Something About Eve

    Likewise, at this very moment, you might encounter, in the prodigal world outside this somewhat stuffy room, those tinier, those mere baby winds which were continually whispering in the tree-tops about this world’s marvelousness now that April was departing; or you might hear the irrationally dear sound of a bird calling dubiously in the spring night, with a very piercing sweetness; or, if you went adventuring yet farther, you might hear the muffled delicious voice of a woman counterfeiting embarrassment and reproof of your enterprise.... Outside this book-filled room, in fine, was that unforgotten mortal world in which any conceivable young man could live very royally, and with never-failing ardor, upon every person’s patrimony of the five human senses.

    And yet, in such a well-stocked world, this lean, red-headed boy was vexedly making upon paper (with that much nibbled-at black pen) small scratches, the most of which he almost immediately canceled with yet other scratches, all the while with the air of a person who is about something intelligent and of actual importance. This Gerald Musgrave therefore seemed to the waiting, spectral Sylan a somewhat excessively silly mortal, thus to be squandering a lad’s brief while of living in vigorous young human flesh, among so many readily accessible objects which a boy like this could always be seeing and tasting and smelling and hearing and handling, with unforgotten delight.

    But the Sylan reflected, too, a bit wistfully, that his own mortal youth was now for some time overpast. It had, in fact, been nearly six hundred years since he had been really young, a good five and a half centuries since young Guivric and his nine tall comrades in the famous fellowship had so delighted in their patrimony of five human senses and had spent that inheritance rather notably. Yes, he was getting on, the Sylan reflected; he had quite lost touch with the ways of these latter-day young people.

    Yet it was perhaps unavoidable that in the great while since he had gone about this world in a man’s natural body, the foibles of human youth had become somewhat strange to him; and it was not, after all, to appraise the wastefulness of authors that you had traveled a long way, from Caer Omn to Lichfield, at the command of another Author, to put this doomed red-headed boy out of living.

    The Sylan spoke...

2. Evelyn of Lichfield

    THE Sylan spoke. He spoke at some length. And the young man at the writing-table, after arising with the slight start which these supernatural visitations invariably evoked from him, had presently heard the Sylan’s proposal.

    “Who is it,” said Gerald, then, “that tempts me to this sacrifice and to this partial destruction?”

    The Sylan replied, “The name that I had in my mortal living was Guivric, but now I am called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes.”

    That was a queer name, and it was a queer arrangement, too, which this vague wraith in the likeness of a man was proposing,—an arrangement, Gerald Musgrave decided, which, at least, was worth consideration....

    For, as a student of magic, Gerald Musgrave in his time had dealt with many demons: but never had been made to him, before this final night in the April of 1805, such a queer, and yet rational, and even handsome offer as was now held out. Gerald pushed aside the manuscript of his unfinished romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme; he straightened the ruffles about his throat; and for an instant weighed the really quite alluring suggestion.... Most demons were obsessed by the notion of buying from you a soul which Gerald, in this age of reason, had no sure proof that he possessed. But this Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, it seemed, was empowered and willing to rid Gerald of all corporal obligations, and to take over Gerald’s physical life just as it stood,—even with all the plaguing complications of Gerald’s entanglement with Evelyn Townsend.

    “I was once human,” the Sylan explained, “and wore a natural body. And old habits, in such trifles as apparel, cling. I feel at times, even nowadays, after five centuries of a Sylan’s care-free living, rather at a loss for human ties.”

    “I find them,” Gerald stated, “vast nuisances. Candor is no more palatable than an oyster when either is out of season. And my relatives are all cursed with a very disastrous candor. They conceal from me nothing save that respect and envy with which they might, appropriately, regard my accomplishments and nobler qualities.”

    “That has been the way with all relatives, Gerald, since Cain and Abel were brothers.”

    “Still, but for one calamity, I could, it might be, endure my brothers. I could put up with my sisters’ voluble and despondent view of my future. I might even go so far in supererogation as to condone—upon alternate Thursdays, say,—a chorus of affectionate aunts who speak for my own good.”