The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  “No,” replied Tana: “for I am served at all times by the powers of the moon, and by all else which is unstable and false and fickle. And so, until time ends for you, and no matter where your light heart may scamper—like a dead dry leaf,—still, Lord of the Forest, your thinking will be my kingdom.”

  At that, he took both her hands in his hands; and he looked at her with a sort of resigned fondness.

  “I do not complain,” he said, sturdily; “for your dear, deformed hands alone have brought peace to my thinking. In these strange, in these rather horrible hands, which are not like the hands of any other woman, rest my happiness—and, it may be, my misery and my destruction also. I do not understand this. It is not necessary I should understand. It is enough that when I am with you I touch contentment.”

  “Yet not utterly, poor Lord of the Forest; because in your thinking a clock ticks relentlessly, as it counts the passing away of your dream and of all your dreams.”

  His eyes remained fond; his look was unwontedly grave, his voice quiet, as Mr. Smith said:

  “I still move in a dream, dear Tana, perceiving very dimly those large truths which I know to be fixed and terrible and righteous, and which I may not understand because of my littleness. Where love is, there must be death also. This thing my dream tells me.... And you”—he said, his voice rising—“you are both!”

  “That is as it may be, Lord of the Forest: but does it make good sense to a sound logician?”

  “No, Tana: it does not make any sense at all to my brain. But my heart knows it is true. You content me because you are both love and death.”

  He shrugged then, saying: “Well, but that same Charlemagne who sent me a-hunting for my four sons, that forlorn great Emperor who might not win back to his Gilles as I to my Tana, he none the less had the root of this matter. Yes, he spoke wisely. It is far better for me—who, in spite of my wit and my fancy and my erudition, must always be the shared toy of two commonplaces—not ever to think over-gravely about this pair of supreme commonplaces which we term love and death. Yet that they are indivisible, my heart tells me; they overrule all that fine life which we foreplan in our youth, and which we do not live in our maturity; and a wise Mr. Smith—if indeed I still be Lord of the Forest—will make shift to accept the bitter along with the sweet.”

  “Then do you sit down beside me, at my feet, like a pacified child who has talked quite enough foolishness,” said Tana.

  And the Lord of the Forest obeyed her, meekly.

  She spoke then, without any haste, stroking the dark curls of his hair with formal gestures. Now the words of Tana resembled the humming of bees, they were like the sedate noise of a top turning round and round and round, ceaselessly. And they must have been magic words made powerful with a wonder unknown to the fancy and the wit and the erudition of the Lord of the Forest, because it seemed to him that their sound was the sound of a spinning-wheel upon which all the thread of his life was spun. It seemed to him that much doubting, and some discontent, and every possible ill chance, went away from him forever, in the drone of this peace-giving noise and under the fond touch of those peace-giving, deformed hands.

  Yet all the while he could hear likewise an unseen clock, a clock which was hidden somewhere, and which ticked faintly, without ever ceasing.

  “It speaks of new dreams, it may be,” the Lord of the Forest thought, drowsily, “into which I shall wander by-and-by, forgetting this special dream. And perhaps I must wander on and on, and still onward, without ever finding any assured faith or any certainty, until all dreams have ended. But, as yet, this dream endures; and I, like Faust, I reach now the moment to which I would cry out, ‘Tarry, thou art so fair!’”

  He looked upward at Tana’s dear face; and he smiled at her, sleepily, without firm belief, but with entire adoration.

  “That my dream lies, I have no grave doubt. But it is a good dream, a most charitable dream. It tells me that, through the kindly magics of Urc Tabaron, my tall sons have been drawn back to me, and that Tana also has been brought back to me, from out of very many long-perished, fond imaginings. It tells me, in brief, that the desired work of my life is done; and that I may now live in eternal contentment. Yes, all these things my dream tells me, at this fine moment, at this special and wholly splendid clock-tick. So this moment contents me; and whether my illogical dreaming reports true things or untrue things, I esteem it the part of a sound logician not to inquire.”

