And when Gud had finished reading the woman asked: "Is that all?"
And Gud looked at the poem in his hand and said sorrowfully, "That is
all."
"But that is quite comprehensible," said the woman, "for it is merely
one of Hersey's usual plagiarisms--a twittering parody of Rossetti's
'THE BLESSED DAMOSEL', and it is so simple."
"Do you understand it?" asked Gud.
"Of course, it merely means that the love of man is insufficient to
satisfy the yearning of woman, and so she must look into the mirror of
her own soul in search of greater spiritual joys. But alas, she is
shadowed by her sex consciousness as reflected in her beauty of the
flesh, and she can not escape that haunting shadow which finally drives
her mad. Is that not simple?"
To D. S.: I protest. This interpretation is entirely
erroneous.--H. H.
To H. H.: Good God, I know it! but if you had seen what I first
wrote about it you would keep still.--D. S.
"I should say," said Gud, "that it is beautiful simplicity."
"That is just the trouble with all that these chaps are writing. They
are so keen on the obvious. You see, I can understand all that these men
have written, for it is all explainable by psychoanalysis. It is merely
the symbolism of a suppressed wish to be famous. And, oh Gud, how I do
crave true mystery!"
"Then," said Gud, "you shall have it, for am I not Gud the Great?"
"If you are, why do you not inspire these men who are writing this book
about you to put something into the book that no one can understand?
Indeed, if you cannot do that I shall be tempted to believe that you are
not Gud, but only a mere figment of fancy conceived in the brains of two
conceited young egotists who are seeking a cheap notoriety by shocking
decent people with blasphemous literature."
"I fear you are right."
"Oh," cried the woman, "then you admit that you are what I said?"
"Not at all. I merely admit that he is what you said."
"Really, Gud, you ought to have had some well-known writer do this book
about you--some one who had already been suppressed, or, better yet, a
Russian."
"Who are the Russians?" asked Gud.
"They are the supremists in dancing, the theorists in politics, the
idealists in economics and the realists in literature. But you are
romantic, aren't you, Gud?"
"I think so. At least I feel so--did you always wear your hair that
way?"
"Oh, no, indeed. You see, I used to wear it shorn like that of a boy,
for that fashion was once the insignia of the female intelligence. But
all the fat bankers' wives aped us, so now our only chance for
distinction is to ape our mothers, and I wear my mother's hair. See, I
will take it off and show it to you."
"It is very lovely," said Gud, as he fingered her mother's hair. "I
think I should have loved your mother, and it is very sweet of you to
wear this hair in remembrance of her. Most women who have risen to your
intellectual heights forget their mothers."
"It is very kind of you to say that, but distinction is in being
different, and so we ultra-intelligent women are again showing respect
for our mothers to distinguish us from the mob of the commonplace
intellectuals who came flopping into the pool of progress and muddied
the water.... It is a great race, dear Gud, this struggle to keep ahead
of the apings of the stupid."
"Yes, yes, so I find it. Little up-start muddling gods have quite fogged
up the milky way with their nebulous creations--but pardon me if I
suggest that I would rather that you put your mother's hair back on."
She had some difficulty in putting her mother's hair on straight; so Gud
reached over, and with a few deft touches, arranged it for her. Then,
plucking a button from his robe, he burnished it on his sleeve until it
shone silvery bright, and then he held it before her. She looked into
the mirroring silver and gave a little rapturous cry of joy, for the
hair of her mother, on which they had both wasted so much henna, had
been turned into a brilliant shade of fluorescent opalescence--a color
that no artist of the Latin Quarter had ever painted and that no artist
of the Village had ever imagined.
"Oh, Gud," she cried, "now I know that I love you, for they will go mad
about it and I shall be the queen of the studios."
"I would rather that you remain just a woman as you have so sweetly
shown yourself to be."
"Never!" cried she who wanted something that no one could understand,
"never, never, will I be content to be just a woman! I must be, oh so
much more. I must have super-personality, and hyper-yearnings, and
ultra-strivings and transcendent seekings after ultimate
mysteries--really I don't think you understand me at all!"
"Has any one ever understood you?" asked Gud.
"No," she breathed in soft expectancy.
"Only a little while ago you were searching for something that no one
could understand--have we not found it in yourself?"
"Perhaps," she spoke dubiously.
"And if you were in my book, would it not then contain something that no
one could understand?"
"Do you mean it?" she faltered.
"Yes, dear child, for whom all writers write, if it will bring me one
more smile from those ever-changing eyes of beauty--I will see that you
are in '_The Book of Gud_'--if I have to catch these blasphemous scribes
and pound their heads together!"
"For that promise," said the iridescent lady, "I could love you forever
and a day. To think that we two should be in a book together! Just me
and Gud!
"And now," she added, in a lower tone, "I'll confess to you why I want
to be in the book. You see, I am supposed to be a literary character and
one has to be in a book to be a literary character, you know."
"Yes, yes, I know. I suppose it will make me one also. But now I must
hasten to seek out these mundane scribes, and see to it that they put
you in my book--for they have it about finished."
"Which one of them do you propose to have write me into the book?"
"Which one would you prefer?"
"I hardly know," she said. "That fellow Spain is a woman hater, and I am
afraid he will say something unkind about me. But that Hersey poet
prostitutes his art to flatter women. He has an exaggerated idea of the
importance of the sex consciousness in an intellectual woman's life.
Really, it is a choice between two evils."
"If that is the way you feel about it," said Gud, "perhaps I had better
write you into the book myself."
"Could you really? Oh, Gud! I would die of joy to be written by you; not
even a movie actress ever had a celestial press agent!"
"I'll try," said Gud, "that is, if you will tarry with me as I write."
"Do you mean that I would inspire you?"
"Exactly."
"That is what they all say!"
"Then it must be true."
"But why do you not say something original, since you are Gud?"
"Because I am talking to you."
"You old brute!"
"Perhaps so, but a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points."
"Oh, I like that," cried she who had sought for mystery. "It sounds so
original, and I am sure that no one can understand it--what does it
mean?"
"It means," said Gud, "that you and I have very much in common that
quite transcends the reach and grasp of men."
"You flatter me."
"But really, that is true."
"Then quick, write it down before you lose the inspiration."
"But I have nothing on which to write," said Gud.
She blushed and turned away from him, and tore the whiteness from her
bosom, and turned again toward Gud and handed him the whiteness that had
covered up the secrets of her heart.
Gud took the whiteness of her bosom and thereupon he began to write,
while she lay down upon the other side of the pool, and hid her bosom
away from Gud, lest, now with its whiteness gone, he might see the color
of her heart.
And so Gud, who is made in the image of man, became as a man. And as he
wrote he forgot the woman, for when a pen is in the hand of man or god,
the light that lies in woman's eyes burns dim as some brief candle.
And this indeed is the paradox of all who wield the treacherous weapon:
that man sets out to write, some woman's heart to flutter; and having
struck pen to paper, if there be anything in him that rises o'er the
damp swamp of woman's kisses, then of a truth the instrument that she
put into his hand becomes a knife to sever the cords with which she
sought to bind him.
Such is the tragedy of her who flutters near while men make words on
paper, that in their youth they write for her; and their youth gone,
they still write on beyond the reaches of her soul.
And so, as Gud wrote upon the whiteness torn from a woman's bosom, he
forgot quite utterly the woman herself, who lay by the pool trembling
and suffering and trying to hide her heart from Gud.
And when she saw that he had forgotten her--even though he had told her
he wanted her near him and needed her for inspiration--she suffered so
that her heart died within her, and she shrank and withered and fell
into the pool of the fountain, and, as a brown leaf, floated on the
surface of the water.