The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  “In addition,” said Gurson, “we will reveal to you the ten best recipes for controlling the desires of women; and I assure you that some of these recipes have been known now and then to work.”

  “Come now,” replied Elair, brightening, “but that sounds more promising; for we need only a plan by which my wife Oina and my heart’s love Fergail and I too may all live together without inconvenience.”

  “Master,” these fiends then entreated, piteously, “do you permit us to return to our own place! The simple arithmetic of hell has not ever managed to add one man to two women with real comfort for anybody concerned; and we, who have lived tolerably enough, for so many centuries, in eternal torment, dare not abide the result of your dreadful experiment in this middle class home.”

  Elair sighed; and dismissed them.

  Well, and afterward, now that neither good nor evil seemed able to help him, he nevertheless continued to seek knowledge with the recipes and the odd paraphernalia of Urc Tabaron. In this way did Elair gather together many stray bits of miscellaneous information.

  He learned, for example, how to draw up the dead from out of their graves, how to control good and bad luck, and how to make himself invisible with the aid of a stone found in the hoopoe’s nest. He learned how to consult the Five Beryls of Baphomet, which answered all questions as to all happenings; and he learned how to compound the three ointments which enabled Elair, after a little practice, to fly about in the air as freely as a bird does. He learned how to control the Pythonic Word, the Mystery of the Salamanders, the Grotto of the Gnomes, and the ambiguous seraphim of the Heavens of Gad. Moreover, he learned how to cure epilepsy with three iron nails, how to win law suits with a bit of hematite, how to heal burns with currant jelly, and how to avert the dangers of travel with a turquoise.

  The great trouble was that, out of so much diverse knowledge, Elair got no knowledge to his own purpose. No; for his late father-in-law (Elair decided) had been at bottom unpractical. Virtually omniscient, Urc Tabaron had been satisfied, in just one point, to fall short of omniscience. At no time had he devoted his undeniable talents to the sensible and the philanthropic task of finding out how to induce two women to share one man equally and amicably. That omission was disastrous. It vitiated all Elair’s knowledge-seeking: for what Elair wanted was a way in which to win Fergail with the charmed Water of Airdra without deserting his wife and child; what he got were irrelevances about how to control lightnings, subdue kings, create gold, and induce posies. There was no sense in an outcome so flatly inconsequent; and Elair saw that no one of Urc Tabaron’s arts was of any real use to Elair.

  It was then that, in his forthright way, Elair took action. He carried the paraphernalia of Urc Tabaron to a safe distance from the gray house, he piled up all in a great heap, and he set fire to the dead wizard’s belongings.

  XXVIII. THE GREAT BURNING

  It is probable that no other person ever made such a bonfire as Elair kindled. For in the piled heap, which reached to Elair’s shoulder, were talismans, philtres, fetishes, amulets, and divining rods; magic lamps, rings, caskets, carpets, spectacles, mirrors, and belts; wishing-caps, and caps of darkness; the black robes of a conjuror, and the white robes needed for necromancy; as well as two pairs of seven-league boots, and one pair of red tarask-skin gloves in which to hold thunder bolts.

  Then Elair brought out of the gray house the skulls of eight parricides; and the dried head of a black cat which (according to Urc Tabaron’s attached memorandum) had been fed upon human flesh for five days before being slaughtered; and a moonstone, about the size of an orange, which was surmounted by a cross and inscribed with the names of three seraphim; and a copper censer, containing a mixture of ambergris, storax, camphor and aloes, which mixture had been properly steeped for seven days in yet another mixture, of the blood of moles and of goats and of bats; and the little finger of St. James the Less; and a half-dozen candles made from the fat of ravished nuns, which candles were set in a pair of ebony candlesticks carved in the shape of a crescent; and a bit of the Holy Manger, duly autographed by the Three Magi; and a leaden cap adorned in bas-relief with the ill-omened sign of Saturn; and yet other strong and dangerous tools for the working of wizardry.

