Chapter 20 - The Ogre's Castle
BETWEEN six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse carrying triple -- man, woman, and armor; then we stopped for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid1 brook2.
Right so came by and by a knight3 riding; and as he drew near he made dolorous4 moan, and by the words of it I perceived that he was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of his coming, for that I saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters all of shining gold was writ5:
"USE PETERSON S PROPHYLACTIC6 TOOTH-BRUSH-- ALL THE GO."
I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly great fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace7 of sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext8 or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, and yet never withheld9 when asked: that was, that the reason he didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down over horse-tail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not see any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him, for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was so fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand leonine set of his plumed11 head, and his big shield with its quaint12 device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush, with motto: "Try Noyoudont." This was a tooth-wash that I was introducing.
He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not alight. He said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarder referred to was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of considerable celebrity13 on account of his having tried conclusions in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul that Sir Gaheris himself -- although not successfully. He was of a light and laughing disposition14, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polish sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing serious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do was to deftly15 and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections16 toward neatness against the time when the stove should appear upon the stage.
Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. He said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any comfort, until he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this account. It appeared, by what I could piece together of the unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and glades17, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare customers for prophylactics18 and tooth-wash. With characteristic zeal19 Sir Madok had plunged20 away at once upon this quest, and after three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled21 his game. And behold22, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the dungeons23 the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all of twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth.
"Blank-blank-blank him," said Sir Madok, "an I do not stove-polish him an I may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that hight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide24 on live, an I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a great oath this day."
And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and gat him thence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon one of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. He was basking25 in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing27 him were also descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now; but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind was stagnant28. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast29 half a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old wife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could remember him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hands and went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castle could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense30; but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there among her married sons and daughters trying to realize a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set before her face.
It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage31 so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous32 dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him.
I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant33 and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable34 law that all revolutions that will succeed must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward35. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign36 of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.
Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement and feverish37 expectancy38. She said we were approaching the ogre's castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort of thing is catching39. My heart got to thumping40. You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps41 about things which the intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse, motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head bent42 nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered a declivity43, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And they kept it up while she was gaining her ambush44 and getting her glimpse over the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side on my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed45 with her finger, and said in a panting whisper:
"The castle! The castle! Lo, where it looms46!"
What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said:
"Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty47; a pigsty with a wattled fence around it."
She looked surprised and distressed48. The animation49 faded out of her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and silent. Then:
"It was not enchanted50 aforetime," she said in a musing51 fashion, as if to herself. "And how strange is this marvel52, and how awful -- that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base and shameful53 aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and stately still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air from its towers. And God shield us, how it pricks54 the heart to see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their sweet faces! We have tarried along, and are to blame."
I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to ME, not to her. It would be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion55, it couldn't be done; I must just humor it. So I said:
"This is a common case -- the enchanting56 of a thing to one eye and leaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of it before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these ladies were hogs58 to everybody and to themselves, it would be necessary to break the enchantment59, and that might be impossible if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. And hazardous60, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the true key, you are liable to err10, and turn your hogs into dogs, and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas which you can't follow -- which, of course, amounts to the same thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible61 hog57 is a lady, that is enough for me, I know how to treat her."
"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I know that thou wilt62 deliver them, for that thou art minded to great deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will and to do, as any that is on live."
"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds --"
"The ogres, Are THEY changed also? It is most wonderful. Now am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of their nine cubits of stature63 are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily64, fair sir; this is a mightier65 emprise than I wend."
"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how MUCH of an ogre is invisible; then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you be afraid, I will make short work of these bunco-steerers. Stay where you are."
I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky66 and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the swine-herds. I won their gratitude67 by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest quotations68. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the manor69, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the swine-herds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and he said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took the fattest one for tithes70, the wife burst out upon him, and offered him a child and said:
"Thou beast without bowels71 of mercy, why leave me my child, yet rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?"
How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day, under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise.
I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned72 Sandy to come -- which she did; and not leisurely73, but with the rush of a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon those hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them to her heart, and kiss them, and caress26 them, and call them reverently74 by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race.
We had to drive those hogs home -- ten miles; and no ladies were ever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road, no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest places they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughly accosted75; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming their rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying and difficult to scour76 around after hogs, in armor. There was one small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair on her back, that was the devil for perversity77. She gave me a race of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress. I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing78. When I overtook Sandy she was horrified79, and said it was in the last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train.
We got the hogs home just at dark -- most of them. The princess Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting: namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side -- a couple of the tryingest blisters80 to drive that I ever saw. Also among the missing were several mere81 baronesses82 -- and I wanted them to stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills to that end.
Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great guns! -- well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anything like it. And never smelt83 anything like it. It was like an insurrection in a gasometer.
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