The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  IV. EYES OF A GOD

  “So,” said the Emperor, “so—since we speak of kings—it appears that this forest, with its house builded of silver and its house builded of copper, is subject to the old laws of faery. Now, by these known laws, any third adventurer, even though he be a king, must come, of necessity, to a house of gold.”

  “That is known everywhere, highness,” the pedlar returned.

  “And in this house,” Charlemagne went on, “he likewise would encounter a woman. Yes; for the legislators of faery, and of its many provinces, abhor novelty. They are a most conservative people.”

  With that, the Emperor became silent; and the pedlar regarded him silently.

  Charlemagne to-day wore his accustomed simple dress. A long blue cloak hung over his shoulders, closed as far as the loins, where this cloak divided into two parts, of which the shorter part fell before him to his knees, and the longer part hung down behind him to his ankles. His legs were clothed in rather short blue trousers, laced at the outer sides with a silver cord, and he likewise wore blue silk stockings. His legs were regrettably skinny. He wore beneath his cloak a white tunic; and a belt of silver encircled his waist, from which hung, in an ornamented sheath of blue leather, the world-famous sword Flamberge.

  But in his wise, wrinkled, white-bearded face great Charlemagne wore only an air of serene meditation. He said now,—

  “Well, and what long-lost paramour would I, who am a king, tall pedlar, be finding in that same house of gold?”

  The pedlar replied: “No one of your four wives, highness, nor yet any one of those five acknowledged mistresses who have borne your acknowledged children. You would find instead, in that golden house, the appearance of Madame Gilles.”

  “Hah!” said Charlemagne.

  “I mean, highness, your dead sister, the Lord Roland’s mother.”

  Now Charlemagne sat absolutely still, seeming for that instant, inside his somehow collapsed blue mantle, a gray and stricken old dotard. He laughed then. He said, with unshaken lordliness:

  “My Roland was born, even as you tell me the four children of sublime Smirt were born, of a dream which has forsaken its dreamer, long and very long ago. Dreams are not durable, not steadfast … Yet the eyes of a god remain always steadfast. They are like the eyes of a serpent. The eyes of a god do not twitch or blink or shift restlessly, as do the eyes of mankind. So may one recognize a god, tall pedlar, whatsoever be his disguise.”

  Then the pedlar answered, yet again, with not-ever-failing urbanity,—

  “That is known, highness.”

  “Now the eyes of a god,” said Charlemagne, “see clearly. It is permitted them to perceive far-off matters from which my own eyes turn away resolutely. I have sinned against nature, and beyond pardon, it may be. At all events, I am no poet to rhapsodize in picked words, no priest to repent smugly, over the doings of my boyhood. Instead, I must be about my kingly work in this world, laboring to let my good deeds outbalance my ill deeds, in the while that I rule over my people as best I may, without sparing time to consider that which is by-gone and disastrous and dead.”

  His wrinkled, brown-blotched old hands gripped each other, in a sudden wild gesture.

  “Oh, and more dear to me than is my wide kingdom,” he said, “even now! There was love. There was death. To-day there is only much power. And it does not matter. The great power of Charlemagne and all the world-famous doings of Charlemagne are derided by those two commonplaces which we call love and death!”

  “Nevertheless, highness,” said the pedlar, slowly, “that power remains supreme in all earthly matters. So does it not follow that you should invade Branlon without any superstitious backwardness?”

  “To the contrary!” replied Charlemagne, smiling rather sadly, “I was about to say that for the sake of my supreme power, and for my sanity’s sake likewise, I, who have conquered all the world, do not dare enter this forest. For in Branlon it is just possible, one may come to consider gravely—as my Roland has done, and as shrewd Turpin has not done—the two supreme commonplaces which we term love and death.”

  He gave orders. Then the great army turned northward, skirting the forest of Branlon, as they went out of Rorn into Ecben, all marching with their backs turned toward Rome. By hundreds and by scores of hundreds they went northward, leaving the Holy Father as yet entrapped by Desiderius, that Lombard infidel, toward whom Charlemagne entertained all the dislike suitable to a relative-in-law, and leaving likewise a planet’s doom undecided, rather than that Charlemagne the all-conqueror should again face the woman whom alone he had loved with his whole heart.

