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Don Rodriguez; Chronicles of Shadow Valley

by Lord Dunsany · English · Gutenberg #4282 · 421,388 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Don Rodriguez; Chronicles of Shadow Valley

Author: Lord Dunsany


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4282]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4282

Credits: Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


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Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










DON RODRIGUEZ

CHRONICLES OF SHADOW VALLEY


By

LORD DUNSANY



To WILLIAM BEEBE





CHRONOLOGY

After long and patient research I am still unable to give to the reader
of these Chronicles the exact date of the times that they tell of. Were
it merely a matter of history there could be no doubts about the
period; but where magic is concerned, to however slight an extent,
there must always be some element of mystery, arising partly out of
ignorance and partly from the compulsion of those oaths by which magic
protects its precincts from the tiptoe of curiosity.

Moreover, magic, even in small quantities, appears to affect time, much
as acids affect some metals, curiously changing its substance, until
dates seem to melt into a mercurial form that renders them elusive even
to the eye of the most watchful historian.

It is the magic appearing in Chronicles III and IV that has gravely
affected the date, so that all I can tell the reader with certainty of
the period is that it fell in the later years of the Golden Age in
Spain.





CONTENTS


THE FIRST CHRONICLE
  HOW HE MET AND SAID FAREWELL TO MINE HOST OF THE DRAGON AND KNIGHT

THE SECOND CHRONICLE
  HOW HE HIRED A MEMORABLE SERVANT

THE THIRD CHRONICLE
  HOW HE CAME TO THE HOUSE OF WONDER

THE FOURTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SUN

THE FIFTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE RODE IN THE TWILIGHT AND SAW SERAFINA

THE SIXTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE SANG TO HIS MANDOLIN AND WHAT CAME OF HIS SINGING

THE SEVENTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE CAME TO SHADOW VALLEY

THE EIGHTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE TRAVELLED FAR

THE NINTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE WON A CASTLE IN SPAIN

THE TENTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE CAME BACK TO LOWLIGHT

THE ELEVENTH CHRONICLE
  HOW HE TURNED TO GARDENING AND HIS SWORD RESTED

THE TWELFTH CHRONICLE
  THE BUILDING OF CASTLE RODRIGUEZ AND THE ENDING OF THESE CHRONICLES





DON RODRIGUEZ





THE FIRST CHRONICLE

HOW HE MET AND SAID FAREWELL TO MINE HOST OF THE DRAGON AND KNIGHT


Being convinced that his end was nearly come, and having lived long on
earth (and all those years in Spain, in the golden time), the Lord of
the Valleys of Arguento Harez, whose heights see not Valladolid, called
for his eldest son. And so he addressed him when he was come to his
chamber, dim with its strange red hangings and august with the
splendour of Spain: "O eldest son of mine, your younger brother being
dull and clever, on whom those traits that women love have not been
bestowed by God; and know my eldest son that here on earth, and for
ought I know Hereafter, but certainly here on earth, these women be the
arbiters of all things; and how this be so God knoweth only, for they
are vain and variable, yet it is surely so: your younger brother then
not having been given those ways that women prize, and God knows why
they prize them for they are vain ways that I have in my mind and that
won me the Valleys of Arguento Harez, from whose heights Angelico swore
he saw Valladolid once, and that won me moreover also ... but that is
long ago and is all gone now ... ah well, well ... what was I saying?"
And being reminded of his discourse, the old lord continued, saying,
"For himself he will win nothing, and therefore I will leave him these
my valleys, for not unlikely it was for some sin of mine that his
spirit was visited with dullness, as Holy Writ sets forth, the sins of
the fathers being visited on the children; and thus I make him amends.
But to you I leave my long, most flexible, ancient Castilian blade,
which infidels dreaded if old songs be true. Merry and lithe it is, and
its true temper singeth when it meets another blade as two friends sing
when met after many years. It is most subtle, nimble and exultant; and
what it will not win for you in the wars, that shall be won for you by
your mandolin, for you have a way with it that goes well with the old
airs of Spain. And choose, my son, rather a moonlight night when you
sing under those curved balconies that I knew, ah me, so well; for
there is much advantage in the moon. In the first place maidens see in
the light of the moon, especially in the Spring, more romance than you
might credit, for it adds for them a mystery to the darkness which the
night has not when it is merely black. And if any statue should gleam
on the grass near by, or if the magnolia be in blossom, or even the
nightingale singing, or if anything be beautiful in the night, in any
of these things also there is advantage; for a maiden will attribute to
her lover all manner of things that are not his at all, but are only
outpourings from the hand of God. There is this advantage also in the
moon, that, if interrupters come, the moonlight is better suited to the
play of a blade than the mere darkness of night; indeed but the merry
play of my sword in the moonlight was often a joy to see, it so
flashed, so danced, so sparkled. In the moonlight also one makes no
unworthy stroke, but hath scope for those fair passes that Sevastiani
taught, which were long ago the wonder of Madrid."

