Jurgen | Page 9

come of
age--" Then as she paused in speech, whatever was the matter upon
which this girl now meditated, her cheeks were tenderly colored by the
thought of it, and in her knowledge of this thing her eyes took infinite
joy.
And Jurgen understood. He had come back somehow to the Dorothy
whom he had loved: but departed, and past overtaking by the fleet
hoofs of centaurs, was the boy who had once loved this Dorothy, and
who had rhymed of her as his Heart's Desire: and in the garden there
was of this boy no trace. Instead, the girl was talking to a staid and
paunchy pawnbroker, of forty-and-something.
So Jurgen shrugged, and looked toward the Centaur: but Nessus had
discreetly wandered away from them, in search of four-leafed clovers.
Now the east had grown brighter, and its crimson began to be colored
with gold.
"Yes, I have heard of this other Jurgen," says the pawnbroker. "Oh,
Madame Dorothy, but it was he that loved you!"
"No more than I loved him. Through a whole summer have I loved
Jurgen."
And the knowledge that this girl spoke a wondrous truth was now to
Jurgen a joy that was keen as pain. And he stood motionless for a while,
scowling and biting his lips.
"I wonder how long the poor devil loved you! He also loved for a
whole summer, it may be. And yet again, it may be that he loved you
all his life. For twenty years and for more than twenty years I have
debated the matter: and I am as well informed as when I started."
"But, friend, you talk in riddles."
"Is not that customary when age talks with youth? For I am an old
fellow, in my forties: and you, as I know now, are near eighteen,--or
rather, four months short of being eighteen, for it is August. Nay, more,

it is the August of a year I had not looked ever to see again; and again
Dom Manuel reigns over us, that man of iron whom I saw die so
horribly. All this seems very improbable."
Then Jurgen meditated for a while. He shrugged.
"Well, and what could anybody expect me to do about it? Somehow it
has befallen that I, who am but the shadow of what I was, now walk
among shadows, and we converse with the thin intonations of dead
persons. For, Madame Dorothy, you who are not yet eighteen, in this
same garden there was once a boy who loved a girl, with such love as it
puzzles me to think of now. I believe that she loved him. Yes, certainly
it is a cordial to the tired and battered heart which nowadays pumps
blood for me, to think that for a little while, for a whole summer, these
two were as brave and comely and clean a pair of sweethearts as the
world has known."
Thus Jurgen spoke. But his thought was that this was a girl whose equal
for loveliness and delight was not to be found between two oceans.
Long and long ago that doubtfulness of himself which was closer to
him than his skin had fretted Jurgen into believing the Dorothy he had
loved was but a piece of his imaginings. But certainly this girl was real.
And sweet she was, and innocent she was, and light of heart and feet,
beyond the reach of any man's inventiveness. No, Jurgen had not
invented her; and it strangely contented him to know as much.
"Tell me your story, sir," says she, "for I love all romances."
"Ah, my dear child, but I cannot tell you very well of just what
happened. As I look back, there is a blinding glory of green woods and
lawns and moonlit nights and dance music and unreasonable laughter. I
remember her hair and eyes, and the curving and the feel of her red
mouth, and once when I was bolder than ordinary--But that is hardly
worth raking up at this late day. Well, I see these things in memory as
plainly as I now seem to see your face: but I can recollect hardly
anything she said. Perhaps, now I think of it, she was not very
intelligent, and said nothing worth remembering. But the boy loved her,
and was happy, because her lips and heart were his, and he, as the

saying is, had plucked a diamond from the world's ring. True, she was a
count's daughter and the sister of a count: but in those days the boy
quite firmly intended to become a duke or an emperor or something of
that sort, so the transient discrepancy did not worry them."
"I know. Why, Jurgen is going to be a duke, too," says she, very
proudly, "though he did think,