  V. A PEDLAR REFLECTS

  “That crowned tired man has wisdom,” declared the pedlar. “Yes, as kings go, he has done well enough in capping an infamy with a cowardice. For they who have mastered this day-lit world through their common-sense, and who fare unperturbed about its high places, may find in Branlon no comfort. But to the conquered and outworn this forest ministers with fair dreams; to the young it brings a surety of all conquests. And I whom the Olympians conquered, I have outlived all the Olympians nowadays, and as yet I remain young.”

  Thereafter the Lord of the Forest laughed, and his appearance became a bright shining. Very white birds wheeled circle-wise about the dark ringlets of his divine head, and then flew away in every direction, singing with light sweet voices. His staff gleamed like bright silver; at the top of it showed a blazing fir-cone.

  So was it that Mr. Smith strode back into the unviolated woods which were his home.

  And yet, as he now reflected, it sometimes appeared to Mr. Smith that this Branlon was only his temporary home, a mere resting place upon that not ever ending journey which Mr. Smith had begun—so it seemed to him—in his fine dream about being a master of all gods.

  Ah, but then (replied reason) there had been that yet earlier dream, about your being a gifted literary genius, in an era so remote from the present as the twentieth century, pursued everywhither by the public at large. It is not possible that your past life should have been spent thus gloriously so far in the future.

  “I admit that,” said Mr. Smith, “as a sound logician. Yet it was a fine dream while it lasted.”

  Moreover (reason continued) there was that dream about your being a blue-bottle fly which was dreaming itself to be a man of letters who was dreaming that he was a master of gods ruling over a planet presented by the All-Highest—

  “And that too,” Mr. Smith interrupted the promptings of reason, “was a fine dream, even though it may have been a bit too subtle for all persons quite to understand it.”

  Well, then (reason summed up), from each one of these dreams, and from a great many other dreams, in turn, Mr. Smith had awakened, quietly and naturally. Mr. Smith knew now that Mr. Smith was no one of these things—not an all-powerful god, nor a writer who would not be born for ever so many centuries, nor a rather large blue-bottle fly descended from the great race of Diptera—but a mere local deity, the bucolic Lord of the Forest of Branlon. Mr. Smith thus remained neither more nor less than the sole survivor anywhere of an immemorial mythology so very ancient that it had nowadays been forgotten by everybody, including himself.

  “Yes, that is logic,” Mr. Smith assented.

  And in a way, as you got on in life (his thinking continued), it was an actual relief to have done with all such magnificent fancies. You regarded them, however, with a bias of indulgence. You even admired them, a bit wistfully. You now and then missed their high-pitched irrationality. Yes, that was true; and, as he lighted one of those Virginian cigarettes with which a charmed pocket piece continued to supply him, this truth wrung from the Lord of the Forest a resigned sigh.

  None the less was there a sober consolation to be got out of the knowledge that, at a last howsoever long, you were facing the plain facts about yourself. These facts were not veiled nowadays by the perhaps too complex fantasies of your imagination. You had awakened from all such unprofitable dreaming. You now—at length wide awake,
and with the fond nonsense of your dreamland forever put by—you perceived that in point of fact you were no more than a majestic mythical figure living in a charmed forest between two semi-fabulous kingdoms; and to know this beyond any doubt—to have touched actuality at last—was a sound comfort, Mr. Smith reflected, with yet another profound sigh. He sighed because, as a poet, he could not but deplore, in defiance of all logic, his lost faculty for dreaming about the improbable.

  VI. WHAT URC TABARON THOUGHT

  Now by the wayside sat Urc Tabaron, who was the most famous of wizards in those parts, and, as some said, the greatest of all living wizards in the lands beyond common-sense. He offered to Mr. Smith a gray bowl, crying,—

  “Hail, Lord of the Forest!”

  Mr. Smith saw then that this bowl contained mangled flesh and blood. And so Mr. Smith at once waved aside the abhorrent tribute, saying,—

  “This is not my required offering in Branlon.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Urc Tabaron, “it is your need, if only you knew what is good for you.”

