Something About Eve

    “—It follows that your notions are preposterous. Oh, that is not your fault, my dear fellow, and not for an instant am I blaming you. Your conduct, from your human point of view, is very right, very friendly, very proper. So your rather laughable blunder does not offend me in the least. And if, as you declare, I have lingered here for some four years as you human beings estimate time, what do four years amount to with an immortal who has at his disposal all eternity? Come now, Gaston, do you but answer me that very simple question!”

    But Gaston answered only: “You are content. You are lost.”

34. Ambiguity of the Brown Man

    AND Gaston said no more about the matter, because just here their talking was interrupted. For now, as these two still sat at the roadside, they were joined by a brown man, dressed completely in neat brown, who was journeying toward Antan.

    “Hail, friend!” said Gerald, “and what business draws you to the city of all marvels?”

    And the brown man, pausing, said that, in point of fact, it was upon a slight matter of business routine that he desired to consult with Queen Freydis. All gods, he said, had rather speedily passed downward to encounter the word which was in the beginning,—for it was thus that the brown man spoke, very much as King Solomon had spoken,—all gods, that is, save only one, who so bewilderingly altered his tenets that there was no telling where to have him.

    The brown man thought that, nowadays, in a comparatively enlightened nineteenth century, was perhaps the appropriate time for something to be done about this celestial chameleon. And in any case, he said yet further, he always enjoyed his little conferences with Freydis, who was rather a dear—

    “So, so!” said Gerald, “you, sir, have previously visited Antan?”

    “Oh, very often. For I am the adversary of all the gods of men.”

    And Gerald viewed with natural interest the one person who pretended to know at first hand anything about Gerald’s appointed kingdom: yet, even so, if this brown gentleman, as Gerald had begun to suspect, happened to be the Father of All Lies, there was no real point to questioning him, inasmuch as you could believe none of his answers.

    “—For, I infer,” said Gerald, “that you who travel on the road of gods and myths are that myth not unfamiliar to my Protestant Episcopal rearing; and that I have now the privilege, so frequently anticipated for me by my nearer relatives, of addressing the devil?”

    “I retain of course in every mythology, including the Semitic, my niche,” replied the brown man, “from which to speak to intelligent persons in somewhat varying voices.”

    Then Gaston Bulmer arose, and the aging adept shaped a sign which to Gerald was unfamiliar.

    “I suspect, sir,” said Gaston Bulmer, “that my mother’s father, who was called Florian de Puysange, once heard the speaking of that voice.”

    “It is a tenable hypothesis. I in my day have spoken much.”

    “—As did, I believe, yet another forebear of mine, the great Jurgen, from whom descends the race of Puysange, and who once encountered someone rather like you in a Druid wood—”

    “I cannot deny it. The Druids also knew me. I, who am the Prince of this world, meet however, as you will readily understand, so many millions of people during the course of my efforts to keep them contented with my kingdom that it is not always possible for me to recollect every one of my beneficiaries.”

    “Still,” Gerald said, “you have played in large historical events a strange high part; you have known all the very best people: and you must have much of interest to tell me about. You, sir, at least shall dine with me, since my friend here is obdurate. My wife avoids the usual run of gods, but to devils I have never heard her voice the slightest objection. So, if you will do me the honor to accompany me to my temporary home, in that cottage—”

    But the brown man smiled. And he excused himself.

    “For your wife and I are not wholly strangers, And the circumstances in which we last parted were, I confess, a bit awkward. So I really believe it would be more pleasant, for everyone concerned, for me not to meet your wife just now. Do you present, none the less, my compliments.”

    “And whose compliments shall I tell her that they are?”

    “Do you say a friend of her earliest youth passed by, one somewhat intimately known to her before she first became a mother; and I make no doubt that Havvah will understand.’’

    “But my wife’s married name is Maya, and before our marriage it was AEsred—”

    “Ah, yes!” the brown man said, precisely as Glaum had done, “women do vary in their given names. Do you present my compliments, then, to your wife: for that word, by and by, means the same thing to every husband.”

    “I will convey the message,” Gerald promised: “but the aphorism I would prefer to have delivered by somebody else.”

    And he so parted with both his guests.