Jurgen. A Comedy of Justice Read online

  And Anaïtis also had forgotten Jurgen, or else she did not recognize him in this man of forty and something: and again belief awoke in Jurgen's heart that this was the only woman whom Jurgen had really loved, as he listened to Anaïtis and to her talk of marvelous things.

  Of the lore of Thaïs she spoke, and of the schooling of Sappho, and of the secrets of Rhodopê, and of the mourning for Adonis: and the refrain of all her talking was not changed. "For we have but a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure. As thus and thus," says she. And the bright-colored pensive woman spoke with antique directness of matters that Jurgen, being no longer a scapegrace of twenty-one, found rather embarrassing.

  "Come, come!" thinks he, "but it will never do to seem provincial. I believe that I am actually blushing."

  Aloud he said: "Sweetheart, there was—why, not a half-hour since!—a youth who sought quite zealously for the over-mastering frenzies you prattle about. But, candidly, he could not find the flesh whose touch would rouse insanity. The lad had opportunities, too, let me tell you! Hah, I recall with tenderness the glitter of eyes and hair, and the gay garments, and the soft voices of those fond foolish women, even now. But he went from one pair of lips to another, with an ardor that was always half-feigned, and with protestations which were conscious echoes of some romance or other. Such escapades were pleasant enough: but they were not very serious, after all. For these things concerned his body alone: and I am more than an edifice of viands reared by my teeth. To pretend that what my body does or endures is of importance seems rather silly nowadays. I prefer to regard it as a necessary beast of burden which I maintain, at considerable expense and trouble. So I shall make no more pother about it."

  But then again Queen Anaïtis spoke of marvelous things; and he listened, fair-mindedly; for the Queen spoke now of that which was hers to share with him.

  "Well, I have heard," says Jurgen, "that you have a notable residence in Cocaigne."

  "But that is only a little country place, to which I sometimes repair in summer, in order to live rustically. No, Jurgen, you must see my palaces. In Babylon I have a palace where many abide with cords about them and burn bran for perfume, while they await that thing which is to befall them. In Armenia I have a palace surrounded by vast gardens, where only strangers have the right to enter: they there receive a hospitality that is more than gallant. In Paphos I have a palace wherein is a little pyramid of white stone, very curious to see: but still more curious is the statue in my palace at Amathus, of a bearded woman, which displays other features that women do not possess. And in Alexandria I have a palace that is tended by thirty-six exceedingly wise and sacred persons, and wherein it is always night: and there folk seek for monstrous pleasures, even at the price of instant death, and win to both of these swiftly. Everywhere my palaces stand upon high places near the sea: so they are beheld from afar by those whom I hold dearest, my beautiful broad-chested mariners, who do not fear even me, but know that in my palaces they will find notable employment. For I must tell you of what is to be encountered within these places that are mine, and of how pleasantly we pass our time there." Then she told him.

  Now he listened more attentively than ever, and his eyes were narrowed, and his lips were lax and motionless and foolish-looking, and he was deeply interested. For Anaïtis had thought of some new diversions since their last meeting: and to Jurgen, even at forty and something, this queen's voice was all a horrible and strange and lovely magic. "She really tempts very nicely, too," he reflected, with a sort of pride in her.

  Then Jurgen growled and shook himself, half angrily: and he tweaked the ear of Queen Anaïtis.

  "Sweetheart," says he, "you paint a glowing picture: but you are shrewd enough to borrow your pigments from the day-dreams of inexperience. What you prattle about is not at all as you describe it. You forget you are talking to a widely married man of varied experience. Moreover, I shudder to think of what might happen if Lisa were to walk in unexpectedly. And for the rest, all this to-do over nameless delights and unspeakable caresses and other anonymous antics seems rather naïve. My ears are beset by eloquent gray hairs which plead at closer quarters than does that fibbing little tongue of yours. And so be off with you!"

  With that Queen Anaïtis smiled very cruelly, and she said: "Farewell to you, then Jurgen, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern, for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid the world of me. I, Anaïtis, laugh, and my heart is a wave in the sunlight. For there is no power like my power, and no living thing which can withstand my power; and those who deride me, as I well know, are but the dead dry husks that a wind moves, with hissing noises, while I harvest in open sunlight. For I am the desire that uses all of a man: and it is I that am leaving you forever."

