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

the table, I no longer beat about the bushes of equivocation. It is Aillê, the daughter of Cormac, whom I love, and who can blame me? Did you ever in your life behold a more enticing figure, Anaïtis?⁠—certainly I never did. Besides, I noticed⁠—but never mind about that! Still I could not help seeing them. And then such eyes! twin beacons that light my way to comfort for my not inconsiderable regret at losing you, my darling. Oh, yes, assuredly it is to Tir-nam-Beo I elect to go.”

“Whither you go, my fine fellow, is a matter in which I have the choice, not you. And you are going to Leukê.”

“My love, now do be reasonable! We both agreed that Leukê was not a bit suitable. Why, were there nothing else, in Leukê there are no attractive women.”

“Have you no sense except book-sense! It is for that reason I am sending you to Leukê.”

And thus speaking, Anaïtis set about a strong magic that hastened the coming of the Equinox. In the midst of her charming she wept a little, for she was fond of Jurgen.

And Jurgen preserved a hurt and angry face as well as he could: for at the sight of Queen Helen, who was so like young Dorothy la Désirée, he had ceased to care for Queen Anaïtis and her diverting ways, or to care for aught else in the world save only Queen Helen, the delight of gods and men. But Jurgen had learned that Anaïtis required management.

“For her own good,” as he put it, “and in simple justice to the many admirable qualities which she possesses.”

XXVII Vexatious Estate of Queen Helen

“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