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.