The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  “Pedlar, I would not question the correctness of Aristotle’s remarks in his Constitution of Athens, or in his History of Animals, either. Yet does Aristotle really matter at this special moment?” asked Charlemagne.

  “He does not matter in the least, highness. What truly matters is that this discrepancy very often troubled Mr. Smith, long after he had awakened from this superb dream of being Smirt, and of being made unconquerable by the keen wit and the sparkling fancy and the unlimited erudition of Smirt—to which you but now referred, highness, as having impressed you so favorably,—and had found that Smirt was but a misreading of Smith, a mere local deity.”

  “You appear to be somewhat over-deep in the confidence of Mr. Smith,” observed Charlemagne, drily. “Were his eyes changed, do you think?”

  To this, the pedlar replied, smilingly, “My eyes have not ever rested upon the eyes of Mr. Smith.”

  “That,” said Charlemagne, “I concede to be likely. At all events, it is none of my concern.”

  Then the Emperor meditated; and, with that tinge of self-centeredness which is sometimes encountered in business-like persons, the imperial thoughts appeared to stray back toward Charlemagne’s own affairs. To march forward through this forest, without any delay perilous to all Christendom, was the counsel both of religion and of common-sense, because a devout son of the Church upon his way to defend the head of the Church must necessarily be defended by Heaven against any possible assaults of magic, over and above the fact that Charlemagne had always felt wholly capable of defending himself.

  Nevertheless, he looked yet again at the eyes of this pedlar. After that, Charlemagne gave orders.

  II. THUS ROLAND REPORTED

  Duke Roland, that flaxen-haired fine fighting-man, returned to Charlemagne the great Emperor. The young eyes of Roland were blue and shining like the flame of a candle; and bright armor was upon him. This Roland said:

  In the forest of Branlon I rode but a short way. I rode among oak-trees and ash-trees and thorn-trees. I came to a lordly house builded of copper. The drawbridge was down. The figured copper gate stood open.

  I entered the courtyard very warily. I found there no living creature. The stables were empty of grooms. The stables were full of echoes. The name of each horse was painted above its stall, in a blue lettering. The stalls were empty.

  Yet in the stables I perceived corn and hay. With this I fed my own horse. I tethered him, in the courtyard, with a copper chain. It was fastened to a pillar of copper.

  In the main hall of the house a fire burned cheerily. This hall was hung with bright-colored tapestries.

  They depicted the intimacy of Dame Venus with the Chevalier Adonis. I ascended the dais. It was covered with a blue cloth. I sat in a tall chair of estate. There were two such chairs. They were placed side by side. The arms of these chairs each ended with the head of a lion very handsomely carved. I waited.

  A dwarf came. His face was white as marble. He had copper-colored hair. All his clothing was of a blue color. His clothing was trimmed with white fur. The toes of his shoes curved upward. They were fastened about his ankles with a thin chain of copper. I observed him with an uneasy attentiveness.

  Me this dwarf did not heed. Silently he spread the long table before me with a white cloth. He brought loaves of white bread, sprinkled with caraway seeds. He set forth crystal flagons containing white wine. He lighted torches. He disposed them about the walls of the place, in brackets of copper. He made all things ready for supper.

  And I waited. I did not move at all. Now into the bright hall came noiselessly a young girl. She was attended by twelve serving women. These women were dressed alike, in white and in blue. Between the breasts of each woman hung a disk of engraved copper. I did not look very closely at these women. The young girl whom they attended was well known to me. So likewise was the fact known that she had been dead for a long while.

  Roland, the brave warrior, was silent. He made a little swallowing motion, saying:

  “I have striven to forget that dark quiet girl in many bedchambers, and to shut out the sound of her voice with much laughter. I have not succeeded.”

  Charlemagne nodded. He said:

  “That girl is known to each one of us, Roland of my heart. The grave hides her body; the rose-colored flesh which delighted us now delights gray worms: or it may be that some ageing and tousled-haired woman yet waddles about earth bearing the name of that all-wonderful girl libelously. In either case, we strive to forget. In either case, we do not forget. Proceed, Roland my son.”

