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Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

by James Branch Cabell · English · Gutenberg #8771 · 553,360 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

Author: James Branch Cabell


        
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8771]
                Most recently updated: April 10, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JURGEN: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE ***




JURGEN

_A Comedy of Justice_



By

JAMES BRANCH CABELL

1922



   _"Of JURGEN eke they maken mencioun,
   That of an old wyf gat his youthe agoon,
   And gat himselfe a shirte as bright as fyre
   Wherein to jape, yet gat not his desire
   In any countrie ne condicioun."_






TO

BURTON RASCOE

     Before each tarradiddle,
   Uncowed by sciolists,
   Robuster persons twiddle
   Tremendously big fists.

     "Our gods are good," they tell us;
   "Nor will our gods defer
   Remission of rude fellows'
   Ability to err."

     So this, your JURGEN, travels
   Content to compromise
   Ordainments none unravels
   Explicitly ... and sighs.





      *       *       *       *       *


"Others, with better moderation, do either entertain the vulgar
history of Jurgen as a fabulous addition unto the true and authentic
story of St. Iurgenius of Poictesme, or else we conceive the literal
acception to be a misconstruction of the symbolical expression:
apprehending a veritable history, in an emblem or piece of Christian
poesy. And this emblematical construction hath been received by men
not forward to extenuate the acts of saints."

                                        --PHILIP BORSDALE.


"A forced construction is very idle. If readers of _The High
History of Jurgen_ do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory
will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is
as plain as a pikestaff. It might as well be pretended that we
cannot see Poussin's pictures without first being told the allegory,
as that the allegory aids us in understanding _Jurgen_."

                                        --E. NOEL CODMAN.


"Too urbane to advocate delusion, too hale for the bitterness of
irony, this fable of Jurgen is, as the world itself, a book wherein
each man will find what his nature enables him to see; which gives
us back each his own image; and which teaches us each the lesson
that each of us desires to learn."

                                        --JOHN FREDERICK LEWISTAM.


      *       *       *       *       *




_CONTENTS_

        A FOREWORD: WHICH ASSERTS NOTHING

      I WHY JURGEN DID THE MANLY THING

     II ASSUMPTION OF A NOTED GARMENT

    III THE GARDEN BETWEEN DAWN AND SUNRISE

     IV THE DOROTHY WHO DID NOT UNDERSTAND

      V REQUIREMENTS OF BREAD AND BUTTER

     VI SHOWING THAT SEREDA IS FEMININE

    VII OF COMPROMISES ON A WEDNESDAY

   VIII OLD TOYS AND A NEW SHADOW

     IX THE ORTHODOX RESCUE OF GUENEVERE

      X PITIFUL DISGUISES OF THRAGNAR

     XI APPEARANCE OF THE DUKE OF LOGREUS

    XII EXCURSUS OF YOLANDE'S UNDOING

   XIII PHILOSOPHY OF GOGYRVAN GAWR

    XIV PRELIMINARY TACTICS OF DUKE JURGEN

     XV OF COMPROMISES IN GLATHION

    XVI DIVERS IMBROGLIOS OF KING SMOIT

   XVII ABOUT A COCK THAT CROWED TOO SOON

  XVIII WHY MERLIN TALKED IN TWILIGHT

    XIX THE BROWN MAN WITH QUEER FEET

     XX EFFICACY OF PRAYER

    XXI HOW ANAÏTIS VOYAGED

   XXII AS TO A VEIL THEY BROKE

  XXIII SHORTCOMINGS OF PRINCE JURGEN

   XXIV OF COMPROMISES IN COCAIGNE

    XXV CANTRAPS OF THE MASTER PHILOLOGIST

   XXVI IN TIME'S HOUR-GLASS

  XXVII VEXATIOUS ESTATE OF QUEEN HELEN

 XXVIII OF COMPROMISES IN LEUKÊ

   XXIX CONCERNING HORVENDILE'S NONSENSE

    XXX ECONOMICS OF KING JURGEN

   XXXI THE FALL OF PSEUDOPOLIS

  XXXII SUNDRY DEVICES OF THE PHILISTINES

 XXXIII FAREWELL TO CHLORIS

  XXXIV HOW EMPEROR JURGEN FARED INFERNALLY

   XXXV WHAT GRANDFATHER SATAN REPORTED

  XXXVI WHY COTH WAS CONTRADICTED

 XXXVII INVENTION OF THE LOVELY VAMPIRE

XXXVIII AS TO APPLAUDED PRECEDENTS

  XXXIX OF COMPROMISES IN HELL

     XL THE ASCENSION OF POPE JURGEN

    XLI OF COMPROMISES IN HEAVEN

   XLII TWELVE THAT ARE FRETTED HOURLY

  XLIII POSTURES BEFORE A SHADOW

   XLIV IN THE MANAGER'S OFFICE

    XLV THE FAITH OF GUENEVERE

   XLVI THE DESIRE OF ANAÏTIS

  XLVII THE VISION OF HELEN

 XLVIII CANDID OPINIONS OF DAME LISA

   XLIX OF THE COMPROMISE WITH KOSHCHEI

      L THE MOMENT THAT DID NOT COUNT




A FOREWORD

_"Nescio quid certè est: et Hylax in limine latrat."_




_A Foreword: Which Asserts Nothing._


In Continental periodicals not more than a dozen articles in all
would seem to have given accounts or partial translations of the
Jurgen legends. No thorough investigation of this epos can be said
to have appeared in print, anywhere, prior to the publication, in
1913, of the monumental _Synopses of Aryan Mythology_ by Angelo
de Ruiz. It is unnecessary to observe that in this exhaustive digest
Professor de Ruiz has given (VII, p. 415 _et sequentia_) a
summary of the greater part of these legends as contained in the
collections of Verville and Bülg; and has discussed at length and
with much learning the esoteric meaning of these folk-stories and
their bearing upon questions to which the "solar theory" of myth
explanation has given rise. To his volumes, and to the pages of Mr.
Lewistam's _Key to the Popular Tales of Poictesme_, must be
referred all those who may elect to think of Jurgen as the
resplendent, journeying and procreative sun.

Equally in reading hereinafter will the judicious waive all
allegorical interpretation, if merely because the suggestions
hitherto advanced are inconveniently various. Thus Verville
finds the Nessus shirt a symbol of retribution, where Bülg,
with rather wide divergence, would have it represent the dangerous
gift of genius. Then it may be remembered that Dr. Codman says,
without any hesitancy, of Mother Sereda: "This Mother Middle is
the world generally (an obvious anagram of _Erda es_), and this
Sereda rules not merely the middle of the working-days but the
midst of everything. She is the factor of _middleness_, of
mediocrity, of an avoidance of extremes, of the eternal compromise
begotten by use and wont. She is the Mrs. Grundy of the Léshy; she is
Comstockery: and her shadow is common-sense." Yet Codman speaks with
certainly no more authority than Prote, when the latter, in his
_Origins of Fable_, declares this epos is "a parable of ... man's
vain journeying in search of that rationality and justice which his
nature craves, and discovers nowhere in the universe: and the shirt
is an emblem of this instinctive craving, as ... the shadow symbolizes
conscience. Sereda typifies a surrender to life as it is, a giving up
of man's rebellious self-centredness and selfishness: the anagram being
_se dare_."

Thus do interpretations throng and clash, and neatly equal the
commentators in number. Yet possibly each one of these unriddlings,
with no doubt a host of others, is conceivable: so that wisdom will
dwell upon none of them very seriously.

With the origin and the occult meaning of the folklore of Poictesme
this book at least is in no wise concerned: its unambitious aim has
been merely to familiarize English readers with the Jurgen epos for
the tale's sake. And this tale of old years is one which, by rare
fortune, can be given to English readers almost unabridged, in view
of the singular delicacy and pure-mindedness of the Jurgen mythos:
in all, not more than a half-dozen deletions have seemed expedient
(and have been duly indicated) in order to remove such sparse and
unimportant outcroppings of mediæval frankness as might conceivably
offend the squeamish.

Since this volume is presented simply as a story to be read for
pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and
no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left
unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological
problems perhaps involved are relinquished to those really
thoroughgoing scholars whom erudition qualifies to deal with such
topics, and tedium does not deter....

In such terms, and thus far, ran the Foreword to the first issues of
this book, whose later fortunes have made necessary the lengthening
of the Foreword with a postscript. The needed addition--this much at
least chiming with good luck--is brief. It is just that fragment
which some scholars, since the first appearance of this volume, have
asserted--upon what perfect frankness must describe as not
indisputable grounds--to be a portion of the thirty-second chapter
of the complete form of _La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_.

And in reply to what these scholars assert, discretion says nothing.
For this fragment was, of course, unknown when the High History was
first put into English, and there in consequence appears, here,
little to be won either by endorsing or denying its claims to
authenticity. Rather, does discretion prompt the appending, without
any gloss or scholia, of this fragment, which deals with

    _The Judging of Jurgen._

Now a court was held by the Philistines to decide whether or no King
Jurgen should be relegated to limbo. And when the judges were
prepared for judging, there came into the court a great tumblebug,
rolling in front of him his loved and properly housed young ones.
With the creature came pages, in black and white, bearing a sword, a
staff and a lance.

This insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror.
The bug cried to the three judges, "Now, by St. Anthony! this Jurgen
must forthwith be relegated to limbo, for he is offensive and lewd
and lascivious and indecent."

"And how can that be?" says Jurgen.

"You are offensive," the bug replied, "because this page has a sword
which I choose to say is not a sword. You are lewd because that page
has a lance which I prefer to think is not a lance. You are
lascivious because yonder page has a staff which I elect to declare
is not a staff. And finally, you are indecent for reasons of which a
description would be objectionable to me, and which therefore I must
decline to reveal to anybody."

"Well, that sounds logical," says Jurgen, "but still, at the same
time, it would be no worse for an admixture of common-sense. For you
gentlemen can see for yourselves, by considering these pages fairly
and as a whole, that these pages bear a sword and a lance and a
staff, and nothing else whatever; and you will deduce, I hope, that
all the lewdness is in the insectival mind of him who itches to be
calling these things by other names."

The judges said nothing as yet. But they that guarded Jurgen, and
all the other Philistines, stood to this side and to that side with
their eyes shut tight, and all these said: "We decline to look at
the pages fairly and as a whole, because to look might seem to imply
a doubt of what the tumblebug has decreed. Besides, as long as the
tumblebug has reasons which he declines to reveal, his reasons stay
unanswerable, and you are plainly a prurient rascal who are making
trouble for yourself."

"To the contrary," says Jurgen, "I am a poet, and I make
literature."

"But in Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for
yourself are synonyms," the tumblebug explained. "I know, for
already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers
of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until
I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and
knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I
chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of
him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and
indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into
disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect
him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he
hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was
dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to
play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected
makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to
goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been
no more free from makers of literature than are the other
countries."

"Now, but these three," cried Jurgen, "are the glory of Philistia:
and of all that Philistia has produced, it is these three alone,
whom living ye made least of, that to-day are honored wherever art
is honored, and where nobody bothers one way or the other about
Philistia."

"What is art to me and my way of living?" replied the tumblebug,
wearily. "I have no concern with art and letters and the other lewd
idols of foreign nations. I have in charge the moral welfare of my
young, whom I roll here before me, and trust with St. Anthony's aid
to raise in time to be God-fearing tumblebugs like me, delighting in
what is proper to their nature. For the rest, I have never minded
dead men being well-spoken-of. No, no, my lad: once whatever I may
do means nothing to you, and once you are really rotten, you will
find the tumblebug friendly enough. Meanwhile I am paid to protest
that living persons are offensive and lewd and lascivious and
indecent, and one must live."

Then the Philistines who stood to this side and to that side said in
indignant unison: "And we, the reputable citizenry of Philistia, are
not at all in sympathy with those who would take any protest against
the tumblebug as a justification of what they are pleased to call
art. The harm done by the tumblebug seems to us very slight, whereas
the harm done by the self-styled artist may be very great."

Jurgen now looked more attentively at this queer creature: and he
saw that the tumblebug was malodorous, certainly, but at bottom
honest and well-meaning; and this seemed to Jurgen the saddest thing
he had found among the Philistines. For the tumblebug was sincere in
his insane doings, and all Philistia honored him sincerely, so that
there was nowhere any hope for this people.

Therefore King Jurgen addressed himself, as his need was, to submit
to the strange customs of the Philistines. "Now do you judge me
fairly," cried Jurgen to his judges, "if there be any justice in
this mad country. And if there be none, do you relegate me to limbo
or to any other place, so long as in that place this tumblebug is
not omnipotent and sincere and insane."

And Jurgen waited....




*       *       *       *       *



 JURGEN

 ... _amara lento temperet risu_




1.

Why Jurgen Did the Manly Thing


It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, saying: In the old
days lived a pawnbroker named Jurgen; but what his wife called him
was very often much worse than that. She was a high-spirited woman,
with no especial gift for silence. Her name, they say, was Adelais,
but people by ordinary called her Dame Lisa.

They tell, also, that in the old days, after putting up the shop-windows
for the night, Jurgen was passing the Cistercian Abbey, on his way home:
and one of the monks had tripped over a stone in the roadway. He was
cursing the devil who had placed it there.

"Fie, brother!" says Jurgen, "and have not the devils enough to bear
as it is?"

"I never held with Origen," replied the monk; "and besides, it hurt
my great-toe confoundedly."

"None the less," observes Jurgen, "it does not behoove God-fearing
persons to speak with disrespect of the divinely appointed Prince of
Darkness. To your further confusion, consider this monarch's
industry! day and night you may detect him toiling at the task
Heaven set him. That is a thing can be said of few communicants and
of no monks. Think, too, of his fine artistry, as evidenced in all
the perilous and lovely snares of this world, which it is your
business to combat, and mine to lend money upon. Why, but for him we
would both be vocationless! Then, too, consider his philanthropy!
and deliberate how insufferable would be our case if you and I, and
all our fellow parishioners, were to-day hobnobbing with other
beasts in the Garden which we pretend to desiderate on Sundays! To
arise with swine and lie down with the hyena?--oh, intolerable!"

Thus he ran on, devising reasons for not thinking too harshly of the
Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had
composed, in the shop when business was slack.

"I consider that to be stuff and nonsense," was the monk's glose.

"No doubt your notion is sensible," observed the pawnbroker: "but
mine is the prettier."

Then Jurgen passed the Cistercian Abbey, and was approaching
Bellegarde, when he met a black gentleman, who saluted him and said:

"Thanks, Jurgen, for your good word."

"Who are you, and why do you thank me?" asks Jurgen.

"My name is no great matter. But you have a kind heart, Jurgen. May
your life be free from care!"

"Save us from hurt and harm, friend, but I am already married."

"Eh, sirs, and a fine clever poet like you!"

"Yet it is a long while now since I was a practising poet."

"Why, to be sure! You have the artistic temperament, which is not
exactly suited to the restrictions of domestic life. Then I suppose
your wife has her own personal opinion about poetry, Jurgen."

"Indeed, sir, her opinion would not bear repetition, for I am sure
you are unaccustomed to such language."

"This is very sad. I am afraid your wife does not quite understand
you, Jurgen."

"Sir," says Jurgen, astounded, "do you read people's inmost
thoughts?"

The black gentleman seemed much dejected. He pursed his lips, and
fell to counting upon his fingers: as they moved his sharp nails
glittered like flame-points.

"Now but this is a very deplorable thing," says the black gentleman,
"to have befallen the first person I have found ready to speak a
kind word for evil. And in all these centuries, too! Dear me, this
is a most regrettable instance of mismanagement! No matter, Jurgen,
the morning is brighter than the evening. How I will reward you, to
be sure!"

So Jurgen thanked the simple old creature politely. And when Jurgen
reached home his wife was nowhere to be seen. He looked on all sides
and questioned everyone, but to no avail. Dame Lisa had vanished in
the midst of getting supper ready--suddenly, completely and
inexplicably, just as (in Jurgen's figure) a windstorm passes and
leaves behind it a tranquillity which seems, by contrast, uncanny.
Nothing could explain the mystery, short of magic: and Jurgen on a
sudden recollected the black gentleman's queer promise. Jurgen
crossed himself.

"How unjustly now," says Jurgen, "do some people get an ill name for
gratitude! And now do I perceive how wise I am, always to speak
pleasantly of everybody, in this world of tale-bearers."

Then Jurgen prepared his own supper, went to bed, and slept soundly.

"I have implicit confidence," says he, "in Lisa. I have particular
confidence in her ability to take care of herself in any
surroundings."

That was all very well: but time passed, and presently it began to
be rumored that Dame Lisa walked on Morven. Her brother, who was a
grocer and a member of the town-council, went thither to see about
this report. And sure enough, there was Jurgen's wife walking in the
twilight and muttering incessantly.

"Fie, sister!" says the town-councillor, "this is very unseemly
conduct for a married woman, and a thing likely to be talked about."

"Follow me!" replied Dame Lisa. And the town-councillor followed her
a little way in the dusk, but when she came to Amneran Heath and
still went onward, he knew better than to follow.

Next evening the elder sister of Dame Lisa went to Morven. This
sister had married a notary, and was a shrewd woman. In consequence,
she took with her this evening a long wand of peeled willow-wood.
And there was Jurgen's wife walking in the twilight and muttering
incessantly.

"Fie, sister!" says the notary's wife, who was a shrewd woman, "and
do you not know that all this while Jurgen does his own sewing, and
is once more making eyes at Countess Dorothy?"

Dame Lisa shuddered; but she only said, "Follow me!"

And the notary's wife followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the
heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A
lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his
tongue: but the notary's wife struck thrice with her wand, and the
silent beast left them. And Dame Lisa passed silently into the cave,
and her sister turned and went home to her children, weeping.

So the next evening Jurgen himself came to Morven, because all his
wife's family assured him this was the manly thing to do. Jurgen
left the shop in charge of Urien Villemarche, who was a highly
efficient clerk. Jurgen followed his wife across Amneran Heath until
they reached the cave. Jurgen would willingly have been elsewhere.

For the hound squatted upon his haunches, and seemed to grin at
Jurgen; and there were other creatures abroad, that flew low in the
twilight, keeping close to the ground like owls; but they were
larger than owls and were more discomforting. And, moreover, all
this was just after sunset upon Walburga's Eve, when almost anything
is rather more than likely to happen.

So Jurgen said, a little peevishly: "Lisa, my dear, if you go into
the cave I will have to follow you, because it is the manly thing to
do. And you know how easily I take cold."

The voice of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously
changed voice. "There is a cross about your neck. You must throw
that away."

Jurgen was wearing such a cross, through motives of sentiment,
because it had once belonged to his dead mother. But now, to
pleasure his wife, he removed the trinket, and hung it on a barberry
bush; and with the reflection that this was likely to prove a
deplorable business, he followed Dame Lisa into the cave.




2.

Assumption of a Noted Garment


The tale tells that all was dark there, and Jurgen could see no one.
But the cave stretched straight forward, and downward, and at the
far end was a glow of light. Jurgen went on and on, and so came
presently to a centaur: and this surprised him not a little, because
Jurgen knew that centaurs were imaginary creatures.

Certainly they were curious to look at: for here was the body of a
fine bay horse, and rising from its shoulders, the sun-burnt body of
a young fellow who regarded Jurgen with grave and not unfriendly
eyes. The Centaur was lying beside a fire of cedar and juniper wood:
near him was a platter containing a liquid with which he was
anointing his hoofs. This stuff, as the Centaur rubbed it in with
his fingers, turned the appearance of his hoofs to gold.

"Hail, friend," says Jurgen, "if you be the work of God."

"Your protasis is not good Greek," observed the Centaur, "because in
Hellas we did not make such reservations. Besides, it is not so much
my origin as my destination which concerns you."

"Well, friend, and whither are you going?"

"To the garden between dawn and sunrise, Jurgen."

"Surely, now, but that is a fine name for a garden! and it is a
place I would take joy to be seeing."

"Up upon my back, Jurgen, and I will take you thither," says the
Centaur, and heaved to his feet. Then said the Centaur, when the
pawnbroker hesitated: "Because, as you must understand, there is no
other way. For this garden does not exist, and never did exist, in
what men humorously called real life; so that of course only
imaginary creatures such as I can enter it."

"That sounds very reasonable," Jurgen estimated: "but as it happens,
I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by
a devil, poor fellow!"

And Jurgen began to explain to the Centaur what had befallen.

The Centaur laughed. "It may be for that reason I am here. There is,
in any event, only one remedy in this matter. Above all devils--and
above all gods, they tell me, but certainly above all centaurs--is
the power of Koshchei the Deathless, who made things as they are."

"It is not always wholesome," Jurgen submitted, "to speak of
Koshchei. It seems especially undesirable in a dark place like
this."

"None the less, I suspect it is to him you must go for justice."

"I would prefer not doing that," said Jurgen, with unaffected
candor.

"You have my sympathy: but there is no question of preference where
Koshchei is concerned. Do you think, for example, that I am frowzing
in this underground place by my own choice? and knew your name by
accident?"

Jurgen was frightened, a little. "Well, well! but it is usually the
deuce and all, this doing of the manly thing. How, then, can I come
to Koshchei?"

"Roundabout," says the Centaur. "There is never any other way."

"And is the road to this garden roundabout?"

"Oh, very much so, inasmuch as it circumvents both destiny and
common-sense."

"Needs must, then," says Jurgen: "at all events, I am willing to
taste any drink once."

