AND upon another day, as Gerald sat by the roadside beneath his chestnut-tree, and waited for supper to be ready, three persons passed toward Antan, traveling together. They were all notable looking men; and Gerald greeted them with the sign which is known only to supreme mages. They returned his greeting, but they shaped signs that were of an older magic than any which was familiar to Gerald.

And then the first of these men said, “I was Odysseus, Laertes’ son.”

Gerald thus knew that before him stood yet another of his discarded personalities. But Gerald made no comment.

And Odysseus continued: “I had wisdom. My prudent wisdom was to men of every calling an object of considerable attention, and the fame of it reached Heaven. I ruled in Ithaca, an island kingdom, well situated toward the west. I went unwillingly with the other well-greaved Greeks to besiege Ilion: the enterprise to me seemed rash, and unlikely to be remunerative: yet, being engaged, I dealt prudently, and in the end, where so many merely brave persons had failed, it was through my prudence that the enterprise succeeded. For ten years Ilion defied the strength of Achilles and of Ajax; Ilion derided all the endeavors of auburn-haired Menelaus and of godlike Agememnon: but the cunning of Odysseus felled Ilion in one night. I took my share of the spoils; I left the glory to them that wanted it. I returned across the world to that which I more prudently desired, toward the quiet comforts of my home in craggy Ithaca. The prayer of the blinded Cyclops, the wrath of earth-shaking Poseidon, the white thunder of offended Zeus, and the twelve winds of Æolus, all fought against me. I prevailed. The sea-witch Scylla, an exorbitant lady with twelve arms, a ravening monster whom none might pass and live, I passed. Charybdis, which devoured all, did not devour me, for I clung prudently to a fig-tree.”

“Indeed,” said Gerald, “the leaves of that tree are very often a great protection,—O much-enduring and crafty Odysseus,” Gerald added hastily, as became a Greek scholar.

“Moreover, the sun’s daughter, fair-haired Circe, and bright Queen Calypso, the divine one of goddesses, these also detained me rather more amiably. I embraced them; they did not find me slothful in their beds. For they were goddesses, as quick in anger as they were in lust. It is not prudent to deny a goddess. From the fond arms of these immortals I passed on toward my desired goal. Yet nobody is always prudent. When my ship approached the island of the man-devouring Sirens I caused the ears of my sailors to be stopped with wax; but I caused myself to be bound to the mast, so that I might hear the song which Leucosia sang in the while that Parthenopê and Ligeia made a sweet music. I desired to hear without any hurt that song which was so lovely that it drew less prudent men to the arms of its singer, wherein, as they well knew, dark death awaited them. I heard that song. It did not matter to me that I saw how the low beach about those music-makers gleamed, like silver, where a thin sunlight fell upon the scattered bones of many men whom they had slain. I struggled to cast myself into the gray sea-water, so that I might go to Leucosia. But my bonds held me. I was bound, both my hands and feet were bound, with very strong cables. The black ship passed onward, whitening the water with its polished blades of fir-wood; and I wept as I too passed onward, away from my own ruin, and drawing nearer to the goal which my prudent wisdom had desired.”

“Truly, the enchantment of her singing must have maddened you. Yet such is the magic of great poetry,” Gerald remarked, “a thing not ever wholly to be explained even by the poet.... Yet your goal, nevertheless, was reached, they tell me, O much-contriving Odysseus. Your goal was reached, as I remember it, in the many-pillared hall of your home in Ithaca, and in a fine slaughter of those suitors who were pestering your wife because they believed that she was your widow.”

“Very naturally my goal was reached. I was Odysseus. Very naturally I made an end of those wasters of my substance who had been eating and drinking for nine years at my expense. There arose, as one by one their heads were smitten off, a hideous moaning. The floors ran with blood. It was wholly plain that Odysseus faced those imprudent persons who had made over-free with his flocks and his wine jars and his wife and the other goods of his household. Yet I knew, by and by, that what I now desired was not to be found in craggy Ithaca nor in the calm embraces of Penelope nor in the tranquillity of my well-ordered home. I gave laws. I heard cases. I decided squabbles between one shepherd and another shepherd. I who had contrived the burning of Ilion now oversaw the branding of my cattle. War did not trouble Ithaca, of whose king all other kings were afraid. For I was very famous. I lacked for nothing in wealth. I lived at ease. But no man hears the singing of Leucosia except at a great price. I heard Leucosia no more. I heard, instead, the voices of fools praising my strength and my prudent wisdom, and the voice of my wife talking sensibly about I never noticed exactly what. I lacked for nothing which prudent men desire, in my snug, sleek, well-ordered Ithaca. But I had seen too much in my voyaging about a world which was more lewd and riotous than I permitted anybody to be in my Ithaca. I remembered too many things. No, I did not regret Calypso nor Circe nor that fine girl Nausicaä. I could at will have returned to them. But I remembered the singing of Leucosia, to whom I dared not return. For no man hears the singing of Leucosia except at a great price.”