  No one of these women looked at me (Roland continued). I did not move. They washed their hands, with old formal gestures. I could not understand these gestures. So did each one of them wash her hands, in a large embossed bowl of copper.

  Then they approached the table. Gerda sat down in the empty chair of estate. Six waiting maids sat to the right of her. Six sat to the left. At her side was the other tall chair carved with lions’ heads. In this chair I remained motionless.

  So did I sup with my betrayed dead love. The dwarf served to us white bread and white wine. We partook of both reverently. There was no sound anywhere. Nobody regarded me save only Dame Venus and the slim Assyrian knight Adonis.

  The dwarf brought toward us a harp. Then Gerda arose. She looked down at me. She smiled, with that divine mingling of tenderness and of comprehension which Gerda, which Gerda alone has revealed, oh, Gerda alone, in all my lifetime. She did not again look toward me after that one brief glancing. Instead, she made on her harp a music. This music was dim and perplexed. This music was exceedingly proud. This music spoke of much sorrow. Yet this music remained proud. So was it that I heard, as I now think, the dirge of my youth and of all that world which youth contrives out of youth’s ignorance, and makes lovely with callow fancies, and colors everywhere with the impossibly fine notions of youth.

  I would not dispraise our human life here nor the brave earth which is its theatre. I have found life very good. I praise life. It is only that a boy creates in his day-dreams a life which is better. Yes, for young people build up more aspiringly, in their valiant and absurd day-dreams, than the Eternal Father, through His wisdom, has seen fit to build anywhere in reality. A boy’s fancy creates more nobly than God creates. That is all. We foreplan in our youth a life which we do not live in our maturity, if only because every young person must design, with a high heart, the impossible.

  That, I repeat, is all. That is a truism. Ah, but that is likewise a tragedy, as we come by-and-by to acknowledge, in a strange and perturbed loneliness, when we lie awake at night, and when the slow moments of night pass by, very heavily, like dark mourners who commemorate the burial of those dead, and foolish, and frail, and most lovely notions of our youth—and yet, too, the moments pass then like dark weary-hearted fiends who are jeering at these notions.

  Now Gerda sounded the proud dirge of these same notions, so I believe; and her music troubled me. I had got much of life. It seemed not rational to lament that I had never got of life a splendor to which no man anywhere attains, except only in the day-dreams of his youthfulness. I, at least, I disliked and I loved this music which troubled me beyond reason, oh, very far beyond reason.

  I thought about my wealth. I thought about my famousness. I had served the great Emperor Charlemagne not unworthily. Some glory was behind me. Yes, and new times which had not yet come would remember to applaud Roland, telling how he did not go into battle without fetching a victory out of it; and how he never took his leisure in any king’s house but some woman of beauty, and it might be the king’s daughter or the queen’s self, fixed her love on Duke Roland.

  These things were true. These things did not satisfy me. For beside me stood Gerda. In my first youth, in my boyhood, I had loved Gerda as I have loved no other human being. And with Gerda I had broken faith. I saw the fine curve of her throat. I had forgotten how lovely was the white throat of Gerda.

  I knew that this girl was dead. She was lost to me. I had only much
wealth and honor and my famousness. I had only a great name which would be applauded after I was past hearing what men said about it. A skull has no ears. Yes, I had bargained with my one life upon earth unthriftily. I saw now how very poorly I had bargained, and a large weariness possessed me. I slept, because a dim and proud music lulled me. I slept, because nothing mattered any more.

  When I awoke, it was morning. I lay among dead leaves, under a thorn-tree. Beside me stood my bay horse. It was tethered to an ash-tree. There was no copper house anywhere. I had but dreamed about much unhappy and faded and quite inconclusive nonsense, I reflected.

  Charlemagne said: “These dreams about dead women have no profit in them. They trouble contentment. Such dreams are known to me. Such dreams make only a wasting, yes, and they make an unhappiness also, in the life of their dreamer.”

