not know but it is as hard on her as on me.'
'My friend, do you forget the poet that you might be, even yet? No rational person would dispute that the society and amiable chat of Dame Lisa must naturally be a desideratum—'
But Dame Lisa was always resentful of long words. 'Be silent, you black scoffer, and do not allude to such disgraceful things in the presence of respectable people! For I am a decent Christian woman, I would have you understand. But everybody knows your reputation! and a very fit companion you are for that scamp yonder! and volumes could not say more!'
Thus casually, and with comparative lenience, did Dame Lisa dispose of Koshchei, who made things as they are, for she believed him to be merely Satan. And to her husband Dame Lisa now addressed herself more particularly.
'Jurgen, I always told you you would come to this, and now I hope you are satisfied. Jurgen, do not stand there with your mouth open, like a scared fish, when I ask you a civil question! but answer when you are spoken to! Yes, and you need not try to look so idiotically innocent, Jurgen, because I am disgusted with you. For, Jurgen, you heard perfectly well what your very suitable friend just said about me, with my own husband standing by. No—now I beg of you!—do not ask me what he said, Jurgen! I leave that to your conscience, and I prefer to talk no more about it. You know that when I am once disappointed in a person I am through with that person. So, very luckily, there is no need at all for you to pile hypocrisy on cowardice, because if my own husband has not the feelings of a man, and cannot protect me from insults and low company, I had best be going home and getting supper ready. I dare say the house is like a pig-sty: and I can see by looking at you that you have been ruining your eyes by reading in bed again. And to think of your going about in public, even among such associates, with a button off your shirt!'
She was silent for one terrible moment; then Lisa spoke in frozen despair.
'And now I look at that shirt, I ask you fairly, Jurgen, do you consider that a man of your age has any right to be going about in a shirt that nobody—in a shirt which—in a shirt that I can only—Ah, but I never saw such a shirt! and neither did anybody else! You simply cannot imagine what a figure you cut in it, Jurgen. Jurgen, I have been patient with you; I have put up with a great deal, saying nothing where many women would have lost their temper; but I simply cannot permit you to select your own clothes, and so ruin the business and take the bread out of our mouths. In short, you are enough to drive a person mad; and I warn you that I am done with you forever.'
Dame Lisa went with dignity to the door of Koshchei's office.
'So you can come with me or not, precisely as you elect. It is all one to me, I can assure you, after the cruel things you have said, and the way you have stormed at me, and have encouraged that notorious blackamoor to insult me in terms which I, for one, would not soil my lips by repeating. I do not doubt you consider it is all very clever and amusing, but you know now what I think about it. And upon the whole, if you do not feel the exertion will kill you, you had better come home the long way, and stop by Sister's and ask her to let you have a half-pound of butter; for I know you too well to suppose you have been attending to the churning.'
Dame Lisa here evinced a stately sort of mirth such as is unimaginable by bachelors.
'You churning while I was away!—oh, no, not you! There is probably not so much as an egg in the house. For my lord and gentleman has had other fish to fry, in his fine new courting clothes. And that—and on a man of your age, with a paunch to you like a beer barrel and with legs like pipe-stems!—yes, that infamous shirt of yours is the reason you had better, for your own comfort, come home the long way. For I warn you, Jurgen, that the style in which I have caught you rigged out has quite decided me, before I go home or anywhere else, to stop by for a word or so with your high and mighty Madame Dorothy. So you had just as well not be along with me, for there is no pulling wool over my eyes any longer, and you two need never think to hoodwink me again about your goings-on. No, Jurgen, you cannot fool me; for I can read you like a book. And such behavior, at your time of life, does not surprise me at all, because it is precisely what I would have expected of you.'
With that Dame Lisa passed through the door and went away, still talking. It was of Heitman Michael's wife that the wife of Jurgen spoke, discoursing of the personal traits, and of the past doings, and (with augmented fervor) of the figure and visage of Madame Dorothy, as all these abominations appeared to the eye of discernment, and must be revealed by the tongue of candor, as a matter of public duty.