  Said Jurgen: "I could not see all this in you, not quite all this, because of a shadow that followed me. Now it is too late, and this is a sorrowful thing which is happening. I am become as a puzzled ghost who furtively observes the doings of loud-voiced ruddy persons: and I am compact of weariness and apprehension, for I no longer discern what thing is I, nor what is my desire, and I fear that I am already dead. So farewell to you, Queen Anaïtis, for this, too, is a sorrowful thing and a very unfair thing that is happening."

  Thus he cried farewell to the Sun's daughter. And all the colors of her loveliness flickered and merged into the likeness of a tall thin flame, that aspired; and then this flame was extinguished.

  47. The Vision of Helen

  And for the third time Koshchei waved his hand. Now came to Jurgen a gold-haired woman, clothed all in white. She was tall, and lovely and tender to regard: and hers was not the red and white comeliness of many ladies that were famed for beauty, but rather it had the even glow of ivory. Her nose was large and high in the bridge, her flexible mouth was not of the smallest; and yet, whatever other persons might have said, to Jurgen this woman's countenance was in all things perfect. And, beholding her, Jurgen kneeled.

  He hid his face in her white robe: and he stayed thus, without speaking, for a long while.

  "Lady of my vision," he said, and his voice broke—"there is that in you which wakes old memories. For now assuredly I believe your father was not Dom Manuel but that ardent bird which nestled very long ago in Leda's bosom. And now Troy's sons are all in Adês' keeping, in the world below; fire has consumed the walls of Troy, and the years have forgotten her tall conquerors; but still you are bringing woe on woe to hapless sufferers."

  And again his voice broke. For the world seemed cheerless, and like a house that none has lived in for a great while.

  Queen Helen, the delight of gods and men, replied nothing at all, because there was no need, inasmuch as the man who has once glimpsed her loveliness is beyond saving, and beyond the desire of being saved.

  "To-night," says Jurgen, "as once through the gray art of Phobetor, now through the will of Koshchei, it appears that you stand within arm's reach. Hah, lady, were that possible—and I know very well it is not possible, whatever my senses may report,—I am not fit to mate with your perfection. At the bottom of my heart, I no longer desire perfection. For we who are tax-payers as well as immortal souls must live by politic evasions and formulae and catchwords that fret away our lives as moths waste a garment; we fall insensibly to common-sense as to a drug; and it dulls and kills whatever in us is rebellious and fine and unreasonable; and so you will find no man of my years with whom living is not a mechanism which gnaws away time un
prompted. For within this hour I have become again a creature of use and wont; I am the lackey of prudence and half-measures; and I have put my dreams upon an allowance. Yet even now I love you more than I love books and indolence and flattery and the charitable wine which cheats me into a favorable opinion of myself. What more can an old poet say? For that reason, lady, I pray you begone, because your loveliness is a taunt which I find unendurable."

  But his voice yearned, because this was Queen Helen, the delight of gods and men, who regarded him with grave, kind eyes. She seemed to view, as one appraises the pattern of an unrolled carpet, every action of Jurgen's life: and she seemed, too, to wonder, without reproach or trouble, how men could be so foolish, and of their own accord become so miry.

  "Oh, I have failed my vision!" cries Jurgen. "I have failed, and I know very well that every man must fail: and yet my shame is no less bitter. For I am transmuted by time's handling! I shudder at the thought of living day-in and day-out with my vision! And so I will have none of you for my wife."

  Then, trembling, Jurgen raised toward his lips the hand of her who was the world's darling.

  "And so farewell to you, Queen Helen! Oh, very long ago I found your beauty mirrored in a wanton's face! and often in a woman's face I have found one or another feature wherein she resembled you, and for the sake of it have lied to that woman glibly. And all my verses, as I know now, were vain enchantments striving to evoke that hidden loveliness of which I knew by dim report alone. Oh, all my life was a foiled quest of you, Queen Helen, and an unsatiated hungering. And for a while I served my vision, honoring you with clean-handed deeds. Yes, certainly it should be graved upon my tomb, 'Queen Helen ruled this earth while it stayed worthy.' But that was very long ago.

