Something About Eve

    “Is it, then, inconsistent with the manners of a continent in the Western Hemisphere—first named America by Waldseemiiller, a teacher of geography in the college of Saint-Die among the Vosges, in a treatise called Cosmographia, published in 1507,—for me to like you so much that I just want to touch you and be near you?”

    “No, ma’am, that, I regret to say, is universal. Besides, I did not particularly mean you. I only mean that there are such women, as we both know, dear lady, who prey upon young boys. They employ for this purpose all their confidence and generosity without the least scruple. And many a hard, bitter, cynical man has originally had his faith in and his regard for everything good and holy blasted in his very first boyhood by the confiding nature and generosity of some middle-aged woman or another and her subsequent references to the advantage he took of her.”

    “It is possible that you speak with the clearness recommended by Quintilian as the chief virtue of speech,—born in Spain about 25 A.D., died about 95 A.D., patronized by Vespasian and Domitian,—but it is certain that I do not understand one word of your speaking.”

    “—However,” Gerald continued, “when a boy has a nice, clean friendship with an older woman it is one of the most valuable and helpful experiences that can come into his life. A friendship such as this appears to me a rather beautiful idea. The older woman—particularly when she is older by many thousands of years,—can teach him, as his mother out of the superficial knowledge of a callow half-century or so cannot possibly do, about women. She can inspire and direct him. She can fire his ambition. She can encourage him. She can be to him in every way a liberal education.”

    “Now, certainly, I shall never understand your American way of uttering so many platitudes—derived from the Greek word platys, meaning ‘flat,’—when I was attempting to do all these things!”

    “Ah, but we must keep the education entirely oral, and we must keep, too, your little hands—So, now, that is very much better!”

    “It is better still to permit a willful person to have his way,—a remark attributed to Periander, an ancient sage, and Tyrant of Corinth during the sixth century B.C.,—since you elect to give me my honorarium for nothing,” Evaine said, rather sulkily.

    Gerald elected to do nothing of the sort. But, since his real intentions would have been an awkward matter to explain, he kept silent about them.

    After that Gerald questioned the learned Fox-Spirit. She explained to him willingly enough the laws of Lytreia and described the basket they were found in, and she made it plain just how these laws were enforced by a committee of midwives and stonemasons. She spoke of the magic she had put upon Lytreia. She spoke of Tenjo, telling how in the prime of his youth he came to be called Tenjo of the Long Nose; and her statistics were remarkable. She talked then about the wind between the stars, and about the grandeur that was Greece, and about Hobson’s choice, and about Davey Jones’s locker, and about the cause of volcanoes, and about the curate’s egg, and about the best cures for baldness. For no information anywhere was hidden from the wisdom of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods.

    “I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have knowledge, and I like your reflections extremely. So do you speak yet further out of the stores of your omniscience!”

    He had been glancing all the while toward the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths. But he of course said never a word about this mirror. His present task was simply to lure on this cultured and malefic creature to her complete ruin.

    For the Fox-Spirit, as Gerald saw, was still about the brutish magic of the wu, which drives men mad, and she now spoke of more and yet more evil matters such as were very well adapted to incite Gerald to brutality. She spoke of the battle of life, and of the feast of reason, and of the irony of fate, and of the lap of luxury. She talked of the writing on the wall, and of the scroll of fame, and of the lexicon of youth, and of the cloud that had a silver lining. She touched upon the two seas, of troubles and of upturned faces. She discussed the durance that was vile, and the hours that were wee and small, and the consummation that was devoutly to be wished for, and the light that was dim and religious, and the heat which was not the humidity. She indicated the balm in Gilead, the place in the sun, and the safety in numbers. She afterward gave succinctly the recipes for making a mountain out of a molehill, a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and a virtue out of a necessity. For no evil phrase of any sort was hidden from the wisdom of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods, and who was now intent to exercise upon Gerald the magic of the wu, which drives men mad.

    But Gerald only smiled, almost approvingly. This woman was reminding him more and more of Evelyn Townsend, and his pulses had not ever been calmer.