The Book of Gud Part 28

"Then die," shrieked the old-fas.h.i.+oned vampire, as she plunged a dagger into the very tender heart.

All the girls brought orange blossoms and laid them on the coffin and wept much in each other's arms, and the director renounced his professional ambitions and went back to his old job as market reporter on an undertaker's weekly.

"Oh, thank you so much," spoke the ugly old soul to Gud.

"For what?" asked Gud.

"For the beautiful sentiments of the picture," she replied.

"But that wasn't a picture," corrected Gud, "that was reality."

"What are you saying?" queried the old soul, "I was blind, you know, and didn't hear very well either."

"Oh, nothing," said Gud. "I am glad you enjoyed it." For he saw that she had taken reality for romance, which is a far more beautiful illusion than taking romance for reality. So Gud went quietly on his way.

Chapter LVIII

And Gud overtook a thief who had stolen an ocean and loaded it into a wagon which he had hitched to a star. The thief was making a poor getaway, for the wagon was leaking badly and was dropping clues at every step.

To avoid being drowned in the drippings, Gud turned into an unexplored dimension, but before he could get his bearings he was run down by an insane comet collector, who was madly chasing a comet that was buzzing dangerously near an incandescent sun--so hot that its nearest molecules were farther apart than the hearts of a bigamist's wives.

To avoid the net of the comet collector Gud hid himself in an ethereal cavern. There he found a spiritual paleontologist at work reconstructing extinct souls from the merest fossil fragments.

Gud picked up a tiny fragment and asked the paleontologist what manner of soul it had been.

The paleontologist scrutinized it through his confounded monocle and replied: "It is a bit of ectoplasm from the soul of a woman killed by curiosity. She was forever asking her lovers, 'How much do you love me?'"

The paleontologist now reached up to a geometrical plane and brought down another small fossil. "Observe," said he, "the marking on this other bit of petrified ectoplasm, and note how the two differ."

"Yes, I see," said Gud, "what is that one?"

"That," replied the paleontologist, "is a fragment of the aura of a woman who wished to be loved for herself alone."

"It is very interesting," agreed Gud, "but tell me why those two completed models on the nebulous shelf behind you look so argumentative."

"Ah," said the paleontologist, "they are the pride of my collection, being the reconstruction of two friendly enemies. One was the soul of a deist and the other the soul of an atheist, and they argued and argued through one eternity after another. They argued not wisely but too well, for each finally converted the other, and the deist became an atheist and the atheist became a deist. Then they started arguing all over again. But before the atheist who had become a deist could convert the deist who had become an atheist back to deism, or the deist who had become an atheist could convert the atheist who had become a deist back to atheism, the astral plane was rotated into a cosmic epizoid, resulting in a cataclysm that buried these two poor souls in an avalanche of metaphysical debris which was stratified under the radiant pressure, just as we find it here."

"It is very wonderful," said Gud, "but why do you probe into secrets of the dead past when there are so many living souls existing in poverty of hopes or a sorrow of memories?"

The paleontologist removed the confounded monocle from his eye, and wiped the lens with a bit of chamois skin.

"I am no base utilitarian," said he, "but a pure scientist seeking truth for truth's sake."

"Well," said Gud, "a good deal of it isn't worth seeking for any other reason. Do you know I have often wondered what any one would do with all the truth if he did find it--for my part I have never been able to make use of half I possessed."

"But you misunderstand the aims of pure science. We scientists have no use for truth either, after we have found it; but the search for truth raises us above the base utilitarian."

"Yes," said Gud, "pure science is all right in its place, but you wipe the lens of your confounded monocle with a chamois skin, and how could one get chamois skin unless there were farmers and butchers and skinners and tanners to farm, butcher, skin and tan the chamois?"

"Mere hewers of wood and drawers of water," repeated the pure scientist with disdain, "let them serve truth and searchers after truth; for knowledge is power and the truth shall make us free."

"Free of what?" asked Gud.

But the paleontologist did not answer, for he had spied another bit of fossilized ectoplasm and was readjusting his confounded monocle so that he might examine it, to see if it were part of the fragment of the soul of the infant prodigy who had mastered calculus before it cut its canine teeth, or merely another piece of that soul of the man who had gone spiritually to pieces when he met his fame.

Alas, it was neither but something worse, and so Gud asked what it was.

"It is the fragment," replied the paleontologist, "of the soul of an old maid who committed suicide because she could not live in eternal doubt."

"And what did she doubt?" asked Gud.

"Her virtue."

"And why did she doubt that?"

"Because she suffered from a dual personality complicated by amnesia."

"Oh, I see," said Gud, "she wanted to know how the other half lived."

"No, no," protested the fossil collector, "she was not a sociologist but one of the minor female poets who specialize in ballads in the romantic manner. See, here is one of her ma.n.u.scripts that she had translated so that she could take it with her."

"Translated into what?" asked Gud.

"Into spirit language," said the paleontologist, "and if you read it you will see for yourself how very spiritual it is."

Gud took the poem and glanced at the first line. "Pardon me," he said, "but is there a graveyard handy?"

"As you should judge for yourself," replied the paleontologist, "from the number of bones I have been digging up, this place itself was once a graveyard."

"All things that were can be again," said Gud, as he turned back the wheel of time until he came into the graveyard as it was in the days of its prosperity.

Seeing that he was in the respectable part of the graveyard, Gud hastened to walk down the hill to the less respectable portion.

Experience had taught him that in the part of a graveyard where rich men are buried he was likely to be annoyed by relatives who felt they had been cheated in the wills and were anxious to have resurrections performed.

As Gud strolled through the disreputable portion of the cemetery he came upon a man who was sitting on a grave and weeping bitterly.

Chapter LIX

The G.o.ds of the Gallows ride tonight Their shadowy faces spotted white.

The creature who watches through the bars Hears every footfall under the stars.

The G.o.ds of the gallows need no rest-- They ride like chieftains--twelve abreast.