Thus speaking, Smire shrugs; and he goes into the gray house which had once belonged to Urc Tabaron, before his familiar spirit wrung the lean neck of this all-powerful wizard; and in which Urc Tabaron had contrived so many magics for Smire’s delight in the fine days before Smire had become a phantom.
XXXIII. IS OF BRANLON REGAINED
Smire goes into the gray house; and in that neat place, neat Oina the Gray Witch was cooking Elair’s dinner. She did not reply to the bland salutation of her father-in-law, nor did the demure gray little woman appear to see him when he stood full before her. He cried out to her affably that he had returned once more to rule over Branlon. She did not hear him; and so, as he observed with some gratitude, could not note the tremor which was now in his serene, self-confident, velvet-soft voice.
When he tried to lift up a pan from her neat kitchen table, so that in this way he might rouse her attention, then it was as though the pan, instead of Smire, were a phantom. It was like a vapor, through which his fingers passed, feeling nothing. His hand, as he noted with a considerate and a virtually impersonal interest, appeared merely to close upon itself; nor could his fingertips feel their contact with the palm of his own hand.
He could not pinch himself, he discovered: there was nothing to take hold of. For sublime Smire had come into magic Branlon as the mere ghost of his former self; it was his doom now, his long-deferred doom, which he himself had invoked, to drift unnoticed, like an imperceptible mist, among the creations of his wit, his fancy, and his erudition; and in no way could he get their attention.
“Yet it was Moera herself who promised me—!”
Then Smire shrugged, very lightly.
“Now that I think of it, she promised me only, as a reward for my artful wheedling of Madame Moera, that I should again see Branlon. And I do see it, I see it without any let or obstruction. She has kept her promise, quite literally. Come now, but it appears the cantankerous, stupid, all-powerful creature has her own sense of humor! She has been pleased to attempt, in her dealings with, of all persons, me, irony. I would not dispraise irony. To do that, would very ill become me, who am considered a past master of this special rhetorical device. Yet I consider this stroke of it to be misplaced. Dog, as they say, ought not to eat dog.”
—Whereafter he shrugged yet again. And he laughed also.
For he now reflected that somewhere in this forest must be Tana, that dear sorceress, to whom the heart at least of Smire had been given eternally.
They tell in Branlon how Smire had freed Tana from the malignity of the White Rabbit who lives in the moon; and how the last bit of magic which Smire got from Urc Tabaron had been used to make everlasting the youth of Tana. They say that, as a wise-woman who, for unarithmeticable centuries, had applied to all branches of human wickedness her homeopathic arts, Tana was a deal more than familiar with phantoms. And so, they add, with his heart’s one true deep love, with Tana at least, Smire knew that he could communicate.
He passed hastily toward the centre of the forest. And now yet another son of Smire, the tall highwayman Clitandre, on his thrifty way to that afternoon’s larceny, rode down upon Smire: but the black mare galloped, unfelt, through and beyond this Smire who was only a phantom, and Glitandre did not heed his creator at all.
XXXIV. OF SMITH IN HIS KINGDOM
Smire comes to his own snug home, in the deep midst of the charmed forest of Branlon. Not anything was changed in this place. All seemed as it had been when the Lord of the Forest fell asleep at his Tana’s feet; and had awakened, among bleak crags, under the cold gaze of many vultures.
And besides that, in this place still sat a tall dark girl, who was dressed in long silvery-colored robes which were embroidered everywhere with black stars and black suns and black comets. She was as lovely and as dear as ever, so the returning god perceived, in the grip of his desperate terror.
“Hah, my beloved,” said Smire then, at his very jauntiest, “and so at long last I have returned to you. For to Smire all things are possible.”
Even in the while he was speaking, he heard a clock strike. Its tones were remarkably soft and sweet, and indeed, almost caressing. It struck thirteen.
He saw that at the feet of Tana sat a sublime and handsome personage, sound asleep, with his divine head between Tana’s knees. Beside this demi-god lay a tall silver staff tipped with a fir-cone; and his peaceful, faintly smiling face was the face of Smire.