  “Not so, my uncle,” replied Roland the fine fighting-man: “inasmuch as my horse was tethered to the ash-tree with this same chain of copper which you behold now about my neck. My dream does not any longer make an unhappiness now that it has made also a chain of copper, a chain of Dame Venus’ true metal, to be a bright and assured token that Gerda has forgiven my unfaith. She awaits my return, in high paradise, I deduce from this chain of copper; and so, by this chain of copper, am I led to believe that the magic of Branlon is kindly.”

  Then said the pedlar: “Let the young poets come to Branlon. Let the gray poets whose hearts yet keep their youth seek Branlon for their hearts’ comfort. So will Branlon delude all these into such contentment as now has helped Duke Roland, for the magic of Branlon is compassionate and above reason. For absurd loyalties this forest has made a haven; this forest feeds magnanimity; this forest revives the hurt daydreams of youth. Let all the young in heart repair to the country home of Mr. Smith, the retired poet, because in this way, for so long a while as the slender, blended, tender magic of Branlon endures, may they believe that all life may be made noble and highhearted.”

  The Emperor cleared his throat, in a thoroughgoing fashion which shook his white beard.

  “Your remarks,” observed Charlemagne—“coming, as they do, in the form of an addition to my dear nephew’s moonstruck story—have set me to thinking about more women than I need name. Hah, and by Holy Magdalene I cannot see that their forgiveness of our shared doings is called for. I cannot see that such forgiveness is either an assured or a very important matter. These poets! I reflect: and my opinion of most verse-makers takes form as a shrug. Moreover, I do not think that a copper chain, howsoever unaccountably acquired, and no matter how shiny, establishes beyond moral doubt a fixed assignation in paradise, or anywhere else.”

  Afterward he dismissed Roland indulgently, because the Emperor loved this young man as dearly as if the flaxen-haired champion were his own son. And indeed it was generally whispered, among his detractors, that he had reason to love Roland in this way.

  “Now then,” said Charlemagne, “now that the most brave has spoken, let the most shrewd continue. Let us hear what Archbishop Turpin reports.”

  III. THE TALE OF TURPIN

  Turpin, the bland Archbishop, ruling over Rheims, was a quiet-spoken clergyman, with a serene, thin and very noble face, having gray hair. On his steel helmet was the head of a cherub moulded in silver; and his close-fitting shirt of mail was of pale gold woven out of little chains as pliant as silk. This Turpin said:

  I rode into the forest of Branlon but a short way before I came to a house builded of silver. In the courtyard I found a woman whose face was not strange to me. There is no living woman more beautiful, nor more prodigally tricked out with those demure, those soft, those glowing, and those most damnable snares such as betray men’s flesh, than this girl whom I had known in my ruinous youth. It was troubling to reflect that she had died a great while ago, for this woman was no phantom. The hand which I kissed—with that civility which befits a prince of the Church in dealing with all living creatures—was so warm and tender that in touching it my own hand trembled. Her robe might have been a cloud, so soft and white it was. About her wrists were broad bands of silver. At her girdle hung a net very finely woven of silver threads. In her face stayed that tenderness which I had not merited, so the obtuse said, when my better nature and all the orderings of common-sense led me to abandon a woman so godless that but a little while afterward she committed the dreadful crime of felo-de-se ... I wept for her misdemeanor, I remember. I was very young then … Well, and now the appearance of this same woman stood beside a bright shallow pool in which were swimming small fish of twelve colors.

  “My dearest,” she said, “the gray years of our separation have been long, but they have gone by now, as a smoke vanishes; and only the love which was once between us endures.”

  “It endures,” I replied, “variously. Love departs from us forever. Only the ghost of love may return, oh, even from out of the deep grave may that bright and bitter ghost return, bringing strange and terrible gifts and unfed desires.”

  She said, “You speak of gifts.”

  “In addressing gentlewomen, Mathilde, I have found that to be the opening most generally looked for in a prince of the Church, who cannot well speak of marriage.”

