Chapter LXIX

And when Gud had finished reading the woman asked: "Is that all?"

And Gud looked at the poem in his hand and said sorrowfully, "That is all."

"But that is quite comprehensible," said the woman, "for it is merely one of Hersey's usual plagiarisms--a twittering parody of Rossetti's 'THE BLESSED DAMOSEL', and it is so simple."

"Do you understand it?" asked Gud.

"Of course, it merely means that the love of man is insufficient to satisfy the yearning of woman, and so she must look into the mirror of her own soul in search of greater spiritual joys. But alas, she is shadowed by her sex consciousness as reflected in her beauty of the flesh, and she can not escape that haunting shadow which finally drives her mad. Is that not simple?"

To D. S.: I protest. This interpretation is entirely erroneous.--H. H.

To H. H.: Good God, I know it! but if you had seen what I first wrote about it you would keep still.--D. S.

"I should say," said Gud, "that it is beautiful simplicity."

"That is just the trouble with all that these chaps are writing. They are so keen on the obvious. You see, I can understand all that these men have written, for it is all explainable by psychoanalysis. It is merely the symbolism of a suppressed wish to be famous. And, oh Gud, how I do crave true mystery!"

"Then," said Gud, "you shall have it, for am I not Gud the Great?"

"If you are, why do you not inspire these men who are writing this book about you to put something into the book that no one can understand? Indeed, if you cannot do that I shall be tempted to believe that you are not Gud, but only a mere figment of fancy conceived in the brains of two conceited young egotists who are seeking a cheap notoriety by shocking decent people with blasphemous literature."

"I fear you are right."

"Oh," cried the woman, "then you admit that you are what I said?"

"Not at all. I merely admit that he is what you said."

"Really, Gud, you ought to have had some well-known writer do this book about you--some one who had already been suppressed, or, better yet, a Russian."

"Who are the Russians?" asked Gud.

"They are the supremists in dancing, the theorists in politics, the idealists in economics and the realists in literature. But you are romantic, aren't you, Gud?"

"I think so. At least I feel so--did you always wear your hair that way?"

"Oh, no, indeed. You see, I used to wear it shorn like that of a boy, for that fashion was once the insignia of the female intelligence. But all the fat bankers' wives aped us, so now our only chance for distinction is to ape our mothers, and I wear my mother's hair. See, I will take it off and show it to you."

"It is very lovely," said Gud, as he fingered her mother's hair. "I think I should have loved your mother, and it is very sweet of you to wear this hair in remembrance of her. Most women who have risen to your intellectual heights forget their mothers."

"It is very kind of you to say that, but distinction is in being different, and so we ultra-intelligent women are again showing respect for our mothers to distinguish us from the mob of the commonplace intellectuals who came flopping into the pool of progress and muddied the water.... It is a great race, dear Gud, this struggle to keep ahead of the apings of the stupid."

"Yes, yes, so I find it. Little up-start muddling gods have quite fogged up the milky way with their nebulous creations--but pardon me if I suggest that I would rather that you put your mother's hair back on."

She had some difficulty in putting her mother's hair on straight; so Gud reached over, and with a few deft touches, arranged it for her. Then, plucking a button from his robe, he burnished it on his sleeve until it shone silvery bright, and then he held it before her. She looked into the mirroring silver and gave a little rapturous cry of joy, for the hair of her mother, on which they had both wasted so much henna, had been turned into a brilliant shade of fluorescent opalescence--a color that no artist of the Latin Quarter had ever painted and that no artist of the Village had ever imagined.

"Oh, Gud," she cried, "now I know that I love you, for they will go mad about it and I shall be the queen of the studios."

"I would rather that you remain just a woman as you have so sweetly shown yourself to be."

"Never!" cried she who wanted something that no one could understand, "never, never, will I be content to be just a woman! I must be, oh so much more. I must have super-personality, and hyper-yearnings, and ultra-strivings and transcendent seekings after ultimate mysteries--really I don't think you understand me at all!"

"Has any one ever understood you?" asked Gud.

"No," she breathed in soft expectancy.

"Only a little while ago you were searching for something that no one could understand--have we not found it in yourself?"

"Perhaps," she spoke dubiously.

"And if you were in my book, would it not then contain something that no one could understand?"

"Do you mean it?" she faltered.

"Yes, dear child, for whom all writers write, if it will bring me one more smile from those ever-changing eyes of beauty--I will see that you are in '_The Book of Gud_'--if I have to catch these blasphemous scribes and pound their heads together!"

"For that promise," said the iridescent lady, "I could love you forever and a day. To think that we two should be in a book together! Just me and Gud!

"And now," she added, in a lower tone, "I'll confess to you why I want to be in the book. You see, I am supposed to be a literary character and one has to be in a book to be a literary character, you know."

"Yes, yes, I know. I suppose it will make me one also. But now I must hasten to seek out these mundane scribes, and see to it that they put you in my book--for they have it about finished."

"Which one of them do you propose to have write me into the book?"

"Which one would you prefer?"

"I hardly know," she said. "That fellow Spain is a woman hater, and I am afraid he will say something unkind about me. But that Hersey poet prostitutes his art to flatter women. He has an exaggerated idea of the importance of the sex consciousness in an intellectual woman's life. Really, it is a choice between two evils."

"If that is the way you feel about it," said Gud, "perhaps I had better write you into the book myself."

"Could you really? Oh, Gud! I would die of joy to be written by you; not even a movie actress ever had a celestial press agent!"

"I'll try," said Gud, "that is, if you will tarry with me as I write."

"Do you mean that I would inspire you?"

"Exactly."

"That is what they all say!"

"Then it must be true."

"But why do you not say something original, since you are Gud?"

"Because I am talking to you."

"You old brute!"

"Perhaps so, but a straight line is the shortest distance between two points."

"Oh, I like that," cried she who had sought for mystery. "It sounds so original, and I am sure that no one can understand it--what does it mean?"

"It means," said Gud, "that you and I have very much in common that quite transcends the reach and grasp of men."

"You flatter me."

"But really, that is true."

"Then quick, write it down before you lose the inspiration."

"But I have nothing on which to write," said Gud.

She blushed and turned away from him, and tore the whiteness from her bosom, and turned again toward Gud and handed him the whiteness that had covered up the secrets of her heart.

Gud took the whiteness of her bosom and thereupon he began to write, while she lay down upon the other side of the pool, and hid her bosom away from Gud, lest, now with its whiteness gone, he might see the color of her heart.

And so Gud, who is made in the image of man, became as a man. And as he wrote he forgot the woman, for when a pen is in the hand of man or god, the light that lies in woman's eyes burns dim as some brief candle.

And this indeed is the paradox of all who wield the treacherous weapon: that man sets out to write, some woman's heart to flutter; and having struck pen to paper, if there be anything in him that rises o'er the damp swamp of woman's kisses, then of a truth the instrument that she put into his hand becomes a knife to sever the cords with which she sought to bind him.

Such is the tragedy of her who flutters near while men make words on paper, that in their youth they write for her; and their youth gone, they still write on beyond the reaches of her soul.

And so, as Gud wrote upon the whiteness torn from a woman's bosom, he forgot quite utterly the woman herself, who lay by the pool trembling and suffering and trying to hide her heart from Gud.

And when she saw that he had forgotten her--even though he had told her he wanted her near him and needed her for inspiration--she suffered so that her heart died within her, and she shrank and withered and fell into the pool of the fountain, and, as a brown leaf, floated on the surface of the water.