, with more decision than dignity, "I am a poor
country god, but I know the law. If you can find on this plant one speck,
one stain, one token that you have anything to do with her, take her, and
welcome. If you cannot, take yourself off instead."
"Be it so," returned the stranger, haughtily declining the proffered
inspection. "You will find it is ill joking with Death."
So saying, he quitted the cavern.
Pan sat down chuckling, yet not wholly at ease, for if the charity of Death
is beautiful even to a mortal, his anger is terrible, even to a god.
Anxious to terminate the adventure, he reached towards the charmed wand by
whose wonderful instrumentality the dying maiden had already become a
living flower, and was now to undergo a yet more delightful metamorphosis.
Wondrous wand! But where was it? For Death, the great transfigurer of all
below this lunar sphere, had given Pan a characteristic proof of his
superior cunning. Where the wand had reposed writhed a ghastly worm, which,
as Pan's glance fell upon it, glided towards him, uplifting its head with
an aspect of defiance. Pan's immortal nature sickened at the emblem of
corruption; he could not for all Olympus have touched his metamorphosed
treasure. As he shrank back the creature pursued its way towards the vase;
but a marvellous change befell it as it came under the shadow of the
flower. The writhing body divided, end from end, the sordid scales sank
indiscernibly into the dust, and an exquisite butterfly, arising from the
ground, alighted on the lily, and remained for a moment fanning its wings
in the last sunbeam, ere it unclosed them to the evening breeze. Pan,
looking eagerly after the Psyche in its flight, did not perceive what was
taking place in the cavern; but the magic wand, now for ever lost to its
possessor, must have cancelled its own spell, for when his gaze reverted
from the ineffectual pursuit, the living lily had disappeared, and Iridion
lay a corpse upon the ground, the faded flower of her destiny reposing upon
her breast.
Death now stood for a third time upon Pan's threshold, but Pan heeded him
not.
A PAGE FROM THE BOOK OF FOLLY
"That owned the virtuous ring and glass."
[--_Il Penseroso_.]
I
"Aurelia!"
"Otto!"
"Must we then part?"
They were folded in each other's arms. There never was such kissing.
"How shall we henceforth exchange the sweet tokens of our undying
affection, my Otto?"
"Alas, my Aurelia, I know not! Thy Otto blushes to acquaint thee that he
cannot write."
"Blush not, my Otto, thou needest not reproach thyself. Even couldest thou
write, thy Aurelia could not read. Oh these dark ages!"
They remained some minutes gazing on each other with an expression of fond
perplexity. Suddenly the damsel's features assumed the aspect of one who
experiences the visitation of a happy thought. Gently yet decidedly she
pronounced:
"We will exchange rings."
They drew off their rings simultaneously. "This, Aurelia, was my
grandfather's."
"This, Otto, was my grandmother's, which she charged me with her dying
breath never to part with save to him whom alone I loved."
"Mine is a brilliant, more radiant than aught save the eyes of my Aurelia."
And, in fact, Aurelia's eyes hardly sustained the comparison. A finer stone
could not easily be found.
"Mine is a sapphire, azure as the everlasting heavens, and type of a
constancy enduring as they."
In truth, it was of a tint seldom to be met with in sapphires.
The exchange made, the lady seemed less anxious to detain her lover.
"Beware, Otto!" she cried, as he slid down the cord, which yielded him an
oscillatory transit from her casement to the moat, where he alighted
knee-deep in mud. "Beware!--if my brother should be gazing from his
chamber on the resplendent moon!"
But that ferocious young baron was accustomed to spend his time in a less
romantic manner; and so it came to pass that Otto encountered him not.
II
Days, weeks, months had passed by, and Otto, a wanderer in a foreign land,
had heard no tidings of his Aurelia. Ye who have loved may well conceive
how her ring was all in all to him. He divided his time pretty equally
between gazing into its cerulean depths, as though her lovely image were
mirrored therein, and pressing its chilly surface to his lips, little as it
recalled the warmth and balminess of hers.
The burnished glow of gold, the chaste sheen of silver, the dance and
sparkle of light in multitudinous gems, arrested his attention as he one
evening perambulated the streets of a great city. He beheld a jeweller's
shop. The grey-headed, spectacled lapidary sat at a bench within,
sedulously polishing a streaked pebble by the light of a small lamp. A
sudden thought struck Otto; he entered the shop, and, presenting the ring
to the jeweller, inquired in a tone of suppressed exultation:
"What hold you for the worth of this inestimable ring?"
The jeweller, with no expression of surprise or curiosity, received the
ring from Otto, held it to the light, glanced slightly at the stone,
somewhat more carefully at the setting, laid the ring for a moment in a
pair of light scales, and, handing it back to Otto, remarked with a tone
and manner of the most entire indifference:
"The worth of this inestimable ring is one shilling and sixpence."
"Caitiff of a huckster!" exclaimed Otto, bringing down his fist on the
bench with such vigour that the pebbles leaped up and fell rattling down:
"Sayest thou this of a gem framed by genii in the bowels of the earth?"
"Nay, friend," returned the jeweller with the same imperturbable air, "that
thy gem was framed of earth I in nowise question, seeing that it doth
principally consist of sand. But when thou speakest of genii and the bowels
of the earth, thou wilt not, I hope, take it amiss if I crave better proof
than thy word that the devil has taken to glass-making. For glass, and
nothing else, credit me, thy jewel is."
"And the gold?" gasped Otto.
"There is just as much gold in thy ring as sufficeth to gild handsomely a
like superficies of brass, which is not saying much."
And, applying a sponge dipped in some liquid to a small part of the hoop,
the jeweller disclosed the dull hue of the baser metal so evidently that
Otto could hardly doubt longer. He doubted no more when the lapidary laid
his ring in the scales against another of the same size and make, and
pointed to the inequality of the balance.
"Thou seest," he continued, "that in our craft a very little gold goes a
very great way. It is far otherwise in the world, as thou, albeit in no
sort eminent for sapience, hast doubtless ere this ascertained for thyself.
Thou art evidently a prodigious fool!"
This latter disparaging observation could be safely ventured upon, as Otto
had rushed from the shop, speechless with rage.
Was Aurelia deceiver or deceived? Should he execrate her, or her venerable
grandmother, or some unknown person? The point was too knotty to be solved
in the agitated state of his feelings. He decided it provisionally by
execrating the entire human race, not forgetting himself.
In a mood like Otto's a trifling circumstance is sufficient to determine
the quality of action. The ancient city of which he was at the time an
inhabitant was traversed by a large river spanned by a quaint and
many-arched bridge, to which his frantic and aimless wanderings had
conducted him. Spires and gables and lengthy facades were reflected in the
water, blended with the shadows of boats, and interspersed with the
mirrored flames of innumerable windows on land, or of lanterns suspended
from the masts or sterns of the vessels. The dancing ripples bickered and
flickered, and seemed to say, "Come hither to us," while the dark reaches
of still water in the shadow of the piers promised that whatever might be
entrusted to them should be faithfully retained. Swayed by a sudden
impulse, Otto drew his ring from his finger. It gleamed an instant aloft in
air; in another the relaxation of his grasp would have consigned it to the
stream.
"Forbear!"
Otto turned, and perceived a singular figure by his side. The stranger was
tall and thin, and attired in a dusky cloak which only partially concealed
a flame-coloured jerkin. A cock's feather peaked up in his cap; his eyes
were piercingly brilliant; his nose was aquiline; the expression of his
features sinister and sardonic. Had Otto been more observant, or less
preoccupied, he might have noticed that the stranger's left shoe was of a
peculiar form, and that he limped some little with the corresponding foot.
"Forbear, I say; thou knowest not what thou doest."
"And what skills what I do with a piece of common glass?"
"Thou errest, friend; thy ring is not common glass. Had thy mistress
surmised its mystic virtues, she would have thought oftener than twice ere
exchanging it for thy diamond."
"What may these virtues be?" eagerly demanded Otto.
"In the first place, it will show thee when thy mistress may chance to
think of thee, as it will then prick thy finger."
"Now I know thee for a lying knave," exclaimed the youth indignantly.
"Learn, to thy confusion, that it hath not pricked me once since I parted
from Aurelia."
"Which proves that she has never once thought of thee."
"Villain!" shouted Otto, "say that again, and I will transfix thee."
"Thou mayest if thou canst," rejoined the stranger, with an expression of
such cutting scorn that Otto's spirit quailed, and he felt a secret but
overpowering conviction of his interlocutor's veracity. Rallying, however,
in some measure, he exclaimed:
"Aurelia is true! I will wager my soul upon it!"
"Done!" screamed the stranger in a strident voice of triumph, while a burst
of diabolical laughter seemed to proceed from every cranny of the eaves and
piers of the old bridge, and to be taken up by goblin echoes from the
summits of the adjacent towers and steeples.
Otto's blood ran chill, but he mustered sufficient courage to inquire
hoarsely:
"What of its further virtues?"