  “It is a long journey, Turpin, from the grave to the arms of my lover. Because of that journey I must have my bride-gift.”

  My voice answered, hollowly: “A gift for a gift, Mathilde; for I likewise have fared a long way, even from out of our shared iniquity to the dear portals of heaven; and you bid me retrace that journeying.”

  She smiled; and in heaven, as I well knew, there could not be anything more dangerous, or more beautiful, than Mathilde.

  “Give me,” she said, “the archbishop’s ring from that hand which has so often caressed me amorously.”

  “Give me,” I replied, “the net from your girdle which I have so very often unloosed before to-day.”

  So did we exchange gifts, rejecting alike the service of good and of evil because of that love which endured between a great prince of Holy Church and a dead harlot. Mathilde smiled up at me happily. She was frightened, I thought, now that I held the silver net; and yet she was proud of my shrewdness also. I had half forgotten how lovely she was, how brave where I was not over-brave. I looked at her for a while, so that I might remember always how dear to me was the lewdness and the folly of my youth.

  Let none misunderstand me. I believe that for the lewdness and the folly of his youth a good Christian ought to repent with his entire heart. Yes, and he ought to repent not over-belatedly, but at the very first moment that age has made of such carnal matters a temptation feeble enough to be resisted with convenience. There is much comfort in repentance, a virtue which in many cases leads directly to the endowment of cathedrals and convents and to other pious offerings. Yet is charity also a virtue, that all-embracing charity which applies to all persons, including oneself.

  As a prince of the Church, I know that every man is bidden to forgive in his neighbor—according to the mathematics of the most holy Matthew—seventy times seven sins. Likewise, upon the authority of the same Apostle, and of two other Apostles, is every person commanded to love his neighbor and himself equally, without any least difference. Logic infers, I submit, that on account of this equal affection a good Christian must necessarily overlook his own errancy into an equal number of criminal offences.

  Yes, such is every man’s divinely allotted allowance of misdemeanors, even unto seventy times seven. It is an affair in which I would counsel no excess. I say only that not prior to the commission of some four hundred and ninety-first crime may the remorse of a good Christian awaken, or any reprobation of his own conduct be justified, if he has considered our sacred Scriptures with the carefulness proper to a prince of the Church.

  Secured by this course of reasoning, and by my tight hold on the silver net, I made bold, in the time that I looked fondly upon the eternally damned, the very lovely, and the most dear love of my youth, to recall with indulgence the more intimate frolics of ou
r carnal offences. I forgave, with a clear conscience, my part in all these enormities, which by my arithmetic could not well have exceeded four hundred at utmost. Perhaps I ought to explain that necessarily, after this long lapse of time, I figured the sins of each separate evening as a single unit.

  I groaned then. I cast the net so that it fell about her golden fair head; and so, for one heart-beat, she yet smiled at me through the silver meshes.

  What happened after that was dreadful, for the flesh of Mathilde blackened, then it became gray, and it crumbled into foul dust. I stooped, weeping; and from among these ashes I took up again the ring which declared me the faithful servant of all-seeing Heaven. My hands were damp with sweat, so that a gray powdering of these. ashes clung to my finger-tips. And for another odd thing, I noted that the fish of twelve colors had become little creatures having the shape of small frightened men, differently dressed. They were climbing out of the shallow pool, running away in all directions. I was left alone in the forest.

  Then Archbishop Turpin sighed. He spread out his plump, well-shaped and very carefully washed hands, so that his happily preserved episcopal ring gleamed handsomely, in the while the Archbishop was saying: “That is all, highness. I returned unmolested. There is in this forest a disrespectfulness, which does not honor the dignity of a prince of the Church.”

  Now said the pedlar: “Let the kings and the high priests and the judges of this earth, and let all other persons that have overwisely compounded with prudence, avoid the home of a god who fell very long ago from his godhead. For these also are fallen gods who have lost the divine unreason of youth. And in quiet Branlon they perceive this, with sullen and hungry eyes.”