"But," said the widow, "how can I unless I have another egg, and the hen has already laid two eggs in one day. How can she lay another?"
"I do not know," said Gud, "but I will find out."
So he called to the little hen again and gave her a homily on the evils of race suicide. The hen became as moral as a tombstone and grievously wrought up over the way her sisters were neglecting their duty, so that she laid yet another egg.
The widow picked up this egg and shook it also, and saw that it was even fresher than the other one, and she made another curtsy to Gud and said: "I perceive that you are a great fakir, but you are very clever, and so I will make a cake for two and we shall eat it together, and perhaps have a cup of tea, if there is any sugar in the house."
At last the cake was put into the oven. The fire of the oven waxed hot and the cake began to rise nicely. And when it had risen above the top of the pan and almost to the top of the oven, the dear little widow opened the oven door ever so softly. As she peeked in, a nearby constellation broke asunder; the crash of the breaking shook the wobbling world like a great earthquake, the cottage jarred as with a blow from the hand of wrath, and the cake fell and was ruined utterly.
Then the dear little widow began to weep because her cake had fallen, and she was very angry through her tears and said: "What is the matter and what happened and what ruined my cake?"
"I fear me, it is the storm outside," replied Gud.
"Then I think you ought to go out and stop it."
"I will," agreed Gud.
And he went out and stopped the storm, and while he was out he destroyed the major portion of the local law of gravitation.
When he came back into the cottage, the moral little hen was all a-cackling and the dear little widow was all a-smiling, for behold, the hen was looking at the widow, who in her hand held the lightest cake she had ever lifted.
After he had had his cake and eaten it, too, Gud returned to the Impossible Curve, and as he reached it, Fidu came romping forth to meet him.
Chapter XVI
As Gud pa.s.sed on along the way he saw a white-haired man sitting in a window of the sky and writing with a tattered goose quill pen, which he dipped into a pool of blood.
He was a sad old man with gloomy eye, Who wrote with slow and studied inference, Heaving the while some long and doleful sigh, Or staring about with bored indifference.
Around his body there were ragged clothes As hung upon a scarecrow in the corn, And on his coat was pinned a withered rose, From which he slowly plucked each barbed thorn.
Gud stopped upon his way and questioned him.
"I am a lonely soul," the old man said, "Within this rose I find that life is grim, Without its thorns, why even beauty"s dead!"
Gud wondered, yet it would not be polite To break the old man"s tale of woe.
"I"d like to know," the ancient said, "the candle-light-- When we have blown it out where does it go?"
"I do not know," said Gud, "do you?"
"Ah yes," replied the old man, "I know very well, For I remember as if it were but yesterday how Half dead and famished, the desert in my eyes And hunger written on my lips I stood there like a captain on a hill Dreaming of his broken ships.
"I kicked aside a stone that crushed a skull; When from that mouth that mouldered there, There came as if it were the voice of doom, A haunting cry that chilled the air.
"Then suddenly I laughed and turned my heel In that dead face; and laughing still I danced along the sands, played hide and seek And chased my shadow up a hill."
And when the old man had done with these foolish words he suddenly seized the rose upon his coat and tore it off and cast it from him. Then he picked up his tattered goose quill pen and dipped it in a pool and began to write furiously.
When the old man paused and stared up vacantly, Gud spoke to him and asked: "What are you writing?"
Thereupon the old man made answer and said to Gud: "I am writing a cook book for cannibals."
Being a vegetarian in theory if not in practice, Gud was not interested, and he pa.s.sed on, walking rapidly, so that he presently overtook a man who was following stealthily after yet another man.
He who followed stooped frequently and, with a two-p.r.o.nged instrument, picked up objects from the pavement. These he cast into a brazier that he carried, wherein that which he picked up sizzled and burned and made a stench in its burning.
Gud wot not what the man did and would know, so he plucked at the sleeve of yet another citizen of that place and asked of him: "Who be these two, the one that walks alone with his face aloft, and the other that follows after, stooping and searching for filth?"
Said the citizen: "These be our Genius and our Critic."
"And what do they?" asked Gud.
To this the citizen replied: "The Genius talks words, and the Critic follows after, and, as the words fall from the lips of Genius, the Critic picks them up with the tongs of contempt and burns them in the brazier of public opinion."
"But why," asked Gud, "do the words of the Genius make a stench in their burning?"
"Because," said the citizen, "they are vile."
Gud doubted that which the citizen told him, and he quickened his steps and made bold to pa.s.s close to the Critic. Whereupon Gud, who could see all things, saw that the words of the Genius which the Critic picked up were not vile but beautiful; and that, when the Critic made a pa.s.s toward the brazier, he put the word not therein but dropped it instead into a wallet which he carried beneath his mantle.
Gud was angered and he grasped the fellow by his egotism and shook him until his conceit rattled and made inferential allegations of hypocrisy.
"What is it to you," demanded the Critic, "if I spit into the brazier to make a stench to please the people?"
"But what do you with the words of Genius?"
"By the holy name of Public Opinion! Why should a man do the work of a street cleaner on the salary of a critic?"
"I have been a public official myself," replied Gud sympathetically, "and I know how ill such service is paid."
This pleased the Critic and he turned and looked into Gud"s face and saw there the satisfied look of self-sufficient authority which he recognized as akin to his own. Plucking confidentially at Gud"s sleeve he said: "As you appreciate that I must live by subtle ways, then perhaps I can interest you in a few choice verbal gems."
Gud realized that purchasing these words was probably illegal in this world. But it wasn"t his world, so he said: "I should like to look at them."
The Critic led Gud into the rear room of a perfectly respectable place and opened up his wallet. Here, in a secluded corner, he emptied the contents upon a table.
Gud began fingering over the verbal gems.
"Look at this," the Critic cried, picking up a brilliant one.
"Too scintillating for the quiet setting I have in mind," replied Gud.
Then after examining a few more, he asked: "What will you take for the lot?"
"My price for the lot," said the Critic, "is the gift of power to speak myself such words of genius as I have been defaming to please the people, for I am weary of being a mere word picker and moral scavenger."
Gud answered: "I can give a Critic the power to walk down the street and spill words but I can not make a Genius pick them up."