  After that, Elair fetched out, and he placed upon the top of this strange scrap-heap, the books of magic, each one of which had been interleaved by Urc Tabaron with notes many times more valuable than were the books themselves. Here were the Great and the Little Albert, the Enchiridion, the Red Dragon, the Black Hen, the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Magical Venus, the Treasure of the Old Man of the Pyramids, and the Secrets of the Brown Druid, and dozens of yet other books. Far more important, though, here were the unique and the priceless three manuscript volumes in which Urc Tabaron had written down the invocations, and the magical recipes in general, which had made Urc Tabaron supreme among wizards.

  Now to all these august matters Elair laid fire; and he began to burn everything painstakingly. While he was thus engaged, a grave voice spoke from behind Elair, saying,—

  “Son of sublime Smirt, you destroy such knowledge and such power as no other living man possesses.”

  Turning, Elair perceived the speaker to be that queer half-brother of his whom they called Volmar. And Elair replied:

  “It is not about other men I am bothering. I burn rubbish of no worth to Elair the Song-Maker. For of what use are this knowledge and this power if they cannot give me my desire?”

  “I will answer that question, it may be,” said Volmar, “if you will first tell me just what is your desire.”

  “Why, but Fergail is my desire.”

  “And where, or what, or perhaps who, is this Fergail?”

  “Truly, Volmar, but your ignorance is a matter to wonder over. Fergail is the Queen of Evain, and she is likewise the queen of this world’s women. These are facts known to all well-informed persons.”

  “Ah, but now I can understand you, O married man who makes bonfires,” declared Volmar, shrugging. “And I say to you it is better to marry than to burn.”

  “You have the advantage of me,” Elair stated, stiffly, “because I cannot see that my bonfire or my marriage, or my desire either, is any of your concern.”

  “There is truth in your saying,” agreed Volmar, “and so I must give you, in return for it, a saying which is equally true. I must tell you, poor married poet, that none makes an omelet without breaking eggs.”

  “Nobody knows more about omelets than does Oina,” replied Elair, soberly. “I must ask her about that.”

  Volmar grinned, saying: “Moreover, I must tell you, O my brother, that, though necessity be a rude nurse, yet she raises strong children. And I add, for your consolation, my fellow unfortunate, that all cats remain quiet when their catnip is put out of reach.”

  “I do not see that cats have anything more to do with it than have omelets,” said Elair. “We were not talking about cats; and certainly I was not thinking about cats. Instead, I was thinking that, after all, I can bear living without Fergail’s love; but I could not bear to hurt Oina.”

  “Well, and indeed—or, at any rate, in strict theory—I could not willingly hurt my own wife,” Volmar returned, “because the love which we once had for each other was of a nature so sublime that she gave up being a crowned Queen of Rorn, and having a husband worth twenty-seven of me, in order to become the wife of a blacksmith. Nor is it her fault, of course, that I once knew the flawless women of Auster.”

  “But what, Volmar, have the women of Auster, whoever they may be, to do with your wife and with cats and with nurses and with omelets?”

  Volmar answered, with a perplexed and a strangely haggard face:

  “Why, they come back to me, now and then, Elair, do those most damnably fair sylphs. They condole with me, in a vein somewhere between wistfulness and derision. They whisper, with remote low voices, which are more sweet than Sonia’s voice seems nowadays, when she is talking and talking and forever talking about that fine Feodor wh
om she might have married, that my wife is a person of whom I am rather tired, and in whom I find not very much good temper and no special sharp flavor of interest. Then I go to the tavern.”

  “In fact, Volmar, you are not often quite sober.”

  “It is not well for any married poet who remembers the women of Auster to be sober too long after breakfast,” replied Volmar, gloomily.

  “That is a bad aphorism.”

  “It is a most horrible aphorism,” agreed Volmar, “because it is perfectly true. For indeed I suspect that, just as Mr. Smith says, all we who are poets, and who have the sublime Smirt’s blood in us, are doomed forever to desire that which we lack and to contemn always that which we have. So do I perceive nowadays that I somewhat rashly disregarded the call of perfection, just as you now, Elair, are disregarding the call of knowledge and of power, because each of us has happened to prefer a flesh-and-blood woman. Hah, and I won her! whereas you, my thrice-fortunate brother, you have lost your heart’s desire! and in place of it have a woman who understands omelets! and yet you make bonfires!”

