The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  After that, Smirt regarded this not unattractive looking dark girl, for an instant, rather fondly. It appeared permissible in a widower of so many centuries’ standing. She was very pretty, very stupid. Smirt thought of six stories into which Arachne might be fitted, but he saw too that no one of his handsome inventions suited her. The nature of this chuckle-headed naïve young creature was at odds with his habitual vein of romantic irony. She had been invented—and that was the trouble—by another creative artist, who for his own ends had made this girl a nicely colored and agreeably shaped moron.

  The further trouble was, could anybody, without prejudice, with complete urbanity, describe this happy-hearted and uncommonly pretty Arachne as a moron? She did not know, perhaps, as clearly as Smirt knew, what was the estimated population of Brazil, or the relative specific gravity of hard and soft coal, or the names of the seven stars in the Big Dipper; she might not even know anything about Keats, or about the functions of the pituitary gland, or that Edward Everett had served as the United States’ envoy to Great Britain during John Tyler’s administration: but she did know how to live serenely and honestly, in contentment with her surroundings. No dreams misled or troubled Arachne. She was, in a dreadful phrase, wholesome.

  Oh, but beyond doubt this Arachne had been invented by some botcher who belonged to a most deplorable and quite obsolete school of art. Smirt spoke sharply; and the appearance of the faintly smiling attendant girl was annihilated. Smirt’s reproduction of Arachne no longer existed.

  Smirt had not planned that destruction consciously. But an odd sense of dismay had possessed him as he regarded the girl’s innocent and stupid and so kissable face, because this chit—confound her impudence!—was just the one sort of thing he could never invent. She belonged to a more popular school of art, to an aesthetic kindergarten of sugar and fine sentiments and uncritical optimism. Yet did Smirt desire to be loved foolishly, and above all he wanted to love this young woman very foolishly, without any need to remain urbane. He wanted to share with Arachne, unbothered by the touchstones of experience and savoir faire, and untrammeled by sophistication, all that high and pure and idiotic emotion which, he dimly knew, had been a part of the legend that Smirt could neither remember nor invent. It followed that, for just one instant, the urbanity of Smirt had been flawed with petulance.

  But he carried off this error with a light laugh. “I was ill inspired,” said Smirt. “Let us destroy and forget the legend of Arachne, for I have thought of a much better story.”

  XXIII. WHAT MEMORY MADE

  Yes, I have thought of a much better story,” Smirt said, yet again. And thereafter he raided the vast stores of his scholarship and his erudition with a high hand.

  He spoke first the required word of power; and he spoke also the required Invocation of Memory, saying, as his instant need was:

  “O clement and all-cunning sophist, world-wise apologist, and learned counsel for the defence of our foolishness! Friendly apothecary, the compounder of bland poultices, the chemist of strong healing balms, for pride’s bruises! Skilled brewer of magnanimity; unerring historian of the false; discreet mortician of the unpleasant; well-balanced acrobat, not ever to be tumbled from the trapeze of self-respect! O all-accomplished Memory! do you now give me heed and aid!”

  Then Smirt said also: “Let us two conspire together, O wayward lord of all trades, to create again that world which is governed great-heartedly, by the fancy of a child; which poets revere as their native land, hungered after throughout life-long exile; which is cherished in secret by every common-sense person bustling about shops and court rooms and office buildings; and which by no redeemed spirit in any paradise can be recalled unenviously. O all-accomplished Memory, give heed! Let our pleasant magic now revive that immortal world which, since it never was, may not ever perish!”

  And after that, with memory to abet him, Smirt made his implausible, desired world in an eye’s twinkling.

  He judged, rightly, that for a divine audience so prosaic, and virtually illiterate, there was no need to invent anything new. So out of time-tested materials he builded his mythic world, after every time-approved model borrowed from the best fairy tales. For there was once a princess, Smirt had always remembered, a princess who was more lovely than was any one of that season’s debutantes, and who was more desirable than a Pulitzer Prize; and with that knowledge firm in his mind, he found it in some sort a sentimental pleasure to create a world fit for her inhabitancy.

