Something About Eve

    “I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have a great deal of knowledge, with the vocabulary of a dear friend to back it devastatingly. Therefore, ma’am, to avail myself of your knowledge alone may serve my divine ends much better than your really most flattering proffers in other fields.”

    For now it was Gerald’s turn to speak. So now he revealed to the baffled Fox-Spirit the fact that he was Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, a very potent god who had temporarily mislaid his mythology. He told the omniscient Fox-Spirit, who knew all things excepting only how and at what hour her knowledge would end, of Gerald’s adventures during the rather crowded twenty-four hours since he had left Lichfield.

    And now she was smiling over his obtuseness. For to all-wise Evaine it was at once apparent that Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, was a culture hero like Quat or Quetzalcoatl or Cagn or Osiris or Dionysos. All these were former acquaintances of hers: she knew, she said, every inch of them, for each one of these had stopped to visit her who served all gods, as each had passed downward toward Antan. Evaine, if anybody, would thus know a culture hero wherever she saw a culture hero.

    Every mythology contained one of these glorious philanthropists, born of a mysterious and superior race, just as Gerald had been born in the United States of America, a philanthropist, as the learned Fox-Spirit said, very usually theriomorphic, who came in the appearance of a jackass or of some other animal among less favored peoples to teach them strange new arts and mysteries, and to endow them with every kind of cultural advantage and prosperity, just as Gerald had benefited the people of Dersam and of Lytreia, and was preparing to benefit Antan.

    She pointed out, furthermore, that a culture hero was in no way un-American. There had been, for example, Quetzalcoatl. She also remembered quite clearly Yetl,—because a deity in the form of a bird was always, she said, rather difficult,—and Poshaiyankya, and Coyote, and Esaugetuh, and that other waggish Indian deity—his name at present evaded her,—who had traveled incognito in the shape of a large spider. For all these aboriginal American culture heroes had visited Evaine as they passed downward toward Antan, and every one of them had been in a somewhat earlier generation Gerald’s fellow countryman.

    “In the light of your forceful logic, ma’am, I concede that, over and above being a Savior and a sun god, it seems probable I must be a culture hero too.”

    “But yet, in any case,—dear, unresponsive, frigid child,” said the Fox-Spirit, speaking far more simply than she had done before,—“do you not know that all mythologies are controlled by the Master Philologist, so that he alone may say in which one of them and in what capacity you belong?”

    “I find that saying obscure.”

    “It means only that sooner or later all gods save only Koleos Koleros and the upright spirit of the Holy Nose pass down into Antan.”

    “Yes, for, as they told me at Caer Omn, Antan is the heaven of all deserving gods, where they rest from their divine labors.”

    But the Fox-Spirit shook her head, rather forebodingly. “I, certainly, would not say that.”

    “Do you, then, but answer me this very simple question! What becomes of them there? what fate befalls in that place all which men have found most beautiful and most worshipful?”

    “How can one say, when no god has ever returned? It is known only that, in one way or another way, the Master Philologist disposes of every deity that men have served, save only the two supreme gods of all mammals,—a class of vertebrates embracing bats, the warm-blooded quadrupeds, seals, cetaceans, man, and sirenians.”

    Gerald drew a long face. “Your account of the matter, ma’am, suggests that my predecessor upon the throne of Antan lacks piety. You imply that the creature is deficient in true religious feeling. That is a fault I would have to requite when I take from him his throne and all the great and best words of magic.”

    “To do that, child, needs power such as has not been shown by any god among the many millions of gods that men have worshipped since the first infancy of Chronos,—a Greek personification of Time, usually depicted as carrying a sickle and an hourglass.”

    “Ah, but, my dear lady, I, who am at once a culture hero and a sun deity and a Savior, must be a peculiarly powerful god. And, besides, ma’am, from what you tell me—Why, but, really now, it appears probable that the Master Philologist has damaged the Dirghic mythology to which I myself belong! No god can patiently endure such usage; and my divine wrath will, thus, redouble my power.”

    “But, still,—but, still, you dear, nice-looking and vainglorious baby—!”