god. “Oh, very certainly, not yet! No, I have had quite enough of my
illogical position as a Christian and of the worries of being
rationalized by incomprehensible foreigners. I shall thankfully return
to my Midianites and to my little shrines upon Seir and Sinai and Horeb,
and to the quiet living of a local godling. I shall be hearing again my
own people’s sane and intelligible prayers for rain, and I shall be
snuffing up the smoke of such rational offerings as kids and goats and
an occasional prisoner of war, just as I used to do, where I was given
due credit for my actions, and where you heard no unpleasant personal
scandal circulated about my being triplets. In the meanwhile, my
benefactor, is there not any favor which, in my turn, I can do you?”
“Indeed, my dear sir,” Gerald answered, harking back to that worriment
which in a neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards stayed always
in the rear of Gerald’s mind, “there is a small one, now you mention it.
For we have a boy, as you perceive. And it occurs to me that this is the
first chance to have Theodorick Quentin Musgrave properly christened
according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal church—”
The storm god asked of Gerald, in good-humored surprise. “But do I now
look to you much like an Episcopalian clergyman?”
“Well, sir, I admit the situation is perplexing. Nevertheless, you
remain, so far as I can see, one of the three official heads of the
Christian church, in every denomination. And as such, you must be wholly
competent to administer the sacred rites of that baptism to which we
Musgraves are accustomed.”
He who had been a bishop laughed again. For an instant he glanced
sidewise at Maya, rather impishly. Then the god called to him Theodorick
Quentin Musgrave.
The boy came forward without speaking. There had never been any dearer
brat since time began, Gerald reflected, than was this sturdy droll
red-headed jackanapes who waited there holding his small chin well up in
order to look with politely puzzled interest at the storm god’s
glittering face and the tiny lightnings which played about it. Gerald
was abeam with the most fatuous sort of pride in Theodorick’s perfect
behavior. Gerald glowed all over, now that awkward matter of the boy’s
christening was being at last attended to, by the very highest
authority. And Gerald nodded smilingly and with some inconsequence at
his dear stupid Maya, so that she too might note how splendidly
Theodorick was behaving. The boy was displaying the composure and the
excellent manners of a true Musgrave.
Then the storm god dipped his fingers in his unfinished glass of milk,
and upon Theodorick’s lifted forehead he drew a sign. Gerald was not
wholly certain, afterward, that it was the sign of a cross.
“This is another sort of baptism than that which restored my youth. For
youth this child already has,—to every seeming,” the god said, a bit
unaccountably. “Therefore I now release this child whom I did not
create, I release him from the bondage of the woman and of the Adversary
who caused him to live upon this earth. I decree a forgiveness for the
seven crimes. I cry a remission of the seven punishments.”
“I must say, though, you have been long enough about it,” Maya placidly
observed....
As for Gerald, now that the ceremony was over, he was unaffectedly
hugging Theodorick, and telling him that he was far too big a boy to be
kissing people, and the vaguely puzzled, clinging child was asking, But
who started it, Father?...
And the storm god was saying to Maya, “Do you forget, my dear Havvah,
that it is from your service I am releasing him?”
She answered, still quite placidly: “So far as that goes, the imp has
well earned a holiday; and it is not as if I were dependent upon him.
No, but I confess to wondering—and not for the first time,
either,—just what you may be up to.”
40.
On the Turn of a Leaf
SO THE Oriental storm god went back into the world of everyday, to
look for his old shrines upon Sinai and Horeb: and Gerald was happily
rid of a future subject whom, he could not but feel, it would have been
a bit awkward to have as a subject. And the evening passed tranquilly,
although it seemed to Gerald that Theodorick was rather moody and quiet
after his christening.
But it was not until the next day that Theodorick, just after breakfast,
spoke with a voice which seemed to Gerald not quite the voice of a
child: and Theodorick told his parents he wanted to go down into Antan.
Gerald was troubled. Yet he suggested, with very careful levity, “If—?”
“If you please,” the but half-smiling, ugly, so dear brat now added,
docilely.
“Why, it must be as your father says,” Maya replied. She had paused in
her sweeping off of the porch, and for a moment she held the broom
slantwise as she meditated over the boy’s notion. “But, for one, I see
no great harm in your having a little outing, for I will put a
protection on you. Only, you must promise to be back in good time to
have your face and hands washed for supper.”
