The Nightmare Had Triplets (5 page)

    It is not that even in my most private thoughts I disparage these matters. I mean only that, if any author dared venture into printed frankness, I would have to say to you, necessarily, that it was my appointed task to construct my own books in the way which seemed best to me. I was thus forced (I would continue) throughout the passing away of many highly enjoyable years, to run counter to all current literary trends, and to disregard them. You question me (I would point out) as to a subject with which I have cultivated—resolutely, throughout my whole life as an author—all possible unacquaintance. Inasmuch as I have never taken holy orders, I do not believe that complete ignorance of the topic in hand can peculiarly qualify me to dispose of it with authority.

    Even so, I prefer to be fair. I remark that, perhaps throughout the entire South, but most certainly in the State of Virginia, the liberal arts now flourish to an unprecedented extent. Mr. Charles Gilpin, the noted actor who but lately created the title role of
The Emperor Jones,
I would remind you, was a native born Virginian. So, I believe, was Miss Peggy Hopkins Joyce, whose cognate genius for acting is attested by the number of her husbands. And Mr. Bill Robinson, the famous tap dancer, is yet another jewel—as one should say, a black diamond—in the cultural diadem of Virginia.

    In still another field of aesthetics may Virginia point with maternal pride to that gifted cantatrice, Miss Kate Smith, whose voice makes melody in the homes of a vast radio audience thrice a week, proclaiming the merits of I forget whose cigars. And in what state, I demand of the welkin, was reared and nurtured Mr. Freeman Gosden, that pre-eminent expositor of Pepsodent’s never-ending 
comédie humaine!
Echo answers, I admit, “Maine.” But her answer is not true. The world knows that Mr. Gosden likewise is a native born Virginian.

    Do not think me a mere boaster, in the best Southern tradition. It is needful for a Virginian thus to catalogue at the top of his voice these finer flowers of our present-day cultural renaissance. And my point is not merely that all these Virginian artists prospered through the simple and unarduous recipe of leaving Virginia. What seems to me far more important, and more instructive, and more full of promise as concerns the future, is the attested fact that Virginia nowadays honors her leading artists liberally. Did Charles, the great emperor, stoop to pick up the brush of Titian? With a celerity no less imperial or gleaming, so often as Miss Kate Smith delights Virginia With a visit, does the Governor of Virginia, attended by his gold-braided staff, arise very early in the morning to meet her Pullman with plenary homage. And when Mr. Robinson frequents Richmond-in-Virginia, then even in the lobby of our most fashionable hotel is Mr. Bill Robinson to be seen dancing nimbly with this or the other fair Caucasian maiden, his pupil, amid the respectful applause of our city’s elite, so properly have we learned to esteem the art of Mr. Robinson as weighed against yesterday’s inter-racial taboos.

    Concerning the enthusiasm with which Virginia greets the most widely known of her children, Mr. Gosden, I can but remark that it staggers belief and checks traffic in the public highways. It does not seem enough that
en grande tenue
the citizens of Richmond have conferred upon this all-conqueror the appropriate gift of a sword. The pomps of that chivalrous ceremony did but feebly indicate our fond and inexpressible pride in the most famous of living Virginians. Everywhither do such throngs attend the passing of our supreme artist that when, with his confrere in comedy, Mr. Charles Correll, he last entered a Richmond bank, it was found needful to put a placard in the front window explaining that no “run” on the establishment was in progress, but that “Amos ’n’ Andy” were inside. We Virginians have taken, in short, the main step toward autochthonous art: we have evolved, we have learned to revere, our own aesthetic.

    With the cultural ideals of the South in a condition thus thriving, I do not doubt that, in the former Confederacy, literature will begin, by-and-by, to share with her sister arts in public esteem. This very afternoon I have overheard remarks from the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker which displayed a praiseworthy interest in polite letters. That fact is encouraging. It induces me to look forward to a time when every Southern household of the better class will contain its book as well as its electric refrigerator; when painters and musicians will be regarded in the South almost as seriously as aldermen; when its statuary will serve needs not wholly canine; and when Southerners will accord, in brief, to the career of every kind of creative artist a quota of condonation.

