Something About Eve

    Maya replied: “I do wish you would try just one more of those cakes, for I made them myself, exactly as you used to like them in the plains of Mamre, when you were up to your nonsense with Sarah. Yes, I believe that a girl, a really nice girl, that is, should keep her caresses for her husband. Oh, I am casting no reflections upon either of your sweethearts. It is a matter every woman must decide for herself. I merely say that, for my part, I think a love-affair with a god while he is still in power is ostentatious and can only end in unhappiness—”

    “But—!” Gerald had begun indignantly.

    She patted his hand. “No, Gerald, I did not mean you. Your power is limitless, and you are quite different from all other gods, and nobody knows that better than I do. So please do not start any pouting while we have company! He thinks that he is a god, too,” Maya then stated, casually, to her visitor. “That is why his feelings are upset. He believes he is the Fair-haired Hoodoo, the Helper and the Pretender, or something of that sort. As for that woman, Adam was very lucky to get rid of her.”

    “I wonder,” said the white-bearded gentleman, smiling reminiscently, “I wonder if he always thought so?”

    “My dear old friend! but you and I know quite well what the creatures are! Of course he cherished the memory of her for the rest of his life, long after the worthless piece had gone, just literally, to the devil. She was not bad looking: that much, anyhow, one can say in her favor: and so the poor fellow had always his memories of that beauty which he had known, once. He used to say it was too lovely to be retained by any man. And I agreed with him. No man had the least chance, with infernal connoisseurs about.... And his sons,” said Maya, as she reflectively scratched at her nose, “have, somehow, all preserved that memory. There is no one of them but now and then finds my daughters rather inadequate, and half remembers that woman and gets lackadaisical over her. It is just another thing about the creatures which my daughters have to put up with.”

    “She too is yonder, they tell me,”—and the old gentleman nodded toward Antan. Then he continued:” And I suspect there is no one of your daughters but is jealous of this ever-living memory of that Lilith who stays always the first, never quite forgotten love of every son of Adam; and who prevents more of them than you would care to acknowledge, my dear, from ever utterly giving over their hearts to any of your daughters.”

    “We are jealous, within limits,” Maya replied, in the while that she hospitably refilled his glass with fresh milk. “No woman likes playing second fiddle, even in the moonstruck brain of a poet. Yet my daughters know it does no real harm. And if men were not up to something, they would be up to something else. Besides, it gives them their nonsense to be romantic over in private, without pestering their poor sweethearts, and their wives too, at first, to be romantic along with them, which is a thing no nice woman really feels comfortable about—”

    But the old gentleman had sighed. “You touch upon a somewhat harrowing subject. For I fancy that no other luckless being has ever had to cater to the shifting needs of popular romance so arduously or so variously as I.”

    And Maya now was beaming upon him quite fondly. “Yes, but how clever you have been about it! In fact, I suppose that nobody anywhere has ever had a more wonderful career than yours. And it seems only yesterday—does it not?—that we were all young together in the Garden, and your reputation was merely local. But you Jews are so adaptable!”

    “I was not even a Jew, my dear, to begin with. Perhaps that is why I never quite got on with them. I was a storm deity of the Midianites. But the Jews kidnapped me, in some way or another, when I was just a godling playing happily with my thunderbolts upon the flanks of Sinai.”

    “Even so, when I think of what a position you have attained in the best Christian circles, and of the perfect respectability of the church to which you now belong, and of all the splendid poetry you have inspired, and of how generally famous you have become everywhere, I am wholly proud that you once, when we were both younger”—and Gerald saw that Maya had colored up rather prettily,—“had other plans for me.”

    “You,” said the old gentleman,—who, as Gerald now observed, was really quite Jewish looking,—“were the first of my disappointments. Yes, I suppose that in many respects my career has been unusual. Yet it has ended by placing me in a most awkward position: and nothing ever turned out in accordance with my plans, somehow.”