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diff --git a/old/69779-0.txt b/old/69779-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 79e184a..0000000 --- a/old/69779-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8558 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Something about Eve, by James Branch -Cabell - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Something about Eve - A comedy of fig-leaves - -Author: James Branch Cabell - -Release Date: January 13, 2023 [eBook #69779] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Delphine Lettau, Cindy Beyer, Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan & the - online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at - http://www.pgdpcanada.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMETHING ABOUT EVE *** - - - - - - SOMETHING ABOUT EVE - - - A Comedy of Fig-leaves - - BY - JAMES BRANCH CABELL - - - “I WAS AFRAID, BECAUSE I WAS - NAKED: AND I HID MYSELF” - - - LONDON - JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED - - - - - First Published in 1927 - Made and Printed in Great Britain by - Tonbridge Printers Peach Hall Works Tonbridge - - - - - To - ELLEN GLASGOW - - —very naturally—this book which - commemorates the intelligence - of women - - - - - CONTENTS - PART ONE: THE BOOK OF OUTSET - - 1 How the Tempter Came 3 - 2 Evelyn of Lichfield 6 - 3 Two Geralds 15 - 4 That Devil in the Library 21 - - PART TWO: THE BOOK OF TWILIGHT - - 5 Christening of the Stallion 33 - 6 Evadne of the Dusk 38 - - PART THREE: THE BOOK OF DOONHAM - - 7 Evasherah of the First Water-Gap 51 - 8 The Mother of Every Princess 65 - 9 How One Butterfly Fared 72 - - PART FOUR: THE BOOK OF DERSAM - - 10 Wives at Caer Omn 77 - 11 The Glass People 83 - 12 Confusions of the Golden Travel 86 - 13 Colophon of a God 99 - 14 Evarvan of the Mirror 102 - - PART FIVE: THE BOOK OF LYTREIA - - 15 At Tenjo’s Court 113 - 16 The Holy Nose of Lytreia 120 - 17 Evaine of Peter’s Tomb 126 - 18 End of a Vixen 142 - 19 Beyond the Veil 146 - - PART SIX: THE BOOK OF TUROINE - - 20 Thaumaturgists in Labor 155 - 21 They That Wore Blankets 159 - 22 The Paragraph of the Sphinx 164 - 23 Odd Transformation of a Towel 176 - - PART SEVEN: THE BOOK OF POETS - - 24 On Mispec Moor 183 - 25 The God Conforms 190 - 26 “Qualis Artifex!” 195 - 27 Regarding the Stars 206 - - PART EIGHT: THE BOOK OF MAGES - - 28 Fond Magics of Maya 215 - 29 Leucosia’s Singing 220 - 30 What Solomon Wanted 225 - 31 The Chivalry of Merlin 229 - 32 A Boy That Might As Well Be 238 - - PART NINE: THE BOOK OF MISPEC MOOR - - 33 Limitations of Gaston 247 - 34 Ambiguity of the Brown Man 255 - 35 Of Kalki and a Döoppelganger 259 - 36 Tannhäuser’s Troubled Eyes 263 - 37 Contentment of the Mislaid God 270 - - PART TEN: THE BOOK OF ENDINGS - - 38 About the Past of a Bishop 281 - 39 Baptism of a Musgrave 294 - 40 On the Turn of a Leaf 298 - 41 Child of All Fathers 301 - 42 Theodorick Rides Forth 305 - 43 Economics of Redemption 310 - 44 Economics of Common-Sense 319 - 45 Farewell to All Fair Welfare 323 - - PART ELEVEN: THE BOOK OF REMNANTS - - 46 The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins 329 - 47 How Horvendile Gave Up the Race 333 - - PART TWELVE: THE BOOK OF ACQUIESCENCE - - 48 Fruits of the Sylan’s Industry 345 - 49 Triumph of the Two Truths 352 - 50 Exodus of Glaum 362 - - - - - THE ARGUMENT OF THIS COMEDY - Set forth as clearly as discretion permits, for the convenience - of the intending reader - - THESE shadows here are subtle: for they wait - Like usurers that briefly lend the sun - Disfavor and a stinted while to run - With flaunting vigor through life’s large estate - Of fire and turmoil; or like thieves that hate - No law-lord save the posturing of desire - With genuflexions where dejections tire - The fig-leaf’s trophy with the fig-leaf’s weight. - - Yes; they are subtle: and where no light is - These tread not openly, as heretofore, - With whisperings of that at odds with this - To veil their passing, where a broken door - Confronts the zenith, and Semiramis, - At one with Upsilon, exhorts no more. - - - - - PART ONE - - THE BOOK OF OUTSET - - “Wheresoever a Man Lives, There - Will be a Thornbush Near His Door.” - - - - - 1. - How the Tempter Came - - -FOR some moments after he had materialized, and had become perceivable -by human senses, the Sylan waited. He waited, looking down at the very -busy, young, red-haired fellow who sat within arm’s reach at the -writing-table. This boy, as yet, was so unhappily engrossed in literary -composition as not to have noticed his ghostly visitant. So the Sylan -waited.... - -And as always, to an onlooker, the motions of creative writing revealed -that flavor of the grotesque which is attendant upon every form of -procreation. The Sylan rather uneasily noted the boy’s writhing antics, -which to a phantom seemed strange and eerie.... For this mortal world, -as the Sylan well remembered, was remarkably opulent in things which -gave pleasure when they were tasted or handled,—the world in which this -pensive boy was handling, and now nibbled at, the tip-end of a black -pen. Outside this somewhat stuffy room were stars or sunsets or -impressive mountains, to be looked at from almost anywhere in this -mortal world,—which would also afford to the investigative, who -searched in appropriate places, such agreeable smells as that of vervain -and patchouli, and of smouldering incense, and of hayfields under a -large moon, and of pine woods, and the robustious salty odors of a wind -coming up from the sea. - -Likewise, at this very moment, you might encounter, in the prodigal -world outside this somewhat stuffy room, those tinier, those mere baby -winds which were continually whispering in the tree-tops about this -world’s marvelousness now that April was departing; or you might hear -the irrationally dear sound of a bird calling dubiously in the spring -night, with a very piercing sweetness; or, if you went adventuring yet -farther, you might hear the muffled delicious voice of a woman -counterfeiting embarrassment and reproof of your enterprise.... Outside -this book-filled room, in fine, was that unforgotten mortal world in -which any conceivable young man could live very royally, and with -never-failing ardor, upon every person’s patrimony of the five human -senses. - -And yet, in such a well-stocked world, this lean, red-headed boy was -vexedly making upon paper (with that much nibbled-at black pen) small -scratches, the most of which he almost immediately canceled with yet -other scratches, all the while with the air of a person who is about -something intelligent and of actual importance. This Gerald Musgrave -therefore seemed to the waiting, spectral Sylan a somewhat excessively -silly mortal, thus to be squandering a lad’s brief while of living in -vigorous young human flesh, among so many readily accessible objects -which a boy like this could always be seeing and tasting and smelling -and hearing and handling, with unforgotten delight. - -But the Sylan reflected, too, a bit wistfully, that his own mortal youth -was now for some time overpast. It had, in fact, been nearly six hundred -years since he had been really young, a good five and a half centuries -since young Guivric and his nine tall comrades in the famous fellowship -had so delighted in their patrimony of five human senses and had spent -that inheritance rather notably. Yes, he was getting on, the Sylan -reflected; he had quite lost touch with the ways of these latter-day -young people. - -Yet it was perhaps unavoidable that in the great while since he had gone -about this world in a man’s natural body, the foibles of human youth had -become somewhat strange to him; and it was not, after all, to appraise -the wastefulness of authors that you had traveled a long way, from Caer -Omn to Lichfield, at the command of another Author, to put this doomed -red-headed boy out of living. - -The Sylan spoke.... - - - - - 2. - Evelyn of Lichfield - - -THE Sylan spoke. He spoke at some length. And the young man at the -writing-table, after arising with the slight start which these -supernatural visitations invariably evoked from him, had presently heard -the Sylan’s proposal. - -“Who is it,” said Gerald, then, “that tempts me to this sacrifice and to -this partial destruction?” - -The Sylan replied, “The name that I had in my mortal living was Guivric, -but now I am called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes.” - -That was a queer name, and it was a queer arrangement, too, which this -vague wraith in the likeness of a man was proposing,—an arrangement, -Gerald Musgrave decided, which, at least, was worth consideration.... - -For, as a student of magic, Gerald Musgrave in his time had dealt with -many demons: but never had been made to him, before this final night in -the April of 1805, such a queer, and yet rational, and even handsome -offer as was now held out. Gerald pushed aside the manuscript of his -unfinished romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme; he straightened the -ruffles about his throat; and for an instant he weighed the really quite -alluring suggestion.... Most demons were obsessed by the notion of -buying from you a soul which Gerald, in this age of reason, had no sure -proof that he possessed. But this Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, it seemed, -was empowered and willing to rid Gerald of all corporal obligations, and -to take over Gerald’s physical life just as it stood,—even with all the -plaguing complications of Gerald’s entanglement with Evelyn Townsend. - -“I was once human,” the Sylan explained, “and wore a natural body. And -old habits, in such trifles as apparel, cling. I feel at times, even -nowadays, after five centuries of a Sylan’s care-free living, rather at -a loss for human ties.” - -“I find them,” Gerald stated, “vast nuisances. Candor is no more -palatable than an oyster when either is out of season. And my relatives -are all cursed with a very disastrous candor. They conceal from me -nothing save that respect and envy with which they might, appropriately, -regard my accomplishments and nobler qualities.” - -“That has been the way with all relatives, Gerald, since Cain and Abel -were brothers.” - -“Still, but for one calamity, I could, it might be, endure my brothers. -I could put up with my sisters’ voluble and despondent view of my -future. I might even go so far in supererogation as to condone—upon -alternate Thursdays, say,—a chorus of affectionate aunts who speak for -my own good.” - -“The first person, Gerald, that pretended to speak for the real good of -anybody else was a serpent in a Garden, and ever since then that sort of -talking has been venomous.” - -“Yet all these afflictions I might,” said Gerald,—“conceivably, at -least, I might be able to endure, if only the pursuit of my art had not -been hampered, and the ease of my body blasted, by the greatest blessing -which can befall any man.” - -“You allude, I imagine,” said the Sylan, “to the love of a good woman?” - -“That is it, that is precisely the unmerited and too irremovable -blessing which may end, after all, in reducing me to your suggested -vulgar fraction of a suicide.” - -Now Gerald was silent. He leaned far back in his chair. He meditatively -placed together the tips of his two little fingers, and then one by one -the tips of his other fingers, until his thumbs also were in contact; -and he regarded the result, upon the whole, with disapprobation. - -“Every marriage gets at least one man into trouble,” he philosophised, -“and it is not always the bridegroom. You see, sir, by the worst of -luck, this Evelyn Townsend was already married, so that ours had -necessarily to become an adulterous union. It is the tragedy of my life -that I met my Cousin Evelyn too late to marry her. Any married person of -real ingenuity and tolerable patience can induce his wife to divorce -him. But there is no way known to me for a Southern gentleman to get rid -of a lady whom he has possessed illegally, until she has displayed the -decency to become tired of him. And Evelyn, sir, in this matter of -continuing her immoral relations with me has behaved badly, very badly -indeed—” - -“All women—” Glaum began. - -“No, but let us not be epigrammatic and aphoristic and generally -flippant about a perverseness which is pestering me beyond any -reasonable endurance! You know as well as I do that every pretty woman -ought, by and by, to remember what she owes to her husband and to her -marriage vows, and to act accordingly. Repentance when suitably timed in -a liaison makes for everybody’s happiness. But some women, sir, some -women stay more affectionately adhesive than an anaconda. They weep. -They reply to their helpless paramours’ every least attempt at any -rational statement, ‘And I trusted you! I gave you all!’” - -Glaum nodded, not unsympathetically. “I also in my time have heard that -observation without any active enjoyment. It is, I believe, -unanswerable.” - -Gerald shuddered. “There is, for a Southern gentleman at all events, no -really satisfactory reply save murder. And against that solution there -is of course a rather general prejudice. Therefore a woman of this -bleating sort exacts fidelity, she makes every nature of unconscionable -demand, and she pesters you to the verge of lunacy, always upon the -unanswerable ground that her claim upon your gratitude, and upon your -instant obedience in everything, ought not to exist. Oh, I assure you, -my dear fellow, there is no more sensible piece of friendly counsel -existent than is the Seventh Commandment!” - -“Your aphorisms are more or less true, and your predicament I can -understand. Nevertheless—” - -But the Sylan hesitated. - -“You also understand us Musgraves perfectly!” Gerald applauded. “For I -perceive you are now about to wheedle me forward in this business by -throwing obstacles in my way.” - -“I was but going to point out the truism that, nevertheless, it may be -wiser to put up with your Eve unresistingly—” - -“The name,” emended Gerald, “is Evelyn.” - -At that the Sylan smiled. “Yes, to be sure! Women do vary in their given -names. It might be wiser, then, I was about to say, for you to put up -with your Evelyn unresistingly, rather than for a student of magic, with -so little real practical experience as yours, to go blundering about the -doubtful road which leads to Antan.” - -“But, sir, I have the soul of an artist! Once”—and Gerald pointed to -his manuscript,—“once it was the little art of letters. Then, through -my acquaintance with Gaston Bulmer, who is no doubt known to you—” - -The Sylan shook his spectral head, like smoke in a veering wind. “I have -not, I believe, that pleasure.” - -“You astound me. I would have supposed the name of Gaston Bulmer to be -in all infernal circles a household word, because the dear old rascal is -an adept, sir, of wide parts, of taste, and of sound judgment. Then, -too, since Mrs. Townsend is his daughter, he has now for some while been -my father-in-law for all practical purposes—But, where was I? Ah, yes! -Through Gaston Bulmer, I repeat, I became initiate into the greatest of -all arts. Now I desire to excel in that art. I note that I falter in the -little art of letters, that my prose is no longer superb and -breath-taking in its loveliness, because my heart is not any longer -really interested in writing, on account of my heart’s ever-pricking -desire to revive in its full former glories the far nobler and—at all -events, in the United States of America,—the unjustly neglected art of -the magician. And from whom else—just as you have suggested, my dear -fellow,—from whom else save the Master Philologist can I get the great -and best words of magic? Do you but answer me that very simple -question!” - -“From no one else, to be sure—” - -“So, now, you see for yourself!” - -“Yet the Master Philologist is nowadays a married man, and is ruled in -everything by his wife. And this Queen Freydis has a mirror which must, -they say, be faced by those persons who venture into the goal of all the -gods of men—” - -“That mirror, too,” said Gerald, airily, “I may be needing. Mirrors are -employed in many branches of magic.” - -Glaum now was speaking with rather more of graveness than there seemed -any call for. And Glaum said: - -“For one, I would not meddle with that mirror. Even in the land of -Dersam, where a mirror is sacred, we do not desire any dealings with the -Mirror of the Hidden Children and with those strange reflections which -are unclouded by either good or evil.” - -“I shall face the Mirror of the Hidden Children,” Gerald said, with his -chin well up, “and should I see any particular need for it, I shall -fetch that mirror also out of Antan. When a citizen of the United States -of America takes up the pursuit of an art, sir, he does not -shilly-shally about it.” - -“For my part,” the Sylan answered, “I wearied, some centuries ago, of -all magic: and I hanker, rather, after the more material things of life. -For five hundred years and over, in my untroubled abode at Caer Omn, in -the land of Dersam, I have reigned among the dreams of a god—” - -“But how did you come by these dreams?” - -“They forsook him, Gerald, when his hour was come to descend into -Antan.” - -“That saying, sir, I cannot understand.” - -“It is not necessary, Gerald, that you should. Meanwhile, I admit, the -life of a Sylan has no fret in it, a Sylan has nothing to be afraid of: -and there is in me a mortal taint which cannot endure interminable -contentment any longer. You conceive, I also was once a mortal man, with -my deceivings and my fears and my doubts to spice my troubled deference -to the ever-present folly of my fellows and to the ever-present -ruthlessness of time and chance. And, as I remember it, Gerald, that -Guivric, whom people so preposterously called the Sage, got more zest -out of his subterfuges and compromises than I derive from being -care-free and rather bored twenty-four hours to each insufferable day. -Therefore, I repeat, I will take over your natural body—” - -“But that, my dear fellow, would leave me without any carnal residence.” - -“Why, Gerald, but I am surprised at such scepticism in you who pay your -pew-rent so regularly! We have it upon old, fine authority that for -every man there is a natural body and a spiritual body.” - -Then Gerald colored up. He felt that both his erudition and his piety -stood reproved. And he said, contritely: - -“In fact, as a member of the Protestant Episcopal church, I am familiar -with the Burial Service—Yes, you are right. I have no desire to take -issue with St. Paul. The religion of my fathers assures me that I have -two bodies. I can live in only one of them at a time. It is, for that -matter, a bit ostentatious, it has a vaguely disreputable sound, for any -unmarried man to be maintaining two establishments. So, let us get on!” - -“Therefore, I repeat, I will take over your natural body, just as that -first Glaum once took over my body; and I will take over all your body’s -imbroglios, even with your mistress,—who can hardly be more tasking to -get along with than are the seven official wives and the three hundred -and fifty-odd concubines I am getting rid of.” - -“You,” Gerald said, morosely, “do not know Evelyn Townsend.” - -“I trust,” the Sylan stated, more gallantly, “to have that privilege -to-morrow.” - -It was in this way the bargain was struck. And then the Sylan who was -called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes did what was requisite. - - - - - 3. - Two Geralds - - -THE Sylan who was called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, be it repeated, -did that which was requisite.... To Gerald, as a student of magic, the -most of the process was familiar enough: and if some curious grace-notes -were, perhaps, excursions into the less wholesome art of goety, that was -not Gerald’s affair. It was sufficient that, when the Sylan had ended, -no Sylan was any longer visible. Instead, in Gerald Musgrave’s library, -stood face to face two Geralds, each in a blue coat and a golden yellow -waistcoat, each with a tall white stock and ruffles about his throat, -and each clad in every least respect precisely like the other. - -Nor did these two lean, red-headed Geralds differ in countenance. Each -smiled at the other with the same amply curved, rather womanish mouth -set above the same prominent, long chin; and each found just the same -lazy and mildly humorous mockery in the large and very dark blue, the -really purple, eyes of the other: for between these two Gerald Musgraves -there was no visual difference whatever. - -One half of this quaint pair now sat down at the writing-table; and, -fiddling with the papers there, he took up the pages of Gerald -Musgrave’s unfinished romance, about the high loves of his famous -ancestor Dom Manuel of Poictesme and Madame Niafer, the Soldan of -Barbary’s daughter. Gerald had begun this tale in the days when he had -intended to endow America with a literature superior to that of other -countries; but for months now he had neglected it: and, in fact, ever -since he set up as a student of magic he had lacked time, somehow, with -every available moment given over to runes and cantraps and -suffumigations, to get back to any really serious work upon this -romance. - -Then the seated Gerald, smiling almost sadly, looked up toward his twin. - -“Thus it was,” said the seated Gerald, “a great while ago at Asch, when -two Guivrics confronted each other and played shrewdly for the control -of the natural body of Guivric of Perdigon. All which I lost on that -day, through my over-human clinging to the Two Truths, I now have back, -after five centuries of pleasure-seeking in the land of Dersam. And I -find this second natural body of mine committed to the creating of yet -more pleasure-giving nonsense, about, of all persons, that eternal -Manuel of Poictesme! I find this body also enamored of the fig-leaf of -romance!” - -“It may be that I do not understand your simile,” said the standing -Gerald, “for in the United States of America the fig-leaf is, rather, -the nice symbol of decency, it is, indeed, the beginning and the end of -democratic morality.” - -“Nevertheless, and granting all this,” replied the now demon-haunted -natural body of Gerald Musgrave, “the fig-leaf is a romance with which -human optimism veils the only two eternal and changeless and rather -unlovely realities of which any science can be certain.” - -“Ah, now I comprehend! And without utterly agreeing with you, I cannot -deny there is something in your metaphor. Yet I must tell you, sir, that -I am perhaps peculiarly qualified to deal with Dom Manuel because of the -fact that this famous hero was my lineal ancestor—” - -“Oh, but, my poor Gerald, was he indeed!” - -“Yes, through both the Musgrave and the Allonby lines. For my mother’s -father was Gerald Allonby—” - -And Gerald would have gone on to explain the precise connection, of -which the Musgrave family was justifiably proud. But the unappreciative -Sylan who now wore good Musgrave flesh and blood had remarked, of all -conceivable remarks: - -“I honestly condole with you. Yet ancestors cannot be picked like -strawberries. And my luck was even worse, for I was of Manuel’s -fellowship. I knew the tall swaggerer himself throughout his blundering -career. And I can assure you that, apart from his unhuman gift for -keeping his mouth shut, there was nothing a bit wonderful about the -cock-eyed, gray impostor.” - -This was surprising news. Still, Gerald reflected, a demon did, in the -way of business, meet many persons in circumstances in which the better -side of their natures was not to the fore. Gerald therefore flew to -defend the honor of his race quite civilly. - -“My progenitor, in any event, carried through his imposture. He died -very well thought of by his neighbors. That you will find to be a -leading consideration with any citizen of the United States of America. -And I in turn assure you that my account of the great Manuel’s exploits -will be, when it is completed, an exceedingly fine romance. It will be a -tale which has not its like in America. Loveliness lies swooning upon -every page, illuminated by a never-ceasing coruscation of wit. It is a -story which, as you might put it, grips the reader. There is no -imaginable reader but will be instantly engaged, by my adroit depiction -of the hardihood and the heroic virtues of Dom Manuel—” - -“But,” said the really very handsomely disguised Sylan, “Manuel had -always a cold in his head. Nobody can honestly admire an elderly fellow -who is continually sneezing and spitting—” - -“In American literature of a respectable cast no human being has any -excretory functions. Should you reflect upon this statement, you will -find it to be the one true test of delicacy. At most, some tears or a -bead or two of perspiration may emanate, but not anything more, upon -this side of pornography. That rule applies with especial force to love -stories, for reasons we need hardly go into. And my romance is, of -course, the story of Dom Manuel’s love for the beautiful Niafer, the -Soldan of Barbary’s daughter—” - -“Her father was a stable groom. She had a game leg. She was not -beautiful. She was dish-faced, she was out and out ugly, apart from her -itch to be reforming everybody and pestering them with respectability—” - -“Faith, charity and hope are the three cardinal virtues,” said Gerald, -reprovingly. “And I think that a gentleman should exercise these three, -in just this order, when he is handling the paternity or the looks or -the legs of any lady.” - -“—And she smelt bad. Every month she seemed to me to smell worse. I do -not know why, but I think the Countess simply hated to wash.” - -“My dear fellow! really now, I can but refer you to my previously cited -rule as to the anatomy of romance. A heroine who smells bad every -month—No, upon my word, I can find nothing engaging in that notion. I -had far rather play with some wholly other and more beautiful idea than -with a notion so utterly lacking in seductiveness. For this, I repeat, -is a romance. It is a romance such as has not its like in America. I -therefore consider that I display considerable generosity in presenting -you with those quite perfect ninety-three pages, and in permitting you -to complete this romance and to take the credit for writing all of it. -Why, your picture will be in the newspapers, and learned professors will -annotate your fornications, and oncoming ages will become familiar with -every mean act you ever committed!” - -To that the Sylan replied: “I shall complete your balderdash, no doubt, -since all your functions are now my functions. I shall complete it, if -only my common-sense and my five centuries of living among the loveliest -dreams of a god, and, above all, if my first-hand information as to -these people, have not ruined me for the task of ascribing large virtues -to human beings.” - -“I envy you that task,” said Gerald, with real wistfulness, “but, very -much as there was a geas upon my famous ancestor to make a figure in -this world, just so there is a compulsion upon me. The compulsion is -upon me to excel in my art; and to do this I must liberate the great and -best words of the Master Philologist.” - -Then the true Gerald went out of the room through a secret passage -unknown to him until this evening. - - - - - 4. - That Devil in the Library - - -YET Gerald looked back for an instant at that unfortunate devil, in -the appearance of a sedate young red-haired man, who remained in the -library. To regard this Gerald Musgrave, now, was like looking at a -droll acquaintance in whom Gerald was not, after all, very deeply -interested. - -For this Gerald Musgrave, the one who remained in the library, was -really droll in well-nigh every respect. About the Gerald who was -now—it might be, a bit nobly,—yielding up his life in preference to -violating the code of a gentleman, and who was now quitting Lichfield, -in order to become a competent magician, there was not anything -ludicrous. That Gerald was an honorable and intelligent person who -sought a high and rational goal. - -But that part of Gerald Musgrave which remained behind, that part which -was already marshaling more words in order the more pompously to inter -the exploits of Dom Manuel of Poictesme, appeared droll. There was, for -one thing, no sensible compulsion upon that red-haired young fellow thus -to be defiling clean paper with oak-gall, when he might at that very -instant be comfortably drunk at the Vartreys’ dinner, or he might be -getting pleasurable excitement out of the turns of fortune at Dorn’s -gaming-parlors, or he might be diverting himself in his choice of four -bedrooms with a lively companion. - -But, instead, he sat alone with bookshelves rising stuffily to every -side of him,—rather low bookshelves upon the tops of which were perched -a cherished horde of porcelain and brass figures representing one or -another beast or fowl or reptile. Among the shiny toys, which in -themselves attested his childishness, the young fellow sat of his own -accord thus lonely. And his antics, incontestably, were queer. He -fidgeted. He shifted his rump. He hunched downward, as if with a sudden -access of rage, over the paper before him. He put back his head, to -stare intently at a white china hen. He pulled at the lobe of his left -ear; and he then rather frantically scratched the interior of this ear -with his little finger. - -Between these bodily exercises he, who was so precariously seated upon -the crust of a planet teetering unpredictably through space, was making -upon the paper before him, with his much nibbled-at black pen, small -scratches, the most of which he presently canceled with yet other -scratches, all the while with the air of a person who was about -something intelligent and of actual importance. The spectacle was queer; -it was unspeakably irrational: for, as always, to an onlooker, the -motions of creative writing revealed that flavor of the grotesque which -is attendant upon every form of procreation. - -Yet it was upon a graver count that Gerald felt honestly sorry for the -inheritor of Gerald Musgrave’s natural body. For Gerald was giving up -his life out of deference to the code of a gentleman with rather more of -relief than he had permitted the Sylan to suspect. And the poor devil -who had so rashly taken over this life would—howsoever acute his -diabolical intelligence,—he too would, in the end, Gerald reflected, be -powerless against that unreasonable Evelyn Townsend and that even more -unreasonable code of a gentleman. - -Nobody, Gerald’s thoughts ran on, now that he had found a rather -beautiful idea to play with, nobody who had not actually indulged in the -really dangerous dalliance of adultery in Lichfield could quite -understand the hopelessness of the unfortunate fiend’s position. For in -the chivalrous Lichfield of 1805 adultery had its inescapable etiquette. -Your exact relations with the woman were in the small town a matter of -public knowledge familiar to everybody: but no person in Lichfield would -ever formally grant that any such relations existed. Eyes might meet -with perfect understanding: but from the well-bred lips of no Southern -gentleman or gentlewoman would ever come more than a suave and placid -“Evelyn and Gerald have always been such good friends.” For you were -second cousins, to begin with: and—in a Lichfield wherein, as -everywhere else in this human world, most people unaffectedly disliked, -and belittled, and kept away from their cousins,—that relationship was -considered a natural reason for you two being much together. Moreover, -every woman in Lichfield was, by another really rather staggering social -convention, assumed to be beautiful and accomplished and chaste: it was -an assumption which needed hardly to be stated: it was merely among all -Southern gentry an axiom in the vast code of being well-bred. - -It followed that, when you were once involved in a liaison, your one -salvation was for your co-partner in iniquity to become tired of you, -and to cease dwelling upon the fact that she had trusted you and had -given you all. That remained, of course, by the dictates of Southern -chivalry, at any moment her privilege: but in this case the -inconsiderate woman only grew fonder and fonder of Gerald, and repeated -the dreadful observation more and more frequently.... And it remained, -too, the privilege of the technically aggrieved husband to pick a -quarrel with you, provided only that the grounds of this quarrel in no -way involved a mention of his wife’s name. Then, still by the set rules -of Lichfield’s etiquette, there would be a duel. After the duel you -either were dispiritingly dead or, else, if you happened to be the more -assuredly luckless survivor, you were compelled, merely by the silent -force of everybody’s assumption that a gentleman could not do otherwise, -to marry the widow. To do this was your debt to society at large, in -atonement for having “compromised” a lady, where, bewilderingly enough, -she was unanimously granted never to have been concerned at all. For -never, in either outcome, would the occurrence of anything “wrong” be -conceded, nor would ever the possibility of a lady’s having committed -adultery be so much as hinted at in any speech or act of the chivalrous -gentry of Lichfield. - -Meanwhile you were trapped. There was no way whatever of avoiding that -bleated “Oh, and I trusted you! I gave you all!” You were not even -privileged to avoid the woman. It was not considered humanly possible -that you were bored, and upon some occasions frenziedly annoyed, by the -society of a beautiful and accomplished and chaste gentlewoman who -honored you with her friendship. There was, instead, compressing you -everywhere, the tacit but vast force of the general assumption that your -indebtedness to her could not ever be discharged in full. The -deplorable—and sometimes, too, the rather dear—fond woman’s inability -to keep her hands off you was conscientiously not noticed. So your -Cousin Evelyn pawed at you in public without an eyebrow’s going up: -hostesses smilingly put you together: other men affably quitted her side -whensoever you appeared. Her husband was no different: Frank Townsend, -also, genially accepted—in the teeth of whatsoever rationality the man -might privately harbor,—the axiom that “Evelyn and Gerald have always -been such good friends.” - -Of course, Gerald granted, this was, in the upper circles of the best -Southern families, an exceptional case. Time and again Gerald had envied -the dozens of other young fellows in Lichfield who were conducting their -liaisons with visibly such superior luck. For the lady tired of them or, -else, was smitten with convenient repentance: and these gay blades -passed on high-heartedly to the embraces of yet other technically -beautiful and accomplished and chaste playfellows. But Evelyn evinced an -impenitence which threatened to be permanent; Evelyn did not tire of -Gerald; she pawed at him; she slipped notes into his hand; she bleated -almost every day her insufferable claim to upset his convenience and his -comfort: and he cursed in all earnestness that fatal charm of his which -held him in such desperate loneliness. - -—In loneliness, because not even the lean comfort of candor, not even -any quest of sympathy, was permitted you. A gentleman did not kiss and -tell: he, above all, might not tell that the kissing had become an -infernal nuisance. Not any of your brothers, neither one of your -sisters—not even when your indolence and your general worthlessness had -reduced Cynthia to whimpering bits of the New Testament, or had launched -Agatha in a chattering millrace of babbling maledictory -vaticinations,—would ever recognize to you in plain words that you and -Cousin Evelyn were illicitly intimate. Nor would any of your kindred, -either, ever contemplate the possibility of you yourself acting or -speaking here with common-sense, or in any other manner violating the -formulas set for every gentleman’s conduct by the insane and magnificent -code of Lichfield. - -For it was, after all, magnificent, in its own way, the code by which -those bull-headed Musgraves—who shared the blood that was in your body, -but no one of the notions in your astonishingly clever head,—along with -the rest of this brave and stupid Lichfield, lived day after day, and -carried genial, never-troubled self-respect into the graveyard. This -code avoided, so far as Gerald could see, no especial misdoing or crime: -but it did show you how, with the appropriate and most graceful of -gestures, to commit either, when the need arose, in the prescribed -fashion of a well-bred Southern gentleman. Yes, really, Gerald -reflected, that code was rather a beautiful idea to play with. It was an -excellent thing to be a gentleman: but it proved always fatal, too, in -the end, simply because no lady was a gentleman. - -However, it was that poor devil in the library who was now involved in -the dangerous task of carrying through an adultery in Lichfield after -the fashion of well-bred persons. It was in his ears that a still rather -dear but too damnably adhesive Evelyn would be bleating every day a -reiteration of the fact that she had trusted him and had given him all. -And Gerald himself, having decorously laid down his life rather than -violate this dreadful code of a gentleman, was now fairly in train to -become a competent magician. - -Not ever again would he sit writing among those bookshelves, engrossed, -and rubbing at his chin or forehead, or scratching his head, or sticking -his little finger into his ear, or restively shifting his weight from -one buttock to the other buttock, in his multiform efforts to quicken, -somehow, the flow of lagging thought. He would pause no more to prop his -chin (with an unpleasantly moist hand, as a rule), and thus to stare -lack-wittedly at one or another of the china and brass toys which he -had, quite as idiotically, collected to make vivid his bookshelves. All -these queer exercises, as Gerald, standing there, had seen them in the -last few minutes performed by the natural body of Gerald Musgrave, did, -manifestly, not constitute an engaging or a sane way of spending the -evening, in a somewhat stuffy room. - -No, he was now, forever, very happily done with all these forlorn -gymnastics. It was only the natural body of Gerald Musgrave which -henceforward would, before this commensurately irrational audience of -small elephants and dogs and parrots and chicken, go through these -foolish writhing antics, in that wholly nice looking young idiot’s -endeavor to complete the romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme.... Well, -one could but wish the poor devil joy of his bargain! and it no longer -really mattered that all which pertained to Gerald Musgrave was rather -droll, Gerald decided, as he passed out of sight of that red head bent -over that incessant pen scratching. - - - - - PART TWO - THE BOOK OF TWILIGHT - - “It is Not Well to Look a - Gift Horse in the Mouth.” - - - - - 5. - Christening of the Stallion - - -GERALD descended nineteen steps; and in the dusk he found waiting -there, beside a tethered riding-horse, yet another young man, with hair -as red as Gerald Musgrave’s own. - -“That you may travel the more quickly, along a woman-haunted way, in -your journeying toward your appointed goal,” this stranger began, “I -have fetched a horse for you to ride upon.” - -Yet the speaker was not wholly a stranger. So Gerald now said, “Oh, so -it is you!” As a student of magic, Gerald had held earlier dealings with -this red-haired Horvendile, who was Lord of the Marches of Antan. - -And Gerald went on, gratefully: “Come now, but this is kind! Even as a -courtesy between fellow artists, this is generous!” - -“The amenities of fellow artists,” returned Horvendile, “are by ordinary -two-edged. And this one may cut deeper than you foreknow.” - -“Meanwhile you have brought me this huge shining horse, which cannot be -other than Pegasus—” - -“Whether or not this divine steed be that Pegasus which bears romantics -even to the ultimate goal of their dreams, depends upon the horseman. It -has been prophesied, however, that the Redeemer of Antan and the monarch -who shall reign, after the overthrow of the Master Philologist, in the -place beyond good and evil, will come riding upon the silver stallion -that is called, not Pegasus, but Kalki—” - -“Oh! oh!” said Gerald: and for an instant he considered this surprising -turn of affairs. To reign in Antan had, very certainly, been no part of -his modest plans; but he saw at once how much more becoming it would be, -and how much better suited to his real merits, to enter into Antan as -its heir apparent, resistless upon the silver stallion famous in old -prophecies, rather than to come as a suppliant begging for a few words. - -“Prophecies,” said Gerald, then, “ought to be respected by all well -brought up persons. Only, does this horse happened to be Kalki? Because, -you see, Horvendile, that appears to be the whole point of the -prophecy.” - -Rather oddly, Horvendile said, “Whether or not this divine steed be that -Kalki which bears romantics even to the ultimate goal of all the gods, -depends upon the horseman.” - -Gerald considered this saying. Gerald smiled, and Gerald remarked: - -“Oh, but now I comprehend you! The rider and the owner of any horse is, -quite naturally, entitled to call the animal whatsoever he prefers. Very -well, then! I shall christen this riding-horse Kalki. Yes, Horvendile, -upon mature deliberation, I will accept the throne of Antan, without -considering my personal preferences and my dislike of publicity and -ostentation, in order that the prophecy may be fulfilled, because that -is always a good thing for prophecies.” - -“Since that is your decision, Gerald, you have but, after you have paid -homage here, to mount intrepidly. And the divine steed will carry you -upon no common road, but, since he is divine, along that way which the -gods and the great myths pursue in their journeying toward Antan.” - -“It is appropriate, of course, that I should travel on the road -patronized by the best classes. Nevertheless, it would, I think, be a -rather beautiful idea—” - -“Nevertheless, also,” said Horvendile, “and all the while that you waste -in talking about beautiful ideas, there is a man’s homage to be paid -here; and moreover, at the first gap of the Doonham, the Princess awaits -you with some impatience. It would not be going too far to say, indeed, -that she hungers for your coming.” - -“Come now, but the things you tell me steadily become more palatable!” -remarked Gerald, as he approached the huge stallion. “Now that I have -accepted the responsibilities of a throne and of all the great and best -words of the Master Philologist, it would be most unbecoming for a -princess to be ignored by anyone who already is virtually a reigning -monarch. There are amenities to be preserved between royal houses. Very -terrible wars have sprung from the omission of such amenities. So do you -lead me forthwith to this impatient princess; but do you first tell me -the adorable name of her highness!” - -Horvendile answered, “The princess who just now awaits you is Evasherah, -the Lady of the First Water-Gap of Doonham.” - -“I admit that the information, now I have it, means very little. -Nevertheless, my dear fellow, do you direct me to the water-gap of this -princess!” - -“Yet, I repeat, it would be wise for you, before departing from this -place, to render a man’s homage to the ruler of it.” - -“Well, Horvendile, the name of this tropical, damp, and this rather -curious smelling country is no doubt better known to you than, I -confess, it stays to me!” - -“This place has not any name in the reputable speech of men. It is the -realm of Koleos Koleros.” - -At that name Gerald bowed his head; and, as became a student of magic, -he courteously made the appropriate sign. - -And Gerald said: “Very dreadful is the name of Koleos Koleros! Yet, -quite apart from the fact that I am a member of the Protestant Episcopal -church, I owe this Koleos Koleros no homage. And I, very certainly, -shall not linger to pay any, with a princess waiting for me! Rather, do -I elect to pass hastily through this land of quags and underbrush, and -to leave this somewhat unsanitarily odored neighborhood, in which, I -perceive, misguided persons yet live—” - -For these two young men were no longer alone in this ambiguous valley. -Through the twilight Gerald now saw many women passing furtively toward -a dark laurel grove; and from out of that grove came a queer music. - -Then Horvendile spoke of these women. - - - - - 6. - Evadne of the Dusk - - -NOW all the while that Horvendile talked it was to the accompaniment -of that remote queer music: and Gerald was troubled. He came, at least, -as near to being troubled as Gerald ever permitted himself to do. For -Gerald did not really enjoy trouble of any kind, and said frankly that -he found it uncongenial. - -“But these,” said Gerald, by and by, “all these, my dear fellow, I had -thought to have perished a long while ago.” - -“You travel, Gerald, on the road of the greater myths. Such myths do not -perish speedily. And, besides, nothing is true anywhere in the Marches -of Antan. All is a seeming and an echo: and through this superficies men -come to know the untruth which makes them free. It follows, in my logic, -that to-day these women are the flute-players of Koleos Koleros. They -serve to-day, forever unsatiated, that most insatiable divinity who is -shaggy and evil-odored, and who can taste no pleasure until after -bloodshed—” - -“I have read, also,” Gerald broke in, with the slight smile of one who -is not unpleased to display his learning, “that this Koleos Koleros is a -somewhat contradictory goddess, producing the less the more constantly -that she is cultivated and stirred up—” - -“Oho, but a most potent goddess is this Koleos Koleros!” continued -Horvendile. “She is wrinkled and flabby in appearance, yet the most -stout of heroes falls at last before her. Infants perish nightly in her -gloomy vaults, and plagues and diseases harbor there—” - -But again Gerald had interrupted him, saying: “Yet I have read, -moreover, that this modest and retired Koleos Koleros, alone of eternal -beings, is ever ardent to quench the ardor of her servitors; and -that—still to praise merit where merit appears,—in her untiring -warfare with all men that rise up to oppose her, she displays the -magnanimity to favor, and to embrace lovingly, the adversary that -attacks her most often and most deeply.” - -Horvendile thereupon held out his hand. He showed thus the tip of his -forefinger touching the tip of his thumb so that they formed a circle. -And Horvendile said: - -“She varies even as the moon varies. Yet equally is this divine small -monster the bestower of life and of all joy; she charms in defiance of -reason: and whensoever Koleos Koleros appears, red and inflamed and -hideous among her tousled tresses, a man is moved willy-nilly to place -in her his chief delight.” - -“Oho!” said Gerald, and, as became a student of magic, he also made the -needful sign, “oho, but a most potent goddess is this Koleos Koleros!” - -“Now, then,” continued Horvendile, “all they who in this place serve -eternally this most whimsical divinity are a loving and a peculiarly -happy people. Their amorousness, which here is not ever blighted by -shrill reprobation, has need at no time to fear either the chastisement -of human law nor the anathemas of any other religion anywhere in the -quiet brakes and lowlands of the moist realm of Koleos Koleros. For, you -conceive, these feminine myths who now are flute-players in and about -the shrine of the wrinkled goddess, and who through so many centuries -have been trained in all the arts of pleasure, came by and by into a -certain confusion—” - -“But what sort of confusion, Horvendile, do you mean? For I find your -speaking another sort. And I am rather more interested in that -princess—” - -“I mean that their religion, which ranks pleasure above all else, -permits no man to pass by unpleased.” - -“Ah, now I understand you!” - -“—I mean that, through the duties of their religious faith, their way -of living has been given over to an assiduous and an empirical study of -all the charms peculiar to a woman, the more particularly as these -charms are employed—” - -“Let us say, in the exercise of their religion,” Gerald suggested, “for -I wholly understand you, sir.” - -“It has followed that the taste of these ladies has become more -delicate. It has followed that, by force of considering their own -feminine loveliness, always unveiled and in lively employment, and by -comparing it so intimately and so jealously with the loveliness of their -female rivals in the service of the wrinkled goddess, they have become -connoisseurs of the beauties peculiar to their sex. They have acquired a -refinement of taste—” - -“To be refined in one’s taste is eminently praiseworthy. Ah, my dear -fellow, if you but knew what shocking examples of bad taste we kings are -continually encountering among our sycophants! And that reminds me, you -said something about a princess—” - -“—They have learned to despise the hasty and boisterous and, between -ourselves, the very often disappointing ways of men—” - -“Ah, yes, no doubt!” said Gerald. “Men are a bad lot. But we were -speaking of a princess—” - -“—And they have lovingly contrived more finespun and more rococo -diversions without the crude assistance of any man. Then also they -delight in playing with many well-trained pets,—with goats and large -dogs and asses and, they tell me, with rams and with bulls also. The -surprising and mysterious joys which blaze up among these flute-players -are, thus, very violent and delicious.” - -Gerald said then that kindness to dumb animals was generally reckoned a -most estimable trait in the United States of America. Whereas, in all -quarters of that enlightened and hospitable republic, Gerald estimated, -a princess— - -“Yet,” Horvendile went on, “these learned women do not forget, in mere -pleasure-seeking, their religious duty of permitting no man to pass by -unpleased. Go to them, therefore, you will be welcome. Yonder at this -instant a religious festival is preparing. Yonder sweet-voiced Leucosia, -who hereabouts is called Evadne, waits for you—” - -“But I have not the honor of knowing this Evadne—” - -“She is easily known, by her violet hair and her sharp teeth. Moreover, -Gerald, her wise sisters—Telês, and Parthenopê, and Radnê, and Ligeia, -and Molpê,—all these will greet you with ardor. They will deny to you -no secret of their pious rites; they will share with you esoteric joys -religiously. They will incite you to perform among their choir, in the -most secret shrine of Koleos Koleros—” - -“But, really now, my dear fellow! I have no talent whatever for music. I -would be quite out of place in any choir.” - -“These flute-players are very ingenious. They will find for you some -suitable instrument. And there will be strange harmonies and much soft -laughter at this festival: each reveller will pour out libations -copiously: cups will be refilled and emptied until dawn. There will be -for you perfumes and rose garlands and the most exquisite of wines and -the most savory of dishes and other delicacies. Due homage will be paid -to Koleos Koleros.” - -“Nevertheless,” said Gerald, “there is a phrase which haunts me—” - -“That dusky grove of laurels yonder is the hall of this pious feast. -Nothing will be lacking to you at this feast if you attend it with -proper religious exaltation; and you will discover abilities there which -will surprise you.” - -“Ah, as to that now, Horvendile—! Yes, I have a man’s proper share of -ability, I have quite enough ability for two persons. Nevertheless, -there is a patriotic phrase which haunts me, and that phrase is _E -pluribus unum_. For I have compunctions, Horvendile, which are -translating that same phrase, a little freely, as ‘One among so many.’” - -“It seems to me a harmless phrase even in your paraphrase. More harm may -very well come of the fact that these learned ladies will endeavor to -cajole you out of the divine steed, so that he may be added to their -trained pets—” - -“Oh! oh, indeed!” said Gerald. “But that is nonsense. The rider upon -Kalki, and none other, has to fulfil that estimable old prophecy: and a -deal of good such wheedlings will do any woman breathing, with a fine -kingdom like that of mine set against a mere kiss or, it may be, a few -tears!” - -“That matter remains to be attested in due time. Meanwhile, I can but -repeat that if you do not render a man’s homage to the ruler of this -place there is no doubt whatever that the slighted goddess will avenge -herself.” - -“Sir,” Gerald now replied, with appropriate dignity, “I am, as were my -fathers before me, a member of the Protestant Episcopal church. Is it -thinkable that a communicant of this persuasion would worship a goddess -of the benighted heathen? Do you but answer me that very simple -question!” - -“In Lichfield,” Horvendile retorted, “to adhere to the religion of your -fathers is tactful, and in this place also, as in every other place, -tactfulness ought to be every wise man’s religion. Otherwise, you will -be running counter to that which is expected of the descendants of -Manuel and of Jurgen; and you may by and by have cause to regret it.” - -But Gerald thought of his church, and of its handsome matters of faith -in the way of organ music and of saints’ days and of broad-mindedness -and of delightful lawn-sleeved bishops and of majestic rituals. He -thought of newly washed choir-boys and of his prayer-book’s wonderful -mouth-filling phrases, of rogation days and of ember days and of Trinity -Sunday. He thought about pulpits and hassocks and stained glass and -sextons, and about the Thirty-nine Articles, and about those -unpredictable, superb mathematics which early in every spring -collaborated with the new moon to afford him an Easter: and these things -Gerald could not abandon. - -So he said: “No. No, Horvendile! I pay no homage to the wrinkled -goddess.” - -Then Horvendile warned him again, “You may find that decision costly.” - -“That is as it may be!” said Gerald, with his chin well up. “For a good -Episcopalian, sir, finds in the petulance of no heathen goddess anything -to blench the cheek and make the heart go pitapat.” - -Still, he looked rather fondly through the dusk. And now his shoulders -also went up, shruggingly. - -“Yet I concede,” said Gerald, “that, howsoever firm my churchmanship, -and even with a princess waiting for me, I am tempted. For yonder -flute-player who still delays to join her companions—who are now, no -doubt, already about their merry games with one another and with their -trained pets,—has charms. Yes, she has charms which give my thoughts, -as it were, a locally religious turn, and make the notion of joining her -a rather beautiful idea. I deplore, of course, her feathered legs. Even -so, she displays, as you too may observe, in her so leisurely retreat, -an opulence in that most engaging kind of beauty which once got for -Aphrodite the epithet of Callipygê. I contemplate, with at least locally -pious joy, the curving of those reins, the whiteness and the fineness of -the skin, and the graciousness of those superb contours, designed -without any stinting or exaggeration, into the perfection of those fair -twin moons of delight—” - -But in a moment Gerald said, “Still, there is something vaguely -familiar, a something which chills me—” - -And Gerald said also: “Or, rather, in their so gentle undulations as she -walks unhurriedly away from us, in their so amiable convulsions,—in -their heavings, their twitchings, their ripplings and their -twinklings,—rather, do the bewitching and multitudinous movements of -those silvery spheres resemble, to my half dazzled eyes, the -unarithmeticable smiling of the sunlit sea, to which, as you will -remember, Horvendile, old Æschylos has so finely referred. I feel that I -could compose a not discreditable sonnet to that most beautiful of -backsides. There is nothing more poetical than is the backside of a -naked woman who is walking away from you. Its movements awaken the -yearnings of all elegiac verse.... And I do not doubt, sir, that the -front of this feathery-legged lady is fully as enchanting as the rear. -Yes, I imagine that the façade too has its own peculiar attractions: and -I admit, in a word, that I am tempted to confront her—” - -Horvendile glanced toward the woman who alone remained within reach. -“That is Evadne, who in the days of her sea-faring was called Leucosia. -And it is plain enough that she waits for temptation to inflame and to -uplift you into raptures somewhat more practical than all this talking.” - -“She waits,” said Gerald, “in vain. At this distance she is a rather -beautiful idea: nearer, she would be only another woman with her clothes -off. Moreover, sir, I am a self-respecting member of the Protestant -Episcopal church: and besides that, as I now perceive, it is of Evelyn -Townsend’s figure that this woman’s half-seen figure reminds me. That -resemblance makes for every sedentary virtue. I have learned only too -well what comes of permitting any female person to trust you and to give -you all. Then, too, I am called to duties of more honor and -responsibility in my appointed kingdom. And for the rest, I prefer to -disappoint these ladies by failing in ardor at such a distance as will -not provoke my blushes. No, Horvendile: no, I am still haunted by that -patriotic phrase _E pluribus unum_; and I shall not just now presume to -render a man’s homage to Koleos Koleros, among quite so many -flute-players. Moreover, you assert that a princess is waiting for me, -to whom I prefer to present the member of another royal house in the -full possession of all faculties. So I do not elect, just now, to share -in these—if you will permit the criticism,—somewhat un-American -methods of religious exercise. I ask, instead, that you conduct me to -the impatient princess about whom you keep talking so obstinately that, -I perceive, there is no least hope of my stopping you.” - -It was in this way that Gerald began his journey by putting an affront -upon Koleos Koleros. - - - - - PART THREE - THE BOOK OF DOONHAM - - “Though a Woman’s Tongue be but Three - Inches Long, It can kill a Six-foot Man.” - - - - - 7. - Evasherah of the First Water-Gap - - -“A GOOD-MORNING to you, ma’am,” Gerald had begun. His horse was -tethered to a palm-tree, and Horvendile was gone, so that there now was -only the Princess to be considered. “And in what way can I be of any -service?” - -Yet his voice shook, as he stood there beside the alabaster couch.... -For Gerald was enraptured. The Princess Evasherah was, in the dawn of -this superb May morning, so surpassingly lovely that she excelled all -the other women his gaze had ever beheld. Her face was the proper shape, -it was appropriately colored everywhere, and it was surmounted with an -adequate quantity of hair. Nor was it possible to find any defect in her -features. The colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes were nicely -matched, and her nose stood just equidistant between them. Beneath this -was her mouth, and she had also a pair of ears. In fine, the girl was -young, she exhibited no deformity anywhere, and the enamored glance of -the young man could perceive in her no fault. She reminded him, though, -of someone that he had known.... - -Such were the ardent reflections which had passed through Gerald’s mind -in the while that he said decorously, “A good-morning, ma’am: and in -what way can I be of any service?” - -But the Princess, in her impetuous royal fashion, had wasted no time -upon the formal preliminaries which were more or less customary in -Lichfield. And while Gerald’s patriotic republican rearing had been -explicit enough as to the goings-on in monarchical families, he was -whole-heartedly astounded by the animation and candor which here -confronted him. There was no possible doubting that the Princess -Evasherah was prepared to trust him and to give him all. - -“But, oh, indeed, ma’am,” Gerald said, “you quite misunderstand me!” - -For he had it now. This woman was uncommonly like Evelyn Townsend. - -Gerald sighed. All ardor had departed from him. And with a few -well-chosen words he placed their relationship upon a more decorous -basis. - -Now the Princess Evasherah, that most lovely Lady of the Water-Gap, was -lying down even when Gerald first came to her, just after sunrise. She -was lying upon a couch of alabaster, which had four legs made of -elephants’ tusks. Upon this couch was a mattress covered with green -satin and embroidered with red gold; upon the mattress was the Princess -Evasherah in a brief shirt of apricot colored silk; and, over all, was a -saffron canopy adorned with fig-leaves worked in pearls and emeralds. - -This couch was furthermore shaded by three palm-trees, and it stood near -to the bank of the river called Doonham. And by the sparkling ripples of -that river’s deep waters—as the Princess Evasherah explained, some -while after she and Gerald had reached a friendly and clean-minded -understanding, with no un-American nonsense about it,—was hidden the -residence of the Princess, where presently they would have breakfast. - -“But,” Gerald said, a little dejectedly, “I have just now no appetite of -any kind.” - -“That will not matter,” said the Princess: and for no reason at all she -laughed. - -“—And to live under the water, ma’am, appears a virtually unprecedented -form of royal eccentricity—” - -“Ah, but I must tell you, lord of the age, and most obdurate averter -from the desirer of union with him, that very long ago, because of a -girlish infatuation for a young man whose name I have forgotten, I -suffered a fiery downfalling from the Home of the Heavenly Ones, into -the waters of this river. For I had offended my Father (whose name be -exalted!) by stealing six drops of quite another kind of water, of the -water from the Churning of the Ocean—” - -“Eh?” Gerald said, “but do you mean the divine Amrita?” - -“Garden of my joys, and summit of sagacity,” the Princess remarked, “you -are learned. You have knowledge of heavenly matters, you have traversed -the Nine Spaces. And I perceive that you who travel overburdened with -unresponsiveness upon this road of the gods are yet another god in -disguise.” - -“Oh, no, ma’am, it is merely that, as a student of magic, one picks up -such bits of information. I am the heir apparent to a throne, I cannot -honestly declare myself any more than that: and I am upon my way to -enter into my kingdom, but it is not, I am tolerably certain, a -celestial kingdom.” - -The Princess was not convinced. “No, my preceptor and my only idol, it -is questionless you are a god, all perfect in eloquence and in grace, a -temptation unto lovers, and showing as a visible paradise to the -desirous. Here, in any event, out of my keen regard for your virtues, -and in exchange for that great gawky horse of yours which reveals in -every feature its entire unworthiness of contact with divine buttocks, -here are the five remaining drops, in this little vial—” - -Gerald inspected the small crystal bottle quite as sceptically as the -Princess had regarded his disclaimer of being a god. “Well, now, ma’am, -to me this looks like just ordinary water.” - -She placed one drop of the water upon her finger-tip. She drew upon his -forehead the triangle of the male principle, she drew the female -triangle, so that one figure interpenetrated the other, and she invoked -Monachiel, Ruach, Achides, and Degaliel. No student of magic could fail -to recognize her employment of an interesting if uncanonical variant of -the Third Pentacle of Venus, but Gerald made no comment. - -After that the Princess Evasherah laughed merrily. “Now, then, companion -of my heart, now that you have promised me that utterly contemptible -horse of yours, I unmask you. For I perceive that you, O my master, more -comely than the moon, are the predestined Redeemer of Antan—” - -“That much, ma’am, I already know—” - -“In short,” said the Princess, “you are Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and -Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly -Ones, thus masked in human flesh and in human forgetfulness and in -peculiarly unhuman coldness. Yet very soon the power of the Amrita will -have bestowed unfailing vigorousness upon your thinking, and presently -the hounds of recollection will have run down the hare of your -inestimable glory.” - -“That is well said, ma’am. It is spoken with a fine sense of style. And -I conjecture that, although the better stylists usually omit this -ingredient, it has some meaning also.... Yes, you do allude to my having -red hair, but the hare of my inestimable glory, which you likewise -mention, is not capillary, but zoölogical,—in addition to being also -metaphorical.... You state, in brief, in a figurative Oriental way, that -by and by I shall recollect something which I have forgotten.... But -just what is it, ma’am, that you so confidently expect me to recollect?” - -“My lord, and acme of my contentment, you will recall, for one matter, -the love that was between us in this world’s infancy, when you did not -avert from me the inspiring glances of fond affection. For you, the -bright-tressed, the resplendent, are unmistakably the Well-beloved of -Heavenly Ones. I perfectly remember you, by your high nose, by your -jutting chin, and by the eminence of yet another feature whose noble -proportions also very deeply delighted me during my visit to your -Dirghic paradise, and which I perceive to remain unabatedly heroic.” - -Gerald, gently, but with decision, took hold of her hand. It seemed to -him quite time. - -Then the fair Lady of the Water-Gap, she who would have been so adorable -if only she had not reminded Gerald more and more of Evelyn Townsend, -began to talk about matters which Gerald as yet really did not remember. - -She spoke of Gerald’s golden and high-builded home, in which, it seemed, -this Princess had trusted him and had given him all: and she spoke also -of the unresting love for mankind which had led Gerald to quit that -exalted home, among the untroubled lotus-ponds of Vaikuntha, upon nine -earlier occasions, and of his nine fine exploits in the way of -redemption. - -She spoke of how Gerald had visited men sometimes in his present heroic -and elegant form, at other times in the appearance of a contemptible -looking dwarf, and upon yet other occasions as a tortoise and as a boar -pig and as a lion and as a large fish. His taste in apparel seemed as -fickle as his charitableness was firm. For over and over again, the -Princess said, it had been the power of Gerald, as Helper and Preserver, -which had prevented several nations and a dynasty or two of gods from -being utterly destroyed by demons whom Gerald himself had destroyed. It -was Gerald, as he learned now, who had preserved this earth alike from -depopulation and from ignorance, when during the first great flood the -Lord of the Third Truth, in his incarnation as a great fish, had carried -through the deluge seven married couples and four books containing the -cream of earth’s literature: whereas, later, during a yet more severe -inundation, Gerald had held up the earth itself between his tusks,—this -being, of course, in the time of his incarnation as a boar pig,—and -swimming thus, had preserved the endangered planet from being as much as -mildewed. - -And Evasherah spoke also of how when Gerald was a tortoise he had -created such matters as the first elephant, the first cow, and the first -wholly amiable woman. He had created at the same time, she added, the -moon and the great jewel Kaustubha and a tree called Parijata, which -yielded whatever was desired of it, and it was then also that -Fair-haired Hoo, the Well-beloved Lord of the Third Truth, had invented -drunkenness. There had been, in all, Evasherah concluded, nineteen -supreme and priceless benefits invented by Gerald at this time, but she -confessed her inability to recall offhand everyone of them— - -“It is sufficient,—oh, quite sufficient!” Gerald assured her, with -wholly friendly condescension, “for already, ma’am, it embarrasses me to -have my modest philanthropies catalogued.” - -Yet Gerald, howsoever lightly he spoke, was thrilled with not -uncomplacent pride in his past. He was not actually surprised, of -course, because logic had already pointed out that the ruler of Antan -would very naturally be a divine personage with just such a magnificent -past. To be a god appeared to him a rather beautiful idea. So he first -asked what was the meaning of that skull over yonder in the grass: the -Princess explained that it was not her skull, but had been left there by -a visitor some two months earlier: and then Gerald, after having agreed -with her that people certainly ought to be more careful about their -personal belongings, went on with what was really in his mind. - -“In any event, ma’am,” he hazarded, with the brief cough of diffidence, -“it seems there have been tender passages between us before this -morning—” - -“I trusted you! I gave you all!” she said, reproachfully. “But you, -disposer of supreme delights, and fair vase of my soul, you have -forgotten even the way you used to take advantage of my confidence! For -how can the modesty of a frail woman avail against the brute strength of -a determined man!” - -“No, Evelyn, not to-night—I beg your pardon, ma’am! My mind was astray. -What I meant to say was that I really must request you to desist.” Then -Gerald went on, tenderly: “To the contrary, my dear lady, our love stays -unforgettable. I recall every instant of it, I bear in mind even that -sonnet which I made for you on the evening of my first respectful -declaration of undying affection.” - -“Ah, yes, that lovely sonnet!” the Princess remarked, with the -uneasiness manifested by every normal woman when a man begins to talk -about poetry. - -“—And to prove it, I will now recite that sonnet,” Gerald said. - -And he did. - -Yet his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the -octave, Gerald paused, because it was never within Gerald’s power to -resist the beauty of a sublime thought when it was thus adequately -expressed in flawless verse. So for an instant he stayed silent. - -He caught up the lovely, always straying hands of the Princess -Evasherah, of this impulsive and investigatory lady, who so troublingly -resembled Evelyn Townsend, and Gerald pressed these hands to his -trembling lips. This lovely girl, returned to him almost miraculously, -it might seem, out of his well-nigh forgotten past, was not merely -intent once more to trust him and to give him all. She trusted also, as -Gerald felt with that keen penetration which is natural to divine -beings, to delude and to wheedle him into some material loss. What the -Princess desired to cajole him out of was, perhaps, not wholly clear. -Nevertheless, he felt that, in some way or another way, Evasherah was -attempting to deceive him. It might be that neither her explanation as -to that skull nor even her so candid seeming adoration of his wisdom and -his comeliness was entirely sincere. For women were like that: they did -not always mean every word they said, not even when they were addressing -a god. And so, the gods had over-painful duties laid upon them, Gerald -decided. - -After that he sighed: and he continued the reciting of his sonnet with -an air of lofty resignation, with which was intermingled a certain -gustatory approval of really good verse. - -“Light of my universe, that is a very beautiful sonnet,” the Princess -remarked, when he had finished, “and I am proud to have inspired it, and -I am almost equally proud of the fact that you (through whose supreme -elegance and amiable aspect my heart is once more rent with ecstasy) -should remember it so well after these thousands of years.” - -“Years mean very little, ma’am, to Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and -Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly -Ones: and centuries are, quite naturally, powerless to dim my memories -of any matter in any way pertaining to you. Yet affairs of minor -importance do rather tend to become a bit ambiguous as the æons slip -by.... For example, what, in the intervals between my redemptory -exploits—upon mere week days, as it were,—what do I happen to be the -god of?” - -“That,” said the Princess, “O my master, and pure fountain-head of every -virtue, is a peculiarly silly question to be coming from you, who are, -as everybody knows, the Lord of the Third Truth.” - -“Ah, yes, to be sure,—of the Third Truth! My divine interests are -invested in veracity. Well, that is highly gratifying. Yet, ma’am, there -are a great many gods, and it is a rather beautiful idea to observe -that, even where their professional spheres are the same, these gods -differ remarkably. Thus, Vulcan is the lord of one fire, and Vesta of -another, but Agni and Fudo and Satan rule over yet other fires, each -wholly individual. Cupid and Lucina traffic in the same port, but not in -the same way. Æolus controls twelve winds, and Tezcatlipoca four winds, -and Crepitus only one wind—” - -“Director of my life, and comely shepherd of my soul, I know. Few gods -are strange to me or to my embraces. Many a Heavenly One has invited me -to love, and I have yielded piously: my kisses have written the tale of -my religious transports upon many divine cheeks.” - -“—And I imagine that this water from the Churning of the Ocean was not -intended, in the first place, to further my apotheosis. I mean, ma’am, I -do not suppose you went to the trouble of stealing six drops of the -Amrita in order just to recall to me that divinity which, in the press -of other affairs, I had somehow permitted to slip my mind?” - -“Disposer and sole archetype of the seven magnanimities, you speak the -truth. For the five remaining drops, as I was trying to tell you when -you kept interrupting me, O my lord, and beloved of my heart, and joy of -both my eyes, were intended for the five human senses of the young man -about whom I was then rather foolish; and upon whom I meant to bestow -immortality and eternal youth. The first drop, inasmuch as the Amrita -confers a never-ending vigorousness, I had of course already placed. So -my Father (whose name be exalted!) smote us both with lightnings, in his -impetuous way, and tumbled us both from out of the Home of the Heavenly -Ones into this river. My young man was thus drowned before I had the -chance to confer upon him any of the favors which I greatly fear your -superior strength and your pertinacity are now about to force from me—” - -Gerald replied: “I really do think you would get on far more quickly -with your story if you were to keep both of these like this. The -position, you see, is much more American: it lacks that earlier air of -such personal freedom as a democracy does not think well of.” - -“Light of the age, I hear and I obey. Yet all my tale has been revealed -to your consideration—” - -“Yes,” Gerald assented, “but your history interests me far more—” - -“Far more than what, O cruel and resplendent one?” - -“Why, far more than I can say, of course. So let us get on with it!” - -“But my sad history is now as refined glass before your discerning -glance. It suffices to add that the immortal part of my young man was -happily removed from the waters of this river, and is now worshipped as -a god in Lytreia. But for me, alas! the squirrel of calamity continued -to revolve in the cage of divine wrath. For, so perfectly ridiculous is -the way my Father (whose name be exalted!) behaves when the least thing -upsets him, that I was condemned through the length of nine thousand -years to assume certain official duties in the waters of this river, in -the repugnant shape of a crocodile.” - -But with that statement Gerald took prompt issue. “What may be your -official duties as the guardian of these waters I can no more guess than -I can guess how your visitors happen to be so careless about leaving -their skulls behind. That really is a sort of slapdash and inconsiderate -behavior which I cannot condone without considerable reflection. But I -do know that the shape which I have beheld, and still see a great deal -of, in nothing resembles the shape of a crocodile.” - -“Epitome of every excellence, and exalted zenith of my existence, that -is because the nine thousand years of my doom have now happily expired. -The proof of this is that already my luckless substitute arrives. We -shall now behold her encounter with the terminator of delights and the -separator of companions. Thereafter, when we have had breakfast, O vital -spirit of my heart, whom my unmitigated love incites me to devour out of -pure affection, I shall ride hence upon the horse with which you have so -gallantly presented me, to enter again into the Home of the Heavenly -Ones.” - -With that, the Princess pointed. - - - - - 8. - The Mother of Every Princess - - -WITH that, the Princess pointed. And Gerald also now looked toward the -river.... He viewed an unsolid-seeming world of dimly colored movings. -Directly before him the deep river sparkled and rippled eastward with -unhurried, very shallow undulations. But, under the sun’s warmth, mists -rising everywhere above the waters streamed eastward too, unhastily, and -in such unequal volume that now this and now another portion of the wide -landscape beyond the river was irregularly glimpsed and then, gradually -but with a surprising quickness, veiled. Very lovely medallions of green -lawns and shrubbery and distant hills thus seemed to take form and then -to dissolve into the mists’ incessant gray flowing, toward the newly -risen sun.... - -And Gerald also saw that, some fifty feet away from him, an unusually -unclad elderly woman was approaching the river bank, carrying in her -thin arms a child. The woman trudged forward toward the river like a -drugged person, because of the doom which was upon her. - -Now this woman seemed to stumble, and she fell into the water, but in -falling she cast the child from her, so that it remained safe in the -coarse tall-growing grass. - -The woman whom divine will had led hither to serve as a scapegoat for -the Princess Evasherah proceeded to drown satisfactorily, and with -indeed a sort of decorum. She sank twice, with hardly any beating or -splashing of the waters, because of that doom which was upon her. The -child, though, whom no long years of living had taught to accept a -preponderance of unpleasant happenings, screamed continuously, in -candid, mewing disapproval of divine will. - -Out of the near-by reeds came a bright-eyed jackal; and it furtively -approached the child. - -The Princess rose from the alabaster couch and from Gerald’s partially -detaining arms. She stood for an instant irresolute. In her lovely face -was trouble. Her mouth, a little open, trembled. Gerald liked that. Here -was revealed the ever-tender heart of womanhood and the quick generous -sympathy with all afflicted persons which living had taught him to look -for only in the best literature. - -The Princess quitted Gerald. She hastened to the river bank. The jackal -backed from her, crouching in a half-circle, with bared teeth, and the -reeds swallowed the beast. The Princess leaned down, and with a lovely -gesture of compassion the Princess caught the drowning woman by one hand -and assisted her ashore. - -It was then that the Princess Evasherah cried out in wordless surprise. -Then too her raised hands clenched, and her little fists jerked downward -in a gesture of candid exasperation. - -And then also the woman whom the Princess had just saved from drowning -unfastened the small copper bowl and the knife which hung by copper -chains about her waist. The Princess took these, she approached the -wailing child, she stooped, and the crying ceased. The Princess returned -to the strange woman, calling out, “Hrang, hrang!” To the gray lips of -this woman Evasherah applied the blood which was now in the copper bowl, -and the remainder of the child’s blood she sprinkled over the woman’s -unveiled breasts and between the woman’s legs, which were held wide -apart for this fecundation. - -“Hail, Mother!” said Evasherah. “All hail, O red and wrinkled Mother of -Every Princess! Hail, patient and insatiable Havvah! A salutation to -thee! Spheng, spheng! a salutation to thee, and all delight to thee for -a thousand years of thy Wednesdays! Drink deep, beloved and wise Mother, -for an oblation of blood which has been rendered pure by holy texts is -more sweet than ambrosia.” - -At first the elder lady had seemed peculiarly red and inflamed and -hideous among her tousled tresses. Now she was placated, she panted, and -her eyes rolled languorously. She began, with aggrieved reproach, “But, -O my dearie! you have relapsed into a masculine display of clemency such -as has flung away your allotted chance of redemption.” - -“Sorrow and mourning reside in my heart, O my Mother: my limbs are -rendered infirm by remorse. For I had no least notion it was you. I -thought only that some mortal woman was to take over my duties in the -repulsive shape of a crocodile; and I could not bear to hear the small -voice of the little child crying out as the sharp jackal teeth drew -nearer, and to reflect that I was destroying two lives in order to -purchase my freedom from this endless love-making and over-eating.” - -“But it was a boy child. Dearie, you are talking as though these sons of -Adam were of real importance. And to hear you, nobody would ever give -you your due credit for having piously ended the ambitions of so many -hundreds of them, since you have protected the entrance to the road of -gods and myths against the impudence of these romantics.” - -“Yet, refuge of the uplifted, and asylum of the vigorous, the persons -whose blood has nourished my exile were all young men aflame with impure -intentions. And a child is different. It is not right that the stainless -flesh of a little boy, which is an offering acceptable to all our -exalted race, should be torn by the long teeth of an undomesticated -dog.” - -“That is true. That is alike a truthful and a pious reflection. A child -is different from all other afflictions, because a child alone can -always be an endless and a quite new sort of trouble. That nobody knows -better than I who am the Mother of Every Princess, with my daughters -everywhere policing the wild dreams of men so inadequately. Yet a thing -done has an end. And it may be that by and by I can get around your -Father—” - -“Whose name be exalted!” remarked Evasherah. - -“That also, dearie, is a wholly proper observation,—though, as I was -saying, you know as well as I do how pig-headed he is. Meanwhile, there -is nothing left for you, for the present, save another incarnation, and -another century or two of seductiveness upon the verge of Doonham.” - -“But I have been,” observed the Princess, “a crocodile professionally -for nine thousand years, for all that my chest is so delicate. The cats -of conjecture are therefore abroad in the meadows of my meditation -purring that this time I would prefer something a little less damp.” - -“Dearie, since your next incarnation is but a matter of form, do you by -all means please yourself, so that you stay a destruction to young men -and to their upsetting aspirations. You have been wholly inadequate this -morning, I observe—” - -“Why, but—” said the abashed Princess. - -Her voice sank as she went on rather ruefully with a talking which to -Gerald was now inaudible. He could merely see that the elder lady had -hazarded a suggestion which Evasherah at once dismissed with an emphatic -toss of her lovely head. He saw too the Princess place together the -palms of her hands and then draw them about seven inches apart. - -“Oh, fully that, at first!” she stated, in the raised tones of mild -exasperation, “so that, altogether, this unresponsive person (within -whose ancestral tomb may all goats propagate!) remains quite -incomprehensible.” - -The old woman replied: “In any event, you have failed; but that does not -really matter. He travels, you assure me, with his assured betrayer. And -the road he follows, that also, is lively enough and long enough to -betray him in the end. For he will meet others of my daughters; and if -all else fails, he will meet me.” - -“The ship of my enduring resolution is not yet wrecked upon the iceberg -of his indifference; and I am not through with him, by any means. I am -returning to this unremunerative occupier of my couch,—for breakfast, O -my Mother,” the Princess added, with a merry laugh. - -And the old lady answered her with a mother’s ever-responsive -tenderness. “That is my own child. One has to persevere with these -romantics, no matter how hard the task may seem. For none of us knows -yet what these romantic men desire. My daughters prepare for them fine -food and drink, my daughters see to it that their homes are snug, and at -the end of each day my daughters love them dutifully. All things that -men can ask for, my daughters furnish them. Why need so many of these -men nurse strange desires which do not know their aim? for how can any -of my daughters content such desires?” - -“One can but summon, O my Mother, the terminator of delights and the -separator of companions and the ender of all desires.” - -“There are other ways, my dearie, which are more subtle. That way is of -the East, that way is old and crude. Still, that way also quiets -over-ambitious dreaming; and that way serves.” - -Gerald blinked. He was a bit troubled by the matter-of-fact occurrence -before his eyes of a perfectly incredible happening. - -For the elder lady became transfigured. She became larger, all ruddiness -went away from her, and she took on the black and livid coloring of a -thunder cloud. In her left hand she now carried a pair of scales and a -yardstick. Her face smiled rather terribly as she steadily grew larger. -Her necklace, you perceived, was made of human skulls, and each of her -earrings was the dangling corpse of a hanged man in a very poor state of -preservation. Altogether, it was not a grief to Gerald when the Mother -of Every Princess had attained to her full heavenly stature, and had -vanished. - -But the Lady of the Water-Gap was changed in quite another fashion. -Where she had stood now fluttered a large black and yellow butterfly. - - - - - 9. - How One Butterfly Fared - - -SO it was in the shape of a large butterfly that Evasherah returned -toward Gerald, to careen and drift affectionately about him, in a -bewildering medley of bright colors. He cried to her adoringly, “My -darling—!” He grasped at her: and she did not avoid him. - -Gerald now held this lovely creature, by the throat, at arm’s length. He -began the compelling words, “Schemhamphoras—” And in Gerald’s face was -no adoration whatever. - -Instead, he continued, rather sadly, “—Eloha, Ab, Bar, Ruachaccocies—” -and so went through the entire awful list, ending by and by with -“Cados.” - -His prey was now struggling frantically. The unreflective girl had not -allowed for her lover’s being a student of magic. And her restiveness -was—well, it might be, pardonably,—a bit interfering with Gerald’s -æsthetic delight, now that he paused to admire the splendor of the -trapped Princess’s last incarnation, before he used the fatal Hausa -charm. - -For Evasherah’s wings were of a wonderful velvety black and a fiery -orange color, her body was golden, and her breast crimson. He noted also -that Evasherah, in her increasing agitation of mind, had thrust out from -the back of her neck a soft forked horn which diffused a horrible odor. - -And those curved, strong, needle-sharp fangs which were striking vainly -at him were so adroitly designed that Gerald fell now to marveling, -still a little sadly, at their superb efficiency. A yellowish oil oozed -from their tips. They had, he saw, just the curve of two cat claws: -whensoever such fangs struck flesh, their victim’s recoil would but -clamp fangs which were shaped like that more deeply and more venomously; -it was a quite ingenious arrangement. It perfectly explained, too, how -the visitors of this soft-spoken, cuddling and utterly adorable Princess -happened to leave their skulls in the thick grass around her alabaster -couch. - -Then Gerald said: “O Butterfly, O Gleaming One, your breakfast this day -is disappointment, your fork is agony, and your napkin death. O -Butterfly, repent truly, abandon falsehood, put away deceit and -flattery, cease thinking about your deluded lovers even remorsefully. -Repent in verity, do not repent like the wildcat which repents with the -fowl in its mouth without putting the fowl down. Where now is the -artfulness which was yours, where are the high-hearted, tricked -lovers?—To-day all lies in the tomb. This world, O Butterfly, is a -market-place: everyone comes and goes, both stranger and citizen. The -last of your lovers is a pious friend, he assists the decreed course of -this world.” - -Still, it was rather strange that the body she had chosen appeared to -belong to the species _Onithoptera crœsus_,—Gerald decided, as his foot -crushed the squeaking soft remnants and rubbed all into a smeared paste -of blood and gold-dust,—because, of course, this kind of butterfly was -more properly indigenous to the Malay Archipelago than to these parts, -over and above the fact that for any butterfly to have the fangs of a -serpent was false entomology. - -However, the geography and local customs and all else which pertained to -the Marches of Antan were tinged with some perceptible inconsequence, -Gerald reflected, as he returned to his tethered stallion. He mounted -then, cheered with the yet further reflection that he had got from -Evasherah the rather beautiful idea of being a god, and had got also the -four remaining drops from the Churning of the Ocean. The properties of -this water were sufficiently well known to every student of magic. - - - - - PART FOUR - THE BOOK OF DERSAM - - “What Has a Blind Man - to Do with Any Mirror?” - - - - - 10. - Wives at Caer Omn - - -NOW Gerald mounted on the stallion Kalki, and Gerald traveled upon the -way of gods and myths, down a valley of cedar-trees, into the realm of -Glaum of the Haunting Eyes. The land of Dersam was already falling away -into desolation, because of the disappearance of its liege-lord into -mortal living. And at Caer Omn, which formerly had been the Sylan’s -royal palace, and where Gerald got his breakfast, the three hundred and -fifty-odd concubines of Glaum were about their cooking and cleaning and -nursing, but the seven wives of Glaum sat together in a walled garden. - -Six of these wives were young and comely, but the seventh seemed—to -Gerald’s finding,—as wrinkled as a wet fishnet, and as old as envy. - -By the half-dozen who retained their youth, however, Gerald was -enraptured. As he looked from one of them to the other, each in her turn -appeared so surpassingly lovely that she excelled all the other women -his gaze had ever beheld.... But, no! Glaum was his benefactor. Glaum at -this instant, in Lichfield, was toiling away at that unfinished romance -about Dom Manuel of Poictesme which by and by was to make the name of -Gerald Musgrave famous everywhere. It would, therefore, never do to -encourage these so shapely and chromatically meritorious dears to follow -out the dictates of womanly confidence and generosity to the point where -they could bleat about it. No, to permit them all to deceive one husband -would be an unfriendly and injudicious pleonasm, Gerald reflected. And -Gerald sighed whole-heartedly. - -The seven women had sighed earlier. “What else is now come to trouble -us?” said the wives of the Sylan when Gerald came. - -He answered them, with a great voice: “Ladies, I am Fair-haired Hoo, the -Helper and the Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved -of Heavenly Ones. Yet, I pray you, do not be unduly alarmed by this -revelation! I am not a ruthless deity, I deal fiercely with none save my -misguided opponents. I, in a word, am he of whom it was prophesied that -I, my dear ladies, or perhaps I ought to say that he—although, to be -sure, it does not really matter which pronoun a strict grammarian would -prefer, since in any case the meaning is unmistakable and very -sublime,—would at his or at my appointed season appear, in unexampled -and appropriate splendor, to reign over Antan, riding upon the silver -stallion Kalki.” - -But the wives of Glaum seemed unimpressed. “Your meaning, sir,” said one -of them, “may be terrible, but certainly it is not plain.” - -This wife had reddish golden hair, uncovered: she wore a blue gown, so -fashioned that it left her right breast wholly uncovered also; and, -doubtless for some sufficient purpose, she carried an iron candlestick -with seven branches. - -Gerald asked, with indignation tempered by her good looks: “And do you -doubt my divine word? Do you dispute my Dirghic godhead?” - -Another wife answered him, a glorious dark sultry creature in purple, -who wore a semi-circular crown and had about the upper part of each bare -arm two broad gold bands. - -She said: “Why should we question that? Gods by the score and by the -hundreds, gods in battalions, have passed through the land of Dersam, -going downward toward Antan, to enter into well-earned rest after their -long labors in this world.” - -“Ah, so it appears that Antan is the heaven of all deserving gods, and -that I am to rule a celestially populated kingdom well worthy of me!” - -“We have not ever been to Antan. We thus know nothing of its customs. We -know only that many gods have passed us, traveling upon all manner of -steeds as they went down into Antan. Bes rode upon a cat, and Tlaloc -upon a stag, and Siva upon a bull: we have seen Kali pass upon the back -of a tiger: above our heads Zeus has gone by upon the back of an eagle, -as he traveled abreast with Amen-Ra upon the back of a very large -beetle. We therefore think it likely enough that you who pass upon this -shining horse are yet another one of these gods. What are the gods to -us, in this our season of unexampled trouble?” - -Then the seven wives fell into a lamentation, and their complaining was -that, since Glaum of the Haunting Eyes had left them, the sacred mirror -reflected only the person who stood before it. - -“And is not such the nature of all mirrors?” Gerald asked. - -“Oh, sir,” replied the wife who carried a bunch of keys, and who wore -that unaccountable tall bifurcated orange-colored headdress, “but until -yesterday ours was the mirror which showed things as they ought to be.” - -“And what did one discover in it?” - -Now the old wife spoke. Her head was wrapped in a white turban; her face -had no more color than has the belly of a fish; and a sprinkling of -white hairs, so long that they had grown into spirals and half-circles, -glittered upon her shaking chin. “To the aged, such as I have now -become, the Mirror of Caer Omn reveals nothing any more: but to the -young, such as we all were before Glaum left us, it was used to reveal -that which may not be described.” - -“Then why do you not place before it some young person—?” - -“Alas, sir, but there is no longer any co-respondent youth in the -mirror!” - -The speaker was the brown-haired and alluringly plump wife who wore -nothing at all anywhere, and whose delicious body had been depilated in -every needful place. - -Then the seven wives of Glaum of the Haunting Eyes raised a lament; and -now the pallid sharp-nosed wife who was far gone in pregnancy, and who -wore that maroon-colored headdress shaped like a cone, began to speak of -the young fellows who had been used to come to them out of the sacred -mirror. - -She spoke of very handsome, tall, brisk, nimble, impudent young fellows, -that had been always jolly and buxom and jaunty, and not ever grumpish -like a husband; of over-rash young fellows who must have their flings, -who stuck at nothing, who went to all lengths, who had a finger in every -pie, who kept the pot a-boiling; of what forward, eager, pushing, -plodding, thwacking, negligent of no corner, business-like, -never-wearying, soul-stirring workmen they had been at every job they -undertook; of what great plagues they had been, too, without the least -bit of any patience or of any modesty; and of how unreasonably you -missed these sad rapscallions now that there was no longer any -co-respondent youth remaining in the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn. - -Gerald replied: “Your plaint is very moving. I regard a mirror which -begets any such young fellows as a rather beautiful idea. It is true -that I am a bachelor who therefore object to no reasonable mitigation of -matrimony. But I am also a god, dear ladies, a god who brings all youth -with me here in this vial.” - -At that the last wife spoke. Her hair was flaxen; her body was -everywhere engagingly visible through her gown, of a transparent soft -green tissue; she carried a small golden-hilted sword. And this wife -said: - -“You differ, then, from those other gods who have passed this way. No -youth went with these gods, who had themselves grown old and tired and -more feeble, and who journeyed toward a resting from all miracles and -away from a world wherein they were no longer worshipped.” - -“But I,” said Gerald, “I am a god who is, moreover, a citizen of the -United States of America, wherein every sort of religion yet flourishes -as it can never do in an effete and sophisticated monarchy. So do you -show me the way to the temple of the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn!” - - - - - 11. - The Glass People - - -THE seven wives conducted Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and the -Preserver, to the Temple of the Mirror. It was the old wife who now -lifted from the mirror a blue veil embroidered with tiny fig-leaves -worked in gold thread. You saw then that this mirror was splotched and -clouded and mildewed. It reflected sallowly a distorted and rather -speckled Gerald: it glistened with an unwholesome iridescence. - -Thereafter Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the -Third Truth, when he had announced his various titles, with such due -ceremony as befits an exchange of amenities between divine powers, -moistened his finger-tip with one drop of water from the Churning of the -Ocean. Upon the sacred Mirror of Caer Omn he drew with his finger-tip -the triangle of the male and of the female principle, so that the one -interpenetrated the other: and he invoked Monachiel, Ruach, Achides, and -Degaliel. - -Then there was never a more inconsequent rejoicing witnessed anywhere -than was made by the seven wives of Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, now that -the sacred mirror was altered, for these seven ungrateful -scatter-brained women were now singing a sort of hymn in honor of the -charitableness and the vigorous procreative powers of the sun. - -“But what under the sun has the sun,” said Gerald, a little flustered, -“to do with the not inconsiderable favor which I have conferred upon -this country? And do you think such anatomical details as you are -singing about quite the proper theme for an opera?” - -They replied: “Sir, it is obvious that you are a sun god, of the clan of -Far-darting Helios and Freyr the Fond Wooer and the Elder Horus and -Marduk of the Bright Glance, all of whom have ridden this way as they -passed down toward Antan. Sir, it is clear that the Lord of the Third -Truth, also, is a god whose mission it is to awaken warmth and humidity -and a renewal of life in all that he touches—” - -“But,” Gerald said, “but with my finger!” - -“—Just as,” they concluded, “you have done to this mirror. Therefore, -sir, we are praising your charitableness and your vigorous procreative -powers.” - -“Ah, now I comprehend you! Still, let us, in these public choral odes, -let us adhere strictly to the charitableness! Those other solar traits I -would describe as far better adapted to chamber music, in some duet -form. Meanwhile, since this somewhat un-American hymn is intended as a -personal tribute, I accept your really very personal arithmetic in the -proper spirit, dear ladies, as a pious exaggeration. For of course, just -as you say, it does seem fairly obvious I am a sun god.” - -Yet Gerald, after all, was now more deeply interested in that huge -mirror than in anything else. He saw that the mirror which they -worshipped in the land of Dersam was not in any way dreadful. If only -the mirror of Freydis was like this, then every inheritance which -awaited him in his appointed kingdom might well be pleasant enough. - -For now the Mirror of Caer Omn shone with a golden clear glowing, and in -its depths he viewed with lively admiration a throng of strange and -lovely beings such as he had not known in Lichfield. - - - - - 12. - Confusions of the Golden Travel - - -BUT when three huge men beckoned to him, and Gerald had moved forward, -he found, with wholly tolerant surprise, that this mirror was in reality -a warmish golden mist, through which he entered into the power of these -three giant blacksmiths, and into the shackles of adamant with which -they bound him fast to a gray, lichen-crusted crag, the topmost crag -above a very wide ravine, among a desert waste of mountain tops; and he -entered, too, into that noble indignation which now possessed Gerald -utterly. For it was Heaven he was defying, he who was an apostate god, a -god unfrightened by the animosity of his divine fellows. He had -preserved, somehow,—in ways which he could not very clearly recall, but -of which he stayed wholly proud,—all men and women from destruction by -the harshness and injustice of Heaven. He only of the gods had pitied -that futile, naked, cowering race which lived, because of their -defencelessness among so many other stronger animals, in dark and -shallow caverns, like ants in an ant-hill. He had made those timid, -scatter-brained, two-legged animals human: he had taught them to build -houses and boats; to make and to employ strong knives and far-smiting -arrows against the fangs and claws with which Heaven had equipped the -other animals; and to tame horses and dogs to serve them in their -hunting for food. He had taught them to write and to figure and to -compound salves and medicines for their hurts, and even to foresee the -future more or less. All arts that were among the human race had come -from Prometheus, and all these benefits were now preserved for his so -inadequate, dear puppets, through the nineteen books in which Prometheus -had set down the secrets of all knowledge and all beauty and all -contentment,—he who after he had discovered to mortals so many -inventions had no invention to preserve himself. Prometheus, in brief, -had created and had preserved men and women, in defiance of Heaven’s -fixed will. For that sacrilege Prometheus atoned, among the ends of -earth, upon this lichen-crusted gray crag. He suffered for the eternal -redemption of mankind, the first of all poets, of those makers who -delight to shape and to play with puppets, and the first of men’s -Saviors. And his was a splendid martyrdom, for the winged daughters of -old Ocean fluttered everywhere about him in the golden Scythian air, -like wailing seagulls, and a grief-crazed woman with the horns of a cow -emerging from her disordered yellow hair paused too to cherish him, and -then went toward the rising place of the sun to endure her allotted -share of Heaven’s injustice. - -But he who was the first of poets burst Heaven’s shackles like -packthread, ridding himself of all ties save the little red band which -yet clung about one finger, and rising, passed to his throne between the -bronze lions which guarded each of its six steps, and so sat beneath a -golden disk. All wisdom now belonged to the rebel against Heaven, and -his was all earthly power: the fame of the fine poetry and the -comeliness and the grandeur of Solomon was known in Assyria and Yemen, -in both Egypts and in Persepolis, in Karnak and in Chalcedon, and among -all the isles of the Mediterranean. He sported with genii and with -monsters of the air and of the waters; the Elementals served King -Solomon when he began to build, as a bribe to Heaven, a superb temple -which was engraved and carved and inlaid everywhere with cherubim and -lions and pineapples and oxen and the two triangles. There was no power -like Solomon’s: his ships returned to him three times each year with the -tribute of Nineveh and Tyre and Parvaam and Mesopotamia and Katuar; the -kings of all the world were the servants of King Solomon: the spirits of -fire and the lords of the air brought tribute to him, too, from behind -the Pleiades. His temple now was half completed. But upon his ring -finger stayed always the band of blood-colored asteria upon which was -written, “All things pass away.” These glittering and soft and -sweet-smelling things about him, as he knew always, were only loans -which by and by would be taken away from him by Heaven. He turned from -these transient things to drunkenness and to the embraces of women, he -hunted forgetfulness upon the breasts of nine hundred women, he quested -after oblivion between the thighs of the most beautiful women of Judea -and Israel, of Moab and of Ammon and of Bactria, of Baalbec and of -Babylon: he turned to wantoning with boys and with beasts and with -bodies of the dead. These madnesses enraptured the flesh of Solomon, but -always the undrugged