James Branch Cabell
Something About Eve
SOMETHING ABOUT EVE
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
“
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 1927
COPYRIGHT, 1927,
BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
Published, September,
(First Impression)
To
ELLEN GLASGOW
—very naturally —
this book which commemorates
the intelligence of women
Table of Contents
THE ARGUMENT OF THIS COMEDY
PART ONE THE BOOK OF OUTSET
1. How the Tempter Came
2. Evelyn of Lichfield
3 . Two Geralds
4. That Devil in the Library
PART TWO THE BOOK OF TWILIGHT
5. Christening of the Stallion
6. Evadne of the Dusk
PART THREE THE BOOK OF DOONHAM
7. Evasherah of the First Water-Gap
8. The Mother of Every Princess
9. How One Butterfly Fared
PART FOUR THE BOOK OF DERSAM
10. Wives at Caer Omn
11. The Glass People
12. Confusions of the Golden Travel
13. Colophon of a God
14. Evarvan of the Mirror
PART FIVE THE BOOK OF LYTREIA
15. At Tenjo’s Court
16. The Holy Nose of Lytreia
17. Evaine of Peter’s Tomb
18. End of a Vixen
19. Beyond the Veil
PART SIX THE BOOK OF TUROINE
20. Thaumaturgists in Labor
21. They That Wore Blankets
22. The Paragraph of the Sphinx
23. Odd Transformation of a Towel
PART SEVEN THE BOOK OF POETS
24. On Mispec Moor
25. The God Conforms
26. “Qualis Artifex!”
27. Regarding the Stars
PART EIGHT THE BOOK OF MAGES
28. Fond Magics of Maya
29. Leucosia’s Singing
30. What Solomon Wanted
31. Chivalry of Merlin
32. A Boy That Might As Well Be
PART NINE THE BOOK OF MISPEC MOOR
33. Limitations of Gaston
34. Ambiguity of the Brown Man
35. Of Kalki and a Doppelganger
36. Tannhauser’s Troubled Eyes
37. Contentment of the Mislaid God
PART TEN THE BOOK OF ENDINGS
38. About the Past of a Bishop
39. Baptism of a Musgrave
40. On the Turn of a Leaf
41. Child of All Fathers
42. Theodorick Rides Forth
43. Economics of Redemption
44. Economics of Common-Sense
45. Farewell to All Fair Welfare
PART ELEVEN THE BOOK OF REMNANTS
46. The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins
47. How Horvendile Gave Up the Race
PART TWELVE THE BOOK OF ACQUIESCENCE
48. Fruits of the Sylan’s Industry
49. Triumph of the Two Truths
50. Exodus of Glaum
THE ARGUMENT OF THIS COMEDY
These shadows here are subtle: for they wait
Like usurers that briefly lend the sun
Disfavor and a stinted while to run
With flaunting vigor through life’s large estate
Of fire and turmoil; or like thieves that hate
No law-lord save the posturing of desire
With genuflexions where dejections tire
The fig-leaf’s trophy with the fig-leaf’s weight.
Yes; they are subtle: and where no light is
These tread not openly, as heretofore,
With whisperings of that at odds with this
To veil their passing, where a broken door
Confronts the zenith, and Semiramis,
At one with Upsilon, exhorts no more.
PART ONE THE BOOK OF OUTSET
1. How the Tempter Came
“
FOR some moments after he had materialized, and had become perceivable by human senses, the Sylan waited. He waited, looking down at the very busy, young, red-haired fellow who sat within arm’s reach at the writing-table. This boy, as yet, was so unhappily engrossed in literary composition as not to have noticed his ghostly visitant. So the Sylan waited. ...
And as always, to an onlooker, the motions of creative writing revealed that flavor of the grotesque which is attendant upon every form of procreation. The Sylan rather uneasily noted the boy’s writhing antics, which to a phantom seemed strange and eerie. .. . For this mortal world, as the Sylan well remembered, was remarkably opulent in things which gave pleasure when they were tasted or handled,—the world in which this pensive boy was handling, and now nibbled at, the tip-end of a black pen. Outside this somewhat stuffy room were stars or sunsets or impressive mountains, to be looked at from almost anywhere in this mortal world,—which would also afford to the investigative, who searched in appropriate places, such agreeable smells as that of vervain and patchouli, and of smouldering incense, and of hayfields under a large moon, and of pine woods, and the robustious salty odors of a wind coming up from the sea.