40.Economics of Glaum-Without-Bones
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THEN Guivric passed through this door likewise; and so, with glowing feet and with an odor of funereal spices, Guivric came into the room in which was the Sylan. Glaum-Without-Bones looked up from his writing, tranquilly. Glaum said nothing: he merely smiled. All was quiet.
Guivric noticed a strange thing, and it was that this room was hung with brown and was furnished with books and pictures which had a familiar seeming. And then he saw that this room was in everything like the brown room at Asch in which now for so many years he had conducted his studies and his thaumaturgies; and that in this mischancy place, for all his arduous traveling beyond the Country of Widows and the fearful Isle of the Ten Carpenters and the high Wall of the Sassanid, here you still saw, through well-known windows, the familiar country about Asch and the gleaming of the Duardenez river, and beyond this the long plain of Amneran and the tall Forest of Acaire. And Guivric saw that this Glaum-Without-Bones, who sat there smiling up at Guivric, from under a cap of owl feathers,had in everything the appearance of the aging man who had so long sat in this room; and that Glaum-Without-Bones did not differ in anything from Guivric the Sage.
Guivric spoke first. He said:
“This is a strong magic. This is a sententious magic. They had warned me that I would here face my own destruction, that I would here face the most pitiable and terrible of all things: and I face here that which I have made of life, and life of me. I shudder; I am conscious of every appropriate sentiment. Nevertheless, sir, I must venture the suggestion that mere, explicit allegory as a form of art is somewhat obsolete.”
Glaum-Without-Bones replied: “What have I to do with forms of art? My need was of a form of flesh and blood. I had need of a human body and of human ties and of a human saga of the Norn’s most ruthless weaving. We Sylans have our powers and our privileges, but we are not the children of any god; and so, when we have lived out our permitted centuries, we must perish utterly unless we can contrive to become human. Therefore I had sore need of all human discomforts, so that a soul might sprout in me under oppression and chastening, and might, upon fair behavior, be preserved in eternal bliss, and not ever perish as we Sylans perish.”
“Everybody has heard of these familiar facts about you Sylans,” returned Guivric, impatiently, “and it isyour stealing, in this shabby fashion, of my own particular human ties that I consider unheard-of—”
“Yes, yes,” said Glaum, with some complacence, “that was done through a rare magic, and through a strong magic, and through a magic against which there is no remedy.”
“That we shall see about! For what has happened to me is not fair—”
“Of course it is not,” Glaum assented. “The doom which is now upon you is no fairer than the doom which was upon me yesterday, to perish utterly like a weed or an old tom-cat.”
“—And so I have come hither to match my resistless thaumaturgies against your piddling magic, and to compel you to restore to me your pilferings—”
“I shall restore to you,” Glaum stated, “nothing. And I have taken all. Your saga is now my saga, your castles are my castles, your son is my son, and your body is my body. Inside that body I intend to live self-mortifyingly and virtuously, for some ten years or so; and then that body will die: but by that time a soul will have sprouted in me, an immortal soul which, you may be certain, I shall keep stainless, because I at least know how to appreciate such a remunerative bit of property. Thus, when your tomb becomes my tomb, that soul will of course ascend to eternal bliss.”
“But what,” said Guivric, scornfully, “what if Ido not consent to be robbed of the salvation assured to me by sixty years of careful and respectable living? and what if I compel you—?”
“I think that, in your sorry case, you should not speak of compelling anybody to do anything. Nor is it altogether my doing that your house is now the Sylan’s House. Self-centered and self-righteous man, you had no longer any strength nor real desires, but only many little habits. Nothing at all solid remained really yours, not even when I first set about my magicking. Oho, and then you were an easy prey! and the human ties you held so lightly slipped very lightly away from you who had so long been living without any love or hatred or belief. For throughout that over-comfortable while the strength and the desire had been oozing out of you, and all your living wore thin. I had only to complete the emaciation. And in consequence”—Glaum gestured, rather gracefully, with Guivric’s long thin hands,—“in consequence, you go as a phantom.”
Guivric saw this was regrettably true. He saw it was as a slight grayish mist, through which he was looking down unhindered at the familiar rug behind him, that he now wavered and undulated in the midst of this room in which he had for so many years pursued his studies without a hint of such levity. Yet nothing was changed. Guivric of Perdigon still sat there, behind the oak table with copper corners. Guivric of Perdigon kept his accustomed place, palpable and prim andwary, as vigorous as could be hoped for at his age, and honored and well-to-do, and, in fine, with nothing left to ask for, as men estimate prosperity.
