31.Other Paternal Apothegms
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NOW Jurgen went very often to court, since the boy at twenty-one was fathoms deep in love with Count Manuel’s second daughter, whom they called Dorothy la Désirée. Coth saw her but once: and, even over and above his rage at the thought of sharing Jurgen with anybody, Coth was honestly moved, in the light of his considerable boudoir experience, to uncivil prophecy. He was upon this occasion, in the main hall at Bellegarde, with dozens of persons within earshot, most embarrassingly explicit with Jurgen, alike as to the quality of Jurgen’s intelligence and the profession which Coth desired no daughter-in-law of his to practice.
The two quarreled. That nowadays was no novelty. The difference was that into this quarrel Jurgen put all his heart. So the insolent, overbearing, bulldozing young scoundrel was packed off to serve under the Vidame de Soyecourt: and before the year was out Coth heard that this Dorothy la Désirée was married to Guivric’s son Michael.
“This Michael is but the first served at an entertainmentpreparing for the general public,” was Coth’s epithalamium.
And many rumors came back to Haut Belpaysage as to Jurgen’s doings in Gâtinais, and, while they all seemed harmless enough, not all were precisely what a father would have elected to hear. Coth considered, for example, that Jurgen had acted with imprudence in thus hastily making Coth a grandfather with the assistance of the third wife of the Vidame de Soyecourt. Husbands had a sad way of being provoked by such offspring, upon the wholly illogical ground that the provocation was not mutual. Still, young people needed their diversions, and husbands, to Coth’s experience, were not a dangerous tribe. What really fretted a somewhat aging Alderman, however, was that such stories reached him casually, and that from Jurgen himself he heard nothing.
Yet other gossip came too from the court at Bellegarde and Storisende, as to how Manuel’s oldest daughter, Madame Melicent, was now betrothed to King Theodoret, and how upon the eve of her marriage she had disappeared out of Poictesme: and she was next heard of as living in unchristian splendor far oversea, as—if you elected to put it more gracefully than Coth did,—the wife of Miramon Lluagor’s son and murderer, Demetrios.
“Why not?” said Coth. “Why should not snub-nosed Miramon’s swarthy lad be having his wencheswhen convenient? Parricide is no bar to fornication. They are sins committed with quite different weapons. And, for the rest, all sons are intent to do what this one has succeeded in doing. How, for that matter, did Dom Manuel, that famous Redeemer of yours, deal with his own father Oriander the Swimmer?”
That, it was hastily explained to him by his wife Azra, was but a part of the great Redeemer’s abnegation and self-denial. That was the atonement, and the immolation of his only beloved father, in order to expiate the gross sins of Poictesme—
“To expiate the sins of one person by killing another person,” replied Coth, “is not an atonement. It is nonsense.”
Well, but, it was furthermore explained, this atonement was a great and holy mystery; and, as such, it should be approached with reverence rather than mere rationality. Yet this high mystery of the atonement must undoubtedly symbolize the fact that, in order to attain perfection, Manuel had put off the ties of his flesh—
To which Coth answered, staring moodily at his wife Azra: “I saw that fight. He put off those ties of his flesh, and Oriander’s head from his body, with such pleasure as Manuel showed in no other combat. And all sons are like him. Have we not a son? Why do you keep pestering me?”
“I only meant—”
“Stop contradicting me!” But very swiftly Coth added, with a sort of gulp, “—my dear.”
For Coth was changing. He hunted no more, he had closed up his bear-pit. He seemed to prefer to be alone. Azra would very often find him huddled in his chair, not doing anything, but merely thinking: and then he would glare at her ferociously, without speaking; and she would go away from him, without speaking, because she also thought too frequently about their son for her own comfort.