The Cream of the Jest

"The name means nothing to you?"

"I never heard it before. But it seemed natural, somehow – just as it did when you spoke of Ole-Luk-Oie and Beatricê Cenci."

"But Ole-Luk-Oie is the lord and master of all dreams, of course. And that furtive long-dead Roman girl has often troubled my dreams. When I was a boy, you conceive, there was in my room at the first boarding-house in which I can remember dieting, a copy of the Guido portrait of Beatricê Cenci – a copy done in oils, a worthless daub, I suppose. But there was evil in the picture – a lurking devilishness, which waited patiently and alertly until I should do what that silent watcher knew I was predestined to do, and, being malevolent, wanted me to do. I knew nothing then of Beatricê Cenci, mark you, but when I came to learn her history I thought the world was all wrong about her. That woman was evil, whatever verse-makers may have fabled, I thought for a long while… To-day I believe the evil emanated from the person who painted that particular copy. I do not know who that person was, I never shall know. But the black magic of that person's work was very potent."

And Kennaston looked about him now, to find fog everywhere – impenetrable vapors which vaguely showed pearl-colored radiancies here and there, but no determinable forms of trees or of houses, or of anything save the face of Ettarre, so clearly discerned and so lovely in that strange separate cloud of roseate light.

"Ah, yes, those little magics"- it was the girl who spoke -"those futile troubling necromancies that are wrought by portraits and unfamiliar rooms and mirrors and all time-worn glittering objects – by running waters and the wind's persistency, and by lonely summer noons in forests – how inconsequently they fret upon men's heartstrings!"

"As if some very feeble force – say, a maimed elf – were trying to attract your attention? Yes, I think I understand. It is droll."

"And how droll, too, it is how quickly we communicate our thoughts – even though, if you notice, you are not really speaking, because your lips are not moving at all."

"No, they never do in dreams. One never seems, in fact, to use one's mouth – you never actually eat anything, you may also notice, in dreams, even though food is very often at hand. I suppose it is because all dream food is akin to the pomegranates of Persephone, so that if you taste it you cannot ever return again to the workaday world… But why, I wonder, are we having the same dream? – it rather savors of Morphean parsimony, don't you think, thus to make one nightmare serve for two people? Or perhaps it is the bit of metal I found this afternoon -"

And the girl nodded. "Yes, it is on account of the sigil of Scoteia. I have the other half, you know."

"What does this mean, Ettarre -?" he began; and reaching forward, was about to touch her, when the universe seemed to fold about him, just as a hand closes…

____________________

And Felix Kennaston was sitting at the writing-table in the library, with a gleaming scrap of metal before him; and, as the clock showed, it was bedtime.

"Well, it is undoubtedly quaint how dreams draw sustenance from half-forgotten happenings," he reflected; "to think of my recollecting that weird daub which used to deface my room in Fairhaven! I had forgotten Beatricê entirely. And I certainly never spoke of her to any human being, except of course to Muriel Allardyce… But I would not be at all surprised if I had involuntarily hypnotized myself, sitting here staring at this shiny piece of lead – you read of such cases. I believe I will put it away, to play with again sometime."

V

Of Publishing: With an Unlikely

Appendix

SO Kennaston preserved this bit of metal. "No fool like an old fool," his commonsense testily assured him. But Felix Kennaston's life was rather barren of interests nowadays…

He thought no more of his queer dream, for a long while. Life had gone on decorously. He had completed The Audit at Storisende, with leisured joy in the task, striving to write perfectly of beautiful happenings such as life did not afford. There is no denying that the typed manuscript seemed to Felix Kennaston – as he added the last touches, before expressing it to Dapley Pildriff – to inaugurate a new era in literature.

Kennaston was yet to learn that publishers in their business capacity have no especial concern with literature. To his bewilderment he discovered that publishers seemed sure the merits of a book had nothing to do with the advisability of printing it. Herewith is appended a specimen or two from Felix Kennaston's correspondence.