The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  “I shall obey you with pleasure, sir, the moment that you have ended speaking thus learnedly.”

  “For why indeed should anybody be speaking at any such length about love?” Mr. Smith assented. “To do that is time-wasting. What only matters is that it is in vain we resist the passion of love. So let the wise person yield to it silently, without any prolonged and useless talking. As yet another philosopher is going to declare, I do not know just how many hundred years from this evening, it is far wiser to contend with bulls, lions, bears, and ferocious giants, than with love. Love domineers over every living creature, and can make mighty, or lunatic, or sorrowful, whomsoever love touches. It follows that the man is no better than a fool, or an idiot, or at utmost a school-teacher, who does not acknowledge, through a tribute of awe-stricken dumbness, that this same love is an exceedingly great god. For all these reasons, Clitandre, you ought, in my opinion, to make haste to serve this great god, instead of dawdling here and talking about love thus endlessly.”

  “I intend to do that, sir, as soon as I may. Only, it is you, Lord of the Forest, who are detaining me here with your eloquent advice to go away at once.”

  This was a statement which self-evidently grieved Mr. Smith, by its large unreason. So he said:

  “Now you are talking long-winded nonsense, Clitandre, because it is well known that no young person was ever yet checked in the pursuit of his amours by any advice, no matter how good that advice might be. Yes, and you talk a great deal of nonsense, Clitandre.”

  “Why, but only about facts, sir,” Clitandre answered; “and all facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician.”

  “Ah, ah!” said Mr. Smith.

  “And when I say ‘considerable’,” Clitandre explained, “I mean worthy of being considered.”

  “Do you get along with you to your Nicole!” replied a well-pleased Mr. Smith, “inasmuch as the impudence of this younger generation proclaims them to be beyond saving morally.”

  XXXIV. IN NICOLE’S ROOM

  Clitandre came to the little frame-and-plaster house in the Street of St. Silenus at about ten o’clock; and huge was his surprise to discover the second floor of this house brilliantly illuminated. He most certainly had not expected this; it seemed unacceptable; yet, finding the garden gate unlocked, as Nicole had promised him it would be, he went in, and he passed to the rear of the place. Here also, just as had been arranged, the side door proved to be ajar.

  He tapped discreetly; but nobody answered him. By-and-by Clitandre entered the dark passageway, and he crept gently upstairs. He came to a flaringly lighted room, and thus peeped through the doorway, upon an interior which he adjudged to be startling, for immediately before him, upon a broad table in the centre of the room, lay two naked bodies.

  Of these, one was the corpse of a young man whom Clitandre did not remember to have seen earlier. But the other stripped corpse, beyond any doubt, was that of plump, merry, black-haired Nicole—yes, very obviously, of black-haired Nicole—whom Clitandre had hoped to admire—it was an ironic reflection—in precisely this state of undress. For another odd thing, at the big fireplace beyond this so dreadfully burdened table, three of the constables of Arleoth, in their dark green-and-silver uniforms, were burning the straw mattresses of a bed. Clitandre inferred that these men must have been destroying the clothing of the dead also, for the air smelt unpleasantly of burned cloth. From over the mantel a neatly painted Virgin and Child smiled down upon everything benignantly.

  “But then, Valère, what can you expect of a known rascal like that?” one policeman was saying.

  “Indeed, Ariste, I remember him ten years ago,” said the second policeman, coughing. “Fit to strangle you, this smoke is. No, but nearer twelve it must have been, because that was in my first wife’s time.”

  “A superb woman, that, Valère! A sad loss to a great many of your male friends!”

  “You may well say that, Ariste. We are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Yes, and he was just the same then, if not more so, on account of his being younger in those times. No butter would ever melt in his mouth, bless you! Oh, no! not at any price. But the lawyer found out different, you remember.”

  They all three laughed heartily at that.

  “Ah, but indeed we do remember, Valère. Him, with his bald head and his fine alibi!” said the third policeman, as he stirred up the close packed straw, with a long curtain rod. “Like an egg!”

