The Nightmare Had Triplets (56 page)

    “I,” he remarked, “I am a fallen god. My abjectedness I do not dispute. I observe only that there is a certain fitness in all things, and an etiquette above the hacked corpse of which mere decency is now wailing.”

    “And what,” the priest asks of him, “would that mean if it meant anything?”

    “It means, my dear gray-haired sir,” Smire replied, to the priest of Apollo, “that these newcomers upon Olympus are perhaps well enough, in their own
nouveau riche
way. I do not criticize them.”

    “Indeed,” says the priest, “but you had far better not do anything of that sort, with Zeus sitting over us, still holding a thunder-bolt in his hand.”

    “No,” Smire continued, temperately; “I say nothing whatever, as you may note with some natural surprise, about parvenus, or about the crass methods of parvenus, or about the ill breeding which all parvenus appear doomed to flaunt everywhere rather disgustingly. I pass lightly over these horrors, without even alluding to them.”

    “Now but do you indeed?” asks the priest, doubtfully.

    “Yes,” Smire assured him; “yes, I stand only upon my seniority as a divine being. So I very certainly shall not come to the temple of Phoebus Apollo.”

    “But,” the priest answered, “to deny the will of a god is blasphemy.”

    And with the respect due to every truth, of howsoever deplorable a nature, Smire admitted this fact, saying:

    “Blasphemy is involved, beyond doubt. Yes; as the most venerable of all gods hereabouts, I detect plain blasphemy in the blunt summons of your master: and he may well thank his lucky star, the Sun, for my indulgent refusal to take seriously his impudence.”

    “Tut! this is heresy,” the bland priest reminded Smire. “It is irreligion, it is the insane pride forerunning a great fall. This is schismatic, it is criminal.”

    “I agree with you,” Smire assured him. “It is even inurbane. Nevertheless, the young fellow’s deficiency, as you may observe, has aroused in me no anger. One should not expect too much of a godling, of a beginning divinity, who as yet hardly knows his way about heaven.”

    “Hush!” said the priest, now somewhat appalled.

    “I would but point out to your Phoebus Apollo,” Smire continued, “the neat principles of civility. That is a plain matter of etiquette, a plain duty which I pay meekly to my own self-respect.”

    “You had much better stop talking such dreadful dangerous matter,” the priest protested, “for the God of the Silver Bow shoots truly, without ever missing his mark.”

    “Indeed,” Smire assented, amiably, “with the proprieties thus honored, I shall forthwith become as silent as a bivalve, as mild and as sweetly flavored as an apricot.”

    —Whereafter Smire added, with his habitual superb generosity:

    “Yes, O most bland and gray-haired Flamen of Apollo. As men of the world, you and I, of course, cannot endure seeing the affair bungled. But with the proprieties thus suitably honored, I will now permit the lord god of poets to indulge in an epiphany in my library to-morrow afternoon, at, let us say, four o’clock, since it is my custom to receive literary people at that hour.”

    “Already I am here,” replied the god, sternly.

    And indeed, in the sudden but unsurprising way in which most persons enter your dreams, Phoebus Apollo now stood at Smire’s elbow. So was it that Smire found himself to be committed to an heroic but desperate duelling against the celestial forces of Olympus.

    They say in Branlon that Phoebus Apollo was young and ardent, but wholly grave. He was clothed splendidly, they relate, in a sort of large, gold-wrought bath-towel with a scarlet bordering, flung over his left shoulder; and this garment an imperceptible wind at all times kept disposed modestly, in the best style of mythological illustrations. He was crowned with entwined laurel leaves. And besides that, for one instant, a crow and a hawk were to be observed circling about his head, just as to the left side of him showed a swan and a cock, and at the right side, a wolf accompanied by a huge golden-colored grasshopper; but within yet another moment this zoological exhibit had vanished, unobtrusively. Now the two deities regarded each the other with divine eyes, which do not ever twitch or blink. And Smire greeted Phoebus Apollo with a civilness which was not unrestrained.

    “Lord god of poets,” said Smire, “as a poet, I salute you reverently. Yet, as a Master of Gods who once reigned in Amit before the Kronids were ever heard of, and who at that time was omnipotent within limits, I am asking as politely as seems warranted, What is the meaning of your feeble-minded impudence in summonsing, of all persons, me, to your two-penny temple to dance attendance upon the leisure of any Kronid?”

