Therefore Gerald claimed with a clear conscience the miracle which Gerald had, in fact, actually performed, at one remove. And Gerald kept his long chin, resolutely, well up....
“So that,” observed the brown man, quietly, “that is the end of Antan. I do not complain.”
“I had forgotten,” then said the wrinkled old woman who had been Maya of the Fair Breasts, “I had forgotten how willful is that Abdel-Hareth who got his being upon Earth from me. Something of this sort was to be looked for, the first moment that the headstrong wretch was freed from my control. Still, Jahveh has gained less than we have gained through Jahveh’s meddling. Abdel-Hareth has served me even at the last by removing Antan from the horizon. Earth will be quieter now; and my daughters will not be so hard put to it to keep men in reasonable order.”
“I forget nothing,” the brown man remarked, drily. “And so I did not await the coming of your first-born in the likeness of a child whose fearless innocence surmounts all evil. For it was the seeming of a little child who rode up against Antan, you conceive, with every appearance of that faith against which the snares of no sorcerer and of hardly nine women in ten can prevail. Such innocence is a quite dangerous counterfeit. For one, I do not meddle with it nor with any other unearthly phenomenon. I have my realm. It suffices me.”
The woman asked, “But what, what, Janicot, do you suppose has happened?”
“How shall we ever know, dear Havvah, when manifestly there are no survivors of that happening? Antan, in any case, is no loss to us.”
Here Gerald broke in upon their talking; and Gerald shook at them his red head lordlily.
“You little creatures guess in vain at the means which I have employed. And equally in vain will you supplicate me to reveal those means. For I shall tell you nothing. It is sufficient that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones has accomplished the mission of his tenth incarnation with a thoroughness not customary in interrogative pronouns. I came to redeem my appointed kingdom from the rule of usurpers. I came as the Lord of that Third Truth which is unknown to those who teach only that we copulate and die. That Third Truth has been loosed. No, I shall tell you nothing of its nature, for you are not fit to comprehend the Third Truth. But the mightiness of it your own eyes have witnessed. So Antan is now redeemed—”
His voice broke here. But Gerald presently continued:
“Antan is now redeemed at a great price. That woman and that child to whom my heart was given have perished. I remain. I know that these two were illusions. Nevertheless, I remain. There is no bond upon the Lord of the Third Truth to be happy: there is a strong bond upon every Helper and Preserver not to evade the full discharge of his mission. What, you may ask of me, is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth? And I will reply to you out of my divine wisdom. It is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth, howsoever he may palter or struggle against his doom, to destroy that which he most loves.”
44. Economics of Common-Sense
NOW Gerald sat with his head bowed. He heard a talking between the old woman who had been his Maya and the brown man who was the Adversary of all the gods of men.
“What is it men desire?” said the woman. “My daughters prepare for them fine food and drink, my daughters see to it that their homes are snug, and at the end of each day my daughters love them dutifully. All things that men can ask for, my daughters furnish them. Why need men cherish strange desires which do not know their aims? For how can any of my daughters content such desires?”
“I also marvel at the desires of men,” replied the Adversary. “I, too, am ready to accord whatsoever a man can ask for sensibly and in plain words. I, who am the Prince of this world, remain a generous and ever-indulgent monarch. I will to make my people happy. My curious opulence awaits at every hand to afford my subjects whatsoever they can ask. But men want more. They desire that which was never in my kingdom. They have followed after impalpable gods: they have been enamoured of phantoms. They have believed that their desire was in Antan, in part because they did not know what was their desire, and in part because they did not know what was Antan. Yes, it is well that Antan has perished.”
“This world is well enough,” the woman said. “It is well to be born into this world of an ever-loving mother. It is well to be a young man in this world wherein one may follow after young women and be cherished by them. There is soft living in this world when you have come as near discretion as men ever get and have had the wit to find a wife to take care of you. And at the end it is well to fare out of this world quietly and incuriously, with a deft-handed woman to nurse you and to wash your body afterward. But men want more.”
“This world is very good. My kingdom is a wholly sufficing kingdom,” agreed the Adversary. “The wise man, as goes human wisdom, will be content with the inexhaustible goodness of those material things which all are mine. For the five senses are an endless comfort; the five senses are an endless store of anodynes. A man may purchase bodily ease and a drugged brain with his five senses. But men want more.
“So they have passed beyond my daughters,” the woman said. “One by one, a many have passed, perversely and so lonelily, from all my daughters could contrive to content them: and one by one a host of demented romantic men have struggled toward Antan, and toward what befalls all mortals and immortals there. Yes, it is very well that Antan has perished.”
“One by one,” said the Adversary, “they have derided my kingdom. They have followed after impalpable gods. These gods passed futilely. But they drew many of my subjects from me, all to be lost forever in that beguiling Antan.”
“Men are great fools, and my daughters can hardly hamper their folly. That which my daughters can do they perform willingly. But not all men could my daughters preserve from the madness which drew men toward Antan and into ruinous desires to judge the goal of every god. At last, Antan has fallen: it is very well.”
The Adversary said, more leniently: “Men are, beyond doubt, great fools. But they are my people; and those that I can save I save. Yet many evade me. And their dreaming troubles all my realm and me, too, they trouble now and then. But Antan has fallen: and after that foolishness at least my people will not be following any more.”
“The daughters of Eve are not troubled now and then, they are troubled at every moment, by the dreams of men. Such of these blundering men as fond and eternal laboring may save, my daughters win away from their toplofty dreams. But the work is hard; the work is endless; and our losses are many.”
And then the Adversary said: “We two who began in the Garden to contrive for the happiness of men, and to be speaking always for the real good of men—yes, certainly, our work is hard and endless.
For men stay romantically minded creatures who aspire beyond my kingdom. Yet we do not despair.”
45. Farewell to All Fair Welfare
WHEN Gerald raised his head he was alone on the naked moor, for the brown man had departed, and Maya had gone away with the first of all her lovers, and her illusions had vanished, including the neat log and plaster cottage. And mists were creeping up from the ruined kingdom of Antan, in billows of ever-thickening gray which seemed to be the smoke from that great burning.
Then Gerald said:
“I have come out of my native home on a gainless journeying with no profit in it: yet there has been pleasure in that journeying. I do not complain. Let every man that must journey, without ever knowing why, from the dark womb of his mother to the dark womb of his grave, take pattern by me!