The Nightmare Had Triplets (21 page)

    The Dark Angel spoke gravely. His unstable, not ever quite clearly seen face, you imagined, compassionate, in the while that Azrael said:

    “To all living creatures, Smirt, I bring death. To
the Shining Ones, when they have fallen away from their stewardship and have become tax-payers to the most rigorous of assessors, I shall bring death in due course. But not as yet.”

    And at that, Smirt shook his head, without feeling called on to hide his disapproval. “These excuses, Azrael, this mere playing for time,” Smirt admitted, “I do not find satisfactory. I must tell you that, in all frankness. Beyond that, of course, an urbane person—howsoever disappointed and howsoever grieved, Azrael, by your strange conduct—must elect not to embarrass you by discussing your shortcomings to your face. I dismiss the unpleasant topic. I require merely that you rid me of the public at large, who leave me no peace, not even in the eternal city of Amit.”

    “Of all human follies,” said Azrael, gently and meditatively, “I shall make an end by-and-by. But not as yet. Not even of you, Smirt, and of your continual babbling, may I make an end at this time—no, not as yet. The worlds take shape, the worlds swarm with life, and the worlds perish, as All-Highest & Company work out their design. And yet, from out of the wreckage of each world as it perishes, arises an odd sound, which is at once a taunt and a giggle and a questioning and a sneer; and I may not silence that little, that rather nasty noise—not quite as yet.”

    “That sound, my dear Azrael,” Smirt explained, “is
constructive criticism. It is the defiant answer which a small civilized minority flings back at the inescapable and poorly contrived doom of mankind.”

    Azrael said, with some shortness: “That sound is Smirt. So long as that tiny sound endures, so long will you also endure in your flippant and feverish dreaming. But for no instant longer.”

    Thus speaking, Azrael, who was already so indeterminate in appearance, now vanished completely. And Smirt merely shrugged over this renewed example of angelic pig-headedness.

    “Yet my situation is annoying. I am robbed, I am travestied, and all proper recompense is denied me, in this dream wherein people drop the most uncivil sort of hints about blue-bottle flies. I must get help from Wise Aldemis.”

    “I must get help from Wise Aldemis,” Smirt repeated. And he wondered who this Wise Aldemis might be, and at what place or time he had heard of her, even in the same instant that, as a sound logician, Smirt decided these various problems could not greatly matter, after all, now that he stood face to face with Wise Aldemis. It was a little confusing, he reflected; but then dreams were very apt to be like that. It was odd too that the withered pallid creature stood within a pentagram drawn with four parallel lines of red and blue and yellow and green; and at her feet was the bleached skull of a ram.

    “What is it, Smirt,” asked the gray woman, at once, “that you are seeking of Aldemis, with omnipotence in your pocket?”

    “Oh, but come now, dear lady,” Smirt replied, “for me to answer that question would be in some sort to cast a slur upon that omniscience which you have in
your head. No, no! there is no possible need for me to be telling Wise Aldemis, who already knows everything, that I am now looking for the legend of Arachne; and in consequence I shall not answer your question, and then have you laughing at me for my simplicity.”

    “In fact, Smirt,” said Aldemis, shrewdly, nid-nid-nodding her shrivelled head, “I perceive you are looking for the legend of Arachne.”

    Then Smirt cried out, in unconcealed admiration, “Did I not say that all things are known to Wise Aldemis!”

    “That is true, Smirt; and yet, I admit, on the other hand—”

    “So I need not tell you, dear lady, that I am looking for this legend because I promised to restore to the young person in question her lost estate in the lands beyond common-sense.”

    “Nevertheless—” said Wise Aldemis.

    “I need not tell you,” Smirt continued, “that since I am omnipotent—within limits—it would be easy enough for me to create anew the milieu of her legend and to put her back in it, in her proper social position, so to speak, if only I knew what her legend was.”

    “Yes, but—” the gray woman began again to reply.

