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

I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong; but still, at the same time⁠—! Come now, could you not let me see my first wife for just a moment?”

This was no sooner asked than granted; for there, sure enough, was Dame Lisa. She was no longer restricted to quiet speech by any stupendous necromancy: and uncommonly plain she looked, after the passing of those lovely ladies.

“Aha, you rascal!” begins Dame Lisa, addressing Jurgen; “and so you thought to be rid of me! Oh, a precious lot you are! and a deal of thanks I get for my scrimping and slaving!” And she began scolding away.

But she began, somewhat to Jurgen’s astonishment, by stating that he was even worse than the Countess Dorothy. Then he recollected that, by not the most disastrous piece of luck conceivable, Dame Lisa’s latest news from the outside world had been rendered by her sister, the notary’s wife, a twelvemonth back.

And rather unaccountably Jurgen fell to thinking of how unsubstantial seemed these curious months devoted to other women, as set against the commonplace years which he and Lisa had fretted through together; of the fine and merry girl that Lisa had been before she married him; of how well she knew his tastes in cookery and all his little preferences, and of how cleverly she humored them on those rare days when nothing had occurred to vex her; of all the buttons she had replaced, and all the socks she had darned, and of what tempests had been loosed when anyone else had had the audacity to criticize Jurgen; and of how much more unpleasant⁠—everything considered⁠—life was without her than with her. She was so unattractive looking, too, poor dear, that you could not but be sorry for her. And Jurgen’s mood was half yearning and half penitence.

“I think I will take her back, Prince,” says Jurgen, very subdued⁠—“now that I am forty-and-something. For I do not know but it is as hard on her as on me.”

“My friend, do you forget the poet that you might be, even yet? No rational person would dispute that the society and amiable chat of Dame Lisa must naturally be a desideratum⁠—”

But Dame Lisa was always resentful of long words. “Be silent, you black scoffer, and do not allude to such disgraceful things in the presence of respectable people! For I am a decent Christian woman, I would have you understand. But everybody knows your reputation! and a very fit companion you are for that scamp yonder! and volumes could not say more!”

Thus casually, and with comparative lenience, did Dame Lisa dispose of Koshchei, who made things as they are, for she believed him to be merely Satan. And to her husband Dame Lisa now addressed herself more particularly.

“Jurgen, I always told you you would come to this, and now I hope you are satisfied. Jurgen, do not stand there with your mouth open, like a scared fish, when I ask you a civil question! but answer when you are spoken to! Yes, and you need not try to look so idiotically innocent, Jurgen, because I am disgusted with you. For, Jurgen, you heard perfectly well what your very suitable friend just said about me, with my own husband standing by. No⁠—now I beg of you!⁠—do not ask me what he said, Jurgen! I leave that to your conscience, and I prefer to talk no more about it. You know that when I am once disappointed in a person I am through with that person. So, very luckily, there is no need at all for you to pile hypocrisy on cowardice, because if my own husband has not the feelings of a man, and cannot protect me from insults and low company, I had best be going home and getting supper ready. I dare say the house is like a pigsty: and I can see by looking at you that you have been ruining your eyes by reading in bed again. And to think of your going about in public, even among such associates, with a button off your shirt!”

She was silent for one terrible moment; then Lisa spoke in frozen despair.

“And now I look at that shirt, I ask you fairly, Jurgen, do you consider that a man of your age has any right to be going about in a shirt that nobody⁠—in a shirt which⁠—in a shirt that I can only⁠—Ah, but I never saw such a shirt! and neither did anybody else! You simply cannot imagine what a figure you cut in it, Jurgen. Jurgen, I have been patient with you; I have put up with a great deal, saying nothing where many women would have lost their temper; but I simply cannot permit you to select your own clothes, and so ruin the business and take the bread out of our mouths. In short, you are enough to drive a person mad; and I warn you that I am done with you forever.”

Dame Lisa went with dignity to the door of Koshchei’s office.

“So you can come with me or not, precisely as you elect. It is all one to me, I can assure you, after the cruel things you have said, and the way you have stormed at me, and have encouraged that notorious blackamoor to insult me in terms which I, for one, would not soil my lips by repeating. I do not doubt you consider it is all very clever and amusing, but you know now what I think about it. And upon the whole, if you do not feel the exertion will kill you, you had better come home the long way, and stop by Sister’s and ask her to let you have a half-pound of butter; for I know you too well to suppose you have been attending to the churning.”

Dame Lisa here evinced a stately sort of mirth such as is unimaginable by bachelors.

“You churning while I was away!⁠—oh, no, not you! There is probably not so