  “And she was not the first of them, either,” pointed out Ariste, virtuously. “My, but how it all comes back!”

  “No, and not by a good armful, if you mean the fat widow woman. Careful there, Geronte, or you will have that there chimney on fire! What did you mean, Ariste, by ‘a great many of my male friends?’”

  “You were not talking about your male friends, Valère, but about the fat widow woman. You will doubtless recollect that she married the grocer, after all, she did, just the same, Lord help him!”

  “Yes,” agreed the red-haired third policeman, “and there was a baby in rather less than no time, I seem to remember. So he got out of that too.”

  “They do, mostly,” Valère remarked, despondently, “until it makes an honest man fair fit to question Providence. But I still do not see what you meant by ‘a great many of my male friends’.”

  “Why, but I meant, of course, that all policemen admire virtue, Valère, because they necessarily see so little of it.”

  So was it that the three constables of Arleoth discoursed lazily, as they burned up a pair of large straw mattresses under the supervision of a smiling Virgin in blue and white and of a Child who blessed them with two eternally lifted fingers; and as Clitandre tiptoed, with a softness begotten by experience, away from Nicole’s room.

  “The fact appears obvious,” Clitandre reflected, in the back garden, “that the affairs of my charming Nicole have taken a bad turn. Let us keep out of them. She seems, at all events, to have died without pain.

  “Well, and I pardon her,” he decided, as he walked safely down the Street of St. Silenus, “although I cannot doubt she betrayed my love. Her companion, on the table, could not possibly have been the husband whose advanced age and physical deficiencies she lamented. No; that sturdy and quite handsome young man was far more directly my rival, in the role of her lover. With him she deceived me; and for their perfidy they have both been punished.”

  He sighed, to think of how strange life was! how rough-handed in its jests! and in its justice how inscrutable! Then Clitandre resumed his meditations, saying:

  “It is true I do not know how, or for what reason, or by whom, they were punished. The entire affair is mysterious; and the remarks of the police, as usual, are not enlightening.”

  With that, the young highwayman sighed yet again; he approached the huge dark cathedral of St. Lucy the Martyr, a most holy place; and so his thoughts passed naturally to the pureness and the modesty and the blonde beauty of Marianne, beside which such sordid matters as evil-minded policemen and stray, hole-and-corner illicit love-affairs showed in their true ugliness. He resolved not any longer to think about these ubiquitous nuisances which, night-in, night-out, laid claim to so many young poets.

  “Moreover, I can inquire into this tragedy to-morrow morning, at complete leisure. I shall then find in it, perhaps, the material for a most handsome elegy, an outcome which would be gratifying, even in the light of Nicole’s probable unfaith. I would not let any woman’s unworthiness stand between me and the composition of a really first-class elegy lamenting the world’s loss of her unparalleled virtues. Nor would any other true poet, I imagine, be guilty of such un-thrift.”

  Thereafter Clitandre heaved a third sigh, because he knew that, in the long run, he would not ever get any real pleasure out of Nicole’s death, no matter what might turn out to have been its cause and its circumstances.

  “Yes, I foresee that any possible explanation of this dear, dark-haired young minx’s murder cannot but turn out to be a disappointment, when it is compar
ed with any one of the nine very beautiful and horrific explanations now in my mind. Life does not ever live up to the intelligent demands of a poet; life has no conscience, in this respect; and to coerce that which has already happened is a matter of some difficulty.

  One can but shrug; and then set for life a yet finer, brand-new example.—Which reminds me that, in the mean while, I have no moral right to let Nicole’s double-dealing avert my poetic abilities, such as they may or may not be, from continuing their refined labors upon ‘A Garland for Marianne.’” So he turned now toward Miradol.

  XXXV. MAIDS OF HONOR

  All that evening Marianne had remembered the incident of the young highwayman. The court ball was magnificent; her partners in the dance were ardent; and yet the polished phrases in which they expressed their dishonorable desires rang hollow, somehow. They lacked the dear naïveté of her poet lover, who at that instant was pursuing his arduous profession among goodness only knew what dangers, and yet always remembering the maiden hallowed with his affections.