Gerald said forlornly, “But what are those small yellow things you are
sweeping from the porch, my dear?”
“They are fallen leaves from a sycamore-tree, left here last night by
that wind, Gerald: and I really do wish you would not ask such silly
questions, when I was talking about something quite different.”
“But that means summer is ending, Maya. It means an end of all growing.
It means that not anything now will become any larger or more lovely.”
“Upon my word, but I never did hear of any such nonsense as you do talk
sometimes, for a grown man, Gerald, as if summer did not always end!”
“That is it, precisely. It always ends: and the warmth and comfort of it
perish. Yes, there is death in the air. I do not find that cheering. And
that is all, my darling.”
“Why, then, Gerald, if you are quite through with that up-in-the-air
sort of talking—which may be very deep and clever indeed, only I happen
not to understand it, and certainly have no wish to,—why, then, I was
asking you about something entirely different.”
“Oh, yes, you were speaking of Theodorick! Well, boys do get restless
without any playmates, I suppose. I will talk to him about his notion
while you are making up the beds.”
Nothing could have been more prosaic. Yet Gerald was troubled. He could
hear Maya inside the cottage, already thumping at the pillows. All about
him seemed matter of fact, and comfortable, and familiar, and stable.
And yet everything, as he somehow knew, was about to change. There awoke
in him as yet no real unhappiness, but just a faint uneasiness mixed
with resentment, now that he noted the fall of the first leaf in autumn,
and knew he was powerless to stay the beginning change in everything
about his small, snug home.
41.
Child of All Fathers
THEN Gerald followed the child down to the roadside. And they talked
together under the chestnut-tree, just where Gerald had talked with so
many strange beings who had passed beyond Mispec Moor in that continuous
journeying toward Antan.
First Gerald performed that needful rite which would reveal the truth.
The child watched quietly. By and by Theodorick began to smile. But he
said never a word until his father was through with these droll doings.
Then Gerald questioned his small son. Theodorick replied. The appearance
of a little child still sat there, and the soft red lips of a child were
moving, but that curious tongue which was like a small white serpent was
speaking about matters never known to any child.
No one of Gerald’s excursions into the darker magics had prepared him
for what was now in part revealed. Something of the spaces outside the
world apparent to human senses Gerald knew, and of the realms beyond
Earth’s orbit he, as a former student of magic, was not ignorant. But
now he understood from what remote abyss his wife had drawn the being
which seemed his child: a bit unwillingly, he could even surmise with
what kind of enchantments Maya had fetched this seeming into the happier
superficial world which is apparent to human senses.
And Gerald was moved: he was, as so many husbands have been, before and
since, now almost frightened by this glimpse of the unswerving and
whole-hearted and unscrupulous love which women nourish for that man
whom marriage has given them to look after. He was not worthy, he
contritely felt, of being thus idolized and of being coddled at the
fearful price of such unearthly indiscretions. And Gerald was sincerely
touched, now that he comprehended to what lengths Maya had gone to
gratify his whim of wanting a son, out of hand. She had warned him, too,
that he was contriving for himself grief. Yes, her womanly intuition
had, somehow, foreseen that to which all his cleverness had been blind.
And yet, even so, Maya had not denied him his desire, because poor Maya
pampered him in everything, to the accompaniment of a commentary
howsoever tart.
And Gerald thought too of how, a moment since, his worst dread had been
that the boy was an illusion. He looked at his beloved son, knowing now
what inhabited that freckled and droll, sturdy little body. The boy had
of a sudden become strange; he was now a threat of unimaginable danger,
and a creature worse than evil: yet Gerald knew, with a dull wonder,
that he loved Theodorick Quentin Musgrave even now....
Gerald by and by put yet another question to this dreadful parody of a
child’s innocence and helplessness, to the being whom Gerald invoked as
Abdel-Hareth.
“But I have served her purpose,—my father,” the child replied, with a
rather perturbing smile. “Oh, but I know! She has had many husbands.
Most of them desired a son. I have always been that son.”
Then, after an instant of silence, the being who was speaking through
the child’s dear lips told of the bonds from which the Midianite storm
god’s touch and absolution had released him. Gerald found this part of
the story particularly unpleasant. And Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, whom
Gerald still addressed as Abdel-Hareth, went on to tell why he must now
go downward into Antan, to encounter, not the Master Philologist, but
Queen Freydis.