    My point is merely that the dawn of this approvable day (despite the highly encouraging symptoms noted this afternoon) is not quite as yet apparent. And so I admit that, to my finding, for any young Southerner to commence author, just at present, does show such disregard for the opinions of his more mature and better-thought-of neighbors as (even before I have looked over his book and decided that, after all, I do not have to read it) does prejudice me as to his mental balance. One who forfeits thus wantonly the respect of his daily associates, and of his abashed family, is not, I reflect, the exact person with whom the judicious would foregather, even in print. So I do, it may be, avoid the books of our younger Southern authors somewhat more expeditiously than I shy away from the newest balderdash by oncoming American authors spawned in some other section of the Republic. I do it unconsciously, because of my respect for the common-sense standards of my own better-thought-of neighbors.

    I shall say no one of these things tomorrow afternoon, although I believe you would sympathize did I become thus loquacious. As behooves a normally intelligent and well-reared young Southerner, you also are no whit interested in such flimsy makeshifts for personal rapture, and for personal experience, and for personal notions, as literature keeps in stock. You prefer these substitutes at a higher voltage in the moving pictures. You have been sent me-ward, by an irrational city editor, to get a “story” out of our talk to-morrow afternoon, a “story” which will appear unobtrusively, some four days later, interning my alleged “philosophy of life,” with my portrait, very far inside the paper, between the quips of the local humorist and the day’s special bargains at the cut-rate drugstore. And I am abetting you because of my publisher’s firm belief that such not-ever-read reading-matter makes valuable “publicity” which will enable him (so lively is the Baptist faith) to sell books in remunerative quantities on the south side of the Potomac.

    The impending “interview,” in brief, must be for both of us a nuisance to be endured restively. We two are the victims of circumstance. None can help us. Nobody will help us. We can but try to make our shared boredom as lenient as may prove possible, with the aid of a few
hors-d’oeuvres,
and of Ravished Virgin cocktails, and of much continuous cigarette smoking, in the while we discuss the future trend of Southern literature, and which one of our younger Southern writers has the most promising future, in the North.

    All these things (Smirt concluded) we will do resignedly to-morrow afternoon. My point is merely that to-day happens not to be to-morrow. To-day I happen to be rather busy in the middle of a dream, quite apart from the circumstance that in this dream I am standing on a street corner. Today, in brief, I really cannot talk with you upon any subject whatever. I have, you conceive, a previous engagement with the young woman who is now peeping at me from out of this gateway, although I do not desire her, either, I am afraid...

    The girl was wistful and young, and she was well enough to look at, in an unimportant dark fashion. She had youth and health, which are fine possessions, to be sure, but even so, are not remarkably rare. No, Smirt did not desire this girl; yet he could almost, although not wholly, remember her.

    She might perhaps be one of those not quite grasped memories which troubled him in the dawn, when he lay abed, not exactly awake and yet far from sleeping. He could very nearly recall that this girl’s unimportant young face had passed restively through his dreams in one or another of those lonely dawns, just as he almost knew what doom it was that had touched this girl, darkly and ruthlessly, in a legend which he did not at this instant remember.

    He had it, though, in part; she was the Princess Who Spins; and because of her spinning she had been thrust out of the magical lands behind this cobweb-covered gate, to wander about in common daylight, homeless and unremembered. He pitied this young girl in her exile; he liked her appearance: but Smirt desired other matters, and he was in fair hope to find out by-and-by what these matters might be. So he said only,—

    “A good day to you, Arachne.”

    “A good day to you, Smirt.”

    “Ah, ah! And why do you also think my name to be Smirt?”

    “But in a dream one always knows the names of people.”

    “That is true, Arachne. And since you are an exile from legend, and legends are closely akin to dreams, I do not doubt you are right. It may be that in this odd dream of mine I am indeed Smirt, and that Smirt is a blue-bottle fly. I can perceive no least evidence to the contrary. And for what, Arachne, are you looking in this irrational dream?”