  Heigho, but it was strangely sweet to be loved thus boyishly by a young poet! And that she might meet him again was an aspiration which Marianne must very certainly introduce into her prayers every evening before retiring.

  Well, and something of the romantic interest which had been aroused by her meeting with Clitandre was conveyed by Marianne to her friend Angelique that night, as the two maids of honor, clothed now in dressing-gowns, and with their hair down, sat cosily chatting in Marianne’s bedroom on the third floor of the castle of Miradol. Marianne at this time was putting away her jewels.

  “He might have taken all these bright pebbles, Angelique. All these I had with me in the coach, as I told him. But he took nothing.”

  “Nothing whatever, darling?”

  “No,” Marianne replied, blushing ever so prettily.

  “Such misplaced continence,” remarked Angelique, “appears to me foolish. In fact, I consider it discourteous, inasmuch as you two were alone in the forest.”

  “Your mind,” returned Marianne, “remains incurably corrupt. So noble was his manner that I did not think about the great jewel of my honor, except just in passing, of course, as girls have to do now and then. But it touched me, it did touch me sincerely, Angelique darling, the unbusinesslike way in which he did not make off with these lesser jewels.”

  “Given his chances, my sweetest, I at least would not have been so bucolicly honest.” And Angelique gazed with frank envy at the gem-littered dressing-table. “No other girl at court has such jewels as you have. And it is so affecting, my pet, that each one of these bright lovely things should have its sentimental association.”

  “It is that which I value chiefly,” Marianne admitted, with a fond sigh. “This emerald bracelet, for example, whensoever I see it, recalls to me the dear Marquis, in the gay days before he married. This brooch is an ever-present reminder of the dear Baron—before he married. In point of fact, I believe it was the dear Chevalier, but the principle is the same. And these pearl earrings revive always the most delightful memories of the dear Bishop. I do not mean, of course, the Bishop of Sorram: he was a pendant, and only turquoise at that. No, I mean the dear Bishop of Arleoth.”

  “And was that in the days of his celibacy also, darling?”

  “But of course, Angelique. Such holy persons cannot marry. Besides, you well know my scruples. I do not accept the friendship of a married man. I think it immoral.”

  “Ah, but the necklace, dearest!” cried Angelique, raising a stout rivulet of large diamonds. “Now for such a necklace even a maid of honor might almost wink at immorality, for it is a king’s ransom.”

  “No, darling,” Marianne corrected her, smilingly, “it is only the ransom of a duke. You see, poor Charles was compelled by his rank and that uncle of his to marry. And he had written me a great number of indiscreet letters, even about her, my sweetest, that was the most delightful part of it all. And he wanted them back, of course.”

  “I see,” said Angelique, “perfectly. And so, what happened?”

  “Why, nothing whatever. I showed him a copy of one or two of the worst ones. Then he gave me this necklace at once. And I gave him his letters. And we parted quite pleasantly.”

  “My pet,” said Angelique, admiringly, “but you do manage affairs so well! With such correctness of principle! And with never the least breath of scandal! But whatever can that be?” Angelique asked, with a change of tone, now that a sudden uproar of musketry fire began in the courtyard just beneath Marianne’s windows.

  “It is only the palace guard firing at somebody and missing him,” Marianne answered, with a slight yawn. “No doubt, some reprobate was trying to get in at the window of one or another maid of honor; and against such impropriety the dear Queen has issued the most strict if somewhat old-fashioned orders. They have never hit anybody, though, since that time, you remember, when the dear King had to sit on cushions, and we all pretended not to notice anything, for weeks.”

  Brown, rather fat, and good-hearted Angelique was by nature prudent. She therefore counseled:

  “Yet do you lock up these pretty jewels at once, my dearest. It may just as easily be a thief, because, in the polite circles which we adorn, stealing is almost as frequent as seduction.”