  EXPLICIT

  SMIRE

  An Acceptance in the Third Person

  BY BRANCH CABELL

  “He was of that small band, standing out as isolated figures far separated down the ages, who have the gift of speech; and who are not workers in this or that, not ploughmen nor carpenters nor followers for gain of any craft; but who serve the Muses and the leader of their choir, the God of the Silver Bow”

  GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

  MCMXXXVII

  DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

  Printed at the Country Life Press,

  Garden City, N.Y., U.S.A.

  COPYRIGHT, 1937

  BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  FIRST EDITION

  For

  HUNTER STAGG

  Hereinafter we dismiss

  Usage for some little time,

  Noting that in dreamland this

  Takes the randomness of rhyme.

  Every law which dreamland knows

  Riots and leads all askance.

  So that saneliest one goes

  Toward dreamland’s fond romance

  As the fallen, unforlorn

  God of Branlon goes,—with chance

  Guiding through the gates of horn.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The events of this story are fictitious. Nor is any character in it, excepting only the black dog, borrowed from what usage calls, somewhat inexplicably, “real life.” As go the general plan and the general standards of the story, you may find these matters to have been outlined (albeit with a Smirean tinge) as tersely as painstaking could manage, in the Twenty-fourth chapter of this book,—wherein philanthropy has employed the classic device of a parabasis in preference to detaining you hereabouts with any formal preface.

  PART ONE. WHICH IS AN OLD STORY

  “In the two fragments of the Chrestomathy of Proklos, as discovered by Tychsen in the library of the Escurial, and by Siebenkees at Venice, there is no mention of Smire; from which circumstance it has been over-rashly inferred that this hero’s stay at Carthage was of post-Homeric invention. Yet, as Spohn has remarked, it was upon this occasion that the goddess Fortuna was first pictured as blinded and standing on a wheel. Ballinger’s emendation, if he ever made it, does not seem to have much in its favor.”

  I. FOLK-LORE OF BRANLON

  Be it told, to begin with, that in the mythical kingdoms of Rorn and Ecben an age-old rumor declares that the people of other planets can manage now and then, during the hours of their sleeping, to enter these kingdoms in the appearance of a native true inhabitant of the lands beyond common-sense. About such people, as go their exterior traits, you may find no hint of the unusual: not for a moment would you suspect they are merely dreaming about you. There is one test, however: these dreamers have not any sense of taste or of smell; they eat nothing. Thus alone may the cautious native of dreamland detect them.

  Now this is a baseless, very foolish superstition, say the local scientists of Sorram and Arleoth and yet other fabulous cities; whereafter they explain it away scientifically. The better-thought-of wizards, the worldly-wise fairy godmothers, the leading prelates, and the chief spectres of the lands beyond common-sense, each for the honor of his craft, scoff scornfully at the notion of any such alien magic as the magic of flesh-and-blood countries. The professorial collect such notions as folk-lore. But in the enchanted forest of Branlon (which divides Rorn from Ecben) this ancient belief keeps its strength without any special loss under time’s nibbling. Fauns hereabouts say they h
ave talked with such dreamers; the Niagriusar, who live situated favorably for observance, in the tree-tops, declare they have peeped down at such outlandish creatures going about Branlon in open moonshine; many nymphs will smile reminiscently when these dreamers are mentioned.

  There is, in brief, a sort of sylvan mythology as to these strange human intruders who in their dreams have come from remote constellations into the forest of Branlon. But especially in Branlon do the forest spirits and the wood demons narrate their simple folktales about Smire, whom they believe to have journeyed from a planet, which they call Earth, in the Solar System.

  It is not a complete tale, this epopee of Smire. Much of it, to the most casual sort of inspection, must seem blurred and uncertain. No part of the story glitters under art’s prinking, or gleams with oil burned at midnight. At times it is tainted with a logic and a quiet reasonableness so uncongenial to the lands beyond common-sense as to bespeak a foreign origin. And a large deal of the story has been lost nowadays, entirely, irrevocably.

