Now the Philistines led out their prisoners, and made ready to
inflict the doom which was decreed. And they permitted the young
King of Eubonia to speak with Chloris.
"Farewell to you now, Jurgen!" says Chloris, weeping softly. "It is
little I care what foolish words these priests of Philistia may
utter against me. But the big-armed axemen are felling my tree
yonder, to get them timber to make a bedstead for the Queen of
Philistia: for that is what this Queen Dolores ordered them to do
the first thing this morning."
And Jurgen raised his hands. "You women!" he said. "What man would
ever have thought of that?"
"So when my tree is felled I must depart into a sombre land wherein
there is no laughter at all; and where the puzzled dead go wandering
futilely through fields of scentless asphodel, and through tall
sullen groves of myrtle,--the puzzled quiet dead, who may not even
weep as I do now, but can only wonder what it is that they regret.
And I too must taste of Lethê, and forget all I have loved."
"You should give thanks to the imagination of your forefathers, my
dear, that your doom is no worse. For I am going into a more
barbaric limbo, into the Hell of a people who thought entirely too
much about flames and pitchforks," says Jurgen, ruefully. "I tell
you it is the deuce and all, to come of morbid ancestry." And he
kissed Chloris, upon the brow. "My dear, dear girl," he said, with a
gulp, "as long as you remember me, do so with charity."
"Jurgen"--and she clung close to him--"you were not ever unkind, not
even for a moment. Jurgen, you have not ever spoken one harsh word
to me or any other person, in all the while we were together. O
Jurgen, whom I have loved as you could love nobody, it was not much
those other women had left me to worship!"
"Indeed, it is a pity that you loved me, Chloris, for I was not
worthy." And for the instant Jurgen meant it.
"If any other person said that, Jurgen, I would be very angry. And even
to hear you say it troubles me, because there was never a hamadryad
between two hills that had a husband one-half so clever-foolish as he
made light of time and chance, with his sleek black head cocked to one
side, and his mischievous brown eyes a-twinkle."
And Jurgen wondered that this should be the notion Chloris had of
him, and that a gesture should be the things she remembered about
him: and he was doubly assured that no woman bothers to understand
the man she elects to love and cosset and slave for.
"O woman dear," says Jurgen, "but I have loved you, and my heart is
water now that you are taken from me: and to remember your ways and
the joy I had in them will be a big and grinding sorrow in the long
time to come. Oh, not with any heroic love have I loved you, nor
with any madness and high dreams, nor with much talking either; but
with a love befitting my condition, with a quiet and cordial love."
"And must you be trying, while I die, to get your grieving for me
into the right words?" she asks him, smiling very sadly. "No matter:
you are Jurgen, and I have loved you. And I am glad that I shall
know nothing about it when in the long time, to come you will be
telling so many other women about what was said by Zorobasius and
Ptolemopiter, and when you will be posturing and romancing for their
delight. For presently I shall have tasted Lethê: and presently I
shall have forgotten you, King Jurgen, and all the joy I had in you,
and all the pride, and all the love I had for you, King Jurgen, who
loved me as much as you were able."
"Why, and will there be any love-making, do you think, in Hell?" he
asks her, with a doleful smile.
"There will be love-making," she replied, "wherever you go, King
Jurgen. And there will be women to listen. And at the last there
will be a bean-pole of a woman, in a wig."
"I am sorry--" he said. "And yet I have loved you, Chloris."
"That is my comfort now. And presently there will be Lethê. I put
the greater faith in Lethê. And still, I cannot help but love you,
Jurgen, in whom I have no faith at all."