  “Well, and even if your cynical aphorism be true,” Marianne replied merrily, “I do not know but one practising professional thief. And I am tolerably certain the guards’ target cannot be my tall and highhearted Clitandre.”

  “Alas, madame,” said the young man who now entered with haste from the balcony—in the instant that he removed his red-plumed hat and bowed gallantly to the two ladies,—“it is none other.”

  XXXVI. REGARDING A WINDOW

  Clitandre, as he explained forthwith, had been contemplating the window of his elect lady with emotions which had flowered superbly in three brand-new stanzas to “A Garland for Marianne” before the meddlesomeness of the palace guard, on their midnight round, had compelled him to climb the waterspout and seek refuge on her balcony.

  “I praise Heaven,” Marianne returned, hastily tucking up her bright hair, and re-arranging her blue dressing-gown with decorum, “that my poet has so happily eluded their malice.”

  “Thus far,” Angelique emended. She had returned from the balcony, with her plump face uncommonly grave; and she said now:

  “They are seeking for you below, Master Clitandre—for such I assume to be your name—with lanterns and newly reloaded muskets. Even to the brusque mind of the professional military man it is apparent that, barring the unlikely event of your being a cherub equipped with wings, you must have entered one or another of the windows in this part of the palace. A search has been ordered. It follows that all is lost. For how may you now hope to escape from the but too well guarded apartments of a maid of honor?”

  “He must descend,” said Marianne, “by the outer window, which opens upon the park outside the castle. There one encounters no guardsmen.”

  Angelique regarded her with compassion. “And for an excellent reason, my pet. The outer side of the fortress of Miradol is a bare bleak wall which, as the dear Queen well knows, defies climbing. No; it is possible that an insect could descend the sheer hundred feet of smooth stone beneath your window; but it is out of reason to imagine that Master Clitandre or any other mortal person could manage it without either a scaling ladder or a ruinous tumble.”

  “That is true,” Marianne answered, unhappily.

  “There remains the door,” Clitandre suggested.

  At that, both the ladies cried out; and they told him of the six eunuchs waiting in the corridor outside, in black armor with their faces painted black and white and red, with black plumes on their heads. Thus terribly garbed were the incomplete but hard-hearted men-at-arms who guarded the Queen’s maids of honor every night, on account of the strictness of her majesty’s moral principles.

  “I can but ask, then,” Clitandre said, after a moment of reflection, “that the one or the
other of you should scream for assistance. These sentinels will enter. Do you then denounce me as the house-breaker that, in point of fact, I occasionally am. They will arrest me. And all will end happily.”

  “Your plan appears excellent,” Marianne admitted, “but for the drawback that it involves your being hanged.”

  “Death, my adored one, is the fixed end of every man’s life. I do not, it is true, desire any such immediate ending. I would prefer to finish my ‘Garland for Marianne’ without being hurried. But it appears not possible for me to escape unseen from this room. It is most certainly not possible for me to be found here in circumstances”—Clitandre blushed, and he looked modestly away from the two maids of honor—“in circumstances through which your reputation would suffer.”

  “Oh, but come now!” said Angelique.

  “People misconstrue such matters,” Clitandre explained. “From the circumstance of a young man’s being found in Madame Marianne’s bedroom they would draw very shocking conclusions.”

  “It is true,” said Angelique, in a sad twitter, “that for Master Clitandre to be caught here as a thief is permissible. A thief is not compromising. A thief might happen to anybody. Otherwise, do what we may, darling, Master Clitandre will be found here in the morning. Our reputations will be ruined. The dear Queen will behave, as she always does, like an infuriated turkey gobbler with overtones of the tigress. She will rend both of us to-morrow, just as she did poor Célie yesterday. We too shall be locked up in convents. And our talents would be wasted in a convent, simply wasted, my precious, among nuns and very old clergymen and penitent persons. Besides, Master Clitandre would be hanged just the same, after having compromised both of us.”