The Nightmare Had Triplets (9 page)

    “I shall make a note of that, Smirt,” said the fiend gratefully; and he produced a small red note-book with a red pencil. “Meanwhile I am flustered. Your acumen has quite dumbfounded me at the moment I was going on to offer you strange sins and infamous pleasures and all the subtler refinements of abominable love. Oh, just the usual routine! There is no need to go into it now. To the contrary, it is a relief to me to be spared such uncongenial nonsense. The old gentleman writes all those speeches, I must tell you. He reads Oscar Wilde a great deal.”

    “Why, then, since your evil devices have failed, to what cause, Company, should I attribute the pleasure of your company, or perhaps,” Smirt continued, with his unfailing flair for that variousness which is the life of prose, “perhaps one had better say of your society, on this flash of lightning?”

    “It is merely that, since our management of Earth does not please you,” replied Company, as he indicated a planet now only some few million miles ahead of them, “you have here a specimen of our later style of work, which we would be delighted to present with the firm’s compliments.”

    “And what would I do with that planet, Company?”

    “Why, whatsoever you elected, Smirt, now that you have baffled my diabolical arts and retain the old gentleman’s pocket piece. For that, I must tell you, confers omnipotence—within limits.”

    “Oh, I see. The coin is a talisman which confers omnipotence—within limits. That is quite convenient.”

    Thereupon Smirt took out of his pocket the forty reis piece, and he wished for a package of cigarettes. How it happened there is no telling, but straightway the coin lay in Smirt’s hand on top of a package of cigarettes which Smirt regarded with chill disapproval. Not even in the matter of smoking did these divine beings appear intelligent.

    “Plain Virginia tobacco—along with a box of matches, please,” said Smirt long-sufferingly; and at once his will was accomplished.

    Then Smirt resumed his conversation with the Lord of Evil, saying: “Why good tobacco should ever be degraded with a mixture of Turkish tobacco is more than my limited imagination has yet been able to conceive. No, Company: I appreciate your offer, and I thank you most heartily for these cigarettes. But for me to exercise my omnipotence—even within limits—over any planet, would involve my becoming the God of that planet. It would mean responsibility. No; I very much prefer to criticize, and to disparage urbanely, the conduct of a world for which someone else is responsible.”

    “That is true, Smirt, as we have often learned to our cost. Ah, but what dashing epigrams you have made about both good and evil with that fine urbanity of yours!”

    “Oh, but come now,” Smirt comforted Company, “there was nothing personal intended. In all I have written as to your universe, I, as an Episcopalian, believed—in so far of course as any absolute conviction permitted to an Episcopalian—that neither member of your firm existed. So none of my wit and fancy and erudition was consciously aimed at either of you. I simply did not know of your existence, far less of your consolidation; but we live and learn.”

    “In fact, as the hair dwindles, Smirt, the wits increase.”

    Smirt looked at his dreadful companion for a moment. Smirt lighted a cigarette, and Smirt said,—

    “You remind me, Company, of a good story that is going the rounds.”

    “Then let us have it, Smirt, for my sense of humor is devilish keen.”

    “Stop me if you have heard this,” Smirt urged; and he continued:

    “A good story is going the rounds about a skittish banker, whose hair, in spite of all his precautions, is beginning to grow thin. His partner in business, it seems, was summoned to the telephone late one evening, and under the impression that this was a long-distance call, did not answer—”

    “Ah, yes,” said Company, “but all partners are like that. I know them. For I too have a partner; and between ourselves, Smirt, I sometimes think I might just as well have a palsy.”

    “You surprise me, Company—”

    “Oh, He has many sterling qualities, Smirt. I would be the last person to criticize my collaborator. Some people are simply born scatter-brained and muddled, and there is no doing anything whatever about it.”

    Here again, Smirt reflected, was the auctorial temperament: but with his usual modesty, Smirt (in continuing his anecdote) refrained from all comment.