    “No,” Smirt concluded, “there is no least need for me to tell you any one of these things; and it is for that reason I have preferred to implore your aid and your mercy without speaking of these irrelevant matters.”

    The pale eyes of Aldemis became yet more friendly. She said:

    “You have done well, Smirt, for I could never put up with loquacious and ever chattering people—”

    “In fact, dear lady, garrulity is the besetting sin of a great many unurbane persons, who must continually be talking and interrupting, and repeating the obvious, and it is precisely this unwisdom I have been careful to avoid in approaching your omniscience.”

    Then Aldemis said: “You have done, I repeat, well. You would do yet better to stop talking about your taciturnity. And you would do still better, I believe, did you put this Arachne out of your head.”

    “I almost wish that I could, dear lady,” Smirt answered, with a self-tolerant smile, because it seemed amusing to find frailties even in Smirt. “And yet, too, I almost think that, what with one thing and another, if you quite follow me, and inasmuch as I did make an explicit promise to the girl, who seems rather a nice little creature, ma’am, and what with my being a Southern gentleman, even in my sleep, yes, I do almost think that upon the whole I would prefer not
to put Arachne out of my head, if it is really just the same to you, dear lady.”

    “I see,” said Aldemis, drily. “I have seen many; things. But never did I see a master of gods who looked more like an embarrassed booby.”

    And Smirt laughed. “I shall not dispute that, Aldemis. You see, she is nothing much to look at, and she has no intelligence at all. Still, I do rather like the way that her head is set on her neck; and I daresay that is it.”

    —To which Aldemis replied only, “You men!”

    Yet, as became a kind-hearted wise woman, she made a magic. She did not know, she explained, about legends, because legends deal with the past and that which has been. “I know only all that is,” she admitted, with a proud candor which Smirt admired.

    So Aldemis made a white magic, taking up the Six Branches—of ash, of basil, of periwinkle, of sage, oil mint, and of vervain—in her right hand; and in her left hand she took salt mingled with ashes. She breathed the Word of the Sylphs. And after she had sufflated the four cardinal points, then into her breathing came that power which first moved above dark waters and breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life. She made Michael her leader and Sabtabiel her servant. Through the calm of her will
she took governance for that while over the spirits of air, through the cunning of her wisdom she restrained for that while the power of the sun, so great was the might of Wise Aldemis. For this was a white magic which had in it the candor, as well as the vigor and the magnanimity, of the world’s youth.

    Now in answer to the white magic of Aldemis came very wonderfully, out of the books of Smirt, the women whom Smirt had created. There was a great company of them: he marvelled that one brain could bear so many beautiful and witty and tender daughters. And now that each glittering phantom reminded him of her legend, as Smirt had contrived it, he wondered also that one brain could invent so many splendid adventures.

    They spoke with him, saying severally:

    “My legend is more lovely than is the legend of Arachne.”

    “There is no legend anywhere more beautiful the fine brain of Smirt has builded for me to live in eternally.”

    “It is very well that the paltry and threadbare legend of Arachne is forgotten now that my superb legend exists.”

    “Assuredly the maker of the legend of Arachne, did he yet drag out his uninventive existence, would be put to great shame to-day. Did any power revive him, he would die for a second time, of sheer envy. For he would have perceived Smirt’s handiwork. He would have despaired ferociously before the countless perfections of my witty and refined legend.”

    —To all which, Smirt answered: “Most dear and most adorable of women, it is possible you are right. It seems highly probable that my genius transcends the more modest talents of the creator of Arachne’s legend. I admit that, in fairness to everybody, because I am a sound logician. Yet how can I be quite certain about this until I have found the legend of Arachne? Then, and then only, you perceive, can I make my fair comparisons, and laugh without any least rancor at the poor fellow.”

    Again spoke the glittering and unhumanly beautiful women whom Smirt had created. “Be very glad,” they said, “that we were made for the delight of mankind forever. Take pride in knowing that you and no other person made each one of us. Be utterly sure that there are no legends more lovely than are our legends. Do not think about any other legends. Give a loose rein to pride and to self-conceit, dear Smirt, for these only may preserve you, as they preserve all
other artists. Consider only your own greatness, and matters may yet go well.”

