Part 43 (1/2)

”You may be right: yet, even so--”

”And Koshchei who directs this infinite moving of puppets may well be the futile harried king in some yet larger game.”

”Now, certainly I cannot contradict you: but, at the same time--!”

”So goes this criss-cross mult.i.tudinous moving as far as thought can reach: and beyond that the moving goes. All moves. All moves uncomprehendingly, and to the sound of laughter. For all moves in consonance with a higher power that understands the meaning of the movement. And each moves the pieces before him in consonance with his ability. So the game is endless and ruthless: and there is merriment overhead, but it is very far away.”

”n.o.body is more willing to concede that these are handsome fancies, Mother Sereda. But they make my head ache. Moreover, two people are needed to play chess, and your hypothesis does not provide anybody with an antagonist. Lastly, and above all, how do I know there is a word of truth in your high-sounding fancies?”

”How can any of us know anything? And what is Jurgen, that his knowing or his not knowing should matter to anybody?”

Jurgen slapped his hands together. ”Hah, Mother Sereda!” says he, ”but now I have you. It is that, precisely that d.a.m.nable question, which your shadow has been whispering to me from the beginning of our companions.h.i.+p. And I am through with you. I will have no more of your gifts, which are purchased at the cost of hearing that whisper.

I am resolved henceforward to be as other persons, and to believe implicitly in my own importance.”

”But have you any reason to blame me? I restored to you your youth.

And when, just at the pa.s.sing of that replevined Wednesday which I loaned, you rebuked the Countess Dorothy very edifyingly, I was pleased to find a man so chaste: and therefore I continued my grant of youth--”

”Ah, yes!” said Jurgen: ”then that was the way of it! You were pleased, just in the nick of time, by my virtuous rebuke of the woman who tempted me. Yes, to be sure. Well, well! come now, you know, that is very gratifying.”

”None the less your chast.i.ty, however unusual, has proved a barren virtue. For what have you made of a year of youth? Why, each thing that every man of forty-odd by ordinary regrets having done, you have done again, only more swiftly, compressing the follies of a quarter of a century into the s.p.a.ce of one year. You have sought bodily pleasures. You have made jests. You have asked many idle questions. And you have doubted all things, including Jurgen. In the face of your memories, in the face of what you probably considered cordial repentance, you have made of your second youth just nothing.

Each thing that every man of forty-odd regrets having done, you have done again.”

”Yes: it is undeniable that I re-married,” said Jurgen. ”Indeed, now I think of it, there was Anatis and Chloris and Florimel, so that I have married thrice in one year. But I am largely the victim of heredity, you must remember, since it was without consulting me that Smoit of Glathion perpetuated his characteristics.”

”Your marriages I do not criticize, for each was in accordance with the custom of the country: the law is always respectable; and matrimony is an honorable estate, and has a steadying influence, in all climes. It is true my shadow reports several other affairs--”

”Oh, G.o.dmother, and what is this you are telling me!”

”There was a Yolande and a Guenevere”--the voice of Mother Sereda appeared to read from a memorandum,--”and a Sylvia, who was your own step-grandmother, and a Stella, who was a yogini, whatever that may be; and a Phyllis and a Dolores, who were the queens of h.e.l.l and Philistia severally. Moreover, you visited the Queen of Pseudopolis in circ.u.mstances which could not but have been unfavorably viewed by her husband. Oh, yes, you have committed follies with divers women.”

”Follies, it may be, but no crimes, not even a misdemeanor. Look you, Mother Sereda, does your shadow report in all this year one single instance of misconduct with a woman?” says Jurgen, sternly.

”No, dearie, as I joyfully concede. The very worst reported is that matters were sometimes a.s.suming a more or less suspicious turn when you happened to put out the light. And, of course, shadows cannot exist in absolute darkness.”

”See now,” said Jurgen, ”what a thing it is to be careful! Careful, I mean, in one's avoidance of even an appearance of evil. In what other young man of twenty-one may you look to find such continence?

And yet you grumble!”

”I do not complain because you have lived chastely. That pleases me, and is the single reason you have been spared this long.”

”Oh, G.o.dmother, and whatever are you telling me!”

”Yes, dearie, had you once sinned with a woman in the youth I gave, you would have been punished instantly and very terribly. For I was always a great believer in chast.i.ty, and in the old days I used to insure the chast.i.ty of all my priests in the only way that is infallible.”

”In fact, I noticed something of the sort as you pa.s.sed in Leuke.”

”And over and over again I have been angered by my shadow's reports, and was about to punish you, my poor dearie, when I would remember that you held fast to the rarest of all virtues in a man, and that my shadow reported no irregularities with women. And that would please me, I acknowledge: so I would let matters run on a while longer. But it is a s.h.i.+ftless business, dearie, for you are making nothing of the youth I restored to you. And had you a thousand lives the result would be the same.”

”Nevertheless, I am a monstrous clever fellow.” Jurgen chuckled here.