The Nightmare Had Triplets (7 page)

    Thereupon the All-Highest explained everything. He explained first about barbers’ poles, and about the King of Hearts (but without committing Himself, one way or the other, as to the Jack of Clubs), and about the
Herald-Tribune
clock, and about De Witt Clinton. Then the All-Highest went on to explain His conduct of the universe: and Smirt listened with ever-growing dismay.

    “It does not please you, Smirt, to know that which no mortal man has known before you?”

    “Oh, as to that, All-Highest, I appreciate Your confidence. I am honored, sir, I assure You. Nor is it quite my province, perhaps, to dictate to You in these cosmic affairs.”

    “Nevertheless, Smirt, do you speak your mind freely.”

    For an instant Smirt looked appraisingly at the gray cloudland which spread everywhither about them. All seemed most satisfactorily chaotic; and yet, as Smirt now knew, there was no chaos anywhere. It was a defect over which Smirt perforce shook his head. Thereafter Smirt answered, with urbane self-restraint:

    “I can but say, sir, that Your methods are out-of-date. The entire system is an anachronism. And what is even more serious, it conflicts with the canons of civilized art.”

    “I had feared,” the All-Highest replied, in an apologetic way, “that my methods could hardly hope for your approval. I have read your books, of course, with vast admiration and some unavoidable envy. You and I, Smirt, are creative artists who belong to different schools. You should allow for that fact before dismissing My work as of no merit at all.”

    “But this work of Yours, All-Highest, as You have confessed to me, is government. It has a formal plan. It is rational. It involves the long ago exploded notion of a Personal Creator. All these circumstances have been revealed to me rather over suddenly; and I will not deny that the shock to my feelings is considerable. Little did I think, sir, in the long while that I was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and worshipped You every Sunday morning, that You actually did exist; and far less did I suspect what You were up to. Your conduct during quite a number of centuries, I to-day perceive, has robbed human life of all lack of meaning. Your conduct of the universe, in brief, has amounted to a direct attack upon civilized art, in that You have left no target for irony. Yet what, I ask of You, what is to become of civilized art if all human life is not in truth a meaningless muddle which the artist observes with amused superiority?”

    “Truly, Smirt,” the All-Highest replied, blushing, “I had not thought of that point. When I began My work there were no civilized persons by whose advice I might profit, and so I had to arrange matters more or less in the light of My own judgment. And you really ought to allow me credit for having done the very best I could.”

    Smirt gave over a moment to profound meditation. He said then:

    “All-Highest, I must be frank with You. To disparage the work of any person to his face is a thankless task. I would prefer to avoid any such seeming brutality: but the present situation is grave. And besides that, mind You, I do find Your universe to be full of many quite charming bits. Your sunsets, for example, Your kangaroos, Your Gila monsters, Your Presidents of the United States, and many of Your thunderstorms, show that You have real imagination, in Your own grotesque vein.”

    “Come now, but that is generous of you, Smirt. Commendation from Sir Hubert Stanley, you know, is praise indeed—”

    “At character drawing, I admit,” Smirt went on regretfully, “You do not excel. Your men and women are not always convincing, and suggest that You have never probed deeply into human nature. Yet nobody has a universal genius, and for such defects it would be hypercriticism to blame You.”

    “You really think, then, that with continued application, Smirt, I have a possible future?”

    “Oh, yes, Your work displays promise, distinct promise! It is merely that You employ obsolete formulae. So for Your own good, sir, I must tell You, in plain words, that this underlying coherent plan ruins everything. Your work, I now discover, has a formal plot: and plots, sir, plots were discarded long ago by the small civilized minority of authors.”

    “But what do you suggest, Smirt—?”

    After an instant’s reflection Smirt decided to apply the supreme test. He said,—“It may be, All-Highest, that I can best illustrate my idea by relating a rather amusing story which occurs to me.”

    “Then do so, Smirt, for My sense of humor is remarkably keen.”

    “I hear and I obey, All-Highest. I obey the more readily because this droll anecdote concerns one of Your immediate servitors. I must tell You, then, that the next Bishop of Wyoming—”

    “That the what, Smirt?”

    “I apologize, sir. I had quite forgotten that all time is coincident to Your perception, since You are omnipresent. It is thus, of course, not possible for You I to distinguish between the present bishop, the last bishop and the next bishop. But I do mean the next bishop. That is an essential point of the story.”

