Jurgen, James Branch Cabell [ebook reader computer .txt] 📗

Now Jurgen shook his sleek black head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And do you think of that towheaded bean-pole very often, King Jurgen?”

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

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

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

“That is not saying much.”

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

“But you admired Achilles! You told me so yourself.”

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

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

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

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

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

XXIX Concerning Horvendile’s Nonsense

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

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

Thus it befell that Jurgen reflectively ate his lunch in solitude, and