The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  Once in these cities wise men studied the stars, Smire remembered. They knew then that all the planets aided, and ruined, and controlled, in a never-idle fashion, all the doings of humankind. Mars, they said, is in the first house, with the Sun ill dignified, thus presaging many wounds by fire and iron: then were they troubled, foreseeing the pillage and the ravishments and the high platitudes of war. Venus, glowing placidly in the grip of the Scorpion, foretold success in one’s current love-affair. Or else Jupiter was at hand to bestow, variously, either prudence or glory, or a tendency to fat, or perhaps hair which curled naturally and a mole on the right foot. Such faiths were not true perhaps; but they had then lent to man’s living a charming assurance that high forces at every instant overlooked his destiny and attended to it with painstaking carefulness. It gave dignity to a stomach-ache, for example, to know that it was caused by a celestial conspiracy on the Moon’s part, or to a cold in the head when you reflected it had come straightway, addressed to you in particular, all the 86,000,000 miles, more or less, between you and the planet Mercury; whereas during a visit to the privy it must have been soul-inspiring to consider that every least detail of your enforced anchoretism was being honored, and was given even its own odor of sanctity, by Saturn’s aloof, grim sallow patronage.

  In the mountain places, and above the querulous great ocean, the stars yet glow and glitter and throng sparklingly, thought Smire; and it is there permitted the people of flesh-and-blood lands to regard these stars, in the light of their more modern superstition that these are stupendous suns about which circle worlds such as is that quaint planet, Earth, by the millions. The heavens then become as inconceivable by the human mind as is a national debt. Infinity unveils its calm features, very tranquilly; and before their gorgon-like cool grandeurs the mind petrifies. Well, but the “truths” of astronomy (as we glibly termed the incomprehensible), and its inconceivable immensities, were not true, perhaps; here again must the Peripatetic Episcopalian reserve judgment; yet at all events they lent to man’s living a charming assurance that the fate of one man in this infinitude could not be regarded seriously. As astrology fostered man’s pride, so did astronomy compel his mind’s quietude. In the mountain places, and beside the ocean, a man perceived that what happened to him could not appreciably matter. And so his little soul might find peace. So yet again would the all-kindly stars grant comfort to their beholders.

  But in the cities of flesh-and-blood one does not see the stars. In such incredible cities the heavens reveal to mankind, more snappily, that So-and-So’s whiskey is the best. The firmaments declare to mankind the glories of Trust Companies and of Chop Suey. And far above the heads of mankind just such unseen fingers as wrote out the doom of Chaldea above the pleasure house of Belshazzar, in ever-shifting fiery letters, are inscribing the glad news that Tweedledum is now playing in his great metropolitan success, for three days only.

  —Or so at least did Smire reflect, in that troubled drowsiness which now visited Smire, as he lay upon the soft couch of no particular color, waiting for the Wrong Oculist.

  XXIX. TRICKS OF AN OCULIST

  Now when on a sudden Smire awakened from his half drowsing, then he found the Wrong Oculist to be a pictorial and exuberant test of any possible patient’s eyesight. For this oculist was dressed to the nines (as they say) in a crimson and black coat with enormous steel buttons. He wore a most stupendously frizzed wig with a pigtail; his wrists were aflutter with ruffles, and he had at his throat a quite liberal cascade of frilled linen. He glittered everywhere with too much jewelry and with a superfluity of watch fobs; his snuff-box, with which he chanced just now to be in consultation, seemed a veritable nebula of diamonds. All about him, in short, was of the most flaring mode of the latter part of the eighteenth century, because this flamboyant personage had been forced to come out of the Age of Reason before he could deal with his patients irrationally. Moreover, he had come wearing a small half-mask of black velvet, which hid the upper part of his face. Well, and since it would have been untactful to notice that his left leg was the leg of a goat (although both his legs, to be sure, had been clothed, deceitfully, in red gold-clocked stockings), or to comment upon the trailing, forked, scaly, scarlet-colored tail which flapped about everywhither on the floor behind him, like a huge dying fish, Smire did not refer in any way to these matters; but consented to appear thoroughly hoodwinked by his ancient and inveterate tempter.

  Now Company examined the eyes of Smire. The cunning fiend then made just that judicious and complacent noise with which every medical man concludes an examination. He emitted the sympathetic, the wise, and the contented throat-clearing which signifies that the patient has shown satisfactorily every sort of lethal disorder which the doctor had looked for from the first. And afterward Company said:

  “This is quite dreadful. You have still the eyes of a god, Smire, for all that you are only a landless wanderer. But, alas, there is doubt in your eyes nowadays.”

  “Doubtless,” agreed Smire; “for to doubt everything is my doubtful métier. For I, O Wrong Oculist, I am the Peripatetic Episcopalian—”

  “Yes,” says the disguised fiend; “yes, but I meant self-doubt. And with Smire that is a new form of exercise.”