Gerald asked, What was needed of Queen Freydis? The child told him. Then
Gerald shivered. He felt, if only for the instant, physically cold and
nauseated. Still, that this creature should desire to return to its
unearthly home was natural enough.
“I comprehend,” said Gerald. “I comprehend a great deal which was
unknown to me ten minutes ago. I confess to being surprised by much that
I have learned from you. Nevertheless, my son,—if you will pardon the
force of habit, sir, and the love I had for my own little, so dear
son—! But I drift into emotional remarks which would be wholly out of
place. My voice, as I note with sincere regret, evinces a distressing
tendency—”
Gerald paused. He gulped. He spoke now in a voice that was light and
high-pitched and rather hysterical.
“In fine, my dear Abdel-Hareth, as you see, I incline somewhat to
blubber like a badly whipped baby. I can but ask you to respect the
emotions of a suddenly bereaved parent, without bothering to understand
his confused utterances. No: you have given me my desire, and my great
happiness. A part of that dies now. But I have had it, utterly. I am
content. I will see to it that you, in your turn, sir, get what you
desire.”
42.
Theodorick Rides Forth
IT WAS after using his handkerchief a bit that Gerald returned to
Maya. Nor did it surprise him she had already prepared a neatly wrapped
up lunch for Theodorick Quentin Musgrave to be eating that day in Antan.
Gerald said, with painstaking carelessness, “Well, my dear, after
talking the matter over, I have decided we may as well let the boy go.”
“Why, to be sure!” said Maya. “And a great deal of bother, too, there
has been made this morning over nothing, as if I did not already have
quite enough to bother me!”
And with that, she summoned from among her enchanted geldings the
handsomer of the pair who formerly had been emperors.
“For a child of mine must go in proper state,” said Maya.
Then Gerald said: “No. An imperial steed is well enough, but a divine
steed is better. Let him take Kalki!”
“Now, really, Gerald, your unreasonableness sometimes surprises even me!
For you know perfectly well that Kalki is your own horse, and that you
will be needing him yourself when you ride down to the appointed kingdom
you are always talking your stuff and nonsense about.”
Gerald looked at her for some while. He was conscious of a hushed great
exultation that in a world wherein all else seemed doubtful and unstable
he had, somehow, through blind luck, won to his Maya and her
snappishness and her unswerving and whole-hearted and quite unscrupulous
love for him. She was not pretty, she was not brilliant, she was not
even easy to live with. But Gerald knew now that he and this woman were
one person; and that any living without Maya would be a maimed business;
and that there could be nothing in Antan which could conceivably content
him for the loss of this dear, ever-wrangling, dull-witted woman.
Then Gerald said: “But it is prophesied that the power of Antan shall
pass to the rider upon Kalki. No harm can befall the rider upon Kalki.
So we will let—we will let our son take Kalki. For in this way we will
secure his protection, and we will remove the one chance of my ever
leaving you, who are worth all the kingdoms that have ever been.”
Maya said, “But—”
Gerald, smiling, replied, “Nevertheless!”
Then the illusion called Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was lifted up by
Gerald to the back of Kalki, and it was Gerald who adjusted the stirrups
for his successor upon the divine steed. And the seeming of a child rode
down toward the goal of all the gods, a rather quaintly pathetic little
figure perched up there so high upon the back of the huge shining
stallion.
Gerald watched the two pass out of his sight. His arms lifted after them
ever so slightly. His arms seemed to ache as he recalled the feel of
that small body and the warmth and yieldingness of it, which were now
lost forever. Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was only an illusion contrived
by forces which it was not comfortable to think about. Gerald knew that
now with certainty. And it did not matter. Nor did it cheer him to
reflect—as he did,—that he was in no worse case than all other
fathers, no one of whom might ever retain the child that was little and
helpless, and was loved for no reason at all, as nobody could quite love
the hobbledehoy thumping schoolboy or even the estimable young man into
whom that warm and yielding, sturdy, so small body might develop....
Then Gerald turned to Maya. “I have only you. But that which I have
suffices me. I have been lucky, O my dearest, very far beyond my
merits.”
