The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  Then Smirt answered her fondly: “To hear that is a grief which I cannot put any bounds to, O queen of this world’s women. Yet it seemed to me that your two mountains fought of their own accord, without my having incited them in the least.”

  “Be that as it may be, Smirt, it was your coming which has destroyed all my belongings, leaving me, O my grief, without any fortune in this kingdom.”

  “It was unintentional, I can but repeat, O beautiful kind woman. And I would willingly make any amends within my power; but to restore mountains is not in my power, nor can I put fresh milk and lowing back into a dead cow.”

  “At the very least, Smirt,” said the conversation woman, “and in mere justice, Smirt, you ought now to provide me with a son to be the support of my penniless old age.”

  “In fact, to a sound logician that appears more reasonable,” Smirt admitted; “and I do not know but that it might be a pleasure, too, to a widower of so many centuries’ standing.”

  “Yet it is not reason I am asking of you, O tall comely hero, no, nor pleasure either, but mere justice.”

  “Then let justice be done,” said Smirt, “for I am lord of the high, the low and the middle justice. As such, I would recommend a habeas corpus.”

  Thus speaking, he affably went up into the gold and silver bed of Airel.

  XXVII. AFFAIRS OF THE FAMILY

  So did Smirt enter into the gold and silver bed of Airel the conversation woman, between the bright curtains which had the color of larkspur and were hung upon rods of copper: and Airel went with him. It was not sleep that they looked for in this bed. And a good fortune blessed their endeavors without any remarkable delay, for before morning the labor pains came upon Airel, and she was delivered of her desired son.

  “You lose no time,” said Smirt, as he laid the child in its bronze cradle. Even as he spoke a wind blew out of the dawn, and the child was whisked away like a pink bit of paper. “Thus quickly do our blessings vanish,” Smirt moralized.

  But Airel replied: “I do not like pessimism. It is written, O man of the house, that joy cometh in the morning.”

  Then as they sat down to their breakfast, of elk’s meat and honey and oatmeal, and when Airel had poured ale into amber cups, a young man approached them; and he said fondly to Airel the conversation woman,—

  “Joy cometh in the morning.”

  “Joy of my life,” said Airel, “it is great wisdom you are speaking.”

  After that, the young hero looked at Smirt, without any fondness, but the grave brown eyes which regarded Smirt were compassionate. The young champion was tall and comely, having a green cloak about him; about his curled dark hair was a red chaplet of sweet-smelling rowan berries; and his face was the face of Smirt.

  “But who, pray, is this whippersnapper?” Smirt asked of Airel.

  She replied, “It is my son Elair, he who was born this morning to be the mainstay of my old age.”

  “But certainly you lose no time,” said Smirt.

  “It is time’s part to lose us,” said Airel, gravely.

  And Smirt answered her: “In any case, you have not as yet any old age for him to be the mainstay of. So do let us all three sit down to breakfast without any more apothegms, or any more argument either, Airel of the Brown Hair.”

  “My grief!” said Airel, keening, “there is anger in my very heart! It is not right of you, O Smirt of the high misdeeds, to be denying me my old age whenever I want it.”

  “Joy of my life,” said the young man Elair, to his mother Airel, “it is great wisdom you are speaking.”

  Then the young man Elair took up a pipe of seven reeds. He played upon it: and as he played, old age came upon Airel, and upon Elair likewise, until both of them were shrivelled and thin beings, as white as the foaming of waves in moonshine, and the wind carried them away very lightly, leaving Smirt alone at the breakfast table.

  “Regret has come into my heart,” said Smirt, “now that life has gone out of Airel. I lament Airel, the delight of my eyes, she who was comely and generous and pursuing. I am sorrowful now that my son Elair is blown away by the west wind. I am not happy in this place. My courage is fallen down; my heart is a wet sponge filled with bitter tears.

  “It would be well for Smirt could I follow my age-stricken family down the long ways of the wind, now that my very old family has gone away in a fume and a dudgeon, or it might be in a huff. My hearthstone and my breakfast are cold: my urbanity fails me when I look at their coldness. I lament Airel of the Brown Hair, who can re-warm neither.

