Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, James Branch Cabell [mini ebook reader .TXT] 📗

ruefully. "I tell you it is the deuce and all, to come of morbid ancestry." And he kissed Chloris, upon the brow. "My dear, dear girl," he said, with a gulp, "as long as you remember me, do so with charity."

"Jurgen"—and she clung close to him—"you were not ever unkind, not even for a moment. Jurgen, you have not ever spoken one harsh word to me or any other person, in all the while we were together. O Jurgen, whom I have loved as you could love nobody, it was not much those other women had left me to worship!"

"Indeed, it is a pity that you loved me, Chloris, for I was not worthy." And for the instant Jurgen meant it.

"If any other person said that, Jurgen, I would be very angry. And even to hear you say it troubles me, because there was never a hamadryad between two hills that had a husband one-half so clever-foolish as he made light of time and chance, with his sleek black head cocked to one side, and his mischievous brown eyes a-twinkle."

And Jurgen wondered that this should be the notion Chloris had of him, and that a gesture should be the things she remembered about him: and he was doubly assured that no woman bothers to understand the man she elects to love and cosset and slave for.

"O woman dear," says Jurgen, "but I have loved you, and my heart is water now that you are taken from me: and to remember your ways and the joy I had in them will be a big and grinding sorrow in the long time to come. Oh, not with any heroic love have I loved you, nor with any madness and high dreams, nor with much talking either; but with a love befitting my condition, with a quiet and cordial love."

"And must you be trying, while I die, to get your grieving for me into the right words?" she asks him, smiling very sadly. "No matter: you are Jurgen, and I have loved you. And I am glad that I shall know nothing about it when in the long time, to come you will be telling so many other women about what was said by Zorobasius and Ptolemopiter, and when you will be posturing and romancing for their delight. For presently I shall have tasted Lethê: and presently I shall have forgotten you, King Jurgen, and all the joy I had in you, and all the pride, and all the love I had for you, King Jurgen, who loved me as much as you were able."

"Why, and will there be any love-making, do you think, in Hell?" he asks her, with a doleful smile.

"There will be love-making," she replied, "wherever you go, King Jurgen. And there will be women to listen. And at the last there will be a bean-pole of a woman, in a wig."

"I am sorry—" he said. "And yet I have loved you, Chloris."

"That is my comfort now. And presently there will be Lethê. I put the greater faith in Lethê. And still, I cannot help but love you, Jurgen, in whom I have no faith at all."

He said, again: "I am not worthy."

They kissed. Then each of them was conveyed to an appropriate doom.

And tears were in the eyes of Jurgen, who was not used to weep: and he thought not at all of what was to befall him, but only of this and that small trivial thing which would have pleased his Chloris had Jurgen done it, and which for one reason or another Jurgen had left undone.

"I was not ever unkind to her, says she! ah, but I might have been so much kinder. And now I shall not ever see her any more, nor ever any more may I awaken delight and admiration in those bright tender eyes which saw no fault in me! Well, but it is a comfort surely that she does not know how I devoted the last night she was to live to teaching mathematics."

And then Jurgen wondered how he would be despatched into the Hell of his fathers? And when the Philistines showed him in what manner they proposed to inflict their sentence he wondered at his own obtuseness.

"For I might have surmised this would be the way of it," said Jurgen. "And yet as always there is a simplicity in the methods of the Philistines which is unimaginable by really clever fellows. And as always, too, these methods are unfair to us clever fellows. Well, I am willing to taste any drink once: but this is a very horrible device, none the less; and I wonder if I have the pluck to endure it?"

Then as he stood considering this matter, a man-at-arms came hurrying. He brought with him three great rolled parchments, with seals and ribbons and everything in order: and these were Jurgen's pardon and Jurgen's nomination as Poet Laureate of Philistia and Jurgen's appointment as Mathematician Royal.

The man-at-arms brought also a letter from Queen Dolores, and this
Jurgen read with a frown.

"Do you consider now what fun it would be to hood-wink everybody by pretending to conform to our laws!" said this letter, and it said nothing more: Dolores was really a wise woman. Yet there was a postscript. "For we could be so happy!" said the postscript.

And Jurgen looked toward the Woods, where men were sawing up a great oak-tree. And Jurgen gave a fine laugh, and with fine deliberateness he tore up the Queen's letter into little strips. Then statelily he took the parchments, and found they were so tough he could not tear them. This was uncommonly awkward, for Jurgen's ill-advised attempt to tear the parchments impaired the dignity of his magnanimous self-sacrifice: he even suspected one of the guards of smiling. So there was nothing for it but presently to give up that futile tugging and jerking, and to compromise by crumpling these parchments.

"This is my answer," said Jurgen heroically, and with some admiration of himself, but still a little dashed by the uncalled-for toughness of the parchments.

Then Jurgen cried farewell to fallen Leukê; and scornfully he cried farewell to the Philistines and to their devices. Then he submitted to their devices. Thus, it was without making any special protest about it that Jurgen was relegated to limbo, and was despatched to the Hell of his fathers, two days before Christmas.

