The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  I shall say no one of these things tomorrow afternoon, although I believe you would sympathize did I become thus loquacious. As behooves a normally intelligent and well-reared young Southerner, you also are no whit interested in such flimsy makeshifts for personal rapture, and for personal experience, and for personal notions, as literature keeps in stock. You prefer these substitutes at a higher voltage in the moving pictures. You have been sent me-ward, by an irrational city editor, to get a “story” out of our talk to-morrow afternoon, a “story” which will appear unobtrusively, some four days later, interning my alleged “philosophy of life,” with my portrait, very far inside the paper, between the quips of the local humorist and the day’s special bargains at the cut-rate drugstore. And I am abetting you because of my publisher’s firm belief that such not-ever-read reading-matter makes valuable “publicity” which will enable him (so lively is the Baptist faith) to sell books in remunerative quantities on the south side of the Potomac.

  The impending “interview,” in brief, must be for both of us a nuisance to be endured restively. We two are the victims of circumstance. None can help us. Nobody will help us. We can but try to make our shared boredom as lenient as may prove possible, with the aid of a few hors-d’oeuvres, and of Ravished Virgin cocktails, and of much continuous cigarette smoking, in the while we discuss the future trend of Southern literature, and which one of our younger Southern writers has the most promising future, in the North.

  All these things (Smirt concluded) we will do resignedly to-morrow afternoon. My point is merely that to-day happens not to be to-morrow. To-day I happen to be rather busy in the middle of a dream, quite apart from the circumstance that in this dream I am standing on a street corner. Today, in brief, I really cannot talk with you upon any subject whatever. I have, you conceive, a previous engagement with the young woman who is now peeping at me from out of this gateway, although I do not desire her, either, I am afraid...

  VII. A LOST LEGEND

  The girl was wistful and young, and she was well enough to look at, in an unimportant dark fashion. She had youth and health, which are fine possessions, to be sure, but even so, are not remarkably rare. No, Smirt did not desire this girl; yet he could almost, although not wholly, remember her.

  She might perhaps be one of those not quite grasped memories which troubled him in the dawn, when he lay abed, not exactly awake and yet far from sleeping. He could very nearly recall that this girl’s unimportant young face had passed restively through his dreams in one or another of those lonely dawns, just as he almost knew what doom it was that had touched this girl, darkly and ruthlessly, in a legend which he did not at this instant remember.

  He had it, though, in part; she was the Princess Who Spins; and because of her spinning she had been thrust out of the magical lands behind this cobweb-covered gate, to wander about in common daylight, homeless and unremembered. He pitied this young girl in her exile; he liked her appearance: but Smirt desired other matters, and he was in fair hope to find out by-and-by what these matters might be. So he said only,—

  “A good day to you, Arachne.”

  “A good day to you, Smirt.”

  “Ah, ah! And why do you also think my name to be Smirt?”

  “But in a dream one always knows the names of people.”

  “That is true, Arachne. And since you are an exile from legend, and legends are closely akin to dreams, I do not doubt you are right. It may be that in this odd dream of mine I am indeed Smirt, and that Smirt is a blue-bottle fly. I can perceive no least evidence to the contrary. And for what, Arachne, are you looking in this irrational dream?”

  She answered: “Men have forgotten my legend. The enraged goddess, the Gray-Eyed-One, decreed that every man who looked me full in the face should forthwith forget my legend. And I too have forgotten my legend, every ancient word of it, all except the long doom which was put upon me. But at times the sorrow and the faded colors and the stiff strangeness of my legend trouble me, from very far away, with a thin vexingness.”

  “To me also, Arachne,” said Smirt, a little puzzled, “it seems that only an instant ago I knew your legend.”

  “But since then, Smirt, you have looked me full in the face.”

  “It is true. And that agreeable action explains, perhaps, this slight touch of aphasia. Yet your legend remains, as it were, just around the corner of my consciousness. Whether in that legend you were really a princess, or only her jealous elder sister, or a depraved sorceress, or a shepherdess, or it may be a dryad, there is no logical way of telling; but an illogical whisper tells me you are the Princess Who Spins.”

  The girl looked about her cautiously. She said, with confiding frankness:

  “That whisper whispers the truth, Smirt. The trouble is, that I too have forgotten my legend. I recall only that the enraged goddess struck me with a shuttle. That was her way of condemning me to spin in an eternal exile from the legend which I have forgotten.”

  “Yet you do not spin, I imagine, like a top—or like a dervish?”

  This widened by a great deal the rather pretty brown eyes of Arachne. But she said only, after a moment’s hesitation,—

  “No, Smirt, I spin, as becomes a good housewife, on a spinning-wheel.”

  “And for what thing, I repeat, except it may be a spinning-wheel, can you, who are an exile from legend, be seeking here in this cobweb-covered gate?”

  “I am looking, Smirt, as every well-conducted girl must do, for a husband to provide me with a home in which I may do my spinning.”

  “Ah, but I,” Smirt explained, “am already married. And Jane, I am certain, would not approve of bigamy. Her principles are beyond reproach.”