“But of what did she sing, O much-planning Odysseus?”

“She sang of that which haunted me, and which derided the rewards of my prudent wisdom. She sang of the one way to that which I truly desired.”

“That, O noble son of Laertes, is not a remarkably explicit reply.”

Now the wise Greek regarded Gerald sombrely. Odysseus said, by and by:

“She sang of that which troubles a prudent person’s soul and despoils his rational living of all fat contentment. Let it suffice that she sang, I think, of Antan. That is why I must travel to Antan, wherein—it may be,—is my desire.”

—It was only then that Gerald recollected something. He recollected that Evadne of the Dusk, that feathery-legged Evadne, who, Horvendile had said, was called Leucosia in the days of her sea-faring. But Gerald said nothing about what, after all, was none of his affair....

AND then the second traveler spoke. He spoke of that which had been his in the days when all riches and all pleasures and all power had been accorded to Solomon because of his sixfold wisdom. To no other being that ever lived among mankind was given such mightiness as was granted to King Solomon in the time that he reigned over Israel and ruled this world.

For Solomon had sexanary wisdom. Solomon knew the six words which were not known to any other men. He understood the speaking of these words.

The word of the beasts. It was spoken, and there assembled in the sight of Solomon a pair of every creature that walks or creeps upon earth, from the elephant to the smallest worm. Upon the neck of each was pressed the seal of Solomon, so that the race of each must henceforth be subject to him. They revealed to him the wisdom of the beasts that perish and do not bother about it. He feasted them at a table of silver and iron which covered four square miles; and at that banqueting Solomon the King served as the pantler, bringing with his hands to every beast and reptile its food according to its kind, from the elephant to the smallest worm.

The word of Morskoï. It was spoken, and all manner of fishes rose to the surface of the sea’s water near Ascalon. Upon the neck of each was pressed the seal of Solomon. Then came a hundred thousand camels and a hundred thousand mules laden with new corn, and all the creatures of the water were fed, and after that they served King Solomon, and they revealed to him the wisdom of the Sea Market.

The word of the fowls. It was spoken, and the sky was hidden by the birds who came to render fealty and to instruct King Solomon in the wisdom of the Apsarasas. The peewit alone did not come. But he came afterward, crying, “He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none for himself.” And it was the peewit who fetched to Solomon wise Balkis, and who taught Solomon to look through the surface of this earth as a man peers through a sheet of glass.

The word of the Adversary. It was spoken, and the entire citizenry of hell kneeled before King Solomon, saving only Sachr and Eblis. The female Djinns were shaped like dromedaries with the wings of a bat; the male Djinns were like peacocks with the horns of a gazelle. The Mazikeen and the Shedeem came also. To the neck of each was pressed the seal of Solomon: and they revealed to him both the black and the gray wisdom.

The word of Arathron. It was spoken, and there came to King Solomon the Seven Stewards of Heaven. The eyes of Solomon were closed, and his hand had shaken a little, as he pressed to the neck of each kneeling Steward the seal of Solomon, for he was troubled by the exceeding glory of the supreme Princes of Heaven. Of these the most terrible were Ophiel and Phul, whose reign is not yet. But these seven Stewards also served King Solomon; and they revealed to him the white wisdom.

The word of the mirror. It was spoken, and before him stood a wicker cage containing three pigeons. Beside this cage lay a small mirror three inches square.

All these six words were known to the wise King. It was the power of these six words which made him lord over the wild beasts and the birds of heaven, and over the devils and the elemental spirits and the ghosts of the dead, and over the sea-depths, and over the cherubim. All creatures upon earth trembled before King Solomon because of these six words: no other king withstood Solomon, nor sent forth his chariots against the army of Solomon. For the soldiers of Solomon were the beasts of the field and of the wild wood; the birds of prey were his horsemen; the little birds were his very cunning spies. His admirals were the huge whales and sea serpents, and Leviathan also served in the navy of King Solomon. His lieutenants were the overseers of hell; the supreme angels were his counsellors. He had also his mirror. The power of these six words was exceedingly great.

Yet there remained one other word, that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished. There stayed yet unrevealed that word which is spoken by the Master Philologist to all the gods of men. That word alone was not known to King Solomon. His little mirror showed him that word, as it showed every other thing; but the word was written in a language which he could not read.

“What need is there for you to be bothering about that word?” said all the women who loved and cherished him. He answered, “I do not know.” The wives and concubines then stated, speaking with nine hundred voices in unanimity, that no one of them had ever before heard of such nonsense. And he answered them again, “I do not know....”

