The Cream of the Jest, James Branch Cabell [smart ebook reader .TXT] 📗

his legs the other way⁠—“when I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me⁠—that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No, Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter⁠—except to show how very dull we are,” he ended, with that irritating little noise that was nearly a snigger, and just missed being a cough.

And I was sorely tempted.⁠ ⁠… You see, I never liked Felix Kennaston. The man could create beauty, to outlive him; but in his own appearance he combined grossness with insignificance, and he added thereto a variety of ugly senseless little mannerisms. He could evolve interesting ideas, as to Omnipotence, the universe, art, life, religion, himself, his wife, a candlestick or a comet⁠—anything⁠—and very probably as to me; but his preferences and his limitations would conform and color all these ideas until they were precisely what he desired to believe, no more or less; and, having them, he lacked means, or courage, to voice his ideas adequately, so that to talk with him meant a dull interchange of commonplaces. Again, he could aspire toward chivalric love, that passion which sees in womankind High God made manifest in the loveliest and most perfect of His creations; but in the quest he had succeeded merely in utilizing womenfolk either as toys to play with and put by or as drudges to wait on him; yet, with all this, he could retain unshaken his faith in and his worship of that ideal woman. He could face no decision without dodging; no temptation without compromise; and he lied, as if by instinct, at the threatened approach of discomfort or of his fellows’ disapproval: yet devils, men and seraphim would conspire in vain in any effort to dissuade him from his self-elected purpose. For, though he would do no useful labor he could possibly avoid, he could grudge nothing to the perfection of his chosen art, in striving to perpetuate the best as he saw it.

In short, to me this man seemed an inadequate kickworthy creature, who had muddled away the only life he was quite certain of enjoying, in contemplation of a dream; and who had, moreover, despoiled the lives of others, too, for the dream’s sake. To him the dream alone could matter⁠—his proud assurance that life was not a blind and aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that he, this gross weak animal, could be strong and excellent and wise, and his existence a pageant of beauty and nobility. To prove this dream was based on a delusion would be no doubt an enjoyable retaliation, for Kennaston’s being so unengaging to the eye and so stupid to talk to; but it would make the dream no whit less lovely or less dear to him⁠—or to the rest of us, either.

For it occurred to me that his history was, in essentials, the history of our race, thus far. All I advanced for or against him, equally, was true of all men that have ever lived.⁠ ⁠… For it is in this inadequate flesh that each of us must serve his dream; and so, must fail in the dream’s service, and must parody that which he holds dearest. To this we seem condemned, being what we are. Thus, one and all, we play false to the dream, and it evades us, and we dwindle into responsible citizens. And yet always thereafter⁠—because of many abiding memories⁠—we know, assuredly, that the way of flesh is not a futile scurrying through dining-rooms and offices and shops and parlors, and thronged streets and restaurants, “and so to bed.”⁠ ⁠…

It was in appropriate silence, therefore, that I regarded Felix Kennaston, as a parable. The man was not merely very human; he was humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.

Colophon

The Cream of the Jest
was published in 1917 by
James Branch Cabell.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Apex Data Services, Inc.
for the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
and on digital scans available at
Google Books.

The cover page is adapted from
A Bedroom in Bernstorff Palace Near Copenhagen,
a painting completed circa 1845 by
Johan Vilhelm Gertner.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

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May 15, 2020, 10:35 p.m.
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