  For it all happened a great while ago, say the woodland people, in the first dawn of a remote, incredible time and in a more noble world than is the world of to-day’s dreaming. In the lands beyond common-sense, Troy had but lately fallen, under the will of Moera, when she indulgently permitted Zeus and her other playthings upon Olympus to burn down all-virtuous Priam’s city into ashes. Agamemnon was hardly cold in his Argive bathtub; in Ogygia, Odysseus was as yet warmed by the affection of Calypso; and just off the Agates, Aphrodite’s sedate son, Æneas, sailed tepidly toward eternal glory, as the founder of Rome’s greatness, being at this remote season about seven leagues east of Carthage.

  This Carthage was then a quite new city, they relate in Branlon; and it was at Carthage that Smire was first heard about, when the Queen of Carthage got to pitying him.

  II. ABOUT ELISSA

  “—For, as an unprotected young widow, I have had such a hard time of it, myself”, says the Queen of Carthage, in concluding her commiserations, “that I can sympathize with anybody who is in trouble.”

  “Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco,” replied the majestic wanderer, smiling.

  “I agree with you thoroughly, dear Smire. What does it mean?”

  “Well, to translate quite accurately, and yet to preserve the true flavor of Latin idiom—to keep, as it were, the exact nuance undimmed,—it means you have had such a hard time of it, yourself. Queen Elissa, that you can sympathize with anybody who is in trouble.”

  “Does it indeed mean that!” the Queen cries out, in her admiration. “But how much you have improved the sound of it!”

  With an unassuming modesty which delighted Elissa’s touched heart, the sublime stranger waved aside the well-merited tribute to his rhetorical powers. He said only,—

  “You should felicitate Virgil, dear lady, rather than me.”

  “But,” she objected, “but I do not know anybody who is called Virgil.”

  “That is perhaps unavoidable,” says Smire. “The Virgil about whom I am talking will not be born for some little while—”

  Smire paused. He lighted a cigarette. He appeared mildly to regret the bared teeth of a dilemma. He says then,—

  “Nevertheless, it is in this noble form, O Queen, that about eight centuries from to-day one Publius Vergilius Maro (flourishing between the years seventy and nineteen B. C.) will be putting your remark into an hexameter which will live on forever in every selection of handy quotations.”

  “How wonderful it is of you, dear Smire,” the Queen remarked, visibly yet more and more impressed, “to be foreseeing all that!”

  “My information as to polite letters—such as it may or may not be, madame—has before this morning sustained the onslaughts of admiration. Yet I deserve no special credit for possessing my own small private fund of pleasant and edifying knowledge such as is perhaps unexampled to mortal experience. No: for I am burdened willy-nilly by the lore of unborn centuries; no less than twenty-nine hundred and forty-odd years as yet to come (according to the approved calendar of my religious faith) have laden my mind with the heaped trash of their misinformation; and I regard the lands beyond common-sense with eyes which have looked undazzled upon flesh-and-blood democracies.”

  Indeed, as he gazed thoughtfully down at her, the Queen recalled, with some wonderment, that the dark and strangely shining eyes of Smire did not ever blink or shift in the manner of normal persons, but retained always a steady gazing. He said, pensively:

  “How is it possible, madame, for me to convince you that you are an implausible golden-robed figure in a dream which I am sleeping through some twenty centuries after the Redeemer of my sins has gone about His ambitious task? To arouse any such conviction is a feat some way beyond the not inconsiderable eloquence with which the charitable have been so kindly as to credit me. To attempt any such persuading would be plain hubris.”

  “But I do not know anybody who is called Hubris, either, dear Smire.”

