Jurgen went in a tremble to the Cathedral of the Sacred Thorn in
Cameliard. All night Jurgen prayed there, not in repentance, but in
terror. For his dead he prayed, that they should not have been
blotted out in nothingness, for the dead among his kindred whom he
had loved in boyhood, and for these only. About the men and women
whom he had known since then he did not seem to care, or not at
least so vitally. But he put up a sort of prayer for Dame
Lisa--"wherever my dear wife may be, and, O God, grant that I may
come to her at last, and be forgiven!" he wailed, and wondered if he
really meant it.
He had forgotten about Guenevere. And nobody knows what were that
night the thoughts of the young Princess, nor if she offered any
prayers, in the deserted Hall of Judgment.
In the morning a sprinkling of persons came to early mass. Jurgen
attended with fervor, and started doorward with the others. Just
before him a merchant stopped to get a pebble from his shoe, and the
merchant's wife went forward to the holy-water font.
"Madame, permit me," said a handsome young esquire, and offered her
holy water.
"At eleven," said the merchant's wife, in low tones. "He will be out
all day."
"My dear," says her husband, as he rejoined her, "and who was the
young gentleman?"
"Why, I do not know, darling. I never saw him before."
"He was certainly very civil. I wish there were more like him. And a
fine looking young fellow, too!"
"Was he? I did not notice," said the merchant's wife, indifferently.
And Jurgen saw and heard and regarded the departing trio ruefully.
It seemed to him incredible the world should be going on just as it
went before he ventured into the Druid forest.
He paused before a crucifix, and he knelt and looked up wistfully.
"If one could only know," says Jurgen, "what really happened in
Judea! How immensely would matters be simplified, if anyone but knew
the truth about You, Man upon the Cross!"
Now the Bishop of Merion passed him, coming from celebration of the
early mass. "My Lord Bishop," says Jurgen, simply, "can you tell me
the truth about this Christ?"
"Why, indeed, Messire de Logreus," replied the Bishop, "one cannot
but sympathize with Pilate in thinking that the truth about Him is
very hard to get at, even nowadays. Was He Melchisedek, or Shem, or
Adam? or was He verily the Logos? and in that event, what sort of a
something was the Logos? Granted He was a god, were the Arians or
the Sabellians in the right? had He existed always, co-substantial
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or was He a creation of the
Father, a kind of Israelitic Zagreus? Was He the husband of
Acharamoth, that degraded Sophia, as the Valentinians aver? or the
son of Pantherus, as say the Jews? or Kalakau, as contends
Basilidês? or was it, as the Docetês taught, only a tinted cloud in
the shape of a man that went from Jordan to Golgotha? Or were the
Merinthians right? These are a few of the questions, Messire de
Logreus, which naturally arise. And not all of them are to be
settled out of hand."
Thus speaking, the gallant prelate bowed, then raised three fingers
in benediction, and so quitted Jurgen, who was still kneeling before
the crucifix.
"Ah, ah!" says Jurgen, to himself, "but what a variety of
interesting problems are, in point of fact, suggested by religion.
And what delectable exercise would the settling of these problems,
once for all, afford the mind of a monstrous clever fellow! Come
now, it might be well for me to enter the priesthood. It may be that
I have a call."
But people were shouting in the street. So Jurgen rose and dusted
his knees. And as Jurgen came out of the Cathedral of the Sacred
Thorn the cavalcade was passing that bore away Dame Guenevere to the
arms and throne of her appointed husband. Jurgen stood upon the
Cathedral porch, his mind in part pre-occupied by theology, but
still not failing to observe how beautiful was this young princess,
as she rode by on her white palfrey, green-garbed and crowned and
a-glitter with jewels. She was smiling as she passed him, bowing
her small tenderly-colored young countenance this way and that way,
to the shouting people, and not seeing Jurgen at all.
Thus she went to her bridal, that Guenevere who was the symbol of
all beauty and purity to the chivalrous people of Glathion. The mob
worshipped her; and they spoke as though it were an angel who
passed.
"Our beautiful young Princess!"
"Ah, there is none like her anywhere!"
"And never a harsh word for anyone, they say--!"
"Oh, but she is the most admirable of ladies--!"
"And so brave too, that lovely smiling child who is leaving her home
forever!"
"And so very, very pretty!"
"--So generous!"
"King Arthur will be hard put to it to deserve her!"
Said Jurgen: "Now it is droll that to these truths I have but to add
another truth in order to have large paving-stones flung at her! and
to have myself tumultuously torn into fragments, by those
unpleasantly sweaty persons who, thank Heaven, are no longer
jostling me!"
For the Cathedral porch had suddenly emptied, because as the
procession passed heralds were scattering silver among the
spectators.
"Arthur will have a very lovely queen," says a soft lazy voice.
And Jurgen turned and saw that beside him was Dame Anaïtis, whom
people called the Lady of the Lake.
"Yes, he is greatly to be envied," says Jurgen, politely. "But do
you not ride with them to London?"
"Why, no," says the Lady of the Lake, "because my part in this
bridal was done when I mixed the stirrup-cup of which the Princess
and young Lancelot drank this morning. He is the son of King Ban of
Benwick, that tall young fellow in blue armor. I am partial to
Lancelot, for I reared him, at the bottom of a lake that belongs to
me, and I consider he does me credit. I also believe that Madame
Guenevere by this time agrees with me. And so, my part being done to
serve my creator, I am off for Cocaigne."
"And what is this Cocaigne?"
"It is an island wherein I rule."
"I did not know you were a queen, madame."
"Why, indeed there are a many things unknown to you, Messire de
Logreus, in a world where nobody gets any assuredness of knowledge
about anything. For it is a world wherein all men that live have but
a little while to live, and none knows his fate thereafter. So that
a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body:
and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure."
"I believe," said Jurgen, as his thoughts shuddered away from what
he had seen and heard in the Druid forest, "that you speak wisdom."
"Then in Cocaigne we are all wise: for that is our religion. But of
what are you thinking, Duke of Logreus?"
"I was thinking," says Jurgen, "that your eyes are unlike the eyes
of any other woman that I have ever seen."
Smilingly the dark woman asked him wherein they differed, and
smilingly he said he did not know. They were looking at each other
warily. In each glance an experienced gamester acknowledged a worthy
opponent.
"Why, then you must come with me into Cocaigne," says Anaïtis, "and
see if you cannot discover wherein lies that difference. For it is
not a matter I would care to leave unsettled."
"Well, that seems only just to you," says Jurgen. "Yes, certainly I
must deal fairly with you."
Then they left the Cathedral of the Sacred Thorn, walking together.
The folk who went toward London were now well out of sight and
hearing, which possibly accounts for the fact that Jurgen was now in
no wise thinking of Guenevere. So it was that Guenevere rode out of
Jurgen's life for a while: and as she rode she talked with Lancelot.
21.