“Yet—” Gerald stated.
Nodding in profound and entire approbation, with which Gerald was not in any way connected, an enchanter in a sopping yellow blanket now remarked:
“I, too, am always ready to defend the magic of our fellow practitioner. My conscience forces me to grant that his magic is not faultless. In mere honesty I have to confess that his magic is stupid and stilted and silly; that it is sniggering and sly and nasty; that it wallows in a morass of self-satisfaction; and that it is steeped and soaked in ever-fretful egoism, in spite of our friendly candor in all dealings with him from the very first. Nor can I dispute that our confrere behaves too much like a decadent small boy who is proud of having been haled into the police court for chalking dirty words on a wall. Apart, though, from his stinking filth and his vileness and his tinsel cynicisms, and aside from his bestiality and his vulgar frippery and his dabblings in cesspools and his vapid sophistries, I stand always ready to defend the magic of Horvendile, because it is not, after all, as if he were a mage of any real importance, and one ought always to be indulgent to persons of third and fourth rate ability.”
“Even so—” Gerald pointed out.
But now an enchanter in a thoroughly drenched scarlet blanket was saying, as he meditatively unclosed his pastepot:
“I quite agree with you. Nobody admires the merits of our esteemed confrere more whole-heartedly than I do. It would be merely silly to deny that he has weakened his always rather wishy-washy magic potions by too frequent blendings. It is impossible to ignore that his magic has become a cloying weariness and a mincing indecency. We are forced to acknowledge that Horvendile is insincere, that he very irritatingly poses as a superior person, that he is labored beyond endurance, that he smells of the lamp, that his art is dull and tarnished and trivial and intolerable, but, even so, we ought also to admit that he does as well as could be expected of anybody who combines a lack of any actual talent with ignorance of actual life.”
“However—” Gerald explained.
The fifth enchanter to interrupt Gerald wore a black blanket; and he, too, appeared to drip with wisdom and bilge-water and judicious amiability in the while that he said:
“It is, in fact, alike our duty and our privilege to be most lenient with this laborious bungler who, after all, is probably doing the best he can. So I, for one, I never dwell even fleetingly upon the awkward fact that the banality of his magic is no excuse for the way he botches its execution. Indeed, I do not know but that a person of very lively imagination might conceive of our confrere’s turning out worse work than he does. Nor do I think I am being over-charitable. For, upon my word,—while I can see that his magic is morbid, that it is sophomoric, that it is malignant, that it is plagiarized, that it is intolerably insipid, that it is sacrilegious, that it is naive, that it is pseudo whatever or other may happen to sound best, that it is over brutal in cynicism, that it is incurably sentimental, and that it bores me beyond description,—yet otherwise I can, at just this moment, think of no especial other fault to find with his magic.”
So it was that these dripping and affable enchanters went on defending Horvendile with such generous volubility that Gerald could get in no word.
Then each took off the single garment which he wore, and so vanished, because without their wet blankets these enchanters were in no way noticeable. And Gerald rode away from that place contentedly, because it was a natural comfort to know that he traveled with a guide and a patron who was so well thought of by the best judges.
22. The Paragraph of the Sphinx
NOW upon the outskirts of Turoine, after Gerald had ridden through this city, Gerald paused to talk with the Sphinx who lay there writing with a black pen in a large black-covered book like a ledger. The monster had so long couched in this place as to be half-imbedded in the red earth.
“This partially buried condition, ma’am,” Gerald began,—“or perhaps one ought to say ‘sir’—”
“Either form of address,” replied the Sphinx, “may be applicable, according to which half of me you are considering.”
“—This semi-interment, then, madam and sir, is untidy looking, and cannot be especially comfortable.”
“Yet I may not move,” replied the Sphinx, “in part because I have my writing to complete, in part because I know all movement and all action of every kind to be equally fruitless. So do I retain eternal bodily as well as mental poise.”
“Such acumen borders upon paralysis,” Gerald said: “and paralysis is ugly.”
“Do you not despise ugliness!” the Sphinx exhorted, “who have traveled thus far upon the road of gods and myths. For what things have you found stable upon this road save only Koleos Koleros and the Holy Nose of Lytreia? and what is there more ugly than these two?”
Gerald replied: “That nose I found it my Christian duty to describe as a tongue; and the lady whom they call Koleos Koleros I have not yet seen. But, in any case, you, ma’am—for, after all, it is not quite nice for me to have your loins upon my mind—No, really, it does seem more becoming for me to treat you as a lady—”
“So, and do you find me ugly?”
“You mistake my meaning. I was about to observe that you, ma’am, also appear tolerably stable. And the Mirror of Caer Omn, that likewise remains in worship.”
“Dreams pass eternally varying through that golden mirror. Thoughts pass eternally varying through my wise head. But all these dreams and thoughts stay barren, as barren as they are irresolute. For we create nothing. We control no material thing. And we aspire toward no goal. That is why we are permitted to endure powerlessly in realms wherein two powers alone are never barren; wherein they control all; and wherein neither may ever be uncertain of its goal so long as the other survives.”
Gerald found this wholly incomprehensible and of no striking interest. So he only shrugged.
“Nevertheless, in my worlds,” Gerald said, “there shall not be any ugliness.”
“Do you, then, possess many worlds?”
“Not as yet, ma’am. I allude to the worlds I shall create by and by, when I have come into my kingdom yonder, in the place beyond good and evil, and have regained my proper station as the Lord of the Third Truth in the Dirghic mythology.”
Now the Sphinx frowned. “I perceive you are only another downfallen god upon your journey to the Master Philologist. I might have guessed it, for Thor and Typhon and Rudra and the Mahits and all the other storm gods who have gone blustering downward into Antan, all had red hair.”
Gerald slapped his thigh.
“Upon my word, ma’am, but that is a real clue! The storm gods did, in every mythology known to me, have red hair. I incline to believe that the wisdom of the Sphinx has solved the mystery of my being. I am no doubt a storm god also; I am rapidly becoming a complete pantheon upon two legs; and at this rate my waistcoat will end by embracing pure monotheism. Meanwhile I really do wonder, ma’am, at your offhand way of speaking about the gods, and I wonder, too, what grudge you can have against us gods?”