  “Come, come, madame, now let us distinguish!” he replies, affably. “Hubris is not a person. Hubris is a too fond opinion of one’s own abilities. Hubris is an injudicious amount of self-conceit and of self-complacency. Hubris, in brief, is that danger-breeding vice which I avoid in particular, on account of the keen intelligence with which I was gifted at birth, through no special merit of my own.”

  “You are modest, dear Smire; and in a man that is always delightful.”

  “So I shall now avoid hubris,” he continued, “by not attempting to argue with you, Elissa, as to whether or not you exist in point of fact. I elect to accept you, dear lady, quite tacitly. And in short I shall not say anything whatever about the odd circumstance that I appear to be sound asleep in another era. I shall not admit, even to myself, that I seem to be dreaming about you, my dear Elissa, who lived in unequalled beauty, and who perished so famously, almost three thousand years before I fell asleep.”

  “That is truly a remarkable fancy,” the Queen said. “Do you really think I am pretty? You probably say that to every woman you meet. And since I have not perished at all, I cannot very well take it seriously.”

  “You speak with unblemished logic,” he admitted. “I have learned long ago, in my long dream, how peculiarly difficult it is to convince the creations of my fancy that outside my mind they have no life whatever. So it is perhaps better to avoid these abstruse distinctions.”

  “Then let us not worry about them any more,” said the Queen, practically.

  “Solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite euros” replied Smire. “Thus handsomely will your Virgil paraphrase yet another matter-of-fact comment when he comes to make up a fine epic poem about you, calling you Dido. And it is Virgil, not you, whom people will be quoting until doomsday!”

  He shrugged, philosophically, saying,—“I infer that under the transforming touch of art the most simple personal sentiments may become the prized heritage of international culture; and that through an adroit change of wording the well-gifted poet may, at his own will, make immortal the commonplace.”

  Queen Elissa answered him, appreciatively: “Yes, to be sure. You are quite right. I have often thought that, myself. And it simply shows you! But dinner is ready.”

  “The thought bothers me,” said Smire.

  “Dear Smire, there is nothing specially dreadful about dinner. Nor is there anybody to be bothering us except Iarbus. I cannot imagine what I ever saw in Iarbus—now,” the Queen added, in a voice which made out of this monosyllable an extensive love-song. “No, I really do not know what in the world I could have been thinking about when I promised to marry Iarbus.”

  “It bothers me,” Smire explained, “because I deduce that in literature it is style only which may hope to endure.”

  “Of course,” says the Queen, thoughtfully, “he does claim to be a son of Zeus. And that is something. Although, to be sure, if you can believe one half the stories you hear about Zeus, that too is no special distinction.”

  “—Because,” s
aid Smire, “to anyone who is habitually visited by notions so superb as the very best-thought-of critics have declared my notions to be, any doubt as to the intrinsic value of my notions cannot but be depressing, inasmuch as it is a reflection upon the fine art of criticism.”

  “Not that anybody whatever,” the Queen answered, “minds Iarbus, one way or the other. He was simply, as I see it, a girlish fancy.”

  “And indeed, Elissa, for aught I know to the contrary, I may be talking quite sensibly about a great principle of aesthetics.”

  “I am sure you are, dear Smire. Besides, I am having his wine drugged so that we can be undisturbed after dinner and, in fact, until breakfast. No, I do not mean what you think I mean, you evil-minded delightful creature. I never thought of such a thing for one instant. I mean only that to have his wine drugged was the very best I could manage. To have poisoned the King of a neighboring country, as I do hope you can see clearly, might have led to foreign complications.”

  “—For as I was saying, Elissa, it may well be that the main essential of the most widely admired poetic style is an underlying triteness of thought.”

  Then the Queen said, “But you are discussing a question of diction, and the best way to put words together, when dinner is ready!”

  “—Since it enables one in the same instant,” Smire explained, “to combine admiration of the novel phraseology with the pleasure of recognizing the thought as an old friend.”

  “You put things so very clearly, my dear Smire, that I could listen to you forever and ever. Nevertheless, let us eat first; and you can talk about literature afterward.”