“And you live in this hole, with a muddy brat and a dull-witted, middle-aged, not at all good-looking woman for your only company! I marvel at the enchantment which controls you. At least Dame Venus held me with an intelligible sort of sorcery.”
“That,” Gerald replied, as he contentedly put on his rose-colored spectacles again, “is nonsense.”
“It is a very dreadful nonsense. It is a soul-destroying and besotting nonsense, from which I flee to look for the less terrible enchantments of the Hörselberg.”
Then Gerald put his question. “You, 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?”
But the comely knight seemed not to have heard this question, in his frank terror of domesticity. Tannhäuser had mounted his horse, and he now rode galloping like a madman toward Antan.
37.
Contentment of the Mislaid God
NOW life contented Gerald as he lived it through this recognized parenthesis in his divine career. Very soon this little episode of his stay upon Mispec Moor would be ended: it would even be forgotten, perhaps, in the press of regal and superhuman affairs. Meanwhile he lived in quite tolerable ease. He had nothing to trouble him. Hardly a morning passed without his finding some more or less interesting celestial outcast to talk to under his chestnut-tree. Maya continued to be an excellent cook, in her plain, unpretentious way: and she saw to it that the cottage was kept comfortable and efficient in all appointments.
And Maya was dear to him. She nowadays found fault with virtually everything that Gerald did. And whenever he ventured any suggestion, as to Theodorick or the economics of the cottage or their social engagements in Turoine,—or even if Gerald as much as suggested opening or closing a window,—Maya at once produced at least nine grounds upon which the suggestion was plainly very foolish and would never have occurred to anyone of real intelligence. And she cherished the most imaginative views as to the extent of Gerald’s selfishness and lack of consideration for other people, and of his habit of never doing anything whatever for her pleasure.
Sometimes, though, she would go for as much as an hour without dwelling, at especial length, upon what a trial Gerald was to her in one way or another. And in all respects she was a capable woman who made him an excellent wife, and treated him far better than she could have found any excuse for doing in what she said about him.
And Gerald loved Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, also, with an affection which rather troubled Gerald. The child, he knew, displayed no extraordinary charm nor talent: no course of reasoning could justify any extreme fondness for Theodorick upon the ground of his physical or mental gifts. Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was not brilliant, he was not lovely, he was not especially amiable: he was, indeed, by way of being a particularly selfish small tyrant, continually adding to the disorder of the cottage, to the dismay of Gerald’s finicky liking for neatness, and continually devising unneeded trouble and commandeering manual tasks from his parents because of the droll pleasure which Theodorick appeared to derive from seeing his parents fetch and carry in his service.