"But how can I travel with the Equinox, with a fictitious thing,
with a mere convention?" Jurgen had said. "To demand any such
proceeding of me is preposterous."
"Is it any more preposterous than to travel with an imaginary
creature like a centaur?" they had retorted. "Why, Prince Jurgen, we
wonder how you, who have done that perfectly unheard-of thing, can
have the effrontery to call anything else preposterous! Is there no
reason at all in you? Why, conventions are respectable, and that is
a deal more than can be said for a great many centaurs. Would you be
throwing stones at respectability, Prince Jurgen? Why, we are
unutterably astounded at your objection to any such well-known
phenomenon as the Equinox!" And so on, and so on, and so on, said
they.
And in fine, they kept at him until Jurgen was too confused to
argue, and his head was in a whirl, and one thing seemed as
preposterous as another: and he ceased to notice any especial
improbability in his traveling with the Equinox, and so passed
without any further protest or argument about it, from Cocaigne to
Leukê. But he would not have been thus readily flustered had Jurgen
not been thinking all the while of Queen Helen and of the beauty
that was hers.
So he inquired forthwith the way that one might quickliest come into
the presence of Queen Helen.
"Why, you will find Queen Helen," he was told, "in her palace at
Pseudopolis." His informant was a hamadryad, whom Jurgen encountered
upon the outskirts of a forest overlooking the city from the west.
Beyond broad sloping stretches of ripe corn, you saw Pseudopolis as
a city builded of gold and ivory, now all a dazzling glitter under a
hard-seeming sky that appeared unusually remote from earth.
"And is the Queen as fair as people report?" asks Jurgen.
"Men say that she excels all other women," replied the Hamadryad,
"as immeasurably as all we women perceive her husband to surpass all
other men--"
"But, oh, dear me!" says Jurgen.
"--Although, for one, I see nothing remarkable in Queen Helen's
looks. And I cannot but think that a woman who has been so much
talked about ought to be more careful in the way she dresses."
"So this Queen Helen is already provided with a husband!" Jurgen was
displeased, but saw no reason for despair. Then Jurgen inquired as
to the Queen's husband, and learned that Achilles, the son of
Peleus, was now wedded to Helen, the Swan's daughter, and that these
two ruled in Pseudopolis.
"For they report," said the Hamadryad, "that in Adês' dreary kingdom
Achilles remembered her beauty, and by this memory was heartened to
break the bonds of Adês: so did Achilles, King of Men, and all his
ancient comrades come forth resistlessly upon a second quest of this
Helen, whom people call--and as I think, with considerable
exaggeration--the wonder of this world. Then the Gods fulfilled the
desire of Achilles, because, they said, the man who has once beheld
Queen Helen will never any more regain contentment so long as his
life lacks this wonder of the world. Personally, I would dislike to
think that all men are so foolish."
"Men are not always rational, I grant you: but then," says Jurgen,
slyly, "so many of their ancestresses are feminine."
"But an ancestress is always feminine. Nobody ever heard of a man
being an ancestress. Men are ancestors. Why, whatever are you
talking about?"
"Well, we were speaking, I believe, of Queen Helen's marriage."
"To be sure we were! And I was telling you about the Gods, when you
made that droll mistake about ancestors. Everybody makes mistakes
sometimes, however, and foreigners are always apt to get words
confused. I could see at once you were a foreigner--"
"Yes," said Jurgen, "but you were not telling me about myself but
about the Gods."
"Why, you must know the aging Gods desired tranquillity. So we will
give her to Achilles, they said; and then, it may be, this King of
Men will retain her so safely that his littler fellows will despair,
and will cease to war for Helen: and so we shall not be bothered any
longer by their wars and other foolishnesses. For this reason it was
that the Gods gave Helen to Achilles, and sent the pair to reign in
Leukê: though, for my part," concluded the Hamadryad, "I shall never
cease to wonder what he saw in her--no, not if I live to be a
thousand."
"I must," says Jurgen, "observe this monarch Achilles before the world
is a day older. A king is all very well, of course, but no husband
wears a crown so as to prevent the affixion of other head-gear."
And Jurgen went down into Pseudopolis, swaggering.
* * * * *
So in the evening, just after sunset, Jurgen returned to the
Hamadryad: he walked now with the aid of the ashen staff which
Thersitês had given Jurgen, and Jurgen was mirthless and rather
humble.
"I have observed your King Achilles," Jurgen says, "and he is a
better man than I. Queen Helen, as I confess with regret, is
worthily mated."
"And what have you to say about her?" inquires the Hamadryad.
"Why, there is nothing more to say than that she is worthily mated,
and fit to be the wife of Achilles." For once, poor Jurgen was
really miserable. "For I admire this man Achilles, I envy him, and I
fear him," says Jurgen: "and it is not fair that he should have been
created my superior."
"But is not Queen Helen the loveliest of ladies that you have ever
seen?"
"As to that--!" says Jurgen. He led the Hamadryad to a forest pool
hard-by the oak-tree in which she resided. The dusky water lay
unruffled, a natural mirror. "Look!" said Jurgen, and he spoke with
a downward waving of his staff.
The silence gathering in the woods was wonderful. Here the air was
sweet and pure: and the little wind which went about the ilex boughs
in search of night was a tender and peaceful wind, because it knew
that the all-healing night was close at hand.