CHAPTER XV
SANDY'S TALE
"And so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I, as we rode off."Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assetsof that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I rafflethem off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"
"Seven, please you, sir, and their squires."
"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?"
"Where do they hang out?"
"Yes, where do they live?"
"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then shesaid musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over hertongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do theyhang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth thephrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily wordedwithal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, wherebyI may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so!already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--"
"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy."
"Cowboys?"
"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them.A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called."
"Game--"
"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on yourstatistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your firestarted. Tell me about the knights."
"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed androde into a great forest. And--"
"Great Scott!"
You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her worksa-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting downto those facts. And she generally began without a preface andfinished without a result. If you interrupted her she would eithergo right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words,and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptionsonly did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt prettyfrequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die ifhe let her monotony drip on him right along all day.
"Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back andbegan over again:
"So they two departed and rode into a great forest. And--"
"_Which_ two?"
"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks,and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their massesin the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a greatforest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, oftwelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, andthe damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaineware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as thedamsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire uponthe shield--"
"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy,I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see thosecreatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that.The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, andI mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblesthello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness,patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land."
"Hello-girl?"
"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl;they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them whenthey are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feelingsorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years,it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is,no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've gotto confess--"
"Peradventure she--"
"Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explainher so you would understand."
"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine andSir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did thatdespite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you.There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield,and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth allladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite tothe shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evila good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventurethough he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he lovethin some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again,and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--"
"Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy.Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. Youwould have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in frontof your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bringabout a new distribution of the married princesses and duchessesof the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is justa sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squawin it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desertto the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt."
"--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine.Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus theking's son of Ireland."
"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't meananything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jumpthis gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs inthe circus; he is born before his time."
"I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight asany is on live."
"_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is thatyou are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter."
"--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights weregathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, saidSir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is tosuppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom,and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that ismore your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to seea knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine andSir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they warewhere Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight towardthem. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled intothe turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way.Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, andsaid on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran togetherthat the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smotehim so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--"
"Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things,it ruins so many horses."
"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him towardMarhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight ofthe turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--"
"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to bebroken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaudand support it."
. . . .
"So these two knights came together with great random--"
I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn'tsay anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble withthe visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case.
"--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieceson the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse andman he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--"
"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple;the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptionssuffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharasof fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws aboutthem a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are allalike: a couple of people come together with great random--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, andso is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others,but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together withgreat random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shieldand the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tailand brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in,and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down_he_ goes, horse and man, ov
er his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck,and then there's another elected, and another and another and stillanother, till the material is all used up; and when you come tofigure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor whowhipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle,sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog.Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiestspectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance?Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boybrast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!"
It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturbSandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again,the minute I took off the lid:
"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine withhis spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield,and they aventred their spears, and they came together with allthe might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hardin the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--"
"I knew it would."
--"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine andhis horse rushed down to the earth--"
"Just so--and brake his back."
--"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled outhis sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus on foot, and therewitheither came unto other eagerly, and smote together with theirswords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised theirhelms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawaine,fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hoursever stronger and stronger and thrice his might was increased.All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his mightincreased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then whenit was come noon--"
The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes andsounds of my boyhood days:
"N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strikethe gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers forthe Shore-line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yardon't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners,_s-a-n-d_'ches, p--_op_-corn!"
--"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine'sstrength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he mightdure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger--"
"Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would oneof these people mind a small thing like that."
--"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt thatye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as everI felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, andtherefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passingfeeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the wordthat I should say. And therewith they took off their helms andeither kissed other, and there they swore together either to loveother as brethren--"
But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinkingabout what a pity it was that men with such superb strength--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensomeiron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bangeach other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been bornat a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Takea jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, andputs it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world becausehe is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he isa jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and shouldnever have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once youstart a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what isgoing to come of it.
When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived thatI had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a longway off with her people.
"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones,and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby wasthe head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sittingthereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knightsince it was christened, but he found strange adventures--"
"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son ofIreland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue,or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one wouldrecognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named.It is a common literary device with the great authors. You shouldmake him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight sinceit was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.'You see how much better that sounds."
--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers.Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hardto say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speedwith usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either salutedother, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, andshe was threescore winter of age or more--"
"The _damsel_ was?"
"Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--"
"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fitkind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, andfall out when you laugh."
"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet ofgold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--"
Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice fadedout of my hearing!
Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her agewho was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whomI shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me backover wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many,many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summermornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear.She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it.
I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who ourcaptured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever getto explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughtswere far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale,caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vagueway that each of these three knights took one of these three damselsup behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east,the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, afteryear and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was ofa piece with the general simplicity of the country.
The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon whenAlisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had madepretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some timeor other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried.
We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge,strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements werecharmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass wasdrenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was thelargest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the onewe were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it;she said she had passed it without calling, when she went downto Camelot.