The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption

by James Branch Cabell

“I shall restore to you,” Glaum stated, “nothing. And I have taken all. Your saga is now my saga, your castles are my castles, your son is my son, and your body is my body. Inside that body I intend to live self-mortifyingly and virtuously, for some ten years or so; and then that body will die: but by that time a soul will have sprouted in me, an immortal soul which, you may be certain, I shall keep stainless, because I at least know how to appreciate such a remunerative bit of property. Thus, when your tomb becomes my tomb, that soul will of course ascend to eternal bliss.”

“But what,” said Guivric, scornfully, “what if I do not consent to be robbed of the salvation assured to me by sixty years of careful and respectable living? and what if I compel you—?”

“I think that, in your sorry case, you should not speak of compelling anybody to do anything. Nor is it altogether my doing that your house is now the Sylan’s House. Self-centered and self-righteous man, you had no longer any strength nor real desires, but only many little habits. Nothing at all solid remained really yours, not even when I first set about my magicking. Oho, and then you were an easy prey! and the human ties you held so lightly slipped very lightly away from you who had so long been living without any love or hatred or belief. For throughout that over-comfortable while the strength and the desire had been oozing out of you, and all your living wore thin. I had only to complete the emaciation. And in consequence”—Glaum gestured, rather gracefully, with Guivric’s long thin hands,—“in consequence, you go as a phantom.”

Guivric saw this was regrettably true. He saw it was as a slight grayish mist, through which he was looking down unhindered at the familiar rug behind him, that he now wavered and undulated in the midst of this room in which he had for so many years pursued his studies without a hint of such levity. Yet nothing was changed. Guivric of Perdigon still sat there, behind the oak table with copper corners. Guivric of Perdigon kept his accustomed place, palpable and prim and wary, as vigorous as could be hoped for at his age, and honored and well-to-do, and, in fine, with nothing left to ask for, as men estimate prosperity.

And the living of this Guivric was reasonably assured of going on like that, for year after year, quite comfortably, and with people everywhere applauding, and with nothing anywhere alluring you toward any rash excesses in the way of emotion. It was from this established and looked-up-to sort of living that a nefarious Sylan was planning to oust Guivric the Sage; and to leave Guivric a mere phantom, a thing as transitory and as disreputable—and of course, in a manner of speaking, as free too, and as lusty and as ageless,—as the Sylan’s self had been only yesterday.... For those abominable thieves and ravishers of maidens did not grow old and vigorless and tired: instead, when the appointed hour had struck, they vanished....

“Well, well!” said Guivric, and he now flickered into a sitting posture, more companionably. “This sort of eviction from every human tie is unexpected and high-handed and deplorable and so on. But we ought, even when all else is being lost, to retain composure.”

The Sylan let him talk....

And Guivric went on: “So, you are indissuadably resolved, at the cost of any possible conflict between my thaumaturgies and your magic, to leave me just a disembodied intelligence! Do you know, Messire Glaum, I cannot quite regard it as a compliment, that you refuse to take over my intelligence! Yet you, no doubt, prefer your own intelligence—”

The Sylan let him talk....

But Guivric had paused. For the Sylan’s intelligence had, after all, enabled Glaum to acquire—through howsoever irregular methods,—the utmost that a reasonable mind could look for in the way of success and comfort and of future famousness long after Glaum-Without-Bones had ascended to the eternal bliss assured by a careful and respectable past. The Sylan’s intelligence had gained for him the very best that any man could hope for. There was thus no firm ground, after all, upon which any human being could disrespect the Sylan’s intelligence.... It was only that these Sylans, always so regrettably lewd and spry, did not ever grow old and tired and vigorless: they did not ever, except of their own volition, become disgustingly smug-looking old prigs: instead when the appointed hour had struck, they vanished....