17 Evaine of Peter’s Tomb
Now Gerald rode upon the silver stallion toward the immemorial, moss-overgrown tomb of King Peter the Builder, and Gerald carried under his left arm the black cock. Gerald noted, with an interest natural to any student of magic, the glorification tree which grew beside this tomb. He once more whistled meditatively. Then he hitched his shining stallion to an over-candidly carved and painted post which stood at the door of the tomb, and he went in.
The interior of this spacious tomb was lighted with nineteen iron lamps swung from the ceiling. Gerald thus saw, first of all, the great four-square mirror covered with a flesh-colored cloth. Before it fumed a smoking brazier; and beside this stood the appearance of a woman. To her left hand was a broad bed, and to her right, a gilded pig-trough heaped with fig-leaves. These leaves this woman was crumpling and tearing into little pieces one by one before she destroyed them in the fire of the brazier.
She heard Gerald’s civil cough. She turned: and Gerald was enraptured.
For Evaine of Peter’s Tomb was so surpassingly lovely that she excelled all the other women his gaze had ever beheld. The colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes were nicely matched, and her nose stood just equidistant between them. Beneath this was her mouth, and she had also a pair of ears. The girl was young, she exhibited no deformity anywhere, and the enamored glance of the young man could perceive in her no fault. There was, to be sure, a puzzling likeness to somebody he had once known, but Gerald’s quick wits soon unriddled the mystery. This woman reminded him of Evelyn Townsend.
Nor was this all. He observed now that this woman was, just as he had suspected, a Fox-Spirit, for now from Evaine of Peter’s Tomb emanated the power of her magic. That magic which overmasters all animals now smote at Gerald; and in a mildly amusing way he found its assaults really quite interesting.
“For this is the goety of beasts,” he reflected. “This is the brutish half-magic of the wu which maddens men, along with all other animals in their rutting season, and robs them of self-control. This magic persuades me, almost, that I, too, am only a bundle of cellular matter upon its way to becoming manure. Yes, my life, too, at just this moment, seems but a grudged brief season of bewildered appetites and of baffled surmise such as is the life of a mortal man. I, too, seem a mere human being passing from the forgotten to the unforeseeable. Under the assaults of this small carnal magic, I seem again to go in that continuous masked loneliness which mortal persons in Lichfield and elsewhere call living. I long to put out of mind the frailness and the transiency of my hold upon living. The nonsensical notion has occurred to me that such forgetfulness may be hired by bringing the epidermis which masks me into superficial contact with the homogenous animal matter in which hides this Fox-Spirit.... Yes, I am being, as it were, maddened with desire; I am very rapidly becoming the prey of this Fox-Spirit’s irresistible powers of fascination, so to speak. And I find it really quite interesting to observe how this half-magic which destroys so many men now impiously strikes beyond its proper arena, at that which is divine; and how this foolish magic attempts to deceive even me, who am a Savior and a sun god.”
Such were the cursory reflections which passed through Gerald’s mind in the while that he said, aloud, “Good-evening, ma’am!”
The Fox-Spirit Evaine, without replying to him directly, took out of her bosom a white gem about the size of an orange. She tossed this up into the air, and caught it again. Gerald conjectured that this was her soul, but he made no comment.
He displayed to her his cock, saying, as was needful, “I entreat you to accept my rooster—”
“But what,” asked learned Evaine, “what did you call this tamed descendant of the wild Bankiva fowl,—whose original habitat was in Northern India from Sindh to Burma, and in Cochin China, and in many of the Malay Islands as far as Timor, and in the Philippines?”
“Why, in the United States of America, ma’am, we, rather more briefly, and for a variety of reasons, call this bird a rooster.”
“It has been well observed,” she replied, “by Pliny the Elder—a celebrated Roman naturalist, born 23 A.D., perished in the eruption of Vesuvius 79 A.D.,—that every nation has its customs.”
Then the Fox-Spirit dexterously cut off the head of Gerald’s cock with the sacrificial ax, and turning toward the East, she spoke the needed words three times. One entered now in a scarlet coat, a yellow vest, and pale green knee-breeches. His head was like that of a mastiff, with the addition of two horns and the ears of an ass, but he had the legs and hoofs of a calf. Such was he who carried off the black cock which Gerald had brought for the Fox-Spirit’s master, as a propitiatory offering and a trap.
