“Altogether,” said the old gentleman who was dressed as a bishop, “I feel that my present ranking in the Christian church is a perplexing and, in some sense, a false position for an Arabian storm god. I have aged under it. Oh, I have tried to be quite fair about the matter. Sometimes I even go so far as to concede that people who have never met a particular person might, just possibly, believe that person to be three persons whose actions were all poetic inventions. The human imagination is vigorous. I must point out to you, though, my friends, that nobody could conceivably believe that about himself. These very curious theories about me thus postulate the existence of at least one sceptic, and they hinge indeed upon the existence of that sceptic, in me. Now, I feel instinctively there must be an error in any such logic. I feel it unfair that I alone of all the persons connected with my church should be inevitably doomed to remain an atheist. And I have aged steadily under the injustice and unreason of it all. Otherwise, if I yet retained the vigor of my youth, I might yet, in my frank way, attempt to clean the slate, as it were, with whirlwinds and thunderbolts and another deluge or so, and to make a fresh start all around. But, alas, I have aged, my dear Havvah, since the days of our first acquaintance. The inexplicable theology and the rationalization, as they call it, to which I have been subjected by my incomprehensible servants, now for some eighteen centuries with ever increasing rigor, have brought me to the point that I cannot logically believe in my own existence. The things they tell me simply do not hold together. And so—”
He comprehensively waved his hand toward Antan.
But Gerald rose, and Gerald put aside his glass of milk and his veal sandwich.
And Gerald said, beamingly: “You who have traveled through the Marches of Antan, wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching is that we copulate and die,—you at least, I know, must, as a leading official of the Protestant Episcopal church, look confidently forward to finding in the goal of all the gods a third truth. The fact emboldens me to ask that you do but answer me this very simple question—”
“Alas, my friend,” the badgered looking old gentleman broke in, “professionally, of course, my faith is all that it should be. But in my private capacity, as a plain-thinking Arabian storm god, now that I am retiring from active churchwork, I suspect that when anybody anywhere once understands the nature of any two truths, that will be quite time enough for him to be requiring a third truth to exercise his wits upon.”
“That truism, sir, is not to be denied,” said Gerald, rather crestfallen. “Yet that is likewise an evasion.”
“In fact,” said the bewildered old gentleman, shaking sadly his white head, “in fact, ever since I acquired triplicity, I have been accused of duplicity also. The Gnostics, I remember, said very unkind things about that: the Valentinians were no more charitable: whereas I would really hesitate to repeat, my friends, the remarks of the Priscillianists.”
“—And in any case,” Gerald said, emphatically, “howsoever you may evade me, it would not do for you to evade your duties to the Protestant Episcopal church. The world as yet has need of bishops and all that they signify. I must point out to you, sir, the wild talking of bishops yet frightens many sons into a thrifty-minded practice of generally beneficent virtues. Indeed, sir, bishops remind rather of calomel in the effect which they have upon the run of men, because I find their effect also to be, ultimately, beneficial. There are also other points of resemblance. And if the strange ways of episcopal action now and then unavoidably upset you, sir, you ought to remember that it is, after all, for the general good. I, moreover, must point out that it absolutely would not do for you to go into Antan and be one of my subjects—”
“He thinks,” Maya once more explained, parenthetically, to her guest, “that he is a god, you understand.”
“But I am!” said Gerald. “These continual interruptions are really very awkward, my dear. And the present situation also is awkward, in view of Protestant Episcopal upbringing. It is a situation which must at any cost be avoided. This gentleman simply must not go into Antan.”
“But what is to be done about it?”
“Oh, do you not be uneasy! Your age, sir, and its attendant delusions, such as wanting to go into Antan, are matters quite easily remedied by any competent Dirghic deity. You could not possibly have pursued a wiser course than to come to me for assistance. So, if you will permit me, sir—”
Thereafter Gerald, still in something of a flutter, baptized the old gentleman who was dressed as a bishop with the last remaining drop of water from the Churning of the Ocean.
39. Baptism of a Musgrave
FORTHWITH the old white-bearded gentleman became a most personable looking youngish Oriental, who shone with a fiery radiance, and about whose head played a continual flashing like small lightnings. And he said, approvingly:
“That is a fine magic which has restored to me my youth and the vigorousness I had in Midian before I was kidnapped by those stiff-necked and affectionate Jews.”
“And will you now be going into Antan?” asked Gerald, rather anxiously.
“Not yet, my friend,” replied the merry, strong, young Arabian storm god. “Oh, very certainly, not yet! No, I have had quite enough of my illogical position as a Christian and of the worries of being rationalized by incomprehensible foreigners. I shall thankfully return to my Midianites and to my little shrines upon Seir and Sinai and Horeb, and to the quiet living of a local godling. I shall be hearing again my own people’s sane and intelligible prayers for rain, and I shall be snuffing up the smoke of such rational offerings as kids and goats and an occasional prisoner of war, just as I used to do, where I was given due credit for my actions, and where you heard no unpleasant personal scandal circulated about my being triplets. In the meanwhile, my benefactor, is there not any favor which, in my turn, I can do you?”
“Indeed, my dear sir,” Gerald answered, harking back to that worriment which in a neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards stayed always in the rear of Gerald’s mind, “there is a small one, now you mention it. For we have a boy, as you perceive. And it occurs to me that this is the first chance to have Theodorick Quentin Musgrave properly christened according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal church—”
The storm god asked of Gerald, in good-humored surprise. “But do I now look to you much like an Episcopalian clergyman?”