The old lord paused, and breathed for a little space, as it were
gathering breath for his last words to his son. He breathed
deliberately, then spoke again. "I leave you," he said, "well content
that you have the two accomplishments, my son, that are most needful in
a Christian man, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin.
There be other arts indeed among the heathen, for the world is wide and
hath full many customs, but these two alone are needful." And then with
that grand manner that they had at that time in Spain, although his
strength was failing, he gave to his eldest son his Castilian sword. He
lay back then in the huge, carved, canopied bed; his eyes closed, the
red silk curtains rustled, and there was no sound of his breathing. But
the old lord's spirit, whatever journey it purposed, lingered yet in
its ancient habitation, and his voice came again, but feebly now and
rambling; he muttered awhile of gardens, such gardens no doubt as the
hidalgos guarded in that fertile region of sunshine in the proudest
period of Spain; he would have known no others. So for awhile his
memory seemed to stray, half blind among those perfumed earthly
wonders; perhaps among these memories his spirit halted, and tarried
those last few moments, mistaking those Spanish gardens, remembered by
moonlight in Spring, for the other end of his journey, the glades of
Paradise. However it be, it tarried. These rambling memories ceased and
silence fell again, with scarcely the sound of breathing. Then
gathering up his strength for the last time and looking at his son,
"The sword to the wars," he said. "The mandolin to the balconies." With
that he fell back dead.

Now there were no wars at that time so far as was known in Spain, but
that old lord's eldest son, regarding those last words of his father as
a commandment, determined then and there in that dim, vast chamber to
gird his legacy to him and seek for the wars, wherever the wars might
be, so soon as the obsequies of the sepulture were ended. And of those
obsequies I tell not here, for they are fully told in the Black Books
of Spain, and the deeds of that old lord's youth are told in the Golden
Stories. The Book of Maidens mentions him, and again we read of him in
Gardens of Spain. I take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise,
for he had himself the accomplishments that he held needful in a
Christian, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin; and if
there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow that which
we believe to be good, then are we all damned. So he was buried, and
his eldest son fared forth with his legacy dangling from his girdle in
its long, straight, lovely scabbard, blue velvet, with emeralds on it,
fared forth on foot along a road of Spain. And though the road turned
left and right and sometimes nearly ceased, as though to let the small
wild flowers grow, out of sheer good will such as some roads never
have; though it ran west and east and sometimes south, yet in the main
it ran northward, though wandered is a better word than ran, and the
Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez who owned no valleys, or anything
but a sword, kept company with it looking for the wars. Upon his back
he had slung his mandolin. Now the time of the year was Spring, not
Spring as we know it in England, for it was but early March, but it was
the time when Spring coming up out of Africa, or unknown lands to the
south, first touches Spain, and multitudes of anemones come forth at
her feet.

Thence she comes north to our islands, no less wonderful in our woods
than in Andalusian valleys, fresh as a new song, fabulous as a rune,
but a little pale through travel, so that our flowers do not quite
flare forth with all the myriad blaze of the flowers of Spain.