"You will be chilled, though, traveling as you are. For you and I
are going a queer way, in search of justice, over the grave of a
dream and through the malice of time. So you had best put on this
shirt above your other clothing."

"Indeed it is a fine snug shining garment, with curious figures on
it. I accept such raiment gladly. And whom shall I be thanking for
his kindness, now?"

"My name," said the Centaur, "is Nessus."

"Well, then, friend Nessus, I am at your service."

And in a trice Jurgen was on the Centaur's back, and the two of them
had somehow come out of the cave, and were crossing Amneran Heath.
So they passed into a wooded place, where the light of sunset yet
lingered, rather unaccountably. Now the Centaur went westward. And
now about the pawnbroker's shoulders and upon his breast and over
his lean arms glittered like a rainbow the many-colored shirt of
Nessus.

For a while they went through the woods, which were composed of big
trees standing a goodish distance from one another, with the
Centaur's gilded hoofs rustling and sinking in a thick carpet of
dead leaves, all gray and brown, in level stretches that were
unbroken by any undergrowth. And then they came to a white roadway
that extended due west, and so were done with the woods. Now
happened an incredible thing in which Jurgen would never have
believed had he not seen it with his own eyes: for now the Centaur
went so fast that he gained a little by a little upon the sun, thus
causing it to rise in the west a little by a little; and these two
sped westward in the glory of a departed sunset. The sun fell full
in Jurgen's face as he rode straight toward the west, so that he
blinked and closed his eyes, and looked first toward this side, then
the other. Thus it was that the country about him, and the persons
they were passing, were seen by him in quick bright flashes, like
pictures suddenly transmuted into other pictures; and all his
memories of this shining highway were, in consequence, always
confused and incoherent.

He wondered that there seemed to be so many young women along the
road to the garden. Here was a slim girl in white teasing a great
brown and yellow dog that leaped about her clumsily; here a girl sat
in the branches of a twisted and gnarled tree, and back of her was a
broad muddied river, copper-colored in the sun; and here shone the
fair head of a tall girl on horseback, who seemed to wait for
someone: in fine, the girls along the way were numberless, and
Jurgen thought he recollected one or two of them.

But the Centaur went so swiftly that Jurgen could not be sure.




3.

The Garden between Dawn and Sunrise


Thus it was that Jurgen and the Centaur came to the garden between
dawn and sunrise, entering this place in a fashion which it is not
convenient to record. But as they passed over the bridge three fled
before them, screaming. And when the life had been trampled out of
the small furry bodies which these three had misused, there was none
to oppose the Centaur's entry into the garden between dawn and
sunrise.

This was a wonderful garden: yet nothing therein was strange.
Instead, it seemed that everything hereabouts was heart-breakingly
familiar and very dear to Jurgen. For he had come to a broad lawn
which slanted northward to a well-remembered brook: and
multitudinous maples and locust-trees stood here and there,
irregularly, and were being played with very lazily by an irresolute
west wind, so that foliage seemed to toss and ripple everywhere like
green spray: but autumn was at hand, for the locust-trees were
dropping a Danaë's shower of small round yellow leaves. Around the
garden was an unforgotten circle of blue hills. And this was a place
of lucent twilight, unlit by either sun or stars, and with no
shadows anywhere in the diffused faint radiancy that revealed this
garden, which is not visible to any man except in the brief interval
between dawn and sunrise.

"Why, but it is Count Emmerick's garden at Storisende," says Jurgen,
"where I used to be having such fine times when I was a lad."

"I will wager," said Nessus, "that you did not use to walk alone in
this garden."

"Well, no; there was a girl."

"Just so," assented Nessus. "It is a local by-law: and here are
those who comply with it."

For now had come toward them, walking together in the dawn, a
handsome boy and girl. And the girl was incredibly beautiful,
because everybody in the garden saw her with the vision of the boy
who was with her. "I am Rudolph," said this boy, "and she is Anne."

"And are you happy here?" asked Jurgen.

"Oh, yes, sir, we are tolerably happy: but Anne's father is very
rich, and my mother is poor, so that we cannot be quite happy until
I have gone into foreign lands and come back with a great many lakhs
of rupees and pieces of eight."

"And what will you do with all this money, Rudolph?"

"My duty, sir, as I see it. But I inherit defective eyesight."

"God speed to you, Rudolph!" said Jurgen, "for many others are in
your plight."

Then came to Jurgen and the Centaur another boy with the small
blue-eyed person in whom he took delight. And this fat and indolent
looking boy informed them that he and the girl who was with him were
walking in the glaze of the red mustard jar, which Jurgen thought
was gibberish: and the fat boy said that he and the girl had decided
never to grow any older, which Jurgen said was excellent good sense
if only they could manage it.

"Oh, I can manage that," said this fat boy, reflectively, "if only I
do not find the managing of it uncomfortable."

Jurgen for a moment regarded him, and then gravely shook hands.

"I feel for you," said Jurgen, "for I perceive that you, too, are a
monstrous clever fellow: so life will get the best of you."

"But is not cleverness the main thing, sir?"

"Time will show you, my lad," says Jurgen, a little sorrowfully.
"And God speed to you, for many others are in your plight."

And a host of boys and girls did Jurgen see in the garden. And all
the faces that Jurgen saw were young and glad and very lovely and
quite heart-breakingly confident, as young persons beyond numbering
came toward Jurgen and passed him there, in the first glow of dawn:
so they all went exulting in the glory of their youth, and
foreknowing life to be a puny antagonist from whom one might take
very easily anything which one desired. And all passed in
couples--"as though they came from the Ark," said Jurgen. But the
Centaur said they followed a precedent which was far older than the
Ark.

"For in this garden," said the Centaur, "each man that ever lived
has sojourned for a little while, with no company save his
illusions. I must tell you again that in this garden are encountered
none but imaginary creatures. And stalwart persons take their hour
of recreation here, and go hence unaccompanied, to become aldermen
and respected merchants and bishops, and to be admired as captains
upon prancing horses, or even as kings upon tall thrones; each in
his station thinking not at all of the garden ever any more. But now
and then come timid persons, Jurgen, who fear to leave this garden
without an escort: so these must need go hence with one or another
imaginary creature, to guide them about alleys and by-paths, because
imaginary creatures find little nourishment in the public highways,
and shun them. Thus must these timid persons skulk about obscurely
with their diffident and skittish guides, and they do not ever
venture willingly into the thronged places where men get horses and
build thrones."

"And what becomes of these timid persons, Centaur?"

"Why, sometimes they spoil paper, Jurgen, and sometimes they spoil
human lives."

"Then are these accursed persons," Jurgen considered.

"You should know best," replied the Centaur.

"Oh, very probably," said Jurgen. "Meanwhile here is one who walks
alone in this garden, and I wonder to see the local by-laws thus
violated."

Now Nessus looked at Jurgen for a while without speaking: and in the
eyes of the Centaur was so much of comprehension and compassion that
it troubled Jurgen. For somehow it made Jurgen fidget and consider
this an unpleasantly personal way of looking at anybody.

"Yes, certainly," said the Centaur, "this woman walks alone. But
there is no help for her loneliness, since the lad who loved this
woman is dead."

"Nessus, I am willing to be reasonably sorry about it. Still, is
there any need of pulling quite such a portentously long face? After
all, a great many other persons have died, off and on: and for
anything I can say to the contrary, this particular young fellow may
have been no especial loss to anybody."

Again the Centaur said, "You should know best."




4.

The Dorothy Who Did Not Understand


For now had come to Jurgen and the Centaur a gold-haired woman,
clothed all in white, and walking alone. 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. Perhaps this was because he never saw her as she
was. For certainly the color of her eyes stayed a matter never
revealed to him: gray, blue or green, there was no saying: they
varied as does the sea; but always these eyes were lovely and
friendly and perturbing.

Jurgen remembered that: for Jurgen saw this was Count Emmerick's
second sister, Dorothy la Désirée, whom Jurgen very long ago (a many
years before he met Dame Lisa and set up in business as a
pawnbroker) had hymned in innumerable verses as Heart's Desire.

"And this is the only woman whom I ever loved," Jurgen remembered,
upon a sudden. For people cannot always be thinking of these
matters.

So he saluted her, with such deference as is due to a countess from
a tradesman, and yet with unforgotten tremors waking in his staid
body. But the strangest was yet to be seen, for he noted now that
this was not a handsome woman in middle life but a young girl.

"I do not understand," he said, aloud: "for you are Dorothy. And yet
it seems to me that you are not the Countess Dorothy who is Heitman
Michael's wife."

And the girl tossed her fair head, with that careless lovely gesture
which the Countess had forgotten. "Heitman Michael is well enough,
for a nobleman, and my brother is at me day and night to marry the
man: and certainly Heitman Michael's wife will go in satin and
diamonds at half the courts of Christendom, with many lackeys to
attend her. But I am not to be thus purchased."

"So you told a boy that I remember, very long ago. Yet you married
Heitman Michael, for all that, and in the teeth of a number of other
fine declarations."

"Oh, no, not I," said this Dorothy, wondering. "I never married
anybody. And Heitman Michael has never married anybody, either, old
as he is. For he is twenty-eight, and looks every day of it! But who
are you, friend, that have such curious notions about me?"

"That question I will answer, just as though it were put reasonably.
For surely you perceive I am Jurgen."

"I never knew but one Jurgen. And he is a young man, barely come of
age--" Then as she paused in speech, whatever was the matter upon
which this girl now meditated, her cheeks were tenderly colored by
the thought of it, and in her knowledge of this thing her eyes took
infinite joy.

And Jurgen understood. He had come back somehow to the Dorothy whom
he had loved: but departed, and past overtaking by the fleet hoofs
of centaurs, was the boy who had once loved this Dorothy, and who
had rhymed of her as his Heart's Desire: and in the garden there was
of this boy no trace. Instead, the girl was talking to a staid and
paunchy pawnbroker, of forty-and-something.

So Jurgen shrugged, and looked toward the Centaur: but Nessus had
discreetly wandered away from them, in search of four-leafed
clovers. Now the east had grown brighter, and its crimson began to
be colored with gold.

"Yes, I have heard of this other Jurgen," says the pawnbroker. "Oh,
Madame Dorothy, but it was he that loved you!"

"No more than I loved him. Through a whole summer have I loved
Jurgen."

And the knowledge that this girl spoke a wondrous truth was now to
Jurgen a joy that was keen as pain. And he stood motionless for a
while, scowling and biting his lips.

"I wonder how long the poor devil loved you! He also loved for a
whole summer, it may be. And yet again, it may be that he loved you
all his life. For twenty years and for more than twenty years I have
debated the matter: and I am as well informed as when I started."

"But, friend, you talk in riddles."

"Is not that customary when age talks with youth? For I am an old
fellow, in my forties: and you, as I know now, are near
eighteen,--or rather, four months short of being eighteen, for it is
August. Nay, more, it is the August of a year I had not looked ever
to see again; and again Dom Manuel reigns over us, that man of iron
whom I saw die so horribly. All this seems very improbable."

Then Jurgen meditated for a while. He shrugged.

"Well, and what could anybody expect me to do about it? Somehow it
has befallen that I, who am but the shadow of what I was, now walk
among shadows, and we converse with the thin intonations of dead
persons. For, Madame Dorothy, you who are not yet eighteen, in this
same garden there was once a boy who loved a girl, with such love as
it puzzles me to think of now. I believe that she loved him. Yes,
certainly it is a cordial to the tired and battered heart which
nowadays pumps blood for me, to think that for a little while, for a
whole summer, these two were as brave and comely and clean a pair of
sweethearts as the world has known."

Thus Jurgen spoke. But his thought was that this was a girl whose
equal for loveliness and delight was not to be found between two
oceans. Long and long ago that doubtfulness of himself which was
closer to him than his skin had fretted Jurgen into believing the
Dorothy he had loved was but a piece of his imaginings. But
certainly this girl was real. And sweet she was, and innocent she
was, and light of heart and feet, beyond the reach of any man's
inventiveness. No, Jurgen had not invented her; and it strangely
contented him to know as much.

"Tell me your story, sir," says she, "for I love all romances."

"Ah, my dear child, but I cannot tell you very well of just what
happened. As I look back, there is a blinding glory of green woods
and lawns and moonlit nights and dance music and unreasonable
laughter. I remember her hair and eyes, and the curving and the feel
of her red mouth, and once when I was bolder than ordinary--But that
is hardly worth raking up at this late day. Well, I see these things
in memory as plainly as I now seem to see your face: but I can
recollect hardly anything she said. Perhaps, now I think of it, she
was not very intelligent, and said nothing worth remembering. But
the boy loved her, and was happy, because her lips and heart were
his, and he, as the saying is, had plucked a diamond from the
world's ring. True, she was a count's daughter and the sister of a
count: but in those days the boy quite firmly intended to become a
duke or an emperor or something of that sort, so the transient
discrepancy did not worry them."

"I know. Why, Jurgen is going to be a duke, too," says she, very
proudly, "though he did think, a great while ago, before he knew me,
of being a cardinal, on account of the robes. But cardinals are not
allowed to marry, you see--And I am forgetting your story, too! What
happened then?"

"They parted in September--with what vows it hardly matters now--and
the boy went into Gâtinais, to win his spurs under the old Vidame de
Soyecourt. And presently--oh, a good while before Christmas!--came
the news that Dorothy la Désirée had married rich Heitman Michael."

"But that is what I am called! And as you know, there is a Heitman
Michael who is always plaguing me. Is that not strange! for you tell
me all this happened a great while ago."

"Indeed, the story is very old, and old it was when Methuselah was
teething. There is no older and more common story anywhere. As the
sequel, it would be heroic to tell you this boy's life was ruined.
But I do not think it was. Instead, he had learned all of a sudden
that which at twenty-one is heady knowledge. That was the hour which
taught him sorrow and rage, and sneering, too, for a redemption. Oh,
it was armor that hour brought him, and a humor to use it, because
no woman now could hurt him very seriously. No, never any more!"

"Ah, the poor boy!" she said, divinely tender, and smiling as a
goddess smiles, not quite in mirth.

"Well, women, as he knew by experience now, were the pleasantest of
playfellows. So he began to play. Rampaging through the world he
went in the pride of his youth and in the armor of his hurt. And
songs he made for the pleasure of kings, and sword-play he made for
the pleasure of men, and a whispering he made for the pleasure of
women, in places where renown was, and where he trod boldly, giving
pleasure to everybody, in those fine days. But the whispering, and
all that followed the whispering, was his best game, and the game he
played for the longest while, with many brightly colored playmates
who took the game more seriously than he did. And their faith in the
game's importance, and in him and his high-sounding nonsense, he
very often found amusing: and in their other chattels too he took
his natural pleasure. Then, when he had played sufficiently, he held
a consultation with divers waning appetites; and he married the
handsome daughter of an estimable pawnbroker in a fair line of
business. And he lived with his wife very much as two people
customarily live together. So, all in all, I would not say his life
was ruined."

"Why, then, it was," said Dorothy. She stirred uneasily, with an
impatient sigh; and you saw that she was vaguely puzzled. "Oh, but
somehow I think you are a very horrible old man: and you seem doubly
horrible in that glittering queer garment you are wearing."

"No woman ever praised a woman's handiwork, and each of you is
particularly severe upon her own. But you are interrupting the
saga."

"I do not see"--and those large bright eyes of which the color was
so indeterminable and so dear to Jurgen, seemed even larger
now--"but I do not see how there could well be any more."

"Still, human hearts survive the benediction of the priest, as you may
perceive any day. This man, at least, inherited his father-in-law's
business, and found it, quite as he had anticipated, the fittest of
vocations for a cashiered poet. And so, I suppose, he was content. Ah,
yes; but after a while Heitman Michael returned from foreign parts,
along with his lackeys, and plate, and chest upon chest of merchandise,
and his fine horses, and his wife. And he who had been her lover could
see her now, after so many years, whenever he liked. She was a handsome
stranger. That was all. She was rather stupid. She was nothing
remarkable, one way or another. This respectable pawnbroker saw that
quite plainly: day by day he writhed under the knowledge. Because, as
I must tell you, he could not retain composure in her presence, even
now. No, he was never able to do that."

The girl somewhat condensed her brows over this information. "You
mean that he still loved her. Why, but of course!"

"My child," says Jurgen, now with a reproving forefinger, "you are
an incurable romanticist. The man disliked her and despised her. At
any event, he assured himself that he did. Well, even so, this
handsome stupid stranger held his eyes, and muddled his thoughts,
and put errors into his accounts: and when he touched her hand he
did not sleep that night as he was used to sleep. Thus he saw her,
day after day. And they whispered that this handsome and stupid
stranger had a liking for young men who aided her artfully to
deceive her husband: but she never showed any such favor to the
respectable pawnbroker. For youth had gone out of him, and it seemed
that nothing in particular happened. Well, that was his saga. About
her I do not know. And I shall never know! But certainly she got the
name of deceiving Heitman Michael with two young men, or with five
young men it might be, but never with a respectable pawnbroker."

"I think that is an exceedingly cynical and stupid story," observed
the girl. "And so I shall be off to look for Jurgen. For he makes
love very amusingly," says Dorothy, with the sweetest, loveliest
meditative smile that ever was lost to heaven.

And a madness came upon Jurgen, there in the garden between dawn and
sunrise, and a disbelief in such injustice as now seemed incredible.

"No, Heart's Desire," he cried, "I will not let you go. For you are
dear and pure and faithful, and all my evil dream, wherein you were
a wanton and be-fooled me, was not true. Surely, mine was a dream
that can never be true so long as there is any justice upon earth.
Why, there is no imaginable God who would permit a boy to be robbed
of that which in my evil dream was taken from me!"

"And still I cannot understand your talking, about this dream of
yours--!"

"Why, it seemed to me I had lost the most of myself; and there was
left only a brain which played with ideas, and a body that went
delicately down pleasant ways. And I could not believe as my fellows
believed, nor could I love them, nor could I detect anything in
aught they said or did save their exceeding folly: for I had lost
their cordial common faith in the importance of what use they made
of half-hours and months and years; and because a jill-flirt had
opened my eyes so that they saw too much, I had lost faith in the
importance of my own actions, too. There was a little time of which
the passing might be made endurable; beyond gaped unpredictable
darkness: and that was all there was of certainty anywhere. Now tell
me, Heart's Desire, but was not that a foolish dream? For these
things never happened. Why, it would not be fair if these things
ever happened!"

And the girl's eyes were wide and puzzled and a little frightened.
"I do not understand what you are saying: and there is that about
you which troubles me unspeakably. For you call me by the name which
none but Jurgen used, and it seems to me that you are Jurgen; and
yet you are not Jurgen."

"But I am truly Jurgen. And look you, I have done what never any man
has done before! For I have won back to that first love whom every
man must lose, no matter whom he marries. I have come back again,
passing very swiftly over the grave of a dream and through the
malice of time, to my Heart's Desire! And how strange it seems that
I did not know this thing was inevitable!"

"Still, friend, I do not understand you."

"Why, but I yawned and fretted in preparation for some great and
beautiful adventure which was to befall me by and by, and dazedly I
toiled forward. Whereas behind me all the while was the garden
between dawn and sunrise, and therein you awaited me! Now assuredly,
the life of every man is a quaintly builded tale, in which the right
and proper ending comes first. Thereafter time runs forward, not as
schoolmen fable in a straight line, but in a vast closed curve,
returning to the place of its starting. And it is by a dim
foreknowledge of this, by some faint prescience of justice and
reparation being given them by and by, that men have heart to live.
For I know now that I have always known this thing. What else was
living good for unless it brought me back to you?"

But the girl shook her small glittering head, very sadly. "I do not
understand you, and I fear you. For you talk foolishness and in your
face I see the face of Jurgen as one might see the face of a dead
man drowned in muddy water."

"Yet am I truly Jurgen, and, as it seems to me, for the first time
since we were parted. For I am strong and admirable--even I, who
sneered and played so long, because I thought myself a thing of
no worth at all. That which has been since you and I were young
together is as a mist that passes: and I am strong and admirable,
and all my being is one vast hunger for you, my dearest, and I will
not let you go, for you, and you alone, are my Heart's Desire."

Now the girl was looking at him very steadily, with a small puzzled
frown, and with her vivid young soft lips a little parted. And all
her tender loveliness was glorified by the light of a sky that had
turned to dusty palpitating gold.

"Ah, but you say that you are strong and admirable: and I can only
marvel at such talking. For I see that which all men see."

And then Dorothy showed him the little mirror which was attached to
the long chain of turquoise matrix about her neck: and Jurgen
studied the frightened foolish aged face that he found in the
mirror.

Thus drearily did sanity return to Jurgen: and his flare of passion
died, and the fever and storm and the impetuous whirl of things was
ended, and the man was very weary. And in the silence he heard the
piping cry of a bird that seemed to seek for what it could not find.

"Well, I am answered," said the pawnbroker: "and yet I know that
this is not the final answer. Dearer than any hope of heaven was
that moment when awed surmises first awoke as to the new strange
loveliness which I had seen in the face of Dorothy. It was then I
noted the new faint flush suffusing her face from chin to brow so
often as my eyes encountered and found new lights in the shining
eyes which were no longer entirely frank in meeting mine. Well, let
that be, for I do not love Heitman Michael's wife.

"It is a grief to remember how we followed love, and found his
service lovely. It is bitter to recall the sweetness of those vows
which proclaimed her mine eternally,--vows that were broken in their
making by prolonged and unforgotten kisses. We used to laugh at
Heitman Michael then; we used to laugh at everything. Thus for a
while, for a whole summer, we were as brave and comely and clean a
pair of sweethearts as the world has known. But let that be, for I
do not love Heitman Michael's wife.

