Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice Part 23

"Yes, with a kitchen towel about her head, and otherwise unostentatiously appareled--but very becomingly, I can a.s.sure you!"

Here Jurgen glanced sidewise at his shadow, and he cleared his throat. "Oh, and a most charming and a most estimable old lady I found this aesred to be, I can a.s.sure you also."

"I would prefer to know nothing about it," said Anatis, hastily, "I would prefer, for both our sakes, that you say no more of aesred."

Jurgen shrugged.

Now in the Library of Cocaigne was garnered a record of all that the nature myths had invented in the way of pleasure. And here, with no companion save his queer shadow, and with aesred arched above and bleakly regarding him, Jurgen spent most of his time, rather agreeably, in investigating and meditating upon the more curious of these recreations. The painted Asan were, in all conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anatis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-of forms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation which ingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the most subtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort of amus.e.m.e.nt would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaint gamut of refinements upon nature which Anatis and her cousins had at odd moments invented, to satiate their desire for some more suave or more strange or more sanguinary pleasure. Yet the deeper Jurgen investigated, and the longer he meditated, the more certain it seemed to him that all such employment was a peculiarly unimaginative pursuit of happiness.

"I am willing to taste any drink once. So I must give diversion a fair trial. But I am afraid these are the games of mental childhood.

Well, that reminds me I promised the children to play with them for a while before supper."

So he came out, and presently, brave in the s.h.i.+rt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenides, the daughters of Anatis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight.

Anatis and the dark potentate had parted by mutual consent.

"Acheron meant well," she would say, with a forgiving sigh, "and that in the Moon's absence he occasionally diverted travellers, I do not deny. But he did not understand me."

And Jurgen agreed that this tragedy sometimes befell even the irreproachably diverting.

The three Eumenides at this period were half-grown girls, whom their mother was carefully tutoring to drive guilty persons mad by the stings of conscience: and very quaint it was to see the young Furies at practise in the schoolroom, black-robed, and waving lighted torches, and crowned each with her garland of pet serpents. They became attached to Jurgen, who was always fond of children, and who had frequently regretted that Dame Lisa had borne him none.

"It is enough to get the poor dear a name for eccentricity," he had been used to say.

So Jurgen now made much of his step-children: and indeed he found their innocent prattle quite as intelligent, in essentials, as the talk of the full-grown nature myths who infested the palace of Anatis. And the four of them--Jurgen, and critical Alecto, and grave Tisiphone, and fairy-like little Megaera,--would take long walks, and play with their dolls (though Alecto was a trifle condescending toward dolls), and romp together in the eternal evening of Cocaigne; and discuss what sort of dresses and trinkets Mother would probably bring them when she came back from Ecbatana or Lesbos, and would generally enjoy themselves.

Rather pathetically earnest and unimaginative little la.s.ses, Jurgen found the young Eumenides: they inherited much of their mother's narrow-mindedness, if not their father's brooding and gloomy tendencies; but in them narrow-mindedness showed merely as amusing.

And Jurgen loved them, and would often reflect what a pity it was that these dear little girls were destined when they reached maturity, to spend the rest of their lives in haunting criminals and adulterers and parricides and, generally, such persons as must inevitably tarnish the girls' outlook upon life, and lead them to see too much of the worst side of human nature.

So Jurgen was content enough. But still he was not actually happy, not even among the endless pleasures of Cocaigne.

"And what is this thing that I desire?" he would ask himself, again and again.

And still he did not know: he merely felt he was not getting justice: and a dim sense of this would trouble him even while he was playing with the Eumenides.

25.

Cantraps of the Master Philologist

But now, as has been recorded, it was September, and Jurgen could see that Anatis too was worrying over something. She kept it from him as long as possible: first said it was nothing at all, then said he would know it soon enough, then wept a little over the possibility that he would probably be very glad to hear it, and eventually told him. For in becoming the consort of a nature myth connected with the Moon Jurgen had of course exposed himself to the danger of being converted into a solar legend by the Philologists, and in that event would be compelled to leave Cocaigne with the Equinox, to enter into autumnal exploits elsewhere. And Anatis was quite heart-broken over the prospect of losing Jurgen.