She was regarding him with a sort of troubled fondness; and her speech
now was hardly snappish at all. “You really are, my poor Gerald, quite
too ridiculous about the child! You talk, you actually do talk, as
though he were not ever coming back,—and in good time for supper, too,
unless he wants a spanking.”
At that, Gerald raised a protesting hand. “Do you not trick me into
optimism, also! Too much ambition and high dreams and that which was
perhaps divine have now departed forever. The illusion which you created
to be our son has departed, forever. But use and wont and a great deal
of honest love remain. I do not say these things are heroic. I do say
that these suffice. So do you let the strong bonds which are about me
content you, my darling, without wreathing them in the paper flowers of
optimism.”
“But are you, also,” Maya said, “content?”
Gerald answered: “I am well content. Day in, day out, let there be
between us faith, and aid, and a great fondness, O my dear, and no
parting! For I am content and very contrite. I know that any life
without you would be a maimed business. I know that I desire only to
continue in our quiet way of living upon Mispec Moor. For the middle way
of life is best. What need have I to be a god or to be seeking
unfamiliar places so that I may rule over them? That way is troubled,
and too full of noise and striving. It is better to be content. It is
better to be content with the dear, common happenings of human life,
shared loyally with the one woman whose love for you is limitless and
does not change, for all that it is blind to none of your failings; and
to know that these things are enough and very far beyond your deserts;
and not to be insanely hankering after any more high-hearted manner of
living which is out of your reach or, at any rate, is attained through
more trouble than it is probably worth. Ah, yes, the middle way of life
is best.”
“At least it is some comfort,” Maya said, “to hear you talking almost
sensibly.”
Then she reached up, still with a grave and rather tender smiling upon
her beloved, homely face; and she took away from Gerald’s eyes the
rose-colored spectacles.
“In fact,” said a male voice, “the woman’s task is ended.”
43.
Economics of Redemption
FOR now had come to them, traveling back from Antan, the brown man.
This brown man came, he said, to summon Maya to her appointed task of
transforming yet other men into domestic animals.
“—For women,” he said, also, “have always their fond task and their
beneficent labor. Here, I repeat, the woman’s task is ended. But yonder
many men go untamed and unbroken to the sane ways of compromise.”
Then Maya a bit absent-mindedly assented, as she put away those
spectacles of hers for future use, that, in point of fact, she supposed
she had done everything that was actually necessary in Gerald’s case,
although nobody ever would really know what a trial he had been to her.
And Gerald for one instant looked at his wife. He found in his wife’s
face that which it is the doom of most husbands to find there at one
time or another. And it caused Gerald to laugh a little.
“Nevertheless,” Gerald said, quietly, “I am Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper
and the Preserver, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. I am Lord of the
Third Truth, in this world which knows of only two truths and of the
compromises which they beget.”
The brown man greeted that with a thin smile. “You have been long
expected. Oh, very long have scepticism and despair, with somewhat
varying voices, invoked your name, saying, ‘Who will overthrow the
Master Philologist!’”
“Well, and now,” said Gerald, with the outline of a swagger, for he was
getting himself more in hand, “now that prophecy is about to be
fulfilled, for I am Hoo, and none other.”
“But, really, friend, I do not see how you can be an interrogative
pronoun.”
“To a god, and more particularly to a Dirghic god, all incarnations are
possible. There is no reason whatever why I should not be an
interrogative pronoun. It is merely a matter of divine election.”
And the brown man civilly inclined his grave brown head, as he remarked:
“Do you have it your own way! Indeed, my people have very often derived
their deities from less promising locations than the pages of a grammar.
And upon the whole, your epiphany is most gratifying. For I try to keep
my people content: yet it has been lamented, from the beginning, that no
mythology revealed a god who might answer that word which the Master
Philologist speaks to all the gods of men. And so, between despair and
scepticism, those of my people who were so unwise as to exercise their
minds in fields wherein thinking does not make for happiness, have very
long been saying, ‘Who will redeem the goal of all the gods of men from
the Master Philologist?’ Now it appears that this word also has become
flesh; and that this interrogative pronoun Who? stands here before us.
Yes, I consider that quite gratifying; for it is desirable that the
sceptical and the despairing also should be contented, by being
justified in their faith.”
“You quibble,” Gerald replied, “you quibble very tediously and
frivolously, in the divine presence of a god who is about to take over
his appointed kingdom, and to make known that Third Truth which is not
known upon Mispec Moor, where the one teaching is that we copulate and
die.”