"When it shall have pricked thee," returned the mysterious personage, "on
turning it once completely round thy finger thou wilt see thy mistress
wherever she may be. If thou turnest it the second time, thou wilt know
what her thought of thee is; and, if the third time, thou wilt find
thyself in her presence. But I give thee fair warning that by doing this
thou wilt place thyself in a more disastrous plight than any thou hast
experienced hitherto. And now farewell."
The speaker disappeared. Otto stood alone upon the bridge. He saw nothing
around him but the stream, with its shadows and lights, as he slowly and
thoughtfully turned round to walk to his lodgings.
III
Ye who have loved, et cetera, as aforesaid, will comprehend the anxiety
with which Otto henceforth consulted his ring. He was continually adjusting
it to his finger in a manner, as he fancied, to render the anticipated
puncture more perceptible when it should come at last. He would have worn
it on all his fingers in succession had the conformation of his robust hand
admitted of its being placed on any but the slenderest. Thousands of times
he could have sworn that he felt the admonitory sting; thousands of times
he turned the trinket round and round with desperate impatience; but
Aurelia's form remained as invisible, her thoughts as inscrutable, as
before. His great dread was that he might be pricked in his sleep, on which
account he would sit up watching far into the morn. For, as he reasoned,
not without plausibility, when could he more rationally hope for a place in
Aurelia's thoughts than at that witching and suggestive period? She might
surely think of him when she had nothing else to do! Had she really nothing
else to do? And Otto grew sick and livid with jealousy. It of course
frequently occurred to him to doubt and deride the virtues of the ring, and
he was several times upon the point of flinging it away. But the more he
pondered upon the appearance and manner of the stranger, the less able he
felt to resist the conviction of his truthfulness.
At last a most unmistakable puncture! the distinct, though slight, pang of
a miniature wound. A crimson bead of blood rose on Otto's finger, swelled
to its due proportion, and became a trickling blot.
"She is thinking of me!" cried he rapturously, as if this were an instance
of the most signal and unforeseen condescension. All the weary expectancy
of the last six months was forgotten. He would have railed at himself had
the bliss of the moment allowed him to remember that he had ever railed at
her.
Otto turned his ring once, and Aurelia became visible in an instant. She
was standing before the mercer's booth in the chief street of the little
town which adjoined her father's castle. Her gaze was riveted on a silk
mantle, trimmed with costly furs, which depended from a hook inside the
doorway. Her lovely features wore an expression of extreme dissatisfaction.
She was replacing a purse, apparently by no means weighty, in her
embroidered girdle.
Otto turned the ring the second time, and Aurelia's silvery accents
immediately became audible to the following effect:
"If that fool Otto were here, he would buy it for me."
She turned away, and walked down the street. Otto uttered a cry like the
shriek of an uprooted mandrake. His hand was upon the ring to turn it for
the third time; but the stranger's warning occurred to him, and for a
moment he forbore. In that moment the entire vision vanished from before
his eyes.
What boots it to describe Otto's feelings upon this revelation of Aurelia's
sentiments? For lovers, description would be needless; to wiser people,
incomprehensible. Suffice it to say, that as his lady deemed him a fool he
appeared bent on proving that she did not deem amiss.
A long space of time elapsed without any further admonition from the ring.
Perhaps Aurelia had no further occasion for his purse; perhaps she had
found another pursebearer. The latter view of the case appeared the more
plausible to Otto, and it hugely aggravated his torments.
At last the moment came. It was the hour of midnight. Again Otto felt the
sharp puncture, again the ruby drop started from his finger, again he
turned the ring, and again beheld Aurelia. She was in her chamber, but not
alone. Her companion was a youth of Otto's age. She was in the act of
placing Otto's brilliant upon his finger. Otto turned his own ring, and
heard her utter, with singular distinctness:
"This ring was given me by the greatest fool I ever knew. Little did he
imagine that it would one day be the means of procuring me liberty, and
bliss in the arms of my Arnold. My venerable grandmother--"
The voice expired upon her lips, for Otto stood before her.
Arnold precipitated himself from the window, carrying the ring with him.
Otto, glaring at his faithless mistress, stood in the middle of the
apartment with his sword unsheathed. Was he about to use it? None can say;
for at this moment the young Baron burst into the room, and, without the
slightest apology for the liberty he was taking, passed his sword through
Otto's body.
Otto groaned, and fell upon his face. He was dead. The young Baron ungently
reversed the position of the corpse, and scanned its features with evident
surprise and dissatisfaction.
"It is not Arnold, after all!" he muttered. "Who would have thought it?"
