She sobbed afresh, in the while that Marianne prepared to meet, without any extra discomforts, a doom worse than death, by unfastening her cloak of vair. When this cloak was put by, you saw that she was clothed wholly in black, with a dove embroidered above her young breasts in threads of silver. She resorted once more to her handkerchief, saying:
“I am helpless. So my conscience is clear. I shall only have to lament that a big and bold and impudent beast of a bandit has no conscience.”
“But I, madame—” he cried out, removing his mask.
“Certainly I can see for myself that you are big. Your conduct has shown you to be bold. You have rather nice eyes, too”—she remarked, in a wanly smiling endeavor to be strictly fair about everything. “As for the impudence, well, but, after all, the amenities of court life have taught me that one young man is no pennyworth worse than another young man, when it comes to being alone with a defenceless and inexperienced girl, so that if, instead of being a bandit, you happened to be a leading banker or a baron—or for that matter, I regret to add, a bishop anywhere under forty—the terrors of my present state would be no less lively. For you men are all alike. Until, at any rate, you have passed fifty.”
“But I, madame,” he replied, “but I, I, I! Will you not ever permit me the poet’s privilege of talking about myself? It is I who am the most unfortunate of living creatures, because I adore you. For an entire year, lacking but a month, I have adored you hopelessly.”
“Why, but whatever can the monster of iniquity be talking about?” Marianne inquired, of nobody in particular.
Thus speaking, the fair young girl walked some little way apart from the relics of her former attendants, directing her progress toward a picturesque, grassy, and soft-looking ridge; she sat down among the violets which adorned this ridge; and she charitably turned back the flowing black sleeves which half hid her very lovely small hands.
Such affability emboldened the tall bandit to introduce himself as Clitandre, at present a protégé of Mr. Smith, the Lord of the Forest, who, by a strange magic, had released Clitandre from his prison in Melphé, where the lad lay under sentence of death for house-breaking. Mr. Smith had completed this kindness by establishing the young man in the more wholesome out-of-door pursuits of brigandage. Yet Clitandre was not merely a highwayman but a general practitioner of theft in all branches.
His mother, Madame Arachne, he explained, had in some inexplicable fashion strayed out of Greek mythology into the dreams of a god, in which she had figured intimately. Clitandre had been the result of this intimacy. And Arachne, as Clitandre furthermore explained, had painstakingly perfected her son in the exercise of every acquisitive art, after the disappearance of his father, the sublime Master of Gods, and prior to her change of life when she again became a large spider, through a renewal of the old doom put upon Arachne very long ago by Pallas Athene.
Of his mother’s charms and of her maternal devotion and of her never-tiring industry Clitandre spoke glowingly. He protested that only once had he found her equal among womankind.
“Aha!” returned Marianne, with a large-eyed and very lovable archness.
“Yes,” said Clitandre, gravely,—“only once.”
He looked full upon her; and that which she saw in his ardent dark young face both pleased and a little troubled her.
Thereafter, with a praiseworthy attention to practical affairs, such as befitted his mother’s son, Clitandre fell to reloading his discharged pistols, and to speaking, with a refined fervor, about his first sight of Marianne in the market-place of Arleoth. He spoke then of the respectful passion which he, an ambitious and high-minded but as yet undistinguished member of the criminal classes, had cherished ever since that afternoon for the Queen of Ecben’s maid of honor.
It was a pure worship, he assured Marianne, in the while that he carefully primed his big pistols, without any carnal taint. It was the immaculate star-towering love of the troubadours re-born in the heart of one who remained always, at heart, a poet, whatsoever might be the occasional, nay, the inevitable, prosaic passages in his professional career as a brigand. Clitandre desired merely to see his adored lady, now and then, if only at a distance, noting her numerous bright perfections; to worship these perfections; and thereafter to resume, with renewed ardor, the composition of his heroic love poem, “A Garland for Marianne,” which would tell fittingly of his unexampled passion.
