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James Branch Cabell

Something About Eve

SOMETHING ABOUT EVE

A Comedy of Fig-Leaves

BY

JAMES BRANCH CABELL

    “I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself.

NEW YORK

ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 1927

COPYRIGHT, 1927,

BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL

Published, September,

(First Impression)

To

ELLEN GLASGOW

—very naturally —

this book which commemorates

the intelligence of women

Table of Contents

THE ARGUMENT OF THIS COMEDY

PART ONE THE BOOK OF OUTSET

1. How the Tempter Came

2. Evelyn of Lichfield

3 . Two Geralds

4. That Devil in the Library

PART TWO THE BOOK OF TWILIGHT

5. Christening of the Stallion

6. Evadne of the Dusk

PART THREE THE BOOK OF DOONHAM

7. Evasherah of the First Water-Gap

8. The Mother of Every Princess

9. How One Butterfly Fared

PART FOUR THE BOOK OF DERSAM

10. Wives at Caer Omn

11. The Glass People

12. Confusions of the Golden Travel

13. Colophon of a God

14. Evarvan of the Mirror

PART FIVE THE BOOK OF LYTREIA

15. At Tenjo’s Court

16. The Holy Nose of Lytreia

17. Evaine of Peter’s Tomb

18. End of a Vixen

19. Beyond the Veil

PART SIX THE BOOK OF TUROINE

20. Thaumaturgists in Labor

21. They That Wore Blankets

22. The Paragraph of the Sphinx

23. Odd Transformation of a Towel

PART SEVEN THE BOOK OF POETS

24. On Mispec Moor

25. The God Conforms

26. “Qualis Artifex!”

27. Regarding the Stars

PART EIGHT THE BOOK OF MAGES

28. Fond Magics of Maya

29. Leucosia’s Singing

30. What Solomon Wanted

31. Chivalry of Merlin

32. A Boy That Might As Well Be

PART NINE THE BOOK OF MISPEC MOOR

33. Limitations of Gaston

34. Ambiguity of the Brown Man

35. Of Kalki and a Doppelganger

36. Tannhauser’s Troubled Eyes

37. Contentment of the Mislaid God

PART TEN THE BOOK OF ENDINGS

38. About the Past of a Bishop

39. Baptism of a Musgrave

40. On the Turn of a Leaf

41. Child of All Fathers

42. Theodorick Rides Forth

43. Economics of Redemption

44. Economics of Common-Sense

45. Farewell to All Fair Welfare

PART ELEVEN THE BOOK OF REMNANTS

46. The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins

47. How Horvendile Gave Up the Race

PART TWELVE THE BOOK OF ACQUIESCENCE

48. Fruits of the Sylan’s Industry

49. Triumph of the Two Truths

50. Exodus of Glaum

THE ARGUMENT OF THIS COMEDY

Set forth as clearly as discretion permits, for the convenience of the intending reader

    These shadows here are subtle: for they wait

    Like usurers that briefly lend the sun

    Disfavor and a stinted while to run

    With flaunting vigor through life’s large estate

    Of fire and turmoil; or like thieves that hate

    No law-lord save the posturing of desire

    With genuflexions where dejections tire

    The fig-leaf’s trophy with the fig-leaf’s weight.

    Yes; they are subtle: and where no light is

    These tread not openly, as heretofore,

    With whisperings of that at odds with this

    To veil their passing, where a broken door

    Confronts the zenith, and Semiramis,

    At one with Upsilon, exhorts no more.

PART ONE THE BOOK OF OUTSET

1. How the Tempter Came

    “Wheresoever a man lives, there will be a thornbush near his door.

    FOR some moments after he had materialized, and had become perceivable by human senses, the Sylan waited. He waited, looking down at the very busy, young, red-haired fellow who sat within arm’s reach at the writing-table. This boy, as yet, was so unhappily engrossed in literary composition as not to have noticed his ghostly visitant. So the Sylan waited. ...

    And as always, to an onlooker, the motions of creative writing revealed that flavor of the grotesque which is attendant upon every form of procreation. The Sylan rather uneasily noted the boy’s writhing antics, which to a phantom seemed strange and eerie. .. . For this mortal world, as the Sylan well remembered, was remarkably opulent in things which gave pleasure when they were tasted or handled,—the world in which this pensive boy was handling, and now nibbled at, the tip-end of a black pen. Outside this somewhat stuffy room were stars or sunsets or impressive mountains, to be looked at from almost anywhere in this mortal world,—which would also afford to the investigative, who searched in appropriate places, such agreeable smells as that of vervain and patchouli, and of smouldering incense, and of hayfields under a large moon, and of pine woods, and the robustious salty odors of a wind coming up from the sea.

    Likewise, at this very moment, you might encounter, in the prodigal world outside this somewhat stuffy room, those tinier, those mere baby winds which were continually whispering in the tree-tops about this world’s marvelousness now that April was departing; or you might hear the irrationally dear sound of a bird calling dubiously in the spring night, with a very piercing sweetness; or, if you went adventuring yet farther, you might hear the muffled delicious voice of a woman counterfeiting embarrassment and reproof of your enterprise.... Outside this book-filled room, in fine, was that unforgotten mortal world in which any conceivable young man could live very royally, and with never-failing ardor, upon every person’s patrimony of the five human senses.

    And yet, in such a well-stocked world, this lean, red-headed boy was vexedly making upon paper (with that much nibbled-at black pen) small scratches, the most of which he almost immediately canceled with yet other scratches, all the while with the air of a person who is about something intelligent and of actual importance. This Gerald Musgrave therefore seemed to the waiting, spectral Sylan a somewhat excessively silly mortal, thus to be squandering a lad’s brief while of living in vigorous young human flesh, among so many readily accessible objects which a boy like this could always be seeing and tasting and smelling and hearing and handling, with unforgotten delight.

    But the Sylan reflected, too, a bit wistfully, that his own mortal youth was now for some time overpast. It had, in fact, been nearly six hundred years since he had been really young, a good five and a half centuries since young Guivric and his nine tall comrades in the famous fellowship had so delighted in their patrimony of five human senses and had spent that inheritance rather notably. Yes, he was getting on, the Sylan reflected; he had quite lost touch with the ways of these latter-day young people.