And Smire saw likewise that if Tana at all heard the voice of Smire, she gave not any sign of such hearing. Instead, the dark girl continued to smile secretively; and her thoughts seemed to be fixed upon matters very far away. Her deformed hands, upon neither of which was there a little finger, still caressed the dark curls of the demi-god who sat at her feet; and from her lips, which were colored as if with newly-shed blood, came indistinguishable, soft, humming words, like the sound of a spinning-wheel. Beside her, ticked a black onyx clock, which had just struck, yet again, the improbable hour at which Smirt became a supreme god. And at Tana’s feet sat the fallen, conquered Lord of the Forest sunk deep in his tranquil dreaming.
It was a spectacle before which Smire philosophized, with complete urbanity, saying:
“Very truly, Smire has been made an outcast from Branlon by his own frailties, which are now the frailties of an imponderable ghost; and by his own duplicity likewise, now that I have somehow become both Smire and Smith. Nay, more: for I know that I am Smirt also. Yes, it is rather through out-and-out triplicity that I have been thus split up and subdivided into insignificance. And just as it was Arachne who betrayed Smirt, so is it Tana who has betrayed Smith!”
After that, he cried out to Tana the Wise-Woman, in a muddled, whirling and sincere fashion such as, through respect to that godhead which Smire had enjoyed at one time, they do not speak in Branlon. They relate only that the sorceress did not hear him. She went on chanting strange, humming words, they record. And they add that, after a little while of such sobbing, rather pitiable, unheeded talk, Smire shrugged, in aloof superiority to Smire’s helplessness.
“Moreover,” he said, “a betrayal or so does not affect my own constancy. Where all else fails, I at least have kept faith. Truly, it is well that, now I employ my handkerchief, I should keep faith in my handkerchief. For one must be logical. My handkerchief has been marked, with destiny’s own private brand of indelible ink, ‘Smire.’ My handkerchief, in this way, assures me that I have taken no hurt from the subtle arts of this ever-smiling Tana. In those strange, in those rather horrible hands, which are not like the hands of any other woman, rests the future of Smith but not of Smire. And therefore—as becomes a sound logician—Smire now shrugs over the deep devices of this wise-woman, quite tolerantly, with that cool and unshaken self-composure which is one of the most amazing characteristics of the Peripatetic Episcopalian. I have destiny’s own word for it that nobody has betrayed me. I am not Smirt, I am not Smith. I am Smire, to whom all things are no longer possible, to whom nothing is possible. And my unconcern is thus demonstrated to be complete.”
—Whereafter, under the consoling effects of logic, he put up his handkerchief jauntily.
“Hah, and as Smire,” says he, “I cannot treat any gentlewoman with less respect than I give to a handkerchief. I elect to keep faith in Tana also. I choose to believe that in her own good hour she will bid this Smith re-awaken, to rule over all Branlon at his Tana’s side.”
It was then that Smire put his vaporous arms about Tana, crying out to her desperately. The smiling girl did not at all heed him. And the lost, futile ghost of Smire shrugged, yet again, saying:
“But I disdain jealousy. I do not any longer value Tana to the extent of this snap of my long white fingers which I now make before her deceiving, most lovely face, so contemptuously. If my voice shakes and my eyes blur immoderately, now that I depart from Tana, that is my own affair. I do not know of any cause in sound logic for me to be perturbed, either one way or another. I know only that I am not Smith any longer, any
more than I am Smirt. To the contrary, I am triplets, being three persons in one god. And that, of course, was to be expected, inasmuch as the triunity of its supreme god is a feature common to every one of the mythologies which Moera has made.”
Then sublime Smire wrung his white, fluttering hands, saying,—
“Oh, Tana, Tana, but I talk and talk, I talk senselessly in my great hurt; and you do not heed me, you deny me even the deep peace of death; and it is ordered that I must leave you forever!”
Now Tana spoke, for the first time, such words as Smire comprehended. But it was to the demi-god at her feet she was speaking, and it was at Smith she looked.