"Our love was fair but short-lived. There is none that may revive
him since the small feet of Dorothy trod out this small love's life.
Yet when this life of ours too is over--this parsimonious life which
can allow us no more love for anybody,--must we not win back,
somehow, to that faith we vowed against eternity? and be content
again, in some fair-colored realm? Assuredly I think this thing will
happen. Well, but let that be, for I do not love Heitman Michael's
wife."

"Why, this is excellent hearing," observed Dorothy, "because I see
that you are converting your sorrow into the raw stuff of verses. So
I shall be off to look for Jurgen, since he makes love quite
otherwise and far more amusingly."

And again, whatever was the matter upon which this girl now
meditated, her cheeks were tenderly colored by the thought of it,
and in her knowledge of this thing her eyes took infinite joy.

Thus it was for a moment only: for she left Jurgen now, with the
friendliest light waving of her hand; and so passed from him, not
thinking of this old fellow any longer, as he could see, even in the
instant she turned from him. And she went toward the dawn, in search
of that young Jurgen whom she, who was perfect in all things, had
loved, though only for a little while, not undeservedly.




5.

Requirements of Bread and Butter


"Nessus," says Jurgen, "and am I so changed? For that Dorothy whom I
loved in youth did not know me."

"Good and evil keep very exact accounts," replied the Centaur, "and
the face of every man is their ledger. Meanwhile the sun rises, it
is already another workday: and when the shadows of those two who
come to take possession fall full upon the garden, I warn you, there
will be astounding changes brought about by the requirements of
bread and butter. You have not time to revive old memories by
chatting with the others to whom you babbled aforetime in this
garden."

"Ah, Centaur, in the garden between dawn and sunrise there was never
any other save Dorothy la Désirée."

The Centaur shrugged. "It may be you forget; it is certain that you
underestimate the local population. Some of the transient visitors
you have seen, and in addition hereabouts dwell the year round all
manner of imaginary creatures. The fairies live just southward, and
the gnomes too. To your right is the realm of the Valkyries: the
Amazons and the Cynocephali are their allies: all three of these
nations are continually at loggerheads with their neighbors, the
Baba-Yagas, whom Morfei cooks for, and whose monarch is Oh, a person
very dangerous to name. Northward dwell the Lepracauns and the Men
of Hunger, whose king is Clobhair. My people, who are ruled by
Chiron, live even further to the north. The Sphinx pastures on
yonder mountain; and now the Chimæra is old and generally derided,
they say that Cerberus visits the Sphinx at twilight, although I was
never the person to disseminate scandal--"

"Centaur," said Jurgen, "and what is Dorothy doing here?"

"Why, all the women that any man has ever loved live here," replied
the Centaur, "for very obvious reasons."

"That is a hard saying, friend."

Nessus tapped with his forefinger upon the back of Jurgen's hand.
"Worm's-meat! this is the destined food, do what you will, of small
white worms. This by and by will be a struggling pale corruption,
like seething milk. That too is a hard saying, Jurgen. But it is a
true saying."

"And was that Dorothy whom I loved in youth an imaginary creature?"

"My poor Jurgen, you who were once a poet! she was your masterpiece.
For there was only a shallow, stupid and airy, high-nosed and
light-haired miss, with no remarkable good looks,--and consider what
your ingenuity made from such poor material! You should be proud of
yourself."

"No, Centaur, I cannot very well be proud of my folly: yet I do not
regret it. I have been befooled by a bright shadow of my own
raising, you tell me, and I concede it to be probable. No less, I
served a lovely shadow; and my heart will keep the memory of that
loveliness until life ends, in a world where other men follow
pantingly after shadows which are not even pretty."

"There is something in that, Jurgen: there is also something in an
old tale we used to tell in Thessaly, about a fox and certain
grapes."

"Well, but look you, Nessus, there is an emperor that reigns now in
Constantinople and occasionally does business with me. Yes, and I
could tell you tales of by what shifts he came to the throne--"

"Men's hands are by ordinary soiled in climbing," quoth the Centaur.

"And 'Jurgen,' this emperor says to me, not many months ago, as he
sat in his palace, crowned and dreary and trying to cheat me out of
my fair profit on some emeralds,--'Jurgen, I cannot sleep of nights,
because of that fool Alexius, who comes into my room with staring
eyes and the bowstring still about his neck. And my Varangians must
be in league with that silly ghost, because I constantly order them
to keep Alexius out of my bedchamber, and they do not obey me,
Jurgen. To be King of the East is not to the purpose, Jurgen, when
one must submit to such vexations.' Yes, it was Cæsar Pharamond
himself said this to me: and I deduce the shadow of a crown has led
him into an ugly pickle, for all that he is the mightiest monarch in
the world. And I would not change with Cæsar Pharamond, not I who am
a respectable pawnbroker, with my home in fee and my bit of tilled
land. Well, this is a queer world, to be sure: and this garden is
visited by no stranger things than pop into a man's mind sometimes,
without his knowing how."

"Ah, but you must understand that the garden is speedily to be
remodeled. Yonder you may observe the two whose requirements are to
rid the place of all fantastic unremunerative notions; and who will
develop the natural resources of this garden according to generally
approved methods."

And from afar Jurgen could see two figures coming out of the east,
so tall that their heads rose above the encircling hills and
glistened in the rays of a sun which was not yet visible. One was a
white pasty-looking giant, with a crusty expression: he walked with
the aid of a cane. The other was of a pale yellow color: his face
was oily, and he rode on a vast cow that was called Ædhumla.

"Make way there, brother, with your staff of life," says the yellow
giant, "for there is much to do hereabouts."

"Ay, brother, this place must be altered a deal before it meets with
our requirements," the other grumbled. "May I be toasted if I know
where to begin!"

Then as the giants turned dull and harsh faces toward the garden,
the sun came above the circle of blue hills, so that the mingled
shadows of these two giants fell across the garden. For an instant
Jurgen saw the place oppressed by that attenuated mile-long shadow,
as in heraldry you may see a black bar painted sheer across some
brightly emblazoned shield. Then the radiancy of everything twitched
and vanished, as a bubble bursts.

And Jurgen was standing in the midst of a field, very neatly plowed,
but with nothing as yet growing in it. And the Centaur was with him
still, it seemed, for there were the creature's hoofs, but all the
gold had been washed or rubbed away from them in traveling with
Jurgen.

"See, Nessus!" Jurgen cried, "the garden is made desolate. Oh,
Nessus, was it fair that so much loveliness should be thus wasted!"

"Nay," said the Centaur, "nay!" Long and wailingly he whinneyed,
"Nay!"

And when Jurgen raised his eyes he saw that his companion was not a
centaur, but only a strayed riding-horse.

"Were you the animal, then," says Jurgen, "and was it a quite
ordinary animal, that conveyed me to the garden between dawn and
sunrise?" And Jurgen laughed disconsolately. "At all events, you
have clothed me in a curious fine shirt. And, now I look, your
bridle is marked with a coronet. So I will return you to the castle
at Bellegarde, and it may be that Heitman Michael will reward me."

Then Jurgen mounted this horse and rode away from the plowed field
wherein nothing grew as yet. As they left the furrows they came to a
signboard with writing on it, in a peculiar red and yellow
lettering.

Jurgen paused to decipher this.

"Read me!" was written on the signboard: "read me, and judge if you
understand! So you stopped in your journey because I called,
scenting something unusual, something droll. Thus, although I am
nothing, and even less, there is no one that sees me but lingers
here. Stranger, I am a law of the universe. Stranger, render the law
what is due the law!"

Jurgen felt cheated. "A very foolish signboard, indeed! for how can
it be 'a law of the universe', when there is no meaning to it!" says
Jurgen. "Why, for any law to be meaningless would not be fair."




6.

Showing that Sereda Is Feminine


Then, having snapped his fingers at that foolish signboard, Jurgen
would have turned easterly, toward Bellegarde: but his horse
resisted. The pawnbroker decided to accept this as an omen.

"Forward, then!" he said, "in the name of Koshchei." And thereafter
Jurgen permitted the horse to choose its own way.

Thus Jurgen came through a forest, wherein he saw many things not
salutary to notice, to a great stone house like a prison, and he
sought shelter there. But he could find nobody about the place,
until he came to a large hall, newly swept. This was a depressing
apartment, in its chill neat emptiness, for it was unfurnished save
for a bare deal table, upon which lay a yardstick and a pair of
scales. Above this table hung a wicker cage, containing a blue bird,
and another wicker cage containing three white pigeons. And in this
hall a woman, no longer young, dressed all in blue, and wearing a
white towel by way of head-dress was assorting curiously colored
cloths.

She had very bright eyes, with wrinkled lids; and now as she looked
up at Jurgen her shrunk jaws quivered.

"Ah," says she, "I have a visitor. Good day to you, in your
glittering shirt. It is a garment I seem to recognize."

"Good day, grandmother! I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to
have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow! Now, having lost my
way, I have come to pass the night under your roof."

"Very good: but few come seeking Mother Sereda of their own accord."

Then Jurgen knew with whom he talked: and inwardly he was perturbed,
for all the Léshy are unreliable in their dealings.

So when he spoke it was very civilly. "And what do you do here,
grandmother?"

"I bleach. In time I shall bleach that garment you are wearing. For
I take the color out of all things. Thus you see these stuffs here,
as they are now. Clotho spun the glowing threads, and Lachesis wove
them, as you observe, in curious patterns, very marvelous to see:
but when I am done with these stuffs there will be no more color or
beauty or strangeness anywhere apparent than in so many dishclouts."

"Now I perceive," says Jurgen, "that your power and dominion is more
great than any other power which is in the world."

He made a song of this, in praise of the Léshy and their Days, but
more especially in praise of the might of Mother Sereda and of the
ruins that have fallen on Wednesday. To Chetverg and Utornik and
Subbota he gave their due. Pyatinka and Nedelka also did Jurgen
commend for such demolishments as have enregistered their names in
the calendar of saints, no less. Ah, but there was none like Mother
Sereda: hers was the centre of that power which is the Léshy's. The
others did but nibble at temporal things, like furtive mice: she
devastated, like a sandstorm, so that there were many dustheaps
where Mother Sereda had passed, but nothing else.

And so on, and so on. The song was no masterpiece, and would not be
bettered by repetition. But it was all untrammeled eulogy, and the
old woman beat time to it with her lean hands: and her shrunk jaws
quivered, and she nodded her white-wrapped head this way and that
way, with a rolling motion, and on her thin lips was a very proud
and foolish smile.

"That is a good song," says she; "oh, yes, an excellent song! But
you report nothing of my sister Pandelis who controls the day of the
Moon."

"Monday!" says Jurgen: "yes, I neglected Monday, perhaps because she
is the oldest of you, but in part because of the exigencies of my
rhyme scheme. We must let Pandelis go unhymned. How can I remember
everything when I consider the might of Sereda?"

"Why, but," says Mother Sereda, "Pandelis may not like it, and she
may take holiday from her washing some day to have a word with you.
However, I repeat, that is an excellent song. And in return for your
praise of me, I will tell you that, if your wife has been carried
off by a devil, your affair is one which Koshchei alone can remedy.
Assuredly, I think it is to him you must go for justice."

"But how may I come to him, grandmother?"

"Oh, as to that, it does not matter at all which road you follow.
All highways, as the saying is, lead roundabout to Koshchei. The one
thing needful is not to stand still. This much I will tell you also
for your song's sake, because that was an excellent song, and nobody
ever made a song in praise of me before to-day."

Now Jurgen wondered to see what a simple old creature was this
Mother Sereda, who sat before him shaking and grinning and frail as
a dead leaf, with her head wrapped in a common kitchen-towel, and
whose power was so enormous.

"To think of it," Jurgen reflected, "that the world I inhabit is
ordered by beings who are not one-tenth so clever as I am! I have
often suspected as much, and it is decidedly unfair. Now let me see
if I cannot make something out of being such a monstrous clever
fellow."

Jurgen said aloud: "I do not wonder that no practising poet ever
presumed to make a song of you. You are too majestical. You frighten
these rhymesters, who feel themselves to be unworthy of so great a
theme. So it remained for you to be appreciated by a pawnbroker,
since it is we who handle and observe the treasures of this world
after you have handled them."

"Do you think so?" says she, more pleased than ever. "Now, may be
that was the way of it. But I wonder that you who are so fine a poet
should ever have become a pawnbroker."

"Well, and indeed, Mother Sereda, your wonder seems to me another
wonder: for I can think of no profession better suited to a retired
poet. Why, there is the variety of company! for high and low and
even the genteel are pressed sometimes for money: then the plowman
slouches into my shop, and the duke sends for me privately. So the
people I know, and the bits of their lives I pop into, give me a
deal to romance about."

"Ah, yes, indeed," says Mother Sereda, wisely, "that well may be the
case. But I do not hold with romance, myself."

"Moreover, sitting in my shop, I wait there quiet-like while tribute
comes to me from the ends of earth: everything which men and women
have valued anywhere comes sooner or later to me: and jewels and
fine knickknacks that were the pride of queens they bring me, and
wedding rings, and the baby's cradle with his little tooth marks on
the rim of it, and silver coffin-handles, or it may be an old
frying-pan, they bring me, but all comes to Jurgen. So that just to
sit there in my dark shop quiet-like, and wonder about the history
of my belongings and how they were made mine, is poetry, and is the
deep and high and ancient thinking of a god who is dozing among what
time has left of a dead world, if you understand me, Mother Sereda."

"I understand: oho, I understand that which pertains to gods, for a
sufficient reason."

"And then another thing, you do not need any turn for business:
people are glad to get whatever you choose to offer, for they would
not come otherwise. So you get the shining and rough-edged coins
that you can feel the proud king's head on, with his laurel-wreath
like millet seed under your fingers; and you get the flat and
greenish coins that are smeared with the titles and the chins and
hooked noses of emperors whom nobody remembers or cares about any
longer: all just by waiting there quiet-like, and making a favor of
it to let customers give you their belongings for a third of what
they are worth. And that is easy labor, even for a poet."

"I understand: I understand all labor."

"And people treat you a deal more civilly than any real need is,
because they are ashamed of trafficking with you at all: I dispute
if a poet could get such civility shown him in any other profession.
And finally, there is the long idleness between business interviews,
with nothing to do save sit there quiet-like and think about the
queerness of things in general: and that is always rare employment
for a poet, even without the tatters of so many lives and homes
heaped up about him like spillikins. So that I would say in all,
Mother Sereda, there is certainly no profession better suited to an
old poet than the profession of pawnbroking."

"Certainly, there may be something in what you tell me," observes
Mother Sereda. "I know what the Little Gods are, and I know what
work is, but I do not think about these other matters, nor about
anything else. I bleach."

"Ah, and a great deal more I could be saying, too, godmother, but
for the fear of wearying you. Nor would I have run on at all about
my private affairs were it not that we two are so close related. And
kith makes kind, as people say."

"But how can you and I be kin?"

"Why, heyday, and was I not born upon a Wednesday? That makes you my
godmother, does it not?"

"I do not know, dearie, I am sure. Nobody ever cared to claim kin
with Mother Sereda before this," says she, pathetically.

"There can be no doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt.
Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds
the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably
notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against
Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider
it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against
Sævius Nicanor?--ah, what indeed?" demanded Jurgen.

And he wondered if there might not have been perchance some such
persons somewhere, after all. Their names, in any event, sounded
very plausible to Jurgen.

"Ah, dearie, I was never one for learning. It may be as you say."

"You say 'it may be', godmother. That embarrasses me, rather,
because I was about to ask for my christening gift, which in the
press of other matters you overlooked some forty years back. You
will readily conceive that your negligence, however unintentional,
might possibly give rise to unkindly criticism: and so I felt I
ought to mention it, in common fairness to you."

"As for that, dearie, ask what you will within the limits of my
power. For mine are all the sapphires and turquoises and whatever
else in this dusty world is blue; and mine likewise are all the
Wednesdays that have ever been or ever will be: and any one of these
will I freely give you in return for your fine speeches and your
tender heart."

"Ah, but, godmother, would it be quite just for you to accord me so
much more than is granted to other persons?"

"Why, no: but what have I to do with justice? I bleach. Come now,
then, do you make a choice! for I can assure you that my sapphires
are of the first water, and that many of my oncoming Wednesdays will
be well worth seeing."

"No, godmother, I never greatly cared for jewelry: and the future is
but dressing and undressing, and shaving, and eating, and computing
percentage, and so on; the future does not interest me now. So I
shall modestly content myself with a second-hand Wednesday, with one
that you have used and have no further need of: and it will be a
Wednesday in the August of such and such a year."

Mother Sereda agreed to this. "But there are certain rules to be
observed," says she, "for one must have system."

As she spoke, she undid the towel about her head, and she took a
blue comb from her white hair: and she showed Jurgen what was
engraved on the comb. It frightened Jurgen, a little: but he nodded
assent.

"First, though," says Mother Sereda, "here is the blue bird. Would
you not rather have that, dearie, than your Wednesday? Most people
would."

"Ah, but, godmother," he replied, "I am Jurgen. No, it is not the
blue bird I desire."

So Mother Sereda took from the wall the wicker cage containing the
three white pigeons: and going before him, with small hunched shoulders,
and shuffling her feet along the flagstones, she led the way into a
courtyard, where, sure enough, they found a tethered he-goat. Of a
dark blue color this beast was, and his eyes were wiser than the eyes
of a beast.

Then Jurgen set about that which Mother Sereda said was necessary.




7.

Of Compromises on a Wednesday


So it was that, riding upon a horse whose bridle was marked with a
coronet, the pawnbroker returned to a place, and to a moment, which
he remembered. It was rather queer to be a fine young fellow again,
and to foresee all that was to happen for the next twenty years.

As it chanced, the first person he encountered was his mother Azra,
whom Coth had loved very greatly but not long. And Jurgen talked
with Azra of what clothes he would be likely to need in Gâtinais,
and of how often he would write to her. She disparaged the new shirt
he was wearing, as was to be expected, since Azra had always
preferred to select her son's clothing rather than trust to Jurgen's
taste. His new horse she admitted to be a handsome animal; and only
hoped he had not stolen it from anybody who would get him into
trouble. For Azra, it must be recorded, had never any confidence in
her son; and was the only woman, Jurgen felt, who really understood
him.

And now as his beautiful young mother impartially petted and snapped
at him, poor Jurgen thought of that very real dissension and
severance which in the oncoming years was to arise between them; and
of how she would die without his knowing of her death for two whole
months; and of how his life thereafter would be changed, somehow,
and the world would become an unstable place in which you could no
longer put cordial faith. And he foreknew all the remorse he was to
shrug away, after the squandering of so much pride and love. But
these things were not yet: and besides, these things were
inevitable.

"And yet that these things should be inevitable is decidedly not
fair," said Jurgen.

So it was with all the persons he encountered. The people whom he
loved when at his best as a fine young fellow were so very soon, and
through petty causes, to become nothing to him, and he himself was
to be converted into a commonplace tradesman. And living seemed to
Jurgen a wasteful and inequitable process.

Then Jurgen left the home of his youth, and rode toward Bellegarde,
and tethered his horse upon the heath, and went into the castle.
Thus Jurgen came to Dorothy. She was lovely and dear, and yet, by
some odd turn, not quite so lovely and dear as the Dorothy he had
seen in the garden between dawn and sunrise. And Dorothy, like
everybody else, praised Jurgen's wonderful new shirt.

"It is designed for such festivals," said Jurgen, modestly--"a
little notion of my own. A bit extreme, some persons might consider
it, but there is no pleasing everybody. And I like a trifle of
color."

For there was a masque that night at the castle of Bellegarde: and
wildly droll and sad it was to Jurgen to remember what was to befall
so many of the participants.

Jurgen had not forgotten this Wednesday, this ancient Wednesday upon
which Messire de Montors had brought the Confraternity of St. Médard
from Brunbelois, to enact a masque of The Birth of Hercules, as the
vagabonds were now doing, to hilarious applause. Jurgen remembered
it was the day before Bellegarde discovered that Count Emmerick's
guest, the Vicomte de Puysange, was in reality the notorious outlaw,
Perion de la Forêt. Well, yonder the yet undetected impostor was
talking very earnestly with Dame Melicent: and Jurgen knew all that
was in store for this pair of lovers.

Meanwhile, as Jurgen reflected, the real Vicomte de Puysange was at
this moment lying in a delirium, yonder at Benoit's: to-morrow the
true Vicomte would be recognized, and within the year the Vicomte
would have married Félise de Soyecourt, and later Jurgen would meet
her, in the orchard; and Jurgen knew what was to happen then also.

And Messire de Montors was watching Dame Melicent, sidewise, while
he joked with little Ettarre, who was this night permitted to stay
up later than usual, in honor of the masque: and Jurgen knew that
this young bishop was to become Pope of Rome, no less; and that the
child he joked with was to become the woman for possession of whom
Guiron des Rocques and the surly-looking small boy yonder, Maugis
d'Aigremont, would contend with each other until the country
hereabouts had been devastated, and the castle wherein Jurgen now
was had been besieged, and this part of it burned. And wildly droll
and sad it was to Jurgen thus to remember all that was going to
happen to these persons, and to all the other persons who were
frolicking in the shadow of their doom and laughing at this trivial
masque.

