Jurgen - James Branch Cabell (reading a book TXT) 📗

been sitting. “Rest there, brave sir, until they find you. Come to me now, my Heart’s Desire. Good, that is excellent. Here I sit with my true love, upon the body of my enemy. Justice is satisfied, and all is quite as it should be. For you must understand that I have fallen heir to a fine steed, whose bridle is marked with a coronet⁠—prophetically, I take it⁠—and upon this steed you will ride pillion with me to Lisuarte. There we will find a priest to marry us. We will go together into Gâtinais. Meanwhile, there is a bit of neglected business to be attended to.” And he drew the girl close to him.

For Jurgen was afraid of nothing now. And Jurgen thought:

“Oh, that I could detain the moment! that I could make some fitting verses to preserve this moment in my own memory! Could I but get into words the odor and the thick softness of this girl’s hair as my hands, that are a-quiver in every nerve of them, caress her hair; and get into enduring words the glitter and the cloudy shadowings of her hair in this be-drenching moonlight! For I shall forget all this beauty, or at best I shall remember this moment very dimly.”

“You have done very wrong⁠—” says Dorothy.

Says Jurgen, to himself: “Already the moment passes, this miserably happy moment wherein once more life shudders and stands heart-stricken at the height of bliss! it passes, and I know even as I lift this girl’s soft face to mine, and mark what faith and submissiveness and expectancy is in her face, that whatever the future holds for us, and whatever of happiness we two may know hereafter, we shall find no instant happier than this, which passes from us irretrievably while I am thinking about it, poor fool, in place of rising to the issue.”

“⁠—And heaven only knows what will become of you Jurgen⁠—”

Says Jurgen, still to himself: “Yes, something must remain to me of all this rapture, though it be only guilt and sorrow: something I mean to wrest from this high moment which was once wasted fruitlessly. Now I am wiser: for I know there is not any memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory of some temptation we resisted. So I will not waste the one real passion I have known, nor leave unfed the one desire which ever caused me for a heartbeat to forget to think about Jurgen’s welfare. And thus, whatever happens, I shall not always regret that I did not avail myself of this girl’s love before it was taken from me.”

So Jurgen made such advances as seemed good to him. And he noted, with amusing memories of how much afraid he had once been of shocking his Dorothy’s notions of decorum, that she did not repulse him very vigorously.

“Here, over a dead body! Oh, Jurgen, this is horrible! Now, Jurgen, remember that somebody may come any minute! And I thought I could trust you! Ah, and is this all the respect you have for me!” This much she said in duty. Meanwhile the eyes of Dorothy were dilated and very tender.

“Faith, I take no chances, this second time. And so whatever happens, I shall not always regret that which I left undone.”

Now upon his lips was laughter, and his arms were about the submissive girl. And in his heart was an unnamable depression and a loneliness, because it seemed to him that this was not the Dorothy whom he had seen in the garden between dawn and sunrise. “For in my arms now there is just a very pretty girl who is not overcareful in her dealings with young men,” thought Jurgen, as their lips met. Well, all life is a compromise; and a pretty girl is something tangible, at any rate. So he laughed, triumphantly, and prepared for the sequel.

But as Jurgen laughed triumphantly, with his arm beneath the head of Dorothy, and with the tender face of Dorothy passive beneath his lips, and with unreasonable wistfulness in his heart, the castle bell tolled midnight. What followed was curious: for as Wednesday passed, the face of Dorothy altered, her flesh roughened under his touch, and her cheeks fell away, and fine lines came about her eyes, and she became the Countess Dorothy whom Jurgen remembered as Heitman Michael’s wife. There was no doubt about it, in that be-drenching moonlight: and she was leering at him, and he was touching her everywhere, this horrible lascivious woman, who was certainly quite old enough to know better than to permit such liberties. And her breath was sour and nauseous. Jurgen drew away from her, with a shiver of loathing, and he closed his eyes, to shut away that sensual face.

“No,” he said; “it would not be fair to what we owe to others. In fact, it would be a very heinous sin. We should weigh such considerations occasionally, madame.”

Then Jurgen left his temptress, with simple dignity. “I go to search for my dear wife, madame, in a frame of mind which I would strongly advise you to adopt toward your husband.”

And he went straightway down the terraces of Bellegarde, and turned southward to where his horse was tethered upon Amneran Heath: and Jurgen was feeling very virtuous.

VIII Old Toys and a New Shadow

Jurgen had behaved with conspicuous nobility, Jurgen reflected: but he had committed himself. “I go in search of my dear wife,” he had stated, in the exaltation of virtuous sentiments. And now Jurgen found himself alone in a world of moonlight just where he had last seen his wife.

“Well, well,” he said, “now that my Wednesday is done with, and I am again a reputable pawnbroker, let us remember the advisability of sometimes doing the manly thing! It was into this cave that Lisa went. So into this cave go I, for the second time, rather than home to my unsympathetic relatives-in-law. Or at least, I think I am