  “To the contrary,” Mr. Smith replied, “this mixture is my special abhorrence. For not long ago—oh, but only in a dream, a mere nightmare—I once visited a country in which the inhabitants were made of this dreadful stuff. And my traffic with these luckless persons was unhappy. They lent to my dream a sorrow. It seemed to me that I lived imprisoned, in a horrible and a very noisy place, among a perplexed and frightened little people who knew not what next to do, and whose fears begot frenzies.”

  “Great virtues have worn flesh and blood, O too hasty Lord of the Forest. Great thoughts have quickened in it. Yes, and the great faith of flesh and blood has builded fine great mansions beyond the tomb.”

  “I admit that flesh and blood has its merits in the way of imaginings and of aspirations and of all anodynes which help flesh and blood to forget the true nature of flesh and blood. The sad part of it is that in practical fields the achievements of flesh and blood should be second rate. Though why, indeed, do I say second rate?”

  “Why you say anything,” Urc Tabaron returned, “remains always to me a mystery, because there is not ever much sense in it.”

  “The prosperity of a sublime saying, my dear fellow, depends upon the agility of its hearer’s wit. I say, then, that this is the true tragedy of flesh and blood, that its best products are perceived to be tenth rate the very instant that one has compared them with the best products of the lands beyond common-sense. For I have but now returned from a brief interview with Charlemagne: and I shall remark only concerning this superb overlord of mankind that very especially he did not remind me of any known President of the United States. Then yet again, last week I was visited by Achilles, who of course brought with him his two wives, Medea and Helen, and his exceedingly pretty minion Patroclus, all three of whom he maintains in Leuke.”

  “Well, and what of it, Lord of the Forest? and why do you always pick out these lecherous items to dwell upon?”

  “But I do not do anything of the sort. I observe merely that this is a ménage which, in itself, would disqualify Achilles from holding any military command in a God-fearing democracy; yet did I find swift-footed Achilles, with his lax lovely entourage, to be rather more splendid than is the average brigadier general, with his liver complaint. Yes, and in the same way, Urc Tabaron, have I compared your fellow wizard Merlin, who continues to advise King Arthur in Avalon, with the financial wizards who advise the White House. I have compared Icarus with the best advertised aviators, and Simple Simon with pre-eminent statesmen. I have compared the Supreme Court with Minos, Æacus and Rhadamanthus. I have compared the Senate with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and Congress with the charmed lovers of Circe, those passionate full-voiced pigs at their feeding-trough. Well, and in every case was my verdict the same: I have cried out, ‘Alas for flesh and blood!’”

  “You would,” said Urc Tabaron, darkly.

  “In brief,” Mr. Smith continued, “the country of flesh and blood is, relatively speaking, a land of drab pygmies. There have been many great persons in flesh-and-blood countries. But no one of them would have risen beyond the lower reaches of mediocrity in a more exigent realm such as any poet can create out-of-hand.”

  Urc Tabaron replied, “Bah!”

  “Yet I speak from experience,” Mr. Smith reminded him, “because I, who am a demi-god, once dreamed I was flesh and blood. I do not know why. I can imagine no crime, nor any excessive supper, which deserved to be requited with any such nightmare. The cheapness, the dishonesty, the hypocrisy, and the staid feeble-mindedness which need blending in order to produce a well-thought-of flesh-and-blood leader in any practical field are beyond a mere demigod’s belief. And for another matter, the quite sincere reverence which, in that nightmare country, is accorded to a neat union of these vices establishes beyond any doubt the future of flesh and blood. No, no, Urc Tabaron: a race which accepts such befogged charlatans as statesmen and patriots, as rulers and lawmakers and executives, or even as dependable dog-catchers, is irretrievably damned, because that race is not any longer able to distinguish between the fine and the abominable.”

  “Pah!” said Urc Tabaron.