  “There was no coldness in her many-colored bed. She was fair and nimble. It was pleasant to put birth upon her, in six conversations. My thinking follows after Airel the conversation woman in a gray weeping mist; my grief follows my son Elair. I would like to have seen more of him. It is a pity the way I am, now that the west wind has broken up my home life.

  “Yet, after all,” said Smirt, “after all, this young woman was not Arachne. No; I have wandered into the wrong legend; and my quest, as yet, remains unfulfilled.”

  XXVIII. INTRODUCES AN ANGEL

  Smirt journeyed on, with the staff guiding him, into a Druid wood. In this wood he met with the more brilliantly colored birds and animals of all latitudes and with five monsters such as are indigenous to the lands beyond common-sense, so that every step of Smirt’s way was of never failing interest.

  He met also with an armed fighting-man, and this Kilian of the Red Marsh defied Smirt to single combat. Inasmuch as Smirt’s staff had now been turned into a sword, this appeared reasonable. So the two men fought with heroic valor, without either of them injuring the other. Then a fleecy cloud hovered over their combat and, oozing downward between the two champions, pushed them apart. An angel stepped out from the rosy depths of this cloud and inquired reprovingly:

  “Wherefore do you fight, the one child of Heaven against another? I call upon you to be reconciled and to become as brothers. Be of one heart and of one mind, and turn your forces against the enemies of true religion. That is my advice to you to-day, as it was my advice yesterday to another pair of gamecocks, to the Sieurs Oliver and Roland.”

  Thus speaking, the angel waved a palm branch over each of the two champions, to denote that the honors of their interrupted duel were evenly divided, and the angel vanished. Kilian of the Red Marsh agreed with Smirt that the angel had spoken sensibly, in all points except one. They could not become as brothers, Kilian considered, until one of them had married the other’s sister.

  “But I have no sister,” said Smirt.

  “That does not matter,” Kilian replied, “for I have a sister, whose good looks are equalled only by her piety. It is true she was carried away by Crogan Knobald, the Dwarf King, and that she married him last year.”

  “Yet is it well, my dear Kilian, to come between husband and wife?”

  “But is it seemly, Smirt, to be contradicting an angel? You forget that my sister is noted for her piety.”

  “Oh, well, of course, if you put it that way!” said Smirt. “Moreover, you mentioned her good looks also. And besides, it may be that your sister, in addition to her good looks, has also the good fortune to be called Arachne?”

  Kilian was frankly puzzled. “But how, Smirt, could she be called anything of that sort?”

  “Why, one has sponsors,” Smirt explained. “And they come forward, either immediately after the Second Lesson at Morning or Evening Prayer, or at such other time as the Minister shall appoint—”

  But Kilian stayed unconvinced. “Be that as it may be, Smirt, my sister is called Oriana; and I have never heard her called anything else.”

  “Then I am still in the wrong legend,” said Smirt. “But that, after all, is no reason for flying in the face of an angel.”

  They gave over their talking for that while, and they went through a patch of fir-trees, to an iron door with gold writing on it. They beat in the door. They came thus to a rose garden where it was always June, because the garden was fenced with a golden
thread, such as used to defend the palaces of the Æsir in the older time; and this thread prevented the entrance of any other month. They could not break this thread, they found, but they stooped and crawled under it without any special difficulty, because they were not months.

  When the Dwarf King came out angrily against these trespassers, he came in gold armor, with a bright carbuncle in his helmet; and his delight to see his brother-in-law was unbounded. “Kilian of my heart, my pulse and my treasure,” Crogan declared, in a thin and high-pitched voice, “there is nobody I would be embracing more willingly.”

  “Health and good days!” cried out Kilian, hugging the doomed monarch with compassion.

  Then Crogan embraced Smirt also, saying, “Health and long life, O friend’s friend!”

  “The pleasure,” Smirt replied, “is inexpressible. And I desire for you, sir, as long a life as piety may permit.”

