Jurgen | Page 6

God."
"Your protasis is not good Greek," observed the Centaur, "because in
Hellas we did not make such reservations. Besides, it is not so much
my origin as my destination which concerns you."
"Well, friend, and whither are you going?"
"To the garden between dawn and sunrise, Jurgen."
"Surely, now, but that is a fine name for a garden! and it is a place I
would take joy to be seeing."
"Up upon my back, Jurgen, and I will take you thither," says the
Centaur, and heaved to his feet. Then said the Centaur, when the
pawnbroker hesitated: "Because, as you must understand, there is no
other way. For this garden does not exist, and never did exist, in what
men humorously called real life; so that of course only imaginary
creatures such as I can enter it."
"That sounds very reasonable," Jurgen estimated: "but as it happens, I
am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a

devil, poor fellow!"
And Jurgen began to explain to the Centaur what had befallen.
The Centaur laughed. "It may be for that reason I am here. There is, in
any event, only one remedy in this matter. Above all devils--and above
all gods, they tell me, but certainly above all centaurs--is the power of
Koshchei the Deathless, who made things as they are."
"It is not always wholesome," Jurgen submitted, "to speak of Koshchei.
It seems especially undesirable in a dark place like this."
"None the less, I suspect it is to him you must go for justice."
"I would prefer not doing that," said Jurgen, with unaffected candor.
"You have my sympathy: but there is no question of preference where
Koshchei is concerned. Do you think, for example, that I am frowzing
in this underground place by my own choice? and knew your name by
accident?"
Jurgen was frightened, a little. "Well, well! but it is usually the deuce
and all, this doing of the manly thing. How, then, can I come to
Koshchei?"
"Roundabout," says the Centaur. "There is never any other way."
"And is the road to this garden roundabout?"
"Oh, very much so, inasmuch as it circumvents both destiny and
common-sense."
"Needs must, then," says Jurgen: "at all events, I am willing to taste any
drink once."
"You will be chilled, though, traveling as you are. For you and I are
going a queer way, in search of justice, over the grave of a dream and
through the malice of time. So you had best put on this shirt above your
other clothing."

"Indeed it is a fine snug shining garment, with curious figures on it. I
accept such raiment gladly. And whom shall I be thanking for his
kindness, now?"
"My name," said the Centaur, "is Nessus."
"Well, then, friend Nessus, I am at your service."
And in a trice Jurgen was on the Centaur's back, and the two of them
had somehow come out of the cave, and were crossing Amneran Heath.
So they passed into a wooded place, where the light of sunset yet
lingered, rather unaccountably. Now the Centaur went westward. And
now about the pawnbroker's shoulders and upon his breast and over his
lean arms glittered like a rainbow the many-colored shirt of Nessus.
For a while they went through the woods, which were composed of big
trees standing a goodish distance from one another, with the Centaur's
gilded hoofs rustling and sinking in a thick carpet of dead leaves, all
gray and brown, in level stretches that were unbroken by any
undergrowth. And then they came to a white roadway that extended
due west, and so were done with the woods. Now happened an
incredible thing in which Jurgen would never have believed had he not
seen it with his own eyes: for now the Centaur went so fast that he
gained a little by a little upon the sun, thus causing it to rise in the west
a little by a little; and these two sped westward in the glory of a
departed sunset. The sun fell full in Jurgen's face as he rode straight
toward the west, so that he blinked and closed his eyes, and looked first
toward this side, then the other. Thus it was that the country about him,
and the persons they were passing, were seen by him in quick bright
flashes, like pictures suddenly transmuted into other pictures; and all
his memories of this shining highway were, in consequence, always
confused and incoherent.
He wondered that there seemed to be so many young women along the
road to the garden. Here was a slim girl in white teasing a great brown
and yellow dog that leaped about her clumsily; here a girl sat in the
branches of a twisted and gnarled