For this reason King Solomon must pass down into Antan, to hear the speaking of the last great word of power.

THEN said the third of these wise men: “I was Merlin Ambrosius. The wisdom that I had was more than human, for it came to me from my father. But I served Heaven with it. The land was starved and sick and frightened. Many little chieftains fought in its wild naked fields, and murderously waylaid one another in its old forests, causelessly. I made the land an ordered realm. I gave the land one king, a king whose sword was as bright as thirty torches. That sword flashed everywhither about the land to enforce justice and every other virtue commendable to Heaven. Arthur Pendragon and the knights who served him all served my whims. They were my toys.... I in my playing gave to the gaping, smooth-chinned boy, and to his shaggy followers, a notion to play with in their turn. This notion was that each one of them, and that every other man, was the child of God and his Father’s vicar upon earth; and that each human life was all a journeying home, toward a not ever ending happiness, and that it was a journeying which should be performed in a style appropriate to Heaven’s heir apparent. Those savages believed me. They were joyous both night and day. They learned to be envious of no one, to love God, and to support no unjust cause. They learned to speak seasonably and graciously, to be generous in giving, to clothe themselves neatly, and to sing and dance, and to war fearlessly against evil. It all quite upset my father.... Yet my notion was, I still believe, a very beautiful notion. It created beauty everywhere, because, as I have said, the heir apparent of Heaven must journey homeward in an appropriate style. Yes, the results were eminently picturesque. Caerleon arose; there was no city more delectable upon earth than was the pleasant town of Caerleon, builded upon Usk between the forest and the clear river. Arthur sat there upon a daïs over which was spread a covering of flame-colored satin. Under his elbow was a cushion of red satin. The lords and princes and the knights sat about King Arthur Pendragon, each in his order and degree. The oppressed and the unhappy came to Arthur. He was to the young a father, to the old a comforter. Wrong was loathsome to him, the right was very dear to Arthur, and he knew not what it was to fear. My father did not think at all well of him.... But I was pleased with my toys, for now I found in every part of the land a romantic strange beauty. The knights rode at adventure upon enormous stallions. They clanked as they rode. They went masked in blue armor and in crimson armor and in silver-speckled green armor. Upon their heads were brightly colored lions and leopards and griffins and sea horses, and very often their helmets were wrapped about with a woman’s sleeve. The giants that these knights fought against were mighty giants who ate at one meal six swine: the dragons that they fought against were marvelous huge worms with shining scales and wattles and magnificent whiskers. The maidens whom they rescued were each more lovely than the day. These maidens had blond curling hair and frontlets of red gold upon their heads. About each tender and rose-tinted body was a gown of yellow satin. Upon the feet of these maidens were shoes of variegated leather fastened with gilt clasps.... In fine, the heirs of Heaven discharged their moral and constabulary duties quite picturesquely as they rode homeward. It was in this way I who was Merlin Ambrosius played with heroic virtues: it was thus that I who was the son of my father made, for my amusement, men that were more virtuous and colorful than Heaven had ever been able to make them. Still, still, it really was a rather plainly outrageous notion upon which all this was founded: and by and by the dear and droll, and heart-breakingly beautiful antics of my flesh and blood toys did not content my desire.”

Gerald remarked, now that the old gentleman had paused in his meditative speaking, “Your desire, Messire Merlin, as I remember it, was for an enchantress who outwitted and betrayed you.”

“Men,” Merlin answered, with a grave smile, “have made a mistake in that report. Is it likely that I could be outwitted? No: I was Merlin Ambrosius.”

And then Merlin told Gerald about the child Nimuë, who was the daughter of the goddess Diana, and of how old, wearied, over-learned Merlin had come to her in the likeness of a young squire. He told of how they played for a long while with his ancient magics, there in the spring woods, beside a very clear fountain in which the gravel shone like powdered silver. To make this twelve-year-old child laugh, as she did so adorably, the mage had turned into prettiness and drollery every infernal device. He created for the child Nimuë, there in the April woods, an orchard full of all those fruits and flowers, howsoever unseasonably mingled, which have the liveliest sweetness and flavor. Phantoms danced for her wide-eyed amusement, in the shaping of armed knights and archbishops and crowned ladies and goat-legged fauns: and it was all quite excellent fun.... Then Merlin told to Nimuë, because she pouted so adorably, the secret of building a tower which is not made of stone or timber or iron, and is so strong that it may never be felled while this world endures. And Nimuë, the moment that he had fallen asleep with his head in her lap, spoke very softly the old runes. In the while that she continued to caress her lover, she imprisoned Merlin in an enchanted tower which she had builded out of the magic air of April above a flowering white hawthorn-bush, so that Nimuë might keep her wonderful, so wise, dear lover utterly to herself.