  “Nor do I want half a husband either, Smirt, but a whole husband. So my principles are as good as hers.”

  “Yet one should take things in order, Arachne. It is excellent for every woman to have a husband; but he should come to you in due state, after a lover or two has ridden before him as his heralds.”

  The girl’s dark little face appeared even darker now under the shadow of discontent. She remarked resignedly:

  “He will be my lover, just at first. It is a thing all women have to put up with. But men get sensible by-and-by.”

  “They get older, my dear.”

  “To begin with, I am not your dear, and in the second place, whether they get older or more sensible, it comes to the same thing.”

  “I apologize, Arachne, and I desire, with all possible respect, to know what it does come to.”

  “It comes, Smirt, to that never-ending spinning and that weaving and that embroidery, and to all the other things which I want to be doing.”

  But such notions did not delight Smirt. He said gravely:

  “These petty avocations are not suited to a person of your high origin, Arachne, in an old legend. You turn from romance to realism; and to do that is unworthy. For one ought to cherish such beautiful nonsense, Arachne, and to keep faith steadfastly with all those impossible things which are not true, but which ought to be true.”

  Now the girl shook her head, replying: “I had a palace, once, or at least I think that I once had a palace, very long ago when Idmon reigned as a great prince in Lybia. Today I desire only a home in which I may rule fondly. We will need also a small shop, to keep us going, and a few babies. Perhaps two boys and a girl would be better, just to start with.”

  “You have then,” Smirt inquired, “some marked out and, as the world averages, some fairly lucky man in mind?”

  “Him!” she remarked, with disfavor. “No, I try not to think about him any more than I have to. Still, there does have to be a man to help me get the babies; and besides that, somebody will have to tend the shop.”

  Smirt nodded affably.

  “I can perceive at least your point of view, Arachne. I can tender you, at any rate, my compliments on your directness. Whatever you were yesterday, to-day you have become what is called a domestic woman; and I wonder if you have been husband huntin
g in yonder?”

  “You talk nonsense, Smirt, for it is well known there is no marriage or giving in marriage in that place behind me.”

  “You speak rather strangely, my dear—”

  “To begin with—”

  And at that, Smirt spread out both his hands, gaily remorseful.

  “I know. I apologize again, Arachne, and I remark only that I never saw a gateway so thick with cobwebs as is this gateway. It is more like the lair of a spider than it is like a gateway. Oh, but yes, beyond any doubt, Arachne, this is a strange gate through which you have walked into my dream.”

  “It very well may be, Smirt, for it leads to a strange place.”

  “And what is that place called, Arachne?”

  She told him.

  “Oh, but come now,” Smirt replied, laughing, “that is an irrational and an excessive name for any person to be giving his home in this select residential section. Yet I have noticed that the retired business man is given to these outbursts of wild fancy.”

  “He is not retired from business,” the girl said,—“as yet.”

  “And how is this unretiring person called?”

  She told him that also.

  Smirt took her astonishing meaning. “You tell me that beyond this very wall He is to be found! Oh, but come now, this must be seen to. I am grateful to you. And do not bother, my dear child, about your lost legend. You shall be restored in due course to all its glories, to its fine improbabilities, and to its bereaved inhabitants, who, I am sure, must miss you a great deal. Goddess or no goddess, it is not fitting that an unchaperoned young woman who began life as a mythical figure should be condemned to live at loose ends in the queer world which the newspapers tell about. I shall see to that likewise.”

  She reached up, touching his shoulder, and coming much nearer to him.

  “But, Smirt,—you speak now of the impossible.”

  “The most of my doings, Arachne, are impossible. I have often noticed it. My wife also refers to the fact, now and then, when something has occurred to upset her.”

  “And besides,” Arachne declared, “with that Jane of yours, who I am sure must watch you like a hawk, and probably has every reason to, what with the way you rattle on without giving the girl a chance to get in a word edgewise, and besides, even if I did rather like you, we do not really know each other as yet, Smirt, and it is not right for us to be together in this lonesome place, where there is no telling what impudence you might be up to, now it is growing darker and darker, with no one in sight of us, so that I would not be able to get any help, no matter how loudly I might scream—”

  “My dear young woman,” Smirt interrupted crisply, “do stop fiddling with my coat button! and scat! I mean, merely as a beguiling ingénue, in which role you are an agreeable commonplace. As an exile from romance, do you by all means remain here, at your proper distance, and accept my sworn oath to restore you to your lost estate in the lands beyond common-sense.”

  “I am grieved that you should have quite misunderstood me, Smirt, for I am not in the least that kind of girl, and I wonder whatever oath you are talking about?”

  “I am talking about that oath, Arachne, which I now swear by such matters as I cordially reverence. I refer to the acumen of Sir Thomas Browne, which first perceived that fine prose should be kept undebased by deep thought; to the theology of William Congreve, through which the unpardonable sin was found to be clumsiness; and to the trimness of Robert Louis Stevenson, which completely baffles description. I refer to the painstaking and suave inclusiveness of Pater; to the higher carelessness of Saki; and to the pleasant eddies, to the ampleness, and to the ultimate, the ineffable Tightness, of every paragraph which was written by W. M. Thackeray. I refer also to the general contents of my own works. It is by these seven great mysteries that I now give you my oath, Arachne, to restore to you your lost estate in the lands beyond common-sense. In the mean while, you have told me that beyond this wall He is to be found in person; and as a Peripatetic Episcopalian, I esteem it my plain duty to investigate, first of all, your surprising report.”