    She answered: “Men have forgotten my legend. The enraged goddess, the Gray-Eyed-One, decreed that every man who looked me full in the face should forthwith forget my legend. And I too have forgotten my legend, every ancient word of it, all except the long doom which was put upon me. But at times the sorrow and the faded colors and the stiff strangeness of my legend trouble me, from very far away, with a thin vexingness.”

    “To me also, Arachne,” said Smirt, a little puzzled, “it seems that only an instant ago I knew your legend.”

    “But since then, Smirt, you have looked me full in the face.”

    “It is true. And that agreeable action explains, perhaps, this slight touch of aphasia. Yet your legend remains, as it were, just around the corner of my consciousness. Whether in that legend you were really a princess, or only her jealous elder sister, or a depraved sorceress, or a shepherdess, or it may be a dryad, there is no logical way of telling; but an illogical whisper tells me you are the Princess Who Spins.”

    The girl looked about her cautiously. She said, with confiding frankness:

    “That whisper whispers the truth, Smirt. The trouble is, that I too have forgotten my legend. I recall only that the enraged goddess struck me with a shuttle. That was her way of condemning me to spin in an eternal exile from the legend which I have forgotten.”

    “Yet you do not spin, I imagine, like a top—or like a dervish?”

    This widened by a great deal the rather pretty brown
eyes of Arachne. But she said only, after a moment’s hesitation,—

    “No, Smirt, I spin, as becomes a good housewife, on a spinning-wheel.”

    “And for what thing, I repeat, except it may be a spinning-wheel, can you, who are an exile from legend, be seeking here in this cobweb-covered gate?”

    “I am looking, Smirt, as every well-conducted girl must do, for a husband to provide me with a home in which I may do my spinning.”

    “Ah, but I,” Smirt explained, “am already married. And Jane, I am certain, would not approve of bigamy. Her principles are beyond reproach.”

    “Nor do I want half a husband either, Smirt, but a whole husband. So my principles are as good as hers.”

    “Yet one should take things in order, Arachne. It is excellent for every woman to have a husband; but he should come to you in due state, after a lover or two has ridden before him as his heralds.”

    The girl’s dark little face appeared even darker now under the shadow of discontent. She remarked resignedly:

    “He will be my lover, just at first. It is a thing all women have to put up with. But men get sensible by-and-by.”

    “They get older, my dear.”

    “To begin with, I am not your dear, and in the second place, whether they get older or more sensible, it comes to the same thing.”

    “I apologize, Arachne, and I desire, with all possible respect, to know what it does come to.”

    “It comes, Smirt, to that never-ending spinning and that weaving and that embroidery, and to all the other things which I want to be doing.”

    But such notions did not delight Smirt. He said gravely:

    “These petty avocations are not suited to a person of your high origin, Arachne, in an old legend. You turn from romance to realism; and to do that is unworthy. For one ought to cherish such beautiful nonsense, Arachne, and to keep faith steadfastly with all those impossible things which are not true, but which ought to be true.”

    Now the girl shook her head, replying: “I had a palace, once, or at least I think that I once had a palace, very long ago when Idmon reigned as a great prince in Lybia. Today I desire only a home in which I may rule fondly. We will need also a small shop, to keep us going, and a few babies. Perhaps two boys and a girl would be better, just to start with.”

    “You have then,” Smirt inquired, “some marked out and, as the world averages, some fairly lucky man in mind?”

    “Him!” she remarked, with disfavor. “No, I try not to think about him any more than I have to. Still, there does have to be a man to help me get the babies; and besides that, somebody will have to tend the shop.”

    Smirt nodded affably.

    “I can perceive at least your point of view, Arachne. I can tender you, at any rate, my compliments on your directness. Whatever you were yesterday, to-day you have become what is called a domestic woman; and I wonder if you have been husband hunting in yonder?”

    “You talk nonsense, Smirt, for it is well known there is no marriage or giving in marriage in that place behind me.”