vision of his mind regarded the fixed will of -Heaven, “These things shall pass away.” The temple which he had been -building lacked now only one log to be completed. He cast that gray and -lichen-crusted cedar log into the Pool of Bethesda: it sank as though it -had been a stone: and Solomon bade his Israelites set fire to the temple -which all these years he had been building as a bribe to Heaven. - -But when the temple burned, it became more than a temple, for not only -the flanks of Mt. Moriah were ablaze, a whole city was burning there, -and its name was Ilion. He aided in the pillaging of it: the golden -armor of Achilles fell to his share. In such heroic gear, he, like a fox -hidden in a slain lion’s skin, took ship to Ismaurus, which city he -treacherously laid waste and robbed: thence he passed to the land of the -Lotophagi, where he viewed with mildly curious, cool scorn the men who -fed upon oblivion. He was captured by a very bad-smelling, one-eyed -giant, from whom he through his wiles escaped. There was no one anywhere -more quick in wiles than was Odysseus, Laertes’ son. He toiled unhurt -through a nightmare of pitfalls and buffetings, among never-tranquil -seas, outwitting the murderous Laestrigonians, and hoodwinking Circe and -the feathery-legged Sirens and fond Calypso: he evaded the man-eating -ogress with six heads: he passed among the fluttering, gray, squeaking -dead, and got the better of Hades’ sullen overlords and ugly spectres, -through his unfailing wiliness,—he who was still a poet, making the -supreme poem of each man’s journeying through an everywhere inimical and -betraying world, he who was pursued by the wrath of Heaven which -Poseidon had stirred up against Odysseus. But always the wiles of -much-enduring Odysseus evaded the full force of Heaven’s buffetings, so -that in the end he won home to Ithaca and to his meritorious wife; and -then, when the suitors of Penelope had been killed, he went, as dead -Tiresias had commanded, into a mountainous country carrying upon his -shoulder an oar, and leading a tethered ram, for it was yet necessary to -placate Heaven. Beyond Epirus, among the high hills of the Thesproteans, -he sat the oar upright in the stony ground, and turning toward the ram -which he now meant to sacrifice to Poseidon, he found Heaven’s -amiability to remain unpurchased, because the offering of Odysseus, who -was a rebel against Heaven’s will to destroy him, had been refused, and -the ram had vanished. - -But in his hand was still the rope with which he had led this ram, and -in his other hand was a bag containing silver money, and in his heart, -now that he had again turned northerly, to find in place of the oar an -elder-tree in flower, now in his heart was the knowledge that no man -could travel beyond him in hopelessness and in infamy. He remembered all -that he had put away, all which he had denied and betrayed, all the -kindly wonders which he had witnessed between Galilee and Jerusalem, -where the carpenters of the Sanhedrin were now fashioning, from a great -lichen-crusted cedar log found floating in the Pool of Bethesda, that -cross which would be set up to-morrow morning upon Mt. Calvary. Then -Judas flung down the accursed silver and the rope with which he had come -hither to destroy himself, because an infamy so complete as his must -first be expressed with fitting words. It was a supreme infamy, it was -man’s masterpiece in the way of iniquity, it was the reply of a very -fine poet to Heaven’s proffered truce after so many æons of tormenting -men causelessly: it was a thing not to be spoken of but sung. He heaped -great sheets of lead upon his chest, he slit the cord beneath his -tongue, he tormented himself with clysters and with purges and in all -other needful ways, so that his voice might be at its most effective -when he sang toward Heaven about his infamy. - -But when he sang of his offence against Heaven, he likened his -hatefulness to that of very horrible offenders in yet elder times, he -compared his sin to that of Œdipus who sinned inexpiably with his -mother, and to that of Orestes whom Furies pursued forever because he -had murdered his mother. But it was not of any Jocasta or of any -Clytemnestra he was thinking, rather it was of his own mother, of that -imperious, so beautiful Agrippina whom he had feared and had loved with -a greater passion than anyone ought to arouse in an emperor, and whom he -had murdered. Nothing could put Agrippina out of his thoughts. It -availed no whit that he was lord of all known lands, and the owner of -the one house in the world fit for so fine a poet to live in, a house -entirely overlaid with gold and adorned everywhere with jewels and with -mother of pearl, a house that quite dwarfed the tawdry little Oriental -hovel which Solomon had builded as a bribe to Heaven, because this was a -house so rich and ample that it had three-storied porticos a mile in -length, and displayed upon its front portico not any such trumpery as an -Ark of the Covenant but a colossal statue of that Nero Claudius Cæsar -who was the supreme poet the world had ever known. Yet nothing could put -Agrippina out of Nero’s thoughts. From the satiating of no lust, -howsoever delicate or brutal, and from the committing of no enormity, -and from the loveliness of none of his poems, could he get happiness and -real peace of mind. He hungered only for Agrippina, he wanted back her -detested scoldings and intermeddlings, he reviled the will of Heaven -which had thwarted the desires of a fine poet by making this so -beautiful, proud woman his mother, and he practised those magical rites -which would summon Agrippina from the dead. - -But when she returned to him, incredibly beautiful, and pale and proud, -and quite naked, just as he had last seen her when his sword had ripped -open this woman’s belly so that he might see the womb in which he had -once lain, then the divine Augusta drew him implacably downward among -the dead, and so into the corridors of a hollow mountain. This place was -thronged with all high-hearted worshippers of the frightening, -discrowned, imperious, so beautiful woman who had drawn him thither -resistlessly, and in this Hörselberg he lived in continued splendor and -in a more dear lewdness, and he still made songs, only now it was as -Tannhäuser that the damned acclaimed him as supreme among poets. But -Heaven would not let him rest even among these folk who had put away all -thought of Heaven. Heaven troubled Tannhäuser with doubts, with -premonitions, even with repentance. Heaven with such instruments lured -this fine poet from the scented Hörselberg into a bleak snow-wrapped -world: and presently he shivered too under the cold wrath of Pope Urban, -bells rang, a great book was cast down upon the pavement of white and -blue slabs, and the candles were being snuffed out, as the now formally -excommunicated poet fled westerly from Rome pursued by the ever-present -malignity of Heaven. - -But from afar he saw the sapless dry rod break miraculously into -blossom, and he saw the messengers of a frightened Bishop of Rome (with -whom also Heaven was having its malicious sport) riding everywhither in -search of him, bearing Heaven’s pardon to the sinner whom they could not -find. For the poet sat snug in a thieves’ kitchen, regaling himself with -its sour but very potent wines and with its frank, light-fingered girls. -Yet a gibbet stood uncomfortably near to the place: upon bright days the -shadow of this gallows fell across the threshold of the room in which -they rather squalidly made merry. Death seemed to wait always within -arm’s reach, pilfering all, with fingers more light and nimble than -those which a girl runs furtively through the pockets of the put-by -clothing of her client in amour. Death nipped the throats of ragged poor -fellows high in the air yonder, and death very lightly drew out of the -sun’s light and made at one with Charlemagne all the proud kings of -Aragon and Cyprus and Bohemia, and death casually tossed aside the -tender sweet flesh which had been as white as the snows of last winter, -and was as little regarded now, of such famous tits as Héloïse and Thaïs -and Queen Bertha Broadfoot. Time was a wind which carried all away. Time -was preparing by and by (still at the instigation of ruthless Heaven) to -make an end even to François Villon, who was still so fine a poet, for -all that time had made of him a wine-soaked, rickety, hairless, -lice-ridden and diseased sneakthief whose food was paid for by the -professional earnings of a stale and flatulent harlot. For time ruined -all: time was man’s eternal strong ravager, time was the flail with -which Heaven pursued all men whom Heaven had not yet destroyed, -ruthlessly. - -But time might yet be confounded: and it was about that task he set. For -Mephistophilus had allotted him twenty-four years of wholly untrammeled -living, and into that period might be heaped the spoilage of centuries. -He took unto himself eagle’s wings and strove to fathom all the causes -of the misery which was upon earth and of the enviousness of Heaven. -That which time had destroyed, Johan Faustus brought back into being: he -was a poet who worked in necromancy, his puppets were the most admirable -and lovely of the dead. Presently he was restoring through art magic -even those lost nineteen books in which were the secrets of all beauty -and all knowledge and all contentment, the secrets for which Prometheus -had paid. But the professors at the university would have nothing to do -with these nineteen books. It was feared that into these books restored -by the devil’s aid, the devil might slily have inserted something -pernicious: and besides, the professors said, there were already enough -books from which the students could learn Greek and Hebrew and Latin. So -they let perish again all those secrets of beauty and knowledge and -contentment which the world had long lost. Now Johan Faustus laughed at -the ineradicable folly with which Heaven had smitten all men, a folly -against which the clear-sighted poet fought in vain. But Johan Faustus -at least was wise, and there had never been any other beauty like this -which now stood before him within arm’s reach (as surely as did death), -now that with a yet stronger conjuration he had wrested from -all-devouring time even the beauty of Argive Helen. - -But when he would have touched the Swan’s daughter, the delight of gods -and men, she vanished, precisely as a touched bubble is shattered into -innumerable sparkling bits, and over three thousand of them he pursued -and captured in all quarters of the earth, for, as he said of himself, -Don Juan Tenorio had the heart of a poet, which is big enough to be in -love with the whole world, and like Alexander he could but wish for -other spheres to which he might extend his conquests, and each one of -these sparkling bits of womanhood glittered with something of that lost -Helen’s loveliness, yet, howsoever various and resistless were their -charms, and howsoever gaily he pursued them, singing ever-new songs, and -swaggeringly gallant, in his fair, curly wig and his gold-laced coat -adorned with flame-colored ribbons, yet he, the eternal pursuer, was in -turn pursued by the malevolence of Heaven, in, as it seemed, the shape -of an avenging horseman who drew ever nearer unhurriedly, until at last -the clash of rapiers and the pleasant strumming of mandolins were not -any longer to be heard in that golden and oleander-scented -twilight,—because of those ponderous, unhurried hoofbeats, which had -made every other noise inaudible,—and until at last he perceived that -both the rider and the steed were of moving stone, of an unforgotten -stone which was gray and lichen-crusted. - -But when fearlessly he encountered the overtowering statue, and had -grasped the horse about its round cold neck, he saw that the stone rider -was lifeless, and was but the dumb and staring effigy of a big man in -armor which was inset with tinsel and with bits of colored glass. It was -the bungled copy and the parody of a magnanimous, great-hearted dream -that he was grasping, and yet it was a part of him, who had been a poet -once, but was now a battered old pawnbroker, for in some way, as he -incommunicably knew, this parodied and not ever comprehended Redeemer -and he were blended, and they were, somehow, laboring in unison to serve -a shared purpose. He derided and he came too near to a mystery which he -distrusted, and which yet (without his preference having been consulted -in the affair) remained a part of him, as it was a part of all poets, -even of a cashiered poet, and a part very vitally necessary to the -existence of a Jurgen. A Jurgen had best not meddle with such matters -one half-second sooner than that dimly foreseen, inevitable need arose -for a Jurgen also to be utilized in the service of this mystery, without -having his preference in the affair consulted. The aging pawnbroker was -a little afraid. He climbed gingerly down from the tall pedestal of -Manuel the Redeemer, he descended from that ambiguous tomb upon which he -was trampling, he stepped rather hastily backward from that carved -fragment of the crag of Prometheus. He stepped backward, treading beyond -the confines of the golden mirror which was worshipped at Caer Omn; and -he was thus released from its magic. - - - - - 13. - Colophon of a God - - -NOW before him the mirror still glowed goldenly, and now a hunchback -held out both his hands toward Gerald, whom he was trying to allure into -the form and mind of this sardonic, cracker-jawed, sly knave who had -such melancholy eyes. Gerald was much tempted to become this Punch, and -to relive for a little the rascal’s defiant and ever-restless life. And -then too, behind Punch waited tall Merlin, crowned with mistletoe, he -that created all chivalry, and that, being himself the great fiend’s -son, first taught men how to live as became the children of God. It -would be quite entertaining to enter into Merlin’s dark heart. Moreover, -to the other hand of Punch, stood a glittering suave gentleman with a -blue beard, in whose uxoricides it might be vastly interesting to -share.... - -Yet Gerald, facing these three rather beautiful ideas, was of two minds. -“For I am a god, with a throne awaiting me in Antan, where all the other -gods will be my lackeys,—and, for that matter, with no doubt a whole -cosmos of my own twirling and burning to unheeded clinkers somewhere in -space, which I ought at this moment to be looking after and -embellishing. And in this particular small world which I am quitting, -the powers of Heaven do quite honestly seem—when you look at them from -a perhaps biassed standpoint, that is,—and only to a certain extent, of -course,—and if you are so ill-advised as to consider matters in a -pessimistic, morbid, wholly un-American way—” - -Gerald paused. He smilingly shook his red head. “No. It is far better -for us gods not to criticize the handiwork of one another. So I shall -without one word of reproof permit my fellows to play as they like with -this planet called Earth. I shall of course, very probably, make new -planets a bit more conformable to my personal fancy. But I shall say -nothing about the planet I am now quitting at all likely to hurt -anybody’s feelings. No: I shall, rather, rely upon the appealing -eloquence of a dignified silence reinforced by a decisive departure.” - -And Gerald said also: “As for this mirror which is worshipped in the -land of Dersam, it pleases me as a toy. But I who am a Savior and a sun -god with nine such very fine exploits behind me, in the way of swimming -and of decimating devils, and of restoring warmth and making moons, and -of really remarkable broad-mindedness as to what particular animal I may -happen to look like,—I, the Helper and the Preserver, who am called to -reign over the goal of all the gods of men,—why, I must necessarily -lose by exchanging such a tremendous destiny for anything to be found in -this mirror.” - -Then Gerald said: “No. I must never forget that, whether I am a Savior -or a sun deity, or whether I am habitually used to discharge both -functions, I in any case remain Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and -Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and so on. I am a most notable -figure, of some sort or another sort, in Dirghic mythology. I am the -appointed rider of the silver stallion. I am destined to inherit from -the Master Philologist the great and best words of magic, and after that -poor hospitable fellow’s downfall to reign in his stead over the place -beyond good and evil which is the goal of all the gods of men and the -reward of their meritorious exertions. I cannot forsake such a majestic -destiny in order to play with the droll and pretty figures that move -about in the depths of this mirror. And whether or not this is a mirror -which I may require hereafter, when I have come into my kingdom and have -resumed my exalted divine estate in my appropriate mythology, is a -matter which I shall settle in due time who have all eternity wherein to -do whatever I may prefer.” - - - - - 14. - Evarvan of the Mirror - - -THEN Gerald perceived that the wives of Glaum were not yet through -with their wonder-workings, for these seven women were now about a -ceremony which they called Asvamedha. They led into the temple a brown -horse. Before the mirror they struck down this horse with pole-axes. The -tail was cut off by the flaxen-haired wife in green, and the naked wife -carried it away, Gerald did not know whither. The horse’s head also was -severed from the body, by that wife who was with child; the head was -then adorned with a chaplet made of small loaves of bread. This head was -afterward impaled upon a stake and thus was set upright before the -mirror, but not facing it. Then the six wives of Glaum who yet remained -in the temple mixed the blood of the horse with the blood of unborn -calves; they turned the stake: and they showed Gerald what he must do. - -When he had obeyed, and when they had all invoked Evarvan, then the -golden glowing of the sacred mirror was turned into a paler haze like -that of moonshine. Out of this silvery mistiness came a crowned woman. -She was clothed in white, and about her head shone an aureole. - -And Gerald was enraptured. For this Evarvan of the Mirror was so -surpassingly lovely that she excelled all the other women his gaze had -ever beheld. Yet somehow it was not the coloring nor the placing of her -features that he was noting. Rather, he was observing himself and the -thing which was happening to this careful, this well-poised, fastidious, -parched, rather pitiable Gerald whom for so many years he had known. The -creature had not for a great while, not since, indeed, the days of his -first insanity about Evelyn, been visited by any real emotion: now, -momentarily at least, he was ablaze: he was caught perhaps: and it was -this imminent personal peril that Gerald was noting, aloofly, with a -drugged sense of derisory exultation. - -For this Gerald, as it seemed to him, had known quite well, a great -while ago, before his lips had touched for pastime’s sake the lips of -any woman anywhere, that this woman who, it seemed, was called Evarvan, -existed in some place, and waited for him, and would by and by be found. -That very important fact, which a boy had known, a thriftless, very -silly young man had let slip out of mind. Throughout all the -twenty-eight years of his living, it seemed to Gerald, this Evarvan had -been the true and perfect love of his heart’s core.... To the extreme -romanticism of this phrase he conceded a smile: that he should have -concocted a phrase so abominable showed him just now to be neither -fastidious nor well poised.... Nevertheless, here was the woman whose -existence he, even in Lichfield, had always dimly divined, and of -whom—he had it now,—of whom Evelyn Townsend had been a parodying -shadow in human flesh. The likeness had been just sufficient to get him -into a great deal of trouble. He saw that likeness now, quite plainly. - -“And this woman too is going to get me into trouble, I very much fear. -For all my being cries out to her. Eh, Gerald, one needs caution here, -my lad, you who find trouble uncongenial!” - -Evarvan spoke. And she was speaking, oddly enough, as it seemed to him, -of that Evelyn who went about Lichfield immured in the body which was a -poor copy of Evarvan’s body. Yet Gerald was listening hardly at all. He -did not like the strong, insane and over-youthful emotions which this -woman roused in him. They endangered his welfare. For this woman was -awakening in him those old, unforgotten fervors which he had once felt -for Evelyn Townsend, and which had betrayed him into the horrid bondage -of an illicit love-affair. This Evarvan was ensnaring him, he knew, into -the insanities appropriate to youth and inexperience: and such nonsense -had to be controlled. - -So it was half dazedly Gerald protested that—quite apart from the -claims of his divine duties as a Savior and a sun god, and apart too -from the obligations he was under to ascend the throne of Antan,—he -could no longer endure the stupidities and the fretfulness and the -jealousies of the Evelyn who had made adultery wholly unendurable. - -“If she were but a bit like you, ma’am,” Gerald gallantly -remarked,—with somewhat increasing composure now that this woman -reminded him the more closely that he observed her yet more and more of -Evelyn,—“the case would be different.” - -“But I,” said Evarvan of the Mirror, “will remain with you always, if -you indeed desire to become my lover. For there is a way, Gerald, there -is for you through my mirror’s aid an open way to contentment. You shall -know an untruth, and that untruth will make you free: the doings of the -world, and all the bustling that is made by merchants and by warriors -and by well-thought-of persons talking about important matters, will -then run by you like a little stream of shallow, bickering waters: and -you will heed none of these things, but only that loveliness which all -youth desires and no man ever finds save through my mirror’s aid. You -will live among bright shadows very futilely: yes: but you will be -happy.” - -Gerald replied hoarsely: “I desire only you. I cannot think of thrones, -nor of any gods, now that you stand here within arm’s reach. All my -life-long I have desired you, as I know now, my dearest, throughout the -dreary while of over-much playing and laughter that I have lived in -ever-dwindling faith I would yet win to you by and by. But now I am -again as Johan Faustus,—or, rather, I am as Jurgen in that other old -story, when he had come at last to Helen, the delight of gods and men: -only I am more favored than was Jurgen, for my Helen speaks....” - -“Oh, and I speak for your own good, my darling, for there is a condition -to be fulfilled before I may trust you and may give you all.” - -Gerald answered: “No, Evelyn, not to-night—But indeed I entreat your -pardon, my dear. My mind must have been wandering. Yes, yes! as I was -saying, the difference is that Helen speaks!” - -“For your own good, my dearest.” - -“Yes; you speak, naturally, of a condition for my own good, just as -Glaum hinted that so many more or less friendly persons would be doing -in these parts.” - -“I speak, though, of a very easy condition. You must yourself perform a -tiny Asvamedha; and you must immolate before my mirror, not any really -valuable horse, of course, nor even a good-looking horse, but only that -hideous and wholly worthless horse which you have brought with you into -the land of Dersam.” - -Then Gerald said: “And that is a small price to pay for the attainment -of the one thing which my heart quite earnestly desires, is it not? For -all my life I have hungered, as I believe that all poets hunger, for -that unflawed beauty, seemingly not ever to be found upon this earth, -which now stands revealed in the form of a woman, and which now speaks -to me with the voice of a woman—oh, quite with the voice of a -woman!—and speaks, too, for my own good. Yes, it is a small price, such -as any boy of nineteen or thereabouts would pay gladly. For I must tell -you, who are the delight of gods and—well! of adolescent boys, at -least, in every quarter of the world,—that all this very strongly -reminds me of that first sonnet which I made about you when I was a boy -of nineteen.” - -Evarvan did not wholly conceal her uneasiness over the prospect of -hearing this sonnet. But there was none the less in her voice a -tenderness almost motherly now that she asked of Gerald, “And did you -make verses, then, about me, dear, so early?” - -“To prove it,” Gerald replied, “I will now recite to you that identical -sonnet.” - -And he did. - -But his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the -octave, he paused, because it was never within Gerald’s power to resist -the beauty of a sublime thought when it was thus adequately expressed in -flawless verse. So for an instant he stayed silent. He caught up the -lovely hands of Evarvan of the Mirror, and he pressed them to his -trembling lips. - -For this beguiling bright dream was now become a snare to delay him in -journeying onward to his appointed kingdom, and to betray him again into -bondage to the rather beautiful ideas and tinsel notions of youth. -Presently he would be seeing no more of this traitorous dream woman, who -was preparing to trust him and to give him all, and who none the less -was more lovely and more dear than any real thing anywhere. Afterward he -would regret her, he knew: always he would regret Evarvan, among -whatsoever delights they were which awaited Gerald in his appointed -kingdom. Nevertheless, this dream was an impediment in the way of a -Savior and a sun deity, with whose appropriate functions this dream was -interfering: and the most painful duty which confronted Gerald was not -precisely to be discourteous to a lady, but to discourage sacrilege. - -Dismissing these cursory reflections, Gerald sighed: and he continued -the reciting of his sonnet with an air of lofty resignation intermingled -with a gustatory approval of really good verse. - -“That,” said Evarvan of the Mirror, when he had ended, “is a very -beautiful sonnet, and I am proud to have inspired it. But we were -talking about something else, I have quite forgotten what—” - -“I,” Gerald said, “have not forgotten.” - -“Oh, yes, now I do remember! We were talking about the lucky chance -afforded you to get rid of that dreadful horse of yours.” - -Gerald looked for one instant at the most lovely of all the illusions he -had found in the Mirror of Caer Omn. Then he began to recite the -multiplication tables. - -You saw that she was frightened. She said, “Oh, and I trusted you! I -gave you all!” - -She bleated now; her beauty was dimmed: and she seemed just the Evelyn -Townsend who had pestered Gerald beyond any reasonable endurance. - -But Gerald, howsoever heavy was the heart of Gerald who quite honestly -objected to being troubled by anything, went on inexorably to exorcise -Evarvan with the old runes of common-sense. He spoke of the elephant -that is the largest of beasts, and of the very dissimilar household -economy practised by a King of Israel and by Elijah the Tishbite, and of -the straight line that is the shortest distance between two points; and -the old magic was potent. - -Before his eyes Evarvan of the Mirror was changed. Of the degradation -which was put upon her, it suffices to report that this lovely lady went -backward in the course of every mortal woman’s living. She passed from -girlhood into a lank-legged childhood, and thence into drooling and -feebly puking infancy, and after that into the shapes she had worn in -her mother’s womb. In the end there remained of the most dear illusion -which Gerald had found in the Mirror of Caer Omn only two pink figures -in the form of a soft throbbing egg and of a creature like a tadpole -darting lustfully about it: and these melted back into the moonshine of -the Sacred Mirror of Caer Omn. - -Nor was that all. The wives of Glaum and the Temple of the Mirror and -all that was about Gerald began to waver. All the material things about -him showed now like paintings on a gauze curtain which was moving and -crinkling in a very gentle breeze. The shaping of the six wives became -longer and more attenuated: they were shaped like the shadows of women -in a fine sunset. These so prettily tinted shadows strained toward the -mirror and entered it precisely as you may see smoke drift toward and -out of an opened window. Then all the temple followed them collapsingly, -as if colored waters were running into a hole. The mirror swallowed all. -Caer Omn was gone: the land of Dersam was a ruined land without -inhabitants. Afterward the pale glass blinked seven times like summer -lightning, and the mirror was not there. - -Gerald stood alone in a cedar-shadowed way. He was weeping quite -unaffectedly. His very deepest poetic sensibilities had been touched by -the rather beautiful idea that he had loved this woman all his -life-long, and that now he had lost her forever: but a little way behind -Gerald the silver stallion stayed unimmolated, and grazed placidly. - - - - - PART FIVE - THE BOOK OF LYTREIA - - “Whether You Boil or Roast Snow, - You Can Have but Water of It.” - - - - - 15. - At Tenjo’s Court - - -GERALD passed on, riding upon the stallion Kalki, down a valley of -cedar-trees, into the realm of Tenjo of the Long Nose. This was the land -of Lytreia, they told him. But, here too, dejection overbrooded all, and -the atmosphere was elegiac, for people everywhere were lamenting that -vigor and resiliency and liveliness had gone out of their noses, so that -no man in Lytreia was able to sneeze or to employ his nose in any other -normal way. - -“Well, now, suppose you take me to this king of yours,” said Gerald, -“for it may be I can re-awaken hereabouts all the lost joys of -influenza.” - -“And who shall we say to him has come into Lytreia, red-headed and -riding upon the back of this huge and sparkling horse with the splendid -nose?” - -“You will say to your king that this land is honored by a visit from -Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, -the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, as he passes toward his appointed -kingdom in Antan, riding in very terrible estate upon the back of his -famous silver stallion Kalki, a beast which, strictly speaking, has no -nose, but only nostrils at the tip of his long, noble head.” - -They also seemed unimpressed. “No god is of terrible estate except the -Holy Nose of Lytreia; nor do we concede the existence of any kingdom not -his. Nevertheless, you may come with us.” - -“Upon my word,” thought Gerald, “but in these parts the people pay very -inadequate homage to us gods and are little better than heretics.” - -But he went with these over-sceptical persons quietly to their King -Tenjo. - -And Tenjo received the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones more affably. -First, though, the grave, white-bearded King shared with the visiting -god a quite excellent dinner, which was handsomely served to them by ten -pages in ermine and a seneschal in vermilion silk: not until dinner was -over, and the two sat drinking their spiced wine out of gold goblets, -would the King talk about his troubles. Then Tenjo complained that his -nose was fallen and flabby. It was no longer worshipful. That was in all -ways deplorable, said the King, refilling his goblet, inasmuch as his -people worshipped a nose, and could respect no male creature who had not -a large and high-standing and robust and succulent nose. - -Gerald was a little puzzled, because this seemed to him a queer sort of -calamity to be befalling anybody, unless it was caused by the magic of -the wu. But Gerald made no comment. He asked only how this sad state of -affairs had come about. - -He was told that all the youth and vigor had been taken out of the Holy -Nose of Lytreia, and out of Tenjo’s nose, and out of the nose of every -man in the kingdom, by the blighting magic of a sorceress who had lately -established her residence in the tomb of King Peter the Builder. - -“It is there,” said Tenjo, “the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths is -hidden: but not even of that does this sorceress seem afraid.” - -“Nor, for that matter, am I: for I am Lord of the Third Truth. Well, it -is fairly evident this woman is a wu.” - -“You may be right. I confess that dreadful possibility had not ever -occurred to me—” - -“Only we gods are omniscient, my dear Tenjo,” said Gerald, kindlily. “So -there is no need for any mere king to be ashamed of his human -blindness.” - -“—Because, as I must tell you, before this minute I had not ever heard -of a wu.” - -“You have been lucky. The less one hears of such creatures, the better -for everybody. So, how is this woman called?” - -“She is called Evaine,” said Tenjo; “and she is called also the Lady of -Peter’s Tomb, now that she has taken possession of it.” - -Then Gerald finished his fourth goblet, and Gerald hiccoughed, and -Gerald said: “Your case, my dear fellow, while perplexing, is not wholly -desperate. For I bring youth with me, and I will renovate your withered -noses. I am competent to deal with any wu. I give you, in fact, my -divine word that you shall be rid of this wu. Yes, Lytreia shall be rid -of her, even though it is necessary that to undo her hoodoo I do with -due to-do woo the wu, too—” - -“Would you be so kind,” said Tenjo, looking troubled, “as to repeat -that, rather more slowly?” - -Gerald obliged him, and continued: “Yes, I assure you, upon the most -sacred oath of our Dirghic heaven,—known only to the gods, my dear -fellow, so that you will, I trust, pardon my not repeating it,—that I -will subject this wu and this mirror also to my divine inspection—” - -“Ah, but I must tell you,” said Tenjo, seeming yet more troubled, “that -the man who looks into that mirror straightway finds himself transformed -into two stones. For that reason it is hidden away in Peter’s Tomb, and -it is kept veiled, and of course no man has ever dared go near it.” - -“How, then, did this mirror ever manage to change anybody into two -stones if nobody ever dared go near it?” - -“Why, but the mirror was compelled to change them into two stones -because that was the law. It was not at all the mirror’s fault. Surely, -you who are a god and are omniscient, and who are now nearly drunk -enough to see everything double, can see that much?” - -“So far as your explanation goes, I can see the mirror’s blamelessness -in the face of an obdurate physical law. Nor does any god object to a -physical law which concerns other people.” - -“And they kept away from the mirror because they knew about this law. -Surely, that too was natural?” - -“In a way, yes. But how could they be certain about this law?” - -“How could they help it, how could anybody be ignorant of one of our -very oldest and most famous laws, which comes down to us, indeed, from -sources so august and venerable that they antedate all history?” - -“Why, then, who enacted this law?” - -“How should I know, when, as I was just telling you, this law is older -than any recorded history?” - -“But in a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of pleasure, and -there are entirely too many laws,” said Gerald, shaking his red head -above his golden goblet rather despondently. “There is common, -statutory, international, maritime, ecclesiastical, and martial law. -There is the law of averages, the Salic law, and Grimm’s law of the -permutations of consonants. There is Jewish sacred law; there is prize -law; there is the law of gravity; there is John Law, who first developed -the natural wealth of the Mississippi, and William Law, who was a great -mystic. There are, in logic, the laws of thought, just as in astronomy -and physics and political economy there are, severally, the well-known -laws of Kepler and Prevost and Gresham. In fine, there are laws -everywhere, and they are very often a nuisance. He that goes to law -loses time and money and rest and friends. Law is a lottery, law is a -bottomless pit, law is an ass which slaps his tail in every man’s face. -So it very well may be, my dear fellow, that in a world so legally -overstocked this law of yours is superfluous, and therefore wrong.” - -But Tenjo was not convinced by Gerald’s relentless logic. Tenjo said -only: - -“I do not any more know what you are talking about than you do. But I do -know that”—here Tenjo hiccoughed, with judicial graveness,—“that it -does not alter the principle of the thing. So this mirror will continue -to transform into two stones all men who look into it, although I cannot -see how it matters the worth of one box of matches in hell, because so -long as the law is such, no man will ever look into this mirror.” - -“Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question! What if some -intelligent, unsuperstitious person were to look into this mirror,—and -were to come back not changed into stone, and not hurt in any -way,—would that not prove to you the insanity of this law?” - -“Of course it would not! That would only prove the man was a liar. The -plain fact of his not being changed into two stones would be legal proof -in any of our courts or in any law-respecting place anywhere that he had -not ever looked into the Mirror of the Two Truths.” - -“Oh, very well!” said Gerald. “No, thank you, my dear fellow, not -another drop! Let us go to the temple! And let us each lean upon the -other’s arm, for your most excellent wine does not seem to have -clarified anything exactly.” - - - - - 16. - The Holy Nose of Lytreia - - -NOW, when the grave, white-bearded King and the red-headed god had -come to the Temple of the Holy Nose, they entered it arm in arm, -followed by the King’s court. And when they approached the adytum, the -head priestess came toward them exhibiting a cteis, or large copper -comb, which she offered to Tenjo. The King accepted it, he parted her -hair in the middle, and he spoke the Word of Entry. - -Said Tenjo: “I enter, proud and erect. I take my fill of delight -imperiously, irrationally, and none punishes.” - -The head priestess replied, “Not yet.” - -Tenjo said then, “But in three months, and in three months, and in three -more months, the avenger comes forth, and mocks me by being as I am, and -by being foredoomed to do as I have done, inevitably.” - -This ceremony being discharged, they all entered the adytum, and then -the three priestesses led Gerald toward the collapsed and shrivelled -idol which was in the adytum. And Gerald whistled. - -“—For do you call this,” said Gerald, “a nose?” - -“Sir,” replied the priestesses, “we do. As, likewise, do all other -well-conducted persons.” - -“Yet, I would call it,” said Gerald, whose naturally fine color was now -perceptibly heightened by Tenjo’s excellent wine, “another member.” - -“Such, sir,” they answered him, “is not our custom.” - -“Nevertheless,” said Gerald, waggling very gravely his red head, -“nevertheless, it is written in the scriptures of the Protestant -Episcopal church that, even as great ships are turned about in the sea’s -roaring main with a very small helm, even so is every man guided in the -main by a small member—” - -They said, “Yet, sir—” - -“And this member is not well spoken of by the Apostolic Fathers. This -member has ruined virgins: its conquests are stained with blood: it has -caused the widow to regret: it has deceived the wisest and most elderly -of men. It is, in fine, a member whose blushing hue is wholly proper to -its iniquitous history.” - -They replied, “Still, sir—” - -“It is an over proud and wild member. Most justly is it written that -every kind of beasts and of birds and of serpents and of things in the -sea is to be tamed, and has been tamed, by human kind; but that this -member can no man tame; for it is an unruly member, seeking ruthlessly -its prey; a rebellious member, prominent in uprisings; a member very -often full of deadly poison.” - -They said, “None the less, sir—” - -“I deduce that this member here represented is not worshipful. I deduce -that it is not well for you of Lytreia to worship this shrivelled image -of a tongue, for all that you call it a nose.” - -“But, sir, while there is much piousness and erudition in what you say, -you must understand that the word ‘nose’ is a word with connotations and -with a reputed correspondence in anatomy—” - -“I do not at all understand that saying, and so I cannot quite see your -point of view. I merely know that, in consonance with the words of St. -James the Just, and according to the scriptures of the Protestant -Episcopal church, this member is a tongue. And I admit that this tongue, -which your heathenish upbringing induces you to call a nose, is in a -peculiarly bad way. But the divine word of Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper -and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, has been pledged to help and -to preserve this idol. So we will see what can be done about it.” - -Then Gerald moistened his finger-tip with a drop of the water from the -Churning of the Ocean. As the Lady of the First Water-Gap had done to -Gerald’s forehead, so Gerald did to the shrivelled idol of Lytreia. - -It was changed. Its limpness departed; its coloring quickened; corded -large blue veins, very intricately forked and branched, arose about its -now glowing surface, which revealed also many tiny veins that were -brightly red and astonishingly tortuous. It became enormous and -high-standing and robust and succulent. It throbbed and jerked. It was -hot to the touch: and the roughened cartilage of its erect tip-end now -glistened with imperial purple. - -And everywhere at that same instant the magic of Evaine was lifted from -Lytreia, and the nose of every man regained its proper proportions and -vigor. Young couples to the right hand and to the left could be seen -withdrawing to sneeze in private: the girls were already producing their -handkerchiefs. And the three priestesses began to bathe the rejuvenated -idol with refreshing water: they wreathed it with leaves of the Indian -wood-apple; they placed before it flowers and incense and sweetmeats. -Meanwhile they chaunted a contented song in honor of the Holy Nose. - -Tenjo and all the older lords and dowagers of Tenjo’s court had kneeled -in worship. Gerald only remained standing as arrogantly erect as was the -idol which people worshipped in Lytreia. - -“I honor in a civil way,” said Gerald, “the spirit of this tongue—” - -“But this,” said Tenjo the King, now speaking almost peevishly, “is not -a tongue. It is the Holy Nose of Lytreia.” - -“Do you not be flying, my dear fellow, upon the wings of bad temper, -into the face of scripture and of logic! In a civil way, I repeat, I -honor this member. I personally am rather fond of talking. Nevertheless, -as being myself a member of the Protestant Episcopal church, and as -being also a self-respecting member of the Dirghic mythology, I must -decline to worship this so restive and inflammable member of any man’s -body.” - -Tenjo at that got up from off his knees. He came toward Gerald: and the -white-bearded, grave King then spoke with rather less of peevishness -than of compassion. - -“You will regret such sayings. For that also is a law of Lytreia. -However, do you now ask what you will for the vigor which you have -restored to our noses, and we will gladly pay that price. Yet for the -blasphemies which you have uttered in this temple the spirit of the Holy -Nose will by and by be asking a price: and that price nor you nor any -other lad will ever pay gladly.” - -Gerald replied, “For the renovation of your noses, and as a propitiatory -trap for the doomed wu in Peter’s Tomb, you will pay me the price of one -black rooster.” - -“But what,” asked Tenjo, “is a rooster?” - -“Why, a rooster is the herald of the dawn, it is the father of an -omelet, it is the pullet’s first bit of real luck, it is the male of the -_Gallus domesticus_.” - -“We do not call a male chicken that—” - -“No,” Gerald assented, “no, but you ought to. And not to do so is wholly -un-American.” - -“Yet why do you Americans call this particular bird a rooster, when -everybody knows that all birds except ostriches and cassowaries roost, -and that every flying bird everywhere is thus a rooster?” - -“Well, I admit that we do not reason about it as you reason in Lytreia. -I admit that the word ‘rooster’ is a word without connotations and -without any correspondence in anatomy. Nevertheless, every nation has -its customs. And it is as much our well-established American custom to -call the male of the chicken a rooster as it is your custom to call that -thing a nose.” - -“But we call that a nose because it is, in point of fact, a nose. It is, -as we have told you I do not know how many times, the Holy Nose of -Lytreia.” - -Gerald was honestly exasperated by the obstinacy of the people of this -kingdom. - -“Even so,” said he, “if you want the truth—” - -He spoke then the truth about that tongue, as it appeared to him. But -his remarks were lost to history through the circumstance that none of -his hearers ever thought of setting them down in writing. - -Instead, his hearers shuddered. They gave him a black cock, and they -drove him out of that temple. It was in this way that Gerald put an -affront upon the Holy Nose of Lytreia. - - - - - 17. - Evaine of Peter’s Tomb - - -NOW Gerald rode upon the silver stallion toward the immemorial, -moss-overgrown tomb of King Peter the Builder, and Gerald carried under -his left arm the black cock. Gerald noted, with an interest natural to -any student of magic, the glorification tree which grew beside this -tomb. He once more whistled meditatively. Then he hitched his shining -stallion to an over-candidly carved and painted post which stood at the -door of the tomb, and he went in. - -The interior of this spacious tomb was lighted with nineteen iron lamps -swung from the ceiling. Gerald thus saw, first of all, the great -four-square mirror covered with a flesh-colored cloth. Before it fumed a -smoking brazier; and beside this stood the appearance of a woman. To her -left hand was a broad bed, and to her right, a gilded pig-trough heaped -with fig-leaves. These leaves this woman was crumpling and tearing into -little pieces one by one before she destroyed them in the fire of the -brazier. - -She heard Gerald’s civil cough. She turned: and Gerald was enraptured. - -For Evaine of Peter’s Tomb was so surpassingly lovely that she excelled -all the other women his gaze had ever beheld. The colors of this -beautiful young girl’s two eyes were nicely matched, and her nose stood -just equidistant between them. Beneath this was her mouth, and she had -also a pair of ears. The girl was young, she exhibited no deformity -anywhere, and the enamored glance of the young man could perceive in her -no fault. There was, to be sure, a puzzling likeness to somebody he had -once known, but Gerald’s quick wits soon unriddled the mystery. This -woman reminded him of Evelyn Townsend. - -Nor was this all. He observed now that this woman was, just as he had -suspected, a Fox-Spirit, for now from Evaine of Peter’s Tomb emanated -the power of her magic. That magic which overmasters all animals now -smote at Gerald; and in a mildly amusing way he found its assaults -really quite interesting. - -“For this is the goety of beasts,” he reflected. “This is the brutish -half-magic of the wu which maddens men, along with all other animals in -their rutting season, and robs them of self-control. This magic -persuades me, almost, that I, too, am only a bundle of cellular matter -upon its way to becoming manure. Yes, my life, too, at just this moment, -seems but a grudged brief season of bewildered appetites and of baffled -surmise such as is the life of a mortal man. I, too, seem a mere human -being passing from the forgotten to the unforeseeable. Under the -assaults of this small carnal magic, I seem again to go in that -continuous masked loneliness which mortal persons in Lichfield and -elsewhere call living. I long to put out of mind the frailness and the -transiency of my hold upon living. The nonsensical notion has occurred -to me that such forgetfulness may be hired by bringing the epidermis -which masks me into superficial contact with the homogenous animal -matter in which hides this Fox-Spirit.... Yes, I am being, as it were, -maddened with desire; I am very rapidly becoming the prey of this -Fox-Spirit’s irresistible powers of fascination, so to speak. And I find -it really quite interesting to observe how this half-magic which -destroys so many men now impiously strikes beyond its proper arena, at -that which is divine; and how this foolish magic attempts to deceive -even me, who am a Savior and a sun god.” - -Such were the cursory reflections which passed through Gerald’s mind in -the while that he said, aloud, “Good-evening, ma’am!” - -The Fox-Spirit Evaine, without replying to him directly, took out of her -bosom a white gem about the size of an orange. She tossed this up into -the air, and caught it again. Gerald conjectured that this was her soul, -but he made no comment. - -He displayed to her his cock, saying, as was needful, “I entreat you to -accept my rooster—” - -“But what,” asked learned Evaine, “what did you call this tamed -descendant of the wild Bankiva fowl,—whose original habitat was in -Northern India from Sindh to Burma, and in Cochin China, and in many of -the Malay Islands as far as Timor, and in the Philippines?” - -“Why, in the United States of America, ma’am, we, rather more briefly, -and for a variety of reasons, call this bird a rooster.” - -“It has been well observed,” she replied, “by Pliny the Elder—a -celebrated Roman naturalist, born 23 A.D., perished in the eruption of -Vesuvius 79 A.D.,—that every nation has its customs.” - -Then the Fox-Spirit dexterously cut off the head of Gerald’s cock with -the sacrificial ax, and turning toward the East, she spoke the needed -words three times. One entered now in a scarlet coat, a yellow vest, and -pale green knee-breeches. His head was like that of a mastiff, with the -addition of two horns and the ears of an ass, but he had the legs and -hoofs of a calf. Such was he who carried off the black cock which Gerald -had brought for the Fox-Spirit’s master, as a propitiatory offering and -a trap. - -Gerald smiled. Gerald shook hands, politely, with Evaine the learned -Fox-Spirit. - -“I am,” said Gerald, “a god.” - -She replied: “I am one who serves all gods. I honor every tribe of those -divine beings whose existence scholars have so variously accounted for -as the products of physical and ethical and historical and etymological -blunders abetted by homonymy and polonymy. But I require for my piety a -honorarium.” - -“And what is that honorarium?” - -She told him. - -And as she spoke, Evaine drew near to him, and yet nearer, and she was -remarkably desirable. If only she had not now reminded Gerald more and -more of Evelyn Townsend, she would have been resistless. - -“Very well, then!” said Gerald, affably: “you shall have that honorarium -to-morrow morning if you still care to demand a reward so trivial.” - -Immediately afterward he said, “But, indeed, ma’am, you quite -misunderstand me!” - -Then with a few well-chosen words he placed their relationship upon a -more decorous basis. - -And Evaine the Fox-Spirit laughed. Such unresponsiveness she declared to -be, when manifested by a god, wholly surprising, and comparable to the -Seven Wonders of the World, namely: (1) the Pyramids of Egypt; (2) the -Hanging Gardens of Babylon; (3) the Tomb of Mausolos; (4) the Temple of -Diana at Ephesus; (5) the Colossus of Rhodes; (6) the Statue of Zeus by -Phidias; and (7) the Pharos at Alexandria. Yet, Evaine continued, she -perceived that she might trust him— - -“You may do nothing of the sort!” said Gerald, decisively. “You may not -even give me all. No, ma’am, it would be quite unadvisable, because, as -I am forced to point out, you in your unfading youth and omniscient -learning are many thousands of years older than I am in my present -incarnation. Beside you, I am a mere boy. Now, it is often a great -disadvantage to a boy, it is by and by a curse to him, to succumb to the -loving confidence and generosity of a woman much older than himself. It -is unwholesome. It is un-American.” - -“Is it, then, inconsistent with the manners of a continent in the -Western Hemisphere—first named America by Waldseemüller, a teacher of -geography in the college of Saint-Dié among the Vosges, in a treatise -called _Cosmographia_, published in 1507,—for me to like you so much -that I just want to touch you and be near you?” - -“No, ma’am, that, I regret to say, is universal. Besides, I did not -particularly