    “I have come,” said Phoebus Apollo, “as the ambassador of High-Seated Zeus—”

    “After summonsing me,” said Smire, “as if the God of Branlon were the defendant in some court case, or a violator of traffic laws, or, what is worse, a mere juryman!”

    “—As the ambassador,” Apollo repeated, “of the great Sire. It is decreed you must leave Carthage.”

    “Hah, Apollo! and for what reason must I leave Carthage?”

    The young god replied: “My nephew Æneas approaches. His ships will be wrecked to-morrow morning in the Tuscan sea, near the Agates, by the Sire’s orders, at about half-past eleven. The Winds like to have luncheon at twelve. So must it be brought about that by the end of this week, shipwrecked Æneas will be entering Carthage to beseech the Queen’s hospitality.”

    Smire answered: “I shall receive the impeccant Trojan, whose one great fault is his over-fondness for talking, as an old friend. In fact, he has been familiar to me ever since my second year in Latin.”

    “But for you to do that, Smire, is not possible.”

    Upon the broad brow of Smire displeasure inscribed its autograph. And Apollo remarked, with haste:

    “I mean, only in a manner of speaking. We know that all things are possible to Smire. And yet—”

    “And yet what are you stuttering about, Lord of the Silver Bow?” Smire demanded, implacably.

    “Why, to be frank with you, God of Branlon, it is just this fact—that all things are possible to Smire—which now troubles Olympus.”

    “And in what way, Apollo, can my little abilities, such as they may or may not be, have had the misfortune to annoy my successors in heaven?”

    “It is the beauty of your person, sublime Smire, and the unfailing charm of your manner which have been found obnoxious.”

    “Yet again, O far-darting Apollo, I am being blamed for qualities which I cannot help possessing. You are talking as unreasonably about my personal magnetism as did Iarbus.”

    “Nevertheless,” said the young god, fidgeting before the bland logic of Smire, “a fixed doom has been set for Æneas and Elissa. They must love each other—”

    It was a supernal decreeing which the Peripatetic Episcopalian at once waved aside with his not-ever-failing broad-mindedness.

    “Yes, yes,” replied Smire; “you refer to that brief indiscretion in a cave, to that twenty-minutes amour, in recording which Virgil has anticipated the reticence of a Pulitzer Prize winner. Yet after all, in a widow, my dear fellow, what material difference does it make? and is it worth our while to be bothering about calisthenics so popular? about games which, like checkers and dominoes, have their place in every home circle?”

    “They must love each other,” Apollo repeated; “and when Æneas deserts Elissa—”

    “Or rather Dido,” Smire interpolated, helpfully, “since it is thus that Elissa will be called more generally in the long time to come.”

    “—When he deserts her, in order to found Rome”, said Apollo, “then she must kill herself. Such is the great Sire’s decree; and in this way, on account of my nephew’s unfaith, will begin a long warring between Rome and Carthage.”

    Smire nodded. And Apollo knew the majestic pre-historic deity had turned mentally toward the unparalleled treasure-house of his information, now that Smire said,—

    “You refer, of course, O unbearded Delphicus, to the first, second, and third Punic Wars, which will rage between 268 and 146 B. C.”

    “Now, but do I?” said Apollo, doubtfully, because he was a bit troubled by Smire’s unexampled erudition as to the future.

    “Yes, beyond question, you do,” Smire assured the young god. “However, these wars are so far away from us just now that I do not see why we need bother about them, either.”

    “But, Smire,” Apollo replied, very patiently, “it is upon this long warring that all human history, for I do not know how many centuries, must pivot. It is a murdering and a plundering and a burning which must last until Carthage has been destroyed. It is a disregard of common-sense and of property values, it is a large triumphing of iniquity everywhere, such as has been decreed by the stainless wisdom of Heaven. These wars are fixed and unalterable.”

    “Oh, ah!” says Smire, pensively, “but now I begin to understand. Well, I think that Elissa will not fall in love with Æneas. And in consequence, there will be no Punic Wars, nor any such absurd history as has been decreed for mankind by the stainless wisdom of Heaven.”

