The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  “These,” said old Fergail, “these two are indeed fine proofs of your love’s fidelity!”

  “Ah, but a poet,” Elair explained, “remains faithful in his heart, with a very sublime faithfulness, to which these incidents and these little by-products of his flesh’s frailty are, when properly regarded, extraneous.”

  “I do not know about that,” replied Fergail, “but I do know that my druids report to me you have found the Water of Airdra. And I have much need of it nowadays, Elair, joy of my heart.”

  “Why, but indeed, Queen Fergail,” declared Oina compassionately, “when one remembers that you will not ever again see fifty, no, nor fifty-five either, am when one thinks about the dissolute life which you have been leading all this while, one would almost you not quite so bad looking as might be hoped for—although, to be sure, I have not ever seen you plainly by daylight,—and besides that, there are some men who do not very much mind their women’s being as fat as a pig.”

  “Do you be silent, Oina!” Elair ordered her.

  “—Or as without any shape,” Oina continued, “as a feather bolster.” She added, meekly:

  “Your will is my will, Elair. Yet I did think it only kindly to comfort the poor creature.”

  But Elair looked dazedly about this familiar, neat and sober-colored room, which on a sudden seemed to him a pitiable and strange place.

  “It is true,” he said, “yes, it is true, that Fergail is ugly and old. It is true that, in our hearts at least, the three of us are old people nowadays. And I had not known it. The time that I have lived here concerned with useful and sensible small matters has passed very quietly; but as that time went by, it was taking away our youth and all the fond splendors of our youth from the three of us. For myself I do not greatly mind, or for Oina either; but it is not right that Fergail, who was a world’s glory, should have fallen away into old age and much ugliness.”

  He went quickly to the cupboard; and he returned now toward Fergail, bringing a gold phial.

  “Fergail, O my beloved Fergail, you who in every song which I made about you, were the delight of my eyes, the desire of my desire, my life’s pulse, and a large number of other things which I have now forgotten, I alone of your champions have kept faith untarnished. It is Elair, the son of sublime Smirt, who now restores to you your youth so that it may be made steadfast.”

  After that, tall young Conan fetched a blue mug; Elair poured into it a part of the Water of Airdra; and the old Queen drank out of the mug which Conan, kneeling respectfully, had presented to her.

  What happened then was beyond believing; and yet it did not seem strange to Elair. Strange and exceedingly strange it had seemed—and indeed, just as Charlemagne had phrased this affair, it had seemed libelous—to have a fat old gray-haired trollop wearing the dear name of Fergail. But to have Fergail back again, in the brave pride of that young beauty which had not its equal anywhere upon earth, did not seem strange at all, because this outcome was out the honorable keeping of a promise which spring-time and his high-hearted day-dreams had made, very long ago, to a young poet. The one puzzling part of the miracle, in fact, was that Fergail seemed a deal lovelier than Elair had remembered; and the reformed staid song-maker, in the while that he nodded approvingly, delighted to observe that throughout all these years he had loved with true discernment.

  “Elair, joy of my heart,” said the proud Queen, “do you now drink as I have drunk, and then take your reward, so that the two of us may reign gloriously over Evain in our not-ever-failing youth. And as for little, dish-faced, snappish, and extremely ugly woman here, we will provide suitably for her needs, in a convent, or perhaps one of my dungeons would be better, now that all I have is yours for the asking.”

  “Ah, but, desire of my desire,” replied Elair, smiling gravely, “I shall not ask.”

  “Hah!” said the Queen, angrily.

  “No!” said Elair, with complete firmness.

  Then the Queen said: “Elair, joy of my heart, do you stop talking any such foolishness! Do you remember that I have sworn by the most noble parts of the Red Stallion of Stairth to marry the champion who brought me a magic by which my youth would be made steadfast. You have done that thing for me. Yes, and you alone of all my champions have kept faith untarnished, as you said but a moment ago.”

  “Well, but, pulse of my life,” said Elair, wriggling, “all poets do say things of that sort now and then. It is expected of them: and their remarks ought not to be taken too seriously.”

  “Elair, joy of my heart, and how can I help taking seriously the great oath I have sworn? I have sworn by the Red Stallion of Stairth to marry him who made my youth steadfast.”

  “Oh, but, but that is true!” said Elair, in his horror, now that he quite understood the frightful position of the dear love of his youth.

  “There is no oath more binding or more terrible,” the Queen continued. “Do you remember, Elair, that if I do not keep my oath then my druids will be compelled, howsoever unwillingly, to fulfill their clerical duties, though I am sure they are all honestly fond of me—especially Cathba and Carnac, even if he does have only one eye, the poor fellow. Not that it is really his fault. No, I do not mean to suggest that, no, not for one instant, Elair, because he could not well have expected the woman’s husband to come home so unexpectedly. No: I mean only that they would have to have me torn into four pieces by four stallions; and I am sure I would not like it.”

  “I would not like it either, dear Lady of Evain,” replied Elair; yet he added, stubbornly:

  “But upon no terms will I be leaving my wife. And it is not right of you, you must let me tell you, delight of my eyes, to be talking about any such misconduct.”

  “Oh, but now indeed I hate you, Elair, joy of my heart, and a most depraved joy you are, to be planning to have me pulled about a big public field in such vulgar fractions, rather than for you to leave this stupid and dish-faced woman.”

  Now the Lord of the Forest spoke, for the first time since Mr. Smith had entered the gray house.

  “If you will permit me, my children, why, then—in exchange, let us say, for what is left of the Water of Airdra, which you do not need, Elair, and for which I shall probably find some use or another—why, then, it is just possible I might suggest a matter-of-fact way out of this most distressing situation.”

  “Take it, and welcome, Lord of the Forest,” said Elair, “if only you can find an honorable way, or even a swindling way, to keep this bold-faced young woman from being quartered by wild stallions, and me from being eloped with.”

  “I suggest, then,” said Mr. Smith, as he thriftily slipped the gold phial into his pocket, “a fact which was witnessed by the five of us, and observed only by me. All facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician.”

  At this statement Elair looked doubly forlorn; yet he said only, with large resignation,—

  “That is true, no doubt, Lord of the Forest, but just what are you talking about, because I do not ever know just what you are talking about?”

  “I am talking about the plain fact, Elair, that it was not you, but young Conan here, who knelt down upon this very rug, and who gave the blue mug to Queen Fergail.”

  “That is indeed a fact,” cried out tall young Conan, in his delight. “It was I who gave her the Water of Airdra, and not you, my poor Father. So you must let me marry her, O my Father, rather than have her fine body broken into four pieces, and my heart into forty pieces, because my entire heart belongs to Fergail, my dear Father, and Fergail”—declared young Conan, his voice shaking with adoration—“Fergail is queen of this world’s women.”

  “Hah! “said Elair.

  Conan answered him, stoutly: “Were the world searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting there would not be found anywhere the twin of Fergail. For her eyes have the sea’s color; the curving of her red lips is very wonderful.”

  “Yes, my dear son,” replied Elair, smiling, “and the clear gold of her hair—as you were, no do
ubt, going on to observe—is like a flame. Yes; I remember.”

  Yet it is a fact that, as Elair looked at his tall son, the widened and fond eyes of Elair were blurred with something uncommonly like tears. Romance dies hard in the heart of a confirmed romanticist; and to be called on to grin over a parody of one’s own lost idiotic splendors proves to such persons an awkward performance.

  “Indeed, my son,” Elair said, clearing his throat, “it is true that Fergail, in her looks, and in her light-headedness, and in all other possessions, is everything which a very young man could admire logically. And I had forgotten that, in addition to being my son, you are likewise the grandson of Urc Tabaron, whom the Norns ordered to regard Fergail as his granddaughter.”

  After that, Elair spread out, a bit wearily, the toil-hardened hands of a ploughman, those hands which would draw no more music from a harp of fine maple-wood. He regarded yet again the familiar and neat and sober-colored home from which he would never be traveling away now except in his coffin. And he said:

  “Well, then, let us honor piously the decree of the omnipotent Norns, since, after all, it does not interfere with my way of living.”

  “Furthermore,” the young Queen observed, with that pensive smile which Elair’s heart had remembered always, “this handsome and well-spoken lad is very like you, my dear Elair, as you were in the days of your youthfulness. To be looking at him, after so many years, makes me feel like somebody in a delightful love poem, because I always did fancy you, rather. Anything which I may have said about hating you, Elair, joy of my heart, was just a manner of speaking, or perhaps I ought to say ‘my dear father-in-law’, inasmuch as it really was he, and not you, who gave me the blue mug.”

  “You speak logic.” Elair agreed, “so far as anybody can understand you: and it is wholly pleasing to find you, and the Norns also, in accord with logic, for at least this once. Do you marry Conan; and in that way fulfill honorably the terms of your oath.”

  XXXI. THE ETERNAL HUSBAND

  “No, Elair, and it is not at all that I object to our son’s being a king, exactly,” said Oina—after the royal couple had driven away on their honeymoon, in the gold chariot of Queen Fergail, and after only Mr. Smith remained with Elair and Oina in the gray house,—“but still, at the same time, Elair, if you want me to be perfectly frank in saying just what I do think about that skinny scatter-brained young woman, with her bleached hair and her cat’s eyes, it might be better for me not to.”

  “I am certain, Oina, that your opinion in everything befits a mother-in-law; and yet, upon the whole, I would prefer not to hear it.”

  “Your will is my will, Elair,” she replied, meekly.

  Then Elair regarded his sedate, plain-faced little wife with approval. He looked afterward at Mr. Smith, with a large complacency.

  “Queens,” said Elair, “are all very well in their way; and so, in their own way, are beauty, and applause, and power, and wealth, and poetry, and wisdom, and a great many other superb matters to which Oina and I have not any pretensions.”

  “No, my poor Elair,” returned Mr. Smith; “and I fancy that, yet again, the dark magics of Urc Tabaron, which fetched you to Branlon, have something to answer for. They have got you contentment, that strong drug, that slow killer of noble-heartedness.”

  “None the less do I find it perturbing,” Elair continued, “that Queen Fergail should have thought I would be leaving Oina, for any of these matters which are more superb than contentment. It does not seem to me a promising outlook, to have a daughter-in-law with such flighty notions.”

  Thus speaking, he had half put his arm about Oina, the gray witch who had reformed Elair the Song-Maker, before he withdrew his arm stiffly. He withdrew it because in the mind of Elair was moving a confusion of tenderness and of worship and of yet other large emotions such as, he felt, it was unbecoming for a husband of so many years’ standing to cherish about his own wife.

  Yet he thought happily about his own wisdom in declining to accept the wisdom of Urc Tabaron, and about his own shrewdness in escaping from so many wonderful fine ladies, such as Morgaine, and that dreadful feather-brained Fergail, and Eudocia, and Astrild, and a dozen or so other splendidly shaped and colored, bright beings, who would have made of Elair the Song-Maker a great lord, or even a demi-god perhaps, but for his shrewdness. Yes; he had bargained very thriftily with his one life upon earth, by getting out of it, not any power or wealth or large famousness, but just Oina. He had got, in brief, a contentment which rather frightened him, because it all depended on Oina entirely.

  He knew that, always and very deeply, now, he had a need of this quiet-spoken, plain little creature; that, without her, his days would be comfortless; that he more or less adored her; and that, above all, if ever she discovered these facts, it would be extremely embarrassing. It was the sort of thing of which women took advantage.

  So the reformed song-maker did not speak of these matters. Instead, he looked sidewise, with scowling disapproval at the disordered supper table; and he said, angrily:

  “Come now, you dawdling slut! but I will not live in a pig-sty, as I have told you time and again. Do you make tidy this dreadful mess! And besides that, where; are your manners, small mouse? Why do you not warm up a good supper for Mr. Smith and for me, now that this good-for-nothing Fergail has left all my red pottage stone-cold?”