  “Well, and what follows,” asked Elair, “in a world wherein every gentleman is entitled to his own tastes? There is no hurt in a good omelet. I rather like omelets.”

  Volmar shrugged yet again. For a moment he was silent. Then he said:

  “Why, it follows that, while you gobble down your good omelets, I go to the tavern. I take counsel with the white wines of Sauterne and of Champagne. I confer carefully with the wines of the Rheingau and Hochheim and Rheinhessen and the Palatine wines of the Rheinpfalz. All these help me for some while to forget the fair women of Auster.”

  “Yes, but—” said Elair, virtuously.

  “I listen to many advisers,” Volmar went on; and he spoke now a little light-headedly, as one speaks in a fever. “I seek them among the red wines of Burgundy—in particular do I consult the great Chambertin—and among the white wines of Burgundy also, which come to me consolingly all the long way between Branlon and the walled town of Chablis. I do not disdain the mild wines of Moselle. I regard affably the two wines of Oporto, both the ruby colored and the tawny colored.”

  “And these two, in their right place, are excellent. Yet you would be much better off, my poor Volmar, for some third sort of adviser—”

  “Ah, but three cunning counsellors do bring advice to me. These three travel together, in the same hamper; they come out of Portugal; they are called Fino and Amontillado and Amoroso. Yes, and four likewise come to me from Medoc, even the revered clarets of Lafite, of Margaux, of Latour, and of Haut-Brion. You perceive that I do not lack for a bevy of noble advisers. And every one of these, Elair, helps me for some while to forget the fair women of Auster. Yes,”—the man groaned,—“and they beget headaches which tell me that my wife is the better bargain, and a mate far too good for any drink-sodden beast who does not merit her occasional kindness.”

  “Then you have got splendid advice out of a bottle, Volmar: and I would beseech you to honor it, my dear brother. For a man’s main concern ought to be with his own wife. He ought to remember always that it is she who keeps his house comfortable and who cooks for him his remarkably fine meals.”

  “Do you think so, O married man who makes bonfires like this great burning, on account of your stupid bull-headed petulance?” asked Volmar; and even in the while that he spoke jeeringly, he wrung his hands. “Hah, and does your desire to talk this bland sort of reputable nonsense cause you—who were once a poet, my poor brother—to forget Fergail?”

  “Well, but my case is quite different, Volmar. And of course I do not ever forget Fergail.”

  “It is the main trouble in this world, Elair, that to every man’s belief his own case is quite different.”

  Then Volmar went away, grinning and twitching a great deal, and reeling just perceptibly, in the general direction of the tavern. And Elair stirred up afresh his large, very terribly smelling bonfire.

  “We are well rid of all cheating kickshaws,” said Elair, that day, as he sat down beamingly to his dinner, “and I have done a good morning’s work. I do not criticize your father, small mouse: yet his power and his wisdom got him only a wrung neck at the last. I take warning from him. And I mean to have no sorceries in my own home.”

  —Whereupon his fond wife, Oina the gray witch, replied, meekly:

  “Your will is my will, Elair. Did you destroy also the Water of Airdra?”

  “No,” said Elair, flushing; and he continued: “But this bread and this pottage of lentils are delicious! It is a beautiful pottage and a strange pottage and a pottage that ought to be wondered at in sweet songs, by if ten poets all singing together.”

  XXIX. HOW A WHILE PASSED

  Elair found his Oina a model housewife. So untiring, indeed, was her care for his every comfort that she conducted her gray magics very secretly, without his knowing about them as yet. Still he complained, at times, that she had borne him no more children after the advent of young Conan. Such children might have made Elair’s home a rather more lively place: for Oina did not sparkle in conversation; and a solemn-eyed young Conan, there was no hiding it, regarded his father as a slow-witted and inefficient person: so that the gray house, howsoever comfortably managed, and howsoever soul-satisfying remained Oina’s cookery, was—after all—a bit dull.

