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.