“And I was happy there for a long while,” said Merlin. “My toys, now that I played no more with them, began to break one another. Dissension and lust and hatred woke among them. They forgot the very pretty notion which I had given them in their turn to play with. The land was no longer an ordered realm. My toys now fought in the land’s naked fields, and they murderously waylaid one another in its old forests. Arthur was dead, at the hands of his own bastard son begotten in incest. It was an awkward ending for the heir apparent of Heaven. The Round Table was dissolved. The land was starved and sick and frightened.”

Now Merlin, the old poet who did not any longer delight to shape and to play with puppets, had paused: and he sat gazing thoughtfully, with wholly patient, tired eyes, at nothing in particular. Then Merlin said:

“I heard of all these things. They did not matter. I was happy. Yes, I suppose that I was happy. My ways were utterly domestic. They stayed thus for a long while.... There was no variety. In that small heaven which a child had builded out of the magic air of April there was no variety whatever. There was no enemy, no adversary for me to get the better of through some cunning device. There was only happiness.... Nimuë stayed always young and kind and beautiful and contented just because I was there. The child loved me. But there was no variety. No son of my father stays forever a domestic animal. So in the end I who was Merlin Ambrosius found my desire was not in that tower of April air. There was only heaven. There was only just such a never-changing happiness as I had once talked about to the gaping, smooth-chinned boy and to his shaggy followers.”

“Yet how could you escape from the blessings of a happy home-life, Messire Merlin, if that tower was truly enchanted?”

“It does not seem reasonable that I should tell you all my secrets,” Merlin replied, drily, “any more than it seemed reasonable that the son of my father should share every secret with Nimuë. The child loved me utterly. And I loved her. Yes, I loved Nimuë as I have loved no other creature fluttering about earth. She did not seem to walk.... Even so, I was Merlin Ambrosius. So in the end I left my child mistress. I quitted the small heaven which a child’s pure-mindedness had contrived. And I go now into Antan to get, it may be, my desire.”

Then there was silence, now that the three mages had all spoken.

And Gerald shook his head. “You gentlemen have talked with gratifying candor. You have expressed yourself, with chaste simplicity, in very plain short sentences. You have reasoned powerfully. You imply that neither a wife nor a mistress, or even a harem, is able to dissuade a wise man from this journeying toward the goal of all the gods. I infer that, to the contrary, the domestic circumstances of no one of you were wholly satisfactory in the old time. Well, that is a situation still to be encountered more frequently than is desirable, even in Lichfield, and it is the reason that I too am on my way to Antan. I am stopping here just for the week-end. Yet I still do not know what in the world you gentlemen really desire.”

“For one, I desire nothing that is in this world,” replied Odysseus.

“Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question! What do you three expect to find in Antan? Because I can assure you that, after the impending changes to be made in the government and other civic affairs of Antan by the Lord of the Third Truth,—a deity, gentlemen, with several not uninteresting aspects, a deity with whom I may without boasting say that I have considerable influence,—why, then, the moment everything is in tolerable working order, it will be a real pleasure to afford you three gentlemen all possible courtesies.”

But the three mages did not seem impressed.

“I was wise,” said Solomon. “I knew all things save one thing. I did not know that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished. And that word no god knows until he has heard it spoken by the Master Philologist.”

“My desire,” said Merlin, “was for the maid Nimuë and for the love of my child mistress. When I had my desire it did not content me. So I now go into Antan to find, it may be, something which I can desire. But my father’s son does not go asking favors of any god.”

Then Gerald said: “Yet, you three mages who have traveled through the Marches of Antan wherein only two truths endure, and the one teaching is that we copulate and die,—do you not look to find in the goal of all the gods some third truth?”

And it seemed to him that the faces of these myths had now become somewhat evasive and more wary.

But they said only, speaking severally: “A wise man knows that no truth is affected either by his beliefs or by his hopes.”—“A wise man accepts each truth as it is revealed to him.”—“A wise man will risk nothing upon the existence of any truth.”

“Still, gentlemen, these are enigmas! These sayings are not a plain answer to a plain question: and I do not quite understand these sayings.”

They answered him, “There is no need that you should understand.”

Then these three passed down toward the sunset statelily. And Gerald, gazing after them, once more shook his red head. These wise myths seemed to him in a bad way: it would not be easy to content the more eminent sages among his future subjects, because these three at least, for all their wisdom, appeared never to have found out what they wanted.

Gerald shrugged. He, in any event, perfectly well knew what in this bracing country air he wanted at once. So Gerald went in at once to supper with his Maya who was such an excellent cook in her plain way.