"Thou seest, brother, how unjust were thy suspicions," observed Aurelia,
with an air of injured but not implacable virtue. "As for this abominable
ravisher----" Her feelings forbade her to proceed.
The brother looked mystified. There was something beyond his comprehension
in the affair; yet he could not but acknowledge that Otto was the person
who had rushed by him as he lay in wait upon the stairs. He finally
determined that it was best to say nothing about the matter: a resolution
the easier of performance as he was not wont to be lavish of his words at
any time. He wiped his sword on his sister's curtains, and was about to
withdraw, when Aurelia again spoke:
"Ere thou departest, brother, have the goodness to ring the bell, and
desire the menials to remove this carrion from my apartment."
The young Baron sulkily complied, and retreated growling to his chamber.
The attendants carried Otto's body forth. To the honour of her sex be it
recorded, that before this was done Aurelia vouchsafed one glance to the
corpse of her old lover. Her eye fell on the brazen ring. "And he has
actually worn it all this time!" thought she.
"Would have outraged my daughter, would he?" said the old Baron, when the
transaction was reported to him. "Let him be buried in a concatenation
accordingly."
"What the guy dickens be a concatrenation, Geoffrey?" interrogated Giles.
"Methinks it is Latin for a ditch," responded Geoffrey.
This interpretation commending itself to the general judgment of the
retainers, Otto was interred in the shelving bank of the old moat, just
under Aurelia's window. A rough stone was laid upon the grave. The magic
ring, which no one thought worth appropriating, remained upon the corpse's
finger. Thou mayest probably find it there, reader, if thou searchest long
enough.
The first visitor to Otto's humble sepulchre was, after all, Aurelia
herself, who alighted thereon on the following night after letting herself
down from her casement to fly with Arnold. Their escape was successfully
achieved upon a pair of excellent horses, the proceeds of Otto's diamond,
which had become the property of a Jew.
On the third night an aged monk stood by Otto's grave, and wept
plentifully. He carried a lantern, a mallet, and a chisel. "He was my
pupil," sobbed the good old man. "It were meet to contribute what in me
lies to the befitting perpetuation of his memory."
Setting down the lantern, he commenced work, and with pious toil engraved
on the stone in the Latin of the period:
"HAC MAGNUS STULTUS JACET IN FOSSA SEPULTUS.
MULIER CUI CREDIDIT MORTUUM ILLUM REDDIDIT."
Here he paused, at the end of his strength and of his Latin.
"Beshrew my old arms and brains!" he sighed.
"Hem!" coughed a deep voice in his vicinity.
The monk looked up. The personage in the dusky cloak and flame-coloured
jerkin was standing over him.
"Good monk," said the fiend, "what dost thou here?"
"Good fiend," said the monk, "I am inscribing an epitaph to the memory of a
departed friend. Thou mightest kindly aid me to complete it."
"Truly," rejoined the demon, "it would become me to do so, seeing that I
have his soul here in my pocket. Thou wilt not expect me to employ the
language of the Church. Nathless, I see not wherefore the vernacular may
not serve as well."
And, taking the mallet and chisel, he completed the monk's inscription with
the supplementary legend:
"SERVED HIM RIGHT."
THE BELL OF SAINT EUSCHEMON
The town of Epinal, in Lorraine, possessed in the Middle Ages a peal of
three bells, respectively dedicated to St. Eulogius, St. Eucherius, and St.
Euschemon, whose tintinnabulation was found to be an effectual safeguard
against all thunderstorms. Let the heavens be ever so murky, it was merely
requisite to set the bells ringing, and no lightning flashed and no thunder
peal broke over the town, nor was the neighbouring country within hearing
of them ravaged by hail or flood.
One day the three saints, Eulogius, Eucherius, and Euschemon, were sitting
together, exceedingly well content with themselves and everything around
them, as indeed they had every right to be, supposing that they were in
Paradise. We say supposing, not being for our own part entirely able to
reconcile this locality with the presence of certain cans and flagons,
which had been fuller than they were.
"What a happy reflection for a Saint," said Eulogius, who was rapidly
passing from the mellow stage of good fellowship to the maudlin, "that even
after his celestial assumption he is permitted to continue a source of
blessing and benefit to his fellow-creatures as yet dwelling in the shade
of mortality! The thought of the services of my bell, in averting lightning
and inundation from the good people of Epinal, fills me with indescribable
beatitude."
"_Your_ bell!" interposed Eucherius, whose path had lain through the mellow
to the quarrelsome. "_Your_ bell, quotha! You had as good clink this
cannakin" (suiting the action to the word) "as your bell. It's my bell that
does the business."