Jurgen. A Comedy of Justice Page 14

  "And I know perfectly well who it is! It is that Ephesian hussy, and I had several times noticed her behavior. Very well, oh, very well, indeed! nevertheless, I shall have a plain word or two with her at once, and the sooner she gets out of my house the better, as I shall tell her quite frankly. And as for you, Jurgen—!"

  "But, my dear Lisa—!"

  "What do you call me? Lisa was never an epithet of mine. Why do you call me Lisa?"

  "It was a slip of the tongue, my pet, an involuntary but not unnatural association of ideas. As for the Ephesian Diana, she reminds me of an animated pine-cone, with that eruption of breasts all over her, and I can assure you of your having no particular reason to be jealous of her. It was merely of the female myths in general I spoke. Of course they all make eyes at me: I cannot well help that, and you should have anticipated as much when you selected such an attractive Prince Consort. What do these poor enamored creatures matter when to you my heart is ever faithful?"

  "It is not your heart I am worrying over, Jurgen, for I believe you have none. Yes, you have quite succeeded in worrying me to distraction, if that is any comfort to you. However, let us not talk about it. For it is now necessary, absolutely imperative, that I go into Armenia to take part in the mourning for Tammouz: people would not understand it at all if I stayed away from such important orgies. And I shall get no benefit whatever from the trip, much as I need the change, because, without speaking of that famous heart of yours, you are always up to some double-dealing, and I shall not know into what mischief you may be thrusting yourself."

  Jurgen laughed, and kissed her. "Be off, and attend to your religious duties, dear, by all means. And I promise you I will stay safe locked in the Library till you come back."

  Thus Jurgen abode among the offspring of heathen perversity, and conformed to their customs. Death ends all things for all, they contended, and life is brief: for how few years do men endure, and how quickly is the most subtle and appalling nature myth explained away by the Philologists! So the wise person, and equally the foreseeing nature myth, will take his glut of pleasure while there is yet time to take anything, and will waste none of his short lien upon desire and vigor by asking questions.

  "Oh, but by all means!" said Jurgen, and he docilely crowned himself with a rose garland, and drank his wine, and kissed his Anaïtis. Then, when the feast of the Sacæ was at full-tide, he would whisper to Anaïtis, "I will be back in a moment, darling," and she would frown fondly at him as he very quietly slipped from his ivory dining couch, and went, with the merest suspicion of a reel, into the Library. She knew that Jurgen had no intention of coming back: and she despaired of his ever taking the position in the social life of Cocaigne to which he was entitled no less by his rank as Prince Consort than by his personal abilities. For Anaïtis did not really think that, as went natural endowments, her Jurgen had much reason to envy even such a general favorite as Priapos, say, from what she knew of both.

  So it was that Jurgen honored custom. "Because these beastly nature myths may be right," said Jurgen; "and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are wrong: but still, at the same time—!"

  For Jurgen was content to dismiss no riddle with a mere "I do not know." Jurgen was no more able to give up questioning the meaning of life than could a trout relinquish swimming: indeed, he lived submerged in a flood of curiosity and doubt, as his native element. That death ended all things might very well be the case: yet if the outcome proved otherwise, how much more pleasant it would be, for everyone concerned, to have aforetime established amicable relations with the overlords of his second life, by having done whatever it was they expected of him here.

  "Yes, I feel that something is expected of me," says Jurgen: "and without knowing what it is, I am tolerably sure, somehow, that it is not an indulgence in endless pleasure. Besides, I do not think death is going to end all for me. If only I could be quite certain my encounter with King Smoit, and with that charming little Sylvia Tereu, was not a dream! As it is, plain reasoning assures me I am not indispensable to the universe: but with this reasoning, somehow, does not travel my belief. No, it is only fair to my own interests to go graveward a little more openmindedly than do these nature myths, since I lack the requisite credulity to become a free-thinking materialist. To believe that we know nothing assuredly, and cannot ever know anything assuredly, is to take too much on faith."

