The Cream of the Jest - James Branch Cabell (life changing books to read TXT) 📗

her bathroom press, and hidden by a bottle of Harrowby’s No. 7 Dental Delight, the missing half of the sigil of Scoteia⁠—the half which Ettarre had retained. There was no doubt about it. He held it in his hand.

“Now, that,” said Felix Kennaston, aloud, “is rather curious.”

He went into the library, and lifted the little pile of unused bookplates; and presently the two pieces of metal lay united upon his wife’s dressing-table, between the manicure-set and the pincushion, forming a circle not quite three inches in diameter, just such as he had seen once upon the brow of Mother Isis, and again in the Didascalion when Ptolemy of the Fat Paunch was master of Egypt.

“So, Kathleen somehow found the other half. She has had it from the first.⁠ ⁠… But naturally I never spoke of Felix Kennaston; it was forbidden, and besides, the sigil’s crowning grace was that it enabled me to forget his existence. And the girl’s name in the printed book is Alison. And Horvendile is such an unimportant character that Kathleen, reading the tale hastily⁠—I thought she simply skimmed it!⁠—did not remember that name either; and so, did not associate the dream names in any way with my book, nor with me.⁠ ⁠… She too, then, does not know⁠—as yet.⁠ ⁠… And, for all that, Kathleen, the real Kathleen, is Ettarre⁠—‘whatever flesh she may wear as a garment!’⁠ ⁠… Or, rather, Ettarre is to Kathleen as Horvendile⁠—but am I truly that high-hearted ageless being? Eh, I do not know, for we touch mystery everywhere. I only know it is the cream of the jest that day by day, while that lean, busy sharp-eyed stranger, whose hands and lips my own hands and lips meet daily, because this contact has become a part of the day’s routine⁠—”

But he was standing before his wife’s dressing-table, and the mirror showed him a squat insignificant burgess in shirtsleeves, with grizzled untidied hair, and mild accommodating pale eyes, and an inadequate nose, with huge nostrils, and a spacious naked-looking upper-lip. That was Felix Kennaston, so far as all other people were concerned save Kathleen. He smiled; and in the act he noted that the visual result was to make Felix Kennaston appear particularly inane and sheepish. But he knew now that did not matter. Nor did it greatly matter⁠—his thoughts ran⁠—that it was never permitted any man, not even in his dreams, ever to touch the hands and lips of Ettarre.

So he left there the two pieces of metal, united at last upon his wife’s dressing-table, between the manicure-set and the pincushion, where on her return she might find them, and, finding, understand all that which he lacked words to tell.

XXXVII Considerations Toward Sunset

Then Kennaston went for a meditative walk in the abating glare of that day’s portentous sunset, wherein the tree-trunks westward showed like the black bars of a grate. It was in just such a twilight that Horvendile had left Storisende.⁠ ⁠…

And presently he came to a field which had been mowed that week. The piled hay stood in rounded heaps, suggestive to Kennaston of shaggy giant heads bursting through the soil, as in the old myth of Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth; beyond were glittering cornfields, whose tremulous green was shot with brown and sickly yellow now, and which displayed a host of tassels like ruined plumes. Autumn was at hand. And as Kennaston approached, a lark⁠—as though shot vehemently from the ground⁠—rose singing. Straight into the air it rose, and was lost in the sun’s abating brilliance; but still you could hear its singing; and then, as suddenly, the bird dropped earthward.

Kennaston snapped his fingers. “Aha, my old acquaintance!” he said, “but now I envy you no longer!” Then he walked onward, thinking.⁠ ⁠…

“What did I think of?” he said, long afterward⁠—“oh, of nothing with any real clarity. You see⁠—I touched mystery everywhere.⁠ ⁠…

“But I thought of Kathleen’s first kiss, and of the first time I came to her alone after we were married, and of our baby that was born dead.⁠ ⁠… I was happier than I had ever been in any dream.⁠ ⁠… I saw that the ties of our ordinary life here in the flesh have their own mystic strength and sanctity. I comprehended why in our highest sacrament we prefigure with holy awe, not things of the mind and spirit, but flesh and blood.⁠ ⁠… A man and his wife, barring stark severance, grow with time to be one person, you see; and it is not so much the sort of person as the indivisibility that matters with them.⁠ ⁠…

“And I thought of how in evoking that poor shadow of Ettarre which figures in my book, I had consciously written of my dear wife as I remembered her when we were young together. My vocabulary and my ink went to the making of the book’s Ettarre: but with them went Kathleen’s youth and purity and tenderness and serenity and loving-kindness toward all created things save the women I had flirted with⁠—so that she contributed more than I.⁠ ⁠…

“And I saw that the good-smelling earth about my pudgy pasty body, and my familiar home⁠—as I turned back my pudgy pasty face toward Alcluid, bathed now in the sun’s gold⁠—were lovely kindly places. Outside were kings and wars and thunderous zealots, and groaning, rattling thunderous printing-presses, too, that were turning off a book called The Tinctured Veil, whereinto had been distilled and bottled up the very best that was in Felix Kennaston; but here was just ‘a citadel of peace in the heart of the trouble.’ And⁠—well, I was satisfied. People do not think much when they are satisfied.”

But he did not walk long; for it was growing chilly, as steadily dusk deepend, in this twilight so like that in which Horvendile had left Storisende forever.

XXXVIII One Way of Elusion

Kathleen was seated at the dressing-table, arranging her hair, when Kennaston came again into her rooms. He went forward, and without speaking, laid one hand upon each shoulder.

Now for an instant