Jurgen. A Comedy of Justice Read online

  The Oread said nothing at all. But she too looked annoyed, and Jurgen reflected that it was probably not the custom of oreads to be rescued from the eudæmonism of satyrs.

  So Jurgen left them; and yet deeper in the forest he found a bald-headed squat old man, with a big paunch and a flat red nose and very small bleared eyes. Now the old fellow was so helplessly drunk that he could not walk: instead, he sat upon the ground, and leaned against a tree-bole.

  "This is a very disgusting state for you to be in so early in the morning," observed Jurgen.

  "But Silenus is always drunk," the bald-headed man responded, with a dignified hiccough.

  "So here is another one of you! Well, and why are you always drunk, Silenus?"

  "Because Silenus is the wisest of the People of the Wood."

  "Ah, ah! but I apologize. For here at last is somebody with a plausible excuse for his daily employment. Now, then, Silenus, since you are so wise, come tell me, is it really the best fate for a man to be drunk always?"

  "Not at all. Drunkenness is a joy reserved for the Gods: so do men partake of it impiously, and so are they very properly punished for their audacity. For men, it is best of all never to be born; but, being born, to die very quickly."

  "Ah, yes! but failing either?"

  "The third best thing for a man is to do that which seems expected of him," replied Silenus.

  "But that is the Law of Philistia: and with Philistia, they inform me, Pseudopolis is at war."

  Silenus meditated. Jurgen had discovered an uncomfortable thing about this old fellow, and it was that his small bleared eyes did not blink nor the lids twitch at all. His eyes moved, as through magic the eyes of a painted statue might move horribly, under quite motionless red lids. Therefore it was uncomfortable when these eyes moved toward you.

  "Young fellow in the glittering shirt, I will tell you a secret: and it is that the Philistines were created after the image of Koshchei who made some things as they are. Do you think upon that! So the Philistines do that which seems expected. And the people of Leukê were created after the image of Koshchei who made yet other things as they are: therefore do the people of Leukê do that which is customary, adhering to classical tradition. Do you think upon that also! Then do you pick your side in this war, remembering that you side with stupidity either way. And when that happens which will happen, do you remember how Silenus foretold to you precisely what would happen, a long while before it happened, because Silenus was so old and so wise and so very disreputably drunk, and so very, very sleepy."

  "Yes, certainly, Silenus: but how will this war end?"

  "Dullness will conquer dullness: and it will not matter."

  "Ah, yes! but what will become, in all this fighting, of Jurgen?"

  "That will not matter either," said Silenus, comfortably. "Nobody will bother about you." And with that he closed his horrible bleared eyes and went to sleep.

  So Jurgen left the old tippler, and started to leave the forest also. "For undoubtedly all the people in Leukê are resolute to do that which is customary," reflected Jurgen, "for the unarguable reason it is their custom, and has always been their custom. And they will desist from these practises when the cat eats acorns, but not before. So it is the part of wisdom to inquire no further into the matter. For after all, these people may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are wrong." Jurgen shrugged. "But still, at the same time—!"

  Now in returning to his cabin Jurgen heard a frightful sort of yowling and screeching as of mad people.

  "Hail, daughter of various-formed Protogonus, thou that takest joy in mountains and battles and in the beating of the drum! Hail, thou deceitful saviour, mother of all gods, that comest now, pleased with long wanderings, to be propitious to us!"

  But the uproar was becoming so increasingly unpleasant that Jurgen at this point withdrew into a thicket: and thence he witnessed the passing through the Woods of a notable procession. There were features connected with this procession sufficiently unusual to cause Jurgen to vow that the desiderated moment wherein he walked unhurt from the forest would mark the termination of his last visit thereto. Then amazement tripped up the heels of terror: for now passed Mother Sereda, or, as Anaïtis had called her, Æsred. To-day, in place of a towel about her head, she wore a species of crown, shaped like a circlet of crumbling towers: she carried a large key, and her chariot was drawn by two lions. She was attended by howling persons, with shaved heads: and it was apparent that these persons had parted with possessions which Jurgen valued.

  "This is undoubtedly," said he, "a most unwholesome forest."