  "And so farewell to you, Queen Helen! Your beauty has been to me as a robber that stripped my life of joy and sorrow, and I desire not ever to dream of your beauty any more. For I have been able to love nobody. And I know that it is you who have prevented this, Queen Helen, at every moment of my life since the disastrous moment when I first seemed to find your loveliness in the face of Madame Dorothy. It is the memory of your beauty, as I then saw it mirrored in the face of a jill-flirt, which has enfeebled me for such honest love as other men give women; and I envy these other men. For Jurgen has loved nothing—not even you, not even Jurgen!—quite whole-heartedly.

  "And so farewell to you, Queen Helen! Hereafter I rove no more a-questing anything; instead, I potter after hearthside comforts, and play the physician with myself, and strive painstakingly to make old bones. And no man's notion anywhere seems worth a cup of mulled wine; and for the sake of no notion would I endanger the routine which so hideously bores me. For I am transmuted by time's handling; I have become the lackey of prudence and half-measures; and it does not seem fair, but there is no help for it. So it is necessary that I now cry farewell to you, Queen Helen: for I have failed in the service of my vision, and I deny you utterly!"

  Thus he cried farewell to the Swan's daughter: and Queen Helen vanished as a bright mist passes, not departing swiftly, as had departed Queen Guenevere and Queen Anaïtis; and Jurgen was alone with the black gentleman. And to Jurgen the world seemed cheerless, and like a house that none has lived in for a great while.

  48. Candid Opinions of Dame Lisa

  "Eh, sirs!" observes Koshchei the Deathless, "but some of us are certainly hard to please." And now Jurgen was already intent to shrug off his display of emotion. "In selecting a wife, sir," submitted Jurgen, "there are all sorts of matters to be considered—"

  Then bewilderment smote him. For it occurred to Jurgen that his previous commerce with these three women was patently unknown to Koshchei. Why, Koshchei, who made all things as they are—Koshchei, no less—was now doing for Jurgen Koshchei's utmost: and that utmost amounted to getting for Jurgen what Jurgen had once, with the aid of youth and impudence, got for himself. Not even Koshchei, then, could do more for Jurgen than might be accomplished by that youth and impudence and tendency to pry into things generally which Jurgen had just relinquished as over-restless nuisances. Jurgen drew the inference, and shrugged; decidedly cleverness was not at the top. However, there was no pressing need to enlighten Koshchei, and no wisdom in attempting it.

  "—For you must understand, sir," continued Jurgen, smoothly, "that, whatever the first impulse of the moment, it was apparent to any reflective person that in the past of each of these ladies there was much to suggest inborn inaptitude for domestic life. And I am a peace-loving fellow, sir; nor do I hold with moral laxity, now that I am forty-odd, except, of course, in talk when it promotes sociability, and in verse-making wherein it is esteemed as a conventional ornament. Still, Prince, the chance I lost! I do not refer to matrimony, you conceive. But in the presence of these famous fair ones now departed from me forever, with what glowing words I ought to have spoken! upon a wondrous ladder of trophes, metaphors and recondite allusions, to what stylistic heights of Asiatic prose I ought to have ascended! and instead, I twaddled like a schoolmaster. Decidedly, Lisa is right, and I am good-for-nothing. However," Jurgen added, hopefully, "it appeared to me that when I last saw her, a year ago this evening, Lisa was somewhat less outspoken than usual."

  "Eh, sirs, but she was under a very potent spell. I found that necessary in the interest of law and order hereabouts. I, who made things as they are, am not accustomed to the excesses of practical persons who are ruthlessly bent upon reforming their associates. Indeed, it is one of the advantages of my situation that such folk do not consider things as they are, and in consequence very rarely bother me." And the black gentleman in turn shrugged. "You will pardon me, but I notice in my accounts that I am positively committed to color this year's anemones to-night, and there is a rather large planetary system to be discontinued at half-past ten. So time presses."

  "And time is inexorable. Prince, with all due respect, I fancy it is precisely this truism which you have overlooked. You produce the most charming of women, in a determined onslaught upon my fancy; but you forget you are displaying them to a man of forty-and-something."

