23 Odd Transformation of a Towel
Gerald now passed beyond Turoine, and, crossing Mispec Moor, he came thus to the tumbled-down hut of a decrepit old woman.
“And how are you called, ma’am?”
“What is that to you?” she answered, peevishly.
And this wrinkled creature seemed to Gerald remarkably red and inflamed and regrettably hideous among her tousled tresses.
“Well, ma’am,” replied Gerald, pleasantly, “a name is a word: and words are my peculiar concern.”
“If it matters to you, young Carrot-top, I have had many names. And under one name or another I was used to deal with every man. Now my powers fall into decay, and one month is like another month, with never any changing in it. All about me is bleached, dearie, all is colorless. There is no more employment for me: and I am an old worthless flabby white-haired creature, still palely quivering with desire for the good ever-busy days—oh, and for the nights too, dearie,—that are overpast. Eh, dearie, though you would not ever think it, once I was Æsred, a mother of the Little Gods and of much else. And I fared handsomely then, taking liveliness and color out of all things, and turning men into useful domestic animals. But now the world is old, and I am the world’s twin: and all vigorousness has gone from me, and one month is like another month, with never any changing in it.”
“I am a god who bring with me all vigor and all youth,” said Gerald: for he remembered what the Sphinx had said about not despising ugliness.
Gerald spoke the appointed words: and he baptized the old whining trot after the rite of the Lady of the First Water-Gap. He straightway saw the dingy towel about her shaking head transformed. This towel had now become a crown composed, a bit surprisingly, of the four suits from a pack of playing cards. There were four clubs set upright, like the strawberry leaves in a duke’s coronet, and alternated with four spades: and the band of this crown was moulded in bas-relief with eight hearts and with sixteen diamonds.
In fact, everything near Gerald was changed. To Gerald’s right hand and to his left were seen neat fields and green things growing pleasantly, and the tumbled-down hovel was now a spruce new cottage. But what seemed even more interesting to Gerald was the circumstance that the wrinkled angry looking old woman had become a quite personable creature, not young and callow, but in the very prime of life: and the name of Æsred now, as she told him, and as he noted at least two other reasons for believing, was Maya of the Fair Breasts.
But she said also, forthwith: “Now that I am young, and have not any chaperon in the house, it would look better for you to be getting on with your journey, because you know how people talk. Yes, and how quick they are to be talking about all widow women anyhow—”
“Oh! oh!” said Gerald: “are you not, then, prepared to trust me?”
“—With or without,” continued Maya, “the least provocation. As for trusting you or any other young fellow living, I never heard before of such nonsense. It is only the elderly men that any woman can depend on, just as far as she can see them, in broad daylight, a good while after they can be depended on at night.”
“You are not even ready to give me all?”
Maya was reasonable. “I will give you your dinner, and on top of that your hat. For I can have no vagabond god hanging around my neat cottage when I am trying to get the dishes washed, and have the name of a widow to keep respectable.”
“Here,” Gerald stated, with conviction, “is an unusual woman. I search the pages of history in vain to find any parallel to the strange behavior of this woman.”
And Gerald reflected. Very certainly this Maya of the Fair Breasts did not excel all the other women his gaze had ever beheld. Yet the colors of her two eyes were nicely matched, and a fairish nose stood about equidistant between them. Beneath this was a tolerably good mouth, for all that the lips were sullen: and the indefinitely brownish hair, which was queerly arranged in nineteen formal braids, no doubt concealed a pair of well-enough ears. This rather heavy-visaged woman was reasonably young, she seemed hardly more than thirty-seven or thereabouts: she exhibited no deformity anywhere: her figure was acceptably preserved, her breasts were positively alluring.... In fine, the appraising glance of the young man could with the kindly eyes of twenty-eight perceive in her no really grave fault.
Moreover, she reminded him of no woman that he had ever seen anywhere before this morning.
So Gerald said: “I am satisfied. I shall stay for dinner. I shall thankfully accept all the refreshments you proffer, of every kind.”
Then Maya answered: “But, indeed, you sauce-box, you quite misunderstand me. So do you keep your proper distance! For I am not the sort of woman that you seem only too well acquainted with.”
Gerald said, with a caressing thrill in his voice, “Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question—”
Maya replied, “Oh, get away with you!”
Thus speaking, she boxed the jaws of the predestined ruler over all the gods of men; and with a few well-chosen words she placed their relationship upon a more decorous basis.
PART SEVEN
THE BOOK OF POETS
“He Goes Farthest That Knows
Not Where He is Going.”