“But uncelestial common-sense has always been my failing. So I must tell
you, friend, that it seems to me, now that you have abandoned the
Redeemer’s steed to a small freckled illusion, Antan has nothing to
expect even from the mysterious awfulness of an interrogative pronoun.
And yet, for one, I abandoned the place when your dwarfed deputy
approached it—”
“And you acted wisely, sir,” Gerald replied, with simple dignity. “No
matter how potent may be the impious sorceries of the Master
Philologist, a child has entered into his domain, fearing nothing and
loving all. The fact that the powers of evil cannot prevail against this
conjunction is well known to every citizen of the United States of
America.”
But the brown man still seemed rather moody. “I cannot say.... No, you
and my friend Jahveh have, between you, loosed against Antan a power
which is not of my kingdom. I therefore do not pretend to say what may
come of the experiment. I merely await with lively interest, and at a
reassuring distance, the upshot of this experiment, now that—of all the
beings from beyond Earth’s orbit,—Abdel-Hareth has been deputed to ride
upon the Redeemer’s steed.”
“And, in any case, it is always very certain, dearie,” Maya said, “that
no real comfort can ever come of such foolish notions as I have ridded
you of a little by a little. And in exchange for those toplofty dreams,
I have trusted you as far as seemed expedient, and I have given you all
that was really good for you. I have given you a season of content and
every wholesome joy of domesticity now for some thirty years of mortal
time. No man gets more from life, my poor dearie. None attempts to get
more without ending in disappointment and discontent: and so no sane man
tries to get any more than you have had. And the end finds even the most
wise and reasonable son of Adam—though, to be sure, that is not saying
much,—if he but lives rationally enough to survive all thirty of those
quiet happy years, with a wife who is just as I am, whatever she may
have seemed to begin with.”
Gerald saw, without any grief or horror, that he had now lost both his
child and his wife. For Maya had become old. She was again the
shrivelled and wrinkled creature, red and inflamed and hideous among her
tousled tresses, that he had first found upon Mispec Moor. And
fleetingly he reflected that she spoke the truth: all women, howsoever
dear and beautiful, did become like that, provided they did not first
die and become even more repulsive carrion.... But Gerald lacked time to
discuss these generalities just now: for he had been looking toward
Antan....
“To this chatter about domesticity and pessimism and content,” Gerald
replied sternly, “I answer that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones is
above all aphorisms. I answer that I am Hoo, the Lord of that Third
Truth whose nature is unknown to you. Now that Third Truth is loosed. Do
you look now upon Antan!”
The woman and the Adversary had turned when Gerald pointed, quite as
majestically as though he knew just what he was talking about. In the
midst of Antan they could see, as Gerald had already seen, a flaring
green flame. Now this great flaming sunk earthward, much as the waters
of a fountain descend; the flame spread evenly to every side, sweeping
outward in an ever-widening circle; and now this flaming was no longer
green, but red and glowing. You saw this flood of fire pass equably and
swiftly, surging outward toward the horizon, where at once the mountains
collapsed and disappeared. All that remained was flat and black and
bare. Antan no longer existed.
It was from such a miracle that the woman and the Adversary looked back
toward Gerald, with every sign of sincere respect.
And Gerald’s bewilderment was rather more profound than theirs. He could
surmise only that the dreadful being to whom he had given Kalki had held
to its plan, as voiced by the lips of a child, and had loosed elemental
fires of a nature incomprehensible to Gerald, since they were drawn from
beyond Earth’s orbit. Yet that seemed to Gerald no real reason for
marring a fine attitude or for failing to preserve his self-respect
before the woman and the Adversary. Tricked he might have been: that was
a wholly different thing from ever admitting that he had been tricked.
Gerald knew at least that the illusion which had appeared to be his son
had entered the perhaps equally illusory place where Gerald now might
never enter; and that, whatever had befallen the best loved but one of
his illusions, the rider upon the silver stallion had destroyed Antan.
And it seemed obvious, too, that Abdel-Hareth had returned homeward....
Therefore Gerald claimed with a clear conscience the miracle which
Gerald had, in fact, actually performed, at one remove. And Gerald kept
his long chin, resolutely, well up....
“So that,” observed the brown man, quietly, “that is the end of Antan. I
do not complain.”