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.”