The Nightmare Had Triplets (26 page)

    They recount how Charlemagne, the Franks’ Emperor, combined religion with his family squabbles by setting forth to relieve the Pope at Rome. That holy city was then being besieged by the Emperor’s father-in-law, Desiderius, King of the Lombards, whom Charlemagne proposed to destroy piously. They relate how, upon the primitive road between the kingdoms of Rorn and Ecben, the great army of Charlemagne came to the forest of Branlon. And they tell how a pedlar (who had just put aside a cigarette) stood in the Emperor’s way, barring the all-conqueror’s armed advance with a wooden staff, and crying out that upon this forest had been laid an enchantment.

    “Expound,” said the Emperor.

    “Highness,” replied the pedlar, “the nature of this magic is not comprehended any longer. But in the old time, and in the days which have gone out of man’s memory, Mr. Smith was Lord of this forest.”

    “Now, of Mr. Smith,” the Emperor declared, with his hands and his voice, all three, uplifted by his deep wonder, “I have never heard in any myth or legend. Yet Mr. Smith is a most marvelous divine name. It is strange and terrible. It appals. It is ruthless. It is a name which in every respect befits a divine being.”

    “Well,” the pedlar explained, “and hereabouts a not very important sort of divine being did wear this name—but not ruthlessly—a long while before any Pharaoh had reigned or bright Babylon became mighty. Wolves hunted where your fine city of Aachen now stands, highness; seven fishermen held Tyre; nor had Troy arisen in that quiet day when Mr. Smith was a little god ruling over this forest, a god friendly to all mankind, and to the light-haired daughters of mankind in particular.”

    “It is known,” said the Emperor, with that harsh curtness which befitted a good Christian, “that the lewd gods of the heathen are to-day changed into demons.”

    “That is known everywhere, highness. But Mr. Smith was not any longer a god when the Crucifixion was accomplished, for the eternal redemption of mankind, and was properly entered in the police records of Judea. It was then a great while since Mr. Smith had been famous in all prayer-books as a divine being and as the leader of the Seven Stewards of Heaven, ruling over them in his own paradise, in high Amit, under another name than the name of Smith.”

    “But what was that name?”

    The pedlar replied, reverently, “He was then called Smirt.”

    “And that superb monosyllable,” declared Charlemagne, “is a large miracle which I have encountered before to-day, although I do not recollect in what place it was.”

    “That is likely, highness: for sublime Smirt was once known in every place. But he relinquished heaven, on account of a woman. He descended into the estate of a local deity; and his epithet became Smith, a name so narrowly famous that not even the most learned Romans in the days of Augustus have dared hazard a conjecture as to the nature of his cult.”

    “Yes, yes!” said the Emperor.

    “For I, highness, I do not agree with Herbastein, that Varro cites an inscription in which Smith is joined with Pomona.”

    “Spare me,” the Emperor commanded, “all this misplaced erudition.”

    “I obey, highness, remarking only that the passage occurs nowhere in the treatise called
De lingua Latina.
So Mr. Smith became less known, and even yet less widely known, as the loud centuries marched by, without any deliberation of Mr. Smith; and one after another, a host of spruce parvenu gods ruled over the planet which All-Highest & Company had first given to sublime Smirt.”

    “In this world,” the Emperor philosophized, “all greatness must have its tumble.”

    “Yet the truly great,” said the pedlar, “will tumble gracefully. They remain always urbane. At all events, Mr. Smith had kept only this forest when the Olympians flourished. He was not known in any heaven; he was honored at utmost, here and there, by peasants and by pessimists and by poets. Strong Jahveh, when he smote down the Olympians, had not any cause to distrust Mr. Smith, the local deity of Branlon, or to covet his lean sacrifices of salt and of fruit, of hexameters and of slim maidens with pale-colored hair. For this reason, Mr. Smith was not changed, nor was his domain altered. He still kept that very little kingdom which he had chosen here in this forest after Arachne betrayed him—in his own shop, highness,—and after the shock of her blood-thirst had awakened him from his long dream of being Smirt.”