    “Very well then, Smirt. It sounds a little puzzling, I admit.... However, you may go on.”

    “The next Bishop of Wyoming,” Smirt resumed, “was famous for his partiality to scrambled eggs, a dish of which, through circumstances irrelevant to the story, he had never partaken. So well known was this foible that, upon a warm afternoon in May, a noted actress inquired of him, in a spirit of banter, ‘Can you inform me, sir, what is the current rate of exchange?’ With a twinkle in his eye, the bishop replied promptly, ‘Madam, no wise man leads a horse to salt water.’ The lady’s confusion can be better imagined than described.”

    The All-Highest laughed heartily at this anecdote, and said:

    “That is a woman, all over. Yes, Smirt, that is an uncommonly good story. Yes, yes, to be sure! And I only wish more of My bishops were as quick-witted.”

    At that, Smirt shook his head, and he sighed a little; but he said nothing.

    “Nor do I deny,” the All-Highest continued, “that I might have profited by forming Myself after superior models. We will let the future test that: and meanwhile, in evidence of my gratitude, I present you with this coin, for a lucky piece.”

    “I observe, All-Highest, that it is a forty reis coin issued in 1820 by John the Sixth, by the Grace of God, King of Portugal, Brazil and Algarvez. I duly admire his laurel wreath, so freely beribboned; his snub nose; and his three chins. But what shall I do with this coin?”

    “Oh, you may do with it whatever you like, Smirt.”

    “I must do that in any case, sir, whether with or without a lucky piece.”

    “That appears likely. It is not utterly certain,” replied the All-Highest, reflectively. “At all events, I would counsel you to preserve this coin, as a slight souvenir of our first meeting. And now, Smirt, as a fellow author, let us have your advice. I was thinking that in view of the gratifying success of My Book—which is still selling excellently,—I might do yet another book, Smirt. I mean something really mature, this time, and something a bit more up-to-date than the Bible, you understand...”

    Smirt said: “Come, let us raise for the All-Highest a lamentation. Begin, ye Muses, begin the funeral song: declare His folly unto the literati; make plain His blunders among the book clubs. With His right hand and His holy arm He would write yet another book.”

    Thereafter Smirt paused; and he shook his head in the while that, as became an American author, Smirt thought respectfully about the magnificos who in his country, at this time, reviewed current reading-matter. Smirt comprehended, only too well, how inadequate must seem the endowments and the creative powers of mere omnipotence when judged by Their standards. And furthermore, Smirt remembered what They invariably said about the next book by any author who had scored a popular hit with his first book.

    For this reason Smirt continued: “Begin, ye Muses, begin the funeral song; and narrate the curt epitaphs of the All-Highest in His second publishing venture. Between the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific ocean may His book hope to find no defender. ‘It displays a sad falling off in inspiration,’ will the Boston
Transcript
remark. The Hartford
Courant
will color its drooling unfavorably. A rumor speeding among the heathen, even into Staten Island and Brooklyn, will proclaim that Soskin hath not read the like of this bosh in ten years; yea, nor Kronenberger. In order to demolish this book will Granville Hicks yet again borrow the aesthetics, the writings, and the urbanity, of Upton Sinclair. In the
American Spectator
will appear the name of the All-Highest, unexplainedly, within mourning borders. Upon every Rural Free Delivery route, where the
New Yorker
delights the hired girl, even where the farmer’s wife takes in
Vanity Fair,
and vice versa, will peasantry scoff at this book.”

    Afterward Smirt said: “Begin, ye Muses, begin the funeral song; for this book must die uncommended. Not even the facile fervors of William Lyon Phelps will acclaim this book surreptitiously, in his safe hiding place, between the covers of
Scribner’s Magazine.
Gibes and a regal pitying, these only, must be the portion of this book. In Cincinnati Ted Robinson will smile upon this book with derision; nor will Fanny Butcher avert her dispraise in Chicago. The horoscope of this book will reveal the Kansas City
Star
as ill dignified, in the twelfth house, in the inimical House of Fishes. In Denver will Caroline Bancroft confess that the All-Highest fails to maintain His earlier promise. ‘Nothing like so good as the Bible,’ will be the blunt verdict of the
Portland Oregonian.
‘Now in its second large printing,’ may the publishers of this book proclaim at utmost, speaking unveraciously.”