And all the way as he went the young man looked at the flame of those
southern flowers, flashing on either side of him all the way, as though
the rainbow had been broken in Heaven and its fragments fallen on
Spain. All the way as he went he gazed at those flowers, the first
anemones of the year; and long after, whenever he sang to old airs of
Spain, he thought of Spain as it appeared that day in all the wonder of
Spring; the memory lent a beauty to his voice and a wistfulness to his
eyes that accorded not ill with the theme of the songs he sang, and
were more than once to melt proud hearts deemed cold. And so gazing he
came to a town that stood on a hill, before he was yet tired, though he
had done nigh twenty of those flowery miles of Spain; and since it was
evening and the light was fading away, he went to an inn and drew his
sword in the twilight and knocked with the hilt of it on the oaken
door. The name of it was the Inn of the Dragon and Knight. A light was
lit in one of the upper windows, the darkness seemed to deepen at that
moment, a step was heard coming heavily down a stairway; and having
named the inn to you, gentle reader, it is time for me to name the
young man also, the landless lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez, as
the step comes slowly down the inner stairway, as the gloaming darkens
over the first house in which he has ever sought shelter so far from
his father's valleys, as he stands upon the threshold of romance. He
was named Rodriguez Trinidad Fernandez, Concepcion Henrique Maria; but
we shall briefly name him Rodriguez in this story; you and I, reader,
will know whom we mean; there is no need therefore to give him his full
names, unless I do it here and there to remind you.

The steps came thumping on down the inner stairway, different windows
took the light of the candle, and none other shone in the house; it was
clear that it was moving with the steps all down that echoing stairway.
The sound of the steps ceased to reverberate upon the wood, and now
they slowly moved over stone flags; Rodriguez now heard breathing, one
breath with every step, and at length the sound of bolts and chains
undone and the breathing now very close. The door was opened swiftly; a
man with mean eyes, and expression devoted to evil, stood watching him
for an instant; then the door slammed to again, the bolts were heard
going back again to their places, the steps and the breathing moved
away over the stone floor, and the inner stairway began again to echo.

"If the wars are here," said Rodriguez to himself and his sword, "good,
and I sleep under the stars." And he listened in the street for the
sound of war and, hearing none, continued his discourse. "But if I have
not come as yet to the wars I sleep beneath a roof."

For the second time therefore he drew his sword, and began to strike
methodically at the door, noting the grain in the wood and hitting
where it was softest. Scarcely had he got a good strip of the oak to
look like coming away, when the steps once more descended the wooden
stair and came lumbering over the stones; both the steps and the
breathing were quicker, for mine host of the Dragon and Knight was
hurrying to save his door.

When he heard the sound of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased
to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine
host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you
might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift
intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his
door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly
build is agile enough in her way.

Mine host said nothing; and Rodriguez, who seldom concerned himself
with the past, holding that the future is all we can order the scheme
of (and maybe even here he was wrong), made no mention of bolts or door
and merely demanded a bed for himself for the night.

Mine host rubbed his chin; he had neither beard nor moustache but wore
hideous whiskers; he rubbed it thoughtfully and looked at Rodriguez.
Yes, he said, he could have a bed for the night. No more words he said,
but turned and led the way; while Rodriguez, who could sing to the
mandolin, wasted none of his words on this discourteous object. They
ascended the short oak stairway down which mine host had come, the
great timbers of which were gnawed by a myriad rats, and they went by
passages with the light of one candle into the interior of the inn,
which went back farther from the street than the young man had
supposed; indeed he perceived when they came to the great corridor at
the end of which was his appointed chamber, that here was no ordinary
inn, as it had appeared from outside, but that it penetrated into the
fastness of some great family of former times which had fallen on evil
days. The vast size of it, the noble design where the rats had spared
the carving, what the moths had left of the tapestries, all testified
to that; and, as for the evil days, they hung about the place, evident
even by the light of one candle guttering with every draught that blew
from the haunts of the rats, an inseparable heirloom for all who
disturbed those corridors.

And so they came to the chamber.

Mine host entered, bowed without grace in the doorway, and extended his
left hand, pointing into the room. The draughts that blew from the
rat-holes in the wainscot, or the mere action of entering, beat down
the flame of the squat, guttering candle so that the chamber remained
dim for a moment, in spite of the candle, as would naturally be the
case. Yet the impression made upon Rodriguez was as of some old
darkness that had been long undisturbed and that yielded reluctantly to
that candle's intrusion, a darkness that properly became the place and
was a part of it and had long been so, in the face of which the candle
appeared an ephemeral thing devoid of grace or dignity or tradition.
And indeed there was room for darkness in that chamber, for the walls
went up and up into such an altitude that you could scarcely see the
ceiling, at which mine host's eyes glanced, and Rodriguez followed his
look.

He accepted his accommodation with a nod; as indeed he would have
accepted any room in that inn, for the young are swift judges of
character, and one who had accepted such a host was unlikely to find
fault with rats or the profusion of giant cobwebs, dark with the dust
of years, that added so much to the dimness of that sinister inn. They
turned now and went back, in the wake of that guttering candle, till
they came again to the humbler part of the building. Here mine host,
pushing open a door of blackened oak, indicated his dining-chamber.
There a long table stood, and on it parts of the head and hams of a
boar; and at the far end of the table a plump and sturdy man was seated
in shirt-sleeves feasting himself on the boar's meat. He leaped up at
once from his chair as soon as his master entered, for he was the
servant at the Dragon and Knight; mine host may have said much to him
with a flash of his eyes, but he said no more with his tongue than the
one word, "Dog": he then bowed himself out, leaving Rodriguez to take
the only chair and to be waited upon by its recent possessor. The
boar's meat was cold and gnarled, another piece of meat stood on a
plate on a shelf and a loaf of bread near by, but the rats had had most
of the bread: Rodriguez demanded what the meat was. "Unicorn's tongue,"
said the servant, and Rodriguez bade him set the dish before him, and
he set to well content, though I fear the unicorn's tongue was only
horse: it was a credulous age, as all ages are. At the same time he
pointed to a three-legged stool that he perceived in a corner of the
room, then to the table, then to the boar's meat, and lastly at the
servant, who perceived that he was permitted to return to his feast, to
which he ran with alacrity. "Your name?" said Rodriguez as soon as both
were eating. "Morano," replied the servant, though it must not be
supposed that when answering Rodriguez he spoke as curtly as this; I
merely give the reader the gist of his answer, for he added Spanish
words that correspond in our depraved and decadent language of to-day
to such words as "top dog," "nut" and "boss," so that his speech had a
certain grace about it in that far-away time in Spain.

I have said that Rodriguez seldom concerned himself with the past, but
considered chiefly the future: it was of the future that he was
thinking now as he asked Morano this question:

"Why did my worthy and entirely excellent host shut his door in my
face?"

"Did he so?" said Morano.

"He then bolted it and found it necessary to put the chains back,
doubtless for some good reason."

"Yes," said Morano thoughtfully, and looking at Rodriguez, "and so he
might. He must have liked you."

Verily Rodriguez was just the young man to send out with a sword and a
mandolin into the wide world, for he had much shrewd sense. He never
pressed a point, but when something had been said that might mean much
he preferred to store it, as it were, in his mind and pass on to other
things, somewhat as one might kill game and pass on and kill more and
bring it all home, while a savage would cook the first kill where it
fell and eat it on the spot. Pardon me, reader, but at Morano's remark
you may perhaps have exclaimed, "That is not the way to treat one you
like." Not so did Rodriguez. His attention passed on to notice Morano's
rings which he wore in great profusion upon his little fingers; they
were gold and of exquisite work and had once held precious stones, as
large gaps testified; in these days they would have been priceless, but
in an age when workers only worked at arts that they understood, and
then worked for the joy of it, before the word artistic became
ridiculous, exquisite work went without saying; and as the rings were
slender they were of little value. Rodriguez made no comment upon the
rings; it was enough for him to have noticed them. He merely noted that
they were not ladies' rings, for no lady's ring would have fitted on to
any one of those fingers: the rings therefore of gallants: and not
given to Morano by their owners, for whoever wore precious stone needed
a ring to wear it in, and rings did not wear out like hose, which a
gallant might give to a servant. Nor, thought he, had Morano stolen
them, for whoever stole them would keep them whole, or part with them
whole and get a better price. Besides Morano had an honest face, or a
face at least that seemed honest in such an inn: and while these
thoughts were passing through his mind Morano spoke again: "Good hams,"
said Morano. He had already eaten one and was starting upon the next.
Perhaps he spoke out of gratitude for the honour and physical advantage
of being permitted to sit there and eat those hams, perhaps
tentatively, to find out whether he might consume the second, perhaps
merely to start a conversation, being attracted by the honest looks of
Rodriguez.

"You are hungry," said Rodriguez.

"Praise God I am always hungry," answered Morano. "If I were not hungry
I should starve."

"Is it so?" said Rodriguez.

"You see," said Morano, "the manner of it is this: my master gives me
no food, and it is only when I am hungry that I dare to rob him by
breaking in, as you saw me, upon his viands; were I not hungry I should
not dare to do so, and so ..." He made a sad and expressive movement
with both his hands suggestive of autumn leaves blown hence to die.

"He gives you no food?" said Rodriguez.

"It is the way of many men with their dog," said Morano. "They give him
no food," and then he rubbed his hands cheerfully, "and yet the dog
does not die."

"And he gives you no wages?" said Rodriguez.

"Just these rings."

Now Rodriguez had himself a ring upon his finger (as a gallant should),
a slender piece of gold with four tiny angels holding a sapphire, and
for a moment he pictured the sapphire passing into the hands of mine
host and the ring of gold and the four small angels being flung to
Morano; the thought darkened his gaiety for no longer than one of those
fleecy clouds in Spring shadows the fields of Spain.

Morano was also looking at the ring; he had followed the young man's
glance.

"Master," he said, "do you draw your sword of a night?"

"And you?" said Rodriguez.

"I have no sword," said Morano. "I am but as dog's meat that needs no
guarding, but you whose meat is rare like the flesh of the unicorn need
a sword to guard your meat. The unicorn has his horn always, and even
then he sometimes sleeps."

"It is bad, you think, to sleep," Rodriguez said.

"For some it is very bad, master. They say they never take the unicorn
waking. For me I am but dog's meat: when I have eaten hams I curl up
and sleep; but then you see, master, I know I shall wake in the
morning."

"Ah," said Rodriguez, "the morning's a pleasant time," and he leaned
back comfortably in his chair. Morano took one shrewd look at him, and
was soon asleep upon his three-legged stool.

The door opened after a while and mine host appeared. "It is late," he
said. Rodriguez smiled acquiescently and mine host withdrew, and
presently leaving Morano whom his master's voice had waked, to curl up
on the floor in a corner, Rodriguez took the candle that lit the room
and passed once more through the passages of the inn and down the great
corridor of the fastness of the family that had fallen on evil days,
and so came to his chamber. I will not waste a multitude of words over
that chamber; if you have no picture of it in your mind already, my
reader, you are reading an unskilled writer, and if in that picture it
appear a wholesome room, tidy and well kept up, if it appear a place in
which a stranger might sleep without some faint foreboding of disaster,
then I am wasting your time, and will waste no more of it with bits of
"descriptive writing" about that dim, high room, whose blackness
towered before Rodriguez in the night. He entered and shut the door, as
many had done before him; but for all his youth he took some wiser
precautions than had they, perhaps, who closed that door before. For
first he drew his sword; then for some while he stood quite still near
the door and listened to the rats; then he looked round the chamber and
perceived only one door; then he looked at the heavy oak furniture,
carved by some artist, gnawed by rats, and all blackened by time; then
swiftly opened the door of the largest cupboard and thrust his sword in
to see who might be inside, but the carved satyr's heads at the top of
the cupboard eyed him silently and nothing moved. Then he noted that
though there was no bolt on the door the furniture might be placed
across to make what in the wars is called a barricado, but the wiser
thought came at once that this was too easily done, and that if the
danger that the dim room seemed gloomily to forebode were to come from
a door so readily barricadoed, then those must have been simple
gallants who parted so easily with the rings that adorned Morano's two
little fingers. No, it was something more subtle than any attack
through that door that brought his regular wages to Morano. Rodriguez
looked at the window, which let in the light of a moon that was getting
low, for the curtains had years ago been eaten up by the moths; but the
window was barred with iron bars that were not yet rusted away, and
looked out, thus guarded, over a sheer wall that even in the moonlight
fell into blackness. Rodriguez then looked round for some hidden door,
the sword all the while in his hand, and very soon he knew that room
fairly well, but not its secret, nor why those unknown gallants had
given up their rings.

It is much to know of an unknown danger that it really is unknown. Many
have met their deaths through looking for danger from one particular
direction, whereas had they perceived that they were ignorant of its
direction they would have been wise in their ignorance. Rodriguez had
the great discretion to understand clearly that he did not know the
direction from which danger would come. He accepted this as his only
discovery about that portentous room which seemed to beckon to him with
every shadow and to sigh over him with every mournful draught, and to
whisper to him unintelligible warnings with every rustle of tattered
silk that hung about his bed. And as soon as he discovered that this
was his only knowledge he began at once to make his preparations: he
was a right young man for the wars. He divested himself of his shoes
and doublet and the light cloak that hung from his shoulder and cast
the clothes on a chair. Over the back of the chair he slung his girdle
and the scabbard hanging therefrom and placed his plumed hat so that
none could see that his Castilian blade was not in its resting-place.
And when the sombre chamber had the appearance of one having undressed
in it before retiring Rodriguez turned his attention to the bed, which
he noticed to be of great depth and softness. That something not unlike
blood had been spilt on the floor excited no wonder in Rodriguez; that
vast chamber was evidently, as I have said, in the fortress of some
great family, against one of whose walls the humble inn had once leaned
for protection; the great family were gone: how they were gone
Rodriguez did not know, but it excited no wonder in him to see blood on
the boards: besides, two gallants may have disagreed; or one who loved
not dumb animals might have been killing rats. Blood did not disturb
him; but what amazed him, and would have surprised anyone who stood in
that ruinous room, was that there were clean new sheets on the bed. Had
you seen the state of the furniture and the floor, O my reader, and the
vastness of the old cobwebs and the black dust that they held, the dead
spiders and huge dead flies, and the living generation of spiders
descending and ascending through the gloom, I say that you also would
have been surprised at the sight of those nice clean sheets. Rodriguez
noted the fact and continued his preparations. He took the bolster from
underneath the pillow and laid it down the middle of the bed and put
the sheets back over it; then he stood back and looked at it, much as a
sculptor might stand back from his marble, then he returned to it and
bent it a little in the middle, and after that he placed his mandolin
on the pillow and nearly covered it with the sheet, but not quite, for
a little of the curved dark-brown wood remained still to be seen. It
looked wonderfully now like a sleeper in the bed, but Rodriguez was not
satisfied with his work until he had placed his kerchief and one of his
shoes where a shoulder ought to be; then he stood back once more and
eyed it with satisfaction. Next he considered the light. He looked at
the light of the moon and remembered his father's advice, as the young
often do, but considered that this was not the occasion for it, and
decided to leave the light of his candle instead, so that anyone who
might be familiar with the moonlight in that shadowy chamber should
find instead a less sinister light. He therefore dragged a table to the
bedside, placed the candle upon it, and opened a treasured book that he
bore in his doublet, and laid it on the bed near by, between the candle
and his mandolin-headed sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a
Cathedral and dealt with the confessions of a young girl, which the
author claimed to have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow
near the Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent.
Lastly he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of
it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping his
sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet and some silk that hung
from the bed, he concealed himself sufficient for his purpose, which
was to see before he should be seen by any intruder that might enter
that chamber.

And if Rodriguez appear to have been unduly suspicious, it should be
borne in mind not only that those empty rings needed much explanation,
but that every house suggests to the stranger something; and that
whereas one house seems to promise a welcome in front of cosy fires,
another good fare, another joyous wine, this inn seemed to promise
murder; or so the young man's intuition said, and the young are wise to
trust to their intuitions.