  And Jurgen paused to shake his sleek black head two or three times, very sagely.

  "No, I cannot believe in nothingness being the destined end of all: that would be too futile a climax to content a dramatist clever enough to have invented Jurgen. No, it is just as I said to the brown man: I cannot believe in the annihilation of Jurgen by any really thrifty overlords; so I shall see to it that Jurgen does nothing which he cannot more or less plausibly excuse, in case of supernal inquiries. That is far safer."

  Now Jurgen was shaking his head again: and he sighed.

  "For the pleasures of Cocaigne do not satisfy me. They are all well enough in their way; and I admit the truism that in seeking bed and board two heads are better than one. Yes, Anaïtis makes me an excellent wife. Nevertheless, her diversions do not satisfy me, and gallantly to make the most of life is not enough. No, it is something else that I desire: and Anaïtis does not quite understand me."

  24. Of Compromises in Cocaigne

  Thus Jurgen abode for a little over two months in Cocaigne, and complied with the customs of that country. Nothing altered in Cocaigne: but in the world wherein Jurgen was reared, he knew, it would by this time be September, with the leaves flaring gloriously, and the birds flocking southward, and the hearts of Jurgen's fellows turning to not unpleasant regrets. But in Cocaigne there was no regret and no variability, but only an interminable flow of curious pleasures, illumined by the wandering star of Venus Mechanitis.

  "Why is it, then, that I am not content?" said Jurgen. "And what thing is this which I desire? It seems to me there is some injustice being perpetrated upon Jurgen, somewhere."

  Meanwhile he lived with Anaïtis the Sun's daughter very much as he had lived with Lisa, who was daughter to a pawnbroker. Anaïtis displayed upon the whole a milder temper: in part because she could confidently look forward to several centuries more of life before being explained away by the Philologists, and so had less need than Dame Lisa to worry over temporal matters; and in part because there was less to ruin one's disposition in two months than in ten years of Jurgen's company. Anaïtis nagged and sulked for a while when her Prince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as he did very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple and that these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaïtis seemed to despair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, and she permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with only an occasional and half-hearted remonstrance.

  What puzzled Jurgen was that she did not seem to tire of him: and he would often wonder what this lovely myth, so skilled and potent in arts wherein he was the merest bungler, could find to care for in Jurgen. For now they lived together like any other humdrum married couple, and their occasional exchange of endearments was as much a matter of course as their meals, and hardly more exciting.

  "Poor dear, I believe it is simply because I am a monstrous clever fellow. She distrusts my cleverness, she very often disapproves of it, and yet she values it as queer, as a sort of curiosity. Well, but who can deny that cleverness is truly a curiosity in Cocaigne?"

  So Anaïtis petted and pampered her Prince Consort, and took such open pride in his queerness as very nearly embarrassed him sometimes. She could not understand his attitude of polite amusement toward his associates and the events which befell him, and even toward his own doings and traits. Whatever happened, Jurgen shrugged, and, delicately avoiding actual laughter, evinced amusement. Anaïtis could not understand this at all, of course, since Asian myths are remarkably destitute of humor. To Jurgen in private she protested that he ought to be ashamed of his levity: but non
e the less, she would draw him out, when among the bestial and grim nature myths, and she would glow visibly with fond pride in Jurgen's queerness.

  "She mothers me," reflected Jurgen. "Upon my word, I believe that in the end this is the only way in which females are capable of loving. And she is a dear and lovely creature, of whom I am sincerely fond. What is this thing, then, that I desire? Why do I feel life is not treating me quite justly?"

  So the summer had passed; and Anaïtis travelled a great deal, being a popular myth in every land. Her sense of duty was so strong that she endeavored to grace in person all the peculiar festivals held in her honor, and this, now the harvest season was at hand, left her with hardly a moment disengaged. Then, too, the mission of Anaïtis was to divert; and there were so many people whom she had personally to visit—so many notable ascetics who were advancing straight toward canonization, and whom her underlings were unable to divert,—that Anaïtis was compelled to pass night after night in unwholesomely comfortless surroundings, in monasteries and in the cells and caves of hermits.

