Something About Eve

    FORTHWITH the old white-bearded gentleman became a most personable looking youngish Oriental, who shone with a fiery radiance, and about whose head played a continual flashing like small lightnings. And he said, approvingly:

    “That is a fine magic which has restored to me my youth and the vigorousness I had in Midian before I was kidnapped by those stiff-necked and affectionate Jews.”

    “And will you now be going into Antan?” asked Gerald, rather anxiously.

    “Not yet, my friend,” replied the merry, strong, young Arabian storm god. “Oh, very certainly, not yet! No, I have had quite enough of my illogical position as a Christian and of the worries of being rationalized by incomprehensible foreigners. I shall thankfully return to my Midianites and to my little shrines upon Seir and Sinai and Horeb, and to the quiet living of a local godling. I shall be hearing again my own people’s sane and intelligible prayers for rain, and I shall be snuffing up the smoke of such rational offerings as kids and goats and an occasional prisoner of war, just as I used to do, where I was given due credit for my actions, and where you heard no unpleasant personal scandal circulated about my being triplets. In the meanwhile, my benefactor, is there not any favor which, in my turn, I can do you?”

    “Indeed, my dear sir,” Gerald answered, harking back to that worriment which in a neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards stayed always in the rear of Gerald’s mind, “there is a small one, now you mention it. For we have a boy, as you perceive. And it occurs to me that this is the first chance to have Theodorick Quentin Musgrave properly christened according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal church—”

    The storm god asked of Gerald, in good-humored surprise. “But do I now look to you much like an Episcopalian clergyman?”

    “Well, sir, I admit the situation is perplexing. Nevertheless, you remain, so far as I can see, one of the three official heads of the Christian church, in every denomination. And as such, you must be wholly competent to administer the sacred rites of that baptism to which we Musgraves are accustomed.”

    He who had been a bishop laughed again. For an instant he glanced sidewise at Maya, rather impishly. Then the god called to him Theodorick Quentin Musgrave.

    The boy came forward without speaking. There had never been any dearer brat since time began, Gerald reflected, than was this sturdy droll redheaded jackanapes who waited there holding his small chin well up in order to look with politely puzzled interest at the storm god’s glittering face and the tiny lightnings which played about it. Gerald was abeam with the most fatuous sort of pride in Theodorick’s perfect behavior. Gerald glowed all over, now that awkward matter of the boy’s christening was being at last attended to, by the very highest authority. And Gerald nodded smilingly and with some inconsequence at his dear stupid Maya, so that she too might note how splendidly Theodorick was behaving. The boy was displaying the composure and the excellent manners of a true Musgrave.

    Then the storm god dipped his fingers in his unfinished glass of milk, and upon Theodorick’s lifted forehead he drew a sign. Gerald was not wholly certain, afterward, that it was the sign of a cross.

    “This is another sort of baptism than that which restored my youth. For youth this child already has,—to every seeming,” the god said, a bit unaccountably. “Therefore I now release this child whom I did not create, I release him from the bondage of the woman and of the Adversary who caused him to live upon this earth. I decree a forgiveness for the seven crimes. I cry a remission of the seven punishments.”

    “I must say, though, you have been long enough about it,” Maya placidly observed.....

    As for Gerald, now that the ceremony was over, he was unaffectedly hugging Theodorick, and telling him that he was far too big a boy to be kissing people, and the vaguely puzzled, clinging child was asking, But who started it, Father? ...

    And the storm god was saying to Maya, “Do you forget, my dear Havvah, that it is from your service I am releasing him?”

    She answered, still quite placidly: “So far as that goes, the imp has well earned a holiday; and it is not as if I were dependent upon him. No, but I confess to wondering—and not for the first time, either,—just what you may be up to.”

40. On the Turn of a Leaf

    SO THE Oriental storm god went back into the world of everyday, to look for his old shrines upon Sinai and Horeb: and Gerald was happily rid of a future subject whom, he could not but feel, it would have been a bit awkward to have as a subject. And the evening passed tranquilly, although it seemed to Gerald that Theodorick was rather moody and quiet after his christening.

    But it was not until the next day that Theodorick, just after breakfast, spoke with a voice which seemed to Gerald not quite the voice of a child: and Theodorick told his parents he wanted to go down into Antan.