    Then yet again Smirt said: “Begin, ye Muses, begin the funeral song; for the South alone will remain silent and unscornful, not heeding this book, or any other book. All these testimonies have become for me a foreboding, and my counsellors likewise, now that I raise for the All-Highest a lamentation.”

    When he had ended his elegiac mingling of the Psalmist and Theocritus, Smirt remained silent—pondering, with a shared mind, upon the divine ways of book reviewers and upon the dilemma into which magnanimity had thrust him.

    And Smirt said: “This really does need considering. Beyond doubt it is my duty, as a fellow church member, to dissuade the All-Highest from this crowning folly. To the other side, in this dream of mine—if it be a dream—I have promised to reinstate that little Arachne in her lost legend; and a gentleman must keep his word, whether he be awake or asleep.”

    It all appeared somewhat troubling. To find the All-Highest a rather obtuse and bemuddled person had been natural enough, since some such person was deducible by logic from all prior acquaintance with His handiwork—provided, of course, that you could manage to reconcile your religious faith as an Episcopalian with His actual existence. But to find Him endowed with the auctorial temperament was a discovery of a distinctly upsetting kind, because you knew that temperament only too well: no universe was safe in its keeping.

    And to find Him on the point of publishing His second book, in an era so unfriendly to ill which the naïve old gentleman represented, was a situation to perceive which had enkindled Smirt with a patronizing and tender, and yet fierce, protectiveness. He must shield this pathetic blunderer, he must without any delay preclude the All-Highest, from that cruel and silken derision which the All-Highest would incur, quite inevitably, by making any more revelations to mankind in the present state of American letters.

    On the other hand, Smirt had given a plain promise to that little Arachne, to a female in distress. It was his duty to look after her lost estate without any delay. And chronologically at least, Arachne had the prior claim.

    Yet Smirt was not twins. He could not simultaneously be in two places, upholding womanhood in one of these places, and protecting God in the other one of these places. It followed that the proper course for the Peripatetic Episcopalian, in these circumstances, required some calm thinking out.

    In the while that Smirt reasoned thus logically between the claims of his religious duties and the claims of his plighted faith, he saw that his admirers had pursued him. For now came running toward Smirt pell-mell the butcher, and the baker, and the candlestick maker, and Tom, and Dick, and Harry, and Madame Quelquechose, and Senora Etcetera, and Lady Ampersand, and the world and his wife, and Anon, and Ibid, and Mrs. Murgatroyd likewise. All these cried out to the Peripatetic Episcopalian: “Do not leave us, Smirt! We have a need of your nonsense. For hour by hour we must do that which hour by hour we did yesterday. We have many common-sense tasks to discharge: they fill up each day utterly; our reward is that we have food and sleep and our children and our portion of shallow laughter. We have our griefs also, but no deep griefs. The fixed round of our living prevents us from yielding up to any passion with our whole hearts. When love touches us, then must we yet think, with at least some part of our minds, about whether marriage would be quite sensible on our present income; about house rents; and whether it would be pleasant to have the beloved’s family in and about the house forever? When death parts us from the most dear, then must we concern ourselves about a suitable plot in the cemetery, we must bargain with the mortician for the coffin. Also we must telephone to borrow black clothing, we must decide upon floral designs and pick out the pall bearers, and we must send in a notice to the newspapers, before we can find any time wherein to grieve for our dead.”

    They said then: “Do not leave us, Smirt! Our joys and our griefs are shallow: there is in our lives no dignity. But you, O Smirt, have skill to release us from many hundreds of small bonds. Your genius is as a delivering sword; of your wit and your fancy is made a shining pair of scissors. Snip, snip, they say, and then yet again, Snip. Thus are we set free from our packthread bondage; the many hundreds of small ties which confine us each in his proper station are clipped through. We become as the gods are, untrammeled. Our joys have majesty, our sorrows tread nobly, and beauty regards us with an unveiled face, very tenderly. We know then that our doom is less strong than we are. We forget our cousins and the family across the street and the first of the month and the tax collector and the unpaid dues at the country club. We observe only the many-colored and urbane world which Smirt has created for our delight, the land about which, like a superior Cook’s guide, the fine art of Smirt leads us on a holiday outing.”