“Come now, my dear, but hospitality is a very famous virtue: and, besides, you owe it to me that you are now the handsomest woman in these parts.”
“But that, Gerald,—even if it were the truth, of course, for you need not think you are fooling me, you scamp,—that is just why people will be imagining things if you continue to stay here.”
“Then let us take good care not to be suspected unjustly, because that would be unfair to everybody—”
“Oh, get along with you! and do you pick up every one of those stockings, too, now you have scattered them all over the floor. And really, you red-headed pest, I am not joking, either. That horse of yours—”
“Ah, yes, that horse of mine! I admit that to the discerning eyes of a woman it is not the handsomest beast in the world. And I suppose you are about to point out that this horse is unworthy of me, and that I ought to dispose of it, in one way or another—”
“But whatever nonsense are you talking, now! It is an extremely handsome horse. There is some sort of prophecy about it, too, is there not? So you would be even more foolish than you seem to be, to part with that horse.”
“Well, to be sure, there may be something in what you say.”
“—And what I was attempting to tell you is that, if you will simply permit me to talk for one minute without interrupting—”
“Hereafter I remain as quiet, my dear, as a belch in polite society; and you may go on.”
“Why, then, I was trying to say that your horse can get you to Antan within an hour. You can find out for yourself all about the place. And I daresay this Queen Freydis, from all I have heard of her, will not have the least objection to your rude way of grabbing and pawing at people and interfering with my housework and generally misconducting yourself. It is the sort of thing she is quite used to. But I do not like it: I feel you would not do it if you really respected me. And I am sorry if anything I have said or done has given you any such wrong notions about me. And if you stuck yourself with that needle it was simply your own fault. And that is all there is to it.”
Gerald replied: “You are regrettably lacking, my dear, in the confidence and the generosity peculiar to your sex. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of anything more dreadful than your conduct. Nevertheless, I must stay until Wednesday, for otherwise I cannot possibly judge of your magics.”
“Oh, very well, then!” Maya answered, with unconcealed regretfulness over the fact that she would have to put up with Gerald for yet another day.
25. The God Conforms
FOR Gerald, upon reflection, had decided it would be really amusing to remain upon Mispec Moor until Wednesday, since only upon Wednesday could Maya show the perfection of her thaumaturgy. Thursday, though, as the wise woman forewarned him candidly, was her cleaning day; and she simply could not be bothering over company with the house all topsy-turvy.
“And I also warn you well in advance, my darling,” said Gerald, “that the performance must be gratis, since I have no material possessions, save possibly my riding-horse, to barter for the privilege of witnessing your parlor magic.”
“Why, but what in the world would I be needing with another horse, who already have dozens of them eating their heads off all over the moor? and when in the world, you pest, I became ‘your darling’ I would really like to know!”
“Now, but have you, indeed? The very first moment I saw you, my dear.”
“I do wish you would sometimes, just for a change, talk half rationally. And of course it has always been my custom to further the true happiness of the men with whom I was particularly intimate by turning them into domestic animals of one kind or another. Quite a number of them came out horses—”
“I do not altogether approve of such a custom. Still, women have incalculable fancies: and all men find out sooner or later that it is less trouble to indulge these fancies than to thwart them. At any rate, a god has no concern with these minor sorceries.”
“Of course not!” Maya agreed. “A scatterbrained, talk-you-to-death, carrot-topped, and generally good-for-nothing god is not concerned with anything except with getting on to that minx Freydis.”
Gerald waved aside the insinuation. He continued to talk about more immediate matters, and he said:
“Nevertheless, your story interests me. It would be droll to have a horse like that. So suppose, now, my dear, suppose that I trade my divine steed for one of those unusual horses of yours?”
“No, Gerald, really I would rather not. For the men that I put my magic upon used once to be fine knights or barons or even kings,—and, for that matter, there were a couple of emperors, though only in a small way,—and I confess to a certain sentiment about them still.”
Then in a clay chafing-dish Maya of the Fair Breasts burned fig-leaves with benzoin and macis and storax. And she showed Gerald how one might master mercurial things. She displayed to him the small magics which are Wednesday’s. She revealed to him—cursorily, since they had only a morning at their disposal,—the secrets of remunerative mediocrity in the learned professions, in truth-telling, in upholstering, in the removal of mountains into the sea, in the erection of bridges over any unpassable place, in the preparation of rose-colored mirrors, in criticism, in oratory, in jurisprudence, and in the safe interpretation of Holy Writ. As himself a former student of magic, Gerald found these formulae of interest: but, as a god, he, regarded Maya with profound respect, as one who, with no native divine advantages, had yet mastered this quite reputable stock of knowledge and ability.
Yet the workings of these magics were not apparent until Gerald had put on the spectacles which Maya gave him. He found these glasses so soothing to the eyes that he retained them, just for the remainder of his visit to her cottage.
For, after all, Gerald decided to stay over the week-end, since Maya was so unflatteringly eager to be rid of him. It was an eagerness troubling to his self-respect. Here was he, a god whom women had always run after, and had pestered beyond reasonable endurance, here was he, of all persons, being treated with unconcealed indifference by a mere hedge-sorceress, by a creature who had not even any remarkable good looks or wit to justify her impudence. This Maya of the Fair Breasts needed taking down quite a large number of pegs. So Gerald fell to wooing her with an ardor that somewhat surprised him. For it was eminently necessary, it was, indeed, a rather beautiful idea, to win the woman, and then to jilt her, so as to teach her, once for all, not ever again to make free and easy with the will of a god.
Meanwhile, Maya had suggested that he conceal the fact he was a god; and that she should introduce him to the local gentry of Turoine as a visiting sorcerer.
“For I must tell you, Gerald,” Maya said, “all the best-thought-of people hereabouts are in one or another branch of sorcery. We have, thus, never had any relations with Heaven. All our connections have been with another quarter. And it is not that we are unduly conceited and exclusive, it is simply that it has just happened so. Nevertheless, so many gods have straggled by, on their way to an ambiguous end, as they went down to encounter the Master Philologist, and whatever it is that he does to them, that there is a tendency among the best people hereabouts, as I will not conceal from you, to regard them as not quite the sort that one meets socially.”