  “I have seen what prosperity made of me,” Smire returns, with the most tiny of shrugs. “So perhaps you are right. I cannot say. I have not ever regarded my own opinion in any matter as more than an intellectual indulgence, unrelated to finality; I have always been careful to avoid any such hubris; and indeed it is because of this modest and becoming habit that I have been acclaimed everywhere as the supreme ornament of mythology.”

  Once more, the Devil took snuff. He said, dusting lightly his finger-tips:

  “Nevertheless, Smire, in the cultivation of your extraordinary virtues you have outraged reason: for there is a medium to be observed. In a normal person uncorrupted by perfection, such modesty as yours would be well enough, from my point of view. But when self-doubt is displayed by Smire it becomes unreasonable. It is dreadful. In fact, it might lead to your eternal damnation; and the thought appals me. For this is a most terrible form of hubris, for anybody to be setting up his innate bashfulness against the judgments of infinity.”

  “And what does that mean, Wrong Oculist?”

  “It means, my dear Smire, a slight astigmatism, which you must permit me to rectify, for both our sakes. So do you lie down once more on the couch, and look yet again at the stars.”

  Thus speaking, the fiend placed upon the divine nose of Smire an eyeglass frame; and into it the adroit Prince of Darkness fitted lenses, turning them first one way, then another, until Smire could see the stars moving sluggishly. Well, and of a sudden, some of the stars, and then yet other stars, quitted their proper places. They took shape as letters, and made words, and after that, they arranged themselves in huge sentences.

  “Smire,” said the first sentence, “has the authentic touch of genius.”

  “Smire,” said the second, “flames in absolute ecstasy.”

  And then yet other enormous sidereal sentences announced: (a) that Smire had a stirring sense of immersion in the currents of life; (b) that Smire was full of drama and humor; (c) that Smire was a barrel of fun; and (d) that Smire was shining and lovely and intensely interesting.

  Nor was that everything. For now it was a wonder to note how the belt of Orion was loosed, the Pleiades parted company, the Great Dipper smashed itself, and Cassiopeia’s Chair collapsed crazily, as the stars forming these constellations, and yet other constellations, dashed everywhither, like comets, to make still more sentences, saying:

  “Smire is thrilling.”

  “Smire is clever, with an unusual twist.”

  “Smire is spiritually conceived and spiritually executed.”

  “Smire is a hit.”

  —After which, part of the Milky Way gave birth to a flaring prophecy, all by itself, saying,—

  “Smire will be talked about at every dinner table for the next six w
eeks.”

  And then, last of all, fell the North Star, Polaris, from its immutably fixed station, to serve as a full stop after the brisk sentence,—

  “Smire is on sale everywhere.”

  So did every one of the stars of heaven depart from its usual orbit in a bright anarchy of adulation; and in this way did the whole firmament testify visibly to the supreme glory of Smire.

  “Well, well!” said the admired theme of infinity, as he sat erect upon the soft couch of no particular color, and coughed with not-ever-failing modesty. “Well, this is gratifying, of course; and the demonstration errs, if at all, upon the side of such discernment as does credit to its possessor, no matter what he may be in, as it were, his professional fields of brimstone and sulphur. My innate bashfulness had misled me. I admit that my too humble opinion of myself was sheer headstrong presumption. I retract that opinion. I apologize for having entertained it. Yes; with all proper reverence let us henceforward accept the judgments of infinity, and not argue about them. Let us avoid hubris.”

  “Moreover,” said the masked Devil, smiling, “let us test your glasses in another fashion. Do you regard carefully this bust here.”

  Obeying him, Smire said: “It is the cold white bust of a fine-looking, severe, obstinate woman, who is past her first youthfulness. But when I regard it through your charmed glasses, Company, then it takes on the hues of life; the woman herself is now wearing steel-rimmed spectacles; and she seems about to give a frank loosing to her disapprobation of somebody or another.”

  “Tut, tut!” said the Devil, startled; “but why do you call me Company?”

  “It was a slip of the tongue, sir, because I do not recognize you in the least. Your disguise is most efficacious; and it has completely deceived me.”

  “But are you certain of that?” asked the fiend, rather suspiciously.

  “I have no faintest notion as to who you may be, I must assure you, sir. I have not even noticed your tail.”

  “Why, then,” said the relieved Devil, “all is quite as it should be.”

  “And so,” Smire continued, “a mere slip of the tongue does not matter. What alone matters is the fact that I do not like the looks of this woman. She has a cantankerous look; and I do not believe that any man living could live with her in tranquillity for more than a quarter of an hour.”

  The Prince of Darkness did not hide his complete disapproval of this sort of criticism.

  “Tut, Smire, but she is the great Moera, who makes and who unmakes all mythologies, the great Doom who is above every god. And you, Smire, would do well to worship her.”

  “To the contrary,” Smire replied, moodily, “she is called, in the avatar which is most familiar to me, Jane. It is under this name—I now suspect—that she is the doom of the God of Branlon; and by-and-by, should my luck fail, she will be making out of this god her commonplace elderly husband during every moment of my waking hours. Meanwhile, I dream”—Smire cried out, jauntily. “As yet, I remain the eternally young God of Branlon, with firm fixed duties to my divine position in dreamland. Now the Peripatetic Episcopalian, sir, does not crook the pregnant knee toward heathen idols nor to any god except only the God of Branlon He goes his own serene way—”

  “Yes, yes, but I know all that chatter as to the Peripatetic Episcopalian, Smire—”

  “He remains unmoved, with a composure that has been inadequately copied by monoliths—” Smire continued.

  “Nevertheless, O you forever-talking Smire,” groaned the Devil, “his observers do not remain unmoved. They throb with the most regrettable sort of emotion when the Peripatetic Episcopalian goes on and on and on with his talking about himself.”

  Smire replied, “In fact, sir, I have noted that complete urbanity, or, as one might call it, ataraxia, does affect many persons in that way But as I was saying—”

  He was interrupted, with a vigorousness.

  “Oh, my God!” said the great Spirit of Evil, “and will you never, never have done talking? for indeed I was trying my very best to pamper your self-conceit, and thus put you in a good humor, and then coax you back to the one woman who will not permit you to behave with criminal folly. I was trying, in short, to prevent your eternal damnation, Smire; and you keep on choking my charity with your long words in a way that is heart-breaking!”

  Well, and now Smire raised a protesting hand, against this rape of decorum.

  “But it is not your proper part to prevent my damnation, Company; and in frankness I must tell you that your conduct is most unprofessional. You ought to be handling this important affair quite otherwise. Now, in order to hoodwink me into my eternal ruin”—Smire made bold to suggest, after a brief moment of reflection—“you ought of course to offer me something which I could not obtain without your assistance.”

  “And what would that be, Smire?”

  “Well, there is probably not anything which I could not obtain by a proper use of my somewhat unusual faculties,” Smire admitted, fair-mindedly. “That, of course, makes your task rather difficult. But it does not alter the principle of the thing.”

  The fiend shuddered. He said, in perturbed accents:

  “Let us dismiss, then, the possibility of my having to spend eternity with you. I am not worthy of it, Smire, no matter what may have been my iniquities during the past.”

  But Smire remained bent upon seeing the affair carried through properly. And he spoke comforting words also, saying:

  “Come now, Company, do you not lose heart! I am open to all offers. In brief, as the heavens have just declared to us, Smire is on sale everywhere. And it is your duty to attempt my damnation. I quite understand that. There will be no hard feelings involved, no matter whether you fail or succeed. And in fact, rather than see this affair bungled, I believe that, in but one instant now, I can think of something utterly irresistible for you to be offering me as the price of my soul’s eternal welfare.”

  “Then do you stop thinking,” cried the fiend. “I will make you no offer whatever, for you might accept it. Can you not understand, Smire, that the all-terrible terrified forces of Hell have been enlisted to prevent your damnation? and that we are working, with a unanimity not ever before manifested since the Fall of Man, to foist you off upon Heaven?”

  “But come now, my dear fellow, this is most irregular. Yes, the entire affair is being managed maladroitly; and I hate bungling.”

  Well, and at that, the Devil made a clean breast of it, saying:

  “Smire, you are not wanted in Hell. Hell could not stand you. Its traditionary old tortures would become mere figures of fun when thus directly compared with the terror of your conversation. Hell’s entire management would be upset. I at least would go raving mad: and what then would become of everything, with only the old gentleman muddling about overhead?”

  To this cosmic question Smire replied, with a suitable gravity which was not unflavored with vexation, and in a tone which protested indomitably against any and all threatened violence to the proprieties,—

  “But—”

  “No, my dear Smire,” cried the fiend, piteously. “No, do you please, just for my sake, do you consent to avoid temptation. Come now, do you grant me this one great favor, like the fine devil of a fellow that you are at bottom! and then do you look through your new glasses at this picture, as our final testing, before you go back to Branlon for your allotted while.”

  “All this remains most irregular,” says Smire, still frowning somewhat. “Yet a lost kingdom seems more valuable than decorum. So I shall not insist upon being tempted properly, if you would indeed rather aid me to get to Branlon than to endless torment.”

  “I would very much rather,” says the Devil, “for both our sakes. So do you please, please look at the picture.”

  Well, and Smire humored him, because of Smire’s kind heart, to which every sort of unhappiness, even in a fiend, was abhorrent. And, peering through the charmed eyeglasses, Smire said:

  “This picture is a most futuristic picture, depic
ting, I believe, a pink camel in a state of recumbency. No, it presents some other state. Why, but to be sure! it presents the State of Virginia.”

  “Tut! are you certain of that, Smire?”