  So in this world there were magical seas made ready for Smirt’s faintly remembered princess to sail upon, in a fairy boat drawn by swans; and there were enchanted forests, in which she might sleep out a century undisturbed, pending the arrival of some whippersnapper third prince or another; and there was a notable abundance of castles, builded finely of gold or of silver or of copper, suitable for this princess to occupy. There were ogres, and witches, and monsters of every kind, and sorcerers of the most villanous nature, all of them peculiarly easy to kill; and at every cross-roads Smirt stationed a dwarf or a talking fox, or it might be a talking hearth broom, to advise all wayfarers as to what lay ahead in their journeying. And besides that, at fixed intervals of fifteen miles, a king and a queen held their court, setting quaint tests for the valor and the ingenuity of the adoring adventurers who wooed their daughter. She in every instance was a blonde beauty of unexampled perfection; and at each court was established both a good and a bad fairy in regular practice.

  Such was the world which Smirt created for the Stewards of Heaven, and which he now exhibited to them, after making antique looking all the contents of this world with a subduing varnish of Celtic glamour. It was a world such as the Shining Ones had not ever imagined during the sad aeons they had given over to realism. They beheld now the glories of romance, with an ever-growing enthusiasm which caused all the seven Stewards to remark Bravo! and Encore! and Author! and Speech! and to make yet other happy observations.

  The applauded one received these tributes with his accustomed ease and urbanity; yet all the while, at the bottom of his heart, Smirt was regretting that in no tinseled fairy land such as this could he hope to find the lost legend of Arachne.

  XXIV. AESTHETICS OF ARATHRON

  Arathron spoke, bowing his dark brow; and the ambrosial locks waved from the god’s immortal head. (‘For my dream becomes Homeric,” Smirt reflected.) At the feet of Arathron a large mousy-colored goat slumbered peacefully. And thus said the All-Father:

  “With no winged words may I praise you fittingly. Appreciation falters before you, O much contriving Smirt, who do not scorn the Stewards of Heaven. Each one of us you have put at ease with some kindly remark. You have been urbane to everybody. You have with unfailing tact concealed that mental superiority of which you could not but be conscious, and you have treated each Shining One as an equal.”

  Then Smirt of the many books replied to the All-Father, saying:

  “Indeed upon their own plane your children entertain me. They compose a leisure class such as I had not previously observed at close range. They live in supreme magnificence, at entire ease, with no need to labor. Yet they do labor, incessantly, and day after day, to upset and to afflict and to destroy mankind, by the hundreds, in time for tomorrow morning’s paper. They put upon men every sort of discomfort and suffering, in order to create that queer world which the newspapers tell about. To do that is vile.”

  “Yet,” Arathron interrupted, “yet do you not believe, dear master of all certainty and of all arts, that some such preliminary training in newspaper work may be of benefit to a creative artist by-and-by?”

  “I grant,” Smirt continued affably, “that the gods are above good and evil, and besides, it seems probable you are false gods who do not exist except in my dream. It is clear that non-existent persons cannot commit crimes, and that in consequence the infamies which you incite cannot exist either. Yes, logic proves that. But logic does not make it equally clear, to any sound logician, why the main interest of the Shining Ones,
who upon the whole bore one another, should be invested in human beings?”

  Arathron said that he had endeavored to make of each of his children an artist whose medium was human life, and that it had seemed to him a preliminary training in newspaper work—

  But all their newspaper work, Smirt interrupted at once, was bedaubed and degraded by realism. There was in it no touch of the imaginative.

  “We perceive that, Smirt, now that you have revealed to us the glories of romance. Yet it had seemed to be our duty to keep life plausible for human beings,” replied Arathron, humbly.