  Jurgen inquired about this procession, later, and from Chloris he got information which surprised him.

  "And these are the beings who I had thought were poetic ornaments of speech! But what is the old lady doing in such high company?"

  He described Mother Sereda, and Chloris told him who this was. Now Jurgen shook his sleek black head.

  "Behold another mystery! Yet after all, it is no concern of mine if the old lady elects for an additional anagram. I should be the last person to criticize her, inasmuch as to me she has been more than generous. Well, I shall preserve her friendship by the infallible recipe of keeping out of her way. Oh, but I shall certainly keep out of her way now that I have perceived what is done to the men who serve her."

  And after that Jurgen and Chloris lived very pleasantly together, though Jurgen began to find his Hamadryad a trifle unperceptive, if not actually obtuse.

  "She does not understand me, and she does not always treat my superior wisdom quite respectfully. That is unfair, but it seems to be an unavoidable feature of married life. Besides, if any woman had ever understood me she would, in self-protection, have refused to marry me. In any case, Chloris is a dear brown plump delicious partridge of a darling: and cleverness in women is, after all, a virtue misplaced."

  And Jurgen did not return into the Woods, nor did he go down into the city. Neither the People of the Field nor of the Wood, of course, ever went within city gates. "But I would think that you would like to see the fine sights of Pseudopolis," says Chloris,—"and that fine Queen of theirs," she added, almost as though she spoke without premeditation.

  "Woman dear," says Jurgen, "I do not wish to appear boastful. But in Eubonia, now! well, really some day we must return to my kingdom, and you shall inspect for yourself a dozen or two of my cities—Ziph and Eglington and Poissieux and Gazden and Bäremburg, at all events. And then you will concede with me that this little village of Pseudopolis, while well enough in its way—!" And Jurgen shrugged. "But as for saying more!"

  "Sometimes," said Chloris, "I wonder if there is any such place as your fine kingdom of Eubonia: for certainly it grows larger and more splendid every time you talk of it."

  "Now can it be," asks Jurgen, more hurt than angry, "that you suspect me of uncandid dealing and, in short, of being an impostor!"

  "Why, what does it matter? You are Jurgen," she answered, happily.

  And the man was moved as she smiled at him across the glowing queer embroidery-work at which Chloris seemed to labor interminably: he was conscious of a tenderness for her which was oddly remorseful: and it appeared to him that if he had known lovelier women he had certainly found nowhere anyone more lovable than was this plump and busy and sunny-tempered little wife of his.

  "My dear, I do not care to see Queen Helen again, and that is a fact. I am contented here, with a wife befitting my station, suited to my endowments, and infinitely excelling my deserts."

  "And do you think of that tow-headed bean-pole very often, King Jurgen?"

  "That is unfair, and you wrong me, Chloris, with these unmerited suspicions. It pains me to reflect, my dear, that you esteem the tie between us so lightly you can consider me capable of breaking it even in thought."

  "To talk of fairness is all very well, but it is no answer to a plain question."

  Jurgen looked full at her; and he laughed. "You women are so unscrupulously practic
al. My dear, I have seen Queen Helen face to face. But it is you whom I love as a man customarily loves a woman."

  "That is not saying much."

  "No: for I endeavor to speak in consonance with my importance. You forget that I have also seen Achilles."

  "But you admired Achilles! You told me so yourself."

  "I admired the perfections of Achilles, but I cordially dislike the man who possesses them. Therefore I shall keep away from both the King and Queen of Pseudopolis."

  "Yet you will not go into the Woods, either, Jurgen—"

  "Not after what I have witnessed there," said Jurgen, with an exaggerated shudder that was not very much exaggerated.

  Now Chloris laughed, and quitted her queer embroidery in order to rumple up his hair. "And you find the People of the Field so insufferably stupid, and so uninterested by your Zorobasiuses and Ptolemopiters and so on, that you keep away from them also. O foolish man of mine, you are determined to be neither fish nor beast nor poultry and nowhere will you ever consent to be happy."