For here--with so much of ruin and failure impending, and with
sorrow prepared so soon to smite a many of these revellers in ways
foreknown to Jurgen; and with death resistlessly approaching so
soon to make an end of almost all this company in some unlovely
fashion that Jurgen foreknew exactly,--here laughter seemed
unreasonable and ghastly. Why, but Reinault yonder, who laughed so
loud, with his cropped head flung back: would Reinault be laughing
in quite this manner if he knew the round strong throat he thus
exposed was going to be cut like the throat of a calf, while three
Burgundians held him? Jurgen knew this thing was to befall Reinault
Vinsauf before October was out. So he looked at Reinault's throat,
and shudderingly drew in his breath between set teeth.

"And he is worth a score of me, this boy!" thought Jurgen: "and it
is I who am going to live to be an old fellow, with my bit of land
in fee, years after dirt clogs those bright generous eyes, and years
after this fine big-hearted boy is wasted! And I shall forget all
about him, too. Marion l'Edol, that very pretty girl behind him, is
to become a blotched and toothless haunter of alleys, a leering
plucker at men's sleeves! And blue-eyed Colin here, with his baby
mouth, is to be hanged for that matter of coin-clipping--let me
recall, now,--yes, within six years of to-night! Well, but in a way,
these people are blessed in lacking foresight. For they laugh, and I
cannot laugh, and to me their laughter is more terrible than
weeping. Yes, they may be very wise in not glooming over what is
inevitable; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are
wrong: but still, at the same time--! And assuredly, living seems to
me in everything a wasteful and inequitable process."

Thus Jurgen, while the others passed a very pleasant evening.

And presently, when the masque was over, Dorothy and Jurgen went out
upon the terrace, to the east of Bellegarde, and so came to an
unforgotten world of moonlight. They sat upon a bench of carved
stone near the balustrade which overlooked the highway: and the boy
and the girl gazed wistfully beyond the highway, over luminous
valleys and tree-tops. Just so they had sat there, as Jurgen
perfectly remembered, when Mother Sereda first used this Wednesday.

"My Heart's Desire," says Jurgen, "I am sad to-night. For I am
thinking of what life will do to us, and what offal the years will
make of you and me."

"My own sweetheart," says she, "and do we not know very well what is
to happen?" And Dorothy began to talk of all the splendid things
that Jurgen was to do, and of the happy life which was to be theirs
together.

"It is horrible," he said: "for we are more fine than we shall ever
be hereafter. We have a splendor for which the world has no
employment. It will be wasted. And such wastage is not fair."

"But presently you will be so and so," says she: and fondly predicts
all manner of noble exploits which, as Jurgen remembered, had once
seemed very plausible to him also. Now he had clearer knowledge as
to the capacities of the boy of whom he had thought so well.

"No, Heart's Desire: no, I shall be quite otherwise."

"--and to think how proud I shall be of you! 'But then I always knew
it', I shall tell everybody, very condescendingly--"

"No, Heart's Desire: for you will not think of me at all."

"Ah, sweetheart! and can you really believe that I shall ever care a
snap of my fingers for anybody but you?"

Then Jurgen laughed a little; for Heitman Michael came now across
the lonely terrace, in search of Madame Dorothy: and Jurgen foreknew
this was the man to whom within two months of this evening Dorothy
was to give her love and all the beauty that was hers, and with whom
she was to share the ruinous years which lay ahead.

But the girl did not know this, and Dorothy gave a little shrugging
gesture. "I have promised to dance with him, and so I must. But the
old fellow is a great plague."

For Heitman Michael was nearing thirty, and this to Dorothy and
Jurgen was an age that bordered upon senility.

"Now, by heaven," said Jurgen, "wherever Heitman Michael does his
next dancing it will not be hereabouts."

Jurgen had decided what he must do.

And then Heitman Michael saluted them civilly. "But I fear I must
rob you of this fair lady, Master Jurgen," says he.

Jurgen remembered that the man had said precisely this a score of
years ago; and that Jurgen had mumbled polite regrets, and had stood
aside while Heitman Michael bore off Dorothy to dance with him. And
this dance had been the beginning of intimacy between Heitman
Michael and Dorothy.

"Heitman," says Jurgen, "the bereavement which you threaten is very
happily spared me, since, as it happens, the next dance is to be
mine."

"We can but leave it to the lady," says Heitman Michael, laughing.

"Not I," says Jurgen. "For I know too well what would come of that.
I intend to leave my destiny to no one."

"Your conduct, Master Jurgen, is somewhat strange," observed Heitman
Michael.

"Ah, but I will show you a thing yet stranger. For, look you, there
seem to be three of us here on this terrace. Yet I can assure you
there are four."

"Read me the riddle, my boy, and have done."

"The fourth of us, Heitman, is a goddess that wears a speckled
garment and has black wings. She can boast of no temples, and no
priests cry to her anywhere, because she is the only deity whom no
prayers can move or any sacrifices placate. I allude, sir, to the
eldest daughter of Nox and Erebus."

"You speak of death, I take it."

"Your apprehension, Heitman, is nimble. Even so, it is not quick
enough, I fear, to forerun the whims of goddesses. Indeed, what
person could have foreseen that this implacable lady would have
taken such a strong fancy for your company."

"Ah, my young bantam," replies Heitman Michael, "it is quite true
that she and I are acquainted. I may even boast of having despatched
one or two stout warriors to serve her underground. Now, as I divine
your meaning, you plan that I should decrease her obligation by
sending her a whippersnapper."

"My notion, Heitman, is that since this dark goddess is about to
leave us, she should not, in common gallantry, be permitted to go
hence unaccompanied. I propose, therefore, that we forthwith decide
who is to be her escort."

Now Heitman Michael had drawn his sword. "You are insane. But you
extend an invitation which I have never yet refused."

"Heitman," cries Jurgen, in honest gratitude and admiration, "I bear
you no ill-will. But it is highly necessary you die to-night, in
order that my soul may not perish too many years before my body."

With that he too whipped out his sword.

So they fought. Now Jurgen was a very acceptable swordsman, but from
the start he found in Heitman Michael his master. Jurgen had never
reckoned upon that, and he considered it annoying. If Heitman
Michael perforated Jurgen the future would be altered, certainly,
but not quite as Jurgen had decided it ought to be remodeled. So
this unlooked-for complication seemed preposterous, and Jurgen began
to be irritated by the suspicion that he was getting himself killed
for nothing at all.

Meanwhile his unruffled tall antagonist seemed but to play with
Jurgen, so that Jurgen was steadily forced back toward the
balustrade. And presently Jurgen's sword was twisted from his hand,
and sent flashing over the balustrade, into the public highway.

"So now, Master Jurgen," says Heitman Michael, "that is the end of
your nonsense. Why, no, there is not any occasion to posture like a
statue. I do not intend to kill you. Why the devil's name, should I?
To do so would only get me an ill name with your parents: and
besides it is infinitely more pleasant to dance with this lady, just
as I first intended." And he turned gaily toward Madame Dorothy.

But Jurgen found this outcome of affairs insufferable. This man was
stronger than he, this man was of the sort that takes and uses
gallantly all the world's prizes which mere poets can but
respectfully admire. All was to do again: Heitman Michael, in his
own hateful phrase, would act just as he had first intended, and
Jurgen would be brushed aside by the man's brute strength. This man
would take away Dorothy, and leave the life of Jurgen to become a
business which Jurgen remembered with distaste. It was unfair.

So Jurgen snatched out his dagger, and drove it deep into the
undefended back of Heitman Michael. Three times young Jurgen stabbed
and hacked the burly soldier, just underneath the left ribs. Even in
his fury Jurgen remembered to strike on the left side.

It was all very quickly done. Heitman Michael's arms jerked upward,
and in the moonlight his fingers spread and clutched. He made
curious gurgling noises. Then the strength went from his knees, so
that he toppled backward. His head fell upon Jurgen's shoulder,
resting there for an instant fraternally; and as Jurgen shuddered
away from the abhorred contact, the body of Heitman Michael
collapsed. Now he lay staring upward, dead at the feet of his
murderer. He was horrible looking, but he was quite dead.

"What will become of you?" Dorothy whispered, after a while. "Oh,
Jurgen, it was foully done, that which you did was infamous! What
will become of you, my dear?"

"I will take my doom," says Jurgen, "and without whimpering, so that
I get justice. But I shall certainly insist upon justice." Then
Jurgen raised his face to the bright heavens. "The man was stronger
than I and wanted what I wanted. So I have compromised with
necessity, in the only way I could make sure of getting that which
was requisite to me. I cry for justice to the power that gave him
strength and gave me weakness, and gave to each of us his desires.
That which I have done, I have done. Now judge!"

Then Jurgen tugged and shoved the heavy body of Heitman Michael,
until it lay well out of sight, under the bench upon which Jurgen
and Dorothy had been sitting. "Rest there, brave sir, until they
find you. Come to me now, my Heart's Desire. Good, that is
excellent. Here I sit with my true love, upon the body of my enemy.
Justice is satisfied, and all is quite as it should be. For you must
understand that I have fallen heir to a fine steed, whose bridle is
marked with a coronet,--prophetically, I take it,--and upon this
steed you will ride pillion with me to Lisuarte. There we will find
a priest to marry us. We will go together into Gâtinais. Meanwhile,
there is a bit of neglected business to be attended to." And he drew
the girl close to him.

For Jurgen was afraid of nothing now. And Jurgen thought:

"Oh, that I could detain the moment! that I could make some fitting
verses to preserve this moment in my own memory! Could I but get
into words the odor and the thick softness of this girl's hair as my
hands, that are a-quiver in every nerve of them, caress her hair;
and get into enduring words the glitter and the cloudy shadowings of
her hair in this be-drenching moonlight! For I shall forget all this
beauty, or at best I shall remember this moment very dimly."

"You have done very wrong--" says Dorothy.

Says Jurgen, to himself: "Already the moment passes this miserably
happy moment wherein once more life shudders and stands heart-stricken
at the height of bliss! it passes, and I know even as I lift this girl's
soft face to mine, and mark what faith and submissiveness and expectancy
is in her face, that whatever the future holds for us, and whatever of
happiness we two may know hereafter, we shall find no instant happier
than this, which passes from us irretrievably while I am thinking about
it, poor fool, in place of rising to the issue."

"--And heaven only knows what will become of you Jurgen--"

Says Jurgen, still to himself: "Yes, something must remain to me of
all this rapture, though it be only guilt and sorrow: something I
mean to wrest from this high moment which was once wasted
fruitlessly. Now I am wiser: for I know there is not any memory with
less satisfaction in it than the memory of some temptation we
resisted. So I will not waste the one real passion I have known, nor
leave unfed the one desire which ever caused me for a heart-beat to
forget to think about Jurgen's welfare. And thus, whatever happens,
I shall not always regret that I did not avail myself of this girl's
love before it was taken from me."

So Jurgen made such advances as seemed good to him. And he noted,
with amusing memories of how much afraid he had once been of
shocking his Dorothy's notions of decorum, that she did not repulse
him very vigorously.

"Here, over a dead body! Oh, Jurgen, this is horrible! Now, Jurgen,
remember that somebody may come any minute! And I thought I could
trust you! Ah, and is this all the respect you have for me!" This
much she said in duty. Meanwhile the eyes of Dorothy were dilated
and very tender.

"Faith, I take no chances, this second time. And so whatever
happens, I shall not always regret that which I left undone."

Now upon his lips was laughter, and his arms were about the
submissive girl. And in his heart was an unnamable depression and a
loneliness, because it seemed to him that this was not the Dorothy
whom he had seen in the garden between dawn and sunrise. For in my
arms now there is just a very pretty girl who is not over-careful in
her dealings with young men, thought Jurgen, as their lips met.
Well, all life is a compromise; and a pretty girl is something
tangible, at any rate. So he laughed, triumphantly, and prepared for
the sequel.

But as Jurgen laughed triumphantly, with his arm beneath the head of
Dorothy, and with the tender face of Dorothy passive beneath his lips,
and with unreasonable wistfulness in his heart, the castle bell tolled
midnight. What followed was curious: for as Wednesday passed, the face
of Dorothy altered, her flesh roughened under his touch, and her cheeks
fell away, and fine lines came about her eyes, and she became the
Countess Dorothy whom Jurgen remembered as Heitman Michael's wife.
There was no doubt about it, in that be-drenching moonlight: and she
was leering at him, and he was touching her everywhere, this horrible
lascivious woman, who was certainly quite old enough to know better
than to permit such liberties. And her breath was sour and nauseous.
Jurgen drew away from her, with a shiver of loathing, and he closed his
eyes, to shut away that sensual face.

"No," he said; "it would not be fair to what we owe to others. In
fact, it would be a very heinous sin. We should weigh such
considerations occasionally, madame."

Then Jurgen left his temptress, with simple dignity. "I go to search
for my dear wife, madame, in a frame of mind which I would strongly
advise you to adopt toward your husband."

And he went straightway down the terraces of Bellegarde, and turned
southward to where his horse was tethered upon Amneran Heath: and
Jurgen was feeling very virtuous.




8.

Old Toys and a New Shadow


Jurgen had behaved with conspicuous nobility, Jurgen reflected: but
he had committed himself. "I go in search of my dear wife," he had
stated, in the exaltation of virtuous sentiments. And now Jurgen
found himself alone in a world of moonlight just where he had last
seen his wife.

"Well, well," he said, "now that my Wednesday is done with, and I am
again a reputable pawnbroker, let us remember the advisability of
sometimes doing the manly thing! It was into this cave that Lisa
went. So into this cave go I, for the second time, rather than home
to my unsympathetic relatives-in-law. Or at least, I think I am
going--"

"Ay," said a squeaking voice, "this is the time. A ab hur hus!"

"High time!"

"Oh, more than time!"

"Look, the man in the oak!"

"Oho, the fire-drake!"

Thus many voices screeched and wailed confusedly. But Jurgen,
staring about him, could see nobody: and all the tiny voices seemed
to come from far overhead, where nothing was visible save the clouds
which of a sudden were gathering; for a wind was rising, and already
the moon was overcast. Now for a while that noise high in the air
became like a wrangling of sparrows, wherein no words were
distinguishable.

Then said a small shrill voice distinctly: "Note now, sweethearts,
how high we pass over the wind-vexed heath, where the gallows'
burden creaks and groans swaying to and fro in the night! Now the
rain breaks loose as a hawk from the fowler, and grave Queen Holda
draws her tresses over the moon's bright shield. Now the bed is
made, and the water drawn, and we the bride's maids seek for the
lass who will be bride to Sclaug."

Said another: "Oh, search for a maid with golden hair, who is
perfect, tender and pure, and fit for a king who is old as love,
with no trace of love in him. Even now our grinning dusty master
wakes from sleep, and his yellow fingers shake to think of her
flower-soft lips who comes to-night to his lank embrace and warms
the ribs that our eyes have seen. Who will be bride to Sclaug?"

And a third said: "The wedding-gown we have brought with us, we that
a-questing ride; and a maid will go hence on Phorgemon in
Cleopatra's shroud. Hah. Will o'the Wisp will marry the couple--"

"No, no! let Brachyotus!"

"No, be it Kitt with the candle-stick!"

"Eman hetan, a fight, a fight!"

"Oho, Tom Tumbler, 'ware of Stadlin!"

"Hast thou the marmaritin, Tib?"

"A ab hur hus!"

"Come, Bembo, come away!"

So they all fell to screeching and whistling and wrangling high over
Jurgen's head, and Jurgen was not pleased with his surroundings.

"For these are the witches of Amneran about some deviltry or another
in which I prefer to take no part. I now regret that I flung away a
cross in this neighborhood so very recently, and trust the action
was understood. If my wife had not made a point of it, and had not
positively insisted upon it, I would never have thought of doing
such a thing. I intended no reflection upon anybody. Even so, I
consider this heath to be unwholesome. And upon the whole, I prefer
to seek whatever I may encounter in this cave."

So in went Jurgen, for the second time.

And the tale tells that all was dark there, and Jurgen could see no
one. But the cave stretched straight forward, and downward, and at
the far end was a glow of light. Jurgen went on and on, and so came
to the place where he had found the Centaur. This part of the cave
was now vacant. But behind where Nessus had lain in wait for Jurgen
was an opening in the cave's wall, and through this opening streamed
the light. Jurgen stooped and crawled through the orifice.

He stood erect. He caught his breath sharply. Here at his feet was,
of all things, a tomb carved with the recumbent effigy of a woman.
Now this part of the cave was lighted by lamps upon tall iron
stands, so that everything was clearly visible, even to Jurgen,
whose eyesight had of late years failed him. This was certainly a
low flat tombstone such as Jurgen had seen in many churches: but the
tinted effigy thereupon was curious, somehow Jurgen looked more
closely. He touched the thing.

Then he recoiled, because there is no mistaking the feel of dead
flesh. The effigy was not colored stone: it was the body of a dead
woman. More unaccountable still, it was the body of Félise de
Puysange, whom Jurgen had loved very long ago in Gâtinais, a great
many years before he set up in business as a pawnbroker.

Very strange it was to Jurgen again to see her face. He had often
wondered what had become of this large brown woman; had wondered if
he were really the first man for whom she had put a deceit upon her
husband; and had wondered what sort of person Madame Félise de
Puysange had been in reality.

"Two months it was that we played at intimacy, was it not, Félise?
You comprehend, my dear, I really remember very little about you.
But I recall quite clearly the door left just a-jar, and how as I
opened it gently I would see first of all the lamp upon your
dressing-table, turned down almost to extinction, and the glowing
dust upon its glass shade. Is it not strange that our exceeding
wickedness should have resulted in nothing save the memory of dust
upon a lamp chimney? Yet you were very handsome, Félise. I dare say
I would have liked you if I had ever known you. But when you told me
of the child you had lost, and showed me his baby picture, I took a
dislike to you. It seemed to me you were betraying that child by
dealing over-generously with me: and always between us afterward was
his little ghost. Yet I did not at all mind the deceits you put upon
your husband. It is true I knew your husband rather intimately--.
Well, and they tell me the good Vicomte was vastly pleased by the
son you bore him some months after you and I had parted. So there
was no great harm done, after all--"

Then Jurgen saw there was another woman's body lying like an effigy
upon another low flat tomb, and beyond that another, and then still
others. And Jurgen whistled.

"What, all of them!" he said. "Am I to be confronted with every
pound of tender flesh I have embraced? Yes, here is Graine, and
Rosamond, and Marcouève, and Elinor. This girl, though, I do not
remember at all. And this one is, I think, the little Jewess I
purchased from Hassan Bey in Sidon, but how can one be sure? Still,
this is certainly Judith, and this is Myrina. I have half a mind to
look again for that mole, but I suppose it would be indecorous.
Lord, how one's women do add up! There must be several scores of
them in all. It is the sort of spectacle that turns a man to serious
thinking. Well, but it is a great comfort to reflect that I dealt
fairly with every one of them. Several of them treated me most
unjustly, too. But that is past and done with: and I bear no malice
toward such fickle and short-sighted creatures as could not be
contented with one lover, and he the Jurgen that was!"

Thereafter, Jurgen, standing among his dead, spread out his arms in
an embracing gesture.

"Hail to you, ladies, and farewell! for you and I have done with love.
Well, love is very pleasant to observe as he advances, overthrowing all
ancient memories with laughter. And yet for each gay lover who concedes
the lordship of love, and wears intrepidly love's liveries, the end of
all is death. Love's sowing is more agreeable than love's harvest: or,
let us put it, he allures us into byways leading nowhither, among
blossoms which fall before the first rough wind: so at the last, with
much excitement and breath and valuable time quite wasted, we find that
the end of all is death. Then would it have been more shrewd, dear
ladies, to have avoided love? To the contrary, we were unspeakably wise
to indulge the high-hearted insanity that love induced; since love alone
can lend young people rapture, however transiently, in a world wherein
the result of every human endeavor is transient, and the end of all is
death."

Then Jurgen courteously bowed to his dead loves, and left them, and
went forward as the cave stretched.

But now the light was behind him, so that Jurgen's shadow, as he
came to a sharp turn in the cave, loomed suddenly upon the cave
wall, confronting him. This shadow was clear-cut and unarguable.

Jurgen regarded it intently. He turned this way, then the other; he
looked behind him, raised one hand, shook his head tentatively; then
he twisted his head sideways with his chin well lifted, and squinted
so as to get a profile view of this shadow. Whatever Jurgen did the
shadow repeated, which was natural enough. The odd part was that it
in nothing resembled the shadow which ought to attend any man, and
this was an uncomfortable discovery to make in loneliness deep under
ground.

"I do not exactly like this," said Jurgen. "Upon my word, I do not
like this at all. It does not seem fair. It is perfectly
preposterous. Well"--and here he shrugged,--"well, and what could
anybody expect me to do about it? Ah, what indeed! So I shall treat
the incident with dignified contempt, and continue my exploration of
this cave."




9.

The Orthodox Rescue of Guenevere


Now the tale tells how the cave narrowed and again turned sharply,
so that Jurgen came as through a corridor into quite another sort of
underground chamber. Yet this also was a discomfortable place.

Here suspended from the roof of the vault was a kettle of quivering
red flames. These lighted a very old and villainous looking man in
full armor, girded with a sword, and crowned royally: he sat erect
upon a throne, motionless, with staring eyes that saw nothing. Back
of him Jurgen noted many warriors seated in rows, and all staring at
Jurgen with wide-open eyes that saw nothing. The red flaming of the
kettle was reflected in all these eyes, and to observe this was not
pleasant.