    “I have it now!” said the Emperor. “I remember that superb and quite indescribable being, because”—here Charlemagne inclined his head reverently—“because Smirt once came to my court, in a jiffy. His wit, his fancy, and the vast stores of his erudition, were limitless. Indeed, he himself told me so. And he was then looking, I can recall, for a girl named Arachne.”

    “That is probable, highness. They record that, in his long dream about his own omnipotence, Smirt was much pestered by women. And upon four of them he begot children, who were born of a dreaming god and of a woman who existed, it may be, only in the dreams of that god.”

    Charlemagne said, pondering, “But all this appears to me to be nonsense.”

    “It is quite plainly nonsense,” agreed the pedlar. “Nevertheless, it was a fact; and all facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician. So this fact forever afterward troubled Mr. Smith. It troubled him because, to a sound logician, the deduction was far too obvious, that for children, and quadruply for four children, born of such most irregular parentage, there could be no place in any world known to us.”

    “Still—” said the Emperor.

    “No, highness, but I can assure you that inference was a mere matter of logic. Not even Aristotle, in his
Constitution of Athens
and his
History of Animals,
has disputed this point.”

    “Pedlar, I would not question the correctness of Aristotle’s remarks in his
Constitution of Athens,
or in his
History of Animals,
either. Yet does Aristotle really matter at this special moment?” asked Charlemagne.

    “He does not matter in the least, highness. What truly matters is that this discrepancy very often troubled Mr. Smith, long after he had awakened from this superb dream of being Smirt, and of being made unconquerable by the keen wit and the sparkling fancy and the unlimited erudition of Smirt—to which you but now referred, highness, as having impressed you so favorably,—and had found that Smirt was but a misreading of Smith, a mere local deity.”

    “You appear to be somewhat over-deep in the confidence of Mr. Smith,” observed Charlemagne, drily. “Were his eyes changed, do you think?”

    To this, the pedlar replied, smilingly, “My eyes have not ever rested upon the eyes of Mr. Smith.”

    “That,” said Charlemagne, “I concede to be likely. At all events, it is none of my concern.”

    Then the Emperor meditated; and, with that tinge of self-centeredness which is sometimes encountered in business-like persons, the imperial thoughts appeared to stray back toward Charlemagne’s own affairs. To march forward through this forest, without any delay perilous to all Christendom, was the counsel both of religion and of common-sense, because a devout son of the Church upon his way to defend the head of the Church must necessarily be defended by Heaven against any possible assaults of magic, over and above the fact that Charlemagne had always felt wholly capable of defending himself.

    Nevertheless, he looked yet again at the eyes of this pedlar. After that, Charlemagne gave orders.

    Duke Roland, that flaxen-haired fine fighting-man, returned to Charlemagne the great Emperor. The young eyes of Roland were blue and shining like the flame of a candle; and bright armor was upon him. This Roland said:

    In the forest of Branlon I rode but a short way. I rode among oak-trees and ash-trees and thorn-trees. I came to a lordly house builded of copper. The drawbridge was down. The figured copper gate stood open.

    I entered the courtyard very warily. I found there no living creature. The stables were empty of grooms. The stables were full of echoes. The name of each horse was painted above its stall, in a blue lettering. The stalls were empty.

    Yet in the stables I perceived corn and hay. With this I fed my own horse. I tethered him, in the courtyard, with a copper chain. It was fastened to a pillar of copper.

    In the main hall of the house a fire burned cheerily. This hall was hung with bright-colored tapestries.

    They depicted the intimacy of Dame Venus with the Chevalier Adonis. I ascended the dais. It was covered with a blue cloth. I sat in a tall chair of estate. There were two such chairs. They were placed side by side. The arms of these chairs each ended with the head of a lion very handsomely carved. I waited.

    A dwarf came. His face was white as marble. He had copper-colored hair. All his clothing was of a blue color. His clothing was trimmed with white fur. The toes of his shoes curved upward. They were fastened about his ankles with a thin chain of copper. I observed him with an uneasy attentiveness.