  XXIX. OF PIETY AND ORIANA

  After that, the three men went together into the underground home of Crogan Knobald. A soft twilight reigned in the vast hall of the palace. The walls were of polished marble, inlaid with obscene designs in gold and silver, for Crogan was not of the true religion. The floor of this hall was formed of a single agate, so far as Smirt could make out; the ceiling was of sapphire; and from this ceiling hung shining rubies, like so many red stars in the blue sky of a spring evening.

  There was nowhere any palace more remarkable than was this palace, which, as Crogan Knobald explained, the Dwarf King had inherited, along with his rose garden, from his great-great-grandfather, King Laurin of Gargazon. The palace did, however, need to be equipped with a more modern lighting system, Smirt reflected, in the same instant Smirt perceived he was wholly wrong.

  For all at once the entire place became brilliant as an August morning, now that Oriana had entered. Her girdle and necklace were jeweled with thirty-nine gems, and in her coronet was a diamond, the third largest of all diamonds known in the lands beyond common-sense; and this diamond shone like the sun, bringing the brightness of day whithersoever it came. But Oriana was far more beautiful than any one of these things, with a sedate and a saintlike loveliness. No man could take his eyes from the quiet and radiant and holy face of Oriana; nor did Smirt make any such hopeless attempt.

  When Crogan went to fetch wine, then Smirt complimented the lady, with his customary ease and elegance, upon her fine fortune in being able to rule in this wonderful palace as its queen.

  She replied in unaffected sincerity that, although she would never forget the home and the friends of her girlhood, no woman could be more fortunate than was Oriana in her present estate. Crogan was always good and kind, and she had learned to esteem the countless virtues of her dear husband, upon an un-carnal plane, because Crogan Knobald was not so sensually disposed and obsessed as were most other men. There was in his love no grossness and no crude materialism, this dove-like and saintly queen told them, on account of a providential accident in his youth.

  “He was injured just here,” she explained to Smirt.

  Smirt replied, “Ouch!”

  “It has followed,” Oriana continued, “that, while this remains, he is burdened with neither of these; and our affection is thus kept perfect and holy.”

  Then Kilian told of the angel’s command, and Oriana began to look at Smirt more and more thoughtfully. In her gray-colored, very large eyes he perceived unshed tears. She bent toward him, she laid her hand in Smirt’s lap, saying sorrowfully:

  “My friend, what choice have I in this matter? The ways of Heaven are beyond our conjecture and beyond our disputing, equally. Yet you, I observe, have not ever been chastened by any accident: your love will be gross and material, I fear. It will trouble me vigorously. Oh, but at each instant I become more certain of that fact.”

  “Divine Oriana,” Smirt replied sympathetically, patting her hand, “in this world we must all bear our crosses.”

  “In this world,” said Kilian, “there is nothing like inspecting the property before one signs a lease. You are both prudent and virtuous, my sister.”

  “I do not understand what you are talking about, Kilian; but yours, Smirt, is a pious reflection.” And it was plain, now that Oriana had withdrawn her hand pensively from under Smirt’s half detaining hand, that Oriana had found comfort in Smirt’s axiom. “Yes, we must all bear our crosses, howsoever enormous, for the will of Heaven must not be disputed. I will put poison in Crogan’s wine,” said Oriana, and she proceeded to do so.

  The Dwarf King died quickly, in considerable astonishment, you could see, but without any apparent pain.

  Then Smirt made ready to take Oriana as his wife, and Kilian sat down beside them, smilingly anticipative, now that the angel’s command was about to be obeyed in every particular. But hardly had the three of them prepared with all suitable fervor to observe these religious duties when the two brothers of Crogan Knobald came into the underground palace.

  They were impious heathen persons, who did not respect angels. Instead they came, bearing willow wands, with dark anger in their hearts; and they cast Druid spells sacrilegiously, in the while that they upset the plainly expressed will of Heaven.

  So was Kilian transformed into a green toad, and Oriana into a dove-colored snake, which at once swallowed the green toad. But upon Smirt the depraved brothers of Crogan Knobald laid the Curse of Two Fortnights.

