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

was joined. And that day the forces of Philistia were everywhere triumphant. But they report a queer thing happened: and it was that when the Philistines shouted in their triumph, Achilles and all they who served him rose from the ground like gleaming clouds and passed above the heads of the Philistines, deriding them.

Thus was Pseudopolis left empty, so that the Philistines entered thereinto without any opposition. They defiled this city of blasphemous colors, then burned it as a sacrifice to their god Vel-Tyno, because the color of ashes is gray.

Then the Philistines erected lithoi (which were not unlike maypoles), and began to celebrate their religious rites.

So it was reported: but Jurgen witnessed none of these events.

“Let them fight it out,” said Jurgen: “it is not my affair. I agree with Silenus: dullness will conquer dullness, and it will not matter. But do you, woman dear, take shelter with your kindred in the unconquerable Woods, for there is no telling what damage the Philistines may do hereabouts.”

“Will you go with me, Jurgen?”

“My dear, you know very well that it is impossible for me ever again to go into the Woods, after the trick I played upon Phobetor.”

“And if only you had kept your head about that bean-pole of a Helen, in her yellow wig⁠—for I have not a doubt that every strand of it is false, and at all events this is not a time to be arguing about it, Jurgen⁠—why, then you would never have meddled with Uncle Phobetor! It simply shows you!”

“Yes,” said Jurgen.

“Still, I do not know. If you come with me into the Woods, Uncle Phobetor in his impetuous way will quite certainly turn you into a boar-pig, because he has always done that to the people who irritated him⁠—”

“I seem to recognise that reason.”

“⁠—But give me time, and I can get around Uncle Phobetor, just as I have always done, and he will turn you back.”

“No,” says Jurgen, obstinately, “I do not wish to be turned into a boar-pig.”

“Now, Jurgen, let us be sensible about this! Of course, it is a little humiliating. But I will take the very best of care of you, and feed you with my own acorns, and it will be a purely temporary arrangement. And to be a pig for a week or two, or even for a month, is infinitely better for a poet than being captured by the Philistines.”

“How do I know that?” says Jurgen.

“⁠—For it is not, after all, as if Uncle Phobetor’s heart were not in the right place. It is just his way. And besides, you must remember what you did with that gimlet!”

Said Jurgen: “All this is hardly to the purpose. You forget I have seen the hapless swine of Phobetor, and I know how he ameliorates the natural ferocity of his boar-pigs. No, I am Jurgen. So I remain. I will face the Philistines and whatever they may possibly do to me, rather than suffer that which Phobetor will quite certainly do to me.”

“Then I stay too,” said Chloris.

“No, woman dear⁠—!”

“But do you not understand?” says Chloris, a little pale, as he saw now. “Since the life of a hamadryad is linked with the life of her tree, nobody can harm me so long as my tree lives: and if they cut down my tree I shall die, wherever I may happen to be.”

“I had forgotten that.” He was really troubled now.

“⁠—And you can see for yourself, Jurgen, it is quite out of the question for me to be carrying that great oak anywhere, and I wonder at your talking such nonsense.”

“Indeed, my dear,” says Jurgen, “we are very neatly trapped. Well, nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbor chooses. Nevertheless, it is not fair.”

As he spoke the Philistines came forth from the burning city. Again the trumpet sounded, and the Philistines advanced in their order of battle.

XXXII Sundry Devices of the Philistines

Meanwhile the People of the Field had watched Pseudopolis burn, and had wondered what would befall them. They had not long to wonder, for next day the Fields were occupied, without any resistance by the inhabitants.

“The People of the Field,” said they, “have never fought, and for them to begin now would be a very unheard-of thing indeed.”

So the Fields were captured by the Philistines, and Chloris and Jurgen and all the People of the Field were judged summarily. They were declared to be obsolete illusions, whose merited doom was to be relegated to limbo. To Jurgen this appeared unreasonable.

“For I am no illusion,” he asserted. “I am manifestly flesh and blood, and in addition, I am the high King of Eubonia, and no less. Why, in disputing these facts you contest circumstances that are so well known hereabouts as to rank among mathematical certainties. And that makes you look foolish, as I tell you for your own good.”

This vexed the leaders of the Philistines, as it always vexes people to be told anything for their own good. “We would have you know,” said they, “that we are not mathematicians; and that moreover, we have no kings in Philistia, where all must do what seems to be expected of them, and have no other law.”

“How then can you be the leaders of Philistia?”

“Why, it is expected that women and priests should behave unaccountably. Therefore all we who are women or priests do what we will in Philistia, and the men there obey us. And it is we, the priests of Philistia, who do not think you can possibly have any flesh and blood under a shirt which we recognize to be a conventional figure of speech. It does not stand to reason. And certainly you could not ever prove such a thing by mathematics; and to say so is nonsense.”

“But I can prove it by mathematics, quite irrefutably. I can prove anything you require of me by whatever means you may prefer,” said Jurgen, modestly, “for the simple reason that I