Jurgen waited non-committally. Nothing happened. Then Jurgen saw
that at this unengaging monarch's feet were three chests. The lids
had been ripped from two of them, and these were filled with silver
coins. Upon the middle chest, immediately before the king, sat a
woman, with her face resting against the knees of the glaring,
withered, motionless, old rascal.

"And this is a young woman. Obviously! Observe the glint of that
thick coil of hair! the rich curve of the neck! Oh, clearly, a
tidbit fit to fight for, against any moderate odds!"

So ran the thoughts of Jurgen. Bold as a dragon now, he stepped
forward and lifted the girl's head.

Her eyes were closed. She was, even so, the most beautiful creature
Jurgen had ever imagined.

"She does not breathe. And yet, unless memory fails me, this is
certainly a living woman in my arms. Evidently this is a sleep
induced by necromancy. Well, it is not for nothing I have read so
many fairy tales. There are orthodoxies to be observed in the
awakening of every enchanted princess. And Lisa, wherever she may
be, poor dear! is nowhere in this neighborhood, because I hear
nobody talking. So I may consider myself at liberty to do the
traditional thing by this princess. Indeed, it is the only fair
thing for me to do, and justice demands it."

In consequence, Jurgen kissed the girl. Her lips parted and
softened, and they assumed a not unpleasant sort of submissive
ardor. Her eyes, enormous when seen thus closely, had languorously
opened, had viewed him without wonder, and then the lids had fallen,
about half-way, just as, Jurgen remembered, the eyelids of a woman
ought to do when she is being kissed properly. She clung a little,
and now she shivered a little, but not with cold: Jurgen perfectly
remembered that ecstatic shudder convulsing a woman's body:
everything, in fine, was quite as it should be. So Jurgen put an end
to the kiss, which, as you may surmise, was a tolerably lengthy
affair.

His heart was pounding as though determined to burst from his body,
and he could feel the blood tingling at his finger-tips. He wondered
what in the world had come over him, who was too old for such
emotions.

Yet, truly, this was the loveliest girl that Jurgen had ever
imagined. Fair was she to look on, with her shining gray eyes and
small smiling lips, a fairer person might no man boast of having
seen. And she regarded Jurgen graciously, with her cheeks flushed by
that red flickering overhead, and she was very lovely to observe.
She was clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, and about her neck
was a collar of red gold. When she spoke her voice was music.

"I knew that you would come," the girl said, happily.

"I am very glad that I came," observed Jurgen.

"But time presses."

"Time sets an admirable example, my dear Princess--"

"Oh, messire, but do you not perceive that you have brought life
into this horrible place! You have given of this life to me, in the
most direct and speedy fashion. But life is very contagious. Already
it is spreading by infection."

And Jurgen regarded the old king, as the girl indicated. The
withered ruffian stayed motionless: but from his nostrils came slow
augmenting jets of vapor, as though he were beginning to breathe in
a chill place. This was odd, because the cave was not cold.

"And all the others too are snorting smoke," says Jurgen. "Upon my
word I think this is a delightful place to be leaving."

First, though, he unfastened the king's sword-belt, and girded
himself therewith, sword, dagger and all. "Now I have arms befitting
my fine shirt," says Jurgen.

Then the girl showed him a sort of passage way, by which they
ascended forty-nine steps roughly hewn in stone, and so came to
daylight. At the top of the stairway was an iron trapdoor, and this
door at the girl's instruction Jurgen lowered. There was no way of
fastening the door from without.

"But Thragnar is not to be stopped by bolts or padlocks," the girl
said. "Instead, we must straightway mark this door with a cross,
since that is a symbol which Thragnar cannot pass."

Jurgen's hand had gone instinctively to his throat. Now he shrugged.
"My dear young lady, I no longer carry the cross. I must fight
Thragnar with other weapons."

"Two sticks will serve, laid crosswise--"

Jurgen submitted that nothing would be easier than to lift the
trapdoor, and thus dislodge the sticks. "They will tumble apart
without anyone having to touch them, and then what becomes of your
crucifix?"

"Why, how quickly you think of everything!" she said, admiringly.
"Here is a strip from my sleeve, then. We will tie the twigs
together."

Jurgen did this, and laid upon the trapdoor a recognizable crucifix.
"Still, when anyone raises the trapdoor whatever lies upon it will
fall off. Without disparaging the potency of your charm, I cannot
but observe that in this case it is peculiarly difficult to handle.
Magician or no, I would put heartier faith in a stout padlock."

So the girl tore another strip, from the hem of her gown, and then
another from her right sleeve, and with these they fastened their
cross to the surface of the trapdoor, in such a fashion that the
twigs could not be dislodged from beneath. They mounted the fine
steed whose bridle was marked with a coronet, the girl riding
pillion, and they turned westward, since the girl said this was
best.

For, as she now told Jurgen, she was Guenevere, the daughter of
Gogyrvan, King of Glathion and the Red Islands. So Jurgen told her
he was the Duke of Logreus, because he felt it was not appropriate
for a pawnbroker to be rescuing princesses: and he swore, too, that
he would restore her safely to her father, whatever Thragnar might
attempt. And all the story of her nefarious capture and imprisonment
by King Thragnar did Dame Guenevere relate to Jurgen, as they rode
together through the pleasant May morning.

She considered the Troll King could not well molest them. "For now
you have his charmed sword, Caliburn, the only weapon with which
Thragnar can be slain. Besides, the sign of the cross he cannot
pass. He beholds and trembles."

"My dear Princess, he has but to push up the trapdoor from beneath,
and the cross, being tied to the trapdoor, is promptly moved out of
his way. Failing this expedient, he can always come out of the cave
by the other opening, through which I entered. If this Thragnar has
any intelligence at all and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will
presently be at hand."

"Even so, he can do no harm unless we accept a present from him. The
difficulty is that he will come in disguise."

"Why, then, we will accept gifts from nobody."

"There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar.
For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in
the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a
detection and a hindrance."

"By that unhuman trait," says Jurgen, "Thragnar ought to be very
easy to distinguish."




10.

Pitiful Disguises of Thragnar


Next, the tale tells that as Jurgen and the Princess were nearing
Gihon, a man came riding toward them, full armed in black, and
having a red serpent with an apple in its mouth painted upon his
shield.

"Sir knight," says he, speaking hollowly from the closed helmet,
"you must yield to me that lady."

"I think," says Jurgen, civilly, "that you are mistaken."

So they fought, and presently, since Caliburn was a resistless
weapon, and he who wore the scabbard of Caliburn could not be
wounded, Jurgen prevailed; and gave the strange knight so heavy a
buffet that the knight fell senseless.

"Do you think," says Jurgen, about to unlace his antagonist's
helmet, "that this is Thragnar?"

"There is no possible way of telling," replied Dame Guenevere: "if
it is the Troll King he should have offered you gifts, and when you
contradicted him he should have admitted you were right. Instead, he
proffered nothing, and to contradiction he answered nothing, so that
proves nothing."

"But silence is a proverbial form of assent. At all events, we will
have a look at him."

"But that too will prove nothing, since Thragnar goes about his
mischiefs so disguised by enchantments as invariably to resemble
somebody else, and not himself at all."

"Such dishonest habits introduce an element of uncertainty, I grant
you," says Jurgen. "Still, one can rarely err by keeping on the safe
side. This person is, in any event, a very ill-bred fellow, with
probably immoral intentions. Yes, caution is the main thing, and in
justice to ourselves we will keep on the safe side."

So without unloosing the helmet, he struck off the strange knight's
head, and left him thus. The Princess was now mounted on the horse
of their deceased assailant.

"Assuredly," says Jurgen then, "a magic sword is a fine thing, and a
very necessary equipment, too, for a knight errant of my age."

"But you talk as though you were an old man, Messire de Logreus!"

"Come now," thinks Jurgen, "this is a princess of rare
discrimination. What, after all, is forty-and-something when one is
well-preserved? This uncommonly intelligent girl reminds me a little
of Marcouève, whom I loved in Artein: besides, she does not look at
me as women look at an elderly man. I like this princess, in fact, I
adore this princess. I wonder now what would she say if I told her
as much?"

But Jurgen did not tempt chance that time, for just then they
encountered a boy who had frizzed hair and painted cheeks. He walked
mincingly, in a curious garb of black bespangled with gold lozenges,
and he carried a gilded dung fork.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then Jurgen and the Princess came to a black and silver pavilion
standing by the roadside. At the door of the pavilion was an
apple-tree in blossom: from a branch of this tree was suspended
a black hunting-horn, silver-mounted. A woman waited there alone.
Before her was a chess-board, with the ebony and silver pieces set
ready for a game, and upon the table to her left hand glittered
flagons and goblets of silver. Eagerly this woman rose and came
toward the travellers.

"Oh, my dear Jurgen," says she, "but how fine you look in that new
shirt you are wearing! But there was never a man had better taste in
dress, as I have always said: and it is long I have waited for you
in this pavilion, which belongs to a black gentleman who seems to be
a great friend of yours. And he went into Crim Tartary this morning,
with some missionaries, by the worst piece of luck, for I know how
sorry he will be to miss you, dear. Now, but I am forgetting that
you must be very tired and thirsty, my darling, after your travels.
So do you and the young lady have a sip of this, and then we will be
telling one another of our adventures."

For this woman had the appearance of Jurgen's wife, Dame Lisa, and
of none other.

Jurgen regarded her with two minds. "You certainly seem to be Lisa.
But it is a long while since I saw Lisa in such an amiable mood."

"You must know," says she, still smiling, "that I have learned to
appreciate you since we were separated."

"The fiend who stole you from me may possibly have brought about
that wonder. None the less, you have met me riding at adventure with
a young woman. And you have assaulted neither of us, you have not
even raised your voice. No, quite decidedly, here is a miracle
beyond the power of any fiend."

"Ah, but I have been doing a great deal of thinking, Jurgen dear, as
to our difficulties in the past. And it seems to me that you were
almost always in the right."

Guenevere nudged Jurgen. "Did you note that? This is certainly
Thragnar in disguise."

"I am beginning to think that at all events it is not Lisa." Then
Jurgen magisterially cleared his throat. "Lisa, if you indeed be
Lisa, you must understand I am through with you. The plain truth is
that you tire me. You talk and talk: no woman breathing equals you
at mere volume and continuity of speech: but you say nothing that I
have not heard seven hundred and eighty times if not oftener."

"You are perfectly right, my dear," says Dame Lisa, piteously. "But
then I never pretended to be as clever as you."

"Spare me your beguilements, if you please. And besides, I am in
love with this princess. Now spare me your recriminations, also, for
you have no real right to complain. If you had stayed the person
whom I promised the priest to love, I would have continued to think
the world of you. But you did nothing of the sort. From a cuddlesome
and merry girl, who thought whatever I did was done to perfection,
you elected to develop into an uncommonly plain and short-tempered
old woman." And Jurgen paused. "Eh?" said he, "and did you not do
this?"

Dame Lisa answered sadly: "My dear, you are perfectly right, from
your way of thinking. However, I could not very well help getting
older."

"But, oh, dear me!" says Jurgen, "this is astonishingly inadequate
impersonation, as any married man would see at once. Well, I made no
contract to love any such plain and short-tempered person. I
repudiate the claims of any such person, as manifestly unfair. And I
pledge undying affection to this high and noble Princess Guenevere,
who is the fairest lady that I have ever seen."

"You are right," wailed Dame Lisa, "and I was entirely to blame. It
was because I loved you, and wanted you to get on in the world and
be a credit to my father's line of business, that I nagged you so.
But you will never understand the feelings of a wife, nor will you
understand that even now I desire your happiness above all else.
Here is our wedding-ring, then, Jurgen. I give you back your
freedom. And I pray that this princess may make you very happy, my
dear. For surely you deserve a princess if ever any man did."

Jurgen shook his head. "It is astounding that a demon so much talked
about should be so poor an impersonator. It raises the staggering
supposition that the majority of married women must go to Heaven. As
for your ring, I am not accepting gifts this morning, from anyone.
But you understand, I trust, that I am hopelessly enamored of the
Princess on account of her beauty."

"Oh, and I cannot blame you, my dear. She is the loveliest person I
have ever seen."

"Hah, Thragnar!" says Jurgen, "I have you now. A woman might, just
possibly, have granted her own homeliness: but no woman that ever
breathed would have conceded the Princess had a ray of good looks."

So with Caliburn he smote, and struck off the head of this thing
which foolishly pretended to be Dame Lisa.

"Well done! oh, bravely done!" cried Guenevere. "Now the enchantment
is dissolved, and Thragnar is slain by my clever champion."

"I could wish there were some surer sign of that," said Jurgen. "I
would have preferred that the pavilion and the decapitated Troll
King had vanished with a peal of thunder and an earthquake and such
other phenomena as are customary. Instead, nothing is changed except
that the woman who was talking to me a moment since now lies at my
feet in a very untidy condition. You conceive, madame, I used to
tease her about that twisted little-finger, in the days before we
began to squabble: and it annoys me that Thragnar should not have
omitted even Lisa's crooked little-finger on her left hand. Yes,
such painstaking carefulness worries me. For you conceive also,
madame, it would be more or less awkward if I had made an error, and
if the appearance were in reality what it seemed to be, because I
was pretty trying sometimes. At all events, I have done that which
seemed equitable, and I have found no comfort in the doing of it,
and I do not like this place."




11.

Appearance of the Duke of Logreus


So Jurgen brushed from the table the chessmen that were set there in
readiness for a game, and he emptied the silver flagons upon the
ground. His reasons for not meddling with the horn he explained to
the Princess: she shivered, and said that, such being the case, he
was certainly very sensible. Then they mounted, and departed from
the black and silver pavilion. They came thus without further
adventure to Gogyrvan Gawr's city of Cameliard.

Now there was shouting and the bells all rang when the people knew
their Princess was returned to them: the houses were hung with
painted cloths and banners, and trumpets sounded, as Guenevere and
Jurgen came to the King in his Hall of Judgment. And this Gogyrvan,
that was King of Glathion and Lord of Enisgarth and Camwy and
Sargyll, came down from his wide throne, and he embraced first
Guenevere, then Jurgen.

"And demand of me what you will, Duke of Logreus," said Gogyrvan,
when he had heard the champion's name, "and it is yours for the
asking. For you have restored to me the best loved daughter that
ever was the pride of a high king."

"Sir," replied Jurgen, reasonably, "a service rendered so gladly
should be its own reward. So I am asking that you do in turn restore
to me the Princess Guenevere, in honorable marriage, do you
understand, because I am a poor lorn widower, I am tolerably
certain, but I am quite certain I love your daughter with my whole
heart."

Thus Jurgen, whose periods were confused by emotion.

"I do not see what the condition of your heart has to do with any
such unreasonable request. And you have no good sense to be asking
this thing of me when here are the servants of Arthur, that is now
King of the Britons, come to ask for my daughter as his wife. That
you are Duke of Logreus you tell me, and I concede a duke is all
very well: but I expect you in return to concede a king takes
precedence, with any man whose daughter is marriageable. But
to-morrow or the next day it may be, you and I will talk over
your reward more privately. Meanwhile it is very queer and very
frightened you are looking, to be the champion who conquered
Thragnar."

For Jurgen was staring at the great mirror behind the King's throne.
In this mirror Jurgen saw the back of Gogyrvan's crowned head, and
beyond this, Jurgen saw a queer and frightened looking young fellow,
with sleek black hair, and an impudent nose, and wide-open bright
brown eyes which were staring hard at Jurgen: and the lad's very red
and very heavy lips were parted, so that you saw what fine strong
teeth he had: and he wore a glittering shirt with curious figures on
it

"I was thinking," says Jurgen, and he saw the lad in the mirror was
speaking too, "I was thinking that is a remarkable mirror you have
there."

"It is like any other mirror," replies the King, "in that it shows
things as they are. But if you fancy it as your reward, why, take it
and welcome."

"And are you still talking of rewards!" cries Jurgen. "Why, if that
mirror shows things as they are, I have come out of my borrowed
Wednesday still twenty-one. Oh, but it was the clever fellow I was,
to flatter Mother Sereda so cunningly, and to fool her into such
generosity! And I wonder that you who are only a king, with bleared
eyes under your crown, and with a drooping belly under all your
royal robes, should be talking of rewarding a fine young fellow of
twenty-one, for there is nothing you have which I need be wanting
now."

"Then you will not be plaguing me any more with your nonsense about
my daughter: and that is excellent news."

"But I have no requirement to be asking your good graces now," said
Jurgen, "nor the good will of any man alive that has a handsome
daughter or a handsome wife. For now I have the aid of a lad that
was very recently made Duke of Logreus: and with his countenance I
can look out for myself, and I can get justice done me everywhere,
in all the bedchambers of the world."

And Jurgen snapped his fingers, and was about to turn away from the
King. There was much sunlight in the hall, so that Jurgen in this
half-turn confronted his shadow as it lay plain upon the flagstones.
And Jurgen looked at it very intently.

"Of course," said Jurgen presently, "I only meant in a manner of
speaking, sir: and was paraphrasing the splendid if hackneyed
passage from Sornatius, with which you are doubtless familiar, in
which he goes on to say, so much more beautifully than I could
possibly express without quoting him word for word, that all this
was spoken jestingly, and without the least intention of offending
anybody, oh, anybody whatever, I can assure you, sir."

"Very well," said Gogyrvan Gawr: and he smiled, for no reason that
was apparent to Jurgen, who was still watching his shadow sidewise.
"To-morrow, I repeat, I must talk with you more privately. To-day I
am giving a banquet such as was never known in these parts, because
my daughter is restored to me, and because my daughter is going to
be queen over all the Britons."

So said Gogyrvan, that was King of Glathion and Lord of Enisgarth
and Camwy and Sargyll: and this was done. And everywhere at the
banquet Jurgen heard talk of this King Arthur who was to marry Dame
Guenevere, and of the prophecy which Merlin Ambrosius had made as to
the young monarch. For Merlin had predicted:

"He shall afford succor, and shall tread upon the necks of his
enemies: the isles of the ocean shall be subdued by him, and he
shall possess the forests of Gaul: the house of Romulus shall fear
his rage, and his acts shall be food for the narrators."

"Why, then," says Jurgen, to himself, "this monarch reminds me in
all things of David of Israel, who was so splendid and famous, and
so greedy, in the ancient ages. For to these forests and islands and
necks and other possessions, this Arthur Pendragon must be adding my
one ewe lamb; and I lack a Nathan to convert him to repentance. Now,
but this, to be sure, is a very unfair thing."

Then Jurgen looked again into a mirror: and presently the eyes of
the lad he found therein began to twinkle.

"Have at you, David!" said Jurgen, valorously; "since after all, I
see no reason to despair."




12.

Excursus of Yolande's Undoing


Now Jurgen, self-appointed Duke of Logreus, abode at the court of
King Gogyrvan. The month of May passed quickly and pleasantly: but
the monstrous shadow which followed Jurgen did not pass. Still, no
one noticed it: that was the main thing. For himself, he was not
afraid of shadows, and the queerness of this one was not enough to
distract his thoughts from Guenevere, nor from his love-making with
Guenevere.

For these were quiet times in Glathion, now that the war with Rience
of Northgalis was satisfactorily ended: and love-making was now
everywhere in vogue. By way of diversion, gentlemen hunted and
fished and rode a-hawking and amicably slashed and battered one
another in tournaments: but their really serious pursuit was
lovemaking, after the manner of chivalrous persons, who knew that
the King's trumpets would presently be summoning them into less
softly furnished fields of action, from one or another of which they
would return feet foremost on a bier. So Jurgen sighed and warbled
and made eyes with many excellent fighting-men: and the Princess
listened with many other ladies whose hearts were not of flint. And
Gogyrvan meditated.

Now it was the kingly custom of Gogyrvan when his dinner was spread
at noontide, not to go to meat until all such as demanded justice
from him had been furnished with a champion to redress the wrong.
One day as the gaunt old King sat thus in his main hall, upon a seat
of green rushes covered with yellow satin, and with a cushion of
yellow satin under his elbow, and with his barons ranged about him
according to their degrees, a damsel came with a very heart-rending
tale of the oppression that was on her.

Gogyrvan blinked at her, and nodded. "You are the handsomest woman I
have seen in a long while," says he, irrelevantly. "You are a woman
I have waited for. Duke Jurgen of Logreus will undertake this
adventure."

There being no help for it, Jurgen rode off with this Dame Yolande,
not very well pleased: but as they rode he jested with her. And so,
with much laughter by the way, Yolande conducted him to the Green
Castle, of which she had been dispossessed by Graemagog, a most
formidable giant.

"Now prepare to meet your death, sir knight!" cried Graemagog,
laughing horribly, and brandishing his club; "for all knights who
come hither I have sworn to slay."

"Well, if truth-telling were a sin you would be a very virtuous
giant," says Jurgen, and he flourished Thragnar's sword, resistless
Caliburn.

Then they fought, and Jurgen killed Graemagog. Thus was the Green
Castle restored to Dame Yolande, and the maidens who attended her
aforetime were duly released from the cellarage. They were now
maidens by courtesy only, but so tender is the heart of women that
they all wept over Graemagog.

Yolande was very grateful, and proffered every manner of reward.

"But, no, I will take none of these fine jewels, nor money, nor
lands either," says Jurgen. "For Logreus, I must tell you, is a
fairly well-to-do duchy, and the killing of giants is by way of
being my favorite pastime. He is well paid that is well satisfied.
Yet if you must reward me for such a little service, do you swear to
do what you can to get me the love of my lady, and that will
suffice."

