Jurgen | Page 5

sides
and questioned everyone, but to no avail. Dame Lisa had vanished in

the midst of getting supper ready--suddenly, completely and
inexplicably, just as (in Jurgen's figure) a windstorm passes and leaves
behind it a tranquillity which seems, by contrast, uncanny. Nothing
could explain the mystery, short of magic: and Jurgen on a sudden
recollected the black gentleman's queer promise. Jurgen crossed
himself.
"How unjustly now," says Jurgen, "do some people get an ill name for
gratitude! And now do I perceive how wise I am, always to speak
pleasantly of everybody, in this world of tale-bearers."
Then Jurgen prepared his own supper, went to bed, and slept soundly.
"I have implicit confidence," says he, "in Lisa. I have particular
confidence in her ability to take care of herself in any surroundings."
That was all very well: but time passed, and presently it began to be
rumored that Dame Lisa walked on Morven. Her brother, who was a
grocer and a member of the town-council, went thither to see about this
report. And sure enough, there was Jurgen's wife walking in the
twilight and muttering incessantly.
"Fie, sister!" says the town-councillor, "this is very unseemly conduct
for a married woman, and a thing likely to be talked about."
"Follow me!" replied Dame Lisa. And the town-councillor followed her
a little way in the dusk, but when she came to Amneran Heath and still
went onward, he knew better than to follow.
Next evening the elder sister of Dame Lisa went to Morven. This sister
had married a notary, and was a shrewd woman. In consequence, she
took with her this evening a long wand of peeled willow-wood. And
there was Jurgen's wife walking in the twilight and muttering
incessantly.
"Fie, sister!" says the notary's wife, who was a shrewd woman, "and do
you not know that all this while Jurgen does his own sewing, and is
once more making eyes at Countess Dorothy?"

Dame Lisa shuddered; but she only said, "Follow me!"
And the notary's wife followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the
heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A
lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his tongue:
but the notary's wife struck thrice with her wand, and the silent beast
left them. And Dame Lisa passed silently into the cave, and her sister
turned and went home to her children, weeping.
So the next evening Jurgen himself came to Morven, because all his
wife's family assured him this was the manly thing to do. Jurgen left the
shop in charge of Urien Villemarche, who was a highly efficient clerk.
Jurgen followed his wife across Amneran Heath until they reached the
cave. Jurgen would willingly have been elsewhere.
For the hound squatted upon his haunches, and seemed to grin at
Jurgen; and there were other creatures abroad, that flew low in the
twilight, keeping close to the ground like owls; but they were larger
than owls and were more discomforting. And, moreover, all this was
just after sunset upon Walburga's Eve, when almost anything is rather
more than likely to happen.
So Jurgen said, a little peevishly: "Lisa, my dear, if you go into the
cave I will have to follow you, because it is the manly thing to do. And
you know how easily I take cold."
The voice of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously
changed voice. "There is a cross about your neck. You must throw that
away."
Jurgen was wearing such a cross, through motives of sentiment,
because it had once belonged to his dead mother. But now, to pleasure
his wife, he removed the trinket, and hung it on a barberry bush; and
with the reflection that this was likely to prove a deplorable business,
he followed Dame Lisa into the cave.

2.

Assumption of a Noted Garment
The tale tells that all was dark there, and Jurgen could see no one. But
the cave stretched straight forward, and downward, and at the far end
was a glow of light. Jurgen went on and on, and so came presently to a
centaur: and this surprised him not a little, because Jurgen knew that
centaurs were imaginary creatures.
Certainly they were curious to look at: for here was the body of a fine
bay horse, and rising from its shoulders, the sun-burnt body of a young
fellow who regarded Jurgen with grave and not unfriendly eyes. The
Centaur was lying beside a fire of cedar and juniper wood: near him
was a platter containing a liquid with which he was anointing his hoofs.
This stuff, as the Centaur rubbed it in with his fingers, turned the
appearance of his hoofs to gold.
"Hail, friend," says Jurgen, "if you be the work of