The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell (the first e reader TXT) 📕

The prelate, it developed, had when he lived in Lichfield known Kennaston’s dead uncle⁠—“for whom I had the highest esteem, and whose friendship I valued most dearly.” He hoped that Kennaston would pardon the foibles of old age and overlook this trespass upon Kennaston’s time. For the prelate had, he said, really a personal interest in the only surviving relative of his dead friend.

“There is a portrait of you, sir, in my library⁠—very gorgeous, in full canonicals⁠—just as my uncle left the room,” said Kennaston, all at sea. But the prelate had begun to talk⁠—amiably, and in the most commonplace fashion conceivable⁠—of his former life in Lichfield, and of the folk who had lived there then, and to ask questions about their descendants, which Kennaston answered as he best could. The whole affair was puzzling Kennaston, for he could think of no reason why this frail ancient gentleman should have sent for a stranger, even though that stranger were the nephew of a dead friend, just that they might discuss trivialities.

So their talking veered, as it seemed, at random.⁠ ⁠…

“Yes, I was often a guest at Alcluid⁠—a very beautiful home it was in those days, famed, as I remember, for the many breeds of pigeons which your uncle amused himself by maintaining. I suppose that you also raise white pigeons, my son?”

Kennaston saw that the prelate now held a small square mirror in his left hand. “No, sir,” Kennaston answered evenly; “there were a great many about the place when it came into our possession; but we have never gone in very seriously for farming.”

“The pigeon has so many literary associations that I should have thought it would appeal to a man of letters,” the prelate continued. “I ought to have said earlier perhaps that I read Men Who Loved Alison with great interest and enjoyment. It is a notable book. Yet in dealing with the sigil of Scoteia⁠—or so at least it seemed to me⁠—you touched upon subjects which had better be left undisturbed. There are drugs, my son, which work much good in the hands of the skilled physician, but cannot be entrusted without danger to the vulgar.”

He spoke gently; yet it appeared to Kennaston a threat was voiced.

“Sir,” Kennaston began, “I must tell you that in writing of the sigil⁠—as I called it⁠—I designed to employ only such general terms as romance ordinarily accords to talismans. All I wrote⁠—I thought⁠—was sheer invention. It is true I found by accident a bit of metal, from which I derived the idea of my so-called sigil’s appearance. That bit of metal was to me then just a bit of metal; nor have I any notion, even today, as to how it came to be lying in one of my own garden-paths.”

He paused. The prelate nodded. “It is always interesting to hear whence makers of creative literature draw their material,” he stated.

“Since then, sir, by the drollest of coincidences, a famous personage has spoken to me in almost the identical words you employed this evening, as to the sigil of Scoteia. The coincidence, sir, lay less in what was said than in the apparently irrelevant allusion to white pigeons which the personage too made, and the little mirror which he too held as he spoke. Can you not see, sir,” Kennaston asked gaily, “to what wild imaginings the coincidence tempts a weaver of romance? I could find it in my heart to believe it the cream of an ironic jest that you great ones of the earth have tested me with a password, mistakenly supposing that I, also, was initiate. I am tempted to imagine some secret understanding, some hidden cooperancy, by which you strengthen or, possibly, have attained your power. Confess, sir, is not the coincidence a droll one?”

He spoke lightly, but his heart was beating fast.

“It is remarkable enough,” the prelate conceded, smiling. He asked the name of the personage whom coincidence linked with him, and being told it, chuckled. “I do not think it very odd he carried a mirror,” the prelate considered. “He lives before a mirror, and behind a megaphone. I confess⁠—mea culpa!⁠—I often find my little looking-glass a convenience, in making sure all is right before I go into the pulpit. Not a few men in public life, I believe, carry such mirrors,” he said, slowly. “But you, I take it, have no taste for public life?”

“I can assure you⁠—” Kennaston began.

“Think well, my son! Suppose, for one mad instant, that your wild imaginings were not wholly insane? suppose that you had accidentally stumbled upon enough of a certain secret to make it simpler to tell you the whole mystery? Cannot a trained romancer conceive what you might hope for then?”

Very still it was in the dark room.⁠ ⁠…

Kennaston was horribly frightened. “I can assure you, sir, that even then I would prefer my peaceful lazy life and my dreams. I have not any aptitude for action.”

“Ah, well,” the prelate estimated; “it is scarcely a churchman’s part to play advocatus mundi. Believe me, I would not tempt you from your books. And for our dreams, I have always held heretically, we are more responsible than for our actions, since it is what we are, uninfluenced, that determines our dreams.” He seemed to meditate. “I will not tempt you, therefore, to tell me the whole truth concerning that bit of metal. I suspect, quite candidly, you are keeping something back, my son. But you exercise a privilege common to all of us.”

“At least,” said Kennaston, “we will hope my poor wits may not be shaken by any more⁠—coincidences.”

“I am tolerably certain,” quoth the prelate, with an indulgent smile, “that there will be no more coincidences.”

Then he gave Kennaston his stately blessing; and Kennaston went back to his life of dreams.

There was no continuity in these dreams save that Ettarre was in each of them. A dream would usually begin with some lightheaded topsyturviness, as