34.

How Emperor Jurgen Fared Infernally

Now the tale tells how the devils of Hell were in one of their churches celebrating Christmas in such manner as the devils observe that day; and how Jurgen came through the trapdoor in the vestry-room; and how he saw and wondered over the creatures which inhabited this place. For to him after the Christmas services came all such devils as his fathers had foretold, and in not a hair or scale or talon did they differ from the worst that anybody had been able to imagine.

"Anatomy is hereabouts even more inconsequent than in Cocaigne," was Jurgen's first reflection. But the first thing the devils did was to search Jurgen very carefully, in order to make sure he was not bringing any water into Hell.

"Now, who may you be, that come to us alive, in a fine shirt of which we never saw the like before?" asked Dithican. He had the head of a tiger, but otherwise the appearance of a large bird, with shining feathers and four feet: his neck was yellow, his body green, and his feet black.

"It would not be treating honestly with you to deny that I am the
Emperor of Noumaria," said Jurgen, somewhat advancing his estate.

Now spoke Amaimon, in the form of a thick suet-colored worm going upright upon his tail, which shone like the tail of a glowworm. He had no feet, but under his chops were two short hands, and upon his back were bristles such as grow upon hedgehogs.

"But we are rather overrun with emperors," said Amaimon, doubtfully, "and their crimes are a great trouble to us. Were you a very wicked ruler?"

"Never since I became an emperor," replied Jurgen, "has any of my subjects uttered one word of complaint against me. So it stands to reason I have nothing very serious with which to reproach myself."

"Your conscience, then, does not demand that you be punished?"

"My conscience, gentlemen, is too well-bred to insist on anything."

"You do not even wish to be tortured?"

"Well, I admit I had expected something of the sort. But none the less, I will not make a point of it," said Jurgen, handsomely. "No, I shall be quite satisfied even though you do not torture me at all."

And then the mob of devils made a great to-do over Jurgen.

"For it is exceedingly good to have at least one unpretentious and undictatorial human being in Hell. Nobody as a rule drops in on us save inordinately proud and conscientious ghosts, whose self-conceit is intolerable, and whose demands are outrageous."

"How can that be?"

"Why, we have to punish them. Of course they are not properly punished until they are convinced that what is happening to them is just and adequate. And you have no notion what elaborate tortures they insist their exceeding wickedness has merited, as though that which they did or left undone could possibly matter to anybody. And to contrive these torments quite tires us out."

"But wherefore is this place called the Hell of my fathers?"

"Because your forefathers builded it in dreams," they told him, "out of the pride which led them to believe that what they did was of sufficient importance to merit punishment. Or so at least we have heard: but if you want the truth of the matter you must go to our Grandfather at Barathum."

"I shall go to him, then. And do my own grandfathers, and all the forefathers that I had in the old time, inhabit this gray place?"

"All such as are born with what they call a conscience come hither," the devils said. "Do you think you could persuade them to go elsewhere? For in that event, we would be deeply obliged to you. Their self-conceit is pitiful: but it is also a nuisance, because it prevents our getting any rest."

"Perhaps I can help you to obtain justice, and certainly to attempt to secure justice for you is my imperial duty. But who governs this country?"

They told him how Hell was divided into principalities that had for governors Lucifer and Beelzebub and Belial and Ascheroth and Phlegeton: but that over all these was Grandfather Satan, who lived in the Black House at Barathum.

"Well, I prefer," says Jurgen, "to deal directly with your principal, especially if he can explain the polity of this insane and murky country. Do some of you conduct me to him in such state as becomes an emperor!"

So Cannagosta fetched a wheelbarrow, and Jurgen got into it, and Cannagosta trundled him away. Cannagosta was something like an ox, but rather more like a cat, and his hair was curly.

And as they came through Chorasma, a very uncomfortable place where the damned abide in torment, whom should Jurgen see but his own father, Coth, the son of Smoit and Steinvor, standing there chewing his long moustaches in the midst of an especially tall flame.

"Do you stop now for a moment!" says Jurgen, to his escort.

"Oh, but this is the most vexatious person in all Hell!" cried
Cannagosta; "and a person whom there is absolutely no pleasing!"

"Nobody knows that better than I," says Jurgen.

And Jurgen civilly bade his father good-day, but Coth did not recognize this spruce young Emperor of Noumaria, who went about Hell in a wheelbarrow.

"You do not know me, then?" says Jurgen.

"How should I know you when I never saw you before?" replied Coth, irritably.

And Jurgen did not argue the point: for he knew that he and his father could never agree about anything. So Jurgen kept silent for that time, and Cannagosta wheeled him through the gray twilight, descending always deeper and yet deeper into the lowlands of Hell, until they had come to Barathum.

35.

What Grandfather Satan Reported

Next the tale tells how three inferior devils made a loud music with bagpipes as Jurgen went into the Black House of Barathum, to talk with Grandfather Satan.

Satan was like a man of sixty, or it might be sixty-two, in all things save that he was covered with gray fur, and had horns like those of a stag. He wore a breech-clout of very dark