His “news,” he at last confessed in guarded tones, concerned herself.
Dangerous though a report might be, he felt one his duty. His
summons into The Presence had been to discuss her. His Highness had
reintroduced the subject of “Grief to Men” and asked the veteran’s
opinion on a number of her points. Did Sam think her the most beautiful
woman he ever had seen? Did he consider her deep or just dumb? In what,
according to a recent earthling, lay her chief charm?
On the whole, declared the old new general, Satan had acted a good deal
as would some human swain who was getting interested in a girl. With
men, he wasn’t such a bad sort as Sam had expected. But with women----
There never was any telling what---- She--she understood?
At his embarrassed glance, she nodded. What woman had better reason to
understand than she?
“One question he asked was why I thought you never smiled,” the simple
soul continued solemnly. “That stumped me. As I told him, Mary Gertrude
used to be one laugh from morn till eve. ‘Odd,’ said he, ‘when she’s
caused all those griefs.’”
“I never learned to smile,” said Dolores. “My father never did. He used
to laugh sometimes. It was terrible to hear him. But he never smiled.”
The wag of Old Sam’s head was rueful. “I don’t want to worry you, but
I feel I should tell you what he called you--his ‘latest flame in the
land of such.’ And he asked me if I thought that a woman who had ruined
so many humans could be of any use to an immortal--some real bad one,
say, who had a good thing to offer her. I reminded him of the Littlest
Devil. ‘Oh, the B. B.,’ says he. ‘Likely she did make one of them happy
for a while. That isn’t what I mean. My thoughts of her are pure--pure
as Hell.’ Ma’am, I can’t figure it out any other way than that he’s got
a weakness for you.”
“Please--_please_ don’t say that!”
Dolores shuddered as though shaken by the torrid breeze, then withdrew
from his side to the outmost end of the bench. Some unseen force had
moved her. Grateful though she felt for his effort to forearm her, she
found herself unable to reassure him. A hateful reluctance stayed her
tongue.
Came startling interpolation: “_All has been overheard._”
The words were spoken in a voice which both recognized. There
materialized to their vision the superb face and figure of His Satanic
Majesty. He was seated between them.
“Eavesdropping is old stuff, I know,” he remarked easily, “but it never
ceases to be.”
“It was you who forced me aside?” Dolores struggled with her
indignation. “I didn’t know you could make yourself invisible.”
“Surest thing you _didn’t_ know, then. Turning oneself on or off is
a trick that our late angel did not lose in his fall. Fancy one of
the Cherubim reduced to turning himself off and on in lowlands like
Gehenna!”
With angry intolerance, he faced toward General Sam. “What’s this you
were saying about me? A weakness--_I_?”
“A man’s weakness for his woman is his strength,” the soldier-soul
contended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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