    Me this dwarf did not heed. Silently he spread the long table before me with a white cloth. He brought loaves of white bread, sprinkled with caraway seeds. He set forth crystal flagons containing white wine. He lighted torches. He disposed them about the walls of the place, in brackets of copper. He made all things ready for supper.

    And I waited. I did not move at all. Now into the bright hall came noiselessly a young girl. She was attended by twelve serving women. These women were dressed alike, in white and in blue. Between the breasts of each woman hung a disk of engraved copper. I did not look very closely at these women. The young girl whom they attended was well known to me. So likewise was the fact known that she had been dead for a long while.

    Roland, the brave warrior, was silent. He made a little swallowing motion, saying:

    “I have striven to forget that dark quiet girl in many bedchambers, and to shut out the sound of her voice with much laughter. I have not succeeded.”

    Charlemagne nodded. He said:

    “That girl is known to each one of us, Roland of my heart. The grave hides her body; the rose-colored flesh which delighted us now delights gray worms: or it may be that some ageing and tousled-haired woman yet waddles about earth bearing the name of that all-wonderful girl libelously. In either case, we strive to forget. In either case, we do not forget. Proceed, Roland my son.”

    No one of these women looked at me (Roland continued). I did not move. They washed their hands, with old formal gestures. I could not understand these gestures. So did each one of them wash her hands, in a large embossed bowl of copper.

    Then they approached the table. Gerda sat down in the empty chair of estate. Six waiting maids sat to the right of her. Six sat to the left. At her side was the other tall chair carved with lions’ heads. In this chair I remained motionless.

    So did I sup with my betrayed dead love. The dwarf served to us white bread and white wine. We partook of both reverently. There was no sound anywhere. Nobody regarded me save only Dame Venus and the slim Assyrian knight Adonis.

    The dwarf brought toward us a harp. Then Gerda arose. She looked down at me. She smiled, with that divine mingling of tenderness and of comprehension which Gerda, which Gerda alone has revealed, oh, Gerda alone, in all my lifetime. She did not again look toward me after that one brief glancing. Instead, she made on her harp a music. This music was dim and perplexed. This music was exceedingly proud. This music spoke of much sorrow. Yet this music remained proud. So was it that I heard, as I now think, the dirge of my youth and of all that world which youth contrives out of youth’s ignorance, and makes lovely with callow fancies, and colors everywhere with the impossibly fine notions of youth.

    I would not dispraise our human life here nor the brave earth which is its theatre. I have found life very good. I praise life. It is only that a boy creates in his day-dreams a life which is better. Yes, for young people build up more aspiringly, in their valiant and absurd day-dreams, than the Eternal Father, through His wisdom, has seen fit to build anywhere in reality. A boy’s fancy creates more nobly than God creates. That is all. We foreplan in our youth a life which we do not live in our maturity, if only because every young person must design, with a high heart, the impossible.

    That, I repeat, is all. That is a truism. Ah, but that is likewise a tragedy, as we come by-and-by to acknowledge, in a strange and perturbed loneliness, when we lie awake at night, and when the slow moments of night pass by, very heavily, like dark mourners who commemorate the burial of those dead, and foolish, and frail, and most lovely notions of our youth—and yet, too, the moments pass then like dark weary-hearted fiends who are jeering at these notions.

    Now Gerda sounded the proud dirge of these same notions, so I believe; and her music troubled me. I had got much of life. It seemed not rational to lament that I had never got of life a splendor to which no man anywhere attains, except only in the day-dreams of his youthfulness. I, at least, I disliked and I loved this music which troubled me beyond reason, oh, very far beyond reason.

    I thought about my wealth. I thought about my famousness. I had served the great Emperor Charlemagne not unworthily. Some glory was behind me. Yes, and new times which had not yet come would remember to applaud Roland, telling how he did not go into battle without fetching a victory out of it; and how he never took his leisure in any king’s house but some woman of beauty, and it might be the king’s daughter or the queen’s self, fixed her love on Duke Roland.