“WHAT more is needed,” Maya had asked, “to make this last day with me pass pleasantly?”

—For this, again, was the very last day which Gerald could possibly spend in the trim log and plaster cottage. Maya had decided, without any reticence, that it was high time he attended to whatsoever foolishness he seemed to think himself committed to, in that disreputable low place down yonder, and that to keep putting it off in this way looked like shirking, and that, for her part, she simply could not understand why he did not get his nonsense over with....

And Gerald said, “It would be nice if we had a son.”

But Maya at once dissented, as, it seemed to Gerald she nowadays dissented, at least in part, from everything that Gerald proposed.

“No, Gerald,” said Maya. “For you would grow far too fond of him. You would be foolish about him. You would be unwilling to leave him, you probably never would leave him. And it would end in your being in my way, and bothering me in the night season, and being under my feet all day, for the rest of your life—”

“But I am a god—”

“Yes, Gerald, to be sure, you are. I had forgotten. I apologize. Now, do not be upset about it! Stop pouting! You are a god, that is quite understood. You are immortal, you are going to outlive me indefinitely, and you are going to perform wonders in Antan, and it is all going to be very nice. I hope so, anyhow. I was only saying it would be much better for us to have no son.”

But Gerald answered: “Do not keep contradicting me in that maddening way! If you again fly out at me like that, Maya, you will rouse my temper. Then I shall rage and roar and, quite possibly, ramp. I will bluster and speak harshly. I will huff, I will puff, I will blow the house down. For I insist it would be quite nice if we had a son.”

“Oh, very well, then!” said Maya; and she turned with that sulkiness which she ever and again displayed—nowadays,—toward a large basket of magics.

“—I mean, though, once he were old enough. Babies are too limited in conversation, they are too vocal, and they are too leaky.”

Maya had lifted from an amber basin a small shining lizard. She held it toward her mouth, breathing softly upon the creature, in the while that she answered Gerald.

“I think, myself,” said Maya, “that, since you insist upon having a son, he might as well be seven or eight years old to begin with.”

Then Maya took off the top of the basket, she reached far into the blue basket with the hand in which she held the shining lizard, and out of this basket, clinging to Maya’s hand for support, climbed a freckled red-haired boy, about eight years old, in blue garments, and having as yet only one upper front tooth.

“We have now got a splendid son,” said Gerald, contentedly. “But who is to christen our son? For I shall of course call him Theodorick Quentin, just as my father and my oldest brother were called.”

The boy was, thus, named Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, and Gerald delighted in the child. For the Lord of the Third Truth put off once more his entry into his kingdom....

“I told you so!” said Maya.

“But, really now, my darling, would you have me lacking in all proper paternal feeling! It is necessary I give the child a fair start in life; and I ask you, candidly, could any parent discharge that duty, with any real thoroughness, in less than a week?”

“That, though, is not at all what I said. And for any full-grown man to be talking such nonsense—”

“So now you see for yourself! Therefore I shall be leaving you both next Tuesday, and it is quite useless for you to implore me to stay a half-second longer than that. Besides, I rather like him.”

Yet the child showed peculiarities. For one thing, his tongue had no red in it, but was formed of perfectly white flesh. When Gerald noticed this odd fact he said nothing about it, though, because Gerald comprehended the limitations of gray magic. And for another thing, on the third day of Theodorick’s existence, Gerald happened to lay aside his rose-colored spectacles while he was playing with his son. Then the boy was not there. Gerald shrugged, just in time to avoid shuddering. He replaced his spectacles, and all was as before, to every freckle and each red hair.

After that, Gerald wore his spectacles always.

For Theodorick Quentin Musgrave had become very dear to him. No more than any other father could Gerald rationally explain this dearness or justify it by any common-sense logic. He only knew that the brat aroused in him a tenderness which came appreciably near to being unselfish; that it worried him to have the brat go unchristened in this neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards; that when he touched the brat it pleased him, for no assignable reason; and that when the brat displayed the mildest gleam of intelligence, it at once seemed quite brilliant and profound, and inexpressibly beyond all other people’s children.

For Theodorick noticed everything. And Gerald delighted particularly in the child’s intelligence and powers of observation, because, since no sort of cleverness could possibly be inherited from poor dear stupid Maya, all the boy’s more excellent mental traits were obviously paternal.

For example, “There is a lady,” Theodorick had stated, pointing toward Antan.

“Oh, any number of ladies, my son,” Gerald assented, as he thought of the many beautiful goddesses and feminine myths who (for all that, he reflected, he had never seen any female creature pass toward Antan) must be aiding to make yet more glorious that kingdom over which Gerald would by this time next week be ruling.

And Gerald’s hand went to the shoulder of the freckled brat whom, after next week, he would not ever be seeing any more: and Gerald wondered at the wholly illogical pleasure he derived just from touching this child.

“Oh, yes, there are no doubt a great many ladies in Antan,” said Gerald, “and the coincidence is truly quaint that I have not yet seen any woman traveling in that direction.”

But the boy explained he meant the very large lady lying down over yonder as if she were dead, but not dead, because her heart was breathing.

Then Gerald saw that, in point of fact, the hills toward the southwest had, from this station, the shaping of a woman’s body. She seemed to lie flat on her back, with her long hair outspread everywhither about her head, of which the profile, now that you look for it, was complete and quite definitely formed. Also you saw her throat and her high breasts, whence the hills sloped downward into the contour of a relatively smallish, flat belly. Just here the outline of the vast violet-tinted figure was broken by the nearer green hill immediately across the road which led to Antan, but all that you could see of this womanlike figure was complete and perfectly moulded. Moreover, Gerald noted that, near where the heart would have been, a forest fire was sending up its languid smoke, which was, of course, what Theodorick Quentin Musgrave had meant by saying that the lady’s heart was breathing.

Gerald was very proud of Theodorick’s cleverness in noticing the shaping of these hills, which Gerald himself had not ever observed, in the entire three weeks he had spent upon Mispec Moor. But when this odd accident of nature was pointed out to Maya, she only said that she saw what you meant of course, but that, after all, it was only two hills, and that hills looked much more like hills than they looked like anything else.

PART NINE

THE BOOK OF MISPEC MOOR

IT WAS at this time, toward the middle of June, that Gaston Bulmer came from Lichfield. Gerald was sitting, as was his daily custom now, under the chestnut-tree beside the road which led to Antan. He waited there to engage in conversation the next of his future subjects who might pass by in that perpetual journeying toward Antan. Gerald, under this same chestnut-tree, had by this time talked with many such unearthly wayfarers: and if the rather interesting things they had told him were all written down, it would make a book unutterably enormous and utterly incredible.

In such circumstances it was, just after two not unfamiliar mountebanks had gone by carrying with them the paraphernalia of their Punch and Judas show, that Gerald noticed a small sulphur-colored cloud sweeping rapidly from the east. It descended: and when it was near to Gerald, it unclosed. Gaston Bulmer then stepped, a bit rheumatically, from its glowing depths, and he laid down a rod of cedar wood tipped with an apple carved in blue-stone.

There was not in all this anything in itself astonishing, since Gaston Bulmer was an adept in the arts of which Gerald, in the strange days before he knew that he was a god, had been a student. But to note how Gaston had aged in the last week or so was astounding. Yet Gerald, in any case, was wholly delighted to see again his old friend and preceptor, and a person who had for so long been virtually his father-in-law.

Gaston would not come up to the cottage, though, for dinner, because, as he confessed, he preferred not to encounter Maya. Rather, it was his wish, and it seemed, indeed, to be his errand, to free Gerald from what Gaston Bulmer, surprisingly enough, described as the wise woman’s pernicious magic.

Gerald said: “Oh, bosh! For really now, Gaston, if such nonsense were not heart-breaking it would be side-splitting. I am inexpressibly shocked by your hallucination, which is, I trust, of a most transitory nature. However, let us not discuss my wife, if you please. Instead, do you tell me how my body is faring.”

So they sat down together under the chestnut-tree. And Gaston Bulmer answered, “That body, Gerald, since you quitted it, has become a noted scholar and a man of letters.”

“Ah! ah!” said Gerald, greatly pleased, “so my romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme has been completed, and is now being admired everywhere!”

“No, for your body has become, just as I said, a scholar. Scholars do not write romances.”

“Yet you referred to a man of letters—?”

“Your body is now a rather famous ethnologist. Your body deals with historical and scientific truths. Your body thus writes large quartos upon topics to which no romance, howsoever indelicate, could afford to devote a sentence.”

Gerald fell to stroking that long chin of his. “Still, I recall that the present informant of my body once informed me there were only two truths of which any science could be certain.”

“And what were these two truths?”

Gerald named them.

Gaston said then: “The demon is consistent. For these two are precisely your body’s scientific specialty. To-day your body writes invaluable books in which the quaint and interesting customs that accompany an interplay of these two truths, and the various substitutes for that interplay, are catalogued and explained, as these customs have existed in all lands and times. Lichfield to-day is wholly proud of the scholarship and the growing fame of Gerald Musgrave.”

“I am glad that my body has turned out so splendidly. And I trust that all goes equally well with your daughter Evelyn?”

“Gerald,” the older man replied, looking more seriously troubled than Gerald ever liked to have anybody seeming in his company, “Gerald, it is an unfair thing that your Cousin Evelyn, without knowing it, should be living upon terms of such close friendship with a demon-haunted body.”

“Ah, so that friendship continues!”

“It continues,” said Gaston, “unaltered. It may interest you, Gerald, by the way, to hear that your Cousin Evelyn has now a son, quite a fine red-headed boy, born just a year after you relinquished your body to that treacherous Sylan.”

Gerald answered affably: “Why, that is perfectly splendid! Frank always wanted a boy.”

“My son-in-law, in fact, is much pleased. It is about my daughter I was thinking. It seems to me the situation is hardly fair to her, Gerald.”

Gerald replied: “My body is all of me that she was ever acquainted with, Gaston. So I fail to perceive that anything is altered.”

“Yet, when I reflect that a beautiful and accomplished and chaste gentlewoman, Gerald—”

“Ah, ah! But, yes, to be sure! you speak in the time-hallowed terms of Lichfield. And I really do not know why I interrupted you.”

“—When I reflect that, without knowing it, a gentlewoman is living upon terms of such close friendship with a mere demon-haunted body—”

“And is, in fact, trusting and giving all?”

“All her friendship and the natural affection of a kinswoman. Yes, that is a sad spectacle. It is an unsuitable spectacle. So it seems to me your duty as a Musgrave, and as a Southern gentleman, to return forthwith to mortal living and to your mortal obligations, and in particular to the obligations of your life-long friendship with your Cousin Evelyn.”

Gerald said, for the second time, “Oh, bosh!”

For the notions and the chivalrous assumptions of Gaston Bulmer all now appeared to Gerald out of reason, in view of the divine predestination which was upon him. A god had no concern with such slight imbroglios as the code of a merely terrestrial gentleman and the proper maintenance upon Earth of polite adultery. It would, indeed, be positively ill-bred for a Dirghic god to meddle with any of the affairs of a planet which, according to Gerald’s Protestant Episcopal faith, had been created and was controlled by an Episcopalian deity; for Gerald had of course retained, provisionally, that religion in which he was a communicant until he could find out something rather more definite about the religion in which he was a god.

Gerald therefore said: “My good Gaston, that your meaning is excellent, I do not doubt. And it is not your fault of course that, in your merely human condition, you do not quite understand these matters, and certainly cannot view them with an omniscient eye.”

The older man said: “I understand, in any event, that through all these years you have stayed here bewitched with terrible half-magics, and that your own eyes are blinded with the woman’s rose-colored spectacles. And I seek to preserve you.”

“You would preserve me for the provincial life of your little Lichfield! You would make me just another chivalrous, bull-headed, rather nice-looking and wholly stupid Musgrave! In fine, you would urge me to become genteel and to deny my glorious destiny. Yet to do that would be cowardly, Gaston: for, whether I like it or not, there is upon me the divine obligation to fulfil some very ancient prophecies.”

“What sort of prophecies are these?”

“They are Dirghic prophecies. But, then, it is not the language in which a prophecy is uttered that matters, rather it is—Well, it is the spirit of the thing! For you must know—although, in view of my wife’s social position, I have compelled her, after some little argument, to introduce me hereabouts as a visiting sorcerer,—yet I may tell you, in strict confidence, Gaston, it is decreed that, as the Lord of the Third Truth, I am to reign in Antan.”

“And who told you any such unlikely nonsense?”

“Some people that I met upon the road. Oh, quite honest looking people, Gaston!”

“And who told you that you were the Lord of any Third Truth?”

“There my authority is unimpeachable. For I had it from the lips of a beautiful and accomplished and chaste gentlewoman, Gaston, who was speaking with all the frankness begotten by our being in bed together at the time.”

“And how can you reign in Antan, or anywhere else, when you do not ever go there? Through all these years, I gather, you have loitered here within a man’s arm’s reach of Antan!”

Gerald said, with the slight frown of one who finds trouble uncongenial: “I am puzzled, my dear friend, by your continued references to all these years. And I admit that various matters have a bit hindered my technical and merely formal entry into my kingdom. Yet I shall be leaving Mispec Moor the instant that this week’s washing is in, on Thursday afternoon—”

“But, my poor Gerald! you will not go, either forward to Antan or back to Lichfield, on what you think to be next Thursday. You have lost here all sense of time, you do not even know that the days you have spent in this place have counted as four years in Lichfield. I tell you that the wise woman, with her half-magics and her accursed spectacles, holds you here bewitched. And I now perceive that nothing whatever can be done for you, who are ensnared by the most fatal of all the magics of the wrinkled goddess.”

—To which Gerald, for the third time, replied: “Oh, bosh! No sorceress has any power over a god. And so completely do you misunderstand my wife, Gaston, that I must tell you hardly a day passes without her urging me to hurry on to Antan.”

Gaston Bulmer was still regarding him with that extraordinary and wholly uncalled-for look of compassion.

“How completely,” he remarked, “she understands you Musgraves! Yes, you are lost, my poor Gerald.”

“—It follows that your notions are preposterous. Oh, that is not your fault, my dear fellow, and not for an instant am I blaming you. Your conduct, from your human point of view, is very right, very friendly, very proper. So your rather laughable blunder does not offend me in the least. And if, as you declare, I have lingered here for some four years as you human beings estimate time, what do four years amount to with an immortal who has at his disposal all eternity? Come now, Gaston, do you but answer me that very simple question!”

But Gaston answered only: “You are content. You are lost.”

AND Gaston said no more about the matter, because just here their talking was interrupted. For now, as these two still sat at the roadside, they were joined by a brown man, dressed completely in neat brown, who was journeying toward Antan.

“Hail, friend!” said Gerald, “and what business draws you to the city of all marvels?”

And the brown man, pausing, said that, in point of fact, it was upon a slight matter of business routine that he desired to consult with Queen Freydis. All gods, he said, had rather speedily passed downward to encounter the word which was in the beginning,—for it was thus that the brown man spoke, very much as King Solomon had spoken,—all gods, that is, save only one, who so bewilderingly altered his tenets that there was no telling where to have him.

The brown man thought that, nowadays, in a comparatively enlightened nineteenth century, was perhaps the appropriate time for something to be done about this celestial chameleon. And in any case, he said yet further, he always enjoyed his little conferences with Freydis, who was rather a dear—

“So, so!” said Gerald, “you, sir, have previously visited Antan?”

“Oh, very often. For I am the adversary of all the gods of men.”

And Gerald viewed with natural interest the one person who pretended to know at first-hand anything about Gerald’s appointed kingdom: yet, even so, if this brown gentleman, as Gerald had begun to suspect, happened to be the Father of All Lies, there was no real point to questioning him, inasmuch as you could believe none of his answers.

“—For, I infer,” said Gerald, “that you who travel on the road of gods and myths are that myth not unfamiliar to my Protestant Episcopal rearing; and that I have now the privilege, so frequently anticipated for me by my nearer relatives, of addressing the devil?”

“I retain of course in every mythology, including the Semitic, my niche,” replied the brown man, “from which to speak to intelligent persons in somewhat varying voices.”

Then Gaston Bulmer arose, and the aging adept shaped a sign which to Gerald was unfamiliar.

“I suspect, sir,” said Gaston Bulmer, “that my mother’s father, who was called Florian de Puysange, once heard the speaking of that voice.”

“It is a tenable hypothesis. I in my day have spoken much.”

“—As did, I believe, yet another forebear of mine, the great Jurgen, from whom descends the race of Puysange, and who once encountered someone rather like you in a Druid wood—”

“I cannot deny it. The Druids also knew me. I, who am the Prince of this world, meet however, as you will readily understand, so many millions of people during the course of my efforts to keep them contented with my kingdom that it is not always possible for me to recollect every one of my beneficiaries.”

“Still,” Gerald said, “you have played in large historical events a strange high part; you have known all the very best people: and you must have much of interest to tell me about. You, sir, at least shall dine with me, since my friend here is obdurate. My wife avoids the usual run of gods, but to devils I have never heard her voice the slightest objection. So, if you will do me the honor to accompany me to my temporary home, in that cottage—”

But the brown man smiled. And he excused himself.

“For your wife and I are not wholly strangers. And the circumstances in which we last parted were, I confess, a bit awkward. So I really believe it would be more pleasant, for everyone concerned, for me not to meet your wife just now. Do you present, none the less, my compliments.”

“And whose compliments shall I tell her that they are?”

“Do you say a friend of her earliest youth passed by, one somewhat intimately known to her before she first became a mother; and I make no doubt that Havvah will understand.”

“But my wife’s married name is Maya, and before our marriage it was Æsred—”

“Ah, yes!” the brown man said, precisely as Glaum had done, “women do vary in their given names. Do you present my compliments, then, to your wife: for that word, by and by, means the same thing to every husband.”

“I will convey the message,” Gerald promised: “but the aphorism I would prefer to have delivered by somebody else.”

And he so parted with both his guests.

For Gaston Bulmer embraced Gerald and then went sorrowfully back to Lichfield, in a cloud which the aging adept’s despondency made quite black: and the brown man leisurely strolled on toward Antan, with the ease of one who was well used to walking to and fro about the earth.

He did not hurry, nor did he look inquisitively about him, Gerald noticed, as has done the other travelers toward the city of all marvels. The brown man, alone of the many that had passed toward Antan, appeared to travel upon a road with which he was thoroughly acquainted, toward a familiar goal.