Jurgen

It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, saying: In the old days lived a pawnbroker named Jurgen; but what his wife called him was very often much worse than that. She was a high-spirited woman, with no especial gift for silence. Her name, they say, was Adelais, but people by ordinary called her Dame Lisa.

They tell, also, that in the old days, after putting up the shopwindows for the night, Jurgen was passing the Cistercian Abbey, on his way home: and one of the monks had tripped over a stone in the roadway. He was cursing the devil who had placed it there.

“Fie, brother!” says Jurgen, “and have not the devils enough to bear as it is?”

“I never held with Origen,” replied the monk; “and besides, it hurt my great-toe confoundedly.”

“None the less,” observes Jurgen, “it does not behoove God-fearing persons to speak with disrespect of the divinely appointed Prince of Darkness. To your further confusion, consider this monarch’s industry! day and night you may detect him toiling at the task Heaven set him. That is a thing can be said of few communicants and of no monks. Think, too, of his fine artistry, as evidenced in all the perilous and lovely snares of this world, which it is your business to combat, and mine to lend money upon. Why, but for him we would both be vocationless! Then, too, consider his philanthropy! and deliberate how insufferable would be our case if you and I, and all our fellow parishioners, were today hobnobbing with other beasts in the Garden which we pretend to desiderate on Sundays!

Thus it was that Jurgen and the Centaur came to the garden between dawn and sunrise, entering this place in a fashion which it is not convenient to record. But as they passed over the bridge three fled before them, screaming. And when the life had been trampled out of the small furry bodies which these three had misused, there was none to oppose the Centaur’s entry into the garden between dawn and sunrise.

This was a wonderful garden: yet nothing therein was strange. Instead, it seemed that everything hereabouts was heart-breakingly familiar and very dear to Jurgen. For he had come to a broad lawn which slanted northward to a well-remembered brook: and multitudinous maples and locust-trees stood here and there, irregularly, and were being played with very lazily by an irresolute west wind, so that foliage seemed to toss and ripple everywhere like green spray: but autumn was at hand, for the locust-trees were dropping a Danaë’s shower of small round yellow leaves. Around the garden was an unforgotten circle of blue hills. And this was a place of lucent twilight, unlit by either sun or stars, and with no shadows anywhere in the diffused faint radiancy that revealed this garden, which is not visible to any man except in the brief interval between dawn and sunrise.

“Why, but it is Count Emmerick’s garden at Storisende,” says Jurgen, “where I used to be having such fine times when I was a lad.”

“I will wager,” said Nessus, “that you did not use to walk alone in this garden.”

Thus Jurgen came through a forest, wherein he saw many things not salutary to notice, to a great stone house like a prison, and he sought shelter there. But he could find nobody about the place, until he came to a large hall, newly swept. This was a depressing apartment, in its chill neat emptiness, for it was unfurnished save for a bare deal table, upon which lay a yardstick and a pair of scales. Above this table hung a wicker cage, containing a blue bird, and another wicker cage containing three white pigeons. And in this hall a woman, no longer young, dressed all in blue, and wearing a white towel by way of headdress was assorting curiously colored cloths.

She had very bright eyes, with wrinkled lids; and now as she looked up at Jurgen her shrunk jaws quivered.

“Ah,” says she, “I have a visitor. Good day to you, in your glittering shirt. It is a garment I seem to recognize.”

“Good day, grandmother! I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow! Now, having lost my way, I have come to pass the night under your roof.”

“Very good: but few come seeking Mother Sereda of their own accord.”

Then Jurgen knew with whom he talked: and inwardly he was perturbed, for all the Léshy are unreliable in their dealings.

So when he spoke it was very civilly. “And what do you do here, grandmother?”

Now Heitman Michael had drawn his sword. “You are insane. But you extend an invitation which I have never yet refused.”

“Heitman,” cries Jurgen, in honest gratitude and admiration, “I bear you no ill-will. But it is highly necessary you die tonight, in order that my soul may not perish too many years before my body.”

With that he too whipped out his sword.

So they fought. Now Jurgen was a very acceptable swordsman, but from the start he found in Heitman Michael his master. Jurgen had never reckoned upon that, and he considered it annoying. If Heitman Michael perforated Jurgen the future would be altered, certainly, but not quite as Jurgen had decided it ought to be remodeled. So this unlooked-for complication seemed preposterous, and Jurgen began to be irritated by the suspicion that he was getting himself killed for nothing at all.

“I have always stood here,” said Terminus.

“And do you never move?”

“No,” said Terminus.

“And for what reason?”

“Because I have always stood here without moving,” replied Terminus. “Why, for me to move would be a quite unheard-of thing.”

So Jurgen left him, and went into the forest. And there Jurgen encountered a smiling young fellow, who rode upon the back of a large ram. This young man had his left forefinger laid to his lips, and his right hand held an astonishing object to be thus publicly displayed.

“But, oh, dear me! now, really, sir⁠—!” says Jurgen.

“Bah!” says the ram.

But the smiling young fellow said nothing at all as he passed Jurgen, because it is not the custom of Harpocrates to speak.

“Which would be well enough,” reflected Jurgen, “if only his custom did not make for stiffness and the embarrassment of others.”

Thereafter Jurgen came upon a considerable commotion in the bushes, where a satyr was at play with an oread.

“Oh, but this forest is not respectable!” said Jurgen. “Have you no ethics and morals, you People of the Wood! Have you no sense of responsibility whatever, thus to be frolicking on a working-day?”

“Why, no,” responded the Satyr, “of course not. None of my people have such things: and so the natural vocation of all satyrs is that which you are now interrupting.”

“Perhaps you speak the truth,” said Jurgen. “Still, you ought to be ashamed of the fact that you are not lying.”