So passed Dame Lisa, neither as flame nor mist, but as the voice of judgment.
49. Of the Compromise with Koshchei
'Phew!' said Koshchei, in the ensuing silence: 'you had better stay overnight, in any event. I really think, friend, you will be more comfortable, just now at least, in this quiet cave.'
But Jurgen had taken up his hat. 'No, I dare say I, too, had better be going,' says Jurgen. 'I thank you very heartily for your intended kindness, sir, still I do not know but it is better as it is. And is there anything'—Jurgen coughed delicately—'and is there anything to pay, sir?'
'Oh, just a trifle, first of all, for a year's maintenance of Dame Lisa. You see, Jurgen, that is an almighty fine shirt you are wearing: it rather appeals to me; and I fancy, from something your wife let drop just now, it did not impress her as being quite suited to you. So, in the interest of domesticity, suppose you ransom Dame Lisa with that fine shirt of yours?'
'Why, willingly,' said Jurgen, and he took off the shirt of Nessus.
'You have worn this for some time, I understand,' said Koshchei, meditatively: 'and did you ever notice any inconvenience in wearing this garment?'
'Not that I could detect, Prince; it fitted me, and seemed to impress everybody most favorably.'
'There!' said Koshchei; 'that is what I have always contended. To the strong man, and to wholesome matter of fact people generally, it is a fatal irritant; but persons like you can wear the shirt of Nessus very comfortably for a long, long while, and be generally admired; and you end by exchanging it for your wife's society. But now, Jurgen, about yourself. You probably noticed that my door was marked Keep Out. One must have rules, you know. Often it is a nuisance, but still rules are rules; and so I must tell you, Jurgen, it is not permitted any person to leave my presence unmaimed, if not actually annihilated. One really must have rules, you know.'
'You would chop off an arm? or a hand? or a whole finger? Come now, Prince, you must be joking!'
Koshchei the Deathless was very grave as he sat there, in meditation, drumming with his long jet-black fingers upon the table-top that was curiously inlaid with thirty pieces of silver. In the lamplight his sharp nails glittered like flame points, and the color suddenly withdrew from his eyes, so that they showed like small white eggs.
'But, man, how strange you are!' said Koshchei, presently; and life flowed back into his eyes, and Jurgen ventured the liberty of breathing. 'Inside, I mean. Why, there is hardly anything left. Now rules are rules, of course; but you, who are the remnant of a poet, may depart unhindered whenever you will, and I shall take nothing from you. For really it is necessary to draw the line somewhere.'
Jurgen meditated this clemency; and with a sick heart he seemed to understand. 'Yes; that is probably the truth; for I have not retained the faith, nor the desire, nor the vision. Yes, that is probably the truth. Well, at all events, Prince, I very unfeignedly admired each of the ladies to whom you were friendly enough to present me, and I was greatly flattered by their offers. More than generous I thought them. But it really would not do for me to take up with any one of them now. For Lisa is my wife, you see. A great deal has passed between us, sir, in the last ten years—And I have been a sore disappointment to her, in many ways—And I am used to her—'
Then Jurgen considered, and regarded the black gentleman with mingled envy and commiseration. 'Why, no, you probably would not understand, sir, on account of your not being, I suppose, a married person. But I can assure you it is always pretty much like that.'
'I lack grounds to dispute your aphorism,' observed Koshchei, 'inasmuch as matrimony was certainly not included in my doom. None the less, to a by-stander, the conduct of you both appears remarkable. I could not understand, for example, just how your wife proposed to have you keep out of her sight forever and still have supper with her to-night; nor why she should desire to sup with such a reprobate as she described with unbridled pungency and disapproval.'
'Ah, but again, it is always pretty much like that, sir. And the truth of it, Prince, is a great symbol. The truth of it is, we have lived together so long that my wife has become rather foolishly fond of me. So she is not, as one