  "It was not I who determined my nature, Chloris: and as for being happy, I make no complaint. Indeed, I have nothing to complain of, nowadays. So I am very well contented by my dear wife and by my manner of living in Leukê," said Jurgen, with a sigh.

  29. Concerning Horvendile's Nonsense

  It was on a bright and tranquil day in November, at the period which the People of the Field called the summer of Alcyonê, that Jurgen went down from the forest; and after skirting the moats of Pseudopolis, and avoiding a meeting with any of the town's dispiritingly glorious inhabitants, Jurgen came to the seashore.

  Chloris had suggested his doing this, in order that she could have a chance to straighten things in his cabin while she was tidying her tree for the winter, and could so make one day's work serve for two. For the dryad of an oak-tree has large responsibilities, what with the care of so many dead leaves all winter, and the acorns being blown from their places and littering up the ground everywhere, and the bark cracking until it looks positively disreputable: and Jurgen was at any such work less a help than a hindrance. So Chloris gave him a parcel of lunch and a perfunctory kiss, and told him to go down to the seashore and get inspired and make up a pretty poem about her. "And do you be back in time for an early supper, Jurgen," says she, "but not a minute before."

  Thus it befell that Jurgen reflectively ate his lunch in solitude, and regarded the Euxine. The sun was high, and the queer shadow that followed Jurgen was huddled into shapelessness.

  "This is indeed an inspiring spectacle," Jurgen reflected. "How puny seems the race of man, in contrast with this mighty sea, which now spreads before me like, as So-and-so has very strikingly observed, a something or other under such and such conditions!" Then Jurgen shrugged. "Really, now I think of it, though, there is no call for me to be suffused with the traditional emotions. It looks like a great deal of water, and like nothing else in particular. And I cannot but consider the water is behaving rather futilely."

  So he sat in drowsy contemplation of the sea. Far out a shadow would form on the water, like the shadow of a broadish plank, scudding shoreward, and lengthening and darkening as it approached. Presently it would be some hundred feet in length, and would assume a hard smooth darkness, like that of green stone: this was the under side of the wave. Then the top of it would curdle, the southern end of the wave would collapse, and with exceeding swiftness this white feathery falling would plunge and scamper and bluster northward, the full length of the wave. It would be neater and more workmanlike to have each wave tumble down as a whole. From the smacking and the splashing, what looked like boiling milk would thrust out over the brown sleek sands: and as the mess spread it would thin to a reticulated whiteness, like lace, and then to the appearance of smoke sprays clinging to the sands. Plainly the tide was coming in.

  Or perhaps it was going out. Jurgen's notions as to such phenomena were vague. But, either way, the sea was stirring up a large commotion and a rather pleasant and invigorating odor.

  And then all this would happen once more: and then it would happen yet again. It had happened a number of hundred of times since Jurgen first sat down to eat his lunch: and what was gained by it? The sea was behaving stupidly. There was no sense in this continual sloshing and spanking and scrabbling and spluttering.

  Thus Jurgen, as he nodded over the remnants of his lunch.

  "Sheer waste of energy, I am compelled to call it," said Jurgen, aloud, just as he noticed there were two other men on this long beach.

  One came from the north, one from the south, so that they met not far from where Jurgen was sitting: and by an incredible coincidence Jurgen had known both of these men in his first youth. So he hailed them, and they recognized him at once. One of these travellers was the Horvendile who had been secretary to Count Emmerick when Jurgen was a lad: and the other was Perion de la Forêt, that outlaw who had come to Bellegarde very long ago disguised as the Vicomte de Puysange. And all three of these old acquaintances had kept their youth surprisingly.

  Now Horvendile and Perion marveled at the fine shirt which Jurgen was wearing.

  "Why, you must know," he said, modestly, "that I have lately become King of Eubonia, and must dress according to my station."

  So they said they had always expected some such high honor to befall him, and then the three of them fell to talking. And Perion told how he had come through Pseudopolis, on his way to King Theodoret at Lacre Kai, and how in the market-place at Pseudopolis he had seen Queen Helen. "She is a very lovely lady," said Perion, "and I marvelled over her resemblance to Count Emmerick's fair sister, whom we all remember."