Yolande, without any particular enthusiasm, consented to attempt
this: and indeed Yolande, at Jurgen's request, made oath upon the
Four Evangelists that she would do everything within her power to
aid him.

"Very well," said Jurgen, "you have sworn, and it is you whom I
love."

Surprise now made her lovely. Yolande was frankly delighted at the
thought of marrying the young Duke of Logreus, and offered to send
for a priest at once.

"My dear," says Jurgen, "there is no need to bother a priest about
our private affairs."

She took his meaning, and sighed. "Now I regret," said she, "that I
made so solemn an oath. Your trick was unfair."

"Oh, not at all," said Jurgen: "and presently you will not regret
it. For indeed the game is well worth the candle."

"How is that shown, Messire de Logreus?"

"Why, by candle-light," says Jurgen,--"naturally."

"In that event, we will talk no further of it until this evening."

So that evening Yolande sent for him. She was, as Gogyrvan had said,
a remarkably handsome woman, sleek and sumptuous and crowned with a
wealth of copper-colored hair. To-night she was at her best in a
tunic of shimmering blue, with a surcote of gold embroidery, and
with gold embroidered pendent sleeves that touched the floor. Thus
she was when Jurgen came to her.

"Now," says Yolande, frowning, "you may as well come out
straightforwardly with what you were hinting at this morning."

But first Jurgen looked about the apartment, and it was lighted by a
tall gilt stand whereon burned candles.

He counted these, and he whistled. "Seven candles! upon my word,
sweetheart, you do me great honor, for this is a veritable
illumination. To think of it, now, that you should honor me, as
people do saints, with seven candles! Well, I am only mortal, but
none the less I am Jurgen, and I shall endeavor to repay this
sevenfold courtesy without discount."

"Oh, Messire de Logreus," cried Dame Yolande, "but what
incomprehensible nonsense you talk! You misinterpret matters, for I
can assure you I had nothing of that sort in mind. Besides, I do not
know what you are talking about."

"Indeed, I must warn you that my actions often speak more
unmistakably than my words. It is what learned persons term an
idiosyncrasy."

"--And I certainly do not see how any of the saints can be concerned
in this. If you had said the Four Evangelists now--! For we were
talking of the Four Evangelists, you remember, this morning--Oh, but
how stupid it is of you, Messire de Logreus, to stand there grinning
and looking at me in a way that makes me blush!"

"Well, that is easily remedied," said Jurgen, as he blew out the
candles, "since women do not blush in the dark."

"What do you plan, Messire de Logreus?"

"Ah, do not be alarmed!" said Jurgen. "I shall deal fairly with
you."

And in fact Yolande confessed afterward that, considering
everything, Messire de Logreus was very generous. Jurgen confessed
nothing: and as the room was profoundly dark nobody else can speak
with authority as to what happened there. It suffices that the Duke
of Logreus and the Lady of the Green Castle parted later on the most
friendly terms.

"You have undone me, with your games and your candles and your
scrupulous returning of courtesies," said Yolande, and yawned, for
she was sleepy; "but I fear that I do not hate you as much as I
ought to."

"No woman ever does," says Jurgen, "at this hour." He called for
breakfast, then kissed Yolande--for this, as Jurgen had said, was
their hour of parting,--and he rode away from the Green Castle in
high spirits.

"Why, what a thing it is again to be a fine young fellow!" said
Jurgen. "Well, even though her big brown eyes protrude too
much--something like a lobster's--she is a splendid woman, that Dame
Yolande: and it is a comfort to reflect I have seen justice was done
her."

Then he rode back to Cameliard, singing with delight in the thought
that he was riding toward the Princess Guenevere, whom he loved with
his whole heart.




13.

Philosophy of Gogyrvan Gawr


At Cameliard the young Duke of Logreus spent most of his time in the
company of Guenevere, whose father made no objection overtly.
Gogyrvan had his promised talk with Jurgen.

"I lament that Dame Yolande dealt over-thriftily with you," the King
said, first of all: "for I estimated you two would be as spark and
tinder, kindling between you an amorous conflagration to burn up all
this nonsense about my daughter."

"Thrift, sir," said Jurgen, discreetly, "is a proverbial virtue, and
fires may not consume true love."

"That is the truth," Gogyrvan admitted, "whoever says it." And he
sighed.

Then for a while he sat in nodding meditation. Tonight the old King
wore a disreputably rusty gown of black stuff, with fur about the
neck and sleeves of it, and his scant white hair was covered by a
very shabby black cap. So he huddled over a small fire in a large
stone fireplace carved with shields; beside him was white wine and
red, which stayed untasted while Gogyrvan meditated upon things that
fretted him.

"Now, then!" says Gogyrvan Gawr: "this marriage with the high King
of the Britons must go forward, of course. That was settled last
year, when Arthur and his devil-mongers, the Lady of the Lake and
Merlin Ambrosius, were at some pains to rescue me at Carohaise. I
estimate that Arthur's ambassadors, probably the devil-mongers
themselves, will come for my daughter before June is out. Meanwhile,
you two have youth and love for playthings, and it is spring."

"What is the season of the year to me," groaned Jurgen, "when I
reflect that within a week or so the lady of my heart will be borne
away from me forever? How can I be happy, when all the while I know
the long years of misery and vain regret are near at hand?"

"You are saying that," observed the King, "in part because you drank
too much last night, and in part because you think it is expected of
you. For in point of fact, you are as happy as anyone is permitted
to be in this world, through the simple reason that you are young.
Misery, as you employ the word, I consider to be a poetical trophe:
but I can assure you that the moment you are no longer young the
years of vain regret will begin, either way."

"That is true," said Jurgen, heartily.

"How do you know? Now then, put it I were insane enough to marry my
daughter to a mere duke, you would grow damnably tired of her: I can
assure you of that also, for in disposition Guenevere is her sainted
mother all over again. She is nice looking, of course, because in
that she takes after my side of the family: but, between ourselves,
she is not particularly intelligent, and she will always be making
eyes at some man or another. To-day it appears to be your turn to
serve as her target, in a fine glittering shirt of which the like
was never seen in Glathion. I deplore, but even so I cannot deny,
your rights as the champion who rescued her: and I must bid you make
the most of that turn."

"Meanwhile, it occurs to me, sir, that it is unusual to betroth your
daughter to one man, and permit her to go freely with another."

"If you insist upon it," said Gogyrvan Gawr, "I can of course lock
up the pair of you, in separate dungeons, until the wedding day.
Meanwhile, it occurs to me you should be the last commentator to
grumble."

"Why, I tell you plainly, sir, that critical persons would say you
are taking very small care of your daughter's honor."

"To that there are several answers," replied the King. "One is that
I remember my late wife as tenderly as possible, and I reflect I
have only her word for it as to Guenevere's being my daughter.
Another is that, though my daughter is a quiet and well-conducted
young woman, I never heard King Thragnar was anything of this sort."

"Oh, sir," said Jurgen, horrified, "whatever are you hinting!"

"All sorts of things, however, happen in caves, things which it is
wiser to ignore in sunlight. So I ignore: I ask no questions: my
business is to marry my daughter acceptably, and that only. Such
discoveries as may be made by her husband afterward are his affair,
not mine. This much I might tell you, Messire de Logreus, by way of
answer. But the real answer is to bid you consider this: that a
woman's honor is concerned with one thing only, and it is a thing
with which the honor of a man is not concerned at all."

"But now you talk in riddles, King, and I wonder what it is you
would have me do."

Gogyrvan grinned. "Obviously, I advise you to give thanks you were
born a man, because that sturdier sex has so much less need to
bother over breakage."

"What sort of breakage, sir?" says Jurgen.

Gogyrvan told him.

Duke Jurgen for the second time looked properly horrified. "Your
aphorisms, King, are abominable, and of a sort unlikely to quiet my
misery. However, we were speaking of your daughter, and it is she
who must be considered rather than I."

"Now I perceive that you take my meaning perfectly. Yes, in all
matters which concern my daughter I would have you lie like a
gentleman."

"Well, I am afraid, sir," said Jurgen, after a pause, "that you are
a person of somewhat degraded ideals."

"Ah, but you are young. Youth can afford ideals, being vigorous
enough to stand the hard knocks they earn their possessor. But I am
an old fellow cursed with a tender heart and tolerably keen eyes.
That combination, Messire de Logreus, is one which very often forces
me to jeer out of season, simply because I know myself to be upon
the verge of far more untimely tears."

Thus Gogyrvan replied. He was silent for a while, and he
contemplated the fire. Then he waved a shriveled hand toward the
window, and Gogyrvan began to speak, meditatively:

"Messire de Logreus, it is night in my city of Cameliard. And
somewhere one of those roofs harbors a girl whom we will call
Lynette. She has a lover--we will say he is called Sagramor. The
names do not matter. Tonight, as I speak with you, Lynette lies
motionless in the carved wide bed that formerly was her mother's.
She is thinking of Sagramor. The room is dark save where moonlight
silvers the diamond-shaped panes of ancient windows. In every corner
of the room mysterious quivering suggestions lurk."

"Ah, sire," says Jurgen, "you also are a poet!"

"Do not interrupt me, then! Lynette, I repeat, is thinking of Sagramor.
Again they sit near the lake, under an apple-tree older than Rome.
The knotted branches of the tree are upraised as in benediction:
and petals--petals, fluttering, drifting, turning,--interminable white
petals fall silently in the stillness. Neither speaks: for there is no
need. Silently he brushes a petal from the blackness of her hair, and
silently he kisses her. The lake is dusky and hard-seeming as jade.
Two lonely stars hang low in the green sky. It is droll that the chest
of a man is hairy, oh, very droll! And a bird is singing, a silvery
needle of sound moves fitfully in the stillness. Surely high Heaven
is thus quietly colored and thus strangely lovely. So at least thinks
little Lynette, lying motionless like a little mouse, in the carved
wide bed wherein Lynette was born."

"A very moving touch, that," Jurgen interpolated.

"Now, there is another sort of singing: for now the pot-house
closes, big shutters bang, feet shuffle, a drunken man hiccoughs in
his singing. It is a love-song he is murdering. He sheds
inexplicable tears as he lurches nearer and nearer to Lynette's
window, and his heart is all magnanimity, for Sagramor is
celebrating his latest conquest. Do you not think that this or
something very like this is happening to-night in my city of
Cameliard, Messire de Logreus?".

"It happens momently," said Jurgen, "everywhere. For thus is every
woman for a little while, and thus is every man for all time."

"That being a dreadful truth," continued Gogyrvan, "you may take it
as one of the many reasons why I jeer out of season in order to
stave off far more untimely tears. For this thing happens: in my
city it happens, and in my castle it happens. King or no, I am
powerless to prevent its happening. So I can but shrug and hearten
my old blood with a fresh bottle. No less, I regard the young woman,
who is quite possibly my daughter, with considerable affection: and
it would be salutary for you to remember that circumstance, Messire
de Logreus, if ever you are tempted to be candid."

Jurgen was horrified. "But with the Princess, sir, it is unthinkable
that I should not deal fairly."

King Gogyrvan continued to look at Jurgen. Gogyrvan Gawr said
nothing, and not a muscle of him moved.

"Although of course," said Jurgen, "I would, in simple justice to
her, not ever consider volunteering any information likely to cause
pain."

"Again I perceive," said Gogyrvan, "that you understand me. Yet I
did not speak of my daughter only, but of everybody."

"How then, sir, would you have me deal with everybody?"

"Why, I can but repeat my words," says Gogyrvan, very patiently: "I
would have you lie like a gentleman. And now be off with you, for I
am going to sleep. I shall not be wide awake again until my daughter
is safely married. And that is absolutely all I can do for you."

"Do you think this is reputable conduct, King?"

"Oh, no!" says Gogyrvan, surprised. "It is what we call
philanthropy."




14.

Preliminary Tactics of Duke Jurgen


So Jurgen abode at court, and was tolerably content for a little
while. He loved a princess, the fairest and most perfect of mortal
women; and loved her (a circumstance to which he frequently
recurred) as never any other man had loved in the world's history:
and very shortly he was to stand by and see her married to another.
Here was a situation to delight the chivalrous court of Glathion,
for every requirement of romance was exactly fulfilled.

Now the appearance of Guenevere, whom Jurgen loved with an entire
heart, was this:--She was of middling height, with a figure not yet
wholly the figure of a woman. She had fine and very thick hair, and
the color of it was the yellow of corn floss. When Guenevere undid
her hair it was a marvel to Jurgen to note how snugly this hair
descended about the small head and slender throat, and then
broadened boldly and clothed her with a loose soft foam of pallid
gold. For Jurgen delighted in her hair; and with increasing
intimacy, loved to draw great strands of it back of his head,
crossing them there, and pressing soft handfuls of her perfumed hair
against his cheeks as he kissed the Princess.

The head of Guenevere, be it repeated, was small: you wondered at
the proud free tossing movements of that little head which had to
sustain the weight of so much hair. The face of Guenevere was
colored tenderly and softly: it made the faces of other women seem
the work of a sign-painter, just splotched in anyhow. Gray eyes had
Guenevere, veiled by incredibly long black lashes that curved
incredibly. Her brows arched rather high above her eyes: that was
almost a fault. Her nose was delicate and saucy: her chin was
impudence made flesh: and her mouth was a tiny and irresistible
temptation.

"And so on, and so on! But indeed there is no sense at all in
describing this lovely girl as though I were taking an inventory of
my shopwindow," said Jurgen. "Analogues are all very well, and they
have the unanswerable sanction of custom: none the less, when I
proclaim that my adored mistress's hair reminds me of gold I am
quite consciously lying. It looks like yellow hair, and nothing
else: nor would I willingly venture within ten feet of any woman
whose head sprouted with wires, of whatever metal. And to protest
that her eyes are as gray and fathomless as the sea is very well
also, and the sort of thing which seems expected of me: but imagine
how horrific would be puddles of water slopping about in a lady's
eye-sockets! If we poets could actually behold the monsters we rhyme
of, we would scream and run. Still, I rather like this sirvente."

For he was making a sirvente in praise of Guenevere. It was the
pleasant custom of Gogyrvan's court that every gentleman must
compose verses in honor of the lady of whom he was hopelessly
enamored; as well as that in these verses he should address the lady
(as one whose name was too sacred to mention) otherwise than did her
sponsors. So Duke Jurgen of Logreus duly rhapsodized of his
Phyllida.

"I borrow for my dear love the appellation of that noted but by much
inferior lady who was beloved by Ariphus of Belsize," he explained.
"You will remember Poliger suspects she was a princess of the house of
Scleroveus: and you of course recall Pisander's masterly summing-up of
the probabilities, in his _Heraclea_."

"Oh, yes," they said. And the courtiers of Gogyrvan Gawr, like
Mother Sereda, were greatly impressed by young Duke Jurgen's
erudition.

For Jurgen was Duke of Logreus nowadays, with his glittering shirt
and the coronet upon his bridle to show for it. Awkwardly this
proved to be an earl's coronet, but incongruities are not always
inexplicable.

"It was Earl Giarmuid's horse. You have doubtless heard of Giarmuid:
but to ask that is insulting."

"Oh, not at all. It is humor. We perfectly understand your humor,
Duke Jurgen."

"And a very pretty fighter I found this famous Giarmuid as I
traveled westward. And since he killed my steed in the heat of our
conversation, I was compelled to take over his horse, after I had
given this poor Giarmuid proper interment. Oh, yes, a very pretty
fighter, and I had heard much talk of him in Logreus. He was Lord of
Ore and Persaunt, you remember, though of course the estate came by
his mother's side."

"Oh, yes," they said. "You must not think that we of Glathion are
quite shut out from the great world. We have heard of all these
affairs. And we have also heard fine things of your duchy of
Logreus, messire."

"Doubtless," said Jurgen; and turned again to his singing.

"Lo, for I pray to thee, resistless Love," he descanted, "that thou
to-day make cry unto my love, to Phyllida whom I, poor Logreus, love
so tenderly, not to deny me love! Asked why, say thou my drink and
food is love, in days wherein I think and brood on love, and truly
find naught good in aught save love, since Phyllida hath taught me
how to love."

Here Jurgen groaned with nicely modulated ardor; and he continued:
"If she avow such constant hate of love as would ignore my great and
constant love, plead thou no more! With listless lore of love woo
Death resistlessly, resistless Love, in place of her that saith such
scorn of love as lends to Death the lure and grace I love."

Thus Jurgen sang melodiously of his Phyllida, and meant thereby (as
everybody knew) the Princess Guenevere. Since custom compelled him
to deal in analogues, he dealt wholesale. Gems and metals, the
blossoms of the field and garden, fires and wounds and sunrises and
perfumes, an armory of lethal weapons, ice and a concourse of
mythological deities were his starting-point. Then the seas
and heavens were dredged of phenomena to be mentioned with
disparagement, in comparison with one or another feature of Duke
Jurgen's Phyllida. Zoology and history, and generally the remembered
contents of his pawnshop, were overhauled and made to furnish
targets for depreciation: whereas in dealing with the famous ladies
loved by earlier poets, Duke Jurgen was positively insulting,
allowing hardly a rag of merit. Still, he was careful to be just:
and he allowed that these poor creatures might figure advantageously
enough in eyes which had never beheld his Phyllida. And to all this
information the lady whom he hymned attended willingly.

"She is a princess," reflected Jurgen. "She is quite beautiful. She
is young, and whatever her father's opinion, she is reasonably
intelligent, as women go. Nobody could ask more. Why, then, am I not
out of my head about her? Already she permits a kiss or two when
nobody is around, and presently she will permit more. And she thinks
I am quite the cleverest person living. Come, Jurgen, man! is there
no heart in this spry young body you have regained? Come, let us
have a little honest rapture and excitement over this promising
situation!"

But somehow Jurgen could not manage it. He was interested in what,
he knew, was going to happen. Yes, undoubtedly he looked forward to
more intimate converse with this beautiful young princess, but it
was rather as one anticipates partaking of a favorite dessert.
Jurgen felt that a liaison arranged for in this spirit was neither
one thing or the other.

"If only I could feel like a cold-blooded villain, now, I would at
worst be classifiable. But I intend the girl no harm, I am honestly
fond of her. I shall talk my best, broaden her ideas, and give her,
I flatter myself, considerable pleasure: vulgar prejudices apart, I
shall leave her no whit the worse. Why, the dear little thing, not
for the ransom of seven emperors would I do her any hurt! And in
these matters discretion is everything, simply everything. No, quite
decidedly, I am not a cold-blooded villain; and I shall deal fairly
with the Princess."

Thus Jurgen was disappointed by his own emotions, as he turned them
from side to side, and prodded them, and shifted to a fresh
viewpoint, only to find it no more favorable than the one
relinquished: but he veiled the inadequacy of his emotions with very
moving fervors. The tale does not record his conversations with
Guenevere: for Jurgen now discoursed plain idiocy, as one purveys
sweetmeats to a child in fond astonishment at the pet's appetite.
And leisurely Jurgen advanced: there was no hurry, with weeks
wherein to accomplish everything: meanwhile this routine work had a
familiar pleasantness.

For the amateur co-ordinates matters, knowing that one thing
axiomatically leads to another. There is no harm at all in
respectful allusions to a love that comprehends its hopelessness: it
was merely a fact which Jurgen mentioned, and was about to pass on;
only Guenevere, in modesty, was forced to disparage her own
attractions, as an inadequate cause for so much misery. Common
courtesy demanded that Jurgen enter upon a rebuttal. To emphasize
one point in this, the orator was forced to take the hand of his
audience: but strangers did that every day, with nobody objecting;
moreover, the hand was here, not so much seized as displayed by its
detainer, as evidence of what he contended. How else was he to prove
the Princess of Glathion had the loveliest hand in the world? It was
not a matter he could request Guenevere to accept on hearsay: and
Jurgen wanted to deal fairly with her.

Well, but before relinquishing the loveliest hand in the world a
connoisseur will naturally kiss each fingertip: this is merely a
tribute to perfection, and has no personal application. Besides, a
kiss, wherever deposited, as Jurgen pointed out, is, when you think
of it, but a ceremonial, of no intrinsic wrongfulness. The girl
demurring against this apothegm--as custom again exacted,--was,
still in common fairness, convinced of her error. So now, says
Jurgen presently, you see for yourself. Is anything changed between
us? Do we not sit here, just as we were before? Why, to be sure! a
kiss is now attestedly a quite innocuous performance, with nothing
very fearful about it one way or the other. It even has its pleasant
side. Thus there is no need to make a pother over kisses or over an
arm about you, when it is more comfortable sitting so: how can one
reasonably deny to a sincere friend what is accorded to a cousin or
an old cloak? It would be nonsense, as Jurgen demonstrated with a
very apt citation from Napsacus.

Then, sitting so, in the heat of conversation a speaker naturally
gesticulates: and a deal of his eloquence is dependent upon his
hands. When anyone is talking it is discourteous to interrupt,
whereas to lay hold of a gentleman's hand outright, as Jurgen
parenthesized, is a little forward. No, he really did not think it
would be quite proper for Guenevere to hold his hand. Let us
preserve decorum, even in trifles.

"Ah, but you know that you are doing wrong!"

"I doing wrong! I, who am simply sitting here and talking my poor
best in an effort to entertain you! Come now, Princess, but tell me
what you mean!"

"You should know very well what I mean."

"But I protest to you I have not the least notion. How can I
possibly know what you mean when you refuse to tell me what you
mean?"

And since the Princess declined to put into words just what she
meant, things stayed as they were, for the while.

