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.”