The brown man thought that, nowadays, in a comparatively enlightened nineteenth century, was perhaps the appropriate time for something to be done about this celestial chameleon. And in any case, he said yet further, he always enjoyed his little conferences with Freydis, who was rather a dear—
“So, so!” said Gerald, “you, sir, have previously visited Antan?”
“Oh, very often. For I am the adversary of all the gods of men.”
And Gerald viewed with natural interest the one person who pretended to know at first hand anything about Gerald’s appointed kingdom: yet, even so, if this brown gentleman, as Gerald had begun to suspect, happened to be the Father of All Lies, there was no real point to questioning him, inasmuch as you could believe none of his answers.
“—For, I infer,” said Gerald, “that you who travel on the road of gods and myths are that myth not unfamiliar to my Protestant Episcopal rearing; and that I have now the privilege, so frequently anticipated for me by my nearer relatives, of addressing the devil?”
“I retain of course in every mythology, including the Semitic, my niche,” replied the brown man, “from which to speak to intelligent persons in somewhat varying voices.”
Then Gaston Bulmer arose, and the aging adept shaped a sign which to Gerald was unfamiliar.
“I suspect, sir,” said Gaston Bulmer, “that my mother’s father, who was called Florian de Puysange, once heard the speaking of that voice.”
“It is a tenable hypothesis. I in my day have spoken much.”
“—As did, I believe, yet another forebear of mine, the great Jurgen, from whom descends the race of Puysange, and who once encountered someone rather like you in a Druid wood—”
“I cannot deny it. The Druids also knew me. I, who am the Prince of this world, meet however, as you will readily understand, so many millions of people during the course of my efforts to keep them contented with my kingdom that it is not always possible for me to recollect every one of my beneficiaries.”
“Still,” Gerald said, “you have played in large historical events a strange high part; you have known all the very best people: and you must have much of interest to tell me about. You, sir, at least shall dine with me, since my friend here is obdurate. My wife avoids the usual run of gods, but to devils I have never heard her voice the slightest objection. So, if you will do me the honor to accompany me to my temporary home, in that cottage—”
But the brown man smiled. And he excused himself.
“For your wife and I are not wholly strangers, And the circumstances in which we last parted were, I confess, a bit awkward. So I really believe it would be more pleasant, for everyone concerned, for me not to meet your wife just now. Do you present, none the less, my compliments.”
“And whose compliments shall I tell her that they are?”
“Do you say a friend of her earliest youth passed by, one somewhat intimately known to her before she first became a mother; and I make no doubt that Havvah will understand.’’
“But my wife’s married name is Maya, and before our marriage it was AEsred—”
“Ah, yes!” the brown man said, precisely as Glaum had done, “women do vary in their given names. Do you present my compliments, then, to your wife: for that word, by and by, means the same thing to every husband.”
“I will convey the message,” Gerald promised: “but the aphorism I would prefer to have delivered by somebody else.”
And he so parted with both his guests.
For Gaston Bulmer embraced Gerald and then went sorrowfully back to Lichfield, in a cloud which the aging adept’s despondency made quite black: and the brown man leisurely strolled on toward Antan, with the ease of one who was well used to walking to and fro about the earth.
He did not hurry, nor did he look inquisitively about him, Gerald noticed, as has done the other travelers toward the city of all marvels. The brown man, alone of the many that had passed toward Antan, appeared to travel upon a road with which he was thoroughly acquainted, toward a familiar goal.
35. Of Kalki and a Doppelganger
SO IT was that Gerald stayed yet a while longer upon Mispec Moor. July passed uneventfully. Each pleasant summer day found Gerald sitting beneath his chestnut-tree at the roadside: and he talked there with many wayfarers who have no part in this tale. For almost all these travelers told the same story. Nine out of every ten of them had yesterday been a god whom human beings served; each had been worshipped by mankind in one or another quarter of the world: to-day their human concerns were over, and they journeyed toward the goal of all the gods. What did they look to find there? Gerald would ask: and—to this very simple question,—every one of them replied evasively. They went to hear that word which was in the beginning, and which would be after everything else had perished, that word which was unknown to all the gods of men. They would say no more: and Gerald did not deeply bother about the matter, because he was nowadays quite well contented, and when he went to Antan would soon be clearing up every mystery for himself.
And the divine steed Kalki also appeared content enough, nor was his aspect altered by inaction. The horse retained that uniform strange shining and that metallic glitter which made him seem actually to be made of untarnished silver. Of course when you saw him grazing upon Mispec Moor just after a rain-shower his back would be dark and sleek, and his broad sides would be streaked with wavering, oily-looking bands. But at all other times he kept his glowing silver color, which was unlike that of any other horse Gerald had ever seen.
Meanwhile the divine steed grazed with the geldings who once had been the human lovers of Maya. He went as they did, lifting each hoof with somewhat droll carefulness as he grazed forward on the sloping ground about the cottage. For Gerald would often watch this grazing. And to him these horses as they moved slowly and irregularly windward seemed continually to pick up and to replace their hoofs upon the ground as though they believed each hoof to be a rather fragile parcel. The pendulous, stretched, heavy necks of these horses, each neck staying always monotonously parallel to all the other necks, appeared to him too heavy ever again to be lifted erect. To wonder in the drowsy summer afternoon how this lifting could possibly be achieved aroused an unpleasant sensation in Gerald’s collarbone.
So Kalki fed all day among the geldings, and on windy nights he huddled with them in the lee of the cottage. Each day Kalki went looking downward, grazing interminably, and without ever ceasing to move those wobbling, dark, prehensile, rotatory, snuffling lips as the divine steed fed upon the sparse grass of Mispec Moor. He, just as greedily as the geldings, would contort his lips and twist his head when he attempted to get at the longer and more luscious grass which grew almost inaccessibly about the fence posts. And to reflection there was something of the incongruous in the spectacle of a divine steed engrossed by this problem.
Now and again, as Gerald noted also, the stallion would raise his superb head, and Kalki would look almost wistfully toward Antan. But soon he would be back at his grazing: and, upon the whole, he seemed content enough with the pleasures appropriate to ordinary horses. And Gerald thought too that, nowadays, Kalki looked less often toward the goal of all the gods.
Yet Kalki turned out to be not wholly unique. For, one morning, as Gerald went toward his chestnut-tree, he noted the approach from afar of a traveler who rode upon a horse that had very much the appearance of Kalki. And when Gerald had reached the roadway he saw that the newcomer was in fact mounted upon a steed which might well have been Kalki’s twin.