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

regarded the Euxine. The sun was high, and the queer shadow that followed Jurgen was huddled into shapelessness.

“This is indeed an inspiring spectacle,” Jurgen reflected. “How puny seems the race of man, in contrast with this mighty sea, which now spreads before me like, as So-and-so has very strikingly observed, a something or other under such and such conditions!” Then Jurgen shrugged. “Really, now I think of it, though, there is no call for me to be suffused with the traditional emotions. It looks like a great deal of water, and like nothing else in particular. And I cannot but consider the water is behaving rather futilely.”

So he sat in drowsy contemplation of the sea. Far out a shadow would form on the water, like the shadow of a broadish plank, scudding shoreward, and lengthening and darkening as it approached. Presently it would be some hundred feet in length, and would assume a hard smooth darkness, like that of green stone: this was the under side of the wave. Then the top of it would curdle, the southern end of the wave would collapse, and with exceeding swiftness this white feathery falling would plunge and scamper and bluster northward, the full length of the wave. It would be neater and more workmanlike to have each wave tumble down as a whole. From the smacking and the splashing, what looked like boiling milk would thrust out over the brown sleek sands: and as the mess spread it would thin to a reticulated whiteness, like lace, and then to the appearance of smoke sprays clinging to the sands. Plainly the tide was coming in.

Or perhaps it was going out. Jurgen’s notions as to such phenomena were vague. But, either way, the sea was stirring up a large commotion and a rather pleasant and invigorating odor.

And then all this would happen once more: and then it would happen yet again. It had happened a number of hundred of times since Jurgen first sat down to eat his lunch: and what was gained by it? The sea was behaving stupidly. There was no sense in this continual sloshing and spanking and scrabbling and spluttering.

Thus Jurgen, as he nodded over the remnants of his lunch.

“Sheer waste of energy, I am compelled to call it,” said Jurgen, aloud, just as he noticed there were two other men on this long beach.

One came from the north, one from the south, so that they met not far from where Jurgen was sitting: and by an incredible coincidence Jurgen had known both of these men in his first youth. So he hailed them, and they recognized him at once. One of these travellers was the Horvendile who had been secretary to Count Emmerick when Jurgen was a lad: and the other was Perion de la Forêt, that outlaw who had come to Bellegarde very long ago disguised as the Vicomte de Puysange. And all three of these old acquaintances had kept their youth surprisingly.

Now Horvendile and Perion marveled at the fine shirt which Jurgen was wearing.

“Why, you must know,” he said, modestly, “that I have lately become King of Eubonia, and must dress according to my station.”

So they said they had always expected some such high honor to befall him, and then the three of them fell to talking. And Perion told how he had come through Pseudopolis, on his way to King Theodoret at Lacre Kai, and how in the marketplace at Pseudopolis he had seen Queen Helen. “She is a very lovely lady,” said Perion, “and I marvelled over her resemblance to Count Emmerick’s fair sister, whom we all remember.”

“I noticed that at once,” said Horvendile, and he smiled strangely, “when I, too, passed through the city.”

“Why, but nobody could fail to notice it,” said Jurgen.

“It is not, of course, that I consider her to be as lovely as Dame Melicent,” continued Perion, “since, as I have contended in all quarters of the world, there has never lived, and will never live, any woman so beautiful as Melicent. But you gentlemen appear surprised by what seems to me a very simple statement. Your air, in fine, is one that forces me to point out it is a statement I can permit nobody to deny.” And Perion’s honest eyes had narrowed unpleasantly, and his sun-browned countenance was uncomfortably stern.

“Dear sir,” said Jurgen, hastily, “it was merely that it appeared to me the lady whom they call Queen Helen hereabouts is quite evidently Count Emmerick’s sister Dorothy la Désirée.”

“Whereas I recognized her at once,” says Horvendile, “as Count Emmerick’s third sister, La Beale Ettarre.”

And now they stared at one another, for it was certain that these three sisters were not particularly alike.

“Putting aside any question of eyesight,” observes Perion, “it is indisputable that the language of both of you is distorted. For one of you says this is Madame Dorothy, and the other says this is Madame Ettarre: whereas everybody knows that this Queen Helen, whomever she may resemble, cannot possibly be anybody else save Queen Helen.”

“To you, who are always the same person,” replied Jurgen, “that may sound reasonable. For my part, I am several people: and I detect no incongruity in other persons’ resembling me.”

“There would be no incongruity anywhere,” suggested Horvendile, “if Queen Helen were the woman whom we had loved in vain. For the woman whom when we were young we loved in vain is the one woman that we can never see quite clearly, whatever happens. So we might easily, I suppose, confuse her with some other woman.”

“But Melicent is the lady whom I have loved in vain,” said Perion, “and I care nothing whatever about Queen Helen. Why should I? What do you mean now, Horvendile, by your hints that I have faltered in my constancy to Dame Melicent since I saw Queen Helen? I do not like such hints.”

“No less, it is Ettarre whom I love, and have loved not quite in vain, and have loved unfalteringly,” says Horvendile, with his quiet