And the living of this Guivric was reasonably assured of going on like that, for year after year, quite comfortably, and with people everywhere applauding, and with nothing anywhere alluring you toward any rash excesses in the way of emotion. It was from this established and looked-up-to sort of living that a nefarious Sylan was planning to oust Guivric the Sage; and to leave Guivric a mere phantom, a thing as transitory and as disreputable—and of course, in a manner of speaking, as free too, and as lusty and as ageless,—as the Sylan’s self had been only yesterday.... For those abominable thieves and ravishers of maidens did not grow old and vigorless and tired: instead, when the appointed hour had struck, they vanished....
“Well, well!” said Guivric, and he now flickered into a sitting posture, more companionably. “This sort of eviction from every human tie is unexpected and high-handed and deplorable and so on. But we ought, even when all else is being lost, to retain composure.”
The Sylan let him talk....
And Guivric went on: “So, you are indissuadably resolved, at the cost of any possible conflict between my thaumaturgies and your magic, to leave me just a disembodied intelligence! Do you know, Messire Glaum, I cannot quite regard it as a compliment, that you refuseto take over my intelligence! Yet you, no doubt, prefer your own intelligence—”
The Sylan let him talk....
But Guivric had paused. For the Sylan’s intelligence had, after all, enabled Glaum to acquire—through howsoever irregular methods,—the utmost that a reasonable mind could look for in the way of success and comfort and of future famousness long after Glaum-Without-Bones had ascended to the eternal bliss assured by a careful and respectable past. The Sylan’s intelligence had gained for him the very best that any man could hope for. There was thus no firm ground, after all, upon which any human being could disrespect the Sylan’s intelligence.... It was only that these Sylans, always so regrettably lewd and spry, did not ever grow old and tired and vigorless: they did not ever, except of their own volition, become disgustingly smug-looking old prigs: instead when the appointed hour had struck, they vanished....
“—For your intelligence appears to me a very terrible sort of intelligence,” Guivric continued, “and I have no doubt that your magic is upon a plane with it. My little thaumaturgies could have no chance whatever against such magic and such intelligence. Oh, dear me, no! So I concede my helplessness, Messire Glaum, without mounting the high and skittish horse of virtuous indignation. I avoid the spectacle of an unseemly wrangle between fellow artists: and, in asking you torestore to me the customary rewards of a thrifty and virtuous and in every way prosperous existence, I can but appeal to your mercy.”
“I,” said the Sylan, “have none.”
“So I had hoped”—here Guivric coughed. “Anguish, sheer anguish, sir, deprives me of proper control of my tongue. For I had of course meant to say,” Guivric continued, upon a more tragic note,—“so I had hoped in vain! Now every hope is gone. Henceforward you are human, and I am only an unhonored vague Sylan! Well, it is all very terrible; but nothing can be done about it, I suppose.”
“Nothing whatever can be done about it,—unless you prefer to court something worse with those thaumaturgies of yours?”
Guivric was pained. “But, between fellow artists!” he stated. “Oh, no, dear Glaum, that sort of open ostentatious rivalry, for merely material gains, seems always rather regrettably vulgar.”
“Why, then, if you will pardon me,” the Sylan submitted, in Guivric’s most civil manner when dealing with unimportant persons, “I shall ask to be excused from prolonging our highly enjoyable chat. Some other time, perhaps— But I really am quite busy this morning: and, besides, our wife will be coming in here any minute, to call me to dinner.”
“I shall not intrude.” Vaporously arising, Guivric now smiled, with a new flavor of sympathy. “A ratherterrible woman, that, you will find! And, Lord, how a young Guivric did adore her once! Nowadays she is one of the innumerous reasons which lead me to question if you have been quite happily inspired, even with the delights of heaven impendent. You see, she is certainly going to heaven. And Michael too,—do you know, I think you will find Michael, also, something of a bore? He expects so much of his father, and when those expectations seem imperiled he does look at you so exactly like a hurt, high-minded cow! Now it is you who will have to live up to his notions, and to the notions of that fond, fretful, foolish woman, and it is you who will be bothered with an ever-present sense of something lost and betrayed—! But you will live up to their idiotic notions, none the less! And I do not doubt that, just as you say, the oppression and the chastening will be good for you.”
The Sylan answered, sternly, “Poor shallow learned selfish fool! it is that love and pride, it is their faith and their jealousy to hide away your shortcomings, it is the things you feebly jeer at, which will create in me a soul!”
“No doubt—” Then Guivric went on hastily, and in a tone of cordial encouragement. “Oh, yes, my dear fellow, there is not a doubt of it! and I am sure you will find the birth-pangs well rewarded. Heaven, everybody tells me, is a most charming place. Meanwhile, if you do not mind, just for a minute, pray do notcontort my face so unbecomingly until after I am quite gone! To see what right-thinking and a respectably inflated impatience with frivolity can make of my face, and has so often made of my face,” reflected Guivric, as he luxuriously drifted out of the familiar window like a smoke, “is even now a little humiliating. But, then, the most salutary lessons are invariably the most shocking.”