“Sleep soundly, and dream on all-happily, O my dear, very foolish lover,” says 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, in your shallow futile dreaming, your light heart may scamper—like a dead dry leaf,—still, O my dearest, your thinking shall be my kingdom, very lovingly tended; nor will I ever let any evil enter it.”
“What help is that to me?” cries out the forlorn ghost of sublime Smire.
And none answers him.
So he shrugs, by-and-by, saying: “Then let the Devil’s will be done! For Smire there remains only the woman who is called Jane, that most cantankerous person in large steel-rimmed spectacles, that wife whom an inhospitable fiend has picked out for Smire, because she is the one woman in any place who is capable of foisting off Smire upon Heaven. Yes, my own dreams have betrayed me. Yet my fixed refuge survives, in that paradise of which I became in some sort a co-founder when I indulgently allowed the Archangel Gabriel to lay open paradise to all mankind. I infer that a kind deed is seldom wasted.”
Smire paused here. He turned his back upon Tana. He looked affably about him. And he said now:
“Well, but my modesty is proverbial. On account of my modesty I must continue to avoid hubris with my accustomed resolution, and tact, and superiority to every sort of temptation, and in brief, with a combination of such fine congenital traits as in itself would betray any other owner of these traits into hubris. Nevertheless am I compelled, by the plain evidence of my perhaps unusually developed senses, to observe that the fair dream which I created—when I was Lord of the Forest—as yet endures thrivingly, to every side of me. And my innate superb good-taste—for possessing which, let us remember, I am not in any way praiseworthy, any more than if I had been born with, in place of it, a hare-lip—now compels me to admit that all Branlon is a most beautiful and double-edged and wholly glorious dream.”
XXXV. THROUGH A DREAM FOREST
Smire went contentedly enough about the charmed forest of Branlon, admiring the splendors of Smith’s dream. Now that Smire was an outcast, and had not any part in Branlon, it was permitted him to applaud with both hands the irrational and delicate finesse of beauty which flourished to each side of him, because he could now do this without incurring any such suspicion of self-conceit as had always appeared abhorrent to his extreme sense of decorum. For Smire to regard approvingly the fine doings of Smire had been, of course, an unavoidable duty imposed upon Smire, over and yet over again, by the dictates of reason, so that as a liberty-loving person, he could get no real pleasure out of his compulsory self-approval. But for Smire to applaud Smith, and the urbane exercises of Smith’s superb wit and resistless fancy and unlimited erudition, was the generous tribute of a sublime artist to his peer. It was a transaction which reflected credit on both of them.
In this way did the baroque glories of Branlon content Smire, just as perhaps forever and forever, the slender magic of Branlon would content all dreamers who were so lucky as to escape thither during the hours of their sleeping. These glories endured. They lived on, as yet, in fair thin colors, in figments grotesque but wholly gracious, and in shapes pleasingly fantastical, to each side of Smire. And whether or not that Smith, that negligible mere demi-god who had invented these sylvan splendors, awakened presently or did not ever awaken from his tranquil sleeping, had become (as Smire reverently recognized, because of his whole-hearted devotion to art) a matter of quite trivial importance. It is true that the question no longer concerned Smire.
But Smith, Smire decided, Smith had dreamed worthily. He had given form to his dream; and had brought to adorn it his bright knickknacks of scholarship—the lovingly repolished small change, as it were, of folk-lore,—and the ingratiating light elfin strokes of Smith’s fancy, and the temperately asparkle tiny gems, so laboriously quarried, of Smith’s wit, until at last his dream glowed and lived on, as yet, in cool loveliness. It was an outcome beside which that still unsolved riddle—whether Smith and Smirt and Smire were all one person, or perhaps some yet other person?—did not matter in the least.
“That person has not changed everything,” says Smire. “By his progress the religion and the history of mankind remain unaffected, in a way that seems almost callous. But his dreams endure. And his dreams have their points, their benefactions even, inasmuch as to humankind they offer, in their own manner, distinction and clarity and beauty and symmetry and tenderness and truth and urbanity. That is not everything perhaps which mankind desires; the appeal, rather, is to virtuosi: and yet are these fine virtues.”