mean you. I only mean that there are such women, as we both -know, dear lady, who prey upon young boys. They employ for this purpose -all their confidence and generosity without the least scruple. And many -a hard, bitter, cynical man has originally had his faith in and his -regard for everything good and holy blasted in his very first boyhood by -the confiding nature and generosity of some middle-aged woman or another -and her subsequent references to the advantage he took of her.” - -“It is possible that you speak with the clearness recommended by -Quintilian as the chief virtue of speech,—born in Spain about 25 A.D., -died about 95 A.D., patronized by Vespasian and Domitian,—but it is -certain that I do not understand one word of your speaking.” - -“—However,” Gerald continued, “when a boy has a nice, clean friendship -with an older woman it is one of the most valuable and helpful -experiences that can come into his life. A friendship such as this -appears to me a rather beautiful idea. The older woman—particularly -when she is older by many thousands of years,—can teach him, as his -mother out of the superficial knowledge of a callow half-century or so -cannot possibly do, about women. She can inspire and direct him. She can -fire his ambition. She can encourage him. She can be to him in every way -a liberal education.” - -“Now, certainly, I shall never understand your American way of uttering -so many platitudes—derived from the Greek word _platys_, meaning -‘flat,’—when I was attempting to do all these things!” - -“Ah, but we must keep the education entirely oral, and we must keep, -too, your little hands—So, now, that is very much better!” - -“It is better still to permit a wilful person to have his way,—a remark -attributed to Periander, an ancient sage, and Tyrant of Corinth during -the sixth century B.C.,—since you elect to give me my honorarium for -nothing,” Evaine said, rather sulkily. - -Gerald elected to do nothing of the sort. But, since his real intentions -would have been an awkward matter to explain, he kept silent about them. - -After that Gerald questioned the learned Fox-Spirit. She explained to -him willingly enough the laws of Lytreia and described the basket they -were found in, and she made it plain just how these laws were enforced -by a committee of midwives and stonemasons. She spoke of the magic she -had put upon Lytreia. She spoke of Tenjo, telling how in the prime of -his youth he came to be called Tenjo of the Long Nose; and her -statistics were remarkable. She talked then about the wind between the -stars, and about the grandeur that was Greece, and about Hobson’s -choice, and about Davey Jones’s locker, and about the cause of -volcanoes, and about the curate’s egg, and about the best cures for -baldness. For no information anywhere was hidden from the wisdom of -Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods. - -“I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have knowledge, and I like your -reflections extremely. So do you speak yet further out of the stores of -your omniscience!” - -He had been glancing all the while toward the veiled Mirror of the Two -Truths. But he of course said never a word about this mirror. His -present task was simply to lure on this cultured and malefic creature to -her complete ruin. - -For the Fox-Spirit, as Gerald saw, was still about the brutish magic of -the wu, which drives men mad, and she now spoke of more and yet more -evil matters such as were very well adapted to incite Gerald to -brutality. She spoke of the battle of life, and of the feast of reason, -and of the irony of fate, and of the lap of luxury. She talked of the -writing on the wall, and of the scroll of fame, and of the lexicon of -youth, and of the cloud that had a silver lining. She touched upon the -two seas, of troubles and of upturned faces. She discussed the durance -that was vile, and the hours that were wee and sma’, and the -consummation that was devoutly to be wished for, and the light that was -dim and religious, and the heat which was not the humidity. She -indicated the balm in Gilead, the place in the sun, and the safety in -numbers. She afterward gave succinctly the recipes for making a mountain -out of a molehill, a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and a virtue out of -a necessity. For no evil phrase of any sort was hidden from the wisdom -of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods, and who was now -intent to exercise upon Gerald the magic of the wu, which drives men -mad. - -But Gerald only smiled, almost approvingly. This woman was reminding him -more and more of Evelyn Townsend, and his pulses had not ever been -calmer. - -“I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have a great deal of knowledge, -with the vocabulary of a dear friend to back it devastatingly. -Therefore, ma’am, to avail myself of your knowledge alone may serve my -divine ends much better than your really most flattering proffers in -other fields.” - -For now it was Gerald’s turn to speak. So now he revealed to the baffled -Fox-Spirit the fact that he was Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and -Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly -Ones, a very potent god who had temporarily mislaid his mythology. He -told the omniscient Fox-Spirit, who knew all things excepting only how -and at what hour her knowledge would end, of Gerald’s adventures during -the rather crowded twenty-four hours since he had left Lichfield. - -And now she was smiling over his obtuseness. For to all-wise Evaine it -was at once apparent that Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the -Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, was a -culture hero like Quat or Quetzalcoatl or Cagn or Osiris or Dionysos. -All these were former acquaintances of hers: she knew, she said, every -inch of them, for each one of these had stopped to visit her who served -all gods, as each had passed downward toward Antan. Evaine, if anybody, -would thus know a culture hero wherever she saw a culture hero. - -Every mythology contained one of these glorious philanthropists, born of -a mysterious and superior race, just as Gerald had been born in the -United States of America, a philanthropist, as the learned Fox-Spirit -said, very usually theriomorphic, who came in the appearance of a -jackass or of some other animal among less favored peoples to teach them -strange new arts and mysteries, and to endow them with every kind of -cultural advantage and prosperity, just as Gerald had benefited the -people of Dersam and of Lytreia, and was preparing to benefit Antan. - -She pointed out, furthermore, that a culture hero was in no way -un-American. There had been, for example, Quetzalcoatl. She also -remembered quite clearly Yetl,—because a deity in the form of a bird -was always, she said, rather difficult,—and Poshaiyankya, and Coyote, -and Esaugetuh, and that other waggish Indian deity—his name at present -evaded her,—who had traveled incognito in the shape of a large spider. -For all these aboriginal American culture heroes had visited Evaine as -they passed downward toward Antan, and every one of them had been in a -somewhat earlier generation Gerald’s fellow countryman. - -“In the light of your forceful logic, ma’am, I concede that, over and -above being a Savior and a sun god, it seems probable I must be a -culture hero too.” - -“But yet, in any case,—dear, unresponsive, frigid child,” said the -Fox-Spirit, speaking far more simply than she had done before,—“do you -not know that all mythologies are controlled by the Master Philologist, -so that he alone may say in which one of them and in what capacity you -belong?” - -“I find that saying obscure.” - -“It means only that sooner or later all gods save only Koleos Koleros -and the upright spirit of the Holy Nose pass down into Antan.” - -“Yes, for, as they told me at Caer Omn, Antan is the heaven of all -deserving gods, where they rest from their divine labors.” - -But the Fox-Spirit shook her head, rather forebodingly. “I, certainly, -would not say that.” - -“Do you, then, but answer me this very simple question! What becomes of -them there? what fate befalls in that place all which men have found -most beautiful and most worshipful?” - -“How can one say, when no god has ever returned? It is known only that, -in one way or another way, the Master Philologist disposes of every -deity that men have served, save only the two supreme gods of all -mammals,—a class of vertebrates embracing bats, the warm-blooded -quadrupeds, seals, cetaceans, man, and sirenians.” - -Gerald drew a long face. “Your account of the matter, ma’am, suggests -that my predecessor upon the throne of Antan lacks piety. You imply that -the creature is deficient in true religious feeling. That is a fault I -would have to requite when I take from him his throne and all the great -and best words of magic.” - -“To do that, child, needs power such as has not been shown by any god -among the many millions of gods that men have worshipped since the first -infancy of Chronos,—a Greek personification of Time, usually depicted -as carrying a sickle and an hourglass.” - -“Ah, but, my dear lady, I, who am at once a culture hero and a sun deity -and a Savior, must be a peculiarly powerful god. And, besides, ma’am, -from what you tell me—Why, but, really now, it appears probable that -the Master Philologist has damaged the Dirghic mythology to which I -myself belong! No god can patiently endure such usage; and my divine -wrath will, thus, redouble my power.” - -“But, still,—but, still, you dear, nice-looking and vainglorious -baby—!” - -Evaine had paused. She was regarding him almost compassionately: and -Gerald felt he could never get used to the flighty way in which people -everywhere in the Marches of Antan seemed to pity the high gods. It was -a quite friendly way they had of looking at you, but to extend -commiseration where reverence was the proper thing savored almost of -irreligion. - -Gerald shrugged. He said: - -“I shall therefore be resistless. I shall compel him to restore into -general circulation the Dirghic mythology, after having amply repaired -whatsoever damage he may have done to it, and then I shall assume, in -addition to his throne, my proper station as a culture hero and a sun -deity and a Savior in that mythology. So the affair is, virtually, -settled: we may now turn to other matters: and in return for the -gracious aid afforded by your large wisdom, I will make in your honor a -sonnet.” - -“It is a very beautiful sonnet,—consisting of fourteen decasyllabic -lines, expressing two phases of a single thought or sentiment,” said -Evaine the Fox-Spirit,—“and I am proud to have inspired it.” - -“You forget,” said Gerald, “that I have not yet recited my sonnet. I -will now do so.” - -And he did. - -But his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the -octave, he paused, because it was never within Gerald’s power to resist -the beauty of a sublime thought when it was thus adequately expressed in -flawless verse. So for an instant he stayed silent. - -He caught up the lovely hands of Evaine the Fox-Spirit, and as he -pressed them to his trembling lips he noted that these hands smelled -like hops drying in the sun. It seemed to him exceedingly pitiful he had -given that promise to Tenjo. It seemed to him there was a certain -sameness in the dear women who made colorful the Marches of Antan, and, -to some extent, a similarity in their more intimate love passages with -Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver. He found it depressing to -reflect that destruction waited, so very near, for so much loveliness. -He found it perfectly dreadful to foreknow that he would often regret -this omniscient Evaine and her fine stores of useful information, once -he had kept the divine word given to Tenjo, and had put an end to her -living before she could do any further damage to the men of Lytreia. - -Gods ought to abstain from all love-affairs: for through love alone -might a god look to be wounded,—upon rainy Sunday afternoons, perhaps, -or after drinking a bit more than was good for one,—to be wounded, at -such unavoidable seasons of low vitality, with recurrent, plaguing -memories of his mortal playthings, so dear, so very dear, and so soon -reft away from his immortal arms, irrevocably.... - -After these cursory reflections, Gerald sighed, and—with the thoughtful -commentary that, since this was a Miltonic sonnet, his poem here went on -with the same sentence,—he continued his reciting. - -And when he had ended, the Fox-Spirit sighed contentedly. She spoke with -acumen and authority as to the main events of Milton’s life and as to -his principal works, and she added: - -“That is a very beautiful sonnet,—a verse form of Italian origin, first -used in English by Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1557,—and I am proud to have -inspired it. That is the sort of poetry which would incline any living -woman to trust you and to give you all the very moment you stopped -reciting it. So now will you not come to bed?” - -“No, Evelyn, not to-night—I beg your pardon, ma’am! My thoughts were -wool-gathering. What I had meant to say was but that if you insist upon -yet further displays of your great-hearted womanly confidence and -generosity you shall be walloped with a broomstick—severely. No, do you -retire now, my dear lady, by all means, and with my apologies for -keeping you up so late because of the delight I have got from your -instructive way of talking. But I shall pass the remainder of the night -in the aloofness appropriate to a god, in this quite comfortable -armchair.” - -And this he did. - - - - - 18. - End of a Vixen - - -WHEN Evaine was asleep, though, then Gerald rose softly from his -chair. He approached the bed. Very carefully he inserted his hand -between the young breasts of Evaine, and lightly he drew out the strange -white gem. He waited now, looking down compassionately at this really -very lovely girl.... - -But at his touch the learned Fox-Spirit had moved, so that she now lay -flat upon her back, with her mouth a little open. Evelyn slept thus. And -that was why Evelyn snored.... - -Gerald shrugged. He took up the sacrificial ax. - -Now that the dawn was at hand, he went out from the tomb, to the -glorification tree, and he began to fell the tree with this ax. At the -first stroke blood gushed out of the gray bark copiously, and Gerald -heard a wailing noise. Gerald looked upward. The appearance of a young -child dressed in blue garments was to be seen in a cleft in the side of -the tree. It had the seeming of a boy child about seven or eight years -old, a freckled boy, with tousled red hair, and with as yet only one -upper front tooth. - -This child wailed broken-heartedly: “A blasphemer is come up against the -Two Truths; a vainglorious fool derides the pair that endure where all -else perishes; and life is denied to me by his wrongheadedness.” - -Gerald had put down the ax. He was trembling. He did not like the love -and the great yearning which had awakened in his heart. He folded his -arms very tightly: he seemed tense and rather frightened looking as he -waited there peering sidewise toward this boy. - -“Child,” Gerald said, “what is your will that you cry out for life from -the glorification tree?” - -“My father, I demand the life which you have not given me, that life -which you owe to me, and that life which is denied me so long as you -deny the Two Truths.” - -“I serve the demands of my appointed kingdom, child. I serve the needs -of no other truth and the needs of no pawing women who would keep me out -of that kingdom.” - -“My father, your kingdom is a doubtful dream, but the flesh of my mother -is real.” - -“My dream is lovelier than any woman. Oh, and a doubtfulness also is -more lovely than the body of a woman, for I know the shaping of that -body over-well.” - -“My father, you refuse the pleasures which will not ever be returning.” - -“I am a god. I serve the needs of my own will.” - -“The gods also pass, my father, they also pass without any returning, -upon the road which you now tread.” - -“Let us pass, then, unhindered! But no woman permits it.” - -“That is because these women, O my father, have a very rational wisdom.” - -“Such is, perhaps, the case. But a god has his irrational dream. And -that is better.” - -“It is well enough, my father, for that dream to end contentedly in the -arms of some woman.” - -“It is well enough. It is customary. But I am Fair-haired Hoo, the -Helper and the Preserver. I go to my appointed kingdom: and I am Lord of -a Third Truth, whose mightiness I must help and preserve.” - -Then Gerald hewed on: and as the tree fell, the child vanished. - -Now Gerald set fire to the tree: and when a tidy blaze was crackling, he -spoke the needed words, and into the heart of this fire he tossed the -strange white gem. Straightway you heard a loud screeching. Out of the -tomb of Peter the Builder came a vixen fox, screaming and shuddering -quite horribly, but not ever ceasing to approach the fire. She entered -the flames. Silence followed, and the dawn of a superb May morning which -was marred only by an unpleasant odor of singed hair and burning flesh. - -Gerald after that went back into the tomb from which the omniscient -Fox-Spirit had been dispossessed. He looked rather sentimentally upon -the empty disordered bed: then he passed beyond the brazier, in which -the ruins of fig-leaves yet smouldered, toward the Mirror of the Two -Truths. - -The fact no longer mattered, perhaps, that any man who looked into this -mirror straightway found himself transformed into two stones: but it -very greatly mattered what effect this mirror would have upon a sun god -and a Savior and a culture hero. So he removed the flesh-colored veil. - - - - - 19. - Beyond the Veil - - -BUT he was not turned into two stones. Nor was there confronting him -any mirror. Beyond the flesh-colored veil he found only an ancient -painting very carefully done, but upon an unhuman scale which made this -painting monstrous. The subject of the picture, however, is not known, -because Gerald never told anybody. - -But it is known that Gerald shook his head at this painting. - -“Laborious daub of prevaricating pigment!” he remarked. “O futile -painting, which so many foolish believers in Lytreia think to be the -Mirror of the Two Truths! I question your arithmetic. For I myself am -the Lord of a Third Truth, for all that I have just at present no -precise idea as to its nature. In consequence, I know the two objects -which you magnify are not all which exists. And I deny that their -never-ending search of each other is the one gesture of life. No: I at -least, I feel assured, am destined to take part in some quite other -gesture, of a more graceful and more cleanly and more dignified -nature,—a gesture of, it well may be, eternal importance....” - -Yet Gerald glanced about him a little forlornly. This place was now -rather lonesome and ambiguous looking. In the crypt immediately beneath -him, Gerald knew, lay all that remained of King Peter and the most of -his numerous family; dozens upon dozens of peculiarly ugly objects were -there, all that remained of a great conqueror and of the queens who had -delighted him, all that attestedly remained now anywhere of a strong -hero’s pride and famous warfaring and of his many women’s loveliness.... - -“Oh, yes, it may be,” Gerald conceded, half frettedly, because he did -not like to be troubled with such reflections, “it may be that I am -wrong in this belief. And that seems to me yet another reason for -adhering to this belief. I, standing here alone upon the remnants of so -many utter strangers, admit indeed to some depression of spirits. It -seems to me, at this exact instant, that just conceivably I may be -neither a Savior nor a sun god nor a culture hero, but merely another -bull-headed Musgrave, for whom death waits, and after death, perhaps, -oblivion. Nevertheless, I find it a more beautiful and a much more -entertaining idea to believe in than to deny the immortality even of a -mere Musgrave. There is to my mind nothing at all interesting in the -idea of my own extinction. And it appears that my belief in this matter, -with no assured knowledge anywhere to go on, must be simply a question -of personal taste. Modesty even suggests that my belief is an affair of -irrelevance.” - -And Gerald said also: “Therefore it furthermore appears to me, O -peculiarly unimaginative painting, a sheer waste of opportunity to -assume that anything is ever going to end even for a mere Musgrave all -conscious experience. I had far rather play with a beautiful idea than -with one utterly lacking in seductiveness. I very much prefer to believe -that I at least am, in one way or another, reserved to take part in some -enduring and rather superb performance,—somewhere, by and by,—in a -performance concerned with some third truth, more august and -æsthetically more pleasing than are the only ever-enduring truths -apparent to us here. We copulate and die, and that is all?—Well, -perhaps! But, then again, perhaps not! One must, you see, be -broad-minded about the matter.” - -He for a moment kept silence. That regrettably candid painting and all -the other adjuncts of this place were certainly very depressing, now -that the learned diableries of the Fox-Spirit no longer enlivened this -tomb. Nevertheless, Gerald kept his long chin well up. - -“Yes, every man ought to be broad-minded about this matter, and ought to -cherish always, if only as a diverting and inexpensive plaything, this -pungent notion of being immortal. It is really inexpensive, because, -should your notion prove ungrounded, you run no risk, no tiniest risk, -of being twitted, by and by, for credulity, or even of ever discovering -your error. Meanwhile this faith in your own durability and potential -importance is in some sense a cordial; and is in sundry ways a fine toy. -It renders life, and dying too, endurable: and it offers against all -vacant half-hours a variety of diverting speculations... as to that -possible third truth.” - -Again Gerald paused. For it seemed to him, as he unwittingly repeated -the age-old self-persuasions of so many of his ancestors, that he had -found now another facet in this jewel of an idea that he was playing -with; and this fact considerably cheered Gerald. - -“Then, too,” said he, “then, too, that rather wide-spread expectation of -an oncoming triumph—somewhere, in some hazed roseate arena, beyond the -discomforts of death and the incredible impudence of the mortician’s -titivating,—that triumph which is to be a perpetual triumphing of -justice and of rationality and of kindliness and of all the other -canonical virtues, this rumored triumph yet cows many persons, not -infrequently, into one or another thrifty-minded practice of these -generally beneficent virtues.” - -Gerald said then: “It thus makes for, at any rate, terrestrial ease and -stability and repose: it gives people, as the phrase runs, something to -go by, in that it supports the most of every nation’s social and legal -rules of thumb. And it tends appreciably to limit men’s common greed and -viciousness, and all the harsher lusts of human beings, to exercises -through which there seems some quite tangible gain within tolerably safe -reach.” - -And Gerald said also: “Yes: it is much better for men to believe in some -third truth which will be revealed to them after the death of their -bodies; and a general faith in the immortality even of mere Musgraves -appears to me, thus, very plainly, because of its happy blending of the -functions of a narcotic and of a policeman, a generally desirable -assumption. It remains in all ways a desirable faith, no matter whether -or not there be any grounds for it. And if this careful painting -presents the entire truth, that fact is but another excellent reason for -paying no attention to it.” - -Gerald now felt quite comfortable through having listened so -respectfully to his own relentless logic. - -“For these reasons, O foolish painting of the Two Truths, I deny your -fleshly significance. Whether I happen to be a sun god or a Savior or a -culture hero or just another bull-headed Musgrave, I deny that you -present to me any truth whatever. I snap my fingers at your materialism; -I turn up my nose at your indecorous anatomical studies; and I send the -divine foot of the Lord of the Third Truth smashing through your ancient -canvas. These things I do to proclaim the majesty of the Third Truth. -And I depart from this Peter and this Peter’s Tomb, to seek my appointed -kingdom.” - -It was in this way that Gerald yet again put an affront upon Koleos -Koleros and upon the Holy Nose of Lytreia. - - - - - PART SIX - THE BOOK OF TUROINE - - “Weathercocks Turn more Easily - when Placed very High.” - - - - - 20. - Thaumaturgists in Labor - - -GERALD passed on, still riding upon the silver stallion, which Evaine -the Fox-Spirit had not, after all, demanded of him that morning as her -promised honorarium. And the next place he came to, and where he got his -breakfast, was Turoine. This was a small free city given to sorceries of -two colors. - -To every side of him the inhabitants of Turoine were about their arts: -and Gerald, as a former student of magic, quite naturally observed their -various activities with interest. - -Now the first sorcerer that he encountered was making a figure out of -pink wax with which was mixed baptismal oil and the ashes of a -consecrated wafer. The next sorcerer was murmuring charms over a very -fat toad which was imprisoned in a net rudely woven out of the golden -hairs from the head of some luckless, unresponsive woman, who was now -about to meet a not wholly desirable doom after that toad had been -buried at her threshold. And the third sorcerer huddled over a small -fire wherein burned cypress branches and broken crucifixes and portions -of a gibbet. In his hand was a skull filled with dark wine which had -been seasoned with hemp and with the fat of a girl child and with poppy -seed: and his familiar, in the shape of a large dun-colored cat, was -lapping up that bitter drink. - -No sorcerer anywhere in Turoine was idle upon this fine May morning. And -in this small, ever-busy city—where all the buildings were quaintly -marked with stars and pentagrams and the signs of the zodiac and the two -kinds of triangles, and were cozily overgrown with honeysuckle and arum -lilies and black poppies and deadly nightshade,—these sorcerers were -about a bewildering variety of studies. - -“I,” one of them told Gerald, “am learning the secrets which proceed -from Saturn, that ashy lord of the greater infortune. I have especial -power over all husbandmen and beggars, over grandfathers and monks of -every order and ministers of the gospel, over all potters, and miners, -and gardeners, and cow-tenders. I have learned how to make men envious, -covetous, slow of thought, suspicious, and stubborn. And I am also able -to afflict whatsoever person I elect with toothache and dropsy and black -jaundice and leprosy and hemorrhoids, either severally or in unison.” - -Another said: “I study to divine and to make smooth the approach of -every evil fortune,—with smoke and arrows and wax, with an egg, with -mice, and with the simulacra of dead persons;—but, above all, as you -may perceive, I have been most successful with the head of an ass in a -brazier of live coals. And my guide is not any bow-legged, swarthy -eunuch, but Leonard, the Grand Master of the Sabbat.” - -“I,” said a third, “have found in Turoine the Great Juggle Bag, for my -guide is Baalberith. So have I mastered all kinds of unheard-of, secret, -merry feats and mysteries and inventions—” - -“But what,” asked Gerald, “what purpose does your knowledge serve?” - -“By means of it, sir, those who are favored by my lord Baalberith, the -Master of Alliances, may make real the sin performed in a dream; may -open the locked door of any jail or bedchamber or counting house; may -smite a husband with embarrassing weakness; may inspire strange maids -and married women with flaming desires; may increase his natural height -here by seven ells and here by three inches; may make himself invisible -or invulnerable; may change his form into that of a cat or a hare or a -wolf; may control thunder and lightning; may collect and talk with -snakes; and”—here the sorcerer coughed,—“and may perform five other -advantageous, extravagant and authentic devices.” - -But Gerald shrugged. “These sciences are well enough for a sorcerer; and -I perceive that the industrious may pick up much useful information in -Turoine. But I am a god who travels toward his appointed kingdom, and -toward the mastery of secrets rather more vital than any of these. For -your arts are of that black magic which hurts but cannot help; your -guides are devils; and you deal only in misfortune and destructiveness.” - -“Then perhaps, sir, you may be better pleased by the enchanters who live -at the other end of this city. For these enchanters have no guides save -restlessness and foiled desires and impotence; they get no direct aid -from hell, but from somewhat less ancient intellectual centres; and they -work all their magic, such as it is, with words.” - -“And what does the magic of these same enchanters create?” - -“It creates, sir, a comfortable sense of equality with your betters -wherever there is least reason for it.” - -“I find that saying obscure. Nevertheless, I will visit these -enchanters,” said Gerald. - -And he rode on. - - - - - 21. - They That Wore Blankets - - -THUS Gerald came to the enchanters who were used to perform all their -magic with words. And they greeted his coming with a very cordial -enthusiasm for creatures so gray and vague and bedraggled looking as -they sat huddled there, each one of them clothed in a blanket, and -thoroughly drenched as though with sour smelling rain. - -Now the first enchanter to speak wore a violet blanket. He arose; and -dripping bilge-water everywhere about him in the while that he smiled -with wholly friendly condescension, he observed: - -“Here is another rider on the silver stallion. Here is yet another -figure of papier mâché which Horvendile has despatched upon a profitless -journeying.” - -“But I—” said Gerald. - -Without at all heeding Gerald, a second enchanter, in a well soaked -green blanket, laid down his scissors; and he addressed the first -enchanter with some fervor, saying: - -“Let us not speak harshly of our good Horvendile’s magic, for everybody -ought to respect the impotence of the aging. We must concede, of course, -that his magic is no longer fresh. It is not possible to deny that a -woefully infirm magic has set this papier mâché figure on a hackneyed -journeying. Candor compels us to grant that this journeying crosses once -sparkling rivers which have long ago run dry. We, as intelligent -enchanters, must admit that a wearying fog lowers thickly about this -journeying, that above it the sun of romance shines very pale and cold, -and that this journeying is sterile and empty of gusto. Nevertheless, -this journeying, as we ought not to ignore, is no doubt an afterthought, -it is the belated invention of a tired mind, and a desperate and -ill-advised proceeding. For these reasons, howsoever sorrowfully we, as -Horvendile’s fellow artists and well-wishers, must always deplore among -ourselves the kindergarten notions of this poor Horvendile, and his -ponderous playfulness, and the limitations of his few and unenterprising -ideas, still we must be careful not to apply to his magic one single -harsh word.” - -“Yet—” Gerald stated. - -Nodding in profound and entire approbation, with which Gerald was not in -any way connected, an enchanter in a sopping yellow blanket now -remarked: - -“I, too, am always ready to defend the magic of our fellow practitioner. -My conscience forces me to grant that his magic is not faultless. In -mere honesty I have to confess that his magic is stupid and stilted and -silly; that it is sniggering and sly and nasty; that it wallows in a -morass of self-satisfaction; and that it is steeped and soaked in -ever-fretful egoism, in spite of our friendly candor in all dealings -with him from the very first. Nor can I dispute that our confrère -behaves too much like a decadent small boy who is proud of having been -haled into the police court for chalking dirty words on a wall. Apart, -though, from his stinking filth and his vileness and his tinsel -cynicisms, and aside from his bestiality and his vulgar frippery and his -dabblings in cesspools and his vapid sophistries, I stand always ready -to defend the magic of Horvendile, because it is not, after all, as if -he were a mage of any real importance, and one ought always to be -indulgent to persons of third and fourth rate ability.” - -“Even so—” Gerald pointed out. - -But now an enchanter in a thoroughly drenched scarlet blanket was -saying, as he meditatively unclosed his pastepot: - -“I quite agree with you. Nobody admires the merits of our esteemed -confrère more whole-heartedly than I do. It would be merely silly to -deny that he has weakened his always rather wishy-washy magic potions by -too frequent blendings. It is impossible to ignore that his magic has -become a cloying weariness and a mincing indecency. We are forced to -acknowledge that Horvendile is insincere, that he very irritatingly -poses as a superior person, that he is labored beyond endurance, that he -smells of the lamp, that his art is dull and tarnished and trivial and -intolerable, but, even so, we ought also to admit that he does as well -as could be expected of anybody who combines a lack of any actual talent -with ignorance of actual life.” - -“However—” Gerald explained. - -The fifth enchanter to interrupt Gerald wore a black blanket; and he, -too, appeared to drip with wisdom and bilge-water and judicious -amiability in the while that he said: - -“It is, in fact, alike our duty and our privilege to be most lenient -with this laborious bungler who, after all, is probably doing the best -he can. So I, for one, I never dwell even fleetingly upon the awkward -fact that the banality of his magic is no excuse for the way he botches -its execution. Indeed, I do not know but that a person of very lively -imagination might conceive of our confrère’s turning out worse work than -he does. Nor do I think I am being over-charitable. For, upon my -word,—while I can see that his magic is morbid, that it is sophomoric, -that it is malignant, that it is plagiarized, that it is intolerably -insipid, that it is sacrilegious, that it is naïve, that it is pseudo -whatever or other may happen to sound best, that it is over brutal in -cynicism, that it is incurably sentimental, and that it bores me beyond -description,—yet otherwise I can, at just this moment, think of no -especial other fault to find with his magic.” - -So it was that these dripping and affable enchanters went on defending -Horvendile with such generous volubility that Gerald could get in no -word. - -Then each took off the single garment which he wore, and so vanished, -because without their wet blankets these enchanters were in no way -noticeable. And Gerald rode away from that place contentedly, because it -was a natural comfort to know that he traveled with a guide and a patron -who was so well thought of by the best judges. - - - - - 22. - The Paragraph of the Sphinx - - -NOW upon the outskirts of Turoine, after Gerald had ridden through -this city, Gerald paused to talk with the Sphinx who lay there writing -with a black pen in a large black-covered book like a ledger. The -monster had so long couched in this place as to be half-imbedded in the -red earth. - -“This partially buried condition, ma’am,” Gerald began,—“or perhaps one -ought to say ‘sir’—” - -“Either form of address,” replied the Sphinx, “may be applicable, -according to which half of me you are considering.” - -“—This semi-interment, then, madam and sir, is untidy looking, and -cannot be especially comfortable.” - -“Yet I may not move,” replied the Sphinx, “in part because I have my -writing to complete, in part because I know all movement and all action -of every kind to be equally fruitless. So do I retain eternal bodily as -well as mental poise.” - -“Such acumen borders upon paralysis,” Gerald said: “and paralysis is -ugly.” - -“Do you not despise ugliness!” the Sphinx exhorted, “who have traveled -thus far upon the road of gods and myths. For what things have you found -stable upon this road save only Koleos Koleros and the Holy Nose of -Lytreia? and what is there more ugly than these two?” - -Gerald replied: “That nose I found it my Christian duty to describe as a -tongue; and the lady whom they call Koleos Koleros I have not yet seen. -But, in any case, you, ma’am—for, after all, it is not quite nice for -me to have your loins upon my mind—No, really, it does seem more -becoming for me to treat you as a lady—” - -“So, and do you find me ugly?” - -“You mistake my meaning. I was about to observe that you, ma’am, also -appear tolerably stable. And the Mirror of Caer Omn, that likewise -remains in worship.” - -“Dreams pass eternally varying through that golden mirror. Thoughts pass -eternally varying through my wise head. But all these dreams and -thoughts stay barren, as barren as they are irresolute. For we create -nothing. We control no material thing. And we aspire toward no goal. -That is why we are permitted to endure powerlessly in realms wherein two -powers alone are never barren; wherein they control all; and wherein -neither may ever be uncertain of its goal so long as the other -survives.” - -Gerald found this wholly incomprehensible and of no striking interest. -So he only shrugged. - -“Nevertheless, in my worlds,” Gerald said, “there shall not be any -ugliness.” - -“Do you, then, possess many worlds?” - -“Not as yet, ma’am. I allude to the worlds I shall create by and by, -when I have come into my kingdom yonder, in the place beyond good and -evil, and have regained my proper station as the Lord of the Third Truth -in the Dirghic mythology.” - -Now the Sphinx frowned. “I perceive you are only another downfallen god -upon your journey to the Master Philologist. I might have guessed it, -for Thor and Typhon and Rudra and the Maruts and all the other storm -gods who have gone blustering downward into Antan, all had red hair.” - -Gerald slapped his thigh. - -“Upon my word, ma’am, but that is a real clue! The storm gods did, in -every mythology known to me, have red hair. I incline to believe that -the wisdom of the Sphinx has solved the mystery of my being. I am no -doubt a storm god also; I am rapidly becoming a complete pantheon upon -two legs; and at this rate my waistcoat will end by embracing pure -monotheism. Meanwhile I really do wonder, ma’am, at your offhand way of -speaking about the gods, and I wonder, too, what grudge you can have -against us gods?” - -“For one thing, it is said that the gods created those men who interrupt -me in my writing to plague me with just such silly questions.” - -“Men naturally seek wisdom from you, ma’am, to whom the whole story of -human life is familiar.” - -“But the story of human life is not one story. There are three stories -of human life.” - -“Ah, ah! And what are they?” - -“Why, there was once a traveling man who came one night to an inn—” - -“I believe I have heard of his indecorous adventures there. So do you -spare my blushes, ma’am, and tell me the second story!” - -“It seems, then, there were once two Irishmen—” - -“That anecdote also, in all conceivable variants, I am quite certain I -have heard. So what is the third story?” - -“There was once a young married couple. And it seems that on the first -night—” - -“Yet that story, in a great number of versions, is equally familiar to -me. And really, ma’am, I question if these intolerably hackneyed tales -sum up all human wisdom.” - -“But the young married couple in the outcome got pleasure for their -bodies in the service of those two powers which I was just talking -about. The Irishmen found an unlooked-for drollness in the mechanics of -those two powers, which they preserved in a neat and nicely memorable -phrase, getting pleasure for their minds. So, by the way, did the two -Jews and the two Scotchmen. And the traveling man, upon the next -morning, after those same two powers had obtained their will of him, -went away from that inn, traveling nobody knows whither; and so got, -through a darker night, unbroken and uncompanioned sleep, unbothered any -longer by those powers. Thus these three stories really do sum up all -the gains which it is possible for a man to acquire through human living -and all the wisdom that it is salutary for any man to know about.” - -“Well, that is as it may be! I am persuaded that in the goal of all the -gods there is a more august power than any which men know of hereabouts -assuredly. For I note the sympathy and compassion and love and -self-denial which human beings display toward one another, after all, -rather copiously. I reflect that every art is a form of self-expression. -And I deduce that the artist who created human beings was prompted in -his embodiment of all these qualities by sheer egotism. He observed -these qualities in his own nature: he approved of them: and so he -embodied them. No actually reflective person, therefore, will ever -imagine that human life does not go forward toward some kindly -winding-up, since none who finds philanthropy in his own heart can doubt -that philanthropy exists in the heart of his creator.” - -“And does that stuff which you are now talking really seem to you,” the -Sphinx asked, “sensible?” - -“My dear lady, it seems to me something far better: it seems to me a -rather beautiful idea. So I play with it sometimes. Now I dismiss that -idea, out of deference to your proverbial wisdom: and I ask what far -more gratifying and uplifting wisdom, ma’am, you may be writing in your -black-covered book?” - -“Oh, yes, my book!” said the Sphinx, with the livelier interest natural -to an author. “You find me just now in some difficulty with my book. You -conceive there has to be an opening paragraph. It would not be possible -to leave out the first paragraph—” - -“I can see that. I can recall no book in which there was not a first -paragraph.” - -“—And this paragraph ought to sum up all things, so to speak—” - -“That likewise is a familiar rhetorical principle—” - -“—And it is with the composition of this paragraph that I am just now -having trouble.” - -“Well, you could not possibly have consulted a more suitable person. I, -too, used to dabble in the little art of letters before I became a god -with four aspects. I am familiar with all rhetorical devices. I am a -past master of zeugma and syllepsis; at hypallage, and chiasmus also, I -excel; and my handling of meiosis and persiflage and oxymoron has been -quite generally admired. So do you read me your rough draft: and I have -no doubt I can arrange all difficulties for you.” - -The Sphinx for a moment considered this suggestion, and, before the -prospect of a connoisseur’s efficient criticism, the monster seemed -rather shy. - -“Do not be vexed unduly,” the Sphinx then said, “if you can find no -meaning in this paragraph—” - -“I shall not be excessively censorious, I assure you. No beginner is -expected to excel in any art.” - -“—For this paragraph was placed here simply because there happened to -be a vacancy which needed filling—” - -“I quite understand that. So let us get on!” - -But there was no hurrying the diffident Sphinx. “The foolish, -therefore,” the Sphinx continued in shy explanation, “will find in it -foolishness, and will say ‘Bother!’ The wise, as wisdom goes, will -reflect that this paragraph was placed here without its consent being -asked; that no wit nor large significance was loaned it by its creator; -and that it will be forgotten with the turning of the one page wherein -it figures unimportantly—” - -“No doubt it will be!” said Gerald, now speaking a little impatiently, -“but let us get on to this famous paragraph!” - -“—So do you turn the page forthwith, in just the care-free fashion of -old nodding Time as he skims over the long book of life: and do you say -either ‘Bother!’ or ‘Brother!’ as your wits prompt.” - -“I will, I assure you, the moment your book is published. But why do you -keep talking about your paragraph? why do you not read me what you have -written?” - -“I have just done so,” replied the Sphinx. “I have not been talking. I -have been reading ever since I said, ‘Do you not be vexed’ and now I -have read you the whole paragraph.” - -Gerald said, “Oh!” He scratched his long chin a bit blankly. He -approached the monster, and leaning over one forepaw, he read for -himself in that black ledger the paragraph of the Sphinx. - -Then Gerald said, “But what comes next?” - -“Were I to answer that question you would be wiser than I. And of course -nobody can ever be wiser than the Sphinx.” - -“But is that as far as you have yet written?” - -“It is as far as anybody has written,” said the Sphinx, “as yet.” - -“In all these centuries you have not got beyond that one paragraph?” - -“Now, do you not see my difficulty? I needed an opening paragraph which -would sum up all things, so to speak, and all the human living which men -keep pestering me to explain. And when I had written it there was not -anything left over to put in the second paragraph.” - -“But, oh, dear me! This is materialism! this is flat sacrilege committed -in the actual presence of a god! I am embarrassed, ma’am. I hardly know -which way to look before the spectacle of such conduct. For you fill -your page, with your ambiguous paragraph—” - -“Do you not be vexed unduly if you can find no meaning in this -paragraph—” - -“—Which has not anything to do with my exalted duties in this world—” - -“This paragraph was placed here simply because there happened to be a -vacancy which needed filling—” - -“But I am not a paragraph, ma’am! I am no less a person, I may tell you -in confidence, than Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord -of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, upon a -journey,—quite incognito, and therefore unattended by my customary -retinue,—toward my appointed kingdom. And I confess that to my divine -mind your writing has not any valid significance—” - -“The foolish, therefore, will find in it foolishness, and will say -‘Bother!’—” - -“—And conveys no valuable lesson—” - -“The wise, as wisdom goes, will reflect that this paragraph was placed -here without its consent being asked; that no wit nor large significance -was loaned it by its creator; and that it will be forgotten with the -turning of the one page wherein it figures unimportantly—” - -“Quite honestly, ma’am, I am not a paragraph! No, I assure you that I -really am the Lord of the Third Truth, upon my way to rule over Antan. I -am the predestined conqueror who will force that irreligious Master -Philologist to refrain from any further evil-doing, and to turn over a -new leaf—” - -“Do you turn the page forthwith, in just the care-free fashion of old -nodding Time as he skims over the long book of life—” - -“Yes, yes!” said Gerald, smiling, “I was thinking you could bring in -that bit, neatly enough, if I gave you the simile to start on. And I -know, of course, how all you authoresses love to quote your own works. -So now, ma’am, if I were to remark, in a half puzzled way, that I hardly -know what to say about your irrational paragraph—” - -“Do you say either ‘Bother!’ or ‘Brother!’ as your wits prompt.” - -“Quite so! And that finishes it. You have now had the privilege of -quoting in the course of one conversation your complete collected works, -from cover to cover: and that ought to leave any authoress in a fairly -amiable frame of mind. My complaint, then, ma’am, is that you have -exhausted my time rather than your subject. There should be by all means -a second paragraph. You see, dear lady,—and I am speaking now from the -professional knowledge of a god,—it is the gist of every religion -that—still to pursue your bibliomaniacal metaphor,—one has but to turn -over that page in order to begin upon the most splendid of romances.” - -“What kind of romance can any dead man be getting pleasure out of in his -dark grave?” the Sphinx asked, in frank surprise. - -“Well, I must not speak over-hastily. I cannot supply offhand your -second paragraph until I have learned what the Dirghic religion states -to be the nature of this second paragraph.... For, you conceive, ma’am, -in the opinion of many wise and virtuous persons that paragraph deals -with a voyaging in the great sun boat, to a hidden land very far down in -the west, after the heart of each passenger has been weighed against a -feather, and forty-two judges have passed favorably upon his claims to -free transportation. But dissenters, just as wise and virtuous, and just -as numerous, declare the subject of that paragraph to be a pleasure -garden in which properly behaved persons will recline in continuous -tipsiness upon golden couches covered with green cushions, cosily shaded -by lotus- and banana-trees, and will have no other occupation than -perpetually to remove the virginity of large-eyed celestial ladies. Yet, -other sages declare that paragraph to deal with the crossing of a -bridge—in which transit a peculiarly obliging dog will serve as the -guide,—into the presence of the bright Amshaspands. Whereas, still -other estimable people contend that your second paragraph should treat -of a four-square city builded of gold and jasper, upon a twelve-fold -foundation of various precious stones, and irrigated by its own private -crystal sea.... For, I repeat, ma’am, the best-thought-of religions vary -quite noticeably as to the nature of this second paragraph: and it would -be wholly a sad thing if by speaking over-hastily I were to run counter -to my own mythology. But, in any case, I have no sympathy whatever with -the mental morbidity of such materialism as would deny the existence of -any kind of second paragraph.” - -Then Gerald frowned, and he rode on. - - - - - 23. - Odd Transformation of a Towel - - -GERALD now passed beyond Turoine, and, crossing Mispec Moor, he came -thus to the tumbled-down hut of a decrepit old woman. - -“And how are you called, ma’am?” - -“What is that to you?” she answered, peevishly. - -And this wrinkled creature seemed to Gerald remarkably red and inflamed -and regrettably hideous among her tousled tresses. - -“Well, ma’am,” replied Gerald, pleasantly, “a name is a word: and words -are my peculiar concern.” - -“If it matters to you, young Carrot-top, I have had many names. And -under one name or another I was used to deal with every man. Now my -powers fall into decay, and one month is like another month, with never -any changing in it. All about me is bleached, dearie, all is colorless. -There is no more employment for me: and I am an old worthless flabby -white-haired creature, still palely quivering with desire for the good -ever-busy days—oh, and for the nights too, dearie,—that are overpast. -Eh, dearie, though you would not ever think it, once I was Æsred, a -mother of the Little Gods and of much else. And I fared handsomely then, -taking liveliness and color out of all things, and turning men into -useful domestic animals. But now the world is old, and I am the world’s -twin: and all vigorousness has gone from me, and one month is like -another month, with never any changing in it.” - -“I am a god who bring with me all vigor and all youth,” said Gerald: for -he remembered what the Sphinx had said about not despising ugliness. - -Gerald spoke the appointed words: and he baptized the old whining trot -after the rite of the Lady of the First Water-Gap. He straightway saw -the dingy towel about her shaking head transformed. This towel had now -become a crown composed, a bit surprisingly, of the four suits from a -pack of playing cards. There were four clubs set upright, like the -strawberry leaves in a duke’s coronet, and alternated with four spades: -and the band of this crown was moulded in bas-relief with eight hearts -and with sixteen diamonds. - -In fact, everything near Gerald was changed. To Gerald’s right hand and -to his left were seen neat fields and green things growing pleasantly, -and the tumbled-down hovel was now a spruce new cottage. But what seemed -even more interesting to Gerald was the circumstance that the wrinkled -angry looking old woman had become a quite personable creature, not -young and callow, but in the very prime of life: and the name of Æsred -now, as she told him, and as he noted at least two other reasons for -believing, was Maya of the Fair Breasts. - -But she said also, forthwith: “Now that I am young, and have not any -chaperon in the house, it would look better for you to be getting on -with your journey, because you know how people talk. Yes, and how quick -they are to be talking about all widow women anyhow—” - -“Oh! oh!” said Gerald: “are you not, then, prepared to trust me?” - -“—With or without,” continued Maya, “the least provocation. As for -trusting you or any other young fellow living, I never heard before of -such nonsense. It is only the elderly men that any woman can depend on, -just as far as she can see them, in broad daylight, a good while after -they can be depended on at night.” - -“You are not even ready to give me all?” - -Maya was reasonable. “I will give you your dinner, and on top of that -your hat. For I can have no vagabond god hanging around my neat cottage -when I am trying to get the dishes washed, and have the name of a widow -to keep respectable.” - -“Here,” Gerald stated, with conviction, “is an unusual woman. I search -the pages of history in vain to find any parallel to the strange -behavior of this woman.” - -And Gerald reflected. Very certainly this Maya of the Fair Breasts did -not excel all the other women his gaze had ever beheld. Yet the colors -of her two eyes were nicely matched, and a fairish nose stood about -equidistant between them. Beneath this was a tolerably good mouth, for -all that the lips were sullen: and the indefinitely brownish hair, which -was queerly arranged in nineteen formal braids, no doubt concealed a -pair of well-enough ears. This rather heavy-visaged woman was reasonably -young, she seemed hardly more than thirty-seven or thereabouts: she -exhibited no deformity anywhere: her figure was acceptably preserved, -her breasts were positively alluring.... In fine, the appraising glance -of the young man could with the kindly eyes of twenty-eight perceive in -her no really grave fault. - -Moreover, she reminded him of no woman that he had ever seen anywhere -before this morning. - -So Gerald said: “I am satisfied. I shall stay for dinner. I shall -thankfully accept all the refreshments you proffer, of every kind.” - -Then Maya answered: “But, indeed, you sauce-box, you quite misunderstand -me. So do you keep your proper distance! For I am not the sort of woman -that you seem only too well acquainted with.” - -Gerald said, with a caressing thrill in his voice, “Yet, do you but -answer me this very simple question—” - -Maya replied, “Oh, get away with you!” - -Thus speaking, she boxed the jaws of the predestined ruler over all the -gods of men; and with a few well-chosen words she placed their -relationship upon a more decorous basis. - - - - - PART SEVEN - THE BOOK OF POETS - - “He Goes Farthest That Knows - Not Where He is Going.” - - - - - 24. - On Mispec Moor - - -GERALD, after they had dined, persuaded Maya of the Fair Breasts to -permit him to rest over for supper also, now that his journeying was -virtually complete. For beyond the home of the wise woman upon Mispec -Moor the way lay unimpeded to the ambiguous lowlands of Antan, where -Queen Freydis and her consort the Master Philologist ruled in, it was -said, a very old, red-pillared palace which had once belonged to still -another queen, named Suskind. - -But, as to this Antan, Gerald could not, even now, learn anything quite -definite, because of all the gods and myths who had passed down into -Antan none ever returned. It thus stayed, as yet, regrettably dubious -whether these glorious beings now all lived together in unimaginable -splendor, as Gerald had gathered at Caer Omn; or whether, as ran the -gloomier report which prevailed in Lytreia, they had each been destroyed -by the Master Philologist. - -In any case, from Mispec Moor you clearly saw Antan. Thus, there -remained for Gerald hardly more than an hour’s ride, and perhaps a -morning’s spirited work, in order to complete his predestined conquest -of his appointed kingdom. Gerald therefore rested until to-morrow, with -this not over-hospitable hostess,—who viewed him with such uncalled-for -suspicion that (as he found toward midnight) the woman had actually -bolted the door to her room, out of a foolish notion that he might be -trying to enter this immovable door, from which he was, instead, with -entire dignity tiptoeing away. He rested so as to be in his very best -fettle when he approached, to-morrow, the climax of his superb -achievements. - -Meanwhile he questioned Maya of the Fair Breasts as to his future -kingdom; and she told him it was a poorly thought-of place. Nobody ever -went there, Maya said, except such trash as poets and threadbare myths -and over-inquisitive persons and such celestial riffraff as had lost -their station in human esteem and their priests and their temples, said -Maya, nodding her head rather gravely. That curious crown of hers -sparkled cheerily with every movement of her head, for she sat at the -window in a patch of sunlight, about her darning. And as to what became -of such worthless people, Maya continued, after they reached Antan, -that, certainly, was a question of no importance— - -“Yes, but what is the general opinion hereabouts, among the sorcerers -and enchanters of Turoine?” - -“Our opinion is that the matter is not worth bothering about.” - -“Yes, but what do you think—?” - -Maya looked up from her darning, in mild but candid surprise. “You -really do ask the silliest questions! For one, I do not think at all -about those outcast tramps and vagabonds except to see that they steal -nothing as they go by.” - -So then Gerald questioned her about Freydis. - -“I have heard of the woman,” said Maya, rather absent-mindedly, as she -went on with the darning upon which stayed fixed her actual -attention,—“of course: but nothing to her credit. They report, for -example, that she has a mirror—” - -“I, too, have heard continually of that mirror, but never of exactly -what she does with it.” - -“For that matter, Gerald, I also have a mirror, if that is all which is -needed. Everybody has a mirror. In fact, I have a number of mirrors.” - -“I know. I have noticed them everywhere about the cottage. But all your -mirrors, dear lady, are rose-colored.” - -—To which Maya replied irrelevantly, and without looking up from her -darning: “But did you not know from the first that I was a wise woman? -In any case, it is said that Queen Freydis holds her mirror up to -nature, and that she does not scruple to hold this mirror up to her -disreputable visitors, too. For they really are, you know. It is all -very well being a god while it lasts. Only, it never does. And then -where are you? Why, exactly! That is why the overlords of Turoine have -always seemed to me more business-like. And there is no flaw in it, -people say,”—now, though, as Gerald deduced, Maya was talking about the -Mirror of the Hidden Children,—“no distortion of any kind, no -flattering in it, and no kindly exaggeration. It is not in anything like -my more sensible rose-colored mirrors. And nobody could of course be -expected to approve of such a mirror.” - -“Nevertheless, if there indeed be any such mirror, I mean to face it, -when to-morrow I enter into my kingdom, and liberate the great words of -the Master Philologist, and restore the Dirghic mythology, for in that -mythology, I must tell you, I am a god with four aspects.” - -“What nonsense you do talk!” said Maya, comfortably, as she slipped the -darning-egg into another stocking. - -Then Gerald confided in her. Then Gerald told Maya of how he, howsoever -unmeritorious, was heir to all the unimaginable wonders which harbored -yonder. He told her that he and none other was Fair-haired Hoo, the -Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of -Heavenly Ones. He told her of everything that had happened in his -triumphant expedition, thus far. He told her of somewhat more than had -happened, for under Gerald’s expansive handling of the rather beautiful -idea of his own invincibility the tale became an epic. And Gerald told -her, too, of how he intended to rule in the goal of all the gods. He -briefly indicated his summer and winter palaces, the probable personnel -of his harem, the deities who would serve in his immediate household, -and, in a general way, the worlds which he would create: and he promised -to remember Maya, liberally, after he had come into his kingdom. - -And Maya all this while went on darning placidly. She admitted that -men— - -“But, as I was telling you, I am a god,—a god with no less than four -aspects.” - -That did not really matter, Maya considered. The gods, as near as she -had been able to judge those scatter-brained ne’er-do-wells that went -tramping by, were just the same, and, if anything, more so. It was -simply incredible, she continued, how little wear there was in a -stocking nowadays. She then admitted that male persons did have these -notions, even about such unlikely places as Antan. And Gerald would, in -any event, be finding out for himself all about Antan to-morrow, because -if he for one solitary instant thought she was going to have him hanging -about her cottage forever—! - -“Come now, my dear, but hospitality is a very famous virtue: and, -besides, you owe it to me that you are now the handsomest woman in these -parts.” - -“But that, Gerald,—even if it were the truth, of course, for you need -not think you are fooling me, you scamp,—that is just why people will -be imagining things if you continue to stay here.” - -“Then let us take good care not to be suspected unjustly, because that -would be unfair to everybody—” - -“Oh, get along with you! and do you pick up every one of those -stockings, too, now you have scattered them all over the floor. And -really, you red-headed pest, I am not joking, either. That horse of -yours—” - -“Ah, yes, that horse of mine! I admit that to the discerning eyes of a -woman it is not the handsomest beast in the world. And I suppose you are -about to point out that this horse is unworthy of me, and that I ought -to dispose of it, in one way or another—” - -“But whatever nonsense are you talking, now! It is an extremely handsome -horse. There is some sort of prophecy about it, too, is there not? So -you would be even more foolish than you seem to be, to part with that -horse.” - -“Well, to be sure, there may be something in what you say.” - -“—And what I was attempting to tell you is that, if you will simply -permit me to talk for one minute without interrupting—” - -“Hereafter I remain as quiet, my dear, as a belch in polite society; and -you may go on.” - -“Why, then, I was trying to say that your horse can get you to Antan -within an hour. You can find out for yourself all about the place. And I -daresay this Queen Freydis, from all I have heard of her, will not have -the least objection to your rude way of grabbing and pawing at people -and interfering with my housework and generally misconducting yourself. -It is the sort of thing she is quite used to. But I do not like it: I -feel you would not do it if you really respected me. And I am sorry if -anything I have said or done has given you any such wrong notions about -me. And if you stuck yourself with that needle it was simply your own -fault. And that is all there is to it.” - -Gerald replied: “You are regrettably lacking, my dear, in the confidence -and the generosity peculiar to your sex. It is impossible for the mind -to conceive of anything more dreadful than your conduct. Nevertheless, I -must stay until Wednesday, for otherwise I cannot possibly judge of your -magics.” - -“Oh, very well, then!” Maya answered, with unconcealed regretfulness -over the fact that she would have to put up with Gerald for yet another -day. - - - - - 25. - The God Conforms - - -FOR Gerald, upon reflection, had decided it would be really amusing to -remain upon Mispec Moor until Wednesday, since only upon Wednesday could -Maya show the perfection of her thaumaturgy. Thursday, though, as the -wise woman forewarned him candidly, was her cleaning day; and she simply -could not be bothering over company with the house all topsy-turvy. - -“And I also warn you well in advance, my darling,” said Gerald, “that -the performance must be gratis, since I have no material possessions, -save possibly my riding-horse, to barter for the privilege of witnessing -your parlor magic.” - -“Why, but what in the world would I be needing with another horse, who -already have dozens of them eating their heads off all over the moor? -and when in the world, you pest, I became ‘your darling’ I would really -like to know!” - -“Now, but have you, indeed? The very first moment I saw you, my dear.” - -“I do wish you would sometimes, just for a change, talk half rationally. -And of course it has always been my custom to further the true happiness -of the men with whom I was particularly intimate by turning them into -domestic animals of one kind or another. Quite a number of them came out -horses—” - -“I do not altogether approve of such a custom. Still, women have -incalculable fancies: and all men find out sooner or later that it is -less trouble to indulge these fancies than to thwart them. At any rate, -a god has no concern with these minor sorceries.” - -“Of course not!” Maya agreed. “A scatter-brained, talk-you-to-death, -carrot-topped, and generally good-for-nothing god is not concerned with -anything except with getting on to that minx Freydis.” - -Gerald waved aside the insinuation. He continued to talk about more -immediate matters, and he said: - -“Nevertheless, your story interests me. It would be droll to have a -horse like that. So suppose, now, my dear, suppose that I trade my -divine steed for one of those unusual horses of yours?” - -“No, Gerald, really I would rather not. For the men that I put my magic -upon used once to be fine knights or barons or even kings,—and, for -that matter, there were a couple of emperors, though only in a small -way,—and I confess to a certain sentiment about them still.” - -Then in a clay chafing-dish Maya of the Fair Breasts burned fig-leaves -with benzoin and macis and storax. And she showed Gerald how one might -master mercurial things. She displayed to him the small magics which are -Wednesday’s. She revealed to him—cursorily, since they had only a -morning at their disposal,—the secrets of remunerative mediocrity in -the learned professions, in truth-telling, in upholstering, in the -removal of mountains into the sea, in the erection of bridges over any -unpassable place, in the preparation of rose-colored mirrors, in -criticism, in oratory, in jurisprudence, and in the safe interpretation -of Holy Writ. As himself a former student of magic, Gerald found these -formulæ of interest: but, as a god, he regarded Maya with profound -respect, as one who, with no native divine advantages, had yet mastered -this quite reputable stock of knowledge and ability. - -Yet the workings of these magics were not apparent until Gerald had put -on the spectacles which Maya gave him. He found these glasses so -soothing to the eyes that he retained them, just for the remainder of -his visit to her cottage. - -For, after all, Gerald decided to stay over the week-end, since Maya was -so unflatteringly eager to be rid of him. It was an eagerness troubling -to his self-respect. Here was he, a god whom women had always run after, -and had pestered beyond reasonable endurance, here was he, of all -persons, being treated with unconcealed indifference by a mere -hedge-sorceress, by a creature who had not even any remarkable good -looks or wit to justify her impudence. This Maya of the Fair Breasts -needed taking down quite a large number of pegs. So Gerald fell to -wooing her with an ardor that somewhat surprised him. For it was -eminently necessary, it was, indeed, a rather beautiful idea, to win the -woman, and then to jilt her, so as to teach her, once for all, not ever -again to make free and easy with the will of a god. - -Meanwhile, Maya had suggested that he conceal the fact he was a god; and -that she should introduce him to the local gentry of Turoine as a -visiting sorcerer. - -“For I must tell you, Gerald,” Maya said, “all the best-thought-of -people hereabouts are in one or another branch of sorcery. We have, -thus, never had any relations with Heaven. All our connections have been -with another quarter. And it is not that we are unduly conceited and -exclusive, it is simply that it has just happened so. Nevertheless, so -many gods have straggled by, on their way to an ambiguous end, as they -went down to encounter the Master Philologist, and whatever it is that -he does to them, that there is a tendency among the best people -hereabouts, as I will not conceal from you, to regard them as not quite -the sort that one meets socially.” - -“But I—!” said Gerald, in uncontrolled indignation. - -“I know, my poor boy, you are entirely different. And I am perfectly -broad-minded about it, myself. But other people are not. And it would -sound much better.” - -Then Gerald spoke with dignity and firmness. Gerald said that not for -one moment would he stoop to such a subterfuge. Not for an instant would -he who was a lord of all exalted white magics pretend to be a sorcerer -soiled with infernal traffics and patronized by mere devils. After that, -Gerald passed as a visiting sorcerer. - - - - - 26. - “Qualis Artifex!” - - -AND Gerald used to amuse himself by talking with the travelers who -passed by the neat log and plaster cottage of Maya the wise woman, upon -their way to the court of Queen Freydis and her consort the Master -Philologist. For it was a good and shrewd policy, Gerald felt, for a -monarch to familiarize himself with his future subjects: so he would sit -by the wayside, in the shade of a conveniently placed -chestnut-tree,—incognito, as it were,—and would artfully allure them -into conversation. - -“Hail, friends! And what business draws you to the city of all marvels?” -said Gerald, on the first morning that he fell into this long-sighted -course. - -He was told—by the big-bellied, yellow-haired man, whose skin was so -curiously spotted,—that they were two poets upon their way to Antan, -the goal of all the gods, and the friendly haven of true poets, where -poets might hope to find at last that loveliness which they desired and -could nowhere discover in their everyday life upon earth. To Gerald this -was excellent news, since it increased the number of his future subjects -very gratifyingly. - -But he said nothing, while the big-bellied, spotted, thin-legged -gentleman in the purple robe adorned with golden stars, went on in his -answer to Gerald’s first question, by explaining that the speaker was -Nero Claudius Cæsar, the king of all poets, and that his scrawny -companion, in a brown doublet of which both elbows needed patching, was -an artist of considerable talent from out of the Gallic provinces, who -was called François Villon. - -Gerald found this also of some interest, in view of what he remembered -about the Mirror of Caer Omn. Not often did you thus come face to face -with two discarded personalities. But Gerald said nothing about this -either. Instead, he questioned Nero yet further, and he thus learned -that these two poets were on their way to the court of Freydis, because -there alone in the universe was art properly regarded: for there, -indeed, true artists were manufactured out of common clay, and were -informed with the fire of Audela. - -It was one or another old hero from out of Poictesme, Nero had heard, -who had first modeled these earthen images; and Freydis, as occasion -served, gave life to these images and set them to live upon earth, as -changelings. But, above all, said Nero, in Antan the true poets of this -world fared happily among the myths and the gods who once had afforded -to these poets such fine themes, so that to-day of course these poets -wrote even more splendid poems now that they composed with the eye upon -the object. - -Yet, Nero thought, playing idly with the emerald monocle which hung upon -a green cord about his scrawny neck, this Queen would not be very likely -ever to create in clay, or to find coming to her court, such another -artist as Nero himself had been in the days of his Roman pre-eminence. -No other person known to him had ever excelled in all the polite arts. -For in dancing and in oratory, in wrestling (even with such dreadful -adversaries as lions) and in music both vocal and instrumental,—alike -as a charioteer and as a tragic actor,—but, above all, as a poet, and -equally as a dramatic, a lyric and an epic poet,—Nero had been -unanimously awarded the first prize in every contest. He did not care to -appear boastful: yet, by all canons of criticism, one had to consider -the list of his overwhelming triumphs, in Rome, in Naples, in Antium, in -Alba,—at the Parthian games, at the Isthmian games, at the Olympic -games,—and, in fine, in each contest which Nero had ever entered -anywhere in all the kingdoms of which he was Emperor. No other artist -had a record to compare with that: no other of the world’s great -geniuses had ever been confessedly supreme in every polite form of -æsthetic endeavor. - -Of course, as a student of history, Nero conceded that the elect artist -was not to be placed, not permanently, by his ranking in the eyes of his -contemporaries, who might often be swayed by such matters, really -extraneous to enduring art, as the artist’s ingratiating manners and his -personal beauty. As a man of the world, he even conceded the judges of -the sacred games in awarding all the first prizes to Nero might -furthermore have been influenced by the large sums of money which the -Emperor always conferred upon his acclaiming judges after such -occasions, as well as by the dexterity of the tortures which would have -followed any decision less just. - -But the indisputable fact, the fact of superb importance, was that Nero -had made of his life a poem which was wholly a unique masterpiece in the -way of self-expression: he, above all other men, had served the one end -of every poet’s art, by revealing the true nature of man’s being; for -Nero had embodied, with loving carefulness, each trait which he found in -himself, through some really memorable action,—rearing, as it were, -among marshes and quicksands, and in yet other places which other -persons feared to visit, those strange and passionately colored orchid -growths which alone could express the highly complex nature of every -man’s desires— - -“That jargon becomes somewhat senescent,” said Gerald. “Still, as a -museum piece,—yes, even now, sophistication does display something of -the quaint beauty of thorough obsoleteness. It has acquired the charm, -and, as it were, the patina, of sedan chairs and of full-bottom wigs and -of girdles of chastity and of suits of armor, and of all other things, -once useful enough, which are nowadays endeared to every poet’s heart by -the fact that they are forever outmoded. So let us grant it, O Cæsar, in -the days that are gone you were a devil of a fellow and a sad rip among -the ladies—” - -“Why, but, for that matter—” Nero began. - -“I know. You broad-mindedly despised neither sex. You were in amour a -Greek scholar. You were something of a surgeon also. I concede it, I -blush, and I urge you to omit all embarrassingly personal details.” - -So Nero went on, saying that other emperors, with very much his chances, -had lacked the genius necessary to develop these chances. There had, of -course, been minor artists. Caligula, for example, among so much -hackwork in the way of throat-cutting, had shown at least one jet of -rather lovely inspiration when he attempted a criminal assault upon the -moon; that was a really finely imagined bit of work. Then, also, -Domitian and Commodus and Tiberius had displayed praiseworthy ambitions; -quite neat little things had been done by Tiberius, in an amateur way, -at Capri; Caracalla too had been so-so: but they had all tended to -wallow unimaginatively in cut and dried executions; merely to chop off -anybody’s head was not art, no matter how often you did it. Besides, -work done upon a public scaffold inevitably coarsened one’s touch. And -Heliogabalus, whatsoever the lad’s thin vein of undeniable talent in the -way of lyric lechery, had lacked the stamina and gusto for any sustained -masterpiece in Nero’s copious epic style. - -For Nero alone had been, in every branch of self-expression, the -sincere, skilled artist, enriching his handiwork always with that -continual slight novelty which art demands. He had builded his -appropriate stage, in the Golden House— - -“A house entirely overlaid with gold,” said Gerald, reminiscently, “and -adorned everywhere with jewels and mother of pearl, a house so rich and -ample that it had three-storied porticos a mile long, and huge revolving -banqueting halls, and ivory ceilings which perpetually scattered -perfumes and red rose-petals—” - -Nero, at that, had out his emerald monocle; and through it he now -regarded Gerald with the childlike amiability of a sincere artist -whensoever his vanity is flattered. - -Yes, Nero admitted, he had endeavored to express himself in that house -also. The Golden House had been (to play with metaphor) the handsome -binding of that poem which was his life, when in a setting such as the -world had never known, before or since, he had given to his every human -trait its full color value. In the Golden House he had reared his -orchids, he had labored to open many frank and incisive and utterly -unstinted avenues of self-expression to that somewhat complex thing -called human nature.... - -But here he entered rather explicitly into details. Gerald felt the -style of this emperor to be growing woefully un-American; and Gerald -fidgeted. - -“Let us, I again urge you,” said Gerald, “speak of less personal -matters, and diversify the vividness of these orchids with a few -fig-leaves!” - -Perhaps, of course, the Emperor continued, he, like every other really -great artist, had been somewhat the anthologist, in that he had invented -outright none of the art forms among the many in which he had -distinguished himself. He had taken over from his predecessors a number -of inspirations and a formula or two, as he would be the very last to -deny: but the fine craftsmanship was all his, as well as that -distinguishing, that peculiarly Neronic, touch of romantic irony, by -virtue of which this artist had slain with suavity, had destroyed with a -caress, and had ennobled all that was most dear to his human nature by -killing it. He spoke now of the deaths of his wives, of Octavia and -Poppæa, and of others who had been his wives just for the evening; he -spoke of Sporus, of Aiëtes, of Narcissus, and of that other exceedingly -beautiful boy, Aulus Plautinus.... - -And again Gerald raised a protesting hand. “Let us still,” said Gerald, -“avoid these quite un-American personalities! Meanwhile, you do not -speak of your mother Agrippina.” - -He surprised in the spotted face of Nero something very like terror. But -Nero said only, “No.” - -And besides, the Emperor continued, with rising animation, that happy -chronological accident, the fact that Christianity began in the days of -Nero its advance toward world supremacy, had enabled him, by pure luck, -to lend to the great poem of his life just the needful felicitous touch -of working in a new medium. To burn well-thought-of taxpayers and -putative virgins as the torches at your supper parties was a device -which, out of a natural desire to surprise and to amuse one’s guests, -might have occurred to almost any host in quest of that continual slight -novelty which the art of hospitality also demands. But that these -flambeaux should later become the brightest glories of a triumphant -church had made these supper parties, which were really quite modest -affairs, unforgettable. Nero had expressed himself—not merely, as he -thought at the time, through persons supposed to be deficient in -patriotism and more or less suspected of being (here again, to play with -metaphor) not one hundred per cent Roman,—but, as it had turned out, -through saints and apostles, and through consecrated religious martyrs, -such as not every artist could get for his themes and raw material. So, -the succeeding discouragements of Christians had, æsthetically, fallen -flat, in their impression upon posterity: their authors had come into -this field too late, to find that tragic vein worked out, and all its -most striking possibilities exhausted, by the great artist that was -Nero. It was hardly remembered that Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian and -many others had broken and flayed and mutilated and burned to the very -best of their ability: these plodders were but the epigoni and the -unimaginative plagiarists of Nero. - -So had it come about that of all the emperors Rome had known, and of all -the tyrants and despots in every land and era, who had followed the fine -art of self-expression, and who had shown what human nature really -is—in, as it were, the nude, when any man is released from time-serving -and is made omnipotent,—of all these, there had remained just one whose -name was remembered everywhere; just one whose fame was imperishable; -just one who had become a never-dying myth: and that one was Nero. The -legend of Nero was, in a world wherein every other man stayed more or -less unwillingly an unfulfilled Nero, the supreme type of the literature -of escape. The legend of Nero was a poem which men would not ever -forget: it was a poem current in all languages: and it was a poem which, -now, everybody could cordially admire and delight in, because time had -removed the need of considering any current moral standards or one’s own -physical safety in judging this poem, now that Nero was only a character -in a book, like—as the Emperor said, with a quaint revealment of his -retained interest in literature,—like Iago or Volpone or Tartuffe. For -whether you called any particular book a history or a poem or a drama -did not, of course, effect the impressiveness and vigor and complexity -of the character drawing in it, nor the value of the author’s apt and -edifying revelations as to any eternal verities of man’s being. - -“For, certainly,” said Nero, “my life presented, as no other artist has -ever done, the gist of all human nature as that nature actually is, when -freed of such inhibitions as constrain it in but too many baffled lives. -My life was, thus, a connoisseur’s production, and a work of art which -escaped even the grave risk of anti-climax. For there was not anything -lacking in the ending of it, either. My fall and the circumstances of my -death were so æsthetically right that, as an artist, I never in my life -enjoyed anything quite so much. Nothing could conceivably have been in -better taste. For, overnight, as you may remember, I passed from the -throne of the world, to hide in a tumbled-down out-house, under a -ragged, very faded blue coverlet, and to perish thus by my own -hand,—with an appropriate tragic verse upon my lips,—and without any -friend remaining anywhere. No tragedy could have been more boldly -proportioned, with all the Aristotelian unities so exactly preserved. -And it was most gratifyingly led up to, too. For just as I was about to -approach the dénouement of my poem, the statues of my Lares tumbled down -miraculously, the hind quarters of my favorite riding-horse were -transformed into the hind quarters of an ape, and the doors of the -mausoleum of Augustus having unclosed of their own accord, there issued -from the tomb a divine voice which summoned me to destruction. These -incidents, I repeat, were gratifying, for they showed that the exercise -of my art had been viewed by Heaven appreciatively. Ah, yes, in all I -was peculiarly favored.” - - - - - 27. - Regarding the Stars - - -VILLON spat meditatively between his yellow front teeth. He fingered, -in the while that he continued his reflections, his scarred and puckered -lower lip. Then he confessed that he dissented from a great many of his -predecessor’s remarks. - -“You were impressive. Your life was a competent job, boldly executed, -and nobody denies its merits on their own melodramatic plane. Yet it -lacked the indispensable touch of tenderness, without which no work of -art is of the first class. No: it was I who was truly favored; and I -made of my life a flawless poem without dragging in such gaudy -accessories as thrones and burning cities and the wasting of a lovely, -mother-naked virgin on a mere lion.” - -And this François Villon went on to speak of the great blessings which -had been accorded him. He had been granted irresolution, and lewdness, -and poverty, and cowardice, and a large weakness for drink, and an -ingrained dishonesty, and a disease-wrecked body, and everything else -which was needed to make him a knave as contemptible as any man could -hope to be. - -“I was, in brief, gentlemen, as I have elsewhere remarked, a hog with a -voice. And there was no voice like my voice.” - -For out of the mire that wallowing, lustful and cowardly beast had sung. -Now he sang jeeringly, and made fun of the whole world with satire and -mockery and invective, and with plain filth-flinging,—which was all -quite good art, because it pleases people to see a man superior to his -fate. Now he sang piercingly of the great platitude that death conquers -and ruins everything: and to that sentiment nobody can ever turn a deaf -ear, because it is the only sentiment with a universal personal -application. But, above all, he sang of his regret for his past -indiscretions, and of his yearning for spiritual cleanliness, -and—“soaring,” as Villon now quoted, with admirable complacency, “to -the very gates of Heaven upon the star-sown wings of faith and -song,”—he had proclaimed his trust in that divine love which, -ultimately, would redeem all properly repentant persons from the logical -outcome of their doings in this world, and would give to the marred life -of every properly repentant person a happy ending in a fair-colored -paradise agreeably full of harps and lutes. And people liked that, too, -of course, because such a philosophy made everybody feel muggily -consoled and, for no especial reason, magnanimous. - -So had Villon become a very great poet whose art was a fine blending of -mirth and of pathos and of faith, and so might he hope to win to high -honors in Antan, where, if anywhere, poets were properly rewarded. And -the squalor and degradation of his terrestrial living were, now, but so -many picturesque ingredients in the superb poem of his life, now that -Villon too was—just as his Roman confrère had pointed out,—to be -regarded as a character in a book. The difference was that Villon had -become a never-dying myth of vagabondage with its heart in the right -place, and a parable which revealed how much of good always survives in -the most vile and abandoned of criminals and even in persons -unsuccessful in business life. The legend of Villon thus proved exactly -the contrary to that which was proved by the legend of Nero: as the one -demonstrated the real nature of man to aspire only to lust and cruelty -the moment that inhibitions were removed, so did the other legend show -the real fundamental nature of every man to be incurably good and -lovable under all possible surface stains. And the legend of Villon, -Villon repeated, had in it tenderness,—that indispensable flavor of -tenderness and of a sentimentality as wholesomely nourishing as -molasses, without which no work of art can ever really be of the first -class so far as goes its popular appeal. - -“For my life, gentlemen, was truly a superb parable. And it has been -properly appreciated, it has ever been paid the fine compliment of being -plagiarised by Holy Writ. Why, what the devil! if the parable of the -Prodigal Son be good art in the New Testament, is it the less good art -for being acted out with the vigor and the brio I brought to that task? -For I too wasted all my substance, with some feminine assistance, and -went down among the swine and the husks, without ever forgetting that by -and by I was to be comforted with never-failing love and veal cutlets. -In brief, although I lived perforce in the gutter, yet my eyes were upon -the stars.” - -Then Gerald remarked, to this one of his discarded personalities: “You -move me, Messire François. You sound upon my heart-strings a resounding -chord, through your employment of a figure of speech which is always -effective. I do not know why, but any imaginable bit of verse conveying -a statement manifestly untrue can be made edifying and sublime through -ending it with the word ‘stars’. We poets have convinced everybody, -including ourselves, that there is some occult virtue in the act of -looking at the stars. So, when you said just now, ‘Although I lived -perforce in the gutter, yet my eyes were upon the stars’, I was moved -very mightily. I seemed to hear the yearning cry of all human -aspirations, foiled but superb. Yet if you had asserted your eyes to -have been habitually, or at least every clear night, upon the -planets—or, for that matter, upon the comets or the asteroids,—I would -not have been moved in the least.” - -“It is sufficient that you were moved without knowing why,” observed -Nero. “That is the magic of poetry. Very often when I recited some of my -best poems, to commemorate the sorrows of Orestes or Canace or Œdipus, I -myself could not quite understand the springs of that terrible misery -which convulsed my hearers. They wept; they fainted; a number of the -women entered prematurely into the labors of childbirth; and I was -compelled to have the doors and windows guarded by my Praetorian -soldiers because so many of the audience invariably attempted to escape -from the well-nigh intolerable ecstasies which my art provoked. Such is -the magic of great poetry, a thing not ever wholly to be explained even -by the poet.” - -Then Gerald said: “Yet, you two poets who have traveled through the -Marches of Antan, wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching -is that we copulate and die,—do you not look to find when you have -reached Antan, which is the goal of all the gods, some third truth?” - -And it seemed to him that the faces of the two myths had now become -evasive and more wary. - -Nero replied, “For a poet, there exist always just as many truths as he -cares to imagine.” - -And Villon remarked: “I would phrase it somewhat differently. I would -say there exist more truths than any poet cares to imagine. But it comes -to the same thing.” - -“Yes,” Gerald assented,—“for it comes to an evasion. Yet I, who also am -a poet, I retain my faith in the rather beautiful idea of that third -truth.” - -And then Gerald told them that he himself had long dabbled in the art of -poetry. “Indeed,” he added, generously, “I will now recite to you one of -my sonnets which appears appropriate to the occasion.” - -“Dog,” Villon replied, taking up his hat, “does not eat dog.” - -And Nero very hastily stated that, howsoever unbounded their regret, -they really must be hurrying on to the city of marvels. - -So these myths departed, traveling together, with an intimacy somewhat -remarkable in the light of their flatly diverse teachings. And Gerald -warned them to make the most of the present state of affairs in Antan, -because the day after to-morrow the Lord of the Third Truth, a deity -with several not uninteresting aspects, would be descending upon Antan, -to take over all the powers of the Master Philologist, and to deal with -Queen Freydis afterward as his divine inclinations might prompt. - -Thereafter Gerald went back to Maya and to his dinner quite jauntily, -now that he knew in his appointed kingdom the true poets of this world -were assembling to purvey his amusement: and he felt himself to be afire -with impatience to reach that city of all marvels, yonder behind him, as -he walked away from Antan, leisurely ascending to the trim cottage of -Maya the wise woman, who went as a crowned queen, and would have none of -his love-making, and yet was such an excellent cook, in her plain way. - - - - - PART EIGHT - THE BOOK OF MAGES - - “Not Every Good Scholar - is a Good Schoolmaster.” - - - - - 28. - Fond Magics of Maya - - -GERALD delayed his departure until Friday, because Gerald was -cordially amused by the fond magics of Maya of the Fair Breasts. He -regarded them, as he did her, through those roseate spectacles which the -wise woman had loaned him to be an unfailing comfort to his eyes: and he -found all very good. - -He had known many lovelier and more brilliant women, alike in the -relinquished world of Lichfield and in his journeying through the -Marches of Antan. But Maya contented him: he had really not the heart to -disappoint his Maya by not forcing upon her—after four prolonged and -tender arguments,—those physical attentions which all women seemed to -expect. - -After that, she put aside her crown; and Gerald never saw it any more. - -And after that, also, the date of his departure from her neat cottage -was postponed until after Sunday, though it was quite understood that, -the very first thing after a particularly early breakfast on Monday, he -would pass on to enter into his appointed kingdom, and to possess -himself of the Master Philologist’s great words, and to reanimate the -Dirghic mythology in which he was a god, and would come to know the -third truth over which he exercised celestial authority. - -Meanwhile he stayed upon Mispec Moor, to regard with indulgence, and -even with some pity, his predecessors in Maya’s affection, those -beguiled men whom she had converted into domestic animals. His divine -steed was for the while turned out to graze with those docile geldings -that had once been knights and barons and reigning kings: all wandered -contentedly enough about the neat cottage, along with a number of steers -and sheep and three mules, who, also, had once been noblemen and -well-thought-of monarchs. - -Gerald saw that these animals seemed not dissatisfied with their -transfiguring doom. Yet it appeared a bit wanton—even to him, who had -once been a tortoise and a lion and a fish and a boar pig,—that these -gentlemen should have been snatched from positions of responsibility and -worldly honor, from thrones and tournaments and large bank accounts, and -set to eating grass in a field. And Gerald sincerely pitied them for -their ignorance as to the correct way in which to deal with the small -magics of Maya. - -The dear woman herself you could not blame. She could not help trying, -out of pure kindliness and affection, to hold men back from daring and -splendid exploits, because she really thought they would be much safer, -and more happy, as domestic animals. - -And, in fact, she justified her charitableness with a logic which was -plausible. She argued that all men were better content after they had -become domestic animals. She pointed out that her lovers, in -particular—Why, but Gerald could see for himself how little vexed were -her steers and geldings, now, by affairs of the heart. Upon every -imaginable moral ground they had been made better by their double -transformation. They did not run after lewd females, they were not -bloodthirstily jealous of one another, and they were asleep every night -at a respectable hour. If Gerald had only known them, as she had known -them, when they were gentlemen of high distinction and reigning -monarchs, he would never argue about an improvement so obvious. - -Besides, domestic animals were spurred by magnanimity and altruism into -no devastating wars, thrift did not often make them covetous of money, -neither did self-respect induce them to spend money foolishly: religion -did not lead mules to bray in any pulpit, nor did the conscientiousness -of a sheep ever make of him an ever-meddling and pernicious pest. In -fine, the domestic animals were undisfigured by any human virtues, and -were quite easy to get along with. Whereas, if any woman attempted to -have that many men about the house—! Maya, who had lost so many -husbands (at least partially) did not complete the statement. But her -expression made the aposiopesis eloquent. - -Gerald had no smallest doubt but that, if he himself had not been divine -and beyond her arts, Maya of the Fair Breasts would long ago, out of -pure kindliness and affection, have transformed him too into a sheep or -an ox or some other useful quadruped, and would thus have held him back -from his appointed inheritance in Antan. And he did not blame her. The -placid, stupid, rather lovable woman simply did not understand that to -be contented was not all: she did not comprehend the obligations which -were upon a god to live with generous splendor and to perform very -tremendous feats in the way of heroism and of philanthropy. - -Of course, just as she said, the exploits of a champion who came to -enlighten and improve any place—even to redeem it from what, by the -standards of the United States of America, was iniquitous and backward -and probably undemocratic,—did of necessity upset the routine to which -the inhabitants had grown accustomed. Antan, as Gerald looked down upon -it from the porch of Maya’s cottage, seemed a contented and tranquil -realm. No matter by howsoever un-American standards people might be -living there, to redeem the place from those standards would bring -upsetment and confusion. And it did seem almost a pity—just as Maya -said,—to be bothering people who were contented enough, when you too -were contented.... Even so, there was an obligation upon a god. To be -contented, to have no cares to worry you by day, to lack for nothing by -day, and every night to induce decorously through connubial affection a -profound and refreshing slumber,—that was not everything a god desired. -Yonder there was a third truth. Yonder was Gerald’s appointed kingdom, -and not here upon Mispec Moor. - -Besides, Gerald had begun to wonder more and more about Freydis. By all -reports, it was she who really ruled those hills and lowlands yonder, -which to-morrow—or at least, next week,—would be Gerald’s hills and -lowlands; and it was she who controlled in everything the Master -Philologist, whom Gerald was appointed to overthrow. It had not been -prophesied, however, so far as Gerald knew, how he would deal with -Freydis. That, to every appearance, was a matter left to his divine -election. Well, one would not be over-harsh with any woman whom rumor -declared so beautiful, Gerald decided, half drowsily, as he sat there so -utterly comfortable in the spectacles and the dressing-gown and the -brown carpet slippers which Maya had provided, and so pleasantly replete -with Maya’s excellent cooking. - - - - - 29. - Leucosia’s Singing - - -AND upon another day, as Gerald sat by the roadside beneath his -chestnut-tree, and waited for supper to be ready, three persons passed -toward Antan, traveling together. They were all notable looking men; and -Gerald greeted them with the sign which is known only to supreme mages. -They returned his greeting, but they shaped signs that were of an older -magic than any which was familiar to Gerald. - -And then the first of these men said, “I was Odysseus, Laertes’ son.” - -Gerald thus knew that before him stood yet another of his discarded -personalities. But Gerald made no comment. - -And Odysseus continued: “I had wisdom. My prudent wisdom was to men of -every calling an object of considerable attention, and the fame of it -reached Heaven. I ruled in Ithaca, an island kingdom, well situated -toward the west. I went unwillingly with the other well-greaved Greeks -to besiege Ilion: the enterprise to me seemed rash, and unlikely to be -remunerative: yet, being engaged, I dealt prudently, and in the end, -where so many merely brave persons had failed, it was through my -prudence that the enterprise succeeded. For ten years Ilion defied the -strength of Achilles and of Ajax; Ilion derided all the endeavors of -auburn-haired Menelaus and of godlike Agememnon: but the cunning of -Odysseus felled Ilion in one night. I took my share of the spoils; I -left the glory to them that wanted it. I returned across the world to -that which I more prudently desired, toward the quiet comforts of my -home in craggy Ithaca. The prayer of the blinded Cyclops, the wrath of -earth-shaking Poseidon, the white thunder of offended Zeus, and the -twelve winds of Æolus, all fought against me. I prevailed. The sea-witch -Scylla, an exorbitant lady with twelve arms, a ravening monster whom -none might pass and live, I passed. Charybdis, which devoured all, did -not devour me, for I clung prudently to a fig-tree.” - -“Indeed,” said Gerald, “the leaves of that tree are very often a great -protection,—O much-enduring and crafty Odysseus,” Gerald added hastily, -as became a Greek scholar. - -“Moreover, the sun’s daughter, fair-haired Circe, and bright Queen -Calypso, the divine one of goddesses, these also detained me rather more -amiably. I embraced them; they did not find me slothful in their beds. -For they were goddesses, as quick in anger as they were in lust. It is -not prudent to deny a goddess. From the fond arms of these immortals I -passed on toward my desired goal. Yet nobody is always prudent. When my -ship approached the island of the man-devouring Sirens I caused the ears -of my sailors to be stopped with wax; but I caused myself to be bound to -the mast, so that I might hear the song which Leucosia sang in the while -that Parthenopê and Ligeia made a sweet music. I desired to hear without -any hurt that song which was so lovely that it drew less prudent men to -the arms of its singer, wherein, as they well knew, dark death awaited -them. I heard that song. It did not matter to me that I saw how the low -beach about those music-makers gleamed, like silver, where a thin -sunlight fell upon the scattered bones of many men whom they had slain. -I struggled to cast myself into the gray sea-water, so that I might go -to Leucosia. But my bonds held me. I was bound, both my hands and feet -were bound, with very strong cables. The black ship passed onward, -whitening the water with its polished blades of fir-wood; and I wept as -I too passed onward, away from my own ruin, and drawing nearer to the -goal which my prudent wisdom had desired.” - -“Truly, the enchantment of her singing must have maddened you. Yet such -is the magic of great poetry,” Gerald remarked, “a thing not ever wholly -to be explained even by the poet.... Yet your goal, nevertheless, was -reached, they tell me, O much-contriving Odysseus. Your goal was -reached, as I remember it, in the many-pillared hall of your home in -Ithaca, and in a fine slaughter of those suitors who were pestering your -wife because they believed that she was your widow.” - -“Very naturally my goal was reached. I was Odysseus. Very naturally I -made an end of those wasters of my substance who had been eating and -drinking for nine years at my expense. There arose, as one by one their -heads were smitten off, a hideous moaning. The floors ran with blood. It -was wholly plain that Odysseus faced those imprudent persons who had -made over-free with his flocks and his wine jars and his wife and the -other goods of his household. Yet I knew, by and by, that what I now -desired was not to be found in craggy Ithaca nor in the calm embraces of -Penelope nor in the tranquillity of my well-ordered home. I gave laws. I -heard cases. I decided squabbles between one shepherd and another -shepherd. I who had contrived the burning of Ilion now oversaw the -branding of my cattle. War did not trouble Ithaca, of whose king all -other kings were afraid. For I was very famous. I lacked for nothing in -wealth. I lived at ease. But no man hears the singing of Leucosia except -at a great price. I heard Leucosia no more. I heard, instead, the voices -of fools praising my strength and my prudent wisdom, and the voice of my -wife talking sensibly about I never noticed exactly what. I lacked for -nothing which prudent men desire, in my snug, sleek, well-ordered -Ithaca. But I had seen too much in my voyaging about a world which was -more lewd and riotous than I permitted anybody to be in my Ithaca. I -remembered too many things. No, I did not regret Calypso nor Circe nor -that fine girl Nausicaä. I could at will have returned to them. But I -remembered the singing of Leucosia, to whom I dared not return. For no -man hears the singing of Leucosia except at a great price.” - -“But of what did she sing, O much-planning Odysseus?” - -“She sang of that which haunted me, and which derided the rewards of my -prudent wisdom. She sang of the one way to that which I truly desired.” - -“That, O noble son of Laertes, is not a remarkably explicit reply.” - -Now the wise Greek regarded Gerald sombrely. Odysseus said, by and by: - -“She sang of that which troubles a prudent person’s soul and despoils -his rational living of all fat contentment. Let it suffice that she -sang, I think, of Antan. That is why I must travel to Antan, wherein—it -may be,—is my desire.” - -—It was only then that Gerald recollected something. He recollected -that Evadne of the Dusk, that feathery-legged Evadne, who, Horvendile -had said, was called Leucosia in the days of her sea-faring. But Gerald -said nothing about what, after all, was none of his affair.... - - - - - 30. - What Solomon Wanted - - -AND then the second traveler spoke. He spoke of that which had been -his in the days when all riches and all pleasures and all power had been -accorded to Solomon because of his sixfold wisdom. To no other being -that ever lived among mankind was given such mightiness as was granted -to King Solomon in the time that he reigned over Israel and ruled this -world. - -For Solomon had sexanary wisdom. Solomon knew the six words which were -not known to any other men. He understood the speaking of these words. - -The word of the beasts. It was spoken, and there assembled in the sight -of Solomon a pair of every creature that walks or creeps upon earth, -from the elephant to the smallest worm. Upon the neck of each was -pressed the seal of Solomon, so that the race of each must henceforth be -subject to him. They revealed to him the wisdom of the beasts that -perish and do not bother about it. He feasted them at a table of silver -and iron which covered four square miles; and at that banqueting Solomon -the King served as the pantler, bringing with his hands to every beast -and reptile its food according to its kind, from the elephant to the -smallest worm. - -The word of Morskoï. It was spoken, and all manner of fishes rose to the -surface of the sea’s water near Ascalon. Upon the neck of each was -pressed the seal of Solomon. Then came a hundred thousand camels and a -hundred thousand mules laden with new corn, and all the creatures of the -water were fed, and after that they served King Solomon, and they -revealed to him the wisdom of the Sea Market. - -The word of the fowls. It was spoken, and the sky was hidden by the -birds who came to render fealty and to instruct King Solomon in the -wisdom of the Apsarasas. The peewit alone did not come. But he came -afterward, crying, “He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none -for himself.” And it was the peewit who fetched to Solomon wise Balkis, -and who taught Solomon to look through the surface of this earth as a -man peers through a sheet of glass. - -The word of the Adversary. It was spoken, and the entire citizenry of -hell kneeled before King Solomon, saving only Sachr and Eblis. The -female Djinns were shaped like dromedaries with the wings of a bat; the -male Djinns were like peacocks with the horns of a gazelle. The Mazikeen -and the Shedeem came also. To the neck of each was pressed the seal of -Solomon: and they revealed to him both the black and the gray wisdom. - -The word of Arathron. It was spoken, and there came to King Solomon the -Seven Stewards of Heaven. The eyes of Solomon were closed, and his hand -had shaken a little, as he pressed to the neck of each kneeling Steward -the seal of Solomon, for he was troubled by the exceeding glory of the -supreme Princes of Heaven. Of these the most terrible were Ophiel and -Phul, whose reign is not yet. But these seven Stewards also served King -Solomon; and they revealed to him the white wisdom. - -The word of the mirror. It was spoken, and before him stood a wicker -cage containing three pigeons. Beside this cage lay a small mirror three -inches square. - -All these six words were known to the wise King. It was the power of -these six words which made him lord over the wild beasts and the birds -of heaven, and over the devils and the elemental spirits and the ghosts -of the dead, and over the sea-depths, and over the cherubim. All -creatures upon earth trembled before King Solomon because of these six -words: no other king withstood Solomon, nor sent forth his chariots -against the army of Solomon. For the soldiers of Solomon were the beasts -of the field and of the wild wood; the birds of prey were his horsemen; -the little birds were his very cunning spies. His admirals were the huge -whales and sea serpents, and Leviathan also served in the navy of King -Solomon. His lieutenants were the overseers of hell; the supreme angels -were his counsellors. He had also his mirror. The power of these six -words was exceedingly great. - -Yet there remained one other word, that word which was in the beginning, -and which will be when all else has perished. There stayed yet -unrevealed that word which is spoken by the Master Philologist to all -the gods of men. That word alone was not known to King Solomon. His -little mirror showed him that word, as it showed every other thing; but -the word was written in a language which he could not read. - -“What need is there for you to be bothering about that word?” said all -the women who loved and cherished him. He answered, “I do not know.” The -wives and concubines then stated, speaking with nine hundred voices in -unanimity, that no one of them had ever before heard of such nonsense. -And he answered them again, “I do not know....” - -For this reason King Solomon must pass down into Antan, to hear the -speaking of the last great word of power. - - - - - 31. - The Chivalry of Merlin - - -THEN said the third of these wise men: “I was Merlin Ambrosius. The -wisdom that I had was more than human, for it came to me from my father. -But I served Heaven with it. The land was starved and sick and -frightened. Many little chieftains fought in its wild naked fields, and -murderously waylaid one another in its old forests, causelessly. I made -the land an ordered realm. I gave the land one king, a king whose sword -was as bright as thirty torches. That sword flashed everywhither about -the land to enforce justice and every other virtue commendable to -Heaven. Arthur Pendragon and the knights who served him all served my -whims. They were my toys.... I in my playing gave to the gaping, -smooth-chinned boy, and to his shaggy followers, a notion to play with -in their turn. This notion was that each one of them, and that every -other man, was the child of God and his Father’s vicar upon earth; and -that each human life was all a journeying home, toward a not ever ending -happiness, and that it was a journeying which should be performed in a -style appropriate to Heaven’s heir apparent. Those savages believed me. -They were joyous both night and day. They learned to be envious of no -one, to love God, and to support no unjust cause. They learned to speak -seasonably and graciously, to be generous in giving, to clothe -themselves neatly, and to sing and dance, and to war fearlessly against -evil. It all quite upset my father.... Yet my notion was, I still -believe, a very beautiful notion. It created beauty everywhere, because, -as I have said, the heir apparent of Heaven must journey homeward in an -appropriate style. Yes, the results were eminently picturesque. Caerleon -arose; there was no city more delectable upon earth than was the -pleasant town of Caerleon, builded upon Usk between the forest and the -clear river. Arthur sat there upon a daïs over which was spread a -covering of flame-colored satin. Under his elbow was a cushion of red -satin. The lords and princes and the knights sat about King Arthur -Pendragon, each in his order and degree. The oppressed and the unhappy -came to Arthur. He was to the young a father, to the old a comforter. -Wrong was loathsome to him, the right was very dear to Arthur, and he -knew not what it was to fear. My father did not think at all well of -him.... But I was pleased with my toys, for now I found in every part of -the land a romantic strange beauty. The knights rode at adventure upon -enormous stallions. They clanked as they rode. They went masked in blue -armor and in crimson armor and in silver-speckled green armor. Upon -their heads were brightly colored lions and leopards and griffins and -sea horses, and very often their helmets were wrapped about with a -woman’s sleeve. The giants that these knights fought against were mighty -giants who ate at one meal six swine: the dragons that they fought -against were marvelous huge worms with shining scales and wattles and -magnificent whiskers. The maidens whom they rescued were each more -lovely than the day. These maidens had blond curling hair and frontlets -of red gold upon their heads. About each tender and rose-tinted body was -a gown of yellow satin. Upon the feet of these maidens were shoes of -variegated leather fastened with gilt clasps.... In fine, the heirs of -Heaven discharged their moral and constabulary duties quite -picturesquely as they rode homeward. It was in this way I who was Merlin -Ambrosius played with heroic virtues: it was thus that I who was the son -of my father made, for my amusement, men that were more virtuous and -colorful than Heaven had ever been able to make them. Still, still, it -really was a rather plainly outrageous notion upon which all this was -founded: and by and by the dear and droll, and heart-breakingly -beautiful antics of my flesh and blood toys did not content my desire.” - -Gerald remarked, now that the old gentleman had paused in his meditative -speaking, “Your desire, Messire Merlin, as I remember it, was for an -enchantress who outwitted and betrayed you.” - -“Men,” Merlin answered, with a grave smile, “have made a mistake in that -report. Is it likely that I could be outwitted? No: I was Merlin -Ambrosius.” - -And then Merlin told Gerald about the child Nimuë, who was the daughter -of the goddess Diana, and of how old, wearied, over-learned Merlin had -come to her in the likeness of a young squire. He told of how they -played for a long while with his ancient magics, there in the spring -woods, beside a very clear fountain in which the gravel shone like -powdered silver. To make this twelve-year-old child laugh, as she did so -adorably, the mage had turned into prettiness and drollery every -infernal device. He created for the child Nimuë, there in the April -woods, an orchard full of all those fruits and flowers, howsoever -unseasonably mingled, which have the liveliest sweetness and flavor. -Phantoms danced for her wide-eyed amusement, in the shaping of armed -knights and archbishops and crowned ladies and goat-legged fauns: and it -was all quite excellent fun.... Then Merlin told to Nimuë, because she -pouted so adorably, the secret of building a tower which is not made of -stone or timber or iron, and is so strong that it may never be felled -while this world endures. And Nimuë, the moment that he had fallen -asleep with his head in her lap, spoke very softly the old runes. In the -while that she continued to caress her lover, she imprisoned Merlin in -an enchanted tower which she had builded out of the magic air of April -above a flowering white hawthorn-bush, so that Nimuë might keep her -wonderful, so wise, dear lover utterly to herself. - -“And I was happy there for a long while,” said Merlin. “My toys, now -that I played no more with them, began to break one another. Dissension -and lust and hatred woke among them. They forgot the very pretty notion -which I had given them in their turn to play with. The land was no -longer an ordered realm. My toys now fought in the land’s naked fields, -and they murderously waylaid one another in its old forests. Arthur was -dead, at the hands of his own bastard son begotten in incest. It was an -awkward ending for the heir apparent of Heaven. The Round Table was -dissolved. The land was starved and sick and frightened.” - -Now Merlin, the old poet who did not any longer delight to shape and to -play with puppets, had paused: and he sat gazing thoughtfully, with -wholly patient, tired eyes, at nothing in particular. Then Merlin said: - -“I heard of all these things. They did not matter. I was happy. Yes, I -suppose that I was happy. My ways were utterly domestic. They stayed -thus for a long while.... There was no variety. In that small heaven -which a child had builded out of the magic air of April there was no -variety whatever. There was no enemy, no adversary for me to get the -better of through some cunning device. There was only happiness.... -Nimuë stayed always young and kind and beautiful and contented just -because I was there. The child loved me. But there was no variety. No -son of my father stays forever a domestic animal. So in the end I who -was Merlin Ambrosius found my desire was not in that tower of April air. -There was only heaven. There was only just such a never-changing -happiness as I had once talked about to the gaping, smooth-chinned boy -and to his shaggy followers.” - -“Yet how could you escape from the blessings of a happy home-life, -Messire Merlin, if that tower was truly enchanted?” - -“It does not seem reasonable that I should tell you all my secrets,” -Merlin replied, drily, “any more than it seemed reasonable that the son -of my father should share every secret with Nimuë. The child loved me -utterly. And I loved her. Yes, I loved Nimuë as I have loved no other -creature fluttering about earth. She did not seem to walk.... Even so, I -was Merlin Ambrosius. So in the end I left my child mistress. I quitted -the small heaven which a child’s pure-mindedness had contrived. And I go -now into Antan to get, it may be, my desire.” - -Then there was silence, now that the three mages had all spoken. - -And Gerald shook his head. “You gentlemen have talked with gratifying -candor. You have expressed yourself, with chaste simplicity, in very -plain short sentences. You have reasoned powerfully. You imply that -neither a wife nor a mistress, or even a harem, is able to dissuade a -wise man from this journeying toward the goal of all the gods. I infer -that, to the contrary, the domestic circumstances of no one of you were -wholly satisfactory in the old time. Well, that is a situation still to -be encountered more frequently than is desirable, even in Lichfield, and -it is the reason that I too am on my way to Antan. I am stopping here -just for the week-end. Yet I still do not know what in the world you -gentlemen really desire.” - -“For one, I desire nothing that is in this world,” replied Odysseus. - -“Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question! What do you three -expect to find in Antan? Because I can assure you that, after the -impending changes to be made in the government and other civic affairs -of Antan by the Lord of the Third Truth,—a deity, gentlemen, with -several not uninteresting aspects, a deity with whom I may without -boasting say that I have considerable influence,—why, then, the moment -everything is in tolerable working order, it will be a real pleasure to -afford you three gentlemen all possible courtesies.” - -But the three mages did not seem impressed. - -“I was wise,” said Solomon. “I knew all things save one thing. I did not -know that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all -else has perished. And that word no god knows until he has heard it -spoken by the Master Philologist.” - -“My desire,” said Merlin, “was for the maid Nimuë and for the love of my -child mistress. When I had my desire it did not content me. So I now go -into Antan to find, it may be, something which I can desire. But my -father’s son does not go asking favors of any god.” - -Then Gerald said: “Yet, you three mages who have traveled through the -Marches of Antan wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching is -that we copulate and die,—do you not look to find in the goal of all -the gods some third truth?” - -And it seemed to him that the faces of these myths had now become -somewhat evasive and more wary. - -But they said only, speaking severally: “A wise man knows that no truth -is affected either by his beliefs or by his hopes.”—“A wise man accepts -each truth as it is revealed to him.”—“A wise man will risk nothing -upon the existence of any truth.” - -“Still, gentlemen, these are enigmas! These sayings are not a plain -answer to a plain question: and I do not quite understand these -sayings.” - -They answered him, “There is no need that you should understand.” - -Then these three passed down toward the sunset statelily. And Gerald, -gazing after them, once more shook his red head. These wise myths seemed -to him in a bad way: it would not be easy to content the more eminent -sages among his future subjects, because these three at least, for all -their wisdom, appeared never to have found out what they wanted. - -Gerald shrugged. He, in any event, perfectly well knew what in this -bracing country air he wanted at once. So Gerald went in at once to -supper with his Maya who was such an excellent cook in her plain way. - - - - - 32. - A Boy That Might As Well Be - - -“WHAT more is needed,” Maya had asked, “to make this last day with me -pass pleasantly?” - -—For this, again, was the very last day which Gerald could possibly -spend in the trim log and plaster cottage. Maya had decided, without any -reticence, that it was high time he attended to whatsoever foolishness -he seemed to think himself committed to, in that disreputable low place -down yonder, and that to keep putting it off in this way looked like -shirking, and that, for her part, she simply could not understand why he -did not get his nonsense over with.... - -And Gerald said, “It would be nice if we had a son.” - -But Maya at once dissented, as, it seemed to Gerald she nowadays -dissented, at least in part, from everything that Gerald proposed. - -“No, Gerald,” said Maya. “For you would grow far too fond of him. You -would be foolish about him. You would be unwilling to leave him, you -probably never would leave him. And it would end in your being in my -way, and bothering me in the night season, and being under my feet all -day, for the rest of your life—” - -“But I am a god—” - -“Yes, Gerald, to be sure, you are. I had forgotten. I apologize. Now, do -not be upset about it! Stop pouting! You are a god, that is quite -understood. You are immortal, you are going to outlive me indefinitely, -and you are going to perform wonders in Antan, and it is all going to be -very nice. I hope so, anyhow. I was only saying it would be much better -for us to have no son.” - -But Gerald answered: “Do not keep contradicting me in that maddening -way! If you again fly out at me like that, Maya, you will rouse my -temper. Then I shall rage and roar and, quite possibly, ramp. I will -bluster and speak harshly. I will huff, I will puff, I will blow the -house down. For I insist it would be quite nice if we had a son.” - -“Oh, very well, then!” said Maya; and she turned with that sulkiness -which she ever and again displayed—nowadays,—toward a large basket of -magics. - -“—I mean, though, once he were old enough. Babies are too limited in -conversation, they are too vocal, and they are too leaky.” - -Maya had lifted from an amber basin a small shining lizard. She held it -toward her mouth, breathing softly upon the creature, in the while that -she answered Gerald. - -“I think, myself,” said Maya, “that, since you insist upon having a son, -he might as well be seven or eight years old to begin with.” - -Then Maya took off the top of the basket, she reached far into the blue -basket with the hand in which she held the shining lizard, and out of -this basket, clinging to Maya’s hand for support, climbed a freckled -red-haired boy, about eight years old, in blue garments, and having as -yet only one upper front tooth. - -“We have now got a splendid son,” said Gerald, contentedly. “But who is -to christen our son? For I shall of course call him Theodorick Quentin, -just as my father and my oldest brother were called.” - -The boy was, thus, named Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, and Gerald -delighted in the child. For the Lord of the Third Truth put off once -more his entry into his kingdom.... - -“I told you so!” said Maya. - -“But, really now, my darling, would you have me lacking in all proper -paternal feeling! It is necessary I give the child a fair start in life; -and I ask you, candidly, could any parent discharge that duty, with any -real thoroughness, in less than a week?” - -“That, though, is not at all what I said. And for any full-grown man to -be talking such nonsense—” - -“So now you see for yourself! Therefore I shall be leaving you both next -Tuesday, and it is quite useless for you to implore me to stay a -half-second longer than that. Besides, I rather like him.” - -Yet the child showed peculiarities. For one thing, his tongue had no red -in it, but was formed of perfectly white flesh. When Gerald noticed this -odd fact he said nothing about it, though, because Gerald comprehended -the limitations of gray magic. And for another thing, on the third day -of Theodorick’s existence, Gerald happened to lay aside his rose-colored -spectacles while he was playing with his son. Then the boy was not -there. Gerald shrugged, just in time to avoid shuddering. He replaced -his spectacles, and all was as before, to every freckle and each red -hair. - -After that, Gerald wore his spectacles always. - -For Theodorick Quentin Musgrave had become very dear to him. No more -than any other father could Gerald rationally explain this dearness or -justify it by any common-sense logic. He only knew that the brat aroused -in him a tenderness which came appreciably near to being unselfish; that -it worried him to have the brat go unchristened in this neighborhood so -full of sorcerers and wizards; that when he touched the brat it pleased -him, for no assignable reason; and that when the brat displayed the -mildest gleam of intelligence, it at once seemed quite brilliant and -profound, and inexpressibly beyond all other people’s children. - -For Theodorick noticed everything. And Gerald delighted particularly in -the child’s intelligence and powers of observation, because, since no -sort of cleverness could possibly be inherited from poor dear stupid -Maya, all the boy’s more excellent mental traits were obviously -paternal. - -For example, “There is a lady,” Theodorick had stated, pointing toward -Antan. - -“Oh, any number of ladies, my son,” Gerald assented, as he thought of -the many beautiful goddesses and feminine myths who (for all that, he -reflected, he had never seen any female creature pass toward Antan) must -be aiding to make yet more glorious that kingdom over which Gerald would -by this time next week be ruling. - -And Gerald’s hand went to the shoulder of the freckled brat whom, after -next week, he would not ever be seeing any more: and Gerald wondered at -the wholly illogical pleasure he derived just from touching this child. - -“Oh, yes, there are no doubt a great many ladies in Antan,” said Gerald, -“and the coincidence is truly quaint that I have not yet seen any woman -traveling in that direction.” - -But the boy explained he meant the very large lady lying down over -yonder as if she were dead, but not dead, because her heart was -breathing. - -Then Gerald saw that, in point of fact, the hills toward the southwest -had, from this station, the shaping of a woman’s body. She seemed to lie -flat on her back, with her long hair outspread everywhither about her -head, of which the profile, now that you look for it, was complete and -quite definitely formed. Also you saw her throat and her high breasts, -whence the hills sloped downward into the contour of a relatively -smallish, flat belly. Just here the outline of the vast violet-tinted -figure was broken by the nearer green hill immediately across the road -which led to Antan, but all that you could see of this womanlike figure -was complete and perfectly moulded. Moreover, Gerald noted that, near -where the heart would have been, a forest fire was sending up its -languid smoke, which was, of course, what Theodorick Quentin Musgrave -had meant by saying that the lady’s heart was breathing. - -Gerald was very proud of Theodorick’s cleverness in noticing the shaping -of these hills, which Gerald himself had not ever observed, in the -entire three weeks he had spent upon Mispec Moor. But when this odd -accident of nature was pointed out to Maya, she only said that she saw -what you meant of course, but that, after all, it was only two hills, -and that hills looked much more like hills than they looked like -anything else. - - - - - PART NINE - THE BOOK OF MISPEC MOOR - - “To Tame the Wolf You Must Marry Him.” - - - - - 33. - Limitations of Gaston - - -IT WAS at this time, toward the middle of June, that Gaston Bulmer -came from Lichfield. Gerald was sitting, as was his daily custom now, -under the chestnut-tree beside the road which led to Antan. He waited -there to engage in conversation the next of his future subjects who -might pass by in that perpetual journeying toward Antan. Gerald, under -this same chestnut-tree, had by this time talked with many such -unearthly wayfarers: and if the rather interesting things they had told -him were all written down, it would make a book unutterably enormous and -utterly incredible. - -In such circumstances it was, just after two not unfamiliar mountebanks -had gone by carrying with them the paraphernalia of their Punch and -Judas show, that Gerald noticed a small sulphur-colored cloud sweeping -rapidly from the east. It descended: and when it was near to Gerald, it -unclosed. Gaston Bulmer then stepped, a bit rheumatically, from its -glowing depths, and he laid down a rod of cedar wood tipped with an -apple carved in blue-stone. - -There was not in all this anything in itself astonishing, since Gaston -Bulmer was an adept in the arts of which Gerald, in the strange days -before he knew that he was a god, had been a student. But to note how -Gaston had aged in the last week or so was astounding. Yet Gerald, in -any case, was wholly delighted to see again his old friend and -preceptor, and a person who had for so long been virtually his -father-in-law. - -Gaston would not come up to the cottage, though, for dinner, because, as -he confessed, he preferred not to encounter Maya. Rather, it was his -wish, and it seemed, indeed, to be his errand, to free Gerald from what -Gaston Bulmer, surprisingly enough, described as the wise woman’s -pernicious magic. - -Gerald said: “Oh, bosh! For really now, Gaston, if such nonsense were -not heart-breaking it would be side-splitting. I am inexpressibly -shocked by your hallucination, which is, I trust, of a most transitory -nature. However, let us not discuss my wife, if you please. Instead, do -you tell me how my body is faring.” - -So they sat down together under the chestnut-tree. And Gaston Bulmer -answered, “That body, Gerald, since you quitted it, has become a noted -scholar and a man of letters.” - -“Ah! ah!” said Gerald, greatly pleased, “so my romance about Dom Manuel -of Poictesme has been completed, and is now being admired everywhere!” - -“No, for your body has become, just as I said, a scholar. Scholars do -not write romances.” - -“Yet you referred to a man of letters—?” - -“Your body is now a rather famous ethnologist. Your body deals with -historical and scientific truths. Your body thus writes large quartos -upon topics to which no romance, howsoever indelicate, could afford to -devote a sentence.” - -Gerald fell to stroking that long chin of his. “Still, I recall that the -present informant of my body once informed me there were only two truths -of which any science could be certain.” - -“And what were these two truths?” - -Gerald named them. - -Gaston said then: “The demon is consistent. For these two are precisely -your body’s scientific specialty. To-day your body writes invaluable -books in which the quaint and interesting customs that accompany an -interplay of these two truths, and the various substitutes for that -interplay, are catalogued and explained, as these customs have existed -in all lands and times. Lichfield to-day is wholly proud of the -scholarship and the growing fame of Gerald Musgrave.” - -“I am glad that my body has turned out so splendidly. And I trust that -all goes equally well with your daughter Evelyn?” - -“Gerald,” the older man replied, looking more seriously troubled than -Gerald ever liked to have anybody seeming in his company, “Gerald, it is -an unfair thing that your Cousin Evelyn, without knowing it, should be -living upon terms of such close friendship with a demon-haunted body.” - -“Ah, so that friendship continues!” - -“It continues,” said Gaston, “unaltered. It may interest you, Gerald, by -the way, to hear that your Cousin Evelyn has now a son, quite a fine -red-headed boy, born just a year after you relinquished your body to -that treacherous Sylan.” - -Gerald answered affably: “Why, that is perfectly splendid! Frank always -wanted a boy.” - -“My son-in-law, in fact, is much pleased. It is about my daughter I was -thinking. It seems to me the situation is hardly fair to her, Gerald.” - -Gerald replied: “My body is all of me that she was ever acquainted with, -Gaston. So I fail to perceive that anything is altered.” - -“Yet, when I reflect that a beautiful and accomplished and chaste -gentlewoman, Gerald—” - -“Ah, ah! But, yes, to be sure! you speak in the time-hallowed terms of -Lichfield. And I really do not know why I interrupted you.” - -“—When I reflect that, without knowing it, a gentlewoman is living upon -terms of such close friendship with a mere demon-haunted body—” - -“And is, in fact, trusting and giving all?” - -“All her friendship and the natural affection of a kinswoman. Yes, that -is a sad spectacle. It is an unsuitable spectacle. So it seems to me -your duty as a Musgrave, and as a Southern gentleman, to return -forthwith to mortal living and to your mortal obligations, and in -particular to the obligations of your life-long friendship with your -Cousin Evelyn.” - -Gerald said, for the second time, “Oh, bosh!” - -For the notions and the chivalrous assumptions of Gaston Bulmer all now -appeared to Gerald out of reason, in view of the divine predestination -which was upon him. A god had no concern with such slight imbroglios as -the code of a merely terrestrial gentleman and the proper maintenance -upon Earth of polite adultery. It would, indeed, be positively ill-bred -for a Dirghic god to meddle with any of the affairs of a planet which, -according to Gerald’s Protestant Episcopal faith, had been created and -was controlled by an Episcopalian deity; for Gerald had of course -retained, provisionally, that religion in which he was a communicant -until he could find out something rather more definite about the -religion in which he was a god. - -Gerald therefore said: “My good Gaston, that your meaning is excellent, -I do not doubt. And it is not your fault of course that, in your merely -human condition, you do not quite understand these matters, and -certainly cannot view them with an omniscient eye.” - -The older man said: “I understand, in any event, that through all these -years you have stayed here bewitched with terrible half-magics, and that -your own eyes are blinded with the woman’s rose-colored spectacles. And -I seek to preserve you.” - -“You would preserve me for the provincial life of your little Lichfield! -You would make me just another chivalrous, bull-headed, rather -nice-looking and wholly stupid Musgrave! In fine, you would urge me to -become genteel and to deny my glorious destiny. Yet to do that would be -cowardly, Gaston: for, whether I like it or not, there is upon me the -divine obligation to fulfil some very ancient prophecies.” - -“What sort of prophecies are these?” - -“They are Dirghic prophecies. But, then, it is not the language in which -a prophecy is uttered that matters, rather it is—Well, it is the spirit -of the thing! For you must know—although, in view of my wife’s social -position, I have compelled her, after some little argument, to introduce -me hereabouts as a visiting sorcerer,—yet I may tell you, in strict -confidence, Gaston, it is decreed that, as the Lord of the Third Truth, -I am to reign in Antan.” - -“And who told you any such unlikely nonsense?” - -“Some people that I met upon the road. Oh, quite honest looking people, -Gaston!” - -“And who told you that you were the Lord of any Third Truth?” - -“There my authority is unimpeachable. For I had it from the lips of a -beautiful and accomplished and chaste gentlewoman, Gaston, who was -speaking with all the frankness begotten by our being in bed together at -the time.” - -“And how can you reign in Antan, or anywhere else, when you do not ever -go there? Through all these years, I gather, you have loitered here -within a man’s arm’s reach of Antan!” - -Gerald said, with the slight frown of one who finds trouble uncongenial: -“I am puzzled, my dear friend, by your continued references to all these -years. And I admit that various matters have a bit hindered my technical -and merely formal entry into my kingdom. Yet I shall be leaving Mispec -Moor the instant that this week’s washing is in, on Thursday -afternoon—” - -“But, my poor Gerald! you will not go, either forward to Antan or back -to Lichfield, on what you think to be next Thursday. You have lost here -all sense of time, you do not even know that the days you have spent in -this place have counted as four years in Lichfield. I tell you that the -wise woman, with her half-magics and her accursed spectacles, holds you -here bewitched. And I now perceive that nothing whatever can be done for -you, who are ensnared by the most fatal of all the magics of the -wrinkled goddess.” - -—To which Gerald, for the third time, replied: “Oh, bosh! No sorceress -has any power over a god. And so completely do you misunderstand my -wife, Gaston, that I must tell you hardly a day passes without her -urging me to hurry on to Antan.” - -Gaston Bulmer was still regarding him with that extraordinary and wholly -uncalled-for look of compassion. - -“How completely,” he remarked, “she understands you Musgraves! Yes, you -are lost, my poor Gerald.” - -“—It follows that your notions are preposterous. Oh, that is not your -fault, my dear fellow, and not for an instant am I blaming you. Your -conduct, from your human point of view, is very right, very friendly, -very proper. So your rather laughable blunder does not offend me in the -least. And if, as you declare, I have lingered here for some four years -as you human beings estimate time, what do four years amount to with an -immortal who has at his disposal all eternity? Come now, Gaston, do you -but answer me that very simple question!” - -But Gaston answered only: “You are content. You are lost.” - - - - - 34. - Ambiguity of the Brown Man - - -AND Gaston said no more about the matter, because just here their -talking was interrupted. For now, as these two still sat at the -roadside, they were joined by a brown man, dressed completely in neat -brown, who was journeying toward Antan. - -“Hail, friend!” said Gerald, “and what business draws you to the city of -all marvels?” - -And the brown man, pausing, said that, in point of fact, it was upon a -slight matter of business routine that he desired to consult with Queen -Freydis. All gods, he said, had rather speedily passed downward to -encounter the word which was in the beginning,—for it was thus that the -brown man spoke, very much as King Solomon had spoken,—all gods, that -is, save only one, who so bewilderingly altered his tenets that there -was no telling where to have him. - -The brown man thought that, nowadays, in a comparatively enlightened -nineteenth century, was perhaps the appropriate time for something to be -done about this celestial chameleon. And in any case, he said yet -further, he always enjoyed his little conferences with Freydis, who was -rather a dear— - -“So, so!” said Gerald, “you, sir, have previously visited Antan?” - -“Oh, very often. For I am the adversary of all the gods of men.” - -And Gerald viewed with natural interest the one person who pretended to -know at first-hand anything about Gerald’s appointed kingdom: yet, even -so, if this brown gentleman, as Gerald had begun to suspect, happened to -be the Father of All Lies, there was no real point to questioning him, -inasmuch as you could believe none of his answers. - -“—For, I infer,” said Gerald, “that you who travel on the road of gods -and myths are that myth not unfamiliar to my Protestant Episcopal -rearing; and that I have now the privilege, so frequently anticipated -for me by my nearer relatives, of addressing the devil?” - -“I retain of course in every mythology, including the Semitic, my -niche,” replied the brown man, “from which to speak to intelligent -persons in somewhat varying voices.” - -Then Gaston Bulmer arose, and the aging adept shaped a sign which to -Gerald was unfamiliar. - -“I suspect, sir,” said Gaston Bulmer, “that my mother’s father, who was -called Florian de Puysange, once heard the speaking of that voice.” - -“It is a tenable hypothesis. I in my day have spoken much.” - -“—As did, I believe, yet another forebear of mine, the great Jurgen, -from whom descends the race of Puysange, and who once encountered -someone rather like you in a Druid wood—” - -“I cannot deny it. The Druids also knew me. I, who am the Prince of this -world, meet however, as you will readily understand, so many millions of -people during the course of my efforts to keep them contented with my -kingdom that it is not always possible for me to recollect every one of -my beneficiaries.” - -“Still,” Gerald said, “you have played in large historical events a -strange high part; you have known all the very best people: and you must -have much of interest to tell me about. You, sir, at least shall dine -with me, since my friend here is obdurate. My wife avoids the usual run -of gods, but to devils I have never heard her voice the slightest -objection. So, if you will do me the honor to accompany me to my -temporary home, in that cottage—” - -But the brown man smiled. And he excused himself. - -“For your wife and I are not wholly strangers. And the circumstances in -which we last parted were, I confess, a bit awkward. So I really believe -it would be more pleasant, for everyone concerned, for me not to meet -your wife just now. Do you present, none the less, my compliments.” - -“And whose compliments shall I tell her that they are?” - -“Do you say a friend of her earliest youth passed by, one somewhat -intimately known to her before she first became a mother; and I make no -doubt that Havvah will understand.” - -“But my wife’s married name is Maya, and before our marriage it was -Æsred—” - -“Ah, yes!” the brown man said, precisely as Glaum had done, “women do -vary in their given names. Do you present my compliments, then, to your -wife: for that word, by and by, means the same thing to every husband.” - -“I will convey the message,” Gerald promised: “but the aphorism I would -prefer to have delivered by somebody else.” - -And he so parted with both his guests. - -For Gaston Bulmer embraced Gerald and then went sorrowfully back to -Lichfield, in a cloud which the aging adept’s despondency made quite -black: and the brown man leisurely strolled on toward Antan, with the -ease of one who was well used to walking to and fro about the earth. - -He did not hurry, nor did he look inquisitively about him, Gerald -noticed, as has done the other travelers toward the city of all marvels. -The brown man, alone of the many that had passed toward Antan, appeared -to travel upon a road with which he was thoroughly acquainted, toward a -familiar goal. - - - - - 35. - Of Kalki and a Döppelganger - - -SO IT was that Gerald stayed yet a while longer upon Mispec Moor. July -passed uneventfully. Each pleasant summer day found Gerald sitting -beneath his chestnut-tree at the roadside: and he talked there with many -wayfarers who have no part in this tale. For almost all these travelers -told the same story. Nine out of every ten of them had yesterday been a -god whom human beings served; each had been worshipped by mankind in one -or another quarter of the world: to-day their human concerns were over, -and they journeyed toward the goal of all the gods. What did they look -to find there? Gerald would ask: and—to this very simple -question,—every one of them replied evasively. They went to hear that -word which was in the beginning, and which would be after everything -else had perished, that word which was unknown to all the gods of men. -They would say no more: and Gerald did not deeply bother about the -matter, because he was nowadays quite well contented, and when he went -to Antan would soon be clearing up every mystery for himself. - -And the divine steed Kalki also appeared content enough, nor was his -aspect altered by inaction. The horse retained that uniform strange -shining and that metallic glitter which made him seem actually to be -made of untarnished silver. Of course when you saw him grazing upon -Mispec Moor just after a rain-shower his back would be dark and sleek, -and his broad sides would be streaked with wavering, oily-looking bands. -But at all other times he kept his glowing silver color, which was -unlike that of any other horse Gerald had ever seen. - -Meanwhile the divine steed grazed with the geldings who once had been -the human lovers of Maya. He went as they did, lifting each hoof with -somewhat droll carefulness as he grazed forward on the sloping ground -about the cottage. For Gerald would often watch this grazing. And to him -these horses as they moved slowly and irregularly windward seemed -continually to pick up and to replace their hoofs upon the ground as -though they believed each hoof to be a rather fragile parcel. The -pendulous, stretched, heavy necks of these horses, each neck staying -always monotonously parallel to all the other necks, appeared to him too -heavy ever again to be lifted erect. To wonder in the drowsy summer -afternoon how this lifting could possibly be achieved aroused an -unpleasant sensation in Gerald’s collarbone. - -So Kalki fed all day among the geldings, and on windy nights he huddled -with them in the lee of the cottage. Each day Kalki went looking -downward, grazing interminably, and without ever ceasing to move those -wobbling, dark, prehensile, rotatory, snuffling lips as the divine steed -fed upon the sparse grass of Mispec Moor. He, just as greedily as the -geldings, would contort his lips and twist his head when he attempted to -get at the longer and more luscious grass which grew almost inaccessibly -about the fence posts. And to reflection there was something of the -incongruous in the spectacle of a divine steed engrossed by this -problem. - -Now and again, as Gerald noted also, the stallion would raise his superb -head, and Kalki would look almost wistfully toward Antan. But soon he -would be back at his grazing: and, upon the whole, he seemed content -enough with the pleasures appropriate to ordinary horses. And Gerald -thought too that, nowadays, Kalki looked less often toward the goal of -all the gods. - -Yet Kalki turned out to be not wholly unique. For, one morning, as -Gerald went toward his chestnut-tree, he noted the approach from afar of -a traveler who rode upon a horse that had very much the appearance of -Kalki. And when Gerald had reached the roadway he saw that the newcomer -was in fact mounted upon a steed which might well have been Kalki’s -twin. - -“Hail, friend!” said Gerald, “And what business draws you to the city of -all marvels?” - -Then a regrettable thing happened; for the young horseman pretended not -to have heard Gerald, and as the boy passed he looked investigatively -about Mispec Moor, and he pretended not to have seen Gerald, who stood -within a few feet of him. - -He was a notably handsome boy, too, in a blue coat and a golden yellow -waistcoat, with a tall white stock and ruffles about his throat. His -hair seemed red: and Gerald noted, moreover, the lazy and mildly -humorous, half-mocking gaze with which this boy regarded Mispec Moor, as -he rode by unhurriedly toward Antan, without any pausing, and Gerald -noted in particular the very lovely smiling of this boy’s so amply -curved and rather womanish mouth, as the boy went by upon the horse -which was astonishingly like Kalki. - -Yes, he had quite the air of a gentleman: and it was a great pity that -this young whippersnapper had not the manners of a gentleman also, -Gerald reflected, as Gerald stood there, feeling unwarrantably snubbed, -and blinking behind his rose-colored spectacles. - - - - - 36. - Tannhäuser’s Troubled Eyes - - -AND upon yet another day Gerald talked with the comely but now aged -knight Tannhäuser, as this famous myth passed by, in full armor, upon -his journey into Antan. - -“There,” said Tannhäuser, “there I may find again, it may be, the fair -Dame Venus and all the brave and high-hearted sinners who would not -compromise with the narrow and cruel ways of respectable persons.” - -“My friend,” said Gerald, mildly, “there is considerable virtue to be -found, here and there, among respectable persons. There is even a virtue -in compromise.” - -And Tannhäuser shouted: “That I deny! All my life denies that, and so -long as my name lives I am that lie’s denial! For it was the good and -the respectable who betrayed me. I found pride and worldliness and a -lack of cordiality to exist among the bourgeoisie and even among those -professional churchmen who should have been the first to sustain and -guide a repentant sinner. And so I turned again to that frankly pagan -beauty which is hateful to pious and small-minded persons.” - -Then this resplendent gray-haired myth spoke heatedly of his own life -history and of how his love for this frankly pagan beauty had led him -into the hollow mountain called the Hörselberg, to live there as the -lover of Dame Venus in all manner of frankly pagan pleasure-seeking; and -of how, after seven years of frankly pagan recreations, when repentance -smote him, abetted by the frailties of middle age, it was among the -leading church members, and in the heart of the very head of the church, -that he had found no sympathy. Therefore Tannhäuser was returning to -those frankly pagan recreations, so far at least as they were consistent -with late middle life, because he was disgusted by those whining and -hypocritical, cruel church members. - -And Gerald listened. He remembered how in the Mirror of Caer Omn he for -a while had been Tannhäuser. Yet it was a queer thing, and a -circumstance which made Gerald suspect time to be changing him, somehow, -who used to be such a tremendous iconoclast, that now this old -rebellious myth,—which represented yet another of Gerald’s discarded -personalities,—appeared to Gerald remarkably over-colored and rather -pitiably foolish. For here was a story which led to wrong conclusions. -It ended by depicting a god at loggerheads with the head of his own -church: and it begot, somewhat inevitably, those loud sneers at the -bourgeois virtues, and those denunciations of people who, after all, had -done nothing worse than to live quiet and common-sense lives which -Tannhäuser was now declaiming, and which to Gerald appeared unutterably -childish. There was no conceivable reason why a well-thought-of pope -should be hobnobbing with and coddling a broken-down old lecher just -come out of a superior brothel. In fact, in reproving Pope Urban so -publicly, Heaven had been, to Gerald’s finding, rather tactless, and had -violated the _esprit de corps_ which ought to be preserved among the -fellow workers in every church. And in any case, Tannhäuser’s present -reflections upon religion were not such as Gerald, now that he had -become a god, could listen to with approval. - -Still, Gerald did listen: and Gerald smiled, friendlily enough. - -“I know, I know!” said Gerald. “I know, friend, all about you. When you -repented of evil-doing,—and, really, you did take your time about -that,—then you turned hopefully to religion, but, alas! you were -repelled by its ministers. You found them to be human beings subject to -human frailties. You found that—in Heaven’s eyes, anyhow,—even a pope -might make a mistake. And so, quite naturally, you proceeded to drown -the surprise and horror awakened by this discovery in out-and-out -debauchery and in cutting reflections upon all pew-renters. For your -discovery was revolutionary; no doubt the stars were shaken in their -courses, to observe a human being making a mistake; and you also must -have found the spectacle extremely trying. Still, you in this way became -useful to romantic art.” - -Then Gerald said: “Lord, man, but what a following you have had! and -what a number of people have got harmless pleasure out of developing the -discovery which Tannhäuser first made, that inconsistency and -mean-spiritedness may be found among the clergy and the churchgoers! You -will thus continue to be a benefactor of your kind for centuries, I have -not a doubt. Yet I sometimes fancy that inconsistency and -mean-spiritedness may be found even among recognizedly depraved persons -who do not go to any church at all. I find that every religion cows a -number of its devotees into a thrifty-minded practice of generally -beneficent virtues. The average of desirable qualities in the -congregation of every church appears to me, after all, quite perceptibly -higher than is that average among the regular customers of any brothel -or the clients of the public hangman. I do not deny that my discovery -also is, from any æsthetic standpoint, revolutionary. I confess that it -is nowhere represented in romance, as yet, and that no conceivable -realist can ever regard such a grotesque fancy with anything save -loathing. But I believe that some day an intrepid handling of this -daring theme will prodigally repay some very great innovator, and will -become useful to romantic art.” - -And Gerald said also: “Moreover, you remain quite invaluable as a -pretext and a palliation whenever youth hungers for its fling. Only, I -must dare point out, my dear sir, that your second century-long fling -was, by the best people, unavoidably, felt to be excessive. All of us, -more or less, have had our flings: even so, a fling needs to be -conducted, and above all to be wound up, with some discretion. It ought -to be high-hearted and lyrical in every feature: it ought especially to -have the briefness of the lyric. And it ought not, no, it really ought -not, to wind up in the Hörselberg. Now I, too, my friend, for example, -have had my fling. But I have had it in a quiet, self-controlled and -gentlemanly way, without overdoing the thing. Thereafter I settled -down,—just temporarily, to be sure, but still I have settled down,—in -no lewd and feverish Hörselberg, but here, where a contented husband -risks no further chance of becoming useful to romantic art.” - -“It is possible for one to exist, but not for anybody to live, here!” -replied Tannhäuser, scornfully, as his wild gaze swept over the still -stretches of Mispec Moor. - -“Allow me!” said Gerald, with the tiniest of smiles; and he perched his -rose-colored spectacles upon the beaked high nose of Tannhäuser. - -There was a pause. And Tannhäuser sighed. - -“I see,” said the knight then, “a quiet little home of your own, in the -country, with your wife and with the kiddies, too, I daresay. And with -fresh vegetables, of course, right out of your own garden.” - -“In just such a home, Messire Tannhäuser, as is the cornerstone of every -nation, the cradle of all the virtues, and the guiding-star of I forget -precisely what. It is also the brightest jewel in the crown of something -or other, and it assists other desirable abstractions in the capacity of -a bulwark, a spur, and an anchor. It is, you may depend upon it, the -proper place in which to end one’s fling.” - -“And I! I might, if only I had married that dear fine sweet girl -Elizabeth, I, too, might have had such a home! For, after all, there is -nothing like marriage and the love of a good woman. An endless round of -perpetual pleasure-seeking rings hollow by and by, and one hungers for -the simple sacred joys of home-life. I must, oh, very decidedly, I must -settle down. I, too, must have just such a home as this.” - -But the thought of all which he had been missing so affected Tannhäuser -that he took off the spectacles and unaffectedly wiped his eyes. After -that the aging, comely knight sat for a while silent and rather -frightened looking. He stared again at the cottage and at the moor, and -then he stared at Gerald. - -“And you live in this hole, with a muddy brat and a dull-witted, -middle-aged, not at all good-looking woman for your only company! I -marvel at the enchantment which controls you. At least Dame Venus held -me with an intelligible sort of sorcery.” - -“That,” Gerald replied, as he contentedly put on his rose-colored -spectacles again, “is nonsense.” - -“It is a very dreadful nonsense. It is a soul-destroying and besotting -nonsense, from which I flee to look for the less terrible enchantments -of the Hörselberg.” - -Then Gerald put his question. “You, who have traveled through the -Marches of Antan, wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching -is that we copulate and die,—do you not look to find in the goal of all -the gods some third truth?” - -But the comely knight seemed not to have heard this question, in his -frank terror of domesticity. Tannhäuser had mounted his horse, and he -now rode galloping like a madman toward Antan. - - - - - 37. - Contentment of the Mislaid God - - -NOW life contented Gerald as he lived it through this recognized -parenthesis in his divine career. Very soon this little episode of his -stay upon Mispec Moor would be ended: it would even be forgotten, -perhaps, in the press of regal and superhuman affairs. Meanwhile he -lived in quite tolerable ease. He had nothing to trouble him. Hardly a -morning passed without his finding some more or less interesting -celestial outcast to talk to under his chestnut-tree. Maya continued to -be an excellent cook, in her plain, unpretentious way: and she saw to it -that the cottage was kept comfortable and efficient in all appointments. - -And Maya was dear to him. She nowadays found fault with virtually -everything that Gerald did. And whenever he ventured any suggestion, as -to Theodorick or the economics of the cottage or their social -engagements in Turoine,—or even if Gerald as much as suggested opening -or closing a window,—Maya at once produced at least nine grounds upon -which the suggestion was plainly very foolish and would never have -occurred to anyone of real intelligence. And she cherished the most -imaginative views as to the extent of Gerald’s selfishness and lack of -consideration for other people, and of his habit of never doing anything -whatever for her pleasure. - -Sometimes, though, she would go for as much as an hour without dwelling, -at especial length, upon what a trial Gerald was to her in one way or -another. And in all respects she was a capable woman who made him an -excellent wife, and treated him far better than she could have found any -excuse for doing in what she said about him. - -And Gerald loved Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, also, with an affection -which rather troubled Gerald. The child, he knew, displayed no -extraordinary charm nor talent: no course of reasoning could justify any -extreme fondness for Theodorick upon the ground of his physical or -mental gifts. Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was not brilliant, he was not -lovely, he was not especially amiable: he was, indeed, by way of being a -particularly selfish small tyrant, continually adding to the disorder of -the cottage, to the dismay of Gerald’s finicky liking for neatness, and -continually devising unneeded trouble and commandeering manual tasks -from his parents because of the droll pleasure which Theodorick appeared -to derive from seeing his parents fetch and carry in his service. - -Yet, whensoever Gerald put his arm about the small, warm, yielding, -sturdy, but so helpless body, it was as though Gerald’s own body were -melting in a grateful glow of what was—bewilderingly—a sort of panic -terror. He loved this freckled, fragile creature with an unwisdom which -was, as Gerald knew, an assuredness of more or less future discomfort -and, it well might be, of anguish, for him who quite honestly disliked -trouble of any kind. Since this child had been created, Gerald’s -well-being was not any longer a matter which Gerald could hope to -control or even to protect: his happiness was now risked upon what might -befall this imp. It was the helplessness of the child which frightened -Gerald with a sense of his own helplessness. Life was so cruel to -children. Life damaged and hurt children in so many ways inevitably. And -every hurt to this child, now, would be an anguish to Gerald, who could -avoid none of them. He could not even manage to get the child properly -christened, in this neighborhood so profuse in sorcerers and wizards, -who used, as everybody knew, unchristened children in horrible ways -which it was not comfortable to think about.... - -Then, too, Gerald was not certain Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was real. -Gerald remembered always, at the back of his mind, that frightful -instant when he had removed his spectacles, to find the child had -vanished. Gerald assured himself that the cause was a slight -indigestion, and that the moment’s blur of vision came from a disordered -stomach. But he was wholly careful not ever again to look at Theodorick -except through the rose-colored spectacles which made visible the magics -of Maya. He kept resolutely out of his full attention the fact that -Theodorick might be an illusion which Maya had created. And he grew -accustomed to that unusual milk-colored tongue, which showed like a -white snake within the red moist little mouth whenever the child -laughed. - -And Gerald sometimes wondered if Maya had over-ambitiously designed to -make permanent this mere parenthesis in his career. She had attempted, -to be sure, no magic such as that with which she had transformed his -predecessors. No sorceress would dare, for that matter, thus to presume -against a god.... Gerald knew that, instead, it was his Maya’s wholesome -simplicity and the prosaic human comfort which he did get, after all, -from living with this middle-aged and fault-finding and not in the least -beautiful woman that had detained him, just for the while of this -parenthesis in his career. He of course would pass on, to enter into his -kingdom, by and by. And there was no conceivable hurry about it, now -that his journeying to Antan was for every practical purpose finished, -and now that whensoever he elected he might within the next half-hour or -so be taking over the realm and all the powers of the Master -Philologist. - -Meanwhile, though, Gerald would now and then wonder amusedly if his -dear, stupid Maya could perhaps have struck upon the device of detaining -him by not using any magic whatever: if she in secret flattered herself -that this device was succeeding: and if she actually cherished the -delusion that she was hoodwinking omniscient Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper -and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly -Ones? - -Anyhow, his life here very amiably contented him for the while. The -local circles of sorcerers and wizards were pleasant enough, barring -only that haunting memory as to how they used unchristened children. -Gerald and Maya did not go out a great deal; but they were on friendly -terms with the neighbors; they attended an occasional Sabbat; and they -kept in touch generally with the affairs of Turoine. And for the rest, -the little happenings of his home life temporarily contented the Lord of -the Third Truth. - -And he began to reflect that, just possibly, Antan might be to him, -after he had entered into his kingdom, a disappointment. From here Antan -seemed uniformly wonderful. It was astonishingly pleasant to sit upon -the western porch of the small cottage, especially toward evening, when -your shoes propped up before you on the porch railing reflected a -pinkish glow from the sunset, and to imagine what was going on in that -broad expanse of yet unvisited fields and hills which now were turning -into gray and purple mists directly beneath the gold and crimson of the -sunset. The trouble was that you, who were gifted with the imagination -of a god, were very certainly imagining more wonderful happenings for -that mysterious theatre than could by any chance be enacted there. - -For one matter, after dark, Antan always displayed eight lights, six of -them grouped together in the middle of the vista with the general effect -of a cross, and the other two showing much farther off to the northwest. -About those never-varying huge lights Gerald had formed at least twenty -delightful theories, all plausible as long as you remained upon Mispec -Moor, whereas if you went to Antan not more at most than one of these -theories could prove true. - -To go to Antan thus meant the destruction of no less than nineteen -rather beautiful ideas as to those lights alone. However, Gerald felt, -there was no help for this: and he whole-heartedly meant to take over -his appointed kingdom without any unpleasant criticizing, no matter what -might be the deficiencies of the place, by and by. Meanwhile, there was -no great hurry: and it was, indeed, a prudent and long-sighted course -for him to be pausing here to enjoy these fine scenic effects, because -by and by he would not ever again be seeing Antan from this distance. - -After nightfall those eight lights never varied. But by day there was -always a different and, as it seemed, a more lovely display of rounded, -parti-colored, cleared hills, which here and there were darklier -streaked, no doubt with orchards. Beyond them many flat-topped mountains -showed, yet farther to the west, like a sleeping herd of gigantic blue -crocodiles all couched across the west and facing north. And above so -much terrestrial graciousness moved an incessant pageant of clouds, not -a bit like the flat clouds which you looked up at from Lichfield, -because the clouds which brooded over Antan were seen, from Gerald’s -station upon Mispec Moor, as on a level with you: and, when they were -thus considered sidewise, they resembled moving walls and crags and -drifting curtains through which the sunlight smote in slanting and huge -and pallid and quite tangible looking shafts. - -Always, too, you noticed, nowadays, that vast and violet-shrouded, -high-breasted woman’s figure lying yonder, motionless, with that -ever-burning heart; and you were visited by an odd fancy. You fancied -that Queen Freydis, the as yet unwon-to queen of your appointed kingdom, -was like that woman. And this fancy came to you none the less often -because of your plain perception of its illogic. - -“Come, now!” said Gerald, “a mistress of that size would be unsuitable. -Charms of so diffuse an acreage would create, even in a god, a sense of -inadequacy. Nevertheless, I am falling rather ardently in love with -those two hills. I begin to adore the casual play of lights and shadows -upon yonder piled-up dirt, which when seen from any other station than -this would not in the least resemble a woman. And such amorous notions, -apart from their insanity, are not befitting in a contentedly, if -temporarily, married person.” - -The transience of his comforts made them very dear. It was well worth -the inconvenience of sleeping in his spectacles (as Gerald, for his own -reasons, did) so that in the night season he could awaken, to see Maya’s -tranquil brown head yonder beside the smaller and tousled and livelily -red head of Theodorick Quentin Musgrave,—both visible yonder because of -the lamp which the child demanded at night, and because of his -insistence that Mother was to sleep with him instead of with Father. - -Outside, Gerald would hear those of his transformed predecessors who now -were horses, shuffling and restively stamping, and at times snorting and -whinnying, in the chill outer darkness; or a misguided gentleman who -lived nowadays as a steer would low, much farther off; or Gerald would -hear yet another one of Maya’s former husbands coughing, with the -far-reaching and morose scornfulness peculiar to a sheep. And then the -difference between the estate of Gerald’s predecessors and the snug -warmth of his so comfortable soft bed, and his knowledge of that -unmarred bodily ease which, just now, was his through every hour of the -day, would trouble Gerald, because he knew it all to be so satisfying -and so transient. - - - - - PART TEN - THE BOOK OF ENDINGS - - “Trust Nobody but Thyself, and - None Other will Betray Thee.” - - - - - 38. - About the Past of a Bishop - - -SO GERALD stayed content enough, all through those pleasant summer -days. It was odd to reflect that these days were counting as he did not -know how many years in Lichfield. He would now and then contrast himself -with his great ancestor Dom Manuel, the same about whom, in that quaint -far-off time when Gerald had believed himself merely human, and was -interested in such human nonsense, Gerald had intended to write a -romance,—because the Redeemer of Poictesme, as Gerald remembered it, -had passed a month with the wood demon Béda, in the forest of Dun -Vlechlan, where the company consisted entirely of evil principles, and -where the passing of each day left Manuel a year older. - -Gerald would reflect how much more sensible and pleasant was the course -which he was following, surrounded with every domestic virtue, where the -days did not count at all. For Gerald was content, and certainly he had -grown no older in body. He had become used to living upon Mispec Moor: -he wondered sometimes if Antan could afford any splendor which he -personally would find more to his taste; and he felt that he would -honestly miss the simple wholesome ways of Maya’s log and plaster -cottage after he had entered forever into the red-pillared palace of his -kingdom beyond good and evil,—next week, perhaps, or at all events not -later than September. - -And it stayed diverting to observe those persons who almost every day -passed beyond Mispec Moor in their journeying toward the goal of all the -gods of men. Then by and by one of these wayfarers turned out to be a -stalwart, white-bearded old gentleman dressed as a bishop. And the sight -of him delighted Gerald: for here at last was somebody who could -properly christen Theodorick Quentin Musgrave. - -Meanwhile this traveler was asking hospitality of Maya. She, who -disliked travelers, prepared the white and tender flesh of a calf, she -kneaded cakes of fine meal and baked them upon the hearth, she fetched -milk and butter. All these she set before the seeming bishop upon the -front porch of her cottage quite affably. For this old gentleman, it -appeared, had known Maya of the Fair Breasts a great while ago, at the -very beginning of a career confessedly so populous in husbands that -Gerald always felt a certain delicacy in asking questions about it. - -“But there was never any reasoning with you, my dear,” said the old -gentleman, as they all ate amicably together upon the porch. “So you -eluded my purpose, and you preferred to content that first man of yours -for his loss of the over-wilful beauty and the rebellious wisdom of your -predecessor—” - -Maya replied: “I do wish you would try just one more of those cakes, for -I made them myself, exactly as you used to like them in the plains of -Mamrê, when you were up to your nonsense with Sarah. Yes, I believe that -a girl, a really nice girl, that is, should keep her caresses for her -husband. Oh, I am casting no reflections upon either of your -sweethearts. It is a matter every woman must decide for herself. I -merely say that, for my part, I think a love-affair with a god while he -is still in power is ostentatious and can only end in unhappiness—” - -“But—!” Gerald had begun indignantly. - -She patted his hand. “No, Gerald, I did not mean you. Your power is -limitless, and you are quite different from all other gods, and nobody -knows that better than I do. So please do not start any pouting while we -have company! He thinks that he is a god, too,” Maya then stated, -casually, to her visitor. “That is why his feelings are upset. He -believes he is the Fair-haired Hoodoo, the Yelper and the Pretender, or -something of that sort. As for that woman, Adam was very lucky to get -rid of her.” - -“I wonder,” said the white-bearded gentleman, smiling reminiscently, “I -wonder if he always thought so?” - -“My dear old friend! but you and I know quite well what the creatures -are! Of course he cherished the memory of her for the rest of his life, -long after the worthless piece had gone, just literally, to the devil. -She was not bad looking: that much, anyhow, one can say in her favor: -and so the poor fellow had always his memories of that beauty which he -had known, once. He used to say it was too lovely to be retained by any -man. And I agreed with him. No man had the least chance, with infernal -connoisseurs about.... And his sons,” said Maya, as she reflectively -scratched at her nose, “have, somehow, all preserved that memory. There -is no one of them but now and then finds my daughters rather inadequate, -and half remembers that woman and gets lackadaisical over her. It is -just another thing about the creatures which my daughters have to put up -with.” - -“She too is yonder, they tell me,”—and the old gentleman nodded toward -Antan. Then he continued: “And I suspect there is no one of your -daughters but is jealous of this ever-living memory of that Lilith who -stays always the first, never quite forgotten love of every son of Adam; -and who prevents more of them than you would care to acknowledge, my -dear, from ever utterly giving over their hearts to any of your -daughters.” - -“We are jealous, within limits,” Maya replied, in the while that she -hospitably refilled his glass with fresh milk. “No woman likes playing -second fiddle, even in the moonstruck brain of a poet. Yet my daughters -know it does no real harm. And if men were not up to something, they -would be up to something else. Besides, it gives them their nonsense to -be romantic over in private, without pestering their poor sweethearts, -and their wives too at first, to be romantic along with them, which is a -thing no nice woman really feels comfortable about—” - -But the old gentleman had sighed. “You touch upon a somewhat harrowing -subject. For I fancy that no other luckless being has ever had to cater -to the shifting needs of popular romance so arduously or so variously as -I.” - -And Maya now was beaming upon him quite fondly. “Yes, but how clever you -have been about it! In fact, I suppose that nobody anywhere has ever had -a more wonderful career than yours. And it seems only yesterday—does it -not?—that we were all young together in the Garden, and your reputation -was merely local. But you Jews are so adaptable!” - -“I was not even a Jew, my dear, to begin with. Perhaps that is why I -never quite got on with them. I was a storm deity of the Midianites. But -the Jews kidnapped me, in some way or another, when I was just a godling -playing happily with my thunderbolts upon the flanks of Sinai.” - -“Even so, when I think of what a position you have attained in the best -Christian circles, and of the perfect respectability of the church to -which you now belong, and of all the splendid poetry you have inspired, -and of how generally famous you have become everywhere, I am wholly -proud that you once, when we were both younger”—and Gerald saw that -Maya had colored up rather prettily,—“had other plans for me.” - -“You,” said the old gentleman,—who, as Gerald now observed, was really -quite Jewish looking,—“were the first of my disappointments. Yes, I -suppose that in many respects my career has been unusual. Yet it has -ended by placing me in a most awkward position: and nothing ever turned -out in accordance with my plans, somehow.” - -Then the stalwart, white-bearded old gentleman who was dressed as a -bishop spoke of his first family, and of how his descendants through a -son named Isaac went astray. He spoke of his efforts to retain the -affection of his family, through the vigorous methods appropriate to a -storm god. But nothing had seemed to avail. There had been fine plagues -and deluges and captivities and decimations and devastating miracles by -the score. He had sent the swords of Babylon and of Philistia and of -dozens of other kingdoms to slay them, and huge dogs to tear their -corpses, and many birds of prey and all the wild beasts of earth to -devour and to destroy them, without arousing one ray of real affection. -He had laid waste their cities; he had made their widows as the sands of -the sea; he had starved them, and had smitten them with leprosy, and had -burned them with lightnings; he had afflicted them with the most voluble -and pessimistic prophets: he had, in a word, done absolutely everything -he could think of as likely to requicken their waning affection. But the -more he annoyed his descendants, the less they had seemed really to love -him. Upon the heels of every warning, and immediately after each -paternal correction, the survivors of it seemed only the more inclined -to prefer some other patron: and it was all very discouraging. - -And of his second son he spoke also. Here he became remarkably vague, -and he talked as if muddled by the whole affair. There had been a great -sacrifice and an atonement, the workings of which the old gentleman -could not pretend to understand. He could not yet say just who had been -put in a more amiable frame of mind by that atonement, since personally -he imagined any father would have found it most distasteful and -upsetting. Anyhow, the affair had resulted in a church with which he had -felt it rather his duty to associate himself. And, awkwardly enough, -after he had thus been persuaded by them formally to commit himself to a -policy of peace and forgiveness and general loving-kindness, his -incomprehensible servants had gone on squabbling and murdering, only -much more often than before, because now they did it on high moral -grounds. They had fought over transubstantiation, and over Greek -diphthongs, and over the respective merits of complete and frontal -baptism, and over infant damnation, and over redemption through faith -alone, and over a number of other recondite matters which no Arabian -storm god, very simply reared in the country during the really formative -years of his life, and with no regular academic training, could well be -expected to understand: and it was all very discouraging. - -Nor to-day was his position much happier. He found himself ranked rather -high in the church with which he was associated professionally. Yes, the -old gentleman admitted, with plain bewilderment, his name was honored. -But all his actions—even such quite notable actions as holding a -conference with his disciples in a fiery furnace, and affording his -messengers inter-urban transportation by means of a whale, and of -causing the sun itself to stand still,—all these fine exploits, along -with his every natural exhibition of the irascibility and truculence -appropriate to a storm god, had been reduced to poetic inventions. His -very existence had been complicated with a triplicity which, since the -mind could not grasp it, prevented his existence from being, actually, -believed in by anybody. That had seemed, from the first moment he heard -of it, a doctrine a bit difficult for him personally to accept, after -having been an undivided deity in regular practice for so many thousands -of years. And eighteen centuries of pondering upon that doctrine of his -triune nature, to which he was through his official position committed, -had showed a matter so abstruse and puzzling to be far beyond the -comprehension of any country-bred Arabian storm god, howsoever -faithfully he had broadened his mind, at the courts of various Christian -monarchs and in the larger nunneries, since the commencement of his -religious training among the farming element of Seir and Sinai. Nor -could he honestly say that he had ever been able to take quite kindly to -the notion that his being was confessedly a mystery not to be understood -by prelates graduated from the best seminaries, and that his actions -were all poetic inventions. For that left of him, so far as could be -seen by a plain-thinking Arabian storm god, nothing which the human mind -could grasp as an actuality; it made every one of his really -thorough-going servants who accepted utterly the teachings of his -church, so far as he could infer, a devotee of vacuousness: and it was -all very discouraging. - -“Altogether,” said the old gentleman who was dressed as a bishop, “I -feel that my present ranking in the Christian church is a perplexing -and, in some sense, a false position for an Arabian storm god. I have -aged under it. Oh, I have tried to be quite fair about the matter. -Sometimes I even go so far as to concede that people who have never met -a particular person might, just possibly, believe that person to be -three persons whose actions were all poetic inventions. The human -imagination is vigorous. I must point out to you, though, my friends, -that nobody could conceivably believe that about himself. These very -curious theories about me thus postulate the existence of at least one -sceptic, and they hinge indeed upon the existence of that sceptic, in -me. Now, I feel instinctively there must be an error in any such logic. -I feel it unfair that I alone of all the persons connected with my -church should be inevitably doomed to remain an atheist. And I have aged -steadily under the injustice and unreason of it all. Otherwise, if I yet -retained the vigor of my youth, I might yet, in my frank way, attempt to -clean the slate, as it were, with whirlwinds and thunderbolts and -another deluge or so, and to make a fresh start all around. But, alas, I -have aged, my dear Havvah, since the days of our first acquaintance. The -inexplicable theology and the rationalization, as they call it, to which -I have been subjected by my incomprehensible servants, now for some -eighteen centuries with ever increasing rigor, have brought me to the -point that I cannot logically believe in my own existence. The things -they tell me simply do not hold together. And so—” - -He comprehensively waved his hand toward Antan. - -But Gerald rose, and Gerald put aside his glass of milk and his veal -sandwich. - -And Gerald said, beamingly: “You who have traveled through the Marches -of Antan, wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching is that -we copulate and die,—you at least, I know, must, as a leading official -of the Protestant Episcopal church, look confidently forward to finding -in the goal of all the gods a third truth. The fact emboldens me to ask -that you do but answer me this very simple question—” - -“Alas, my friend,” the badgered looking old gentleman broke in, -“professionally, of course, my faith is all that it should be. But in my -private capacity, as a plain-thinking Arabian storm god, now that I am -retiring from active churchwork, I suspect that when anybody anywhere -once understands the nature of any two truths, that will be quite time -enough for him to be requiring a third truth to exercise his wits upon.” - -“That truism, sir, is not to be denied,” said Gerald, rather -crestfallen. “Yet that is likewise an evasion.” - -“In fact,” said the bewildered old gentleman, shaking sadly his white -head, “in fact, ever since I acquired triplicity, I have been accused of -duplicity also. The Gnostics, I remember, said very unkind things about -that: the Valentinians were no more charitable: whereas I would really -hesitate to repeat, my friends, the remarks of the Priscillianists.” - -“—And in any case,” Gerald said, emphatically, “howsoever you may evade -me, it would not do for you to evade your duties to the Protestant -Episcopal church. The world as yet has need of bishops and of all that -they signify. I must point out to you, sir, that the wild talking of -bishops yet frightens many persons into a thrifty-minded practice of -generally beneficent virtues. Indeed, sir, bishops remind me rather of -calomel in the effect which they have upon the run of men, because I -find their effect also to be, ultimately, beneficial. There are also -other points of resemblance. And if the strange ways of episcopal action -now and then unavoidably upset you, sir, you ought to remember that it -is, after all, for the general good. I, moreover, must point out that it -absolutely would not do for you to go into Antan and be one of my -subjects—” - -“He thinks,” Maya once more explained, parenthetically, to her guest, -“that he is a god, you understand.” - -“But I am!” said Gerald. “These continual interruptions are really very -awkward, my dear. And the present situation also is awkward, in view of -my Protestant Episcopal upbringing. It is a situation which must at any -cost be avoided. This gentleman simply must not go into Antan.” - -“But what is to be done about it?” - -“Oh, do you not be uneasy! Your age, sir, and its attendant delusions, -such as wanting to go into Antan, are matters quite easily remedied by -any competent Dirghic deity. You could not possibly have pursued a wiser -course than to come to me for assistance. So, if you will permit me, -sir—” - -Thereafter Gerald, still in something of a flutter, baptized the old -gentleman who was dressed as a bishop with the last remaining drop of -water from the Churning of the Ocean. - - - - - 39. - Baptism of a Musgrave - - -FORTHWITH the old white-bearded gentleman became a most personable -looking youngish Oriental, who shone with a fiery radiance, and about -whose head played a continual flashing like small lightnings. And he -said, approvingly: - -“That is a fine magic which has restored to me my youth and the -vigorousness I had in Midian before I was kidnapped by those -stiff-necked and unaffectionate Jews.” - -“And will you now be going into Antan?” asked Gerald, rather anxiously. - -“Not yet, my friend,” replied the merry, strong, young Arabian storm -god. “Oh, very certainly, not yet! No, I have had quite enough of my -illogical position as a Christian and of the worries of being -rationalized by incomprehensible foreigners. I shall thankfully return -to my Midianites and to my little shrines upon Seir and Sinai and Horeb, -and to the quiet living of a local godling. I shall be hearing again my -own people’s sane and intelligible prayers for rain, and I shall be -snuffing up the smoke of such rational offerings as kids and goats and -an occasional prisoner of war, just as I used to do, where I was given -due credit for my actions, and where you heard no unpleasant personal -scandal circulated about my being triplets. In the meanwhile, my -benefactor, is there not any favor which, in my turn, I can do you?” - -“Indeed, my dear sir,” Gerald answered, harking back to that worriment -which in a neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards stayed always -in the rear of Gerald’s mind, “there is a small one, now you mention it. -For we have a boy, as you perceive. And it occurs to me that this is the -first chance to have Theodorick Quentin Musgrave properly christened -according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal church—” - -The storm god asked of Gerald, in good-humored surprise. “But do I now -look to you much like an Episcopalian clergyman?” - -“Well, sir, I admit the situation is perplexing. Nevertheless, you -remain, so far as I can see, one of the three official heads of the -Christian church, in every denomination. And as such, you must be wholly -competent to administer the sacred rites of that baptism to which we -Musgraves are accustomed.” - -He who had been a bishop laughed again. For an instant he glanced -sidewise at Maya, rather impishly. Then the god called to him Theodorick -Quentin Musgrave. - -The boy came forward without speaking. There had never been any dearer -brat since time began, Gerald reflected, than was this sturdy droll -red-headed jackanapes who waited there holding his small chin well up in -order to look with politely puzzled interest at the storm god’s -glittering face and the tiny lightnings which played about it. Gerald -was abeam with the most fatuous sort of pride in Theodorick’s perfect -behavior. Gerald glowed all over, now that awkward matter of the boy’s -christening was being at last attended to, by the very highest -authority. And Gerald nodded smilingly and with some inconsequence at -his dear stupid Maya, so that she too might note how splendidly -Theodorick was behaving. The boy was displaying the composure and the -excellent manners of a true Musgrave. - -Then the storm god dipped his fingers in his unfinished glass of milk, -and upon Theodorick’s lifted forehead he drew a sign. Gerald was not -wholly certain, afterward, that it was the sign of a cross. - -“This is another sort of baptism than that which restored my youth. For -youth this child already has,—to every seeming,” the god said, a bit -unaccountably. “Therefore I now release this child whom I did not -create, I release him from the bondage of the woman and of the Adversary -who caused him to live upon this earth. I decree a forgiveness for the -seven crimes. I cry a remission of the seven punishments.” - -“I must say, though, you have been long enough about it,” Maya placidly -observed.... - -As for Gerald, now that the ceremony was over, he was unaffectedly -hugging Theodorick, and telling him that he was far too big a boy to be -kissing people, and the vaguely puzzled, clinging child was asking, But -who started it, Father?... - -And the storm god was saying to Maya, “Do you forget, my dear Havvah, -that it is from your service I am releasing him?” - -She answered, still quite placidly: “So far as that goes, the imp has -well earned a holiday; and it is not as if I were dependent upon him. -No, but I confess to wondering—and not for the first time, -either,—just what you may be up to.” - - - - - 40. - On the Turn of a Leaf - - -SO THE Oriental storm god went back into the world of everyday, to -look for his old shrines upon Sinai and Horeb: and Gerald was happily -rid of a future subject whom, he could not but feel, it would have been -a bit awkward to have as a subject. And the evening passed tranquilly, -although it seemed to Gerald that Theodorick was rather moody and quiet -after his christening. - -But it was not until the next day that Theodorick, just after breakfast, -spoke with a voice which seemed to Gerald not quite the voice of a -child: and Theodorick told his parents he wanted to go down into Antan. - -Gerald was troubled. Yet he suggested, with very careful levity, “If—?” - -“If you please,” the but half-smiling, ugly, so dear brat now added, -docilely. - -“Why, it must be as your father says,” Maya replied. She had paused in -her sweeping off of the porch, and for a moment she held the broom -slantwise as she meditated over the boy’s notion. “But, for one, I see -no great harm in your having a little outing, for I will put a -protection on you. Only, you must promise to be back in good time to -have your face and hands washed for supper.” - -Gerald said forlornly, “But what are those small yellow things you are -sweeping from the porch, my dear?” - -“They are fallen leaves from a sycamore-tree, left here last night by -that wind, Gerald: and I really do wish you would not ask such silly -questions, when I was talking about something quite different.” - -“But that means summer is ending, Maya. It means an end of all growing. -It means that not anything now will become any larger or more lovely.” - -“Upon my word, but I never did hear of any such nonsense as you do talk -sometimes, for a grown man, Gerald, as if summer did not always end!” - -“That is it, precisely. It always ends: and the warmth and comfort of it -perish. Yes, there is death in the air. I do not find that cheering. And -that is all, my darling.” - -“Why, then, Gerald, if you are quite through with that up-in-the-air -sort of talking—which may be very deep and clever indeed, only I happen -not to understand it, and certainly have no wish to,—why, then, I was -asking you about something entirely different.” - -“Oh, yes, you were speaking of Theodorick! Well, boys do get restless -without any playmates, I suppose. I will talk to him about his notion -while you are making up the beds.” - -Nothing could have been more prosaic. Yet Gerald was troubled. He could -hear Maya inside the cottage, already thumping at the pillows. All about -him seemed matter of fact, and comfortable, and familiar, and stable. -And yet everything, as he somehow knew, was about to change. There awoke -in him as yet no real unhappiness, but just a faint uneasiness mixed -with resentment, now that he noted the fall of the first leaf in autumn, -and knew he was powerless to stay the beginning change in everything -about his small, snug home. - - - - - 41. - Child of All Fathers - - -THEN Gerald followed the child down to the roadside. And they talked -together under the chestnut-tree, just where Gerald had talked with so -many strange beings who had passed beyond Mispec Moor in that continuous -journeying toward Antan. - -First Gerald performed that needful rite which would reveal the truth. -The child watched quietly. By and by Theodorick began to smile. But he -said never a word until his father was through with these droll doings. - -Then Gerald questioned his small son. Theodorick replied. The appearance -of a little child still sat there, and the soft red lips of a child were -moving, but that curious tongue which was like a small white serpent was -speaking about matters never known to any child. - -No one of Gerald’s excursions into the darker magics had prepared him -for what was now in part revealed. Something of the spaces outside the -world apparent to human senses Gerald knew, and of the realms beyond -Earth’s orbit he, as a former student of magic, was not ignorant. But -now he understood from what remote abyss his wife had drawn the being -which seemed his child: a bit unwillingly, he could even surmise with -what kind of enchantments Maya had fetched this seeming into the happier -superficial world which is apparent to human senses. - -And Gerald was moved: he was, as so many husbands have been, before and -since, now almost frightened by this glimpse of the unswerving and -whole-hearted and unscrupulous love which women nourish for that man -whom marriage has given them to look after. He was not worthy, he -contritely felt, of being thus idolized and of being coddled at the -fearful price of such unearthly indiscretions. And Gerald was sincerely -touched, now that he comprehended to what lengths Maya had gone to -gratify his whim of wanting a son, out of hand. She had warned him, too, -that he was contriving for himself grief. Yes, her womanly intuition -had, somehow, foreseen that to which all his cleverness had been blind. -And yet, even so, Maya had not denied him his desire, because poor Maya -pampered him in everything, to the accompaniment of a commentary -howsoever tart. - -And Gerald thought too of how, a moment since, his worst dread had been -that the boy was an illusion. He looked at his beloved son, knowing now -what inhabited that freckled and droll, sturdy little body. The boy had -of a sudden become strange; he was now a threat of unimaginable danger, -and a creature worse than evil: yet Gerald knew, with a dull wonder, -that he loved Theodorick Quentin Musgrave even now.... - -Gerald by and by put yet another question to this dreadful parody of a -child’s innocence and helplessness, to the being whom Gerald invoked as -Abdel-Hareth. - -“But I have served her purpose,—my father,” the child replied, with a -rather perturbing smile. “Oh, but I know! She has had many husbands. -Most of them desired a son. I have always been that son.” - -Then, after an instant of silence, the being who was speaking through -the child’s dear lips told of the bonds from which the Midianite storm -god’s touch and absolution had released him. Gerald found this part of -the story particularly unpleasant. And Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, whom -Gerald still addressed as Abdel-Hareth, went on to tell why he must now -go downward into Antan, to encounter, not the Master Philologist, but -Queen Freydis. - -Gerald asked, What was needed of Queen Freydis? The child told him. Then -Gerald shivered. He felt, if only for the instant, physically cold and -nauseated. Still, that this creature should desire to return to its -unearthly home was natural enough. - -“I comprehend,” said Gerald. “I comprehend a great deal which was -unknown to me ten minutes ago. I confess to being surprised by much that -I have learned from you. Nevertheless, my son,—if you will pardon the -force of habit, sir, and the love I had for my own little, so dear -son—! But I drift into emotional remarks which would be wholly out of -place. My voice, as I note with sincere regret, evinces a distressing -tendency—” - -Gerald paused. He gulped. He spoke now in a voice that was light and -high-pitched and rather hysterical. - -“In fine, my dear Abdel-Hareth, as you see, I incline somewhat to -blubber like a badly whipped baby. I can but ask you to respect the -emotions of a suddenly bereaved parent, without bothering to understand -his confused utterances. No: you have given me my desire, and my great -happiness. A part of that dies now. But I have had it, utterly. I am -content. I will see to it that you, in your turn, sir, get what you -desire.” - - - - - 42. - Theodorick Rides Forth - - -IT WAS after using his handkerchief a bit that Gerald returned to -Maya. Nor did it surprise him she had already prepared a neatly wrapped -up lunch for Theodorick Quentin Musgrave to be eating that day in Antan. - -Gerald said, with painstaking carelessness, “Well, my dear, after -talking the matter over, I have decided we may as well let the boy go.” - -“Why, to be sure!” said Maya. “And a great deal of bother, too, there -has been made this morning over nothing, as if I did not already have -quite enough to bother me!” - -And with that, she summoned from among her enchanted geldings the -handsomer of the pair who formerly had been emperors. - -“For a child of mine must go in proper state,” said Maya. - -Then Gerald said: “No. An imperial steed is well enough, but a divine -steed is better. Let him take Kalki!” - -“Now, really, Gerald, your unreasonableness sometimes surprises even me! -For you know perfectly well that Kalki is your own horse, and that you -will be needing him yourself when you ride down to the appointed kingdom -you are always talking your stuff and nonsense about.” - -Gerald looked at her for some while. He was conscious of a hushed great -exultation that in a world wherein all else seemed doubtful and unstable -he had, somehow, through blind luck, won to his Maya and her -snappishness and her unswerving and whole-hearted and quite unscrupulous -love for him. She was not pretty, she was not brilliant, she was not -even easy to live with. But Gerald knew now that he and this woman were -one person; and that any living without Maya would be a maimed business; -and that there could be nothing in Antan which could conceivably content -him for the loss of this dear, ever-wrangling, dull-witted woman. - -Then Gerald said: “But it is prophesied that the power of Antan shall -pass to the rider upon Kalki. No harm can befall the rider upon Kalki. -So we will let—we will let our son take Kalki. For in this way we will -secure his protection, and we will remove the one chance of my ever -leaving you, who are worth all the kingdoms that have ever been.” - -Maya said, “But—” - -Gerald, smiling, replied, “Nevertheless!” - -Then the illusion called Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was lifted up by -Gerald to the back of Kalki, and it was Gerald who adjusted the stirrups -for his successor upon the divine steed. And the seeming of a child rode -down toward the goal of all the gods, a rather quaintly pathetic little -figure perched up there so high upon the back of the huge shining -stallion. - -Gerald watched the two pass out of his sight. His arms lifted after them -ever so slightly. His arms seemed to ache as he recalled the feel of -that small body and the warmth and yieldingness of it, which were now -lost forever. Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was only an illusion contrived -by forces which it was not comfortable to think about. Gerald knew that -now with certainty. And it did not matter. Nor did it cheer him to -reflect—as he did,—that he was in no worse case than all other -fathers, no one of whom might ever retain the child that was little and -helpless, and was loved for no reason at all, as nobody could quite love -the hobbledehoy thumping schoolboy or even the estimable young man into -whom that warm and yielding, sturdy, so small body might develop.... - -Then Gerald turned to Maya. “I have only you. But that which I have -suffices me. I have been lucky, O my dearest, very far beyond my -merits.” - -She was regarding him with a sort of troubled fondness; and her speech -now was hardly snappish at all. “You really are, my poor Gerald, quite -too ridiculous about the child! You talk, you actually do talk, as -though he were not ever coming back,—and in good time for supper, too, -unless he wants a spanking.” - -At that, Gerald raised a protesting hand. “Do you not trick me into -optimism, also! Too much ambition and high dreams and that which was -perhaps divine have now departed forever. The illusion which you created -to be our son has departed, forever. But use and wont and a great deal -of honest love remain. I do not say these things are heroic. I do say -that these suffice. So do you let the strong bonds which are about me -content you, my darling, without wreathing them in the paper flowers of -optimism.” - -“But are you, also,” Maya said, “content?” - -Gerald answered: “I am well content. Day in, day out, let there be -between us faith, and aid, and a great fondness, O my dear, and no -parting! For I am content and very contrite. I know that any life -without you would be a maimed business. I know that I desire only to -continue in our quiet way of living upon Mispec Moor. For the middle way -of life is best. What need have I to be a god or to be seeking -unfamiliar places so that I may rule over them? That way is troubled, -and too full of noise and striving. It is better to be content. It is -better to be content with the dear, common happenings of human life, -shared loyally with the one woman whose love for you is limitless and -does not change, for all that it is blind to none of your failings; and -to know that these things are enough and very far beyond your deserts; -and not to be insanely hankering after any more high-hearted manner of -living which is out of your reach or, at any rate, is attained through -more trouble than it is probably worth. Ah, yes, the middle way of life -is best.” - -“At least it is some comfort,” Maya said, “to hear you talking almost -sensibly.” - -Then she reached up, still with a grave and rather tender smiling upon -her beloved, homely face; and she took away from Gerald’s eyes the -rose-colored spectacles. - -“In fact,” said a male voice, “the woman’s task is ended.” - - - - - 43. - Economics of Redemption - - -FOR now had come to them, traveling back from Antan, the brown man. -This brown man came, he said, to summon Maya to her appointed task of -transforming yet other men into domestic animals. - -“—For women,” he said, also, “have always their fond task and their -beneficent labor. Here, I repeat, the woman’s task is ended. But yonder -many men go untamed and unbroken to the sane ways of compromise.” - -Then Maya a bit absent-mindedly assented, as she put away those -spectacles of hers for future use, that, in point of fact, she supposed -she had done everything that was actually necessary in Gerald’s case, -although nobody ever would really know what a trial he had been to her. - -And Gerald for one instant looked at his wife. He found in his wife’s -face that which it is the doom of most husbands to find there at one -time or another. And it caused Gerald to laugh a little. - -“Nevertheless,” Gerald said, quietly, “I am Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper -and the Preserver, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. I am Lord of the -Third Truth, in this world which knows of only two truths and of the -compromises which they beget.” - -The brown man greeted that with a thin smile. “You have been long -expected. Oh, very long have scepticism and despair, with somewhat -varying voices, invoked your name, saying, ‘Who will overthrow the -Master Philologist!’” - -“Well, and now,” said Gerald, with the outline of a swagger, for he was -getting himself more in hand, “now that prophecy is about to be -fulfilled, for I am Hoo, and none other.” - -“But, really, friend, I do not see how you can be an interrogative -pronoun.” - -“To a god, and more particularly to a Dirghic god, all incarnations are -possible. There is no reason whatever why I should not be an -interrogative pronoun. It is merely a matter of divine election.” - -And the brown man civilly inclined his grave brown head, as he remarked: - -“Do you have it your own way! Indeed, my people have very often derived -their deities from less promising locations than the pages of a grammar. -And upon the whole, your epiphany is most gratifying. For I try to keep -my people content: yet it has been lamented, from the beginning, that no -mythology revealed a god who might answer that word which the Master -Philologist speaks to all the gods of men. And so, between despair and -scepticism, those of my people who were so unwise as to exercise their -minds in fields wherein thinking does not make for happiness, have very -long been saying, ‘Who will redeem the goal of all the gods of men from -the Master Philologist?’ Now it appears that this word also has become -flesh; and that this interrogative pronoun Who? stands here before us. -Yes, I consider that quite gratifying; for it is desirable that the -sceptical and the despairing also should be contented, by being -justified in their faith.” - -“You quibble,” Gerald replied, “you quibble very tediously and -frivolously, in the divine presence of a god who is about to take over -his appointed kingdom, and to make known that Third Truth which is not -known upon Mispec Moor, where the one teaching is that we copulate and -die.” - -“But uncelestial common-sense has always been my failing. So I must tell -you, friend, that it seems to me, now that you have abandoned the -Redeemer’s steed to a small freckled illusion, Antan has nothing to -expect even from the mysterious awfulness of an interrogative pronoun. -And yet, for one, I abandoned the place when your dwarfed deputy -approached it—” - -“And you acted wisely, sir,” Gerald replied, with simple dignity. “No -matter how potent may be the impious sorceries of the Master -Philologist, a child has entered into his domain, fearing nothing and -loving all. The fact that the powers of evil cannot prevail against this -conjunction is well known to every citizen of the United States of -America.” - -But the brown man still seemed rather moody. “I cannot say.... No, you -and my friend Jahveh have, between you, loosed against Antan a power -which is not of my kingdom. I therefore do not pretend to say what may -come of the experiment. I merely await with lively interest, and at a -reassuring distance, the upshot of this experiment, now that—of all the -beings from beyond Earth’s orbit,—Abdel-Hareth has been deputed to ride -upon the Redeemer’s steed.” - -“And, in any case, it is always very certain, dearie,” Maya said, “that -no real comfort can ever come of such foolish notions as I have ridded -you of a little by a little. And in exchange for those toplofty dreams, -I have trusted you as far as seemed expedient, and I have given you all -that was really good for you. I have given you a season of content and -every wholesome joy of domesticity now for some thirty years of mortal -time. No man gets more from life, my poor dearie. None attempts to get -more without ending in disappointment and discontent: and so no sane man -tries to get any more than you have had. And the end finds even the most -wise and reasonable son of Adam—though, to be sure, that is not saying -much,—if he but lives rationally enough to survive all thirty of those -quiet happy years, with a wife who is just as I am, whatever she may -have seemed to begin with.” - -Gerald saw, without any grief or horror, that he had now lost both his -child and his wife. For Maya had become old. She was again the -shrivelled and wrinkled creature, red and inflamed and hideous among her -tousled tresses, that he had first found upon Mispec Moor. And -fleetingly he reflected that she spoke the truth: all women, howsoever -dear and beautiful, did become like that, provided they did not first -die and become even more repulsive carrion.... But Gerald lacked time to -discuss these generalities just now: for he had been looking toward -Antan.... - -“To this chatter about domesticity and pessimism and content,” Gerald -replied sternly, “I answer that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones is -above all aphorisms. I answer that I am Hoo, the Lord of that Third -Truth whose nature is unknown to you. Now that Third Truth is loosed. Do -you look now upon Antan!” - -The woman and the Adversary had turned when Gerald pointed, quite as -majestically as though he knew just what he was talking about. In the -midst of Antan they could see, as Gerald had already seen, a flaring -green flame. Now this great flaming sunk earthward, much as the waters -of a fountain descend; the flame spread evenly to every side, sweeping -outward in an ever-widening circle; and now this flaming was no longer -green, but red and glowing. You saw this flood of fire pass equably and -swiftly, surging outward toward the horizon, where at once the mountains -collapsed and disappeared. All that remained was flat and black and -bare. Antan no longer existed. - -It was from such a miracle that the woman and the Adversary looked back -toward Gerald, with every sign of sincere respect. - -And Gerald’s bewilderment was rather more profound than theirs. He could -surmise only that the dreadful being to whom he had given Kalki had held -to its plan, as voiced by the lips of a child, and had loosed elemental -fires of a nature incomprehensible to Gerald, since they were drawn from -beyond Earth’s orbit. Yet that seemed to Gerald no real reason for -marring a fine attitude or for failing to preserve his self-respect -before the woman and the Adversary. Tricked he might have been: that was -a wholly different thing from ever admitting that he had been tricked. -Gerald knew at least that the illusion which had appeared to be his son -had entered the perhaps equally illusory place where Gerald now might -never enter; and that, whatever had befallen the best loved but one of -his illusions, the rider upon the silver stallion had destroyed Antan. -And it seemed obvious, too, that Abdel-Hareth had returned homeward.... - -Therefore Gerald claimed with a clear conscience the miracle which -Gerald had, in fact, actually performed, at one remove. And Gerald kept -his long chin, resolutely, well up.... - -“So that,” observed the brown man, quietly, “that is the end of Antan. I -do not complain.” - -“I had forgotten,” then said the wrinkled old woman who had been Maya of -the Fair Breasts, “I had forgotten how wilful is that Abdel-Hareth who -got his being upon Earth from me. Something of this sort was to be -looked for, the first moment that the headstrong wretch was freed from -my control. Still, Jahveh has gained less than we have gained through -Jahveh’s meddling. Abdel-Hareth has served me even at the last by -removing Antan from the horizon. Earth will be quieter now; and my -daughters will not be so hard put to it to keep men in reasonable -order.” - -“I forget nothing,” the brown man remarked, drily. “And so I did not -await the coming of your first-born in the likeness of a child whose -fearless innocence surmounts all evil. For it was the seeming of a -little child who rode up against Antan, you conceive, with every -appearance of that faith against which the snares of no sorcerer and of -hardly nine women in ten can prevail. Such innocence is a quite -dangerous counterfeit. For one, I do not meddle with it nor with any -other unearthly phenomenon. I have my realm. It suffices me.” - -The woman asked, “But what, what, Janicot, do you suppose has happened?” - -“How shall we ever know, dear Havvah, when manifestly there are no -survivors of that happening? Antan, in any case, is no loss to us.” - -Here Gerald broke in upon their talking; and Gerald shook at them his -red head lordlily. - -“You little creatures guess in vain at the means which I have employed. -And equally in vain will you supplicate me to reveal those means. For I -shall tell you nothing. It is sufficient that the Well-beloved of -Heavenly Ones has accomplished the mission of his tenth incarnation with -a thoroughness not customary in interrogative pronouns. I came to redeem -my appointed kingdom from the rule of usurpers. I came as the Lord of -that Third Truth which is unknown to those who teach only that we -copulate and die. That Third Truth has been loosed. No, I shall tell you -nothing of its nature, for you are not fit to comprehend the Third -Truth. But the mightiness of it your own eyes have witnessed. So Antan -is now redeemed—” - -His voice broke here. But Gerald presently continued: - -“Antan is now redeemed at a great price. That woman and that child to -whom my heart was given have perished. I remain. I know that these two -were illusions. Nevertheless, I remain. There is no bond upon the Lord -of the Third Truth to be happy: there is a strong bond upon every Helper -and Preserver not to evade the full discharge of his mission. What, you -may ask of me, is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth? And I will -reply to you out of my divine wisdom. It is the mission of the Lord of -the Third Truth, howsoever he may palter or struggle against his doom, -to destroy that which he most loves.” - - - - - 44. - Economics of Common-Sense - - -NOW Gerald sat with his head bowed. He heard a talking between the old -woman who had been his Maya and the brown man who was the Adversary of -all the gods of men. - -“What is it men desire?” said the woman. “My daughters prepare for them -fine food and drink, my daughters see to it that their homes are snug, -and at the end of each day my daughters love them dutifully. All things -that men can ask for, my daughters furnish them. Why need men cherish -strange desires which do not know their aims? for how can any of my -daughters content such desires?” - -“I also marvel at the desires of men,” replied the Adversary. “I, too, -am ready to accord whatsoever a man can ask for sensibly and in plain -words. I, who am the Prince of this world, remain a generous and -ever-indulgent monarch. I will to make my people happy. My curious -opulence awaits at every hand to afford my subjects whatsoever they can -ask. But men want more. They desire that which was never in my kingdom. -They have followed after impalpable gods: they have been enamored of -phantoms. They have believed that their desire was in Antan, in part -because they did not know what was their desire, and in part because -they did not know what was Antan. Yes, it is well that Antan has -perished.” - -“This world is well enough,” the woman said. “It is well to be born into -this world of an ever-loving mother. It is well to be a young man in -this world wherein one may follow after young women and be cherished by -them. There is soft living in this world when you have come as near -discretion as men ever get and have had the wit to find a wife to take -care of you. And at the end it is well to fare out of this world quietly -and incuriously, with a deft-handed woman to nurse you and to wash your -body afterward. But men want more.” - -“This world is very good. My kingdom is a wholly sufficing kingdom,” -agreed the Adversary. “The wise man, as goes human wisdom, will be -content with the inexhaustible goodness of those material things which -all are mine. For the five senses are an endless comfort; the five -senses are an endless store of anodynes. A man may purchase bodily ease -and a drugged brain with his five senses. But men want more.” - -“So they have passed beyond my daughters,” the woman said. “One by one, -a many have passed, perversely and so lonely, from all my daughters -could contrive to content them: and one by one a host of demented -romantic men have struggled toward Antan, and toward what befalls all -mortals and immortals there. Yes, it is very well that Antan has -perished.” - -“One by one,” said the Adversary, “they have derided my kingdom. They -have followed after impalpable gods. These gods passed futilely. But -they drew many of my subjects from me, all to be lost forever in that -beguiling Antan.” - -“Men are great fools, and my daughters can hardly hamper their folly. -That which my daughters can do they perform willingly. But not all men -could my daughters preserve from the madness which drew men toward Antan -and into ruinous desires to judge the goal of every god. At last, Antan -has fallen: it is very well.” - -The Adversary said, more leniently: “Men are, beyond doubt, great fools. -But they are my people; and those that I can save I save. Yet many evade -me. And their dreaming troubles all my realm and me, too, they trouble -now and then. But Antan has fallen: and after that foolishness at least -my people will not be following any more.” - -“The daughters of Eve are not troubled now and then, they are troubled -at every moment, by the dreams of men. Such of these blundering men as -fond and eternal laboring may save, my daughters win away from their -toplofty dreams. But the work is hard; the work is endless; and our -losses are many.” - -And then the Adversary said: “We two who began in the Garden to contrive -for the happiness of men, and to be speaking always for the real good of -men,—yes, certainly, our work is hard and endless. For men stay -romantically minded creatures who aspire beyond my kingdom. Yet we do -not despair.” - - - - - 45. - Farewell to All Fair Welfare - - -WHEN Gerald raised his head he was alone on the naked moor, for the -brown man had departed, and Maya had gone away with the first of all her -lovers, and her illusions had vanished, including the neat log and -plaster cottage. And mists were creeping up from the ruined kingdom of -Antan, in billows of ever-thickening gray which seemed to be the smoke -from that great burning. - -Then Gerald said: - -“I have come out of my native home on a gain-less journeying with no -profit in it: yet there has been pleasure in that journeying. I do not -complain. Let every man that must journey, without ever knowing why, -from the dark womb of his mother to the dark womb of his grave, take -pattern by me! - -“For all that every pleasure is departed from me, I have had pleasure. I -do not grieve because I have gained nothing in my journeying. The great -and best words of the Master Philologist stay unrevealed; that supreme -word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has -perished, I may not surmise: but I have played with many words which -were rather pretty. In the art of magic which I chose to be my art I -have performed no earth-shaking wonders, yet in small thaumaturgies I -have had some hand. I did not ride the divine steed to my journey’s end: -but a part of the way I rode quite royally. - -“That which I heard of from afar I have not won to in my foiled -journeying. So I now cry farewell to that Queen Freydis whom, I suspect, -I might have loved with a great love if lesser women had not solicited -me. I cry farewell to the Mirror of the Hidden Children in which, I -believe, I might have found myself as I am, and might have come to -knowledge of the Third Truth. And I cry farewell to Antan, to that -never-won-to goal of all the gods which was, I think, my appointed -kingdom. I have surmised high things. I have gained none of them. My -doom has been a little doom. It contents me. - -“I may well be content, because all that a man may hope for I have had, -who have learned at least that the lot of a man is more sure than the -lot of any god. For the deceit which you put upon me, O venerable and -subtle Æsred, I cry out my gratitude. There was the seeming of a home -and of a woman who loved and tended me and of a child. I may not speak -of my love for these illusions. Now they have perished. But my memories -remain: and they are more dear to me than is any real thing. - -“All, all, is perished! It may be that I have offended the two truths -which I did not esteem sufficiently august. And I who willed to be Lord -of the Third Truth have found no third truth anywhere. I have found only -comfortably colored illusions. But I am content with that which I have -found here upon Mispec Moor.” - -In the while that Gerald had been speaking, the mists rose thicker and -thicker from destroyed Antan. He had noted in the while that he spoke -how the first wavering thin billows crept tentatively up the hills and -along the roadway, creeping upon the ground, and under the low-swinging -tree branches, with, as it seemed, a pre-meditated furtiveness; and -then, as if emboldened by finding the way unopposed, these mists had -risen up from the ground, always swiftlier, until now they had eclipsed -all. Gerald, now that he ended his talking, could see nothing palpable -anywhere save the little patch of intermingled stone and grass -immediately beneath his feet; and about him everywhere were the cool -mists, lighted with a diffused gray radiancy which seemed to come from -all sides. - - - - - PART ELEVEN - THE BOOK OF REMNANTS - - “When Wages are Paid, Work is Over.” - - - - - 46. - The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins - - -GERALD now was wandering among thick luminous gray mists, on a gray -way which led through long quieted places. It led him to a -weather-beaten pavilion of badly stained and tattered cloth which once -had been flesh-colored. - -Within this pavilion was a masked skeleton. The gleaming bones sat -upright, and in unmarred order, in a gilded chair. A fan lay in the lap -of this skeleton, a fan that was painted with the gay amours of -Harlequin and Columbine, which Pierrot was observing, wistfully, through -a gap in a yew-hedge: and the skeleton wore a little black velvet -carnival mask, which covered all the upper front part of the skull, -about the eye-sockets. - -And beyond that was a castle, whose exterior was overlaid with cracked -and peeling black-and-gold lacquer work. This castle was empty -everywhere of any inhabitant. Gerald passed through its courtyard and -about many large rooms and corridors, all hung with faded, very ancient -tapestries. He encountered nobody. Then he came to the inmost tower, -builded of horn, and so into the room which had been the bedchamber of -the lord of that castle, and he perceived the reason why not even mice -nor spiders dared to dwell in that place. - -Afterward Gerald came to a dragon’s den. But the dragon was dead long -ago, and the cupboards of that den were as empty as had been the castle -of Vraidex, except for a pepper cruet and a salt cruet, both of -time-blackened silver, and a light golden semi-circular crown inset with -emeralds such as blonde princesses were used to wear in that dragon’s -heyday. - -Thence Gerald passed to a jousting ground, and that too was tenantless -and fallen into decay. In the paved place where knights had tilted -against one another lay at random nineteen broken spears and three -tarnished shields. In the ladies’ gallery Gerald found only a chamber -pot. The hangings of this gallery were discolored and torn, but you -could yet see that these hangings had been of black cloth embroidered -with small rearing silver horses. - -And Gerald came also to a green pasture through which flowed unruffled a -deep stream of still water. This pasture was strewn everywhere with many -curious objects. He noted a crozier, and a wheel, and a camel-hair -shirt, and a huge gridiron, and a copper dish containing the breasts of -a young woman. He found in that pasture also a porcelain box of -ointment, and a great saw, and a blue hat, and a large iron comb, which -like the saw had long-dried blood upon its teeth, and a palm branch, and -two enormous, very rusty keys marked with the monogram S. P. - -Then Gerald passed where three crosses lay overturned. - -And beyond that the way was yet more murky. To this hand and the other -hand Gerald could just dimly divine the ruined porticos and domes and -pylons of incredibly ancient buildings: he seemed to go among obelisks -and many-storied square towers. But all was very gray and dubious. He -wandered now in a cloudiness wherein not anything was indisputable. - -He passed across a narrow bridge beneath which showed a dark and -sluggish river. In that water Gerald could see moving, many-colored -figures which were not strange to him. For Evasherah was there, and -Evaine, and Evarvan, and Evadne also, smiling at him now for the last -time, and he could see how notably they had all resembled one another. -And yet one more woman was there, a blue-clad woman in a crown just such -as Maya had worn before she became his wife, but the face of this woman -Gerald could not clearly discern. - -And upon the farther bank of the dark river one sat among a herd of -black swine, and the eyes of all these swine gleamed meditatively at -Gerald through their ragged white lashes. The man arose: and Gerald saw -this swine-driver was that same young red-haired Horvendile who was Lord -of the Marches of Antan. - -Then Horvendile began to speak. - - - - - 47. - How Horvendile Gave Up the Race - - -HORVENDILE spoke of the race of Manuel, and of the joy, and the -vexation, too, which the antics of this so inadequate race had been to -Horvendile. And it was of Merlin that Gerald was thinking now, for it -seemed to him that here was yet another poet who did not any longer -delight to shape and to play with puppets, because Horvendile was -saying: - -“Now I abandon a race whose needs are insatiable. For tall Manuel lived -always wanting what he had not ever found, and never, quite, knowing -what thing it was which he wanted, and without which he might not ever -be contented. And Jurgen also, after Heaven’s very best had been done to -grant him what he sought for, could reply only that he was Jurgen who -sought he knew not what. And all their descendants have been like these -maddening two in this at least, all seeking after they could not say -what. Nobody can do anything for such a race! For their needs have -stayed insatiable: their journeying has been, in every land and in every -time, a foiled journeying: and in the end, in the inevitable unvarying -end, each one of you treads that gray quiet way of ruins which leads -hither and to no other place.” - -“Well, for that matter,” Gerald said, “it seems that you too, -Horvendile, have some engagement in this hog wallow.” - -“I endeavor, in point of fact, to become familiar with this last stretch -of limbo, against the time of my own possible need not ever to be -remembered anywhere.” - -“—And for my part, I came of my own choice and in self-protection,” -Gerald continued, with his chin well up. “For I must tell you, -Horvendile, that I have had little peace since our last meeting.” - -Then Gerald (putting out of mind those attendant, very hungry looking -pigs) related the epic of his journeying, without reserving anything out -of false modesty, now that he talked with a confrère. He told of how he -had descended into the underwater palace of the Princess Evasherah and -of the orgies which he had shared in. He spoke, a bit contritely, of the -amorous excesses he had been led into by the wives and the three hundred -and fifty-odd concubines of Glaum during their master’s absence. With -unconcealed embarrassment he told of how the people of Lytreia had -endeavored to detain him in their temple, to reign there as their tribal -god, because they found his nose to be so much more majestic than the -idol they hitherto had worshipped. He confessed to his dalliance with -the enamored Fox-Spirit. He frankly admitted that he had not behaved -well in seducing Evarvan and then deserting her after her marvelous -beauty had become to him an old story. He told of how Queen Freydis had -come repeatedly to him with the most generous proffers of her realm and -person; and he spoke of this matter with visible compunction, because he -could not deny that after three or four bouts he had repulsed the -infatuated poor lady rather rudely. - -In fine, said Gerald, since every man ought honestly to acknowledge his -own weaknesses, he could get no real peace in the Marches of Antan. So -at the last he had stolen away, into this quiet, gray untroubled place, -of his own accord, just to be rid of so many persons who took unfair -advantage of his over-amiable and fiery nature.... - -And Horvendile, at the end of Gerald’s repentant narrative, observed: “I -comprehend. You have been, in brief, the devil of a fellow and a sad rip -among the ladies.” - -“Oh, but you wrong me! Such a suspicion is very horrifying and quite -unjust! No, it is merely that not even Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and -Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and the Well-beloved of Heavenly -Ones, is immune to over-constant temptation.” - -And at that, Horvendile shrugged. “A god with so many fine titles is not -to be argued with. In any case, do you be of good cheer, for even after -all these regrettable amours, and beyond the mire that my swine delight -in, the Princess still awaits you.” - -“But in what place?” said Gerald, “and how is she called?” - -“She awaits in every place so long as youth remains—” - -“Upon my word, now, Horvendile, but that is the truth, and a rather -plaguing truth!” - -“—However, this especial Princess is called, as it chances, -Evangeline—” - -“Oh, come!” said Gerald, “come now, but really, my dear fellow—!” - -“—And at your first sight of her you will be enraptured. For this -Princess Evangeline is so surpassingly lovely that she excels all the -other women your gaze has ever beheld—” - -“I know,” said Gerald. “Her face is the proper shape, it is -appropriately colored everywhere, and it is surmounted with an adequate -quantity of hair.” - -“—Nor,” Horvendile went on, with rising enthusiasm, “is it possible to -find any defect in her features—” - -“No: for, doubtless, the colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes -are nicely matched, and her nose stands just equidistant between them. -Beneath this is her mouth; and she has also a pair of ears.” - -“In fine,” said Horvendile, with his hands aflourish above his attendant -pigs, “the Princess is young, she exhibits no absolute deformity -anywhere, and your enamored glance will therefore perceive in her no -fault, because of that magic which in the Marches of Antan the Two -Truths exercise over all vigorous young persons.” - -“You very movingly depict a woman of extraordinary and, I have not the -least doubt, resistless charm. Nevertheless, I cannot any longer be -wandering about a place wherein there are only two truths, and where the -magic of these Two Truths is forever meddling with my young body, for -the gods of the Marches of Antan do not content me.” - -Then Horvendile replied: “Men have found many gods. But these gods pass. -They descend into Antan, and they do not return. One god and one goddess -alone do not pass. They remain eternally, if but to weave eternally a -mist about the seeing and the thinking of the young, and thus to secure -the existence of yet other young persons within a month or so.” - -“With observations to that same general effect,” Gerald answered, “I am -not unfamiliar. But let us make the thing complete! Do you now voice, -here in your murky pigsty, one or another long-winded restatement of the -fact that time disastrously affects all organic material. You will then, -I think, have summed up the entire philosophy of the Marches of Antan. -Perhaps it is a true philosophy. Nevertheless, that philosophy is a -morbid materialism such as does not amuse me, who am a self-respecting -citizen of the United States of America. No: I had far rather play with -a beautiful idea than with one utterly lacking in seductiveness. So I -prefer to think that the gods and the dreams of men pass to a noble and -a worthy goal—” - -It was then that Horvendile sighed, a bit despondently. “Ah, Gerald, but -how may you presume to speak of such matters, who did not attain to -Antan?” - -“My friend,” replied Gerald, affably, “I was too wise to risk any such -indiscretion. No: I did not enter into my appointed kingdom; and I have -destroyed it. Therefore it must remain, so long as I remain, whatever I -choose to imagine it. I retain the privilege of playing with a beautiful -idea, in just the proper half-remorseful frame of mind which begets the -most luxuriant fancies—” - -“But—” Horvendile began. - -“No, my dear fellow, you are quite wrong.” - -Horvendile said, “Still—” - -“Yes, there is something in that, at first glance, yet it does not -really touch the root of the matter.” - -Horvendile protested, “I was but going to say—” - -“I know! I perfectly comprehend your argument. And I admit that you -phrase it forcefully. The trouble is that you are wrong in your -underlying principle.” - -Horvendile said, “However—” - -“Yes, but not always,” Gerald stated. “For the one way for a poet to -appreciate the true loveliness of a place is not ever to go to it. No, -Horvendile, a poet is not to be fobbed off with facts. No matter what -the surrounding facts might be, all poets from Prometheus to Jurgen have -preferred a beautiful idea to play with. So a logical poet will always -destroy his appointed kingdom, because in this way only can he convert -it into a beautiful idea. Therefore for me, who am a poet of sorts, to -have entered into my appointed kingdom would have been woefully -shiftless. I would have had henceforward only one kingdom. But, as it -is, I can remake the destroyed place several times a day, in my -imaginings, and can every time rebuild it more beautifully. I have thus -a thousand kingdoms, each one of them more lovely than the other. To-day -it will be Evasherah who awaits me there, among all the splendor and the -perfume and the sunlit lewdness of the most ancient East: to-morrow the -sweet singing of feathery-legged Evadne will summon me to a quite -different Antan, which then will be a sea-engirdled, low-lying tropic -island: but the day after that, far more idyllic lures will be recalling -me to that pastel-colored, pastoral and rather populous Antan which is -inhabited by all the many dreams that I had in youth, and is to be made -my strictly personal heaven by the pure lips of Evarvan. Whereas, upon -yet other occasions,—when my turn of mind takes on a more scholastic -turn,—I shall know that in Antan awaits me each paragraph of the -profound, wide erudition of Evaine.... But more often, Horvendile, I -shall think of yet another woman and of a boy child, who were not -wonderful in anything, but who for a while seemed mine. And I shall -believe that these two wait for me, in a much more prosaic Antan; and I -shall know that no magic, howsoever mightier than the less aspiring -dreams of my manhood, can afford to me anything more dear.... For all -that one needs, Horvendile, I have had. Antan could boast of nothing -more desirable, to me, than that which I have had. So now not any power -can ever quell my thankfulness for those illusions which have made sport -with me for my allotted while. And I cry out defiantly, among your -waiting swine, in this gray place of endless ruining, I am content...!” - -Then Horvendile replied: “A fool with so many fine words at his tongue’s -tip, a fool also is not to be argued with. For it is a foolishness -beyond any describing, to believe that Antan can be destroyed by you or -by anybody else. Ah, no! your kingdom awaited you, poor Gerald: but you -faltered, you fell away into domesticity,—and you talked! Now it is the -Master Philologist who, through the might of that word which was in the -beginning, and which will be when all else has perished, has removed -your kingdom from your reach, and from your seeing, and even from your -quite whole-hearted belief, forever. Now it is your only comfort to -poultice your failure with such foolish phrases. And now also it is I -who tell you that for such faltering and for such failure, and for such -phrases, there is possible but one answer.” - -Thereafter Horvendile gave Gerald a queer word of power, and Horvendile -took out of his pocket a little mirror three inches square. You heard in -the duskiness a flapping of small vigorous wings. Then three white -pigeons stood among the swine, at the feet of Horvendile. He did what -was requisite: and Gerald thus came straightway into a place which was -not unfamiliar. - - - - - PART TWELVE - THE BOOK OF ACQUIESCENCE - - “Candor is no More Palatable than an - Oyster when Either is Out of Season.” - - - - - 48. - Fruits of the Sylan’s Industry - - -GERALD came thus into the library in which, no more than four months -ago, as it appeared to him, he had quitted his natural body. Lights -burned there, but the room was empty. - -Nor did he perceive any marked signs of change. Most of his books were -very much as he had left them. Upon the bookcases were still ranged his -porcelain and brass animals and birds and reptiles. Investigation, -though, revealed the addition to this diminutive fauna of a rather -charming china cat,—a black cat, fast asleep, with a red ribbon about -its neck,—and of a small ivory elephant, which also was black, but had -white tusks. - -The chairs, he saw, had been recovered, but it was with a figured stuff -of much the same design and color. The rug that once had been his -mother’s was still underfoot; and the curtains, while new looking, were -of just the same repulsive shade of green velvet that by candle light -turned yellowish. - -“It is a quite detestable color. I had always intended to change those -curtains so soon as I could afford it, for a green with some real life -in it. I can but deduce that my body has remained remarkably -conservative through all these thirty years which have seemed to me only -a month or two. My body has evinced commendable industry, also, for here -are dozens upon dozens of books by Gerald Musgrave.” - -It seemed a bit droll thus to be confronted with so much strange work -performed by his own natural body,—thought out in his own brain cells, -and written with his own hand,—during the time that these chattels had -been entrusted to the Sylan. Yet the results were gratifying. - -For here were not any folderol romances such as Gerald himself, he felt -uneasily, might have perhaps contrived with those brain cells and that -hand, romances which at best would have wasted his readers’ time, and at -worst might have incited unedifying and improper notions. Instead, these -quartos were all serious and learned and scholastic works. Gerald -therefore regarded these large quartos with a justifiable pride and with -profound respect. Their very bindings were in themselves as incompatible -with anything frivolous as were their contents with any unscientific -double meanings. These books had the fine clarity of a physician in -conference with a midwife. Moreover, Gerald’s admiring eyes found nearly -every page empedestalled upon the most impressive looking kind of -footnotes: upon tall footnotes in almost illegibly small type; upon huge -polyglottic footnotes very full of numerals and brackets, which -flatteringly assumed your acquaintance with all human tongues and your -possession of all printed books, so that you could be referred offhand -to such and such a page of an especial edition; and upon footnotes which -appeared to quote from the literature of every known language after -having abbreviated the title of each cited volume into -unintelligibility. - -For these quartos dealt with no romantic nonsense such as the phantasms -with which novels vitiate the intelligence and the morals of their -readers, Gerald observed, but with really worth-while ethnographic -matters like the marriage customs of all lands, and the ways of male and -female prostitution among the different races, and with the history in -each country of paederasty, and of lesbianism, and of bestiality, and of -necrophily, and of incest, and of sodomy, and of onanism, and of all -manifestations of the sexual impulse in every era. There, in a more -imaginative vein, were the _Tentative Restoration of the Lost Books of -Elephantis_, the handsomely illustrated _Seed of Minos_, the doctoral -thesis upon _Lingham Worship_, the _Fertility Rites of the Sabbat_, the -privately published _Myth of Anistar and Calmoora_, the _Study of -Priapos_, and the various other monumental works which, although Gerald -did not know this, had already made Gerald Musgrave’s name familiar to -the lecture halls of all universities and the pages of the more learned -reviews. - -These quartos were, in fine, the books which had made Gerald Musgrave -the most famous and widely read of American ethnologists; and by his -body’s industry and erudition and broad-mindedness Gerald was properly -impressed. Here seemed, indeed, to be at least one complete and -scholarly treatise devoted to the historical development and the -mechanics and the literature of every known manifestation of the great -forces which had created all life. - -“Yes, it is really edifying to note with what zeal and common-sense my -body—while I was a-gypsying with over-ambitious follies,—has -decorously set up as the recorder of historical and scientific truths.” - -Then Gerald found upon the next shelf some fourteen tall scrapbooks. -They were full of what the newspapers had printed in laudation and in -the most respectful criticism of the books of Gerald Musgrave. They -contained, also, accounts of the academic honors conferred upon Gerald -Musgrave. They were interleaved with the letters which had been -written—the majority, of course, by that strange race which writes -habitually to authors, but many of them, apparently, by persons of some -consequence,—to Gerald Musgrave about his books. - -“My body in my absence has become, thanks to my body’s books, a -reputable and even a looked-up-to citizen. My body is by way of being, -indeed, a personage. I note, too, with that interest appropriate to the -foibles of the great, that my body has also become a somewhat vain old -magpie, gathering up through thirty years every scrap of paper which -happens to display my name.” - -Next Gerald lighted on a black box with silver corners, and inside it -was a time-discolored manuscript. This Gerald carried to the -writing-table. And he found it that unfinished romance about his heroic -ancestor, Dom Manuel of Poictesme, just ninety-three pages of it, -precisely as Gerald had left it, with no word changed or added. - -“There was not in my natural body sufficient power to sustain the high -inspiration of my youth. So, very sensibly, my body has found other -pursuits, and through them it has become a personage. I do not complain. -Not every body becomes a personage. Even so, it seems a pity to have -denied to mankind the loveliness already created in this fragment.” - -But it was just then that the door opened. In the doorway stood a man in -late middle life. And Gerald now for one instant regarded his natural -body and all the dilapidations which time had performed upon that body. - -And Gerald somehow comprehended the penned-in and eventless and -self-sacrificing, arduous life of the famous scholar, the life which had -been lived so long by the natural body of Gerald Musgrave. That blinking -magpie, in this somewhat stuffy room,—in the midst of this childish -menagerie of small cats and elephants and dogs and parrots and chickens -and camels and other imbecile toys,—day after day compiled the valuable -and interesting matter in those quartos and the trivial magniloquence in -those scrapbooks. And that, virtually, was all he ever did. Such was his -living in a world profuse in so many agreeabilities,—to be tasted and -seen, to be smelt and heard and handled, at absolutely your own -discretion, in this so opulent world wherein anyone could live very -royally, and with never-failing ardor, upon every person’s patrimony of -the five human senses. - -Meanwhile, such self-devotion had paid, under time’s grasping -governance, an exorbitant tax. The impaired shrunk body was unhealthy -looking. Under each of the wavering dim eyes showed a peculiar white -splotch. The skin of the noted scholar was pasty and seemed greasy. He -had hardly any hair except those gray and untended whiskers. Everywhere -he was shrivelled and lean, except for the abrupt, the surprising, -protrusion of a large paunch. He self-evidently had inadequate kidneys, -and an impaired heart, and defective teeth, and a sluggish liver, and -approximately every other drawback to a sedentary person’s late middle -life. - -The body of this ornament to scholarship and letters was, in fine, a -quite disgusting bit of wreckage, in need of patching up everywhere; and -a fallen god, when thus confronted by the work of time and of much study -and of intramural living, might very well shake his red ever-busy head -over the one refuge now remaining to down-tumbled divinity. - -Nevertheless, Gerald spoke the queer word of power which Horvendile had -given him. There followed for Gerald an instant of dizziness, of a -moment’s blindness.... - -Then Gerald found that it was he who stood at the door of the library -peering into the quiet lamp-lit room. Before him waited a red-headed, -slim young man in a blue coat and a golden yellow waistcoat, with a tall -white stock and very handsome ruffles about his throat. And the young -fellow was smiling at Gerald Musgrave with a rather womanish mouth, and -in the eyes of the boy was a half-lazy, mildly humorous mockery. - -Old Gerald Musgrave adored him with an ardor which was half hatred. Then -he saw that the young fellow did not matter, and that Gerald Musgrave -had bargained well. - - - - - 49. - Triumph of the Two Truths - - -“THAT is a strange and glorious word for you to be telling me,” the -boy began. “That is a disastrous bargain for you to be seeking. For your -own will has spoken the revealing word which buys back your natural body -now that your outworn crumbling body is of no more worth.” - -Gerald answered: “I, who have left the Marches of Antan forever, have -bought freedom from the ever-meddling magic of the Two Truths. At my -first sight of no other female body which is not positively deformed -will I become enraptured. I have bought feet too old for errancy, ears -that are deaf to the high gods, and to the heart-stirring music of great -myths, and to the soft wheedling of women also, and I have bought eyes -too dim to note whether or not Antan still gleams on the horizon. It is -a good bargain.” - -Then he took up again the pages of that thirty-year-old romance. That -too remains, he reflected, unfinished, like all else which I have ever -undertaken.... - -Some day it will be completed by other hands than the thin wrinkled -hands before me. Somebody else,—not born, as yet, it may be,—will be -writing out,—intelligibly, anyhow,—the story of Poictesme and of the -Redeemer of Poictesme and of his fine followers and many children,—but -not half so splendidly as I was going to write it. Somebody else will, -by and by, be beleaguering and entering into—by means of the little, -yet the not wholly despicable, art of letters,—that wonder-haunted -province which—yes, that also,—was a part of my appointed kingdom.... -Somebody else will be laying open the fair ways to Bellegarde and to -Amneran and to Storisende, and will be making free these ways to every -person, so that, through the lean lesser art of letters, Poictesme may -become in some sort another Antan,—an Antan perhaps considerably abated -in splendor, but graced at least with easy accessibility.... - -Yet not even such slight triumphs were to be won by aged feet, and by -ears no longer acute, and by dimming eyes, and by pulses which would not -be riotous ever any more. He tore up the pages one by one, just as, he -recollected now, in the land of Lytreia, Evaine had torn up the sacred -fig-leaves. Glaum had said that the fig-leaf was the true symbol of -romance. Gerald meditatively dropped the destroyed fragments of his -romance into the waste-basket. - -Gerald spoke then without any too great hopefulness. “Has my body, -during your inhabitancy of it, my dear fellow, escaped from Evelyn -Townsend? and gone free from the unmerited blessing of a good woman’s -love?” - -The red-headed boy before him replied, discreetly: “Your body and the -body of your Cousin Evelyn have always been such good friends!” - -And Gerald smiled. “I recognize that phrase. So throughout thirty years -Lichfield has never once forgotten its polite formula for exorcising the -inadmissible!” - -“It has been generally felt,” the youngster answered, “that a prominent -man of letters was entitled to his Egeria. Of recent years, to be sure, -your friendship has not been—we will say,—so ardent nor so frequently -manifested. But there has been, to hold you two together, the boy -begotten by your body upon her body. There has been the long usage to -hold you two together. So your friendship has remained unshattered.” - -“I had forgotten,” Gerald said, “the boy. Yes, I remember hearing that -you had thoughtfully provided me with offspring during my absence. I -know not quite how to thank you, my dear fellow, for a favor so delicate -and so personal. We will therefore cough and drop the subject.” - -Then Gerald leaned back in the chair. He put together his finger-tips, -and smilingly he looked at them with rather tired, old eyes. - -“So I stay faithful to one woman, after all! I have been kept in -everything a model American citizen. I have gracefully adhered to the -code of a gentleman. In my private life I have evinced every proper -respect for the chivalrous sacrament of adultery between social equals. -In the field of my professional labors I have composed no puerile and -lascivious romances, but only serious and instructive works. I am, in -brief, in all respects, a credit to my native Lichfield, and, more -generally, to the United States of America.” - -He shrugged. He spread out those old-looking, futile hands. - -“Well, certainly I must not spoil the miracle. So I submit. I yield to -the demands of propriety. I accept my personal good behavior; I accept -my success; and I accept also my measure of actual famousness.” - -Then Gerald said: “Therefore I must, so long as my life lasts, continue -faithfully your work as the recorder of historical and scientific -truths, since it was such truths which brought my name into famousness. -Oh, yes, you may depend upon it, I shall henceforward honor these fine -truths within the limits advisable for anybody now nearing sixty. I -shall serve them, that is, with my pen rather than with other -instruments now perhaps more fallible. For the trained intelligence of -such a famous scholar as I have become cannot deny their proper -importance to those scientific and historical truths which brought him -into famousness,—nor would, of course, my admirers care to have me -abandoning my métier.” - -And Gerald said also: “Even in the private relations which you have -chivalrously preserved for me, my dear fellow, one must not ask -everything. Wheresoever a man lives, there will be a thornbush near his -door: and I can manage well enough, I daresay, to put up with the -continuance of this illicit love-affair,—in which, after all, my -advanced age now protects me from being put to any frequent or -far-reaching inconvenience. Meanwhile, the legend of a life-long illicit -love-affair is a very splendid preservative for the fame of any writer. -It would have been even better, of course, if in conjugating the verb to -love, you had managed to make a few mistakes in gender; that is more -piquant; that is infallible: still, I repeat, one must not ask -everything. I have my satisfying legend of private immorality, created -without any least trouble on my part. Men will remember it. So all ends -very well indeed. I am content with what I have found upon Mispec Moor. -I am content with what I have found in Lichfield. And I shall not bother -any more about Antan, wherein, for one reason and another, I have found -nothing.” - -“Do you not be speaking lightly of Antan! For I—do you not -understand?”—the young man spoke with an almost frightened -elation,—“it is I who am called to reign in Antan. You have brought me -the revealing word and the dreadful summons of Horvendile. Antan is my -appointed kingdom, into which I shall now be entering upon the silver -stallion famous in old prophecies.” - -“Oh, oh!” said Gerald, “so that is how it is! All ends, again, with that -rather hackneyed scoring _Da capo_. And the eternal quest of Antan -continues, for all that I have no part in it....” - -Yet the boy’s joyousness and proud faith appeared to old Gerald Musgrave -pitiable beyond thought. Gerald, now that he was fifty-eight, was of -course not really troubled by that pitiableness, because all actual -commiseration and sympathy for other persons had withered in him along -with the rest of youth’s over-upsetting emotions. Besides, Gerald saw -that, in logic, as a plain question of arithmetic, the boy did not -matter. A million or so other lads more or less like this enthusiastic -young fellow were at that instant preparing for the same downcasting and -failure; and by and by these lads also would be facing their own -unimportance with equanimity. For, as you—howsoever suddenly,—got -older, there was less bitterness, there was hardly any bitterness at -all, to be derived of the knowledge that in human living very much -amounted to nothing, because you saw even more clearly and more -constantly that nothing amounted to very much.... - -So Gerald said only: “You are young. At least, you are living in a young -body. So do you beware! For, so long as you go about the Marches of -Antan in any conveyance so perilous, the lying half-magic of the Two -Truths will beset that young body, and the Princess will await you at -every turn. She will encounter you under many names, for it is true -that, just as you said very long ago, women do vary in their given -names. She will encounter you in varying shapes. But in any case, she -waits for every young romantic everywhere, as a rather lovable and as an -interestingly formed and colored impediment.... I think it, therefore, -highly improbable that you will complete the journey to Antan. I, in any -case, am middle-aged. And I cry, not discontentedly, my personal -farewell to the half-magic of racing pulses and of distended nerves—” - -For an instant Gerald was silent. In his old eyes awoke that gleam which -anybody familiar with Gerald would have recognized at once. - -“You see,” he continued, with large affability, “while you have been -theorizing, my dear fellow,—oh, very charmingly, and with a -thoroughness which does you credit, great credit,—well, my -investigations meanwhile have taken a rather more practical turn. I am -not, of course, at liberty to speak of my love-affairs out yonder, with -any real explicitness. No, here, as always, _noblesse oblige_. Still, if -you only knew! If you but knew half as much as I do about that droll -escapade with the Lady Sigid of Audierne and her cousin the Abbess! -about what happened to me in the harem of Caliph Mizraim! about Beatrice -and Henriette and Madame Pamela and Vittoria and Elspeth! about the -three girls at the tanner’s! or if you knew the truth as to what her -Majesty and I were about that night we came so near being caught—!” - -“I see,” the boy said, rather wistfully. “You have been a devil of a -fellow and a sad rip among the ladies.” - -“Oh, dear me, not at all!” said Gerald. And the old fellow now wore the -expression which, sometimes, accompanies a blush. “It is merely that I -have talked a bit too freely. It is only that this rash tongue of mine -was running away with me. So I can but ask you to forget every word I -have uttered. For exalted names ought, really, not to be repeated thus -lightly. I shall therefore say nothing whatever about the eight other -queens with whom my name has been coupled,—with how good reason I, you -understand, must be the last person in the world to admit,—nor about -any of the empresses either. In fact, a great deal of the scandal about -my intimacy with one of them was exaggerated. No: I most certainly must -not voice any indiscretions about dear Caroline. So I merely point -out—without mentioning any names whatever,—that my experience has been -considerable: and I can assure you, my dear fellow, that in the end -these half-magics produce, after all, no very prodigious miracles.” - -“But—” said the boy. - -“No,” Gerald protested, “no, really, you must not tempt me with such -eloquence! It suffices that during the thirty years that you have sat -here theorizing,—and have, as it were, blossomed forth with all these -delightful books,—these half-magics have led me day after day from one -affair to its twin; they have led me into more or less jealously guarded -lowlands, which were not markedly dissimilar; they have led then from -one valley to another valley which looked and felt and, for that matter, -smelt very much the same; finally they led me to the fair breasts of -Maya. And I fell away into domesticity, I went no farther. But I was -wholly content there.... So I do not complain. I have lost through these -half-magics my appointed kingdom in Antan,—or so, at least, it appears -to me, in a world wherein perhaps nothing is indisputable except, of -course, historical and scientific truths. Yet the losing of my kingdom -has, none the less, been pleasant. I have had, under the harryings of -these half-magics—always, I mean, upon the whole,—an agreeable time. -To-night the half-magics whose appointed duty it is to keep all us -romantics from attaining to Antan have ceased bothering about me. After -to-night I am no longer formidable. I am, in a word, now that I approach -sixty, almost middle-aged. It follows that Antan does not concern me any -longer: and I shall think no more about Antan, wherein, for one reason -and another, I have found nothing.” - -With that, gray Gerald Musgrave dipped his pen. He put the boy quite out -of mind. And the well-thought-of old scholar began to write, just where -his natural body had left off a bit earlier in the evening, setting down -decorously the historical and scientific truth as to the rules governing -pre-nuptial intercourse in the bedchambers of New Guinea and the Tonga -Islands. - - - - - 50. - Exodus of Glaum - - -THE boy waited, looking down at this old fellow who sat there making -small scratches upon paper, the most of which he presently canceled with -yet other scratches, all the while with the air of a person who is about -something intelligent and of actual importance. Then the boy shrugged. -For, as always, to an onlooker the motions of creative writing revealed -that flavor of the grotesque which is attendant upon every form of -procreation. - -And besides, to him for whom the silver stallion waited without, and for -whom his appointed kingdom waited also, such time-wasting appeared -futile. He, who was young, and who retained as yet the untroubled faith -of every boy in his own abilities and in his own importance,—and who, -of course, might not foresee the fate which awaited him in the arms of -Evadne of the Dusk,—could not regard without impatience such -time-wasting. What made it even worse was that this dilapidated remnant -of a man was so plainly enjoying himself. For he chuckled as he wrote; -he had self-evidently found what he considered a rather beautiful idea -to play with, for now he had cocked his battered, so nearly bald, old -head to one side, and that which he had just written down was being -regarded by his dimmed and peering eyes with entire admiration: and it -was all somewhat pitiable to the young eyes of the observer. - -For it did not seem possible that anybody should sit here, thus stuffily -immured, and with no exercise more profitable than writing, when yonder, -as all youth knew, the way lay open to the unimaginable splendors of -Antan. It was, for that matter, an unthrifty wantonness for Gerald -Musgrave’s young observer to be lingering here, in the cold company of -books and china animals, when yonder (as all youth knew) along the -pleasant way to Antan were waiting so many dear, fond, loving women -eager to cheer and to inspire and to trust and to give all to speed the -high-hearted adventurer in that glorious journeying toward his appointed -kingdom. Decidedly, the old fellow was lost: for now he was infatuated -by the contentment to be got out of writing, which remained always, in -its own way, as bedrugging as the contentment to be got out of -domesticity; and there was no help for this preposterous, doomed, -chuckling Gerald Musgrave,—who would always now be finding one or -another rather beautiful idea to play with, and who must remain, so long -as life remained, a poet whose one real delight was to shape and to play -with puppets.... - -Yet it mattered very little, to any person who was already for every -practical purpose a reigning monarch, that all which pertained to this -Gerald Musgrave was somewhat droll, the smiling red-haired boy decided, -as he passed toward Evadne of the Dusk, and out of sight of that -gray-fringed bald head bent over that incessant pen scratching. - -[Illustration: THE END] - - - - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - - -Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. - -Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMETHING ABOUT EVE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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