  “In brief,” Mr. Smith summed up, “it is the misfortune of flesh and blood that in all practical fields it admires the tenth rate sincerely. Yet I do not say this in blame. I commend, rather, the fact that, in these not unimportant fields, flesh and blood should admire, for its own comfort’s sake, the best which it has produced. Yes, for all facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician. In short, a logician considers facts; he does not lament them. So in plain logic I may not now lament that, by the standards of our more favored lands beyond common-sense, the best products of flesh and blood should be tenth rate.”

  “Yah!” said Urc Tabaron, “and you think yourself so much better than anybody else!”

  “Ah, but, my dear fellow, does that follow quite inevitably? It appears to me at least possible to point out the obscurity of an Ethiopian’s complexion without asserting oneself to be a blond. Nor do I believe that Jeremiah meant to deny having any freckles when, in the same passage, he went on to refer to the spots of a leopard. Still, your reply is as logical, and as familiar, as could be expected. Yes, your reply is common—in both senses, I regret to remark.”

  With that, Mr. Smith lighted yet another one of his endless cigarettes; he exhaled then a perfect smoke wreath, observing tranquilly:

  “At all events, I have now awakened from that perplexed dream in which I ascended from being a flesh-and-blood person to become a supreme god. I have now returned to my own home in Branlon, wherein harbor more temperate diversions. And I am well content.”

  “You are not content,” said Urc Tabaron, “nor have you awakened, as yet, from your dreaming.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The urbane Lord of the Forest had spoken almost sharply; and in the clear radiance of his face you saw hope blend with anxiety.

  “Unhappy Lord of the Forest,” replied Urc Tabaron, “you have confused dreams and realities until it is in your own far-fetched and gaudy imaginings alone that you put any faith. In that land of flesh and blood which you revile, with a bad mixing of tediousness and of envy, you none the less remain, at this very instant, locked up, like a prisoner, in the time-impaired body of a middle-aged mammal, which is asleep and dreaming and—as I will not conceal from you—is snoring also.”

  Now was Mr. Smith an embodiment of every sort of dignified divine joy; and he said, happily:

  “So I am not here at all! I am sound asleep in some other place. Ah, but, my dear fellow, but you bring me most excellent news, because in that event, I still dream; and to do that is my true métier, Urc Tabaron, as I was reflecting not ten minutes ago.”

  “You were not ever Smirt,” said the gray wizard, gravely bowing his wise head as he spoke the sublime name; “nor did Smirt ever exist except in your dreams.”

  “At all times, Urc Tabaron, I knew this, at the bottom of
my heart. None the less was Smirt a fine dream.”

  “That,” said Urc Tabaron, “is a question of taste, especially of bad taste. For myself, I say only, De gustibus—Moreover, I say to you that you have now passed into yet another dream, in which you are Mr. Smith, a deposed god, the bucolic Lord of the Forest of Branlon: but no one of these fancies is true, either.”

  “I can but ask, then, after a venerable example, what is truth?” declared the Lord of the Forest; “and who am I, if I be neither Smith nor Smirt? and, lastly, how did you, Urc Tabaron, come to find out about these things?”

  “But I do not know the answer to any one of these questions,” replied Urc Tabaron, with unconcealed patience, “nor would any rational dreamer be putting any such very silly questions to me. For with truth I have no concern; I am but a thin prattling patchwork of your fancies and of your desultory reading in folk-lore; nor have I any existence except in your dream.”

  “Yes, that, that at least, is true, according to your most interesting hypothesis,” said the Lord of the Forest. “For, by this hypothesis, all Branlon and all the contents of Branlon and I too—all these superb matters are but the products of my wit and my fancy and my erudition,—such, I append modestly, as these little talents may be.”

  Mr. Smith considered for some while the perplexed and imperilled nature of his present existence. Then Mr. Smith smiled benignantly.

  “Well, but,” said Mr. Smith, “but, to the other side, all Branlon and all the contents of Branlon—including you, my dear Urc Tabaron,” Mr. Smith added, with his not-ever-failing politeness—“are quite to my taste. Besides that, I entirely enjoy being Lord of the Forest. So I do not complain. If I indeed move in the affairs of a dream, I can but accept this fact. All facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician.”

  Mr. Smith paused; and he raised his divine shoulders, self-deprecatingly, in the mere sketch of a shrug, saying: