59.The Conversion of Palnatoki
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ITHURIEL’S blunder, it is gratifying to record, did not in the outcome really matter. For Christendom just then was at heated odds over points of theology not very clearly understood in Jahveh’s heaven, where in consequence no decisions were hazarded upon the merits of the controversy; and the daily invoices of Christian champions and martyrs of all sects were being admitted to blessedness as fast as they murdered one another.
Moreover, Red Palnatoki was, by the articles of his stern Nordic creed, a fatalist. When he discovered what had happened, and the strange salvation which had been put upon him, his religion therefore assured him that this too had been predestined by the wayward Norns, and he piously made no complaining. The eternal life which he had inherited, with no fighting in it for the present, and no stronger drink than milk, was not up to human expectation, but the tall sea-rover had long ago found out that few things are. Meanwhile he could, at any rate, look forward to that promised last great battle, when those praiseworthycaptains Gog and Magog (with, as Palnatoki understood it, a considerable company of fine fighting-men), would attack the four-square city, and when Palnatoki would have again a chance really to enjoy himself in defending the camp of the saints.
And meanwhile too, he was interested in those girls. It seemed at best to any one with his religious rearing quite unaccountable to find women in heaven, and this especial pair appeared to Palnatoki a remarkably quaint choice for exceptional favoritism. He could only deduce they had got in through some error similar to that which had procured his own admission, particularly as he saw no other women anywhere about.
And Palnatoki reflected that the enceinte lady, with eagle’s wings and the crown of little stars, whom the presumably pet dragon followed everywhere with touching devotion, could not for as yet some months repay cultivating. But that very pretty brunette, with the golden cup and all those splendid clothes and with the placard on her forehead, who had just ridden by upon that seven-headed scarlet monster, rather took Palnatoki’s fancy. That girl was not, you could see, a prude; she had come very near winking at him, if she, indeed, had not actually winked in the moment she glanced back: so that the Great Whore of Babylon (which, as they told him, was this second lady’s name) gave him, upon the whole, something else to look forward to.
Without any sulking under his halo, Palnatoki bent resolutely to his first harp-lesson; and, in place of protests, civilly voiced alleluias.
For, with two fine to-morrows to look forward to, Palnatoki was content enough. And in Jahveh’s heaven, therefore, all went agreeably, and as smoothly as Red Palnatoki at just this point goes out of this story.