    “He thought little of it at the time,” Smirt went on, “not having noticed anyone in the hallway. Only two days later, however, after the police had been most reluctantly called in, a sedate and personable young manicurist, with an uncommonly fine head of naturally blonde hair—”

    “Oho!” said Company, winking, “but now I see. And I know that sort of young woman from her boots up as far as one usually goes.”

    “—Was arrested in St. Louis,” Smirt continued: “and after having been questioned rigorously, confessed she had nothing to do with the robbery, but had nevertheless attempted to score off her too amorous employer in this startling fashion.”

    Company laughed over this anecdote with such fervor as to incur grave danger of tumbling off the flash of lightning. He said, as he wiped away his tears with a red handkerchief:

    “That is human nature, all over. I see a great deal of it in my own work. Yes, that is not only a very funny story. It is an instructive story. I must remember to tell the All-Highest that story,—though, between ourselves, Smirt, humor is not His strong point.”

    “You surprise me,” Smirt stated, “upon at least two grounds.”

    “He has many sterling qualities, Smirt. But, no, humor is not one of them, just between ourselves. However, let us say no more about this little defect, Smirt, and—to go back in our conversation—we shall trust by-and-by to have the benefit of your yet further criticism and of your damned urbanity also.”

    “Of my what, Company?” Smirt asked, surprised.

    “Ah, but in my mouth, Smirt, the adjective ‘damned’ is, as you will readily see, a great compliment, since it represents my
beau ideal
in all matters.”

    “Yes, that is true. I quite understand. And it will be a pleasure, Company, to help you out in any possible way with my experience, my savoir faire, and indeed, if I may so, with my reputation. If people knew that I was interested in your universe, and that I had consented in some sort to supervise it, why, that, you see, well, it would get you a certain following among the very cognoscenti who just now make fun of your universe. It would give you a
cachet,
a prestige, and in brief an aesthetic
je ne sais quoi.
”

    The fiend regarded Smirt reflectively, with a smile of frank pleasure. Company said,—

    “You are kind, Smirt, with an unlooked-for condescension which I can but humbly describe as incredible.”

    “I am always incredible, Company, because I believe in myself. That is virtually a lost art in these days of democracy and of altruism and of other herd-making devices.”

    “In short—you are Smirt.”

    “That is my métier. But, to go back a little—in regard to the planet you offered just now—I must point out, for your own good, my dear fellow, that in the firm’s place, I would have made the planet a perfect sphere. It is an ungrateful task to look a gift planet in the polar regions. Still, that flattening at each polar region, it really is an error in taste. It is not graceful. Form, my dear Company, form is the first consideration in every branch of art. The thing lacks symmetry.”

    The red fiend fetched out his red note-book. He said:

    “Now that you draw my attention, Smirt, I can see what you mean. I shall make a note of it. And I regret that we should have picked out for you a seemingly imperfect piece of workmanship—”

    “Oh, not at all, my dear Company! I accept planets in the spirit in which they are offered. It is a rule with me.”

    “—And besides, the irregularity is very slight.”

    This touched upon heresy. Smirt at once became grave. He remarked gravely:

    “In art there are no trifles. Through continued attention to trifles, in that way alone, may perfection be, not ever reached, to be sure, my dear sir, but adumbrated.”

    “I shall make a note of that also, Smirt—for our future guidance.”

    “And for another matter, Company, the planet lacks distinction. It is shaped, I mean, exactly like any other planet; it is ornamented with the usual continents and oceans; and the trite moon attends it. Your firm really does fall rather into a rut, sir, I am afraid, when I consider the thousands of quite similar planets which you have already produced.”

    The fiend wriggled under the continued candor of Smirt’s criticism. And Company now said, to defend himself:

    “But it is the All-Highest, Smirt, who attends to the designing and to cosmology in general. He has many sterling qualities, let us remember. I do not
I
say that inventiveness is one of them. And at His age every artist has necessarily formed his style.”

    “That is true,” said Smirt, “even when the style ambles in unabashed mediocrity; and I have no doubt that, after all, the firm has done its best. One should not, perhaps, in strict fairness, ask more. Nevertheless, for your own good, I must warn you that among the better class of critics mere repetition is not esteemed. It is not seemly that space should be thus cluttered up with planets as indistinguishable from one another as the books of an aging novelist.”

