Jurgen. A Comedy of Justice

by James Branch Cabell

  Then Merlin went on to speak of the traffic between Merlin and Merlin's shadow.

  "Thus and thus," says Merlin, "I humor my shadow. And thus and thus my shadow serves me. There is give-and-take, such as is requisite everywhere."

  "I understand," says Jurgen: "but has no other person ever perceived this shadow of yours?"

  "Once only, when for a while my shadow deserted me," Merlin replied. "It was on a Sunday my shadow left me, so that I walked unattended in naked sunlight: for my shadow was embracing the church-steeple, where church-goers knelt beneath him. The church-goers were obscurely troubled without suspecting why, for they looked only at each other. The priest and I alone saw him quite clearly,—the priest because this thing was evil, and I because this thing was mine."

  "Well, now I wonder what did the priest say to your bold shadow?"

  "'But you must go away!'—and the priest spoke without any fear. Why is it they seem always without fear, those dull and calm-eyed priests? 'Such conduct is unseemly. For this is High God's house, and far-off peoples are admonished by its steadfast spire, pointing always heavenward, that the place is holy,' said the priest. And my shadow answered, 'But I only know that steeples are of phallic origin.' And my shadow wept, wept ludicrously, clinging to the steeple where church-goers knelt beneath him."

  "Now, and indeed that must have been disconcerting, Messire Merlin. Still, as you got your shadow back again, there was no great harm done. But why is it that such attendants follow some men while other men are permitted to live in decent solitude? It does not seem quite fair."

  "Perhaps I could explain it to you, friend, but certainly I shall not. You know too much as it is. For you appear in that bright garment of yours to have come from a land and a time which even I, who am a skilled magician, can only cloudily foresee, and cannot understand at all. What puzzles me, however"—and Merlin's fore-finger shot out. "How many feet had the first wearer of your shirt? and were you ever an old man?" says he.

  "Well, four, and I was getting on," says Jurgen.

  "And I did not guess! But certainly that is it,—an old poet loaned at once a young man's body and the Centaur's shirt. Adères has loosed a new jest into the world, for her own reasons—"

  "But you have things backwards. It was Sereda whom I cajoled so nicely."

  "Names that are given by men amount to very little in a case like this. The shadow which follows you I recognize—and revere—as the gift of Adères, a dreadful Mother of small Gods. No doubt she has a host of other names. And you cajoled her, you consider! I would not willingly walk in the shirt of any person who considers that. But she will enlighten you, my friend, at her appointed time."

  "Well, so that she deals justly—" Jurgen said, and shrugged.

  Now Merlin put aside the mirror. "Meanwhile it was another matter entirely that Dame Anaïtis and I discussed, and about which I wished to be speaking with you. Gogyrvan is sending to King Arthur, along with Gogyrvan's daughter, that Round Table which Uther Pendragon gave Gogyrvan, and a hundred knights to fill the sieges of this table. Gogyrvan, who, with due respect, possesses a deplorable sense of humor, has numbered you among these knights. Now it is rumored the Princess is given to conversing a great deal with you in private, and Arthur has never approved of garrulity. So I warn you that for you to come with us to London would not be convenient."

  "I hardly think so, either," said Jurgen, with appropriate melancholy; "for me to pursue the affair any further would only result in marring what otherwise will always be a perfect memory of divers very pleasant conversations."

  "Old poet, you are well advised," said Merlin,—"especially now that the little princess whom we know is about to enter queenhood and become a symbol. I am sorry for her, for she will be worshipped as a revelation of Heaven's splendor, and being flesh and blood, she will not like it. And it is to no effect I have forewarned King Arthur, for that must happen which will always happen so long as wisdom is impotent against human stupidity. So wisdom can but make the best of it, and be content to face the facts of a great mystery."

  Thereupon, Merlin arose, and lifted the tapestry behind him, so that Jurgen could see what hitherto this tapestry had screened.

  * * * * *

  "You have embarrassed me horribly," said Jurgen, "and I can feel that I am still blushing, about the ankles. Well, I was wrong: so let us say no more concerning it."

  "I wished to show you," Merlin returned, "that I know what I am talking about. However, my present purpose is to put Guenevere out of your head: for in your heart I think she never was, old poet, who go so modestly in the Centaur's shirt. Come, tell me now! and does the thought of her approaching marriage really disturb you?"

