“But yet, in any case,—dear, unresponsive, frigid child,” said the Fox-Spirit, speaking far more simply than she had done before,—“do you not know that all mythologies are controlled by the Master Philologist, so that he alone may say in which one of them and in what capacity you belong?”
“I find that saying obscure.”
“It means only that sooner or later all gods save only Koleos Koleros and the upright spirit of the Holy Nose pass down into Antan.”
“Yes, for, as they told me at Caer Omn, Antan is the heaven of all deserving gods, where they rest from their divine labors.”
But the Fox-Spirit shook her head, rather forebodingly. “I, certainly, would not say that.”
“Do you, then, but answer me this very simple question! What becomes of them there? what fate befalls in that place all which men have found most beautiful and most worshipful?”
“How can one say, when no god has ever returned? It is known only that, in one way or another way, the Master Philologist disposes of every deity that men have served, save only the two supreme gods of all mammals,—a class of vertebrates embracing bats, the warm-blooded quadrupeds, seals, cetaceans, man, and sirenians.”
Gerald drew a long face. “Your account of the matter, ma’am, suggests that my predecessor upon the throne of Antan lacks piety. You imply that the creature is deficient in true religious feeling. That is a fault I would have to requite when I take from him his throne and all the great and best words of magic.”
“To do that, child, needs power such as has not been shown by any god among the many millions of gods that men have worshipped since the first infancy of Chronos,—a Greek personification of Time, usually depicted as carrying a sickle and an hourglass.”
“Ah, but, my dear lady, I, who am at once a culture hero and a sun deity and a Savior, must be a peculiarly powerful god. And, besides, ma’am, from what you tell me—Why, but, really now, it appears probable that the Master Philologist has damaged the Dirghic mythology to which I myself belong! No god can patiently endure such usage; and my divine wrath will, thus, redouble my power.”
“But, still,—but, still, you dear, nice-looking and vainglorious baby—!”
Evaine had paused. She was regarding him almost compassionately: and Gerald felt he could never get used to the flighty way in which people everywhere in the Marches of Antan seemed to pity the high gods. It was a quite friendly way they had of looking at you, but to extend commiseration where I reverence was the proper thing savored almost of irreligion.
Gerald shrugged. He said:
“I shall therefore be resistless. I shall compel him to restore into general circulation the Dirghic mythology, after having amply repaired whatsoever damage he may have done to it, and then I shall assume, in addition to his throne, my proper station as a culture hero and a sun deity and a Savior in that mythology. So the affair is, virtually, settled: we may now turn to other matters: and in return for the gracious aid afforded by your large wisdom, I will make in your honor a sonnet.”
“It is a very beautiful sonnet,—consisting of fourteen decasyllabic lines, expressing two phases of a single thought or sentiment,” said Evaine the Fox-Spirit,—“and I am proud to have inspired it.”
“You forget,” said Gerald, “that I have not yet recited my sonnet. I will now do so.”
And he did.
But his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the octave, he paused, because it was never within Gerald’s power to resist the beauty of a sublime thought when it was thus adequately expressed in flawless verse. So for an instant he stayed silent.
He caught up the lovely hands of Evaine the Fox-Spirit, and as he pressed them to his trembling lips he noted that these hands smelled like hops drying in the sun. It seemed to him exceedingly pitiful he had given that promise to Tenjo. It seemed to him there was a certain sameness in the dear women who made colorful the Marches of Antan, and, to some extent, a similarity in their more intimate love passages with Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver. He found it depressing to reflect that destruction waited, so very near, for so much loveliness. He found it perfectly dreadful to foreknow that he would often regret this omniscient Evaine and her fine stores of useful information, once he had kept the divine word given to Tenjo, and had put an end to her living before she could do any further damage to the men of Lytreia.
Gods ought to abstain from all love-affairs: for through love alone might a god look to be wounded,—upon rainy Sunday afternoons, perhaps, or after drinking a bit more than was good for one,—to be wounded, at such unavoidable seasons of low vitality, with recurrent, plaguing memories of his mortal playthings, so dear, so very dear, and so soon reft away from his immortal arms, irrevocably....
After these cursory reflections, Gerald sighed, and—with the thoughtful commentary that, since this was a Miltonic sonnet, his poem here went on with the same sentence,—he continued his reciting.
And when he had ended, the Fox-Spirit sighed contentedly. She spoke with acumen and authority as to the main events of Milton’s life and as to his principal works, and she added:
“That is a very beautiful sonnet,—a verse form of Italian origin, first used in English by Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1557,—and I am proud to have inspired
it. That is the sort of poetry which would incline any living woman to trust you and to give you all the very moment you stopped reciting it. So now will you not come to bed?”
“No, Evelyn, not to-night—I beg your pardon, ma’am! My thoughts were wool-gathering. What I had meant to say was but that if you insist upon yet further displays of your great-hearted womanly confidence and generosity you shall be walloped with a broomstick—severely. No, do you retire now, my dear lady, by all means, and with my apologies for keeping you up so late because of the delight I have got from your instructive way of talking. But I shall pass the remainder of the night in the aloofness appropriate to a god, in this quite comfortable armchair.”
And this he did.
18. End of a Vixen
WHEN Evaine was asleep, though, then Gerald rose softly from his chair. He approached the bed. Very carefully he inserted his hand between the young breasts of Evaine, and lightly he drew out the strange white gem. He waited now, looking down compassionately at this really very lovely girl. ... .
But at his touch the learned Fox-Spirit had moved, so that she now lay flat upon her back, with her mouth a little open. Evelyn slept thus. And that was why Evelyn snored....
Gerald shrugged. He took up the sacrificial ax.
Now that the dawn was at hand, he went out from the tomb, to the glorification tree, and he began to fell the tree with this ax. At the first stroke blood gushed out of the gray bark copiously, and Gerald heard a wailing noise. Gerald looked upward. The appearance of a young child dressed in blue garments was to be seen in a cleft in the side of the tree. It had the seeming of a boy child about seven or eight years old, a freckled boy, with tousled red hair, and with as yet only one upper front tooth.
This child wailed broken-heartedly: “A blasphemer is come up against the Two Truths; a vainglorious fool derides the pair that endure where all else perishes; and life is denied to me by his wrong-headedness.”
Gerald had put down the ax. He was trembling. He did not like the love and the great yearning which had awakened in his heart. He folded his arms very tightly: he seemed tense and rather frightened looking as he waited there peering side-wise toward this boy.