“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.”
“Hamlet! yes, I remember Hamlet,” replied Company. “Hamlet is by Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the greatest of all writers of English.”
“In his time, my dear sir,” Smirt answered; and he so fell into a sudden silence.
“But, Smirt, that is what everyone tells me—that; Shakespeare is still the greatest of all writers of English. I am not like the old gentleman: I have written no book, and I do not pretend to be literary, you understand.”
“And I do not argue the matter, Company. I know that many persons affect to admire the writings of that—of that person. Tastes differ: some few of us have learned to appreciate the delicacies and the splendors of prose writing as an actual art: and that is all.”
Now the fiend looked at Smirt, for an instant, with a grin which Smirt did not like especially. But Smirt did not say anything further to this scarlet ignoramus; and if Smirt seemed a trifle stately and reserved, it was for a sufficient reason.
“Your suggestions as to iniquity also shall be duly considered,” said Company, after making an entry in his little red book, “and in my modest way, I shall trust to profit by them. In the mean time,” he continued, just as the flash of lightning struck the ground noiselessly, and so vanished with every bit of Company except his voice, “in the mean time, this, I believe, is your grave, where I was instructed to leave you.”
PART THREE. BEYOND TWO TOMBS
“Even during the Han Period learned Confucian writers believed that prosperity, erudition and high official rank were secured by giving to one’s ancestors grave-sites on which they could look with satisfaction and gratitude. The lin, or unicorn, is related to have appeared in China from time as a harbinger of good government, or at the birth of a virtuous ruler.”
XIII. AT SMIRT’S GRAVE
It surprised Smirt, thus to be standing at his own grave. Yet the range of his first disquiet was soon checked by the discovery that he and his wife had self-evidently been buried in this place a great while ago. It followed that for him to be upset, at this late date, by the deaths of these people would be out of all reason. Why, but he and Jane, to judge by these very old-looking tombstones, and by the gray spider webs which were about each grave, must have lain here undisturbed for several hundred years. As a close student of human nature, Smirt knew that no human grief can outwear a century. He inferred, as a sound logician, that the emotion of which he was now conscious could not be grief.
“And besides,” he reflected, “it is likely that Smirt has a great many graves. The blonde princess knew me in what I can but assume to be an earlier incarnation. I have no doubt lived in many such incarnations. In fact, I can now perceive, dimly, that ever since time began—or at all events, ever since urbanity first came into being—the Peripatetic Episcopalian has followed, upon his discreet path midway between piety and atheism, after that beauty which does not exist; he has hungered in all eras for the impossible, irrespective of any moral ambition; and continually his own self-sufficiency has slain him. In every land lies the grave of Smirt, who could not ever be content with the half-handed and humorless doings of All-Highest & Company, Ergo, I cannot display any special emotion over any special one of my multitudinous graves without exhibiting undue favoritism.”
Smirt looked up toward heaven, pensively. He directed thither an urbane smile; and Smirt said:
“The dull-mindedness of Your futile and charming world, All-Highest, has yet again disposed of me, unavailingly. For I still survive, You may note. And from my most recent graveside I remark that when You gave man reason, he did but cease to believe in You: there was no great hurt done, either way. But You granted him imagination also. You permitted him to create in his dreams another world than Your world. He became then Your critic, for it was apparent to him that his inventions went beyond Your inventions.”
Smirt waved a protesting hand to forestall any divine reply. “In all humbleness, sir, I admit that my notions may be wrong: but I cannot believe they are wrong. A thunderbolt would not, I can assure You, convince me, and any such display of brute force would but lay You open to the charge of peevishness. Besides that, I really do think quite favorably of Your inventions, so far as they go. I have delighted in Your world: for its beauty, its curiousness, and its unintentional humor, I give all thanks. But my heart I have given to the world which I create in my dreams.”
He looked down, toward the grave of his wife. “And to you also, my dearest, my heart was given.”
After that, Smirt said: “You should be a proud woman, Jane, that after I do not know how many years your husband is lamenting you. You have been dead now for a great while. It was not this afternoon that you went out to play contract bridge with the Ralston girls. It was in a faraway time you left me, for your tombstone is very old. I regret that faraway time.”
Smirt said: “And I have but one complainment to make against you, or it may be four complainments. You could not let a fire alone: you must forever be poking at it, and you needed to be pulling it about, until there was no fire, but only the remnants of a fire. And when my shirts and my underclothes came back from the laundry you would not put them at the bottom of the pile, so that I could wear my shirts and my underclothes in a regular rotation. And besides that, you would not put your own shoes down in a sensible way, either, after you took them off: you put always the left shoe on the right side, and the right shoe on the left, so that I was continually straightening after you.”
He blinked a little, wondering at this unaccountable moistness of his eyes.
And Smirt said then: “But my fourth complainment is that you never permitted me to wish I was married to somebody else. You made of me a man who did not have but one wife, and at times that made me wonder if I could be a real genius? There was no other distinguished writer, and there was no famous artist of any kind, but had his third wife, or perhaps his fifth wife, and was getting on with her so very badly that he would soon have another wife. But I had only you, my dearest, and I desired only you; and your common-sense made me over into as good a husband as could be expected.”
He considered that fact with frank wonder. Yes, he had been an excellent husband.
And Smirt said also: “You were a wise woman, Jane. It did not matter to you that in my mind I was unfaithful and followed after a beauty which does not exist. You knew that mere human thinking does not amount to much, after all. Yo
u knew that men were very often up to such nonsense. It was a thing which you had to put up with, like dentists, and like rainy weather, and like traffic policemen. You did not bother about such male talk and male foolishness. You did not care at all that I made mirth and beauty; you would have liked it better if I had made shoes or sermons or prescriptions; but, as matters fell about in this imperfect world, the genius of your husband was a matter which you had to put up with; so you condoned it loyally. You made me as good a wife as could be expected.”
And finally Smirt said: “It is very right that when the tourists and the lovers of fine literature come here to weep over the grave of Smirt they must weep over your grave also. It is proper that every biographer should put a picture of you in all my biographies, and that the orators should speak nicely about you at my centenaries until time ends. So do I cry out to you, my dearest, who have been dead now for a great long while, Hail and farewell!”
Then only did Smirt perceive those persons who had surrounded him.
XIV. THE PUBLIC STILL AT LARGE
It was on the top of a bleak mountain, seemingly, that Smirt, pausing in soliloquy, looked up from the two graves. He saw that some fourteen persons had gathered about him, in a gray twilight; and the butcher said:
“The more the merrier. Smirt is in our midst. Polly put the kettle on! Never had I hoped to find among us that 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.”
“Pleased to meet you, Smirt,” said the baker. “You must promise to pay us a nice long visit. I never saw you looking better. Anyone with a soul to appreciate beauty will find in countless pages of your books that which no other living writer can offer.”
And the candlestick maker remarked: “Now, but this is a pleasure! I admire your style as much as I deplore your morals. Yet both of us bring light into dark places; and all men of ability should know one another.”
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