Gerald smiled. Gerald shook hands, politely, with Evaine the learned Fox-Spirit.
“I am,” said Gerald, “a god.”
She replied: “I am one who serves all gods. I honor every tribe of those divine beings whose existence scholars have so variously accounted for as the products of physical and ethical and historical and etymological blunders abetted by homonymy and polonymy. But I require for my piety a honorarium.”
“And what is that honorarium?”
She told him.
And as she spoke, Evaine drew near to him, and yet nearer, and she was remarkably desirable. If only she had not now reminded Gerald more and more of Evelyn Townsend, she would have been resistless.
“Very well, then!” said Gerald, affably: “you shall have that honorarium to-morrow morning if you still care to demand a reward so trivial.”
Immediately afterward he said, “But, indeed, ma’am, you quite misunderstand me!”
Then with a few well-chosen words he placed their relationship upon a more decorous basis.
And Evaine the Fox-Spirit laughed. Such unresponsiveness she declared to be, when manifested by a god, wholly surprising, and comparable to the Seven Wonders of the World, namely: (1) the Pyramids of Egypt; (2) the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; (3) the Tomb of Mausolos; (4) the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; (5) the Colossus of Rhodes; (6) the Statue of Zeus by Phidias; and (7) the Pharos at Alexandria. Yet, Evaine continued, she perceived that she might trust him—
“You may do nothing of the sort!” said Gerald, decisively. “You may not even give me all. No, ma’am, it would be quite unadvisable, because, as I am forced to point out, you in your unfading youth and omniscient learning are many thousands of years older than I am in my present incarnation. Beside you, I am a mere boy. Now, it is often a great disadvantage to a boy, it is by and by a curse to him, to succumb to the loving confidence and generosity of a woman much older than himself. It is unwholesome. It is un-American.”
“Is it, then, inconsistent with the manners of a continent in the Western Hemisphere—first named America by Waldseemüller, a teacher of geography in the college of Saint-Dié among the Vosges, in a treatise called Cosmographia, published in 1507,—for me to like you so much that I just want to touch you and be near you?”
“No, ma’am, that, I regret to say, is universal. Besides, I did not particularly mean you. I only mean that there are such women, as we both know, dear lady, who prey upon young boys. They employ for this purpose all their confidence and generosity without the least scruple. And many a hard, bitter, cynical man has originally had his faith in and his regard for everything good and holy blasted in his very first boyhood by the confiding nature and generosity of some middle-aged woman or another and her subsequent references to the advantage he took of her.”
“It is possible that you speak with the clearness recommended by Quintilian as the chief virtue of speech,—born in Spain about 25 A.D., died about 95 A.D., patronized by Vespasian and Domitian,—but it is certain that I do not understand one word of your speaking.”
“—However,” Gerald continued, “when a boy has a nice, clean friendship with an older woman it is one of the most valuable and helpful experiences that can come into his life. A friendship such as this appears to me a rather beautiful idea. The older woman—particularly when she is older by many thousands of years,—can teach him, as his mother out of the superficial knowledge of a callow half-century or so cannot possibly do, about women. She can inspire and direct him. She can fire his ambition. She can encourage him. She can be to him in every way a liberal education.”
“Now, certainly, I shall never understand your American way of uttering so many platitudes—derived from the Greek word platys, meaning ’flat,’—when I was attempting to do all these things!”
“Ah, but we must keep the education entirely oral, and we must keep, too, your little hands—So, now, that is very much better!”
“It is better still to permit a wilful person to have his way,—a remark attributed to Periander, an ancient sage, and Tyrant of Corinth during the sixth century B.C.,—since you elect to give me my honorarium for nothing,” Evaine said, rather sulkily.
Gerald elected to do nothing of the sort. But, since his real intentions would have been an awkward matter to explain, he kept silent about them.
After that Gerald questioned the learned Fox-Spirit. She explained to him willingly enough the laws of Lytreia and described the basket they were found in, and she made it plain just how these laws were enforced by a committee of midwives and stonemasons. She spoke of the magic she had put upon Lytreia. She spoke of Tenjo, telling how in the prime of his youth he came to be called Tenjo of the Long Nose; and her statistics were remarkable. She talked then about the wind between the stars, and about the grandeur that was Greece, and about Hobson’s choice, and about Davey Jones’s locker, and about the cause of volcanoes, and about the curate’s egg, and about the best cures for baldness. For no information anywhere was hidden from the wisdom of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods.