  "I am the unhappiest man that breathes," said Jurgen, with unction. "All night I lie awake in my tumbled bed, and think of the miserable day which is past, and of what is to happen in that equally miserable day whose dawn I watch with a sick heart. And I cry aloud, in the immortal words of Apollonius Myronides—"

  "Of whom?" says Merlin.

  "I allude to the author of the Myrosis," Jurgen explained,—"whom so many persons rashly identify with Apollonius Herophileius."

  "Oh, yes, of course! your quotation is very apt. Why, then your condition is sad but not incurable. For I am about to give you this token, with which, if you are bold enough, you will do thus and thus."

  "But indeed this is a somewhat strange token, and the arms and legs, and even the head, of this little man are remarkably alike! Well, and you tell me thus and thus. But how does it happen, Messire Merlin, that you have never used this token in the fashion you suggest to me?"

  "Because I was afraid. You forget I am only a magician, whose conjuring raises nothing more formidable than devils. But this is a bit of the Old Magic that is no longer understood, and I prefer not to meddle with it. You, to the contrary, are a poet, and the Old Magic was always favorable to poets."

  "Well, I will think about it," says Jurgen, "if this will really put Dame Guenevere out of my head."

  "Be assured it will do that," said Merlin. "For with reason does the Dirghâgama declare, 'The brightness of the glowworm cannot be compared to that of a lamp.'"

  "A very pleasant little work, the Dirghâgama," said Jurgen, tolerantly—"though superficial, of course."

  Then Merlin Ambrosius gave Jurgen the token, and some advice.

  So that night Jurgen told Guenevere he would not go in her train to London. He told her candidly that Merlin was suspicious of their intercourse.

  "And therefore, in order to protect you and to protect your fame, my dearest dear," said Jurgen, "it is necessary that I sacrifice myself and everything I prize in life. I shall suffer very much: but my consolation will be that I have dealt fairly with you whom I love with an entire heart, and shall have preserved you through my misery."

  But Guenevere did not appear to notice how noble this was of Jurgen. Instead, she wept very softly, in a heartbroken way that Jurgen found unbearable.

  "For no man, whether emperor or peasant," says the Princess, "has ever been loved more dearly or faithfully or more wholly without any reserve or forethought than you, my dearest, have been loved by me. All that I had I have given you. All that I had you have taken, consuming it. So now you leave me with not anything more to give you, not even any anger or contempt, now that you turn me adrift, for there is nothing in me anywhere save love of you, who are unworthy."

  "But I die many deaths," said Jurgen, "when you speak thus to me."

  And in point of fact, he did feel rather uncomfortable.

  "I speak the truth, though. You have had all: and so you are a little weary, and perhaps a little afraid of what may happen if you do not break off with me."

  "Now you misjudge me, darling—"

  "No, I do not misjudge you, Jurgen. Instead, for the first time I judge both of us. You I forgive, because I love you, but myself I do not forgive, and I cannot ever forgive, for having been a spendthrift fool."

  And Jurgen found such t
alking uncomfortable and tedious and very unfair to him. "For there is nothing I can do to help matters," says Jurgen. "Why, what could anybody possibly expect me to do about it? And so why not be happy while we may? It is not as though we had any time to waste."

  For this was the last night but one before the day that was set for Guenevere's departure.

  19. The Brown Man with Queer Feet

  Early in the following morning Jurgen left Cameliard, traveling toward Carohaise, and went into the Druid forest there, and followed Merlin's instructions.

  "Not that I for a moment believe in such nonsense," said Jurgen: "but it will be amusing to see what comes of this business, and it is unjust to deny even nonsense a fair trial."

  So he presently observed a sun-browned brawny fellow, who sat upon the bank of a stream, dabbling his feet in the water, and making music with a pipe constructed of seven reeds of irregular lengths. To him Jurgen displayed, in such a manner as Merlin had prescribed, the token which Merlin had given. The man made a peculiar sign, and rose. Jurgen saw that this man's feet were unusual.

  Jurgen bowed low, and he said, as Merlin had bidden: "Now praise be to thee, thou lord of the two truths! I have come to thee, O most wise, that I may learn thy secret. I would know thee, and would know the forty-two mighty ones who dwell with thee in the hall of the two truths, and who are nourished by evil-doers, and who partake of wicked blood each day of the reckoning before Wennofree. I would know thee for what thou art."

  The brown man answered: "I am everything that was and that is to be. Never has any mortal been able to discover what I am."

  Then this brown man conducted Jurgen to an open glen, at the heart of the forest.

  "Merlin dared not come himself, because," observed the brown man, "Merlin is wise. But you are a poet. So you will presently forget that which you are about to see, or at worst you will tell pleasant lies about it, particularly to yourself."

  "I do not know about that," says Jurgen, "but I am willing to taste any drink once. What are you about to show me?"

  The brown man answered: "All."

  So it was near evening when they came out of the glen. It was dark now, for a storm had risen. The brown man was smiling, and Jurgen was in a flutter.

  "It is not true," Jurgen protested. "What you have shown me is a pack of nonsense. It is the degraded lunacy of a so-called Realist. It is sorcery and pure childishness and abominable blasphemy. It is, in a word, something I do not choose to believe. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

  "Even so, you do believe me, Jurgen."

  "I believe that you are an honest man and that I am your cousin: so there are two more lies for you."

  The brown man said, still smiling: "Yes, you are certainly a poet, you who have borrowed the apparel of my cousin. For you come out of my glen, and from my candor, as sane as when you entered. That is not saying much, to be sure, in praise of a poet's sanity at any time. But Merlin would have died, and Merlin would have died without regret, if Merlin had seen what you have seen, because Merlin receives facts reasonably."

  "Facts! sanity! and reason!" Jurgen raged: "why, but what nonsense you are talking! Were there a bit of truth in your silly puppetry this world of time and space and consciousness would be a bubble, a bubble which contained the sun and moon and the high stars, and still was but a bubble in fermenting swill! I must go cleanse my mind of all this foulness. You would have me believe that men, that all men who have ever lived or shall ever live hereafter, that even I am of no importance! Why, there would be no justice in any such arrangement, no justice anywhere!"

  "That vexed you, did it not? It vexes me at times, even me, who under Koshchei's will alone am changeless."

  "I do not know about your variability: but I stick to my opinion about your veracity," says Jurgen, for all that he was upon the verge of hysteria. "Yes, if lies could choke people that shaggy throat would certainly be sore."

  Then the brown man stamped his foot, and the striking of his foot upon the moss made a new noise such as Jurgen had never heard: for the noise seemed to come multitudinously from every side, at first as though each leaf in the forest were tinily cachinnating; and then this noise was swelled by the mirth of larger creatures, and echoes played with this noise, until there was a reverberation everywhere like that of thunder. The earth moved under their feet very much as a beast twitches its skin under the annoyance of flies. Another queer thing Jurgen noticed, and it was that the trees about the glen had writhed and arched their trunks, and so had bended, much as candles bend in very hot weather, to lay their topmost foliage at the feet of the brown man. And the brown man's appearance was changed as he stood there, terrible in a continuous brown glare from the low-hanging clouds, and with the forest making obeisance, and with shivering and laughter everywhere.

  "Make answer, you who chatter about justice! how if I slew you now," says the brown man,—"I being what I am?"

  "Slay me, then!" says Jurgen, with shut eyes, for he did not at all like the appearance of things. "Yes, you can kill me if you choose, but it is beyond your power to make me believe that there is no justice anywhere, and that I am unimportant. For I would have you know I am a monstrous clever fellow. As for you, you are either a delusion or a god or a degraded Realist. But whatever you are, you have lied to me, and I know that you have lied, and I will not believe in the insignificance of Jurgen."

  Chillingly came the whisper of the brown man: "Poor fool! O shuddering, stiff-necked fool! and have you not just seen that which you may not ever quite forget?"

  "None the less, I think there is something in me which will endure. I am fettered by cowardice, I am enfeebled by disastrous memories; and I am maimed by old follies. Still, I seem to detect in myself something which is permanent and rather fine. Underneath everything, and in spite of everything, I really do seem to detect that something. What rôle that something is to enact after the death of my body, and upon what stage, I cannot guess. When fortune knocks I shall open the door. Meanwhile I tell you candidly, you brown man, there is something in Jurgen far too admirable for any intelligent arbiter ever to fling into the dustheap. I am, if nothing else, a monstrous clever fellow: and I think I shall endure, somehow. Yes, cap in hand goes through the land, as the saying is, and I believe I can contrive some trick to cheat oblivion when the need arises," says Jurgen, trembling, and gulping, and with his eyes shut tight, but even so, with his mind quite made up about it. "Of course you may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong: but still, at the same time—"

  "Now but before a fool's opinion of himself," the brown man cried, "the Gods are powerless. Oh, yes, and envious, too!"

  And when Jurgen very cautiously opened his eyes the brown man had left him physically unharmed. But the state of Jurgen's nervous system was deplorable.

  20. Efficacy of Prayer

  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.