Thus did Jurgen co-ordinate matters, knowing that one thing
axiomatically leads to another. And in short, affairs sped very much
as Jurgen had anticipated.

Now, by ordinary, Jurgen talked with Guenevere in dimly lighted
places. He preferred this, because then he was not bothered by that
unaccountable shadow whose presence in sunlight put him out. Nobody
ever seemed to notice this preposterous shadow; it was patent,
indeed, that nobody could see it save Jurgen: none the less, the
thing worried him. So even from the first he remembered Guenevere as
a soft voice and a delectable perfume in twilight, as a beauty not
clearly visioned.

And Gogyrvan's people worried him. The hook-nosed tall old King had
been by Jurgen dismissed from thought, as an enigma not important
enough to be worth the trouble of solving. Gogyrvan at once seemed
to be schooling himself to patience under some private annoyance and
to be revolving in his mind some private jest; he was queer, and
probably abominable: but to grant the old rascal his due, he was not
meddlesome.

The people about Gogyrvan, though, were perplexing. These men who
considered that all you possessed was loaned you to devote to the
service of your God, your King and every woman who crossed your
path, could hardly be behaving rationally. To talk of serving God
sounded as sonorously and as inspiritingly as a drum: yes, and a
drum had nothing but air in it. The priests said so-and-so: but did
anybody believe the gallant Bishop of Merion, for example, was
always to be depended upon?

"I would like the opinion of Prince Evrawc's wife as to that," said
Jurgen, with a grin. For it was well-known that all affairs between
this Dame Alundyne and the Bishop were so discreetly managed as to
afford no reason for any scandal whatever.

As for serving the King, there in plain view was Gogyrvan Gawr, for
anyone who so elected, to regard and grow enthusiastic over:
Gogyrvan might be shrewd enough, but to Jurgen he suggested very
little of the Lord's anointed. To the contrary, he reminded you of
Jurgen's brother-in-law, the grocer, without being graced by the
tradesman's friendly interest in customers. Gogyrvan Gawr was a
person whom Jurgen simply could not imagine any intelligent Deity
selecting as steward. And finally, when it came to serving women,
what sort of service did women most cordially appreciate? Jurgen had
his answer pat enough, but it was an answer not suitable for
utterance in a mixed company.

"No one of my honest opinions, in fact, is adapted to further my
popularity in Glathion, because I am a monstrous clever fellow who
does justice to things as they are. Therefore I must remember
always, in justice to myself, that I very probably hold traffic with
madmen. Yet Rome was a fine town, and it was geese who saved it.
These people may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to
say they are wrong: but still, at the same time--! Yes, that is how
I feel about it."

Thus did Jurgen abide at the chivalrous court of Glathion, and
conform to all its customs. In the matter of love-songs nobody
protested more movingly that the lady whom he loved (quite
hopelessly, of course), embodied all divine perfections: and when it
came to knightly service, the possession of Caliburn made the
despatching of thieves and giants and dragons seem hardly
sportsmanlike. Still, Jurgen fought a little, now and then, in order
to conform to the customs of Glathion: and the Duke of Logreus was
widely praised as a very promising young knight.

And all the while he fretted because he could just dimly perceive
that ideal which was served in Glathion, and the beauty of this
ideal, but could not possibly believe in it. Here was, again, a
loveliness perceived in twilight, a beauty not clearly visioned.

"Yet am not I a monstrous clever fellow," he would console himself,
"to take them all in so completely? It is a joke to which, I think,
I do full justice."

So Jurgen abode among these persons to whom life was a high-hearted
journeying homeward. God the Father awaited you there, ready to
punish at need, but eager to forgive, after the manner of all
fathers: that one became a little soiled in traveling, and sometimes
blundered into the wrong lane, was a matter which fathers
understood: meanwhile here was an ever-present reminder of His
perfection incarnated in woman, the finest and the noblest of His
creations. Thus was every woman a symbol to be honored magnanimously
and reverently. So said they all.

"Why, but to be sure!" assented Jurgen. And in support of his
position he very edifyingly quoted Ophelion, and Fabianus Papirius,
and Sextius Niger to boot.




15.

Of Compromises in Glathion


The tale records that it was not a great while before, in simple
justice to Guenevere, Duke Jurgen had afforded her the advantage of
frank conversation in actual privacy. For conventions have to be
regarded, of course. Thus the time of a princess is not her own, and
at any hour of day all sorts of people are apt to request an
audience just when some most improving conversation is progressing
famously: but the Hall of Judgment stood vacant and unguarded at
night.

"But I would never consider doing such a thing," said Guenevere:
"and whatever must you think of me, to make such a proposal!"

"That too, my dearest, is a matter which I can only explain in
private."

"And if I were to report your insolence to my father--"

"You would annoy him exceedingly: and from such griefs it is our
duty to shield the aged."

"And besides, I am afraid."

"Oh, my dearest," says Jurgen, and his voice quavered, because his
love and his sorrow seemed very great to him: "but, oh, my dearest,
can it be that you have not faith in me! For with all my body and
soul I love you, as I have loved you ever since I first raised your
face between my hands, and understood that I had never before known
beauty. Indeed, I love you as, I think, no man has ever loved any
woman that lived in the long time that is gone, for my love is
worship, and no less. The touch of your hand sets me to trembling,
dear; and the look of your gray eyes makes me forget there is
anything of pain or grief or evil anywhere: for you are the
loveliest thing God ever made, with joy in the new skill that had
come to His fingers. And you have not faith in me!"

Then the Princess gave a little sobbing laugh of content and
repentance, and she clasped the hand of her grief-stricken lover.
"Forgive me, Jurgen, for I cannot bear to see you so unhappy!"

"Ah, and what is my grief to you!" he asks of her, bitterly.

"Much, oh, very much, my dear!" she whispered.

So in the upshot Jurgen was never to forget that moment wherein he
waited behind the door, and through the crack between the half-open
door and the door-frame saw Guenevere approach irresolutely, a
wavering white blur in the dark corridor. She came to talk with him
where they would not be bothered with interruptions: but she came
delightfully perfumed, in her night-shift, and in nothing else.
Jurgen wondered at the way of these women even as his arms went
about her in the gloom. He remembered always the feel of that warm
and slender and yielding body, naked under the thin fabric of the
shift, as his arms first went about her: of all their moments
together that last breathless minute before either of them had
spoken stayed in his memory as the most perfect.

And yet what followed was pleasant enough, for now it was to the
wide and softly cushioned throne of a king, no less, that Guenevere
and Jurgen resorted, so as to talk where they would not be bothered
with interruptions. The throne of Gogyrvan was perfectly dark, under
its canopy, in the unlighted hall, and in the dark nobody can see
what happens.

Thereafter these two contrived to talk together nightly upon the
throne of Glathion: but what remained in Jurgen's memory was that
last moment behind the door, and the six tall windows upon the east
side of the hall, those windows which were of commingled blue and
silver, but were all an opulent glitter, throughout that time in the
night when the moon was clear of the tree-tops and had not yet risen
high enough to be shut off by the eaves. For that was all which
Jurgen really saw in the Hall of Judgment. There would be a brief
period wherein upon the floor beneath each window would show a
narrow quadrangle of moonlight: but the windows were set in a wall
so deep that this soon passed. On the west side were six windows
also, but about these was a porch; so no light ever came from the
west.

Thus in the dark they would laugh and talk with lowered voices.
Jurgen came to these encounters well primed with wine, and in
consequence, as he quite comprehended, talked like an angel, without
confining himself exclusively to celestial topics. He was often
delighted by his own brilliance, and it seemed to him a pity there
was no one handy to take it down: so much of his talking was
necessarily just a little over the head of any girl, however
beautiful and adorable.

And Guenevere, he found, talked infinitely better at night. It was
not altogether the wine which made him think that, either: the girl
displayed a side she veiled in the day time. A girl, far less a
princess, is not supposed to know more than agrees with a man's
notion of maidenly ignorance, she contended.

"Nobody ever told me anything about so many interesting matters.
Why, I remember--" And Guenevere narrated a quaintly pathetic little
story, here irrelevant, of what had befallen her some three or four
years earlier. "My mother was living then: but she had never said a
word about such things, and frightened as I was, I did not go to
her."

Jurgen asked questions.

"Why, yes. There was nothing else to do. I cannot talk freely with
my maids and ladies even now. I cannot question them, that is: of
course I can listen as they talk among themselves. For me to do more
would be unbecoming in a princess. And I wonder quietly about so
many things!" She educed instances. "After that I used to notice the
animals and the poultry. So I worked out problems for myself, after
a fashion. But nobody ever told me anything directly."

"Yet I dare say that Thragnar--well, the Troll King, being very
wise, must have made zoology much clearer."

"Thragnar was a skilled enchanter," says a demure voice in the dark;
"and through the potency of his abominable arts, I can remember
nothing whatever about Thragnar."

Jurgen laughed, ruefully. Still, he was tolerably sure about
Thragnar now.

So they talked: and Jurgen marvelled, as millions of men had done
aforetime, and have done since, at the girl's eagerness, now that
barriers were down, to discuss in considerable detail all such
matters as etiquette had previously compelled them to ignore. About
her ladies in waiting, for example, she afforded him some very
curious data: and concerning men in general she asked innumerable
questions that Jurgen found delicious.

Such innocence combined--upon the whole--with a certain moral
obtuseness, seemed inconceivable. For to Jurgen it now appeared that
Guenevere was behaving with not quite the decorum which might fairly
be expected of a princess. Contrition, at least, one might have
looked for, over this hole and corner business: whereas it worried
him to note that Guenevere was coming to accept affairs almost as a
matter of course. Certainly she did not seem to think at all of any
wickedness anywhere: the utmost she suggested was the necessity of
being very careful. And while she never contradicted him in these
private conversations, and submitted in everything to his judgment,
her motive now appeared to be hardly more than a wish to please him.
It was almost as though she were humoring him in his foolishness.
And all this within six weeks! reflected Jurgen: and he nibbled his
finger-nails, with a mental side-glance toward the opinions of King
Gogyrvan Gawr.

But in daylight the Princess remained unchanged. In daylight Jurgen
adored her, but with no feeling of intimacy. Very rarely did
occasion serve for them to be actually alone in the day time. Once
or twice, though, he kissed her in open sunlight: and then her eyes
were melting but wary, and the whole affair was rather flat. She did
not repulse him: but she stayed a princess, appreciative of her
station, and seemed not at all the invisible person who talked with
him at night in the Hall of Judgment.

Presently, by common consent, they began to avoid each other by
daylight. Indeed, the time of the Princess was now pre-occupied: for
now had come into Glathion a ship with saffron colored sails, and
having for its figure-head a dragon that was painted with thirty
colors. Such was the ship which brought Messire Merlin Ambrosius and
Dame Anaïtis, the Lady of the Lake, with a great retinue, to fetch
young Guenevere to London, where she was to be married to King
Arthur.

First there was a week of feasting and tourneys and high mirth of
every kind. Now the trumpets blared, and upon a scaffolding that was
gay with pennons and smart tapestries King Gogyrvan sat nodding and
blinking in his brightest raiment, to judge who did the best: and
into the field came joyously a press of dukes and earls and barons
and many famous knights, to contend for honor and a trumpery chaplet
of pearls.

Jurgen shrugged, and honored custom. The Duke of Logreus acquitted
himself with credit in the opening tournament, unhorsing Sir Dodinas
le Sauvage, Earl Roth of Meliot, Sir Epinogris, and Sir Hector de
Maris: then Earl Damas of Listenise smote like a whirlwind, and
Jurgen slid contentedly down the tail of his fine horse. His part in
the tournament was ended, and he was heartily glad of it. He
preferred to contemplate rather than share in such festivities: and
he now followed his bent with a most exquisite misery, because he
considered that never had any other poet occupied a situation more
picturesque.

By day he was the Duke of Logreus, which in itself was a notable
advance upon pawnbroking: after nightfall he discounted the peculiar
privileges of a king. It was the secrecy, the deluding of everybody,
which he especially enjoyed: and in the thought of what a monstrous
clever fellow was Jurgen, he almost lost sight of the fact that he
was miserable over the impending marriage of the lady he loved.

Once or twice he caught the tail-end of a glance from Gogyrvan's
bright old eye. Jurgen by this time abhorred Gogyrvan, as a person
of abominably unjust dealings.

"To take no better care of his own daughter," Jurgen considered, "is
infamous. The man is neglecting his duties as a father, and to do
that is not fair."




16.

Divers Imbroglios of King Smoit


Now it befell that for three nights in succession the Princess
Guenevere was unable to converse with Jurgen in the Hall of
Judgment. So upon one of these disengaged evenings Duke Jurgen held
a carouse with Aribert and Urien, two of Gogyrvan's barons, who had
just returned from Pengwaed-Gir, and had queer tales to narrate of
the Trooping Fairies who garrison that place.

All three were seasoned topers, so Jurgen went to bed prepared for
anything. Later he sat up in bed, and found it was much as he had
suspected. The room was haunted, and at the foot of his couch were
two ghosts: one an impudent-looking leering phantom, in a suit of
old-fashioned armor, and the other a beautiful pale lady, in the
customary flowing white draperies.

"Good-morning to you both," says Jurgen, "and sorry am I that I
cannot truthfully observe I am glad to see you. Though you are
welcome enough if you can manage to haunt the room quietly." Then,
seeing that both phantoms looked puzzled, Jurgen proceeded to
explain. "Last year, when I was traveling upon business in
Westphalia, it was my grief to spend a night in the haunted castle
of Neuedesberg, for I could not get any sleep at all in that place.
There was a ghost in charge who persisted in rattling very large
iron chains and in groaning dismally throughout the night. Then
toward morning he took the form of a monstrous cat, and climbed upon
the foot of my bed: and there he squatted yowling until daybreak.
And as I am ignorant of German, I was not able to convey to him any
idea of my disapproval of his conduct. Now I trust that as
compatriots, or as I might say with more exactness, as former
compatriots, you will appreciate that such behavior is out of all
reason."

"Messire," says the male ghost, and he oozed to his full height,
"you are guilty of impertinence in harboring such a suspicion. I can
only hope it proceeds from ignorance."

"For I am sure," put in the lady, "that I always disliked cats, and
we never had them about the castle."

"And you must pardon my frankness, messire," continued the male
ghost, "but you cannot have moved widely in noble company if you are
indeed unable to distinguish between members of the feline species
and of the reigning family of Glathion."

"Well, I have seen dowager queens who justified some such
confusion," observed Jurgen. "Still, I entreat the forgiveness of
both of you, for I had no idea that I was addressing royalty."

"I was King Smoit," explained the male phantom, "and this was my
ninth wife, Queen Sylvia Tereu."

Jurgen bowed as gracefully, he flattered himself, as was possible in
his circumstances. It is not easy to bow gracefully while sitting
erect in bed.

"Often and over again have I heard of you, King Smoit," says Jurgen.
"You were the grandfather of Gogyrvan Gawr, and you murdered your
ninth wife, and your eighth wife, and your fifth wife, and your
third wife too: and you went under the title of the Black King, for
you were reputed the wickedest monarch that ever reigned in Glathion
and the Red Islands."

It seemed to Jurgen that King Smoit evinced embarrassment, but it is
hard to be quite certain when a ghost is blushing. "Perhaps I was
spoken of in some such terms," says Smoit, "for the neighbors were
censorious gossips, and I was not lucky in my marriages. And I
regret, I bitterly regret, to confess that, in a moment of extreme
yet not quite unprovoked excitement, I assassinated the lady whom
you now behold."

"And I am sure, through no fault of mine," says Sylvia Tereu.

"Certainly, my dear, you resisted with all your might. I only wish
that you had been a larger and a brawnier woman. But you, messire,
can now perceive, I suppose, the folly of expecting a high King of
Glathion, and the queen that he took delight in, to sit upon your
bed and howl?"

So then, upon reflection, Jurgen admitted he had never had that
experience; nor, he handsomely added, could he recall any similar
incident among his friends.

"The notion is certainly preposterous," went on King Smoit, and very
grimly he smiled. "We are drawn hither by quite other intentions. In
fact, we wish to ask of you, as a member of the family, your
assistance in a delicate affair."

"I would be delighted," Jurgen stated, "to aid you in any possible
way. But why do you call me a member of the family?"

"Now, to deal frankly," says Smoit, with a grin, "I am not claiming
any alliance with the Duke of Logreus--"

"Sometimes," says Jurgen, "one prefers to travel incognito. As a
king, you ought to understand that."

--"My interest is rather in the grandson of Steinvor. Now you will
remember your grandmother Steinvor as, I do not doubt, a charming
old lady. But I remember Steinvor, the wife of Ludwig, as one of the
loveliest girls that a king's eyes ever lighted on."

"Oh, sir," says Jurgen, horrified, "and what is this you are telling
me!"

"Merely that I had always an affectionate nature," replied King
Smoit, "and that I was a fine upstanding young king in those days.
And one of the results of my being these things was your father,
whom men called Coth the son of Ludwig. But I can assure you Ludwig
had done nothing to deserve it."

"Well, well!" said Jurgen: "all this is very scandalous: and very
upsetting, too, it is to have a brand-new grandfather foisted upon
you at this hour of the morning. Still, it happened a great while
ago: and if Ludwig did not fret over it, I see no reason why I
should do so. And besides, King Smoit, it may be that you are not
telling me the truth."

"If you doubt my confession, messire my grandson, you have only to
look into the next mirror. It is precisely on this account that we
have ventured to dispel your slumbers. For to me you bear a striking
resemblance. You have the family face."

Now Jurgen considered the lineaments of King Smoit of Glathion.
"Really," said Jurgen, "of course it is very flattering to be told
that your appearance is regal. I do not at all know what to say in
reply to the implied compliment, without seeming uncivil. I would
never for a moment question that you were much admired in your day,
sir, and no doubt very justly so. None the less--well, my nose, now,
from such glimpses of it as mirrors have hitherto afforded, does not
appear to be a snub-nose."

"Ah, but appearances are proverbially deceitful," observed King
Smoit.

"And about the left hand corner," protested Queen Sylvia Tereu, "I
detect a distinct resemblance."

"Now I may seem unduly obtuse," said Jurgen, "for I am a little
obtuse. It is a habit with me, a very bad habit formed in early
infancy, and I have never been able to break myself of it. And so I
have not any notion at what you two are aiming."

Replied the ghost of King Smoit: "I will explain. Just sixty-three
years ago to-night I murdered my ninth wife in circumstances of
peculiar brutality, as you with rather questionable taste have
mentioned."

Then Jurgen was somewhat abashed, and felt that it did not become him,
who had so recently cut off the head of his own wife, to assume the airs
of a precisian. "Of course," says Jurgen, more broad-mindedly, "these
little family differences are always apt to occur in married life."

"So be it! Though, by the so-and-sos of Ursula's eleven thousand
traveling companions, there was a time wherein I would not have
brooked such criticism. Ah, well, that time is overpast, and I am a
bloodless thing that the wind sweeps at the wind's will through
lands in which but yesterday King Smoit was dreaded. So I let that
which has been be."

"Well, that seems reasonable," said Jurgen, "and to be a trifle
rhetorical is the privilege of grandfathers. Therefore I entreat
you, sir, to continue."

"Two years afterward I followed the Emperor Locrine in his
expedition against the Suevetii, an evil and luxurious people who
worship Gozarin peculiarly, by means of little boats. I must tell
you, grandson, that was a goodly raid, conducted by a band of tidy
fighters in a land of wealth and of fine women. But alack, as the
saying is, in our return from Osnach my loved general Locrine was
captured by that arch-fiend Duke Corineus of Cornwall: and I, among
many others who had followed the Emperor, paid for our merry
larcenies and throat-cuttings a very bitter price. Corineus was not
at all broadminded, not what you would call a man of the world. So
it was in a noisome dungeon that I was incarcerated,--I, Smoit of
Glathion, who conquered Enisgarth and Sargyll in open battle and
fearlessly married the heiress of Camwy! But I spare you the
unpleasant details. It suffices to say that I was dissatisfied with
my quarters. Yet fain to leave them as I became, there was but one
way. It involved the slaying of my gaoler, a step which was, I
confess, to me distasteful. I was getting on in life, and had grown
tired of killing people. Yet, to mature deliberation, the life of a
graceless varlet, void of all gentleness and with no bowels of
compassion, and deaf to suggestions of bribery, appeared of no
overwhelming importance."

"I can readily imagine, grandfather, that you were not deeply
interested in either the nature or the anatomy of your gaoler. So
you did what was unavoidable."

"Yes, I treacherously slew him, and escaped in an impenetrable
disguise to Glathion, where not long afterward I died. My dying
just then was most annoying, for I was on the point of being married,
and she was a remarkably attractive girl,--King Tyrnog's daughter,
from Craintnor way. She would have been my thirteenth wife. And not
a week before the ceremony I tripped and fell down my own castle
steps, and broke my neck. It was a humiliating end for one who had
been a warrior of considerable repute. Upon my word, it made me think
there might be something, after all, in those old superstitions about
thirteen being an unlucky number. But what was I saying?--oh, yes!
It is also unlucky to be careless about one's murders. You will
readily understand that for one or two such affairs I am condemned
yearly to haunt the scene of my crime on its anniversary: such
an arrangement is fair enough, and I make no complaint, though of
course it does rather break into the evening. But it happened that
I treacherously slew my gaoler with a large cobble-stone on the
fifteenth of June. Now the unfortunate part, the really awkward
feature, was that this was to an hour the anniversary of the death
of my ninth wife."

