The Witch-Woman Trilogy

Chapter XII. The Way of All Women

  IT IS told that infirm old Alfgar passed on a gray road beneath gray skies, and about him blew that wind which fans the flickering of the stars. The first woman that he met there was gray and fat as a fed coffin worm. She mumbled, between toothless gums,—

  “Tarry! for I am that Cathra who was your first love.”

  And it is told also that the second woman he met was gray and lean. A piping voice came out of her lank quivering jaws, and that voice said,—

  “Tarry! for I am Olwen whom you loved with your whole heart.”

  Then Hrefna, and Guen, and Lliach, and Astrid, and Una, and all the other most dear maids that Alfgar had followed after in his youth, cried out their willingness to reward his love. Ettaine came also, bent and infirm and gray; her withered, hands trembled, and her guts rumbled rattlingly, in the while that Ettaine was saying,—

  “Tarry, delight of both my eyes!”

  For youth had long ago gone out of these maidens; the years had pilfered their sweet colorings; and time had so nibbled away every part of their comeliness, that these were but gray and decayed old harridans who leered and cackled and broke wind as each plucked at Alfgar’s ragged sleeve in the windy grayness.

  The gaunt tall King trudged onward.

  But here, the gray way was littered to the right hand and to the left hand with a scattering of papers which flutteringly rose up in the persistent wind, and these also spoke with Alfgar.

  “Tarry! for I am Oriana, the most faithful and most fair of all women,” was the first thin whispering that the old King heard: “but Amadis is far from this place, so let us now take our glad fill of love.”

  Then another paper rustled: “I am Aude. Roland loved me until his death, and it was of Roland’s death that I died; but for your dear love’s sake I live again.”

  And a third paper lisped:” I am Yseult, Mark’s queen. But I loved a harper, and the music of this Tristram made all my life a music. Not even death might still that music, for our names endure as one song that answers to another song. But Alfgar now is my one love.”

  He saw then that upon these papers were very crudely drawn the figures of women, in old and faded colors, and he so knew that he was being wooed by the fairest ladies of romance and of legend. But these swept about him futilely, adrift in the wind which fans the flickering of the stars: and all these paper figures were smutched with the thumb marks and the fly droppings and the dim grime of uncountable years. So did they pass as tatterings of soiled, splotched paper in which time had left no magic and no warmth and no beauty.

  Alfgar sighed: but he went onward.

  Then very many skeletons came crying out to Alfgar. And the first skeleton said:

  “Tarry! for I am Cleopatra. I am that one Cleopatra whose name yet lives. All the large world lay in this little hand, as my plaything. I ruled the South and North: and I ruled merrily, as became the daughter of Ra, the Lord of Crowns, and the well beloved of Amen-Ra, the Lord of the Throne of the Two Lands. The war drums and the shoutings of the legions under their tall crests of red horsehair could not prevail against the sweetness of my laughter: with one kiss I conquered Caesar, and all his army. Then Antony brought me new kingdoms, and with each of these, and with him also, I played as I desired, at the price of yet another kiss. But my third lover was more wise and cold than were these Roman captains, and yet I died of his kissing, because that dusty-colored, horned worm was too fiercely enamored of my loveliness.”

  The gaunt tall King trudged onward.

  But another skeleton cried out: “Nay, do you tarry instead with me. For I am that Magdalene whose body was as a well builded market-place wherefrom men got all their desires. My love was very liberal: my love was a highway whereupon glad armies marched in triumph: my love was a not ever ending festival where new guests come and go. Then a god passed, saying, ‘Love ye one another.’ But I stayed perverse, for after that time I loved him alone. In the hour of his tortured dying I did not leave him: when he returned from death I, and I only, awaited him, at the door of the gray tomb, at dawn, beneath the olive-trees, where the birds chattered with a surprising sweetness. But his voice was more sweet than theirs. Whithersoever he went, there I too must be: and for that reason he was followed by many who were enamored of my loveliness.”

  Alfgar sighed: but he went onward.