  "I noticed that at once," said Horvendile, and he smiled strangely, "when I, too, passed through the city."

  "Why, but nobody could fail to notice it," said Jurgen.

  "It is not, of course, that I consider her to be as lovely as Dame Melicent," continued Perion, "since, as I have contended in all quarters of the world, there has never lived, and will never live, any woman so beautiful as Melicent. But you gentlemen appear surprised by what seems to me a very simple statement. Your air, in fine, is one that forces me to point out it is a statement I can permit nobody to deny." And Perion's honest eyes had narrowed unpleasantly, and his sun-browned countenance was uncomfortably stern.

  "Dear sir," said Jurgen, hastily, "it was merely that it appeared to me the lady whom they call Queen Helen hereabouts is quite evidently Count Emmerick's sister Dorothy la Désirée."

  "Whereas I recognized her at once," says Horvendile, "as Count Emmerick's third sister, La Beale Ettarre."

  And now they stared at one another, for it was certain that these three sisters were not particularly alike.

  "Putting aside any question of eyesight," observes Perion, "it is indisputable that the language of both of you is distorted. For one of you says this is Madame Dorothy, and the other says this is Madame Ettarre: whereas everybody knows that this Queen Helen, whomever she may resemble, cannot possibly be anybody else save Queen Helen."

  "To you, who are always the same person," replied Jurgen, "that may sound reasonable. For my part, I am several people: and I detect no incongruity in other persons' resembling me."

  "There would be no incongruity anywhere," suggested Horvendile, "if Queen Helen were the woman whom we had loved in vain. For the woman whom when we were young we loved in vain is the one woman that we can never see quite clearly, whatever happens. So we might easily, I suppose, confuse her with some other woman."

  "But Melicent is the lady whom I have loved in vain," said Perion, "and I care nothing whatever about Queen Helen. Why should I? What do you mean now, Horvendile, by your hints that I have faltered in my constancy to Dame Melicent since I saw Queen Helen? I do not like such hints."

  "No less, it is Ettarre whom I love, and have loved not quite in vain, and have loved unfalteringly," says Horvendile, with his quiet smile: "and I am certain that it was Ettarre whom I beheld when I looked upon Queen Helen."

  "
I may confess," says Jurgen, clearing his throat, "that I have always regarded Madame Dorothy with peculiar respect and admiration. For the rest, I am married. Even so, I think that Madame Dorothy is Queen Helen."

  Then they fell to debating this mystery. And presently Perion said the one way out was to leave the matter to Queen Helen. "She at all events must know who she is. So do one of you go back into the city, and embrace her knees as is the custom of this country when one implores a favor of the King or the Queen: and do you then ask her fairly."

  "Not I," says Jurgen. "I am upon terms of some intimacy with a hamadryad just at present. I am content with my Hamadryad. And I intend never to venture into the presence of Queen Helen any more, in order to preserve my contentment."

  "Why, but I cannot go," says Perion, "because Dame Melicent has a little mole upon her left cheek. And Queen Helen's cheek is flawless. You understand, of course, that I am certain this mole immeasurably enhances the beauty of Dame Melicent," he added, loyally. "None the less, I mean to hold no further traffic with Queen Helen."

  "Now my reason for not going is this," said Horvendile:—"that if I attempted to embrace the knees of Ettarre, whom people hereabouts call Helen, she would instantly vanish. Other matters apart, I do not wish to bring any such misfortune upon the Island of Leukê."

  "But that," said Perion, "is nonsense."

  "Of course it is," said Horvendile. "That is probably why it happens."

  So none of them would go. And each of them clung, none the less, to his own opinion about Queen Helen. And presently Perion said they were wasting both time and words. Then Perion bade the two farewell, and Perion continued southward, toward Lacre Kai. And as he went he sang a song in honor of Dame Melicent, whom he celebrated as Heart o' My Heart: and the two who heard him agreed that Perion de la Forêt was probably the worst poet in the world.

  "Nevertheless, there goes a very chivalrous and worthy gentleman," said Horvendile, "intent to play out the remainder of his romance. I wonder if the Author gets much pleasure from these simple characters? At least they must be easy to handle."