  "And does that make so great a difference?"

  "Oh, a sad difference, Prince! For as a man gets on in life he changes in many ways. He handles sword and lance less creditably, and does not carry as heavy a staff as he once flourished. He takes less interest in conversation, and his flow of humor diminishes. He is not the tireless mathematician that he was, if only because his faith in his personal endowments slackens. He recognizes his limitations, and in consequence the unimportance of his opinions, and indeed he recognizes the probable unimportance of all fleshly matters. So he relinquishes trying to figure out things, and sceptres and candles appear to him about equivalent; and he is inclined to give up philosophical experiments, and to let things pass unplumbed. Oh, yes, it makes a difference." And Jurgen sighed. "And yet, for all that, it is a relief, sir, in a way."

  "Nevertheless," said Koshchei, "now that you have inspected the flower of womanhood, I cannot soberly believe you prefer your termagant of a wife."

  "Frankly, Prince, I also am, as usual, undecided. You may be right in all you have urged; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong; but still, at the same time—! Come now, could you not let me see my first wife for just a moment?"

  This was no sooner asked than granted; for there, sure enough, was Dame Lisa. She was no longer restricted to quiet speech by any stupendous necromancy: and uncommonly plain she looked, after the passing of those lovely ladies.

  "Aha, you rascal!" begins Dame Lisa, addressing Jurgen; "and so you thought to be rid of me! Oh, a precious lot you are! and a deal of thanks I get for my scrimping and slaving!" And she began scolding away.

  But she began, somewhat to Jurgen's astonishment, by stating that he was even worse than the Countess Dorothy. Then he recollected that, by not the most disastrous piece of luck conceivable, Dame Lisa's latest news from the outside world had been rendered by her sister, the notary's wife, a twelvemonth back.
/>   And rather unaccountably Jurgen fell to thinking of how unsubstantial seemed these curious months devoted to other women, as set against the commonplace years which he and Lisa had fretted through together; of the fine and merry girl that Lisa had been before she married him; of how well she knew his tastes in cookery and all his little preferences, and of how cleverly she humored them on those rare days when nothing had occurred to vex her; of all the buttons she had replaced, and all the socks she had darned, and of what tempests had been loosed when anyone else had had the audacity to criticize Jurgen; and of how much more unpleasant—everything considered—life was without her than with her. She was so unattractive looking, too, poor dear, that you could not but be sorry for her. And Jurgen's mood was half yearning and half penitence.

  "I think I will take her back, Prince," says Jurgen, very subdued,—"now that I am forty-and-something. For I do not know but it is as hard on her as on me."

  "My friend, do you forget the poet that you might be, even yet? No rational person would dispute that the society and amiable chat of Dame Lisa must naturally be a desideratum—"

  But Dame Lisa was always resentful of long words. "Be silent, you black scoffer, and do not allude to such disgraceful things in the presence of respectable people! For I am a decent Christian woman, I would have you understand. But everybody knows your reputation! and a very fit companion you are for that scamp yonder! and volumes could not say more!"

  Thus casually, and with comparative lenience, did Dame Lisa dispose of Koshchei, who made things as they are, for she believed him to be merely Satan. And to her husband Dame Lisa now addressed herself more particularly.

  "Jurgen, I always told you you would come to this, and now I hope you are satisfied. Jurgen, do not stand there with your mouth open, like a scared fish, when I ask you a civil question! but answer when you are spoken to! Yes, and you need not try to look so idiotically innocent, Jurgen, because I am disgusted with you. For, Jurgen, you heard perfectly well what your very suitable friend just said about me, with my own husband standing by. No—now I beg of you!—do not ask me what he said, Jurgen! I leave that to your conscience, and I prefer to talk no more about it. You know that when I am once disappointed in a person I am through with that person. So, very luckily, there is no need at all for you to pile hypocrisy on cowardice, because if my own husband has not the feelings of a man, and cannot protect me from insults and low company, I had best be going home and getting supper ready. I dare say the house is like a pig-sty: and I can see by looking at you that you have been ruining your eyes by reading in bed again. And to think of your going about in public, even among such associates, with a button off your shirt!"