Thus Jurgen abode for a little over two months in Cocaigne, and
complied with the customs of that country. Nothing altered in
Cocaigne: but in the world wherein Jurgen was reared, he knew, it
would by this time be September, with the leaves flaring gloriously,
and the birds flocking southward, and the hearts of Jurgen's fellows
turning to not unpleasant regrets. But in Cocaigne there was no
regret and no variability, but only an interminable flow of curious
pleasures, illumined by the wandering star of Venus Mechanitis.
"Why is it, then, that I am not content?" said Jurgen. "And what
thing is this which I desire? It seems to me there is some injustice
being perpetrated upon Jurgen, somewhere."
Meanwhile he lived with Anaïtis the Sun's daughter very much as he
had lived with Lisa, who was daughter to a pawnbroker. Anaïtis
displayed upon the whole a milder temper: in part because she could
confidently look forward to several centuries more of life before
being explained away by the Philologists, and so had less need than
Dame Lisa to worry over temporal matters; and in part because there
was less to ruin one's disposition in two months than in ten years
of Jurgen's company. Anaïtis nagged and sulked for a while when her
Prince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as he
did very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple and
that these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaïtis seemed to
despair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, and
she permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with only
an occasional and half-hearted remonstrance.
What puzzled Jurgen was that she did not seem to tire of him: and he
would often wonder what this lovely myth, so skilled and potent in
arts wherein he was the merest bungler, could find to care for in
Jurgen. For now they lived together like any other humdrum married
couple, and their occasional exchange of endearments was as much a
matter of course as their meals, and hardly more exciting.
"Poor dear, I believe it is simply because I am a monstrous clever
fellow. She distrusts my cleverness, she very often disapproves of
it, and yet she values it as queer, as a sort of curiosity. Well,
but who can deny that cleverness is truly a curiosity in Cocaigne?"
So Anaïtis petted and pampered her Prince Consort, and took such
open pride in his queerness as very nearly embarrassed him
sometimes. She could not understand his attitude of polite amusement
toward his associates and the events which befell him, and even
toward his own doings and traits. Whatever happened, Jurgen
shrugged, and, delicately avoiding actual laughter, evinced
amusement. Anaïtis could not understand this at all, of course,
since Asian myths are remarkably destitute of humor. To Jurgen in
private she protested that he ought to be ashamed of his levity: but
none the less, she would draw him out, when among the bestial and
grim nature myths, and she would glow visibly with fond pride in
Jurgen's queerness.
"She mothers me," reflected Jurgen. "Upon my word, I believe that in
the end this is the only way in which females are capable of loving.
And she is a dear and lovely creature, of whom I am sincerely fond.
What is this thing, then, that I desire? Why do I feel life is not
treating me quite justly?"
So the summer had passed; and Anaïtis travelled a great deal, being
a popular myth in every land. Her sense of duty was so strong that
she endeavored to grace in person all the peculiar festivals held in
her honor, and this, now the harvest season was at hand, left her
with hardly a moment disengaged. Then, too, the mission of Anaïtis
was to divert; and there were so many people whom she had personally
to visit--so many notable ascetics who were advancing straight
toward canonization, and whom her underlings were unable to
divert,--that Anaïtis was compelled to pass night after night in
unwholesomely comfortless surroundings, in monasteries and in the
cells and caves of hermits.
"You are wearing yourself out, my darling," Jurgen would say: "and
does it not seem, after all, a game that is hardly worth the candle?
I know that, for my part, before I would travel so many miles into a
desert, and then climb a hundred foot pillar, just to whisper
diverting notions into an anchorite's very dirty ear, I would let
the gaunt rascal go to Heaven. But you associate so much with
saintly persons that you have contracted their incapacity for seeing
the humorous side of things. Well, you are a dear, even so. Here is
a kiss for you: and do you come back to your adoring husband as soon
as you conveniently can without neglecting your duty."
"They report that this Stylites is very far gone in rectitude," said
Anaïtis, absent-mindedly, as she prepared for the journey, "but I
have hopes for him."
Then Anaïtis put purple powder on her hair, and hastily got together
a few beguiling devices, and went into the Thebaid. Jurgen went back
to the Library, and the _System of Worshipping a Girl_, and the
unique manuscripts of Astyanassa and Elephantis and Sotadês, and the
Dionysiac Formulae, and the Chart of Postures, and the _Litany of
the Centre of Delight_, and the Spintrian Treatises, and the
_Thirty-two Gratifications_, and innumerable other volumes
which he found instructive.
The Library was a vaulted chamber, having its walls painted with the
twelve Asan of Cyrenê; the ceiling was frescoed with the arched body
of a woman, whose toes rested upon the cornice of the east wall, and
whose out-stretched finger-tips touched the cornice of the western
wall. The clothing of this painted woman was remarkable: and to
Jurgen her face was not unfamiliar.
"Who is that?" he inquired, of Anaïtis.
Looking a little troubled, Anaïtis told him this was Æsred.
"Well, I have heard her called otherwise: and I have seen her in
quite other clothing."
"You have seen Æsred!"
"Yes, with a kitchen towel about her head, and otherwise
unostentatiously appareled--but very becomingly, I can assure 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 Æsred to be, I can assure you also."
"I would prefer to know nothing about it," said Anaïtis, hastily, "I
would prefer, for both our sakes, that you say no more of Æsred."
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 Æsred 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 Anaïtis 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
amusement would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaint
gamut of refinements upon nature which Anaïtis 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 shirt of Nessus, and
mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen
was playing tag with the three little Eumenidês, the daughters of
Anaïtis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight.
Anaïtis 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 Eumenidês 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
Anaïtis. And the four of them--Jurgen, and critical Alecto, and
grave Tisiphonê, and fairy-like little Megæra,--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 lasses, Jurgen
found the young Eumenidês: 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 Eumenidês.
25.