  “Ah, Fergail,” Elair would say, in his heart, “it is not thus you are living in the glory of your bright home and the pride of your youth. I concern myself with little labors and with little happenings while you fare splendidly among the great people of earth, as the queen of earth’s women. My desire of you is undying. I shall not ever get out of my thoughts the sea-green color of your eyes or the red color of your curved lips or the gold of your hair. And it is very bitter to think that I, who succeeded in my quest for the Water of Airdra, should have won, not you, but this stupid little mouse of a woman.”

  Meanwhile he attended soberly to his farming; young Conan grew apace; and Oina tended her men folk tenderly, without any nonsense, putting upon them only such gray magics as she considered to be the best for their welfare, very secretly.

  “For that which a person does not know,” said Oina, “does not matter.”

  So was it that a while passed; and throughout that I while there was no change in the life of Elair, inasmuch as into the forest of Branlon time was not permitted to enter. This was because the Lord of the Forest peculiarly disliked clocks.

  He had reason: for throughout his long dream about being a master of gods he had been haunted and indeed but for his never-failing urbanity he might have been annoyed seriously, by the never-failing platitudes of a black onyx clock. This mid-Victoria clock (as manufactured by the Ansonia Brass Company, in Connecticut, about 1850) had evinced the characteristic bad taste of its era by reminding Master of the Gods, over and yet over again, that it ticking counted relentlessly every moment of his omnipotence. For no person had, at any time in his life, more than one instant of existence, said this tedious and taunting, too-talkative timepiece. It ticked tirelessly touching two topics. Every man’s past, so this clock told you, even the past life of a master of gods, was fixed and was removed from his control: his future remained unfixed, perhaps, but it stayed equally uncontrollable, and equally non-existent, and equally not, in any real sense, his. You had only your one instant of existence, your one clock-tick. You had nothing else.

  Now these platitudes were facts which, inasmuch as they were of a personally unpleasant nature, Mr. Smith did not find to be of considerable interest to a sound logician.

  “So let us have no clocks in my forest,” he had ordered, “and no calendar. Let us deport Time as an undesirable alien. For Time is a thief who steals youth and strength; an iconoclast who smashes all glory; a murderer who spares none. Time is a betrayer, as the gray dust of Thebes and of Troy and of Carthage well shows. Time is a demented wizard, who turns the fair-haired daughters of men into the wrinkled grandmothers of men; through the evil magic of Time are great-hearted
and radiant boys converted into lawyers and merchants and school-teachers and convicts and clergymen and captains of industry. No, I will not make any terms with Time; and his crazed wickedness shall not enter into my bucolic kingdom. I will not honor the currency of Time. Against the nonsense of Time I decree a protective tariff, preferring to manufacture my own nonsense.... In brief, since Time does not know the meaning of diplomacy, I will now sever all diplomatic relations with Time.”

  Thus spoke the Lord of the Forest; and in Branlon his speaking was law.

  XXX. TROUBLE AT SUPPER TIME

  So was it that a while passed, and yet another while passed; and Time’s ruinous work was conducted faithfully in every place except Branlon. Then—toward dusk, in the uncertain hour when bats flicker and zigzag about fretfully in the last glowings of a dead sunset, and cannot yet find the acceptable darkness of the desired night season—then Elair sat down to supper with his quiet-spoken gray wife and his quiet, tall, rather snub-nosed son.

  Then also Mr. Smith came smiling pensively. And besides Mr. Smith, a fat old woman came likewise into the gray house, crying out:

  “What thing is this that I have been hearing from the mouths of my druids, in far-away Evain, O false Elair? For they say that you have forgotten your love of me, and are content to drowse here in a snug separating from any glorious doings.”

  Elair looked hard at her; his jaw dropped; and in his face awoke wonder, now that he knew this fat, blowsy, and weather-beaten creature. Yet he held fast, as Elair did at all seasons, to his strict sense of the proprieties.

  “No person,” observed Elair, with a vast politeness—in the while that he put aside his rich, red-colored, steaming pottage, and arose from the supper table—“no person of any sort, and most certainly no poet, who has beheld Fergail, can ever forget the queen of this world’s women. Is it permitted, dear Lady of Evain, that I present to you my wife, as well as my son here?”