Jurgen | Page 8

encountered none but imaginary
creatures. And stalwart persons take their hour of recreation here, and
go hence unaccompanied, to become aldermen and respected merchants
and bishops, and to be admired as captains upon prancing horses, or
even as kings upon tall thrones; each in his station thinking not at all of
the garden ever any more. But now and then come timid persons,
Jurgen, who fear to leave this garden without an escort: so these must
need go hence with one or another imaginary creature, to guide them
about alleys and by-paths, because imaginary creatures find little
nourishment in the public highways, and shun them. Thus must these
timid persons skulk about obscurely with their diffident and skittish
guides, and they do not ever venture willingly into the thronged places
where men get horses and build thrones."
"And what becomes of these timid persons, Centaur?"
"Why, sometimes they spoil paper, Jurgen, and sometimes they spoil
human lives."
"Then are these accursed persons," Jurgen considered.

"You should know best," replied the Centaur.
"Oh, very probably," said Jurgen. "Meanwhile here is one who walks
alone in this garden, and I wonder to see the local by-laws thus
violated."
Now Nessus looked at Jurgen for a while without speaking: and in the
eyes of the Centaur was so much of comprehension and compassion
that it troubled Jurgen. For somehow it made Jurgen fidget and
consider this an unpleasantly personal way of looking at anybody.
"Yes, certainly," said the Centaur, "this woman walks alone. But there
is no help for her loneliness, since the lad who loved this woman is
dead."
"Nessus, I am willing to be reasonably sorry about it. Still, is there any
need of pulling quite such a portentously long face? After all, a great
many other persons have died, off and on: and for anything I can say to
the contrary, this particular young fellow may have been no especial
loss to anybody."
Again the Centaur said, "You should know best."

4.
The Dorothy Who Did Not Understand
For now had come to Jurgen and the Centaur a gold-haired woman,
clothed all in white, and walking alone. She was tall, and lovely and
tender to regard: and hers was not the red and white comeliness of
many ladies that were famed for beauty, but rather it had the even glow
of ivory. Her nose was large and high in the bridge, her flexible mouth
was not of the smallest: and yet whatever other persons might have said,
to Jurgen this woman's countenance was in all things perfect. Perhaps
this was because he never saw her as she was. For certainly the color of
her eyes stayed a matter never revealed to him: gray, blue or green,
there was no saying: they varied as does the sea; but always these eyes

were lovely and friendly and perturbing.
Jurgen remembered that: for Jurgen saw this was Count Emmerick's
second sister, Dorothy la Désirée, whom Jurgen very long ago (a many
years before he met Dame Lisa and set up in business as a pawnbroker)
had hymned in innumerable verses as Heart's Desire.
"And this is the only woman whom I ever loved," Jurgen remembered,
upon a sudden. For people cannot always be thinking of these matters.
So he saluted her, with such deference as is due to a countess from a
tradesman, and yet with unforgotten tremors waking in his staid body.
But the strangest was yet to be seen, for he noted now that this was not
a handsome woman in middle life but a young girl.
"I do not understand," he said, aloud: "for you are Dorothy. And yet it
seems to me that you are not the Countess Dorothy who is Heitman
Michael's wife."
And the girl tossed her fair head, with that careless lovely gesture
which the Countess had forgotten. "Heitman Michael is well enough,
for a nobleman, and my brother is at me day and night to marry the
man: and certainly Heitman Michael's wife will go in satin and
diamonds at half the courts of Christendom, with many lackeys to
attend her. But I am not to be thus purchased."
"So you told a boy that I remember, very long ago. Yet you married
Heitman Michael, for all that, and in the teeth of a number of other fine
declarations."
"Oh, no, not I," said this Dorothy, wondering. "I never married
anybody. And Heitman Michael has never married anybody, either, old
as he is. For he is twenty-eight, and looks every day of it! But who are
you, friend, that have such curious notions about me?"
"That question I will answer, just as though it were put reasonably. For
surely you perceive I am Jurgen."

"I never knew but one Jurgen. And he is a young man, barely