The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  “Yet,” said Ettarre, “yet, as the strength of a man’s mortal body fails, so do his desires perish also. It is a thing more sad than any other thing which men know about, that under the touch of time even they who serve with the most ardor men’s highest fancies must lose, a little by a little, all hunger and all faith as to that which is beyond and above them.”

  He now looked somewhat wistfully into this girl’s quite nicely colored and shaped face which was, to him, so like the face of any other young woman who has good health. The gaunt old man flung back his head. His white hair fluttered about in the dawn wind, untidily, and the palely colored eyes of the tricked wanderer had a vexed and tormented shining, in the while that he said:

  “It is not a true thing which you are speaking. For I retain my faith in that which is beyond and above me. I have lost the desire and the vision: but I retain my faith. I retain my faith in that beauty which I may not see, and in that music which I may not hear ever any more, and in that dream which has betrayed me. And I am content.”

  The girl answered: “You are strangely obstinate. And I could never let anyone remain content.”

  With that she clasped for one moment his withered hands between her hands, and the witch-woman said, very tenderly:

  “Most brave and steadfast, and most foolish, of all them who have followed after Ettarre, the gods do well to smile at your strange and fond imaginings. And yet, tall king of men, the gods provide for him that holds to his faith.”

  She touched his ears. Her finger tips fell lightly upon his wrinkled eyelids.

Chapter XVII. The Changing of Alfgar

  ALL things were changed for Alfgar. He was not any longer a frail and aged person, now that contentment had gone out of him. For all his stoical, enforced contentment had now made room for joy, because his youth had returned to him; and in that garden, now, exulted that Alfgar who had been foremost among the champions of Ecben, the Alfgar who had been the most powerful of kings and the most ardent of lovers and the most knightly of chevaliers.

  All things were changed for Alfgar. He noted, with roving and imperious young eyes, that lilies abounded to each side of him, and that in this garden many climbing white roses also were lighted by the clear and tempered radiancy of early dawn. White rabbits were frisking about King Alfgar. He saw that all the world was lovely, and that time was friendly to all lovers. He heard a music which was not of this world, and it still sought and could not find its desire in any quarter of earth. But now was intermingled with this music the sound of doves that called to their mates; and in this music he found, now, no doubtfulness and no discontent, but only the dear promise of a life which presently would be created out of the resistless might of this music’s yearning, and which would be more noble than had been any life yet known to human kind.

  All things were changed for Alfgar, who grasped with strong hands the hands of the most lovely of the women who are not quite of this world. For this was visibly that ever-young Ettarre whom very long ago the magic of a poet’s love and the wizardry of mathematics had fetched from out of the Waste Beyond the Moon, to be the delight and the ruin of many human lovers less fortunate than Alfgar had been, and to elude them eternally. But Alfgar she could not elude, he knew, because of those strong hands which held her hands securely.

  “The gods provide,” said Alfgar, joyously, “for him that holds to his faith!”

  So was it that all things were changed for Alfgar through the touch of the witch-woman who had drawn him out of the set ways of life into the garden between dawn and sunrise, and whose magic is more great than is the magic of time.

Chapter XVIII. As to Another Marriage Feast

  FROM all quarters of the garden came the young lovers, two by two, in high rejoicing. They rejoiced because, once more, the gray Norns had regarded respectfully the importance of a sincere love-affair, and because the oncoming years were again laboring to reward the steadfastness of true love with never-ending fame and contentment. They cried aloud to Alfgar, with friendly smiles and with gay caperings,—

  “The gods provide for him that holds to his faith!”

  Then they all praised Alfgar cordially. Each couple said, indeed, with the most sympathizing kind of politeness, that Alfgar and his appointed lady in domnei were more remarkable and more glorious than any other pair of lovers which had ever existed, saving only one pair,—which pair no couple was so egotistic as to mention outright.

  They that had served Ettarre came also, all those maimed poets whose living she had ruined. And they said: