Читать книгу Something About Eve - James Branch Cabell - Страница 14

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“A GOOD-MORNING to you, ma’am,” Gerald had begun. His horse was tethered to a palm-tree, and Horvendile was gone, so that there now was only the Princess to be considered. “And in what way can I be of any service?”

Yet his voice shook, as he stood there beside the alabaster couch.... For Gerald was enraptured. The Princess Evasherah was, in the dawn of this superb May morning, so surpassingly lovely that she excelled all the other women his gaze had ever beheld. Her face was the proper shape, it was appropriately colored everywhere, and it was surmounted with an adequate quantity of hair. Nor was it possible to find any defect in her features. 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. In fine, the girl was young, she exhibited no deformity anywhere, and the enamored glance of the young man could perceive in her no fault. She reminded him, though, of someone that he had known....

Such were the ardent reflections which had passed through Gerald’s mind in the while that he said decorously, “A good-morning, ma’am: and in what way can I be of any service?”

But the Princess, in her impetuous royal fashion, had wasted no time upon the formal preliminaries which were more or less customary in Lichfield. And while Gerald’s patriotic republican rearing had been explicit enough as to the goings-on in monarchical families, he was whole-heartedly astounded by the animation and candor which here confronted him. There was no possible doubting that the Princess Evasherah was prepared to trust him and to give him all.

“But, oh, indeed, ma’am,” Gerald said, “you quite misunderstand me!”

For he had it now. This woman was uncommonly like Evelyn Townsend.

Gerald sighed. All ardor had departed from him. And with a few well-chosen words he placed their relationship upon a more decorous basis.

Now the Princess Evasherah, that most lovely Lady of the Water-Gap, was lying down even when Gerald first came to her, just after sunrise. She was lying upon a couch of alabaster, which had four legs made of elephants’ tusks. Upon this couch was a mattress covered with green satin and embroidered with red gold; upon the mattress was the Princess Evasherah in a brief shirt of apricot colored silk; and, over all, was a saffron canopy adorned with fig-leaves worked in pearls and emeralds.

This couch was furthermore shaded by three palm-trees, and it stood near to the bank of the river called Doonham. And by the sparkling ripples of that river’s deep waters—as the Princess Evasherah explained, some while after she and Gerald had reached a friendly and clean-minded understanding, with no un-American nonsense about it,—was hidden the residence of the Princess, where presently they would have breakfast.

“But,” Gerald said, a little dejectedly, “I have just now no appetite of any kind.”

“That will not matter,” said the Princess: and for no reason at all she laughed.

“—And to live under the water, ma’am, appears a virtually unprecedented form of royal eccentricity—”

“Ah, but I must tell you, lord of the age, and most obdurate averter from the desirer of union with him, that very long ago, because of a girlish infatuation for a young man whose name I have forgotten, I suffered a fiery downfalling from the Home of the Heavenly Ones, into the waters of this river. For I had offended my Father (whose name be exalted!) by stealing six drops of quite another kind of water, of the water from the Churning of the Ocean—”

“Eh?” Gerald said, “but do you mean the divine Amrita?”

“Garden of my joys, and summit of sagacity,” the Princess remarked, “you are learned. You have knowledge of heavenly matters, you have traversed the Nine Spaces. And I perceive that you who travel overburdened with unresponsiveness upon this road of the gods are yet another god in disguise.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, it is merely that, as a student of magic, one picks up such bits of information. I am the heir apparent to a throne, I cannot honestly declare myself any more than that: and I am upon my way to enter into my kingdom, but it is not, I am tolerably certain, a celestial kingdom.”

The Princess was not convinced. “No, my preceptor and my only idol, it is questionless you are a god, all perfect in eloquence and in grace, a temptation unto lovers, and showing as a visible paradise to the desirous. Here, in any event, out of my keen regard for your virtues, and in exchange for that great gawky horse of yours which reveals in every feature its entire unworthiness of contact with divine buttocks, here are the five remaining drops, in this little vial—”

Gerald inspected the small crystal bottle quite as sceptically as the Princess had regarded his disclaimer of being a god. “Well, now, ma’am, to me this looks like just ordinary water.”

She placed one drop of the water upon her finger-tip. She drew upon his forehead the triangle of the male principle, she drew the female triangle, so that one figure interpenetrated the other, and she invoked Monachiel, Ruach, Achides, and Degaliel. No student of magic could fail to recognize her employment of an interesting if uncanonical variant of the Third Pentacle of Venus, but Gerald made no comment.

After that the Princess Evasherah laughed merrily. “Now, then, companion of my heart, now that you have promised me that utterly contemptible horse of yours, I unmask you. For I perceive that you, O my master, more comely than the moon, are the predestined Redeemer of Antan—”

“That much, ma’am, I already know—”

“In short,” said the Princess, “you are Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, thus masked in human flesh and in human forgetfulness and in peculiarly unhuman coldness. Yet very soon the power of the Amrita will have bestowed unfailing vigorousness upon your thinking, and presently the hounds of recollection will have run down the hare of your inestimable glory.”

“That is well said, ma’am. It is spoken with a fine sense of style. And I conjecture that, although the better stylists usually omit this ingredient, it has some meaning also.... Yes, you do allude to my having red hair, but the hare of my inestimable glory, which you likewise mention, is not capillary, but zoölogical,—in addition to being also metaphorical.... You state, in brief, in a figurative Oriental way, that by and by I shall recollect something which I have forgotten.... But just what is it, ma’am, that you so confidently expect me to recollect?”

“My lord, and acme of my contentment, you will recall, for one matter, the love that was between us in this world’s infancy, when you did not avert from me the inspiring glances of fond affection. For you, the bright-tressed, the resplendent, are unmistakably the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. I perfectly remember you, by your high nose, by your jutting chin, and by the eminence of yet another feature whose noble proportions also very deeply delighted me during my visit to your Dirghic paradise, and which I perceive to remain unabatedly heroic.”

Gerald, gently, but with decision, took hold of her hand. It seemed to him quite time.

Then the fair Lady of the Water-Gap, she who would have been so adorable if only she had not reminded Gerald more and more of Evelyn Townsend, began to talk about matters which Gerald as yet really did not remember.

She spoke of Gerald’s golden and high-builded home, in which, it seemed, this Princess had trusted him and had given him all: and she spoke also of the unresting love for mankind which had led Gerald to quit that exalted home, among the untroubled lotus-ponds of Vaikuntha, upon nine earlier occasions, and of his nine fine exploits in the way of redemption.

She spoke of how Gerald had visited men sometimes in his present heroic and elegant form, at other times in the appearance of a contemptible looking dwarf, and upon yet other occasions as a tortoise and as a boar pig and as a lion and as a large fish. His taste in apparel seemed as fickle as his charitableness was firm. For over and over again, the Princess said, it had been the power of Gerald, as Helper and Preserver, which had prevented several nations and a dynasty or two of gods from being utterly destroyed by demons whom Gerald himself had destroyed. It was Gerald, as he learned now, who had preserved this earth alike from depopulation and from ignorance, when during the first great flood the Lord of the Third Truth, in his incarnation as a great fish, had carried through the deluge seven married couples and four books containing the cream of earth’s literature: whereas, later, during a yet more severe inundation, Gerald had held up the earth itself between his tusks,—this being, of course, in the time of his incarnation as a boar pig,—and swimming thus, had preserved the endangered planet from being as much as mildewed.

And Evasherah spoke also of how when Gerald was a tortoise he had created such matters as the first elephant, the first cow, and the first wholly amiable woman. He had created at the same time, she added, the moon and the great jewel Kaustubha and a tree called Parijata, which yielded whatever was desired of it, and it was then also that Fair-haired Hoo, the Well-beloved Lord of the Third Truth, had invented drunkenness. There had been, in all, Evasherah concluded, nineteen supreme and priceless benefits invented by Gerald at this time, but she confessed her inability to recall offhand everyone of them—

“It is sufficient,—oh, quite sufficient!” Gerald assured her, with wholly friendly condescension, “for already, ma’am, it embarrasses me to have my modest philanthropies catalogued.”

Yet Gerald, howsoever lightly he spoke, was thrilled with not uncomplacent pride in his past. He was not actually surprised, of course, because logic had already pointed out that the ruler of Antan would very naturally be a divine personage with just such a magnificent past. To be a god appeared to him a rather beautiful idea. So he first asked what was the meaning of that skull over yonder in the grass: the Princess explained that it was not her skull, but had been left there by a visitor some two months earlier: and then Gerald, after having agreed with her that people certainly ought to be more careful about their personal belongings, went on with what was really in his mind.

“In any event, ma’am,” he hazarded, with the brief cough of diffidence, “it seems there have been tender passages between us before this morning—”

“I trusted you! I gave you all!” she said, reproachfully. “But you, disposer of supreme delights, and fair vase of my soul, you have forgotten even the way you used to take advantage of my confidence! For how can the modesty of a frail woman avail against the brute strength of a determined man!”

“No, Evelyn, not to-night—I beg your pardon, ma’am! My mind was astray. What I meant to say was that I really must request you to desist.” Then Gerald went on, tenderly: “To the contrary, my dear lady, our love stays unforgettable. I recall every instant of it, I bear in mind even that sonnet which I made for you on the evening of my first respectful declaration of undying affection.”

“Ah, yes, that lovely sonnet!” the Princess remarked, with the uneasiness manifested by every normal woman when a man begins to talk about poetry.

“—And to prove it, I will now recite that sonnet,” Gerald said.

And he did.

Yet his voice was so shaken with emotion that, when he had completed the octave, Gerald 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, always straying hands of the Princess Evasherah, of this impulsive and investigatory lady, who so troublingly resembled Evelyn Townsend, and Gerald pressed these hands to his trembling lips. This lovely girl, returned to him almost miraculously, it might seem, out of his well-nigh forgotten past, was not merely intent once more to trust him and to give him all. She trusted also, as Gerald felt with that keen penetration which is natural to divine beings, to delude and to wheedle him into some material loss. What the Princess desired to cajole him out of was, perhaps, not wholly clear. Nevertheless, he felt that, in some way or another way, Evasherah was attempting to deceive him. It might be that neither her explanation as to that skull nor even her so candid seeming adoration of his wisdom and his comeliness was entirely sincere. For women were like that: they did not always mean every word they said, not even when they were addressing a god. And so, the gods had over-painful duties laid upon them, Gerald decided.

After that he sighed: and he continued the reciting of his sonnet with an air of lofty resignation, with which was intermingled a certain gustatory approval of really good verse.

“Light of my universe, that is a very beautiful sonnet,” the Princess remarked, when he had finished, “and I am proud to have inspired it, and I am almost equally proud of the fact that you (through whose supreme elegance and amiable aspect my heart is once more rent with ecstasy) should remember it so well after these thousands of years.”

“Years mean very little, ma’am, to Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones: and centuries are, quite naturally, powerless to dim my memories of any matter in any way pertaining to you. Yet affairs of minor importance do rather tend to become a bit ambiguous as the æons slip by.... For example, what, in the intervals between my redemptory exploits—upon mere week days, as it were,—what do I happen to be the god of?”

“That,” said the Princess, “O my master, and pure fountain-head of every virtue, is a peculiarly silly question to be coming from you, who are, as everybody knows, the Lord of the Third Truth.”

“Ah, yes, to be sure,—of the Third Truth! My divine interests are invested in veracity. Well, that is highly gratifying. Yet, ma’am, there are a great many gods, and it is a rather beautiful idea to observe that, even where their professional spheres are the same, these gods differ remarkably. Thus, Vulcan is the lord of one fire, and Vesta of another, but Agni and Fudo and Satan rule over yet other fires, each wholly individual. Cupid and Lucina traffic in the same port, but not in the same way. Æolus controls twelve winds, and Tezcatlipoca four winds, and Crepitus only one wind—”

“Director of my life, and comely shepherd of my soul, I know. Few gods are strange to me or to my embraces. Many a Heavenly One has invited me to love, and I have yielded piously: my kisses have written the tale of my religious transports upon many divine cheeks.”

“—And I imagine that this water from the Churning of the Ocean was not intended, in the first place, to further my apotheosis. I mean, ma’am, I do not suppose you went to the trouble of stealing six drops of the Amrita in order just to recall to me that divinity which, in the press of other affairs, I had somehow permitted to slip my mind?”

“Disposer and sole archetype of the seven magnanimities, you speak the truth. For the five remaining drops, as I was trying to tell you when you kept interrupting me, O my lord, and beloved of my heart, and joy of both my eyes, were intended for the five human senses of the young man about whom I was then rather foolish; and upon whom I meant to bestow immortality and eternal youth. The first drop, inasmuch as the Amrita confers a never-ending vigorousness, I had of course already placed. So my Father (whose name be exalted!) smote us both with lightnings, in his impetuous way, and tumbled us both from out of the Home of the Heavenly Ones into this river. My young man was thus drowned before I had the chance to confer upon him any of the favors which I greatly fear your superior strength and your pertinacity are now about to force from me—”

Gerald replied: “I really do think you would get on far more quickly with your story if you were to keep both of these like this. The position, you see, is much more American: it lacks that earlier air of such personal freedom as a democracy does not think well of.”

“Light of the age, I hear and I obey. Yet all my tale has been revealed to your consideration—”

“Yes,” Gerald assented, “but your history interests me far more—”

“Far more than what, O cruel and resplendent one?”

“Why, far more than I can say, of course. So let us get on with it!”

“But my sad history is now as refined glass before your discerning glance. It suffices to add that the immortal part of my young man was happily removed from the waters of this river, and is now worshipped as a god in Lytreia. But for me, alas! the squirrel of calamity continued to revolve in the cage of divine wrath. For, so perfectly ridiculous is the way my Father (whose name be exalted!) behaves when the least thing upsets him, that I was condemned through the length of nine thousand years to assume certain official duties in the waters of this river, in the repugnant shape of a crocodile.”

But with that statement Gerald took prompt issue. “What may be your official duties as the guardian of these waters I can no more guess than I can guess how your visitors happen to be so careless about leaving their skulls behind. That really is a sort of slapdash and inconsiderate behavior which I cannot condone without considerable reflection. But I do know that the shape which I have beheld, and still see a great deal of, in nothing resembles the shape of a crocodile.”

“Epitome of every excellence, and exalted zenith of my existence, that is because the nine thousand years of my doom have now happily expired. The proof of this is that already my luckless substitute arrives. We shall now behold her encounter with the terminator of delights and the separator of companions. Thereafter, when we have had breakfast, O vital spirit of my heart, whom my unmitigated love incites me to devour out of pure affection, I shall ride hence upon the horse with which you have so gallantly presented me, to enter again into the Home of the Heavenly Ones.”

With that, the Princess pointed.