“Alas, sir,” declared Marianne, “it is not well to speak of poetry, or of love either, to a maid of honor to the Queen of Ecben. The Queen’s strictness in overseeing our moral principles is unbelievable; it swaddles us in ever-present maternal affection and a never quiet meddlesomeness; so that, only this very morning, it sent me on a depressing errand. For my dear friend Célie, I must tell you, was to-day confined in the Convent of the Magdalens, on account of three fervent sonnets and a half-dozen articles of male wearing apparel which were found in her reticule. I have but now returned from bidding my adored pet farewell at the gate of her consecrated prison. And I was going very sadly back to my court duties at Miradol when you interrupted my journey, which was already sufficiently heartbreaking, with assassination.”
“Indeed, madame,” returned the highwayman, mournfully, “I have committed great sacrilege. In the way of business I attacked your coach without knowing who occupied it. Judge then of my horror when I find that, of all creatures in the world, I have molested the one creature whom I worship!”
“But why,” said Marianne, with grave innocence, “why should you worship me in particular?”
“Because, madame, I am a poet. Your perfections, as I have previously remarked, inspire me. They are even now inspiring me with a new stanza to my ‘Garland for Marianne.’”
She regarded this tall and remarkably handsome malefactor with appreciation. She most certainly knew of no debauched young courtier who, when thus left alone with an innocent blonde girl, in this lonely forest, would have devoted the occasion to composing poetry.
“Your principles, Master Clitandre,” said Marianne, “are above reproach. The dear Queen herself would approve of your principles, I am afraid. It follows that I shall look forward with intense interest to the receipt of your beautiful poem; and I shall devour every line of it with applause and unbounded pleasures. Especially if you can get it to me in the summer, when one has time for reading.”
Clitandre answered: “If not with pleasure—O Lady, properly endowed with high station at a queen’s court, and made peerless in pre-eminence by your bright virtues and by the gifts of the Graces in some hour of unusual prodigality—if not with pleasure, if not with your discerning applause, yet do you receive the inconsiderable verses of a still unpublished poet with charity! and do you glance through the spectacles of indulgence upon the slight results of prolonged labors! Not mine are the talents of blind Homer or of bald-headed Æschylus; and though the elephant affords to the huntsman ivory, and the civet-cat a sweet smelling perfume, yet may the hare give only his hide, and the calf cutlets.”
Then Clitandre said: “Lady, the gods weigh the wills of men, not their offerings; therefore may you, who appear to me divine, well imitate your fellow divinities. Pallas Athene, although a thoughtful and serious-minded immortal, desired that web which was woven by my mother Arachne; therefore may you, it is possible, desire a tapestry into which the son of Arachne has interwoven fine words of diverse sounds with the shuttle of respectful adoration. If I have not labored with the good will of the Muses and a discreet placing of my caesurae—if my tropes ring unhandsomely—then let it be from you that the offspring of my foiled striving receives its doom. If otherwise, then let it be the well-shaped and the silk-soft hand of Marianne, more white than is the pallid paper which conveys to her my love very timidly, yea, let it be the worshipful hand of Marianne which, in exchange for her ‘Garland’ places upon my brow a wreath of laurel, the poet’s customary reward.”
And Clitandre said also: “It is permitted you, Lady, to convict me of all si
ns except only the crime of carelessness. So far as I was able, I have always paid an untiring homage to my Muse wheresoever I might happen to be, even in a prison cell. But the talons of the law have often molested my wooing of chaste Erato; wigged judges and rude jailers have instructed me more deeply in penal codes than in scansion; and the police also have refused to honor the license of a poet. Over and yet over again, and under many aliases, have I fled from all sorts of fetters save only those of Apollo which constrain the inspired bard; and in the shadow of the scaffold I have written, it may be, with some little unevenness.”
To this simple but sincere speech Marianne had listened with unconcealed emotion. She was touched by the frank fervors of the young highwayman’s passion. But other matters now engaged her attention and proclaimed its interruption to be inevitable; so that Marianne sighed regretfully, and observed:
“I am moved, sir, by the single-heartedness of your devotion. A maiden’s modesty must check me from saying more at this particular instant. For it now occurs to me that the police, as you suggest, are immune from many emotions of a superior nature. And I notice that Lelio approaches us attended by an entire squadron of constables from Arleoth.”