  "You are wearing yourself out, my darling," Jurgen would say: "and does it not seem, after all, a game that is hardly worth the candle? I know that, for my part, before I would travel so many miles into a desert, and then climb a hundred foot pillar, just to whisper diverting notions into an anchorite's very dirty ear, I would let the gaunt rascal go to Heaven. But you associate so much with saintly persons that you have contracted their incapacity for seeing the humorous side of things. Well, you are a dear, even so. Here is a kiss for you: and do you come back to your adoring husband as soon as you conveniently can without neglecting your duty."

  "They report that this Stylites is very far gone in rectitude," said Anaïtis, absent-mindedly, as she prepared for the journey, "but I have hopes for him."

  Then Anaïtis put purple powder on her hair, and hastily got together a few beguiling devices, and went into the Thebaid. Jurgen went back to the Library, and the System of Worshipping a Girl, and the unique manuscripts of Astyanassa and Elephantis and Sotadês, and the Dionysiac Formulae, and the Chart of Postures, and the Litany of the Centre of Delight, and the Spintrian Treatises, and the Thirty-two Gratifications, and innumerable other volumes which he found instructive.

  The Library was a vaulted chamber, having its walls painted with the twelve Asan of Cyrenê; the ceiling was frescoed with the arched body of a woman, whose toes rested upon the cornice of the east wall, and whose out-stretched finger-tips touched the cornice of the western wall. The clothing of this painted woman was remarkable: and to Jurgen her face was not unfamiliar.

  "Who is that?" he inquired, of Anaïtis.

  Looking a little troubled, Anaïtis told him this was Æsred.

  "Well, I have heard her called otherwise: and I have seen her in quite other clothing."

  "You have seen Æsred!"

  "Yes, with a kitchen towel about her head, and otherwise unostentatiously appareled—but very becomingly, I can assure you!" Here Jurgen glanced sidewise at his shadow, and he cleared his throat. "Oh, and a most charming and a most estimable old lady I found this Æsred to be, I can assure you also."

  "I would prefer to know nothing about it," said Anaïtis, hastily, "I would prefer, for both our sakes, that you say no more of Æsred." Jurgen shrugged.

  Now in the Library of Cocaigne was garnered a record of all that the nature myths had invented in the way of pleasure. And here, with no companion save his queer shadow, and with Æsred arched above and bleakly regarding him, Jurgen spent most of his time, rather agreeably, in investigating and meditating upon the more curious of these recreations. The painted Asan were, in all conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anaïtis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-of forms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation which ingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the most subtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort of amusement would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaint gamut of refinements upon nature which Anaïtis and her cousins had at odd moments invented, to satiate their desire for some more suave or more strange or more sanguinary pleasure. Yet the deeper Jurgen investigated, and the longer he meditated, the more certain it seemed to him that all such employment was a peculiarly unimaginative pursuit of happiness.

  "I am willing to taste any drink once. So I must give diversion a fair trial. But I am afraid these are the games of mental childhood. Well, that reminds me I promised the children to play with them for a while before supper."

  So he came out, and presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenidês, the daughters of Anaïtis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight.

  Anaïtis and the dark potentate had parted by mutual consent. "Acheron meant well," she would say, with a forgiving sigh, "and that in the Moon's absence he occasionally diverted travellers, I do not deny. But he did not understand me."

  And Jurgen agreed that this tragedy sometimes befell even the irreproachably diverting.

  The three Eumenidês at this period were half-grown girls, whom their mother was carefully tutoring to drive guilty persons mad by the stings of conscience: and very quaint it was to see the young Furies at practise in the schoolroom, black-robed, and waving lighted torches, and crowned each with her garland of pet serpents. They became attached to Jurgen, who was always fond of children, and who had frequently regretted that Dame Lisa had borne him none.