  XXX. CITY OF THE DEAD

  Now the wits of Smirt were put away from Smirt’s keeping by the Curse of Two Fortnights. He who had sat among the gods, now wandered in a lonely savageness, dribbling at the mouth which no longer conversed affably. Instead, Smirt moaned and whimpered like a hurt dog; and Smirt lived in the wilder lands beyond common-sense as a beast lives, nakedly, searching after roots and grubs, and then leaving them untasted, because upon no occasion during his dream did Smirt eat any food.

  He made his lair in a stone city, upon which its special doom had fallen, in the older times, turning all to stone. The olive-trees and the palm-trees of this city were of stone; in the quiet streets and bazaars, and in the houses of this city, you found men and women and children of various sizes, all eternally poised in whatsoever trivial or commonplace action they were engrossed by when, without any warning, its doom fell upon this city, and changed all its people into bluish-gray stone statues, in the midst of their shopping and love-making and stolid talking. Thus had a remarkably beautiful girl, of eighteen or thereabouts, been left forever straining at the stool in an outhouse; and one middle-aged citizen had been petrified while he was shaving. For another queer thing, there were in this city four large spider webs, the largest which Smirt had ever seen, and in each of them dangled the skeleton of a young man picked clean of flesh.

  Here Smirt fared very lonelily, seeing no human creature. In his clouded mind there was panic, and remorse troubled him also, but he could not divine for what reason; nor did Smirt think urbane thoughts under the Curse of Two Fortnights.

  He thought always of the dead persons whom he had known, and of how little their lives had mattered. All these persons had passed away, fritteringly, giving over one moment after another moment to kindly and laborious and trivial doings, until no more moments remained. They had made nothing; they had achieved nothing; and nothing survived of them except a few torn and scattered memories in Smirt’s clouded mind.

  For his mind was all clouds, it seemed to him, gray clouds which moved continuously, and which boiled over one another, very lazily, and which opened now and then with pale vistas in which you saw faintly the faces of the dead whom you had known when these faces had color and movement in them. And yet his mind was a ticking also, the ticking of a black onyx clock which he had seen and had heard ticking in some happier place, he did not remember where; and this ticking counted relentlessly every moment of Smirt’s living, telling you there was one instant, then another instant, and then yet another, but only one instant at a time, and telling you that no one of these instants could ever return.

  And b
esides that, his mind was a thin buzzing and a futile blustering, like the noise which is made by a blue-bottle fly; so that this restive little noise was combined with a not ever resting ticking, in a mixture which troubled Smirt a great deal as he wandered about the dead city of Ras Sem. It was not cheering to observe its petrified citizens forever arrested in the midst of their kindly and laborious and trivial doings. And to consider them quite urbanely proved, a difficult matter.

  For you could not think properly with a cloudiness and a ticking and a buzzing. These were not the instruments, Smirt reflected, with which people made urbane thoughts. And he knew very well what he needed.

  XXXI. WHICH BECOMES LOGICAL

  What I need, what I really need, to think with,” Smirt said, in strict confidence, to a black dog—which was not utterly black, however, because it had a white muzzle and a white tail and! four white feet also—“is a brain.”

  “That is true,” replied the black dog. “And it ought to weigh not less than forty-two ounces, of which the gray substance should represent about thirty-eight per cent, of the entire weight. I must tell you this, Smirt, because now that you have lost your wits they have been foisted upon me, of all luckless creatures.”

  “I rather liked having my wits,” said Smirt, wistfully.

  “But I do not like having your wits,” said the black dog. “I detest them cordially. They are forcing me at this very instant to tell you that your main trouble is aphasia. You forget things.”

  “I cannot concede that, black dog, for I do not remember anything I have forgotten.”

  “You forget, for example,” said the unhappy black dog—who was now being compelled, willy-nilly, to use Smirt’s intelligence just as Smirt had formerly used it—“that the Gallitzin Tunnel through the Alleghany Mountains, eleven miles west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is only 3600 feet long.”