Something About Eve

    “Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question! What do you three expect to find in Antan? Because I can assure you that, after the impending changes to be made in the government and other civic affairs of Antan by the Lord of the Third Truth,—a deity, gentlemen, with several not uninteresting aspects, a deity with whom I may without boasting say that I have considerable influence,—why, then, the moment everything is in tolerable working order, it will be a real pleasure to afford you three gentlemen all possible courtesies.”

    But the three mages did not seem impressed.

    “I was wise,” said Solomon. “I knew all things save one thing. I did not know that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished. And that word no god knows until he has heard it spoken by the Master Philologist.”

    “My desire,” said Merlin, “was for the Nimue and for the love of my child mistress. When I had my desire it did not content me. So I now go into Antan to find, it may be, something which I desire. But my father’s son does not go asking favors of any god.”

    Then Gerald said: “Yet, you three mages who have traveled through the Marches of Antan wherein only two truths endure, and the teaching is that we copulate and die,—do you not look to find in the goal of all the gods some third truth?”

    And it seemed to him that the faces of these myths had now become somewhat evasive and more wary.

    But they said only, speaking severally: “A wise man knows that no truth is affected either by his beliefs or by his hopes.”—“A wise man accepts each truth as it is revealed to him.”—“A wise man will risk nothing upon the existence of any truth.”

    “Still, gentlemen, these are enigmas! These sayings are not a plain answer to a plain question: and I do not quite understand these sayings.”

    They answered him, “There is no need that you should understand.”

    Then these three passed down toward the sunset statelily. And Gerald, gazing after them, once more shook his red head. These wise myths seemed to him in a bad way: it would not be easy to content the more eminent sages among his future subjects, because these three at least, for all their wisdom, appeared never to have found out what they wanted.

    Gerald shrugged. He, in any event, perfectly well knew what in this bracing country air he wanted at once. So Gerald went in at once to supper with his Maya who was such an excellent cook in her plain way.

32. A Boy That Might As Well Be

    WHAT more is needed,” Maya had asked, “to make this last day with me pass pleasantly?”

    —For this, again, was the very last day which Gerald could possibly spend in the trim log and plaster cottage. Maya had decided, without any reticence, that it was high time he attended to whatsoever foolishness he seemed to think himself committed to, in that disreputable low place down yonder, and that to keep putting it off in this way looked like shirking, and that, for her part, she simply could not understand why he did not get his nonsense over with….

    And Gerald said, “It would be nice if we had a son.”

    But Maya at once dissented, as, it seemed to Gerald she nowadays dissented, at least in part, from everything that Gerald proposed.

    “No, Gerald,” said Maya. “For you would grow far too fond of him. You would be foolish about him. You would be unwilling to leave him, you probably never would leave him. And it would end in you being in my way, and bothering me in the night season, and being under my feet all day, for the rest of your life—”

    “But I am a god—”

    “Yes, Gerald, to be sure, you are. I had forgotten. I apologize. Now, do not be upset about it! Stop pouting! You are a god, that is quite understood. You are immortal, you are going to outlive me indefinitely, and you are going to perform wonders in Antan, and it is all going to be very nice. I hope so, anyhow. I was only saying it would be much better for us to have no son.”

    But Gerald answered: “Do not keep contradicting me in that maddening way! If you again fly out at me like that, Maya, you will rouse my temper. Then I shall rage and roar and, quite possibly, ramp. I will bluster and speak harshly. I will huff, I will puff, I will blow the house down. For I insist it would be quite nice if we had a son.”

    “Oh, very well, then!” said Maya; and she turned with that sulkiness which she ever and again displayed—nowadays,—toward a large basket of magics.

    “—I mean, though, once he were old enough. Babies are too limited in conversation, they are too vocal, and they are too leaky.”

    Maya had lifted from an amber basin a small shining lizard. She held it toward her mouth, breathing softly upon the creature, in the while that she answered Gerald.

    “I think, myself,” said Maya, “that, since you insist upon having a son, he might as well be seven or eight years old to begin with.”