"And you murdering insignificant strangers on such a day!" said
Queen Sylvia. "You climbing out of jail windows figged out as a lady
abbess, on an anniversary you ought to have kept on your knees in
unavailing repentance! But you were a hard man, Smoit, and it was
little loving courtesy you showed your wife at a time when she might
reasonably look to be remembered, and that is a fact."

"My dear, I admit it was heedless of me. I could not possibly say
more. At any rate, grandson, I discovered after my decease that such
heedlessness entailed my haunting on every fifteenth of June at
three in the morning two separate places."

"Well, but that was justice," says Jurgen.

"It may have been justice," Smoit admitted: "but my point is that
it happened to be impossible. However, I was aided by my
great-great-grandfather Penpingon Vreichvras ap Mylwald Glasanief.
He too had the family face; and in every way resembled me so
closely that he impersonated me to everyone's entire satisfaction;
and with my wife's assistance re-enacted my disastrous crime upon
the scene of its occurrence, June after June."

"Indeed," said Queen Sylvia, "he handled his sword infinitely better
than you, my dear. It was a thrilling pleasure to be murdered by
Penpingon Vreichvras ap Mylwald Glasanief, and I shall always regret
him."

"For you must understand, grandson, that the term of King Penpingon
Vreichvras ap Mylwald Glasanief's stay in Purgatory has now run out,
and he has recently gone to Heaven. That was pleasant for him, I
dare say, so I do not complain. Still, it leaves me with no one to
take my place. Angels, as you will readily understand, are not
permitted to perpetrate murders, even in the way of kindness. It
might be thought to establish a dangerous precedent."

"All this," said Jurgen, "seems regrettable, but not strikingly
explicit. I have a heart and a half to serve you, sir, with not
seven-eighths of a notion as to what you want of me. Come, put a
name to it!"

"You have, as I have said, the family face. You are, in fact, the
living counterpart of Smoit of Glathion. So I beseech you, messire
my grandson, for this one night to impersonate my ghost, and with
the assistance of Queen Sylvia Tereu to see that at three o'clock
the White Turret is haunted to everyone's satisfaction. Otherwise,"
said Smoit, gloomily, "the consequences will be deplorable."

"But I have had no experience at haunting," Jurgen confessed. "It is
a pursuit in which I do not pretend to competence: and I do not even
know just how one goes about it."

"That matter is simple, although mysterious preliminaries will be,
of course, necessitated, in order to convert a living person into a
ghost--"

"The usual preliminaries, sir, are out of the question: and I must
positively decline to be stabbed or poisoned or anything of that
kind, even to humor my grandfather."

Both Smoit and Sylvia protested that any such radical step would be
superfluous, since Jurgen's ghostship was to be transient. In fact,
all Jurgen would have to do would be to drain the embossed goblet
which Sylvia Tereu held out to him, with Druidical invocations.

And for a moment Jurgen hesitated. The whole business seemed rather
improbable. Still, the ties of kin are strong, and it is not often
one gets the chance to aid, however slightly, one's long-dead
grandfather: besides, the potion smelt very invitingly.

"Well," says Jurgen, "I am willing to taste any drink once." Then
Jurgen drank.

The flavor was excellent. Yet the drink seemed not to affect Jurgen,
at first. Then he began to feel a trifle light-headed. Next he
looked downward, and was surprised to notice there was nobody in his
bed. Closer investigation revealed the shadowy outline of a human
figure, through which the bedclothing had collapsed. This, he
decided, was all that was left of Jurgen. And it gave him a queer
sensation. Jurgen jumped like a startled horse, and so violently
that he flew out of bed, and found himself floating imponderably
about the room.

Now Jurgen recognized the feeling perfectly. He had often had it in
his sleep, in dreams wherein he would bend his legs at the knees so
that his feet came up behind him, and he would pass through the air
without any effort. Then it seemed ridiculously simple, and he would
wonder why he never thought of it before. And then he would reflect:
"This is an excellent way of getting around. I will come to
breakfast this way in the morning, and show Lisa how simple it is.
How it will astonish her, to be sure, and how clever she will think
me!" And then Jurgen would wake up, and find that somehow he had
forgotten the trick of it.

But just now this manner of locomotion was undeniably easy. So
Jurgen floated around his bed once or twice, then to the ceiling,
for practice. Through inexperience, he miscalculated the necessary
force, and popped through into the room above, where he found
himself hovering immediately over the Bishop of Merion. His eminence
was not alone, but as both occupants of the apartment were asleep,
Jurgen witnessed nothing unepiscopal. Now Jurgen rejoined his
grandfather, and girded on charmed Caliburn, and demanded what must
next be done.

"The assassination will take place in the White Turret, as usual.
Queen Sylvia will instruct you in the details. You can invent most
of the affair, however, as the Lady of the Lake, who occupies this
room to-night, is very probably unacquainted with our terrible
history."

Then King Smoit observed that it was high time he kept his
appointment in Cornwall, and he melted into air, with an easy
confidence that bespoke long practise: and Jurgen followed Queen
Sylvia Tereu.




17.

About a Cock That Crowed Too Soon


Next the tale tells of how Jurgen and the ghost of Queen Sylvia
Tereu came into the White Turret. The Lady of the Lake was in bed:
she slept unaccompanied, as Jurgen noted with approval, for he
wished to intrude upon no more tête-à-têtes. And Dame Anaïtis did
not at first awake.

Now this was a gloomy and high-paneled apartment, with exactly the
traditional amount of moonlight streaming through two windows. Any
ghost, even an apprentice, could have acquitted himself with credit
in such surroundings, and Jurgen thought he did extremely well. He
was atavistically brutal, and to improvise the accompanying dialogue
he did not find difficult. So everything went smoothly, and with
such spirit that Anaïtis was presently wakened by Queen Sylvia's
very moving wails for mercy, and sat erect in bed, as though a
little startled. Then the Lady of the Lake leaned back among the
pillows, and witnessed the remainder of the terrible scene with
remarkable self-possession.

So it was that the tragedy swelled to its appalling climax, and
subsided handsomely. With the aid of Caliburn, Jurgen had murdered
his temporary wife. He had dragged her insensate body across the
floor, by the hair of her head, and had carefully remembered first
to put her comb in his pocket, as Queen Sylvia had requested, so
that it would not be lost. He had given vent to several fiendish
"Ha-ha's" and all the old high imprecations he remembered: and in
short, everything had gone splendidly when he left the White Turret
with a sense of self-approval and Queen Sylvia Tereu.

The two of them paused in the winding stairway; and in the darkness,
after he had restored her comb, the Queen was telling Jurgen how
sorry she was to part with him.

"For it is back to the cold grave I must be going now, Messire
Jurgen, and to the tall flames of Purgatory: and it may be that I
shall not ever see you any more."

"I shall regret the circumstance, madame," says Jurgen, "for you are
the loveliest person I have ever seen."

The Queen was pleased. "That is a delightfully boyish speech, and
one can see it comes from the heart. I only wish that I could meet
with such unsophisticated persons in my present abode. Instead, I am
herded with battered sinners who have no heart, who are not frank
and outspoken about anything, and I detest their affectations."

"Ah, then you are not happy with your husband, Sylvia? I suspected
as much."

"I see very little of Smoit. It is true he has eight other wives all
resident in the same flame, and cannot well show any partiality. Two
of his Queens, though, went straight to Heaven: and his eighth wife,
Gudrun, we are compelled to fear, must have been an unrepentant
sinner, for she has never reached Purgatory. But I always distrusted
Gudrun, myself: otherwise I would never have suggested to Smoit that
he have her strangled in order to make me his queen. You see, I
thought it a fine thing to be a queen, in those days, Jurgen, when I
was an artless slip of a girl. And Smoit was all honey and perfume
and velvet, in those days, Jurgen, and little did I suspect the
cruel fate that was to befall me."

"Indeed, it is a sad thing, Sylvia, to be murdered by the hand
which, so to speak, is sworn to keep an eye on your welfare, and
which rightfully should serve you on its knees."

"It was not that I minded. Smoit killed me in a fit of jealousy, and
jealousy is in its blundering way a compliment. No, a worse thing
than that befell me, Jurgen, and embittered all my life in the
flesh." And Sylvia began to weep.

"And what was that thing, Sylvia?"

Queen Sylvia whispered the terrible truth. "My husband did not
understand me."

"Now, by Heaven," says Jurgen, "when a woman tells me that, even
though the woman be dead, I know what it is she expects of me."

So Jurgen put his arm about the ghost of Queen Sylvia Tereu, and
comforted her. Then, finding her quite willing to be comforted,
Jurgen sat for a while upon the dark steps, with one arm still about
Queen Sylvia. The effect of the potion had evidently worn off,
because Jurgen found himself to be composed no longer of cool
imponderable vapor, but of the warmest and hardest sort of flesh
everywhere. But probably the effect of the wine which Jurgen had
drunk earlier in the evening had not worn off: for now Jurgen began
to talk wildishly in the dark, about the necessity of his, in some
way, avenging the injury inflicted upon his nominal grandfather,
Ludwig, and Jurgen drew his sword, charmed Caliburn.

"For, as you perceive," said Jurgen, "I carry such weapons as are
sufficient for all ordinary encounters. And am I not to use them, to
requite King Smoit for the injustice he did poor Ludwig? Why,
certainly I must. It is my duty."

"Ah, but Smoit by this is back in Purgatory," Queen Sylvia
protested, "And to draw your sword against a woman is cowardly."

"The avenging sword of Jurgen, my charming Sylvia, is the terror of
envious men, but it is the comfort of all pretty women."

"It is undoubtedly a very large sword," said she: "oh, a magnificent
sword, as I can perceive even in the dark. But Smoit, I repeat, is
not here to measure weapons with you."

"Now your arguments irritate me, whereas an honest woman would see
to it that all the legacies of her dead husband were duly
satisfied--"

"Oh, oh! and what do you mean--?"

"Well, but certainly a grandson is--at one remove, I grant you,--a
sort of legacy."

"There is something in what you advance--"

"There is a great deal in what I advance, I can assure you. It is
the most natural and most penetrating kind of logic; and I wish
merely to discharge a duty--"

"But you upset me, with that big sword of yours, you make me
nervous, and I cannot argue so long as you are flourishing it about.
Come now, put up your sword! Oh, what is anybody to do with you!
Here is the sheath for your sword," says she.

At this point they were interrupted.

"Duke of Logreus," says the voice of Dame Anaïtis, "do you not think
it would be better to retire, before such antics at the door of my
bedroom give rise to a scandal?"

For Anaïtis had half-opened the door of her bedroom, and with a lamp
in her hand, was peering out into the narrow stairway. Jurgen was a
little embarrassed, for his apparent intimacy with a lady who had
been dead for sixty-three years would be, he felt, a matter
difficult to explain. So Jurgen rose to his feet, and hastily put up
the weapon he had exhibited to Queen Sylvia, and decided to pass
airily over the whole affair. And outside, a cock crowed, for it was
now dawn.

"I bid you a good morning, Dame Anaïtis," said Jurgen. "But the
stairways hereabouts are confusing, and I must have lost my way. I
was going for a stroll. This is my distant relative Queen Sylvia
Tereu, who kindly offered to accompany me. We were going out to
gather mushrooms and to watch the sunrise, you conceive."

"Messire de Logreus, I think you had far better go back to bed."

"To the contrary, madame, it is my manifest duty to serve as Queen
Sylvia's escort--"

"For all that, messire, I do not see any Queen Sylvia."

Jurgen looked about him. And certainly his grandfather's ninth wife
was no longer visible. "Yes, she has vanished. But that was to be
expected at cockcrow. Still, that cock crew just at the wrong
moment," said Jurgen, ruefully. "It was not fair."

And Dame Anaïtis said: "Gogyrvan's cellar is well stocked: and you
sat late with Urien and Aribert: and doubtless they also were lucky
enough to discover a queen or two in Gogyrvan's cellar. No less, I
think you are still a little drunk."

"Now answer me this, Dame Anaïtis: were you not visited by two
ghosts to-night?"

"Why, that is as it may be," she replied: "but the White Turret is
notoriously haunted, and it is few quiet nights I have passed there,
for Gogyrvan's people were a bad lot."

"Upon my word," wonders Jurgen, "what manner of person is this Dame
Anaïtis, who remains unstirred by such a brutal murder as I have
committed, and makes no more of ghosts than I would of moths? I have
heard she is an enchantress, I am sure she is a fine figure of a
woman: and in short, here is a matter which would repay looking
into, were not young Guenevere the mistress of my heart."

Aloud he said: "Perhaps then I am drunk, madame. None the less, I
still think the cock crew just at the wrong moment."

"Some day you must explain the meaning of that," says she.
"Meanwhile I am going back to bed, and I again advise you to do the
same."

Then the door closed, the bolt fell, and Jurgen went away, still in
considerable excitement.

"This Dame Anaïtis is an interesting personality," he reflected,
"and it would be a pleasure, now, to demonstrate to her my grievance
against the cock, did occasion serve. Well, things less likely than
that have happened. Then, too, she came upon me when my sword was
out, and in consequence knows I wield a respectable weapon. She may
feel the need of a good swordsman some day, this handsome Lady of
the Lake who has no husband. So let us cultivate patience.
Meanwhile, it appears that I am of royal blood. Well, I fancy there
is something in the scandal, for I detect in me a deal in common
with this King Smoit. Twelve wives, though! no, that is too many. I
would limit no man's liaisons, but twelve wives in lawful matrimony
bespeaks an optimism unknown to me. No, I do not think I am drunk:
but it is unquestionable that I am not walking very straight.
Certainly, too, we did drink a great deal. So I had best go quietly
back to bed, and say nothing more about to-night's doings."

As much he did. And this was the first time that Jurgen, who had
been a pawnbroker, held any discourse with Dame Anaïtis, whom men
called the Lady of the Lake.




18.

Why Merlin Talked in Twilight


It was two days later that Jurgen was sent for by Merlin Ambrosius.
The Duke of Logreus came to the magician in twilight, for the
windows of this room were covered with sheets which shut out the
full radiance of day. Everything in the room was thus visible in a
diffused and tempered light that cast no shadows. In his hand Merlin
held a small mirror, about three inches square, from which he raised
his dark eyes puzzlingly.

"I have been talking to my fellow ambassador, Dame Anaïtis: and I
have been wondering, Messire de Logreus, if you have ever reared
white pigeons."

Jurgen looked at the little mirror. "There was a woman of the Léshy
who not long ago showed me an employment to which one might put the
blood of white pigeons. She too used such a mirror. I saw what
followed, but I must tell you candidly that I understood nothing of
the ins and outs of the affair."

Merlin nodded. "I suspected something of the sort. So I elected to
talk with you in a room wherein, as you perceive, there are no
shadows."

"Now, upon my word," says Jurgen, "but here at last is somebody who
can see my attendant! Why is it, pray, that no one else can do so?"

"It was my own shadow which drew my notice to your follower. For I,
too, have had a shadow given me. It was the gift of my father, of
whom you have probably heard."

It was Jurgen's turn to nod. Everybody knew who had begotten Merlin
Ambrosius, and sensible persons preferred not to talk of the matter.
Then Merlin went on to speak of the traffic between Merlin and
Merlin's shadow.

"Thus and thus," says Merlin, "I humor my shadow. And thus and thus
my shadow serves me. There is give-and-take, such as is requisite
everywhere."

"I understand," says Jurgen: "but has no other person ever perceived
this shadow of yours?"

"Once only, when for a while my shadow deserted me," Merlin replied.
"It was on a Sunday my shadow left me, so that I walked unattended
in naked sunlight: for my shadow was embracing the church-steeple,
where church-goers knelt beneath him. The church-goers were
obscurely troubled without suspecting why, for they looked only at
each other. The priest and I alone saw him quite clearly,--the
priest because this thing was evil, and I because this thing was
mine."

"Well, now I wonder what did the priest say to your bold shadow?"

"'But you must go away!'--and the priest spoke without any fear. Why
is it they seem always without fear, those dull and calm-eyed
priests? 'Such conduct is unseemly. For this is High God's house,
and far-off peoples are admonished by its steadfast spire, pointing
always heavenward, that the place is holy,' said the priest. And my
shadow answered, 'But I only know that steeples are of phallic
origin.' And my shadow wept, wept ludicrously, clinging to the
steeple where church-goers knelt beneath him."

"Now, and indeed that must have been disconcerting, Messire Merlin.
Still, as you got your shadow back again, there was no great harm
done. But why is it that such attendants follow some men while other
men are permitted to live in decent solitude? It does not seem quite
fair."

"Perhaps I could explain it to you, friend, but certainly I shall not.
You know too much as it is. For you appear in that bright garment of
yours to have come from a land and a time which even I, who am a skilled
magician, can only cloudily foresee, and cannot understand at all. What
puzzles me, however"--and Merlin's fore-finger shot out. "How many feet
had the first wearer of your shirt? and were you ever an old man?" says
he.

"Well, four, and I was getting on," says Jurgen.

"And I did not guess! But certainly that is it,--an old poet loaned
at once a young man's body and the Centaur's shirt. Adères has
loosed a new jest into the world, for her own reasons--"

"But you have things backwards. It was Sereda whom I cajoled so
nicely."

"Names that are given by men amount to very little in a case like
this. The shadow which follows you I recognize--and revere--as the
gift of Adères, a dreadful Mother of small Gods. No doubt she has a
host of other names. And you cajoled her, you consider! I would not
willingly walk in the shirt of any person who considers that. But
she will enlighten you, my friend, at her appointed time."

"Well, so that she deals justly--" Jurgen said, and shrugged.

Now Merlin put aside the mirror. "Meanwhile it was another matter
entirely that Dame Anaïtis and I discussed, and about which I wished
to be speaking with you. Gogyrvan is sending to King Arthur, along
with Gogyrvan's daughter, that Round Table which Uther Pendragon
gave Gogyrvan, and a hundred knights to fill the sieges of this
table. Gogyrvan, who, with due respect, possesses a deplorable sense
of humor, has numbered you among these knights. Now it is rumored
the Princess is given to conversing a great deal with you in
private, and Arthur has never approved of garrulity. So I warn you
that for you to come with us to London would not be convenient."

"I hardly think so, either," said Jurgen, with appropriate
melancholy; "for me to pursue the affair any further would only
result in marring what otherwise will always be a perfect memory of
divers very pleasant conversations."

"Old poet, you are well advised," said Merlin,--"especially now that
the little princess whom we know is about to enter queenhood and
become a symbol. I am sorry for her, for she will be worshipped as a
revelation of Heaven's splendor, and being flesh and blood, she will
not like it. And it is to no effect I have forewarned King Arthur,
for that must happen which will always happen so long as wisdom is
impotent against human stupidity. So wisdom can but make the best of
it, and be content to face the facts of a great mystery."

Thereupon, Merlin arose, and lifted the tapestry behind him, so that
Jurgen could see what hitherto this tapestry had screened.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You have embarrassed me horribly," said Jurgen, "and I can feel
that I am still blushing, about the ankles. Well, I was wrong: so
let us say no more concerning it."

"I wished to show you," Merlin returned, "that I know what I am
talking about. However, my present purpose is to put Guenevere out
of your head: for in your heart I think she never was, old poet, who
go so modestly in the Centaur's shirt. Come, tell me now! and does
the thought of her approaching marriage really disturb you?"

"I am the unhappiest man that breathes," said Jurgen, with unction.
"All night I lie awake in my tumbled bed, and think of the miserable
day which is past, and of what is to happen in that equally
miserable day whose dawn I watch with a sick heart. And I cry aloud,
in the immortal words of Apollonius Myronides--"

"Of whom?" says Merlin.

"I allude to the author of the _Myrosis_," Jurgen
explained,--"whom so many persons rashly identify with Apollonius
Herophileius."

"Oh, yes, of course! your quotation is very apt. Why, then your
condition is sad but not incurable. For I am about to give you this
token, with which, if you are bold enough, you will do thus and
thus."

"But indeed this is a somewhat strange token, and the arms and legs,
and even the head, of this little man are remarkably alike! Well,
and you tell me thus and thus. But how does it happen, Messire
Merlin, that you have never used this token in the fashion you
suggest to me?"

"Because I was afraid. You forget I am only a magician, whose
conjuring raises nothing more formidable than devils. But this is a
bit of the Old Magic that is no longer understood, and I prefer not
to meddle with it. You, to the contrary, are a poet, and the Old
Magic was always favorable to poets."

"Well, I will think about it," says Jurgen, "if this will really put
Dame Guenevere out of my head."

"Be assured it will do that," said Merlin. "For with reason does the
_Dirghâgama_ declare, 'The brightness of the glowworm cannot be
compared to that of a lamp.'"

"A very pleasant little work, the _Dirghâgama_," said Jurgen,
tolerantly--"though superficial, of course."

Then Merlin Ambrosius gave Jurgen the token, and some advice.

So that night Jurgen told Guenevere he would not go in her train to
London. He told her candidly that Merlin was suspicious of their
intercourse.

"And therefore, in order to protect you and to protect your fame, my
dearest dear," said Jurgen, "it is necessary that I sacrifice myself
and everything I prize in life. I shall suffer very much: but my
consolation will be that I have dealt fairly with you whom I love
with an entire heart, and shall have preserved you through my
misery."

But Guenevere did not appear to notice how noble this was of Jurgen.
Instead, she wept very softly, in a heartbroken way that Jurgen
found unbearable.

"For no man, whether emperor or peasant," says the Princess, "has
ever been loved more dearly or faithfully or more wholly without 

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