  PART FOUR. THE BOOK OF CLITANDRE

  “Ecben is now governed, under a Constitution adopted April 13,1929, by a two-chamber legislative body, consisting of a Senate (Czac) of in members, and a House (Hrohof) of 444 members, elected by universal suffrage, in a method which takes care of minorities through an efficient jail system. Freedom of speech, press, religion, companionate marriage, judicial bribery, birth control, etc., is guaranteed. The President (Trasc) is elected, upon a commercial basis, by the Parliament (Wonil) for as long as the public can be deluded by him.”

  XXXII. HIGHWAY ROBBERY

  Now the tale turns to the third magic of Urc Tabaron, which had been at work for some while before it caused a masked man to speak with exalted politeness.

  “Your attendants, madame,” remarked this masked man, “I have killed through a most unfortunate error. I can but apologize.”

  Gravely considering the two corpses at her feet, Marianne replied to this statement, with a courteous yet unmistakable air of reproof,—

  “Murder, sir, is not thus lightly to be dismissed as a mere error in judgment.”

  And it was obvious that the propriety of her sentiments had impressed the highwayman favorably. He dismounted at once from his black mare; and removing his red-plumed hat, he declared, in frank contrition:

  “I was not thinking about the decease of these lackeys with the seriousness which their fate merits. I admit my fault. These two have died bravely in defence of you, madame, in the while that their more intelligent comrade galloped away in search of the police. These two at this instant, no doubt, are being welcomed into paradise with a great deal more of enthusiasm than awaits him at the police station. So let us duly honor these undergraduate archangels.”

  “That, sir, is nobly spoken, with a ring of true poetry,” Marianne conceded: “and yet, to a gentlewoman in my present distressed condition, fine words avail little.”

  Her situation, it was beyond dispute, seemed deplorable, and of a sort which in no feature befitted a maid of honor to the strait-laced Queen of Ecben. In broad daylight the coach in which Marianne was riding had been attacked by this masked horseman, as her party attempted to pass through an outlying spur of the forest of Branlon. Her coachman and one of her outriders, in the quick confusion of some spirited gunplay, had fallen victims to the marauder’s superior marksmanship. The other outrider had at once vanished, in the direction of the near-by police station. And Marianne thus remained deserted, in a magic-infected forest, alone with two deceased persons and a desperado but too regrettably alive.

  In such circumstances, the Queen’s maid of honor produced her pocket handker
chief, and gave way to pardonable emotion, in the while she continued,—

  “I assuredly am the most unfortunate of living creatures!”

  “I deny that, madame,” the masked man returned, with warmth.

  She paused then in her weeping; and she put by her handkerchief. She upraised toward the young highwayman two enormous eyes, blue as cornflowers. This shrinking, tender, blonde girl, he perceived, was lovely beyond any poet’s imagining; and great was the man’s joy and delight for the well-remembered beauty of her appearance.

  A large cloak of vair covered all save her dear face; yet this cloak was now open a little way, so that upon her breast showed a silver gleaming; and she gazed up at him forlornly, from out of a hood of vair, saying, in her frank terror:

  “Let us be sensible, sir! Your orders to stand and deliver, combined with your dexterity in putting out of life my two attendants, have led me to regard your moral principles with suspicion. Is it not unavoidable that I should shudder to find myself thus left alone with you in the midst of a forest?”

  “But I, madame—” he protested.

  “For an indiscretion,” she explained, “leads naturally to wrong-doing; and thence one slips, almost inevitably, into actual sin. You have indiscreetly killed two of my lackeys; with what I can but describe as foolhardiness, you have permitted Lelio (for such is the name of my third attendant) to ride hence in search of the police of Arleoth. You now contemplate, I cannot doubt, the wrong-doing of robbing me of those jewels which I was fetching back to wear at the court ball this evening.”

  “But I, madame—” he repeated.

  “Oh, I do not dispute,” Marianne admitted, broad-mindedly, “that, in so far as you are a highwayman, such wrong-doing is a part of your professional duties. I do not criticize the wrong-doing, in itself, but only the most dreadful carnal sin which you intend now that I am at your mercy. Well, then, to get over with the wrong-doing as quickly as may be possible, you will find my jewel-case is on the seat of the coach, to the left side.”