  With that said, Smirt pushed open the cobweb-covered gate, and he went in to the All-Highest.

  PART TWO. OVERLOOKING A UNIVERSE

  “He took a cymbal or bell, and rang therewith, as they use to ring to dinner in cloisters, at the sound whereof many creatures of divers kinds came down from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, some having faces like men, to the number of 4200 of these creatures, all crying but,—‘Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.’”

  VIII. THE ALL-HIGHEST CONFIDES

  The All-Highest was a perturbed looking elderly gentleman, with a benevolent bald forehead and a superb white beard. It was slightly puzzling to observe that the All-Highest had two short horns, and that His right foot was like the hoof of a goat. It seemed odd also that in this place there should be nothing except opaque gray clouds, upon one of which the All-Highest was sitting, with a small book in His lap.

  But Smirt had other matters to consider, now that, after accepting one of Smirt’s cigarettes, the All-Highest was speaking of George Bernard Shaw with virtually American disfavor. “For I do frankly consider, Smirt, that in this rigmarole about a Black Girl, which I have just been looking over, Mr. Shaw has disparaged My Book in a most unfriendly manner.”

  “I would distinguish, All-Highest,” replied Smirt, leaning back comfortably upon his own cloud. “In the first place, the book—by which I do not mean Your Bible, but only The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God—has been out a great while. The cognoscenti have forgotten it very completely, for we do not regard gravely any book which antedates the present publishing season—”

  “Yes, but all our books come to us, Smirt, through the Salvation Army. People do not give them any new books.”

  “—For in our larger centres of culture,” Smirt continued, “books deteriorate rapidly. It is due, I am told, partly to the shallowness of modern culture and partly to the great amount of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of our cities, due to combustion—”

  “Yes, but,” said the All-Highest, “we were not talking about sulphur dioxide, and I do not see how we ever got on any such topic.”

  “In fact, All-Highest, it is my misfortune to have an over-vigorous and too inclusive mind,” said Smirt, frankly. “My thoughts for this reason embrace a wide variety of subjects with a quickness which many persons before You, sir, have found some difficulty in following—”

  “But we were not talking about your mind, Smirt.”

  “Now that You mention it, I believe You are right. I was saying that in the second place, Mr. Shaw must be regarded as one of the larger suns in the astronomy of English literature.”

  “Oh, but were you saying that, Smirt?” the All-Highest asked, doubtfully,—“for it seems an odd thing I did not hear you.”

  “Yes,” said Smirt, “one may no more deny the brilliancy of his genius than one may question the brightness of the sun.”

  Now the All-Highest clutched at His white hair with both hands and appeared slightly worried. “It was I who made the sun, Smirt. And it really is rather nice and shiny, I think; but I quite honestly do not see how we got to talking about the sun either, nor what it has to do with a most uncivil Irishman.”

  “I mean, All-Highest, that, after reading every word of the book now in Your hand, the thought occurred to me that upon at least two occasions the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature has been self justifying. I mean that after the 1930 award Mr. Sinclair Lewis responded in kind by giving to the Nobel Prize Fund an amount of invaluable advertising such as could not otherwise have been secured for double the money. I mean also that when the 1925 award was made to Mr. Bernard Shaw, as the author ‘who had mostly contributed to the benefit of mankind during the preceding year,’ the fact that Mr. Shaw had published no book during the preceding year did cause a noticeable
number of persons to interpret the seeming compliment as a rather brutally accurate criticism of his later writings.”

  The All-Highest brightened so visibly that Smirt perceived he was on the right track. And Smirt continued:

  “For what, after all, do we find in the trumpery tale which has had the misfortune to displease You. A black girl sets forth to search for You, conveniently equipped with her Bible and a knobkerry—”

  “Only this morning, Smirt, I looked that up in the dictionary. It seems that a knobkerry is the Kafir equivalent of a shillalah.”

  “Quite so, All-Highest. Well, and as I was saying, she encounters You in a number of Your avatars, as You appeared variously to Moses, to Job, to Koheleth, to Micah, and to Jesus. All these does the black girl confound, seriatim, with the logic of Voltaire and the knobkerry of Mr. Shaw. Under the combined assault each one of Your avatars vanishes: and then—for we face here a flash of wit designed to captivate the village atheist—then likewise vanishes yet another bit of the Bible.”

  The old gentleman’s brow empurpled. He said:

  “It is to that, to that infamous slander, I object in particular. So many persons have disproved My existence, from time to time, that I do not at all mind being regarded as an obsolete superstition. A great many of my best friends are atheists. But I do resent any such jealous reflections on the enduring qualities of My Book, which is still selling excellently.”