Something About Eve

    “Come, now!” said Gerald, “a mistress of that size would be unsuitable. Charms of so diffuse an acreage would create, even in a god, a sense of inadequacy. Nevertheless, I am falling rather ardently in love with those two hills. I begin to adore the casual play of lights and shadows upon yonder piled-up dirt, which when seen from any other station than this would not in the least resemble a woman. And such amorous notions, apart from their insanity, are not befitting in a contentedly, if temporarily, married person.”

    The transience of his comforts made them very dear. It was well worth the inconvenience of sleeping in his spectacles (as Gerald, for his own reasons, did) so that in the night season he could awaken, to see Maya’s tranquil brown head yonder beside the smaller and tousled and livelily red head of Theodorick Quentin Musgrave,—both visible yonder because of the lamp which the child demanded at night, and because of his insistence that Mother was to sleep with him instead of with Father.

    Outside, Gerald would hear those of his transformed predecessors who now were horses, shuffling and restively stamping, and at times snorting and whinnying, in the chill outer darkness; or a misguided gentleman who lived nowadays as a steer would low, much farther off; or Gerald would hear yet another one of Maya’s former husbands coughing, with the far-reaching and morose scornfulness peculiar to a sheep. And then the difference between the estate of Gerald’s predecessors and the snug warmth of his so comfortable soft bed, and his knowledge of that un-marred bodily ease which, just now, was his through every hour of the day, would trouble Gerald, because he knew it all to be so satisfying and so transient.

PART TEN THE BOOK OF ENDINGS

38. About the Past of a Bishop

    “Trust nobody but thyself, and none other will betray thee.”

    SO GERALD stayed content enough, all through those pleasant summer days. It was odd to reflect that these days were counting as he did not know how many years in Lichfield. He would now and then contrast himself with his great ancestor Dom Manuel, the same about whom, in that quaint far-off time when Gerald had believed himself merely human, and was interested in such human nonsense, Gerald had intended to write a romance,—because the Redeemer of Poictesme, as Gerald remembered it, had passed a month with the wood demon Beda, in the forest of Dun Vlechlan, where the company consisted entirely of evil principles, and where the passing of each day left Manuel a year older.

    Gerald would reflect how much more sensible and pleasant was the course which he was following, surrounded with every domestic virtue, where the days did not count at all. For Gerald was content, and certainly he had grown no older in body. He had become used to living upon Mispec Moor: he wondered sometimes if Antan could afford any splendor which he personally would find more to his taste; and he felt that he would honestly miss the simple wholesome ways of Maya’s log and plaster cottage after he had entered forever into the red-pillared palace of his kingdom beyond good and evil,—next week, perhaps, or at all events not later than September.

    And it stayed diverting to observe those persons who almost every day passed beyond Mispec Moor in their journeying toward the goal of all the gods of men. Then by and by one of these wayfarers turned out to be a stalwart, white-bearded old gentleman dressed as a bishop. And the sight of him delighted Gerald: for here at last was somebody who could properly christen Theodorick Quentin Musgrave.

    Meanwhile this traveler was asking hospitality of Maya. She, who disliked travelers, prepared the white and tender flesh of a calf, she kneaded cakes of fine meal and baked them upon the hearth, she fetched milk and butter. All these she set before the seeming bishop upon the front porch of her cottage quite affably. For this old gentleman, it appeared, had known Maya of the Fair Breasts a great while ago, at the very beginning of a career confessedly so populous in husbands that Gerald always felt a certain delicacy in asking questions about it.

    “But there was never any reasoning with you, my dear,” said the old gentleman, as they all ate amicably together upon the porch. “So you eluded my purpose, and you preferred to content that first man of yours for his loss of the over-willful beauty and the rebellious wisdom of your predecessor—”