Thus generously did Smire applaud Smith and Smith’s handiwork. For what alone mattered to Smire, as an appreciative art critic, was that the baroque small forest of Branlon endured; and that in wonderfulness, and in its own sort of Chinese Chippendale charm, and in its variousness, Branlon excelled all other forests in the lands beyond common-sense. There was hardly any mythology which had not helped to colonize Branlon, as Smire now observed, because Smith, that acquisitive artist, had invaded all pantheons in his restless pursuit of every nature of fabled prettiness and of picturesque oddities.
So not only had Branlon its fauns and satyrs and nymphs of the eight classes, its fays and its gnomes and its wood spirits, such as you found in all forests of the lands beyond common-sense. Branlon displayed a population very much more varied. In Branlon, for example, were to be met the Kogaras, and the Vilas, and the Giibiches. In the tree-tops of Branlon could be seen now and then the tiny red caps of the Niagriusar as they peeped down at you. Through Branlon roved the Norg and the Vargamor and the Kirnis. And there were hundreds of yet other quaint woodland creatures come out of the folk-lore of all nations to live happily together in Branlon, and to entertain those dreamers who entered Branlon during the hours of their sleeping.
Moreover, Branlon was stocked with a fine horde of nominally pernicious monsters, for the benefit of such dreamers as enjoyed the performance of heroic exploits. And these monsters had been trained to perfection. They ramped and they roared soul-chillingly; their fighting was quite gratifyingly ferocious; whereas toward the end of each combat their death-agonies were conducted in the most lively vein of tragic acting, of a splendiferous old sturdy school. These urbane monsters did not ever dash the pleasure of their putative destroyers with modern histrionic notions about “naturalism” and “restraint”; but entered into the spirit of the game handsomely.
So Branlon continued to be the resort of very many dreamers. Through the green aisles of Branlon, bound on improbable questings, fared the glad dreamers, coming each from a far-away planet, drawn by the magic of Smith and exulting to share in his fancies. That which their day-lit living denied them they got of these fancies, freely. The day-dreams of youth revived and were nurtured in Branlon, finding the princess, long longed-for, whose beauty was brighter than daylight; finding a strength and a joy unknown to one’s everyday living; finding that dragons and were-wolves and other fantastical monsters rather enjoyed being slaughtered by champions splendid as you were, now, in your dreams. For in Branlon the dreamers perceived they themselves were mythic, without any blemishes—poets and sages and war-men, equally blessed with all talents, and granted the love of all women, now that again they were youngsters to whom death, chance, and the spoilings wrought by th
e rat-like gnawing of Time, seemed distant and feeble. So, for their dreams they applauded Smith, and were thankful for Branlon.
Yes (Smire decided, now that he averted from hexameters), Branlon seemed a superb place. It contented all the baroque foibles—the rococo tendencies, perhaps—of the Peripatetic Episcopalian. So there was never any place more beautiful, to the fond eyes of Smire, than was this forest over which now ruled the four sons whom Smire had begotten in the fine days when he was Smirt; and whom he had fetched from remote countries, magically, in the fine days when he was Smith; and whom he regarded lovingly on this equally fine day that he went among them as an imperceptible ghost. Into the home of each one of his dear sons he wandered, now for the last time; and he saw that all prospered with them.
To the south of Branlon ruled Volmar; that dark-browed blacksmith, with his princess, the King of Osnia’s daughter. In the northern part of the wood, Elair the Song-Maker went soberly about his farming. To the west, Clitandre the highwayman rode nightly in the pursuit of his own equally healthful open-air employment. Clitandre was married now, so Smire discovered, to a somewhat prudish but kind-hearted court lady, Madame Angelique of Ecben, who was a fond help to Clitandre in his thieving. And in the east, on the seashore, in a pavilion builded of red rocks and copper, Little Smirt continued to write verse of a wholly dull and edifying nature about the charms of his blonde small wife, who was Queen of the Kogaras. In brief, a new dynasty had been established in Branlon; youth reigned in Branlon untroubled, now that the woodland creatures paid homage to the four sons of the Master of Gods; Time had not entered Branlon with any rat-like gnawings; and all was quite as it should be.
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