  Thus he spoke. (“Has phato: for my dream remains Homeric,” Smirt reflected.) And thereafter, even as an iron cauldron is troubled when, surrounded by bright fire, it is melting down the lard of a well-fatted hog; so that at first the large pot bubbles restively, but of a sudden the goodly fat spurts upward on all sides, without any moderation: even so did the urbane patience of Smirt now boil over into candor, in the time that Smirt answered wide-browed Arathron, saying:

  “It is far more obviously your duty, my dear sir, to be attending to the conduct of your divine children. Apart from their endless blunders and their wholesale murderings, as when they cause zero weather to creep south or stir up feuds or set fire to department stores or start wars, in their endeavors to enliven the front page of tomorrow morning’s paper, they display yet another failing not uncommon among journalists, in that they all drink entirely too much. There is no one of them ever quite sober. What sober person, to begin with, would think of putting mandrakes and human blood in his beer?”

  Arathron looked downward. He stroked the head of his goat, and he wore now an air of some constraint and uneasiness. But Arathron replied only:

  “We drink the dark beer of Sekmet, Smirt, so that we may forget our divine destiny. There is but one doom for the super-eminent, whether he be a true god or a false god; and none may escape it.”

  “And what, Arathron, is that doom?”

  “It is revealed to the super-eminent alone, Smirt—”

  “Well, but, upon my word—!” said Smirt.

  “—And at no time,” Arathron continued, “is the thinking of any divine person, whether he be a true god or a false god, quite free from deliberating that doom which awaits him at the appointed hour. Moreover, we drink the dark beer of Sekmet so that we Shining Ones may forget those insane beings who are above us upon this mountain top.”

  “Let us not speak of the public at large, Arathron, for I have seen them. It is a sad truth that the gods also must depend upon the patronage and the continued good will of the public at large.”

  Thus he spoke. (“For we stay Homeric,” thought Smirt.) But even as a questing lion is made glad when he perceives from afar the wide-horned bull, or it may be a stiff-shanked sheep very rich in fat; and in his deep mind he already devours the sweet flesh; so that he advances boldly into the pasture, without any dread of the fleet dogs or the sharp spears of the herdsman: even so did the All-Father Arathron at this season put aside each baneful thought which had troubled his renowned nature, causing his godlike spirit to tremble within him like an emotional blancmange; and he spoke afterward, with the well-famed merriment of grigs and of marriage bells, saying:

  “What do these lesser worries matter, now that we have managed to get in touch with your publisher, and have been allowed his usual discount to divine customers?”

  “You surprise me,” Smirt answered the All-Father, “for that tall being is not at all the person to go a-whoring after strange gods. As in public he above his confrères, so in private do his principles tower above reproach; and indeed in every respect I find the man to be as incomprehensible as are his royalty reports.”

  “Yet do you see for yourself, dear Master!”

  And Arathron waved a thin dark hand in the direction of Arathron’s offspring.

  XXV. RESULT OF MUCH READING

  Smirt saw that to every side of him the children of Arathron sat quietly reading. They had put aside for the while their newspaper work and all stupid realistic dealings with men and women. They merely read: and they paused only to drink silently the dark beer of Sekmet which kept the Shining Ones perpetually fuddled. There were signs up everywhere which said Silence.

  Now and then one of the engrossed Stewards would put aside his book, and he would tiptoe over to an unabridged dictionary in twelve volumes, and he would look up the meaning of a word; after that, he would return happily to his reading. And now and then, too, they spoke in subdued whispers, as the Stewards conferred together.

  “Never had I hoped to find,” said Och, “a genius who depicts with such utter loveliness, such impish wit, and such tender humanity, man’s endless searching after the golden dream which he creates for himself.”

  Bethor replied, “Anyone with a soul to appreciate beauty will find in countless pages of these books that which no other living writer can offer.”

  It was then Phaleg leaned back in his chair. He cupped his chin with his right hand; afterward this handsome red-colored giant rubbed the palm of his right hand against the palm of his left hand, meditatively, and he pursed up his lips.

  “These books,” said Phaleg, “are very deep. One needs quite a knowledge of world literature and mythology to understand them.”

  “They strike,” agreed Hagith, “a responsive chord in the hearts of every type of reader.”

