The Nightmare Had Triplets (14 page)

    “—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.

    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.”

    “
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.
”

    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 seemed 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.”

    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.

    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.”

    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: