The Nightmare Had Triplets (29 page)

    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:

    “Moreover, upon every aesthetic ground, I cannot but notice that this dream reflects some little credit upon its dreamer. That I admit to be an ingratiating circumstance which prompts me—we artists being what we most notoriously have always been—to accept, if but out of auctorial vanity, your odd notion that you do not exist in reality but only in my imagination. Toward you, my dear fellow, in this uncertain condition, which you must necessarily find harrowing, I extend, of course, all appropriate sympathy; but as .concerns me, I perforce stay content.”

    Now the wizard stroked his majestic white beard; and from under his shaggy eyebrows he regarded the Lord of the Forest almost compassionately.

    “You are not content,” said Urc Tabaron. “You never will be, I imagine, no matter how much you may chatter and try to cheat yourself. Such is your nature. And because of that nature—as I well know—you will by-and-by be asking of me an odd number of magics to revive, and to draw back to you, some portion of your lost dreams about being Smirt.”

    “Ah, but come now,” said Mr. Smith, indulgently, “you are now aping Roland and Turpin and Charlemagne, in this talk about ‘lost dreams’. ‘Lost dreams’ are quite out of date: they are an anachronism; they are as completely Victorian as the religious doubts of Mrs. Humphry Ward or the economics of Karl Marx or a painting of dead ducks in the dining room. Let us keep clear of the obsolete, even in a nightmare. Let us intrepidly meet our dreams as they come. Let us not lose but cherish them with the respect they deserve; and acclaim without any faltering their complete handsomeness. For I, I have dreams which are upon a scale commensurate to my talents. And I accept the inevitable, in an awed silence, because after all it was divine Providence, rather than my personal endeavors, that got for me my unusual talents. So let us avoid
hubris.
”

    “And what manner of strange monster may that be?” Urc Tabaron interrupted.

    “
Hubris,
my dear fellow, was the name given to that over-weening pride which destroyed Oedipus, and Prometheus, and so many other protagonists of Greek drama.
Hubris
is an injudicious amount of self-conceit and self-complacency.
Hubris,
in brief, is my
bête noire,
which I avoid zealously, just as I would avoid too much talking, or too much smoking, or any other indulgence which I knew to be ill-advised. I distrust
hubris.
That is why I am now ready very humbly to accept the inevitable, my dear Urc Tabaron, without criticizing unfavorably its entirely pleasant aspect, inasmuch as my life here as a local deity leaves nothing whatever to be desired, by me.”

    Then Mr. Smith went away jauntily, toward his home in the midst of the forest. He said, with contentment:

    “Though Branlon be but a dream, yet Branlon is wonderful. It abounds in the superb improbabilities of myth, and at will I create to inhabit Branlon new myths also. These attend me, who am Lord of the Forest, and we make sport together in this wood. The entire effect is baroque and rococo, of course; my bucolics incline to the school of Chinese Chippendale. Yet this Branlon contents me. I would not willingly be leaving Branlon.”

    No, for he had always admired, and he had liked most cordially, this forest of Branlon during the time when he had thought it merely his native home, in which he had awakened from his dream about being a master of gods. Now the surprising discovery that all Branlon was but a part of another dream, and that his own abilities had created all the wonder and the beauty of Branlon, rather troubled Mr. Smith, on account of his remarkable modesty. It was a discovery which could not but tempt any person, he felt, in the direction of pride and vainglory.

    It accounted, too, for a certain vagueness about the trees and the vegetation in general, because he had never known much about botany. Moreover, he could now see that, in this charmed forest, the flora of the north-temperate and of the sub-tropical zones were mixed a bit indiscriminately. Yet if his inattentive recollection of mere trees and bushes had furnished Branlon without any scientific and slavish adherence to veracity, with what lavishness had Branlon been peopled by his erudition!

    There was hardly any mythology, he reflected, which had not helped to colonise Branlon. Not only had Branlon its fauns and satyrs and nymphs of the eight classes, its fays and its gnomes and its wood spirits, such as you found in all forests of the lands beyond common-sense: Branlon displayed a population very much more varied. In Branlon, for example, were to be met the Kogaras, and the Vilas, and the Glibiches. The Metsik went about Branlon, mounted on a wild boar with golden bristles; and in the tree-tops of Branlon could be seen now and then the tiny red caps of the Ni’agriusar as they peeped down at you.

    Moreover, the Wild Huntsman, green clad and wearing upon his head the horns of a stag, rode impressively about Branlon, side by side with the Tutosel, who dressed as a nun, and who hooted, very delightfully, like an owl. The Kirnis guarded the cherry-trees of Branlon; in the hollow tree-stumps of Branlon lived the Norg; and the Vargamor had charge of the wolves of Branlon. And there were hundreds of yet other quaint woodland creatures come out of the folk-lore of all nations to live happily together in Branlon.

    Yes, Branlon reflected some little credit upon its compiler, Mr. Smith admitted, even in the teeth of his never-failing modesty. It was exceedingly good to be Lord of the Forest.

    After that, Mr. Smith said: “Yet it does trouble me, that when I was not merely a local deity, but a supreme god, I begot children. My wives in that very lofty dream were Tana, who served darkly the sinister white rabbit which lives in the moon, under a cassia-tree; and Airel of the Brown Hair, a conversation woman dwelling upon a glass mountain; and Rani, the South Wind’s third daughter, an erratic queen of philosophers, in her fine paper palace erected upon a weather vane. Moreover, I imprudently married Arachne, the Spider Woman, who lives everywhere, and who devours her mate. I do not count Oriana, the Dwarf King’s widow, for even though I did marry Oriana also, yet I was prevented from the discharge of my marital duties. I regret the omission, which circumstances made unavoidable: but above all do I regret Tana, whose deformed hands brought peace to my thinking.”

    That was it, he reflected. From many women he had got pleasure: but the strange hands of Tana (upon neither of which was there a little finger) had brought him peace. He remembered always the charming, the unexplained, tranquillity of that moment when he had sat at the feet of Tana, and she had caressed the dark curls of his hair, and had spoken magic words,—those incomprehensible and humming and droning words which were like the sound of a spinning-wheel. That moment, in all his long dream about being a master of gods, and throughout so much of applause and glory, and among all the prodigies and the love-making and the adulation which delighted him everywhere in his proud dream—that moment had been his one moment of contentment. There was in this fact no apparent sense; and perceiving this, he sighed, as became a sound logician who is confronted by the inexplicable.

    “However, upon four of these women I begot children. That memory troubles me. It may be that these hapless children of mine are yet astray in that uncomfortably exalted dream from which I have been released to become well-satisfied and bucolic Mr. Smith in, as I now learn, a quite different sort of dream.”

    It was a situation which brought out his charmed pocket piece, because the affair called, rather clamantly, for some cigarettes and some matches to facilitate clear thinking.

    “Now this Charlemagne yet keeps with him fine flaxen-haired Roland, the fair son of a dream which has forsaken its dreamer. It is true that about the historic figure of Charlemagne have grown up so many romantic accretions as to render all his doings open to doubt. I considered it suspicious, for example, that this eighth-century emperor should be followed by an armed company of musketeers in costumes of the seventeenth century; nor were the four elephants with gilded tusks, which transported his luggage, un-flavored with anachronism.”

    Mr. Smith weighed for some while these mysteries; and he decided that, while such mixtures were frequent enough in the lands beyond common-sense, yet he could not make anything out of them by any rule of sound logic.

    In consequence, Mr. Smith said: “Yes, it may well be that this Charlemagne is but a king of romance who exists only in, and by virtue of, my rich-colored superb dreaming about him. Yet in my present dream, if I still move in the affairs of a dream, I permit Charlemagne to keep his Roland, the one being whom Charlemagne yet loves; but I deny myself the dear company of my own sons. To do that, is to carry philanthropy and self-sacrifice too far. For I also am a king of romance, ruling over Branlon; and in Branlon that which I desire must happen. So I will, yes, after all, I will humor Urc Tabaron by accepting from him four magics, because kings ought to be gracious to everybody. And with these magics I will draw variously out of my ancient dreaming the four children whom I begot as Smirt. I will draw them to Branlon, so that at worst, like the great Emperor Charlemagne, I shall not be bereft of my children.”

    Then the tale tells that he went back to Urc Tabaron. And the tale declares that the gray wizard answered the Lord of the Forest sternly, saying:

    “No, Lord of the Forest, because I prophesied that you would ask of me an odd number of magics. You cannot expect me to soil my good name as a soothsayer by pretending that four is an odd number.”

    “Yet four is an excellent number, my dear fellow, as the Four Evangelists and the main points of the compass and every bridge-table will testify—”

    “Nevertheless, Lord of the Forest, that which you ask is quite out of reason. To regain your contentment you will need by-and-by five magics to draw out of an old dream, not four, but five, of your gaudy human-shaped illusions. And even then—I imagine—your nature being what it is, your contentment will hardly outlive one clock-tick.”

    “Well,” Mr. Smith replied, graciously, “I shall not haggle with a friend whom I esteem beyond vocal expression. So in place of the four magics which I consented to accept from you, I will now accept five. But let us not talk any nonsense about clock-ticks: there is no clock in this forest.”

    “
Throughout Osnia farming is unusually highly developed. In 1934 the yield of grains, wheat, wild oats, rye, scotch, bourbon, barley and maize was 7,104,578 metric tons from 8,727,251 acres. Sugar beet production was 3,961,428 metric tons from 322,807 acres. The mineral wealth of this kingdom likewise is considerable, coal, iron, graphite, blarney stones, copper and garnets being abundant. The revenues of Osnia during 1934, as figured in lakhs of rupees, showed a deficit of 47.01.
”

    Now the tale speaks of the first magic of Urc Tabaron which Mr. Smith used in Branlon; and the tale tells about how, in far-away Osnia, this magic began its working when it loosened the loud tongue of Count Gaubert.

    “At the siege of Moscow,” declared this Count Gaubert, “I unhorsed the proud Tzar Alexis, rolling him over in a ditch publicly, while five armies applauded.”

    “Hah, but with only a handful of men,” cried out Andrew of Lower Chamgui, “I captured and I burned the two-score-and-two extremely strong and compact towers of El Gazib. For that reason do the Turks still shudder at a mention of my name.”

    “All this is nothing,” replied Jocelyn of Brienne, “inasmuch as it was I who killed the Sultan of Babylon, and cut him into halves, and tore the black wicked heart out of his pagan body. Now he, I would have you know, was called Saleh Nagim Addim Aijub; and that is a name before which everyone shudders.”

    Thus they boasted: for to-day the King of Osnia held a suitably royal feast in honor of his daughter’s birthday; and after the gentlemen who served him had eaten well, and had drunk yet more zealously—in the large hall hung everywhere with those strange banners which Rudolph the Lame took from the King of the Land of Shadows in his last battle, among the cliffs of Toysan—these gentlemen were now making their brags, as an entertainment for the Princess Sonia. So the one told of his warfaring, and then the other excelled him in confessing to superb and unequalled exploits in battle. Seventeen of them thus outbragged the other. Then Volmar, the dark wanderer said:

    “You have taken cities and heathen lords and suchlike other toys, it may be. But I have taken the fancy of a Christian princess, and that is a fairer thing to be having.”

    “Come,” said King Ludwig, frowning, “but what sort of Christian, much more a princess, would be giving her fancy to a sot and a shock-headed vagabond?”

    “She is the most wise of all princesses,” replied Volmar, “in that she has perceived my merits. She is the most lovely of princesses that are now alive.”

    “Be silent, dark tippler!” cried out Earl Othnar. “There is no woman anywhere more beautiful than our Princess Sonia.”