  "It is enough to get the poor dear a name for eccentricity," he had been used to say.

  So Jurgen now made much of his step-children: and indeed he found their innocent prattle quite as intelligent, in essentials, as the talk of the full-grown nature myths who infested the palace of Anaïtis. And the four of them—Jurgen, and critical Alecto, and grave Tisiphonê, and fairy-like little Megæra,—would take long walks, and play with their dolls (though Alecto was a trifle condescending toward dolls), and romp together in the eternal evening of Cocaigne; and discuss what sort of dresses and trinkets Mother would probably bring them when she came back from Ecbatana or Lesbos, and would generally enjoy themselves.

  Rather pathetically earnest and unimaginative little lasses, Jurgen found the young Eumenidês: they inherited much of their mother's narrow-mindedness, if not their father's brooding and gloomy tendencies; but in them narrow-mindedness showed merely as amusing. And Jurgen loved them, and would often reflect what a pity it was that these dear little girls were destined when they reached maturity, to spend the rest of their lives in haunting criminals and adulterers and parricides and, generally, such persons as must inevitably tarnish the girls' outlook upon life, and lead them to see too much of the worst side of human nature.

  So Jurgen was content enough. But still he was not actually happy, not even among the endless pleasures of Cocaigne.

  "And what is this thing that I desire?" he would ask himself, again and again.

  And still he did not know: he merely felt he was not getting justice: and a dim sense of this would trouble him even while he was playing with the Eumenidês.

  25. Cantraps of the Master Philologist

  But now, as has been recorded, it was September, and Jurgen could see that Anaïtis too was worrying over something. She kept it from him as long as possible: first said it was nothing at all, then said he would know it soon enough, then wept a little over the possibility that he would probably be very glad to hear it, and eventually told him. For in becoming the consort of a nature myth connected with the Moon Jurgen had of course exposed himself to the danger of being converted into a solar legend by the Philologists, and in that event would be compelled to leave Cocaigne with the Equinox, to enter into autumnal exploits elsewhere. And Anaïtis was quite heart-broken over the prospect of losing Jurgen.

  "For I have never had such a Prince C
onsort in Cocaigne, so maddening, and so helpless, and so clever; and the girls are so fond of you, although they have not been able to get on at all with so many of their step-fathers! And I know that you are flippant and heartless, but you have quite spoiled me for other men. No, Jurgen, there is no need to argue, for I have experimented with at least a dozen lovers lately, when I was traveling, and they bored me insufferably. They had, as you put it, dear, no conversation: and you are the only young man I have found in all these ages who could talk interestingly."

  "There is a reason for that, since like you, Anaïtis, I am not so youthful as I appear."

  "I do not care a straw about appearances," wept Anaïtis, "but I know that I love you, and that you must be leaving me with the Equinox unless you can settle matters with the Master Philologist."

  "Well, my pet," says Jurgen, "the Jews got into Jericho by trying."

  He armed, and girded himself with Caliburn, drank a couple of bottles of wine, put on the shirt of Nessus over all, and then went to seek this thaumaturgist.

  Anaïtis showed him the way to an unpretentious residence, where a week's washing was drying and flapping in the side yard. Jurgen knocked boldly, and after an interval the door was opened by the Master Philologist himself.

  "You must pardon this informality," he said, blinking through his great spectacles, which had dust on them: "but time was by ill luck arrested hereabouts on a Thursday evening, and so the maid is out indefinitely. I would suggest, therefore, that the lady wait outside upon the porch. For the neighbors to see her go in would not be respectable."

  "Do you know what I have come for?" says Jurgen, blustering, and splendid in his glittering shirt and his gleaming armor. "For I warn you I am justice."

  "I think you are lying, and I am sure you are making an unnecessary noise. In any event, justice is a word, and I control all words."

  "You will discover very soon, sir, that actions speak louder than words."