Now Jurgen's curious dream put notions into the restless head of
Jurgen. So mighty became his curiosity that he went shuddering into
the abhorred Woods, and passed over Coalisnacoan (which is the Ferry
of Dogs), and did all such detestable things as were necessary to
placate Phobetor. Then Jurgen tricked Phobetor by an indescribable
device, wherein surprising use was made of a cheese and three
beetles and a gimlet, and so cheated Phobetor out of a gray magic.
And that night while Pseudopolis slept King Jurgen came down into
this city of gold and ivory.
Jurgen went with distaste among the broad-browed and great-limbed
monarchs of Pseudopolis, for they reminded him of things that he had
long ago put aside, and they made him feel unpleasantly ignoble and
insignificant. That was his real reason for avoiding the city.
Now he passed between unlighted and silent palaces, walking in
deserted streets where the moon made ominous shadows. Here was the
house of Ajax Telamon who reigned in sea-girt Salamis, here that of
god-like Philoctetês: much-counseling Odysseus dwelt just across the
way, and the corner residence was fair-haired Agamemnon's: in the
moonlight Jurgen easily made out these names engraved upon the
bronze shield that hung beside each doorway. To every side of him
slept the heroes of old song while Jurgen skulked under their
windows.
He remembered how incuriously--not even scornfully--these people had
overlooked him on that disastrous afternoon when he had ventured
into Pseudopolis by daylight. And a spiteful little gust of rage
possessed him, and Jurgen shook his fist at the big silent palaces.
"Yah!" he snarled: for he did not know at all what it was that he
desired to say to those great stupid heroes who did not care what he
said, but he knew that he hated them. Then Jurgen became aware of
himself growling there like a kicked cur who is afraid to bite, and
he began to laugh at this Jurgen.
"Your pardon, gentlemen of Greece," says he, with a wide ceremonious
bow, "and I think the information I wished to convey was that I am a
monstrous clever fellow."
Jurgen went into the largest palace, and crept stealthily by the
bedroom of Achilles, King of Men, treading a-tip-toe; and so came at
last into a little room panelled with cedar-wood where slept Queen
Helen. She was smiling in her sleep when he had lighted his lamp,
with due observance of the gray magic. She was infinitely beautiful,
this young Dorothy whom people hereabouts through some odd error
called Helen.
For Jurgen saw very well that this was Count Emmerick's sister
Dorothy la Désirée, whom Jurgen had vainly loved in the days when
Jurgen was young alike in body and heart. Just once he had won back
to her, in the garden between dawn and sunrise: but he was then a
time-battered burgher whom Dorothy did not recognise. Now he
returned to her a king, less admirable it might be than some of the
many other kings without realms who slept now in Pseudopolis, but
still very fine in his borrowed youth, and above all, armored by a
gray magic: so that improbabilities were possible. And Jurgen's eyes
were furtive, and he passed his tongue across his upper lip from one
corner to the other, and his hand went out toward the robe of
violet-colored wool which covered the sleeping girl, for he stood
ready to awaken Dorothy la Désirée in the way he often awoke
Chloris.
But a queer thought held him. Nothing, he recollected, had shown the
power to hurt him very deeply since he had lost this young Dorothy.
And to affairs which threatened to result unpleasantly, he had
always managed to impart an agreeable turn, since then, by virtue of
preserving a cool heart. What if by some misfortune he were to get
back his real youth? and were to become again the flustered boy who
blundered from stammering rapture to wild misery, and back again, at
the least word or gesture of a gold-haired girl?
"Thank you, no!" says Jurgen. "The boy was more admirable than I,
who am by way of being not wholly admirable. But then he had a
wretched time of it, by and large. Thus it may be that my real youth
lies sleeping here: and for no consideration would I re-awaken it."
And yet tears came into his eyes, for no reason at all. And it
seemed to him that the sleeping woman, here at his disposal, was not
the young Dorothy whom he had seen in the garden between dawn and
sunrise, although the two were curiously alike; and that of the two
this woman here was, somehow, infinitely the lovelier.
"Lady, if you indeed be the Swan's daughter, long and long ago there
was a child that was ill. And his illness turned to a fever, and in
his fever he arose from his bed one night, saying that he must set
out for Troy, because of his love for Queen Helen. I was once that
child. I remember how strange it seemed to me I should be talking
such nonsense: I remember how the warm room smelt of drugs: and I
remember how I pitied the trouble in my nurse's face, drawn and old
in the yellow lamplight. For she loved me, and she did not
understand: and she pleaded with me to be a good boy and not to
worry my sleeping parents. But I perceive now that I was not talking
nonsense."
He paused, considering the riddle: and his fingers fretted with the
robe of violet-colored wool beneath which lay Queen Helen. "Yours
is that beauty of which men know by fabulous report alone, and which
they may not ever find, nor ever win to, quite. And for that beauty
I have hungered always, even in childhood. Toward that beauty I have
struggled always, but not quite whole-heartedly. That night forecast
my life. I have hungered for you: and"--Jurgen smiled here--"and I
have always stayed a passably good boy, lest I should beyond reason
disturb my family. For to do that, I thought, would not be fair: and
still I believe for me to have done that would have been unfair."
He grimaced at this point: for Jurgen was finding his scruples
inconveniently numerous.
"And now I think that what I do to-night is not quite fair to Chloris.
And I do not know what thing it is that I desire, and the will of
Jurgen is a feather in the wind. But I know that I would like to love
somebody as Chloris loves me, and as so many women have loved me. And
I know that it is you who have prevented this, Queen Helen, at every
moment of my life since the disastrous moment when I first seemed to
find your loveliness in the face of Madame Dorothy. It is the memory
of your beauty, as I then saw it mirrored in the face of a jill-flirt,
which has enfeebled me for such honest love as other men give women:
and I envy these other men. For Jurgen has loved nothing--not even you,
not even Jurgen!--quite whole-heartedly. Well, what if I took vengeance
now upon this thieving comeliness, upon this robber that strips life of
joy and sorrow?"
Jurgen stood at Queen Helen's bedside, watching her, for a long
while. He had shifted into a less fanciful mood: and the shadow that
followed him was ugly and hulking and wavering upon the cedarn wall
of Queen Helen's sleeping-chamber.
"Mine is a magic which does not fail," old Phobetor had said, while
his attendants raised his eyelids so that he could see King Jurgen.
Now Jurgen remembered this. And reflectively he drew back the robe
of violet-colored wool, a little way. The breast of Queen Helen lay
bare. And she did not move at all, but she smiled in her sleep.
Never had Jurgen imagined that any woman could be so beautiful nor
so desirable as this woman, or that he could ever know such rapture.
So Jurgen paused.
"Because," said Jurgen now, "it may be this woman has some fault: it
may be there is some fleck in her beauty somewhere. And sooner than
know that, I would prefer to retain my unreasonable dreams, and this
longing which is unfed and hopeless, and the memory of to-night.
Besides, if she were perfect in everything, how could I live any
longer, who would have no more to desire? No, I would be betraying
my own interests, either way; and injustice is always despicable."
So Jurgen sighed and gently replaced the robe of violet-colored
wool, and he returned to his Hamadryad.
"And now that I think of it, too," reflected Jurgen, "I am behaving
rather nobly. Yes, it is questionless that I have to-night evinced a
certain delicacy of feeling which merits appreciation, at all events
by King Achilles."
31.