    “I like your legends extremely,” Smirt replied. “I rejoice in the long years I gave over to your creating. I delight in you, one and all, my immortal offspring. Yet I delight without any vainglory, because modesty has always been with me a distinguishing trait. I cannot conquer it, somehow. Besides that, until I have found the legend of Arachne I lack any standards of comparison. Moreover, the urbane person does not give way to pride and self-conceit. No, let us avoid
hubris:
otherwise, there is no telling. In the third place, I promised to put the girl back in her legend and a Southern gentleman must keep his word, no matter how soundly he may be asleep. And to conclude with, I do like the way her head is set on he neck.”

    Wise Aldemis shrugged her lean shoulders, in the instant that all the lovely daughters of Smirt’s and fancy went back to their improper places in the books of Smirt. Then Aldemis set about a gray magic.

    She made upon the ground a circle with strips of kid’s skin, she made within this circle a triangle drawn with the stone called ematille. In a brazier she burned willow wood and camphor and brandy, in the while that she pronounced correctly the gray charm of Zariatnatmit, which controls Rimmon and Asmodeus. By the four Supreme Names, and by the antagonism between fire and water, she compelled the separating of all substances, even as they were separated during the forenoon of the day of the world’s making. She took upon her that dreadful power which divides, and which divides infinitely, beyond the reach of any man’s thought, and in this way did she divide Smirt from Smirt’s erudition.

    When the vapors of this second magic had cleared away, Smirt saw that out of his brain had come seven members of that large host of learned persons who provided Smirt’s erudition. They were less lovely than the women whom Smirt had created. And these profound, lean, and fusty scholars declared severally:

    “It may be that Arachne is the dawn.”

    “Philology shows that Arachne is a thunder cloud.”;

    “Beyond doubt, Arachne is the spring, who conquers the darkness of winter.”

    “Yet it may be as Muller suggests, that Arachne is the evening aurora.”

    “To my mind, Arachne is quite obviously a grain of sprouting corn.”

    “By Grimm’s law, Arachne must be the moon.”

    “Arachne is, beyond question, a much later spurious and interpolation.”

    “Sirs, sirs,” said Smirt, “she is no one of these
things, I assure you. This Arachne is merely a young woman who has been dispossessed of her estate in the lands beyond common-sense; and for that reason I desire to know her legend.”

    “But in order to have a legend, Smirt, it is needful that she should be some one of these things,” the learned men then replied in unison. “For all legends concern these matters and no other matters.”

    “That is possible, sirs, but she does not look like any one of them. No thunder cloud, for example, could well have its head set upon its neck in quite that fashion—”

    “You are now talking,” said the learned men, severely, “in an unscientific manner.”

    “Yet the spring, gentlemen, has not any such soft-looking red lips, just parted a little, you know, when she looks up at you and waits for you to speak—”

    The learned men said, “Bosh!”

    “Nor, my dear sirs, have I ever noticed a grain of corn with precisely such innocent dark eyes, which half doubt you and half laugh at you—”

    To that the learned men replied, “Stuff and nonsense!”

    Then these learned men took snuff, each one of them from his own horn snuffbox.

    “And I wonder, gentlemen,” said Smirt, “if upon consultation of the proper books—”

    They answered, after putting up their several snuffboxes:

    “We have searched zealously in many books. We have read from cover to cover the Works of Ebenezer Sibly, along with C. J. Paton’s
Freemasonry and Jurisprudence,
and Gilbert White’s
Natural History of Selborne
—”

    “You begin well, gentlemen, in a broad field—”

    “Also,” they continued, “the
World Almanac
for 1925, and Balzac’s
Père Goriot,
and Baedeker’s
Guide to Switzerland
—”

    “Come now, but that is excellent, for there is nothing like thoroughgoing research work—”