    At that, Company produced once more his small red book.

    “I shall make yet another note, Smirt, of the fact that you wish the physical universe altered from beginning to end; and we will of course weigh the suggestion with due care.”

    “And for another matter, Company, now that we are upon the topic of evil, and since it has thus cropped up of itself, as it were, as naturally as original sin—”

    “But were we indeed upon the topic of evil, Smirt?”

    “Obviously, my dear sir, since both you and I are even now talking about it. Evil, as I was about to note with regret when you interrupted me—oh, but no apologies are necessary!—evil is not what it used to be; and all human wickedness tends to deteriorate in its quality. Now I hold no brief for evil: quite possibly, from an ethical point of view, it would be as well to abolish evil, howsoever unsettling might be the resultant disemployment of former members of the police force, of the bar, and of the judiciary. That, you understand, is a matter concerning which I reserve opinion. I note merely, sir, that evil is your province. My point is merely that so long as you, Company, continue to supply the world with evil, it should be your pride as an artist to furnish a somewhat superior grade to that now in use.”

    The fiend had opened his little red book yet again, asking,—

    “And what do you suggest, Smirt—?”

    “I suggest that the first step, the really decisive step, is to effect a complete change in our modern style of dress. It cannot possibly have escaped your notice that since men took to wearing dull colors their crimes have become equally dull.”

    “That is perhaps true. But even so—”

    “In a sack suit, in a suit just such as he knows some hundreds of other men to be wearing,” Smirt went on, “a criminal will instinctively hold up, and rob the cash register of, a shoe store or a filling station, he will forge a cheque, he will rape a trained nurse, or he will commit some other folly equally vulgar and un-exhilarating. Yet when suitably costumed, let us say, in a scarlet and gold doublet, or if given a neat crown and a robe of imperial purple—when made properly conspicuous, I repeat—that same misguided person might well become a Borgia or a Nero, and sin quite handsomely.”

    “I do not deny that, Smirt. It is only that this theory—”

    “This established rule, my dear fellow. I recall an instructive instance, now that you continue to harp on this topic. An acquaintance of mine, a dentist, had lived sordidly for years upon the petty miseries of his clients, until one Christmas morning, when his wife gave him a handsome dressing gown very richly striped with blue and silver. She insisted that he wear it about the house during the holidays, and he humored her. He had been married for some time. But upon New Year’s eve, my dear sir, he removed from the parlor mantel an onyx clock, and with this clock he battered out his wife’s brains. That was not a great crime, I admit; there was about it nothing grandiose, yet it did have a neat touch of originality and of grotesque poetry, as it were, which the man had never displayed in filling teeth or in any of his bridgework; and it must be imputed—as indeed the coroner’s jury did impute it—to his unaccustomedly rich attire.”

    “No doubt, Smirt, you are right. Yet I would submit—”

    “Ah, but to what end, my dear fellow, when I am supported everywhere by zoology? For do you but observe the animal kingdom! It is the sheep, the rabbit, and the ignoble hyena who wear dull colors, where the tiger, the leopard, and the serpent go splendidly attired. These last-named feel themselves to be properly conspicuous; they ravage therefore with élan. They sin handsomely.”

    “Still, Smirt—”

    “I perceive your argument, Company. I follow you. It is wholly true that the larger birds of prey do not ever wear bright colors, and that the shark also might seem, to the superficial, to affect unostentation. But that, my dear fellow, that is because the one of these great criminals practises his profession in the bedazzling gold and blue of high heaven, and the other among the crimson coral reefs and the million-hued resplendent tropic seaweeds. Their sombreness among all this splendor thus lends to them just that sense of being conspicuous which, rather than mere brightness, the criminal needs to inspire him. Their sombreness, I would put it, compels the eye quite as inevitably as does the mourning garb of Hamlet at the gay court of Denmark.”