“I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have knowledge, and I like your reflections extremely. So do you speak yet further out of the stores of your omniscience!”
He had been glancing all the while toward the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths. But he of course said never a word about this mirror. His present task was simply to lure on this cultured and malefic creature to her complete ruin.
For the Fox-Spirit, as Gerald saw, was still about the brutish magic of the wu, which drives men mad, and she now spoke of more and yet more evil matters such as were very well adapted to incite Gerald to brutality. She spoke of the battle of life, and of the feast of reason, and of the irony of fate, and of the lap of luxury. She talked of the writing on the wall, and of the scroll of fame, and of the lexicon of youth, and of the cloud that had a silver lining. She touched upon the two seas, of troubles and of upturned faces. She discussed the durance that was vile, and the hours that were wee and sma’, and the consummation that was devoutly to be wished for, and the light that was dim and religious, and the heat which was not the humidity. She indicated the balm in Gilead, the place in the sun, and the safety in numbers. She afterward gave succinctly the recipes for making a mountain out of a molehill, a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and a virtue out of a necessity. For no evil phrase of any sort was hidden from the wisdom of Evaine, who knew all things, and who served all gods, and who was now intent to exercise upon Gerald the magic of the wu, which drives men mad.
But Gerald only smiled, almost approvingly. This woman was reminding him more and more of Evelyn Townsend, and his pulses had not ever been calmer.
“I perceive,” said Gerald, “that you have a great deal of knowledge, with the vocabulary of a dear friend to back it devastatingly. Therefore, ma’am, to avail myself of your knowledge alone may serve my divine ends much better than your really most flattering proffers in other fields.”
For now it was Gerald’s turn to speak. So now he revealed to the baffled Fox-Spirit the fact that he was Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, a very potent god who had temporarily mislaid his mythology. He told the omniscient Fox-Spirit, who knew all things excepting only how and at what hour her knowledge would end, of Gerald’s adventures during the rather crowded twenty-four hours since he had left Lichfield.
And now she was smiling over his obtuseness. For to all-wise Evaine it was at once apparent that Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, was a culture hero like Quat or Quetzalcoatl or Cagn or Osiris or Dionysos. All these were former acquaintances of hers: she knew, she said, every inch of them, for each one of these had stopped to visit her who served all gods, as each had passed downward toward Antan. Evaine, if anybody, would thus know a culture hero wherever she saw a culture hero.
Every mythology contained one of these glorious philanthropists, born of a mysterious and superior race, just as Gerald had been born in the United States of America, a philanthropist, as the learned Fox-Spirit said, very usually theriomorphic, who came in the appearance of a jackass or of some other animal among less favored peoples to teach them strange new arts and mysteries, and to endow them with every kind of cultural advantage and prosperity, just as Gerald had benefited the people of Dersam and of Lytreia, and was preparing to benefit Antan.
She pointed out, furthermore, that a culture hero was in no way un-American. There had been, for example, Quetzalcoatl. She also remembered quite clearly Yetl,—because a deity in the form of a bird was always, she said, rather difficult,—and Poshaiyankya, and Coyote, and Esaugetuh, and that other waggish Indian deity—his name at present evaded her,—who had traveled incognito in the shape of a large spider. For all these aboriginal American culture heroes had visited Evaine as they passed downward toward Antan, and every one of them had been in a somewhat earlier generation Gerald’s fellow countryman.
“In the light of your forceful logic, ma’am, I concede that, over and above being a Savior and a sun god, it seems probable I must be a culture hero too.”
“But yet, in any case,—dear, unresponsive, frigid child,” said the Fox-Spirit, speaking far more simply than she had done before,—“do you not know that all mythologies are controlled by the Master Philologist, so that he alone may say in which one of them and in what capacity you belong?”
“I find that saying obscure.”
“It means only that sooner or later all gods save only Koleos Koleros and the upright spirit of the Holy Nose pass down into Antan.”
“Yes, for, as they told me at Caer Omn, Antan is the heaven of all deserving gods, where they rest from their divine labors.”
But the Fox-Spirit shook her head, rather forebodingly. “I, certainly, would not say that.”
“Do you, then, but answer me this very simple question! What becomes of them there? what fate befalls in that place all which men have found most beautiful and most worshipful?”
“How can one say, when no god has ever returned? It is known only that, in one way or another way, the Master Philologist disposes of every deity that men have served, save only the two supreme gods of all mammals,—a class of vertebrates embracing bats, the warm-blooded quadrupeds, seals, cetaceans, man, and sirenians.”
Gerald drew a long face. “Your account of the matter, ma’am, suggests that my predecessor upon the throne of Antan lacks piety. You imply that the creature is deficient in true religious feeling. That is a fault I would have to requite when I take from him his throne and all the great and best words of magic.”
“To do that, child, needs power such as has not been shown by any god among the many millions of gods that men have worshipped since the first infancy of Chronos,—a Greek personification of Time, usually depicted as carrying a sickle and an hourglass.”
“Ah, but, my dear lady, I, who am at once a culture hero and a sun deity and a Savior, must be a peculiarly powerful god. And, besides, ma’am, from what you tell me—Why, but, really now, it appears probable that the Master Philologist has damaged the Dirghic mythology to which I myself belong! No god can patiently endure such usage; and my divine wrath will, thus, redouble my power.”
“But, still,—but, still, you dear, nice-looking and vainglorious baby—!”
Evaine had paused. She was regarding him almost compassionately: and Gerald felt he could never get used to the flighty way in which people everywhere in the Marches of Antan seemed to pity the high gods. It was a quite friendly way they had of looking at you, but to extend commiseration where reverence was the proper thing savored almost of irreligion.
Gerald shrugged. He said:
“I shall therefore be resistless. I shall compel him to restore into general circulation the Dirghic mythology, after having amply repaired whatsoever damage he may have done to it, and then I shall assume, in addition to his throne, my proper station as a culture hero and a sun deity and a Savior in that mythology. So the affair is, virtually, settled: we may now turn to other matters: and in return for the gracious aid afforded by your large wisdom, I will make in your honor a sonnet.”
“It is a very beautiful sonnet,—consisting of fourteen decasyllabic lines, expressing two phases of a single thought or sentiment,” said Evaine the Fox-Spirit,—“and I am proud to have inspired it.”
“You forget,” said Gerald, “that I have not yet recited my sonnet. I will now do so.”
And he did.
But his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the octave, he paused, because it was never within Gerald’s power to resist the beauty of a sublime thought when it was thus adequately expressed in flawless verse. So for an instant he stayed silent.
He caught up the lovely hands of Evaine the Fox-Spirit, and as he pressed them to his trembling lips he noted that these hands smelled like hops drying in the sun. It seemed to him exceedingly pitiful he had given that promise to Tenjo. It seemed to him there was a certain sameness in the dear women who made colorful the Marches of Antan, and, to some extent, a similarity in their more intimate love passages with Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver. He found it depressing to reflect that destruction waited, so very near, for so much loveliness. He found it perfectly dreadful to foreknow that he would often regret this omniscient Evaine and her fine stores of useful information, once he had kept the divine word given to Tenjo, and had put an end to her living before she could do any further damage to the men of Lytreia.
Gods ought to abstain from all love-affairs: for through love alone might a god look to be wounded,—upon rainy Sunday afternoons, perhaps, or after drinking a bit more than was good for one,—to be wounded, at such unavoidable seasons of low vitality, with recurrent, plaguing memories of his mortal playthings, so dear, so very dear, and so soon reft away from his immortal arms, irrevocably....
After these cursory reflections, Gerald sighed, and—with the thoughtful commentary that, since this was a Miltonic sonnet, his poem here went on with the same sentence,—he continued his reciting.
And when he had ended, the Fox-Spirit sighed contentedly. She spoke with acumen and authority as to the main events of Milton’s life and as to his principal works, and she added:
“That is a very beautiful sonnet,—a verse form of Italian origin, first used in English by Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1557,—and I am proud to have inspired it. That is the sort of poetry which would incline any living woman to trust you and to give you all the very moment you stopped reciting it. So now will you not come to bed?”
“No, Evelyn, not to-night—I beg your pardon, ma’am! My thoughts were wool-gathering. What I had meant to say was but that if you insist upon yet further displays of your great-hearted womanly confidence and generosity you shall be walloped with a broomstick—severely. No, do you retire now, my dear lady, by all means, and with my apologies for keeping you up so late because of the delight I have got from your instructive way of talking. But I shall pass the remainder of the night in the aloofness appropriate to a god, in this quite comfortable armchair.”
And this he did.