"For I have never had such a Prince Consort in Cocaigne, so maddening, and so helpless, and so clever; and the girls are so fond of you, although they have not been able to get on at all with so many of their step-fathers! And I know that you are flippant and heartless, but you have quite spoiled me for other men. No, Jurgen, there is no need to argue, for I have experimented with at least a dozen lovers lately, when I was traveling, and they bored me insufferably. They had, as you put it, dear, no conversation: and you are the only young man I have found in all these ages who could talk interestingly."

"There is a reason for that, since like you, Anatis, I am not so youthful as I appear."

"I do not care a straw about appearances," wept Anatis, "but I know that I love you, and that you must be leaving me with the Equinox unless you can settle matters with the Master Philologist."

"Well, my pet," says Jurgen, "the Jews got into Jericho by trying."

He armed, and girded himself with Caliburn, drank a couple of bottles of wine, put on the s.h.i.+rt of Nessus over all, and then went to seek this thaumaturgist.

Anatis showed him the way to an unpretentious residence, where a week's was.h.i.+ng was drying and flapping in the side yard. Jurgen knocked boldly, and after an interval the door was opened by the Master Philologist himself.

"You must pardon this informality," he said, blinking through his great spectacles, which had dust on them: "but time was by ill luck arrested hereabouts on a Thursday evening, and so the maid is out indefinitely. I would suggest, therefore, that the lady wait outside upon the porch. For the neighbors to see her go in would not be respectable."

"Do you know what I have come for?" says Jurgen, bl.u.s.tering, and splendid in his glittering s.h.i.+rt and his gleaming armor. "For I warn you I am justice."

"I think you are lying, and I am sure you are making an unnecessary noise. In any event, justice is a word, and I control all words."

"You will discover very soon, sir, that actions speak louder than words."

"I believe that is so," said the Master Philologist, still blinking, "just as the Jewish mob spoke louder than He Whom they crucified.

But the Word endures."

"You are a quibbler!"

"You are my guest. So I advise you, in pure friendliness, not to impugn the power of my words."

Said Jurgen, scornfully: "But is justice, then, a word?"

"Oh, yes, it is one of the most useful. It is the Spanish _justicia_, the Portuguese _justica_, the Italian _giustizia_, all from the Latin _justus_. Oh, yes indeed, but justice is one of my best connected words, and one of the best trained also, I can a.s.sure you."

"Aha, and to what degraded uses do you put this poor enslaved intimidated justice!"

"There is but one intelligent use," said the Master Philologist, unruffled, "for anybody to make of words. I will explain it to you, if you will come in out of this treacherous draught. One never knows what a cold may lead to."

Then the door closed upon them, and Anatis waited outside, in some trepidation.

Presently Jurgen came out of that unpretentious residence, and so back to Anatis, discomfited. Jurgen flung down his magic sword, charmed Caliburn.

"This, Anatis, I perceive to be an outmoded weapon. There is no weapon like words, no armor against words, and with words the Master Philologist has conquered me. It is not at all equitable: but the man showed me a huge book wherein were the names of everything in the world, and justice was not among them. It develops that, instead, justice is merely a common noun, vaguely denoting an ethical idea of conduct proper to the circ.u.mstances, whether of individuals or communities. It is, you observe, just a grammarian's notion."

"But what has he decided about you, Jurgen?"

"Alas, dear Anatis, he has decided, in spite of all that I could do, to derive Jurgen from _jargon_, indicating a confused chattering such as birds give forth at sunrise: thus ruthlessly does the Master Philologist convert me into a solar legend. So the affair is settled, and we must part, my darling."

Anatis took up the sword. "But this is valuable, since the man who wields it is the mightiest of warriors."

"It is a rush, a rotten twig, a broomstraw, against the insidious weapons of the Master Philologist. But keep it if you like, my dear, and give it to your next Prince Consort. I am ashamed to have trifled with such toys," says Jurgen, in fretted disgust. "And besides, the Master Philologist a.s.sures me I shall mount far higher through the aid of this."

"But what is on that bit of parchment?"

"Thirty-two of the Master Philologist's own words that I begged of him. See, my dear, he made this cantrap for me with his own hand and ink." And Jurgen read from the parchment, impressively: "'At the death of Adrian the Fifth, Pedro Juliani, who should be named John the Twentieth, was through an error in the reckoning elevated to the papal chair as John the Twenty-first.'"

Said Anatis, blankly: "And is that all?"

"Why, yes: and surely thirty-two whole words should be enough for the most exacting."