Jurgen. A Comedy of Justice Read online

  Jurgen paused. The moon was risen now. These two sat together upon a bench of carved stone near the balustrade: and before them, upon the other side of the highway, were luminous valleys and tree-tops. Fleetingly Jurgen recollected the boy and girl who had once sat in this place, and had talked of all the splendid things which Jurgen was to do, and of the happy life that was to be theirs together. Then he regarded the composed and handsome woman beside him, and he considered that the money to pay her latest lover's debts had been assured with a suitable respect for appearances.

  "Come, but this is a gallant lady, who would defy the almanac," reflected Jurgen. "Even so, thirty-eight is an undeniable and somewhat autumnal figure, and I suspect young Nérac is bleeding his elderly mistress. Well, but at his age nobody has a conscience. Yes, and Madame Dorothy is handsome still; and still my pulse is playing me queer tricks, because she is near me, and my voice has not the intonation I intend, because she is near me; and still I am three-quarters in love with her. Yes, in the light of such cursed folly as even now possesses me, I have good reason to give thanks for the regained infirmities of age. Yet living seems to me a wasteful and inequitable process, for this is a poor outcome for the boy and girl that I remember. And weighing this outcome, I am tempted to weep and to talk romantically, even now."

  But he did not. For really, weeping was not requisite. Jurgen was making his fair profit out of the Countess's folly, and it was merely his duty to see that this little business transaction was managed without any scandal.

  "So there is nothing more to say," observed Jurgen, as he rose in the moonlight, "save that I shall always be delighted to serve you, madame, and I may reasonably boast that I have earned a reputation for fair dealing."

  And he thought: "In effect, since certainly as she grows older she will need yet more money for her lovers, I am offering to pimp for her." Then Jurgen shrugged. "That is one side of the affair. The other is that I transact my legitimate business,—I, who am that which the years have made of me."

  Thus it was that Jurgen quitted the Countess Dorothy, whom, as you have heard, this pawnbroker had loved in his first youth under the name of Heart's Desire; and whom in the youth that was loaned him by Mother Sereda he had loved as Queen Helen, the delight of gods and men. For Jurgen was quitting Madame Dorothy after the simplest of business transactions, which consumed only a moment, and did not actually count one way or the other.

  And after this moment which did not count, the pawnbroker resumed his journey, and so came presently to his home. He peeped through the window. And there in a snug room, with supper laid, sat Dame Lisa about some sewing, and evidently in a quite amiable frame of mind.

  Then terror smote the Jurgen who had faced sorcerers and gods and devils intrepidly. "For I forgot about the butter!"

  But immediately afterward he recollected that, now, not even what Lisa had said to him in the cave was real. Neither he nor Lisa, now, had ever been in the cave, and probably there was no longer any such place, and now there never had been any such place. It was rather confusing.

  "Ah, but I must remember carefully," said Jurgen, "that I have not seen Lisa since breakfast, this morning. Nothing whatever has happened. There has been no requirement laid upon me, after all, to do the manly thing. So I retain my wife, such as she is, poor dear! I retain my home. I retain my shop and a fair line of business. Yes, Koshchei—if it was really Koshchei—has dealt with me very justly. And probably his methods are everything they should be; certainly I cannot go so far as to say that they are wrong: but still, at the same time—!"

  Then Jurgen sighed, and entered his snug home. Thus it was in the old days.

  EXPLICIT

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  James Branch Cabell

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