    “That is clearly impossible”—the official representative of Heaven now admitted—“so long as the Queen stays infatuated with you. No woman will ever have eyes for Æneas, or for any other male person, so long as Smire remains within arm’s reach.”

    “I blush helplessly,” replied Smire, “because I cannot extract from my harried past any event with which to confute you. And what follows?”

    “It follows, Smire, that the seductiveness of your manner has got in the way of destiny. It has upset everything. It has made hash of history. It converts into an impossibility that which all-powerful Heaven has decreed to be inevitable.”

    “Then why,” Smire asks, reasonably, “does not this all-powerful Heaven obliterate Smire?”

    Apollo sighed; and he said, somewhat sourly: “Zeus would very much like to. Yet it is not permitted us, under the will of Moera, to destroy any one of the older gods outright. You ought to know as well as I know, Smire, that it is the doom of every god to perish more slowly, through a lessening in honor and through a dwindling away of his divine powers, until at long last he goes down into the dark cave of Clioth and is not ever heard of any more in these parts, but fares skulkingly toward Antan.”

    “Moreover,” said Smire, “it would be impossible, now I think of it, for your Zeus to obliterate anybody who has not yet been born. As between deities, Apollo, I may confide to you the circumstance that I shall not be born for ever so long. I have come back, in a dream, from out of an incredibly far-away time when the Olympians will be trite figures of speech and outmoded allusions. At all the Olympians the inhabitants of my time will jeer; and over derision not even any god has power.”

    It was a confiding as to which the young Olympian pondered for an instant; and his verdict on it was,—

    “But that, Smire, that appears to me to be nonsense.”

    “However, O well-tressed Smynthian, like a great deal of other nonsense, it is truth. Well, and to some extent, I can sympathize with your Zeus, since I too have been a supreme god who was omnipotent only within limits. But as Smire, it would seem, I am wholly omnipotent. Heaven has not any least power over the God of Branlon in his exile, for the sufficing reason that I have not as yet been born; nor, for that same quaint reason, can any evil ever touch me. My position is interesting. I must make the most of my position, now that all things are indeed possible to Smire.”

    Thus speaking, Smire lighted a cigarette. He inhaled, he meditated, he reached his heroic decision. And he said then:

    “No, Apollo; no, I shall remain in Carthage, as a well welcomed visitor to the bed of Elissa, and perhaps even as her legal husband. I do not think Tana would resent my having just one more wife during her absence. In any case, as the scion of old Southern families, I must treat with entire chivalry the fond gentlewoman who has trusted me, and who has given me, as the dear creatures phrase it, all. The Queen shall not find me ungrateful. In return for her not unexampled munificence, I shall make of her Carthage the pre-eminent city in the lands beyond common-sense. If your Æneas comes thither, I shall destroy him and thus prevent the foundation of Rome. It is necessary, in brief, to secure the welfare of my dear plump Elissa, that Rome should not be founded; and I must change the decreed history of mortal beings.”

    The face of bright Apollo had become bleak and rather terrible.

    “In that event, Smire, you will suffer for it.”

    “It is true,” Smire admitted, with a resigned sigh, as he blew out a leisurely widening smoke wreath, “yes, it is true that my erudition will sustain many considerable losses. I shall have mastered for no special purpose the complete lists of the Caesars of both empires, of their wives, of such of their children as reached maturity, and of the Popes and Anti-Popes, along with the dates of each birth, accession to office, and decease, and main data as to their chief paramours. All that I know about the lustrum, the Catacombs, the art treasures of the Vatican, the Tarquins, the respective merits of Jeritza and Bernhardt and Blanche Walsh in
La Tosca,
the two feasts of the Faunalia, the construction of triremes, the geese in the Capitol, the statesmanship of Rienzi, and about other allied matters, will be waste knowledge. These things will not ever have any existence. It will henceforward not even be true that in a conditional sentence the Protasis is introduced by the particle
si
or one of its compounds. The Ablative Absolute now perishes unborn; and the irregularities of the verb
esse
become a canard. In brief, all that which I know about Rome and the language of Rome and the history of Rome is destined not to be true any longer. Yet am I content to sacrifice at least part of my erudition to the welfare of Elissa, who has given me—as they say—all.”