Clitandre arose, loosening his long sword in its brown leather scabbard; and then, drawing two of the big silver-mounted pistols from the half-dozen which adorned his wide crimson belt, he declared:
“I deduce death. I infer that it becomes my duty to rebuke with carnage the incivility of these policemen, who have thus interrupted a conversation of grave importance.”
“It would be far more dignified, Master Clitandre,” Marianne pointed out, “as well as very much more scathing, to express your displeasure by withdrawing in silent contempt. It would also—in view of their numerousness, apart from the circumstance that each constable carries a large blunderbuss—be a great deal more prudent.”
The young man perceived the justice of this advice, and replied:
“Moreover, if I remain here, madame, I must necessarily despatch a number of them before I have the chance to express my contempt at full length. The slain persons would thus miss the point of my discourse. Yes, you are right. It will be more adequate to direct against the chief of police a satiric poem denouncing his department and all members of it in such terms as will blight the remainder of his existence and consign everybody of his profession to eternal shame.”
Thus speaking, Clitandre the poet highwayman mounted his black mare, and resuming his black mask, he bowed ceremoniously. He then rode away, in a local hailstorm of hurtless bullets, leaving Marianne, unharmed and unrobbed, to be rescued by the complacent constabulary.
XXXIII. MR. SMITH PLAYS CHESS
When Clitandre had returned to Volmar’s home, upon the southern borders of Branlon, he found Mr. Smith was spending the evening there. They all supped together, except Mr. Smith, who ate nothing. After that, when the King of Osnia’s daughter was about her dish-washing, and when well-fuddled Volmar had gone to sleep upon a couch under a robe of sables, then Mr. Smith took from out of a bag that was woven of gold threads a chess-board, made of gold and of rubies, and the chess men carved in onyx and moulded in bright orichalc. Thus handsomely did he play at chess with Clitandre in the while that the young highwayman talked about the day’s doings.
Nor was it a great while before the Lord of the Forest had heard his tall thieving son’s fine rhapsodies about Marianne indulgently.
“Child of a dream,” replied Mr. Smith, “when I released you from a deep dungeon it was in order that you might follow after your own dreams unhindered. So do you continue by all means to adore this blonde dream-woman. And do you count on my aid whensoever it may be needed. Check.”
“Sir,” said Clitandre, in a warm glow of enthusiasm, which promptly cost him a bishop, “you remain the most splendid of patrons. I regret only that you do not empower me to steal something in your behalf, because, as I shall always remember, I would have been hanged last spring, on account of the Duke of Melphés best pair of candlesticks, but for your staunch friendship for my parents.”
“Let us distinguish, Clitandre!” replied Mr. Smith, modestly. “I was not ever your father’s true friend, even though I did know sublime Smirt, I flatter myself, better than did most people. I very often thank fortune for this fact, upon at least two grounds. Check again, I believe. As for your mother Arachne, well, but as I always said, there was something about the way in which her head was set on her neck that I found specially charming; and her predilection for eating her husbands, after she had once used them, was after all but the combining of a certain fastidiousness with the virtue of thrift. So it follows, my dear boy, yes, it follows that I delight to see the son of Arachne making a young idiot of himself thus wholesomely.”
“Ah, sir, but Madame Marianne is perfection!” said Clitandre, as he castled.
“She customarily is,” returned Mr. Smith, “at your age. Check. And that she thinks well of you I do not doubt, for you have much the look of your father.”
“It is good hearing, sir,” replied Clitandre, reverently, and with the loss of a knight, “that I should in any manner resemble that divine hero whose great fame had no equal either upon earth or in heaven.”
“Well, in a way, Clitandre—check—that is true, just as that is true about the Borgias and Mary’s little lamb and Judas Iscariot. Still, one does distinguish. Check.”
