The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  “I call you all to witness,” said Madoc, “that this day has robbed my living of its purpose and of every joy. I call you all to witness that I shall make no more songs now that I have lost my heart’s arbiter and my art’s arbitrary and most candid critic. Let my fame end with my happiness! Let the provokers of each perish in the one burning!”

29. “THIS TRULY DOES NOT DIE”

  Thereafter Madoc stood beside the funeral pyre. About him were his children and his grandchildren. A company of white-robed boys, from the temple of the local goddess of fertility, were singing what many persons held to be the very noblest of Madoc’s many superb songs, the poet’s great hymn about human immortality and about the glorious heritage of man that is the ever-living and beloved heir of Heaven.

  Four bondwomen were killed, and their bodies were arranged gracefully about the pyre, along with the furnishings of Ettarre’s toilet table and her cooking utensils and her sewing implements. Then fire was laid to all. Ettarre’s frail aged body was burned so, with the black pen that was in her hand.

  The white-robed boys sang very movingly; and they enumerated sweetly and comfortably, and exultantly, the joys into which this noble and most virtuous lady had entered yesterday afternoon. But old Madoc heard another music, unheard through all the years in which he had held Ettarre away from her lunar witcheries to be his bedfellow upon Earth: and the bereaved widower shocked everybody by laughing aloud, now that he heard once more the skirling music from behind the moon which, whether it stayed heard or unheard, was decreed to be the vexing of him who had cheated the Norns.

30. LEADS TO CONTENTMENT

  Such was the end of his prosperity and honor, and such was the beginning of his happiness. Old Madoc went now as a vagabond, a trifle crazed, a trifle ragged, but utterly satisfied to follow after that music which none other heard.

  Its maker fled always a little before him, inaccessibly: she held before her that with which she made her music, upon no cumbersome bronze harp but upon her heartstrings: her averted face he could not see, nor did he any longer wonder if it were Ettarre or some other who guided him. It was enough that Madoc followed after the music woven out of all doubtfulness and discontent which rang more true than any other music.

  He followed its sweet skirling down the lanes and streets in which home-keeping persons chanted the famous songs of Madoc. Everywhere the smiling old wanderer could see his fellows living more happily and more worthily because of the contentedness and the exultant faith which was in these songs.

  He was glad that he had made these songs, to be a cordial to guiltless men who had not cheated the Norns. Meanwhile—for him who had outwitted the Gray Three,—there stayed always yonder, always just ahead, another music, which was not wholly of this earth, and which a vagabond alone might be following after always, as was his allotted doom.

31. THE BEST POSSIBLE POSTSCRIPT

  This the story of Madoc: but of the story of Ettarre this is only a very little part. For her story is not lightly to be ended (so do the learned declare) by the death of any woman’s body which for a while Ettarre has been wearing: nor is her music-making ended either (the young say), no matter to what ears time and conformity may have brought deafness.

  I think we oldsters hardly need to debate the affair, with so many other matters to be discussed and put in order, now that all evenings draw in. If there be any music coming from behind the moon it echoes faintlier than does the crackling of the hearth-fire; it is drowned by the piping voices of our children. We—being human—may pause to listen now and then, half wistfully, it may be, for an unrememberable cadence which only the young hear: yet we whom time has made deaf to this music are not really discontent; and common decency forbids one to disturb the home circle (as that blundering Lamech did, you may remember) by crying out, “I have slain a young man to my hurt!”

explicit

THE WHITE ROBE

A SAINT’S SUMMARY

  “Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,

  and faithfulness the girdle of his reins;

  and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.”

FOR

FRANCES NEWMAN

— inevitably—

this story of dead lovers that were faithful

1. OF HIS MANNER OF LIFE IN THE SECULAR