So it was near evening when they came out of the glen. It was dark
now, for a storm had risen. The brown man was smiling, and Jurgen
was in a flutter.
"It is not true," Jurgen protested. "What you have shown me is a
pack of nonsense. It is the degraded lunacy of a so-called Realist.
It is sorcery and pure childishness and abominable blasphemy. It is,
in a word, something I do not choose to believe. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself!"
"Even so, you do believe me, Jurgen."
"I believe that you are an honest man and that I am your cousin: so
there are two more lies for you."
The brown man said, still smiling: "Yes, you are certainly a poet,
you who have borrowed the apparel of my cousin. For you come out of
my glen, and from my candor, as sane as when you entered. That is
not saying much, to be sure, in praise of a poet's sanity at any
time. But Merlin would have died, and Merlin would have died without
regret, if Merlin had seen what you have seen, because Merlin
receives facts reasonably."
"Facts! sanity! and reason!" Jurgen raged: "why, but what nonsense
you are talking! Were there a bit of truth in your silly puppetry
this world of time and space and consciousness would be a bubble, a
bubble which contained the sun and moon and the high stars, and
still was but a bubble in fermenting swill! I must go cleanse my
mind of all this foulness. You would have me believe that men, that
all men who have ever lived or shall ever live hereafter, that even
I am of no importance! Why, there would be no justice in any such
arrangement, no justice anywhere!"
"That vexed you, did it not? It vexes me at times, even me, who
under Koshchei's will alone am changeless."
"I do not know about your variability: but I stick to my opinion
about your veracity," says Jurgen, for all that he was upon the
verge of hysteria. "Yes, if lies could choke people that shaggy
throat would certainly be sore."
Then the brown man stamped his foot, and the striking of his foot
upon the moss made a new noise such as Jurgen had never heard: for
the noise seemed to come multitudinously from every side, at first
as though each leaf in the forest were tinily cachinnating; and then
this noise was swelled by the mirth of larger creatures, and echoes
played with this noise, until there was a reverberation everywhere
like that of thunder. The earth moved under their feet very much as
a beast twitches its skin under the annoyance of flies. Another
queer thing Jurgen noticed, and it was that the trees about the glen
had writhed and arched their trunks, and so had bended, much as
candles bend in very hot weather, to lay their topmost foliage at
the feet of the brown man. And the brown man's appearance was
changed as he stood there, terrible in a continuous brown glare from
the low-hanging clouds, and with the forest making obeisance, and
with shivering and laughter everywhere.
"Make answer, you who chatter about justice! how if I slew you now,"
says the brown man,--"I being what I am?"
"Slay me, then!" says Jurgen, with shut eyes, for he did not at all
like the appearance of things. "Yes, you can kill me if you choose,
but it is beyond your power to make me believe that there is no
justice anywhere, and that I am unimportant. For I would have you
know I am a monstrous clever fellow. As for you, you are either a
delusion or a god or a degraded Realist. But whatever you are, you
have lied to me, and I know that you have lied, and I will not
believe in the insignificance of Jurgen."
Chillingly came the whisper of the brown man: "Poor fool! O
shuddering, stiff-necked fool! and have you not just seen that which
you may not ever quite forget?"
"None the less, I think there is something in me which will endure.
I am fettered by cowardice, I am enfeebled by disastrous memories;
and I am maimed by old follies. Still, I seem to detect in myself
something which is permanent and rather fine. Underneath everything,
and in spite of everything, I really do seem to detect that
something. What rôle that something is to enact after the death of
my body, and upon what stage, I cannot guess. When fortune knocks I
shall open the door. Meanwhile I tell you candidly, you brown man,
there is something in Jurgen far too admirable for any intelligent
arbiter ever to fling into the dustheap. I am, if nothing else, a
monstrous clever fellow: and I think I shall endure, somehow. Yes,
cap in hand goes through the land, as the saying is, and I believe I
can contrive some trick to cheat oblivion when the need arises,"
says Jurgen, trembling, and gulping, and with his eyes shut tight,
but even so, with his mind quite made up about it. "Of course you
may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are
wrong: but still, at the same time--"
"Now but before a fool's opinion of himself," the brown man cried,
"the Gods are powerless. Oh, yes, and envious, too!"
And when Jurgen very cautiously opened his eyes the brown man had
left him physically unharmed. But the state of Jurgen's nervous
system was deplorable.
20.