“Yet one does not split hairs, sir—except at the grave cost of tonsorial blasphemy—in according reverence to sublime Smirt. Yes; the game is yours, Lord of the Forest. Nor can I play now another chess game,” said Clitandre, rising, “because I have an engagement which summons me forth.”
It was an announcing which Mr. Smith received with urbane disapproval, in the while that he leaned back, and lighted a cigarette, and remarked:
“You work too hard, Clitandre. Yes, you inherit your mother’s untiring industry. That is a fault on the right side, of course: still, it is not well, after giving all day to highway robbery, for you to devote the night season to burglary. No mortal constitution can stand a strain so incessant.”
“Sir, it is not larceny but love which to-night requires my attention.”
Now was Mr. Smith abeam with divine complacency; and he said:
“Why, but can it be that, impressed by the bel air and the fine eyes which you got from your father, this Marianne has granted you an assignation?”
Clitandre was horrified; and he showed as much, in declaring:
“Such an event, sir, is as far beyond my merits as it exceeds the imaginable limits of my revered lady’s condescension. I can think of nothing more dreadful, or more sacrilegious, than is this notion of my approaching Madame Marianne as one normally does approach lesser creatures.”
“Truly,” replied Mr. Smith, “but it takes a long while of blundering to convince any young poet that every woman is made out of flesh and blood. Only at the cost of many sleepless nights, and of much toil and digging in dark places, does he grant that which the more stolid accept as a plain axiom in the first dawn of puberty. But let us discuss matters of less universal interest.”
“In fact, sir, I think it would be a great deal better not to think about any such enormities in connection with her whom I worship whole-heartedly, and to whom my eternal faithfulness is pledged for all time. No, Lord of the Forest, I propose to pass this night with a young woman named Nicole, whom I met in Arleoth this morning; and whose elderly husband, by good luck, is now absent from home.”
“Come now,” said Mr. Smith, “but to console the bereaved, even the temporarily bereaved, and to comfort the lonely, and perhaps also to labor in place of the impotent, is, from every point of view, a fine employment for charitably inclined young men.”
“In that case, Lord of the Forest, I shall ask you to excuse me until breakfast—”
In reply, Mr. Smith exhaled philosophically a smoke wreath, which if not in all a paternal blessing was at any rate a consent of unflawed urbanity.
&
nbsp; “Moreover,” Mr. Smith resumed, “it is praiseworthy that you should intend to remain faithful to your adored Marianne in your thoughts and in your verse-making rather than in your body. It shows a quite proper respect for the operations of the mind, as opposed to one’s merely animal faculties. So must both charity and ethics counsel you, Clitandre, to go forward at once to the consummation of your unhallowed desires.”
“Why, then, Lord of the Forest, I shall say goodnight to you—”
“And besides that, in its every aspect,” Mr. Smith continued, affably, “love is a most interesting passion. As has been well remarked, love is a divine rage and enthusiasm, which seizes on man, and works a revolution in his entire being: it unites him to his race; it carries him with new sympathy into nature; it enhances the power of his senses; it opens his imagination; and it adds to his character heroic and sacred attributes.”
“Very well, then,” said Clitandre, taking up his plumed hat: “then, with your permission, I shall attempt at once to develop my character; and to open my imagination, I believe you said it was, sir; and to enter with sympathy into the workings of nature; and to unite myself with my race, or in any event with one charming member of it.”
“By all means, my dear boy!” Mr. Smith urged him. “For somewhat unreasonably has a carping lawyer protested that it is wrong for man, who was made for the contemplation of heaven and of all noble objects, to kneel before any lesser idol in the shape of a fair woman,—and thus make of himself a slave to his own servant, the eye, which was given him for more serious purposes. Yet the eye is a faithful and far-reaching servant; we do well to reward it with the edifying spectacle of beauty in a hot sweat. Moreover, now I think of it, neither Bacon nor Emerson has as yet said these superb things. But they will say them by-and-by: and the truth of sage sayings is not a matter of chronology. So do you go at once to your Nicole.”
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