  It was in this way that the Stewards of Heaven were each reading the books of Smirt. Each one of them had a complete set in the definitive edition. And when each Steward had read through his set from the first volume to the last volume, then the Shining Ones arose, crying:

  “Homage to Smirt! At last his genius has been recognized fittingly. Henceforward let his aesthetic theories prevail throughout the planet which is in our keeping. Hail to thee, Smirt! not in vain have we read your books very reverently. Hereafter shall all human life become as you have decreed.”

  And Smirt, looking over the ramparts of Amit, perceived they spoke truthfully. The planet beneath Smirt had been disinfected of all matter suited to newspaper publication. The planet had been made colorful with all magics. Everywhither rode abridged likenesses of Smirt upon magnificent quests; and each one of these secondary Smirts was speaking the most polished diction, and was doing urbanely any number of impossible things in the lands beyond common-sense.

  “Come now,” said Smirt, “but this is most gratifying, for it is in the lands beyond common-sense, if anywhere, that I must look for the legend of Arachne.”

  PART FIVE. ABOUT A CHANGED PLANET

  “Xenophon consecrated fifty courtesans to the Corinthian Venus, in pursuance of the vow which he had made when he besought the goddess to give him victory in the Olympian games; and the text of a remarkable legend of the Creation, acquired by the late Mr. A. H. Rhind in 1861, from a tomb on the left bank of the Nile at Thebes, is yet preserved in the British Museum, where it bears the number 20,188.”

  XXVI. AIREL OF THE BROWN HAIR

  Smirt traveled happily in a reorganized planet, seeking after the legend of Arachne. He had got, at all events, into some legend or another legend, now that a charmed staff guided him. This staff, he reflected, had been cut from the Tree of Knowledge, when the Cross of the Saviour of the Protestant Episcopal Church likewise was a portion of that green, many-branching tree in the midst of Eden: and in consequence Smirt carried this staff in his right hand, knowing that if at any time he laid down the staff he would at once regain his sophistication and quite lose his way in this legend.

  He toiled thus through a ravine overgrown with brambles, with flowering gorse, with blackberry bushes, and with small, very tough vines which vexatiously entangled his legs, and which caught about his ankles, like strong wires. He came to an open field in which lay the dead body of a young man extremely like Smirt, wrapped and confined everywhere with the weavings of some great spider, so that this partially devoured body resembled a large gray cocoon. Smirt found this curious; and more curious still seem
ed the fact that a half-finished poem was clutched in the right hand of the half-finished corpse. However, it was not a specially good poem.

  And after that, Smirt went by a black sign post, which said, in a lemon yellow lettering:

  “You are now leaving Legend of Iannak. Come again. Legend of Airel begins 500 feet ahead. Beware of soft shoulders.”

  Then Smirt passed toward a white mountain and a black mountain: and as he approached them yet another curious sight was before Smirt, for these mountains hurled themselves upon each other with a violence so great that both mountains were shattered into fragments. Smirt paused, a little perturbed: for everywhere in front of him the air was now thick with a hailing of black stones and of white stones, as though crows and white pigeons were fighting together.

  Through this two-colored hailing came a brown-haired woman walking mournfully, in leggings of deerskin. She had upon her head a three-pointed crown of gold; and a big brooch of gold glittered on her right shoulder, holding about her a cloak of two colors, a cloak of scarlet and of a green like the green of young ferns. Such was Airel the conversation woman.

  “You have done me a great wrong,” said Airel the conversation woman, “for these mountains were my entire estate. And I lived handsomely there, in a tower of glass, with my blue and yellow birds to attend me, and with my blue cow whose milk never failed, and with my four whispers which brought to me conversation from every quarter of the lands beyond common-sense.”

  Smirt said to her, “That is a good way to be living, Airel of the Brown Hair, having your command over these fine things.”

  “But it is not the way I am any longer, Smirt of the high misdeeds, now that my blue cow and my tower of glass are in flinders, and my birds have flown away, and my whispers have fallen into deep silence, because of that ruining staff of yours.”