The Cream of the Jest James Branch Cabell (recommended ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: James Branch Cabell
Book online «The Cream of the Jest James Branch Cabell (recommended ebook reader TXT) đ». Author James Branch Cabell
Hand upon heart, my dear Mr. Grundy, is this the person to whom you despatched those letters you wrote before you were married? Your wife has those epistles safely put away somewhere, you may depend on it: and for what earthly consideration would you read them aloud to her? Some day, when one or the other of you is dead, those letters will ring true again and rouse a noble sorrow; and the survivor will be all the better for reading them. But now they only prove you were once free of uplands which you do not visit nowadays: and that common knowledge is a secret every wife must share half-guiltily with her husbandâ âeven in your happiest matrimonial venturesâ âas certainly as it is the one topic they may not ever discuss with profit.
For you are married, you and she: and you live, contentedly enough, in a foursquare world, where there is the rent and your social obligations and the childrenâs underclothing to be considered, long and long before indulgence in rattle-pate mountain-climbing. And people glibly think of you as Mr. and Mrs. Grundy now, almost as a unit: but do you really know very much about that woman whose gentle breathingâ âfor we will not crudely call it snoringâ âyou can always hear at will oâ nights? Suppose, by a wild flight of fancy, that she is no more honest with you than you are with her?
So to Kennaston his wife remained a not unfriendly mystery. They had been as demigods for a little while; and the dream had faded, to leave it matters not what memories; and they were only Mr. and Mrs. Felix Kennaston. Concerning all of us, my fellow failures in the great and hopeless adventure of matrimony, this apologue is narrated.
Yet, as I look into my own wifeâs faceâ âno more the loveliest, but still the dearest of all earthly faces, I protestâ âand as I wonder how much she really knows about me or the universe at large, and have not the least notionâ âwhy, I elect to believe that, in the ultimate, Kennaston was not dissatisfied. For all of us the dream-haze merges into the glare of common day; the dea certĂ©, whom that fled roseate light transfigured, stands confessed a simple loving woman, a creature of like flesh and limitations as our own: but who are we to mate with goddesses? It is enough that much in us which is not merely human has for once found exerciseâ âhas had its high-pitched outing, however fleetâ âand that, because of many abiding memories, we know, assuredly, the way of flesh is not a futile scurrying through dining-rooms and offices and shops and parlors, and thronged streets and restaurants, âand so to bed.â
XL Which Mr. Flaherty Does Not Quite ExplainWith the preceding preachment I wish I might end the story. For what followsâ âwhich is my own little part in the story of Felix Kennastonâ âis that discomfortable sort of anticlimax wherein the key to a mystery, by unlocking unsuspected doors, discloses only another equally perplexing riddle.
Kathleen Kennaston died in her sleep some eleven months after her husband discovered the missing half of the sigil.â ââ âŠ
âI have a sort of headache,â she said, toward nine oâclock in the evening. âI believe I will go to bed, Felix.â So she kissed him goodnight, in just that emotionless preoccupied fashion that years of living together had made familiar; and so she left him in the music-room, to smoke and read magazines. He never saw her living any more.
Kathleen stopped in the hall, to wind the clock. âDonât forget to lock the front door when you come up, Felix.â She was out of sight, but he could hear her, as well as the turning of the clock key. âI forgot to tell you I saw AdĂšle Van Orden today, at Greenbergâs. They are going down to the Beach Thursday. She told me they havenât had a cook for three days now, and she and old Mrs. Haggage have had to do all the work. She looked it, tooâ âI never saw anyone let themselves go all to pieces the way she hasâ ââ
âHowâ â? Oh, yes,â he mumbled, intent upon his reading; âit is pretty bad. Donât many of them keep their looks as you do, dearâ ââ
And that was all. He never heard his wifeâs voice any more. Kennaston read contentedly for a couple of hours, and went to bed. It was in the morning the maid found Mrs. Kennaston dead and cold. She had died in her sleep, quite peacefully, after taking two headache powders, while her husband was contentedly pursuing the thread of a magazine story through the advertising columns.â ââ âŠ
Kennaston had never spoken to her concerning the sigil. Indeed, I do not well see how he could have dared to do so, in view of her attitude in a world so opulent in insane asylums. But among her effects, hidden away as before in the press in her bathroom, Kennaston found both the pieces of metal. They were joined together now, forming a perfect circle, but with the line of their former separation yet visible.
He showed me the sigil of Scoteia, having told
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