The reader will know, if he be one of us, who have been to the wars and
slept in curious ways, that it is hard to sleep when sober upon a
floor; it is not like the earth, or snow, or a feather bed; even rock
can be more accommodating; it is hard, unyielding and level, all night
unmistakable floor. Yet Rodriguez took no risk of falling asleep, so he
said over to himself in his mind as much as he remembered of his
treasured book, Notes in a Cathedral, which he always read to himself
before going to rest and now so sadly missed. It told how a lady who
had listened to a lover longer than her soul's safety could warrant, as
he played languorous music in the moonlight and sang soft by her low
balcony, and how she being truly penitent, had gathered many roses, the
emblems of love (as surely, she said at confession, all the world
knows), and when her lover came again by moonlight had cast them all
from her from the balcony, showing that she had renounced love; and her
lover had entirely misunderstood her. It told how she often tried to
show him this again, and all the misunderstandings are sweetly set
forth and with true Christian penitence. Sometimes some little matter
escaped Rodriguez's memory and then he longed to rise up and look at
his dear book, yet he lay still where he was: and all the while he
listened to the rats, and the rats went on gnawing and running
regularly, scared by nothing new; Rodriguez trusted as much to their
myriad ears as to his own two. The great spiders descended out of such
heights that you could not see whence they came, and ascended again
into blackness; it was a chamber of prodigious height. Sometimes the
shadow of a descending spider that had come close to the candle assumed
a frightening size, but Rodriguez gave little thought to it; it was of
murder he was thinking, not of shadows; still, in its way it was
ominous, and reminded Rodriguez horribly of his host; but what of an
omen, again, in a chamber full of omens. The place itself was ominous;
spiders could scarce make it more so. The spider itself was big enough,
he thought, to be impaled on his Castilian blade; indeed, he would have
done it but that he thought it wiser to stay where he was and watch.
And then the spider found the candle too hot and climbed in a hurry all
the way to the ceiling, and his horrible shadow grew less and dwindled
away.

It was not that the rats were frightened: whatever it was that happened
happened too quietly for that, but the volume of the sound of their
running had suddenly increased: it was not like fear among them, for
the running was no swifter, and it did not fade away; it was as though
the sound of rats running, which had not been heard before, was
suddenly heard now. Rodriguez looked at the door, the door was shut. A
young Englishman would long ago have been afraid that he was making a
fuss over nothing and would have gone to sleep in the bed, and not seen
what Rodriguez saw. He might have thought that hearing more rats all at
once was merely a fancy, and that everything was all right. Rodriguez
saw a rope coming slowly down from the ceiling, he quickly determined
whether it was a rope or only the shadow of some huge spider's thread,
and then he watched it and saw it come down right over his bed and stop
within a few feet of it. Rodriguez looked up cautiously to see who had
sent him that strange addition to the portents that troubled the
chamber, but the ceiling was too high and dim for him to perceive
anything but the rope coming down out of the darkness. Yet he surmised
that the ceiling must have softly opened, without any sound at all, at
the moment that he heard the greater number of rats. He waited then to
see what the rope would do; and at first it hung as still as the great
festoons dead spiders had made in the corners; then as he watched it it
began to sway. He looked up into the dimness then to see who was
swaying the rope; and for a long time, as it seemed to him lying
gripping his Castilian sword on the floor he saw nothing clearly. And
then he saw mine host coming down the rope, hand over hand quite
nimbly, as though he lived by this business. In his right hand he held
a poniard of exceptional length, yet he managed to clutch the rope and
hold the poniard all the time with the same hand.

If there had been something hideous about the shadow of the spider that
came down from that height the shadow of mine host was indeed demoniac.
He too was like a spider, with his body at no time slender all bunched
up on the rope, and his shadow was six times his size: you could turn
from the spider's shadow to the spider and see that it was for the most
part a fancy of the candle half crazed by the draughts, but to turn
from mine host's shadow to himself and to see his wicked eyes was to
say that the candle's wildest fears were true. So he climbed down his
rope holding his poniard upward. But when he came within perhaps ten
feet of the bed he pointed it downward and began to sway about. It will
be readily seen that by swaying his rope at a height mine host could
drop on any part of the bed. Rodriguez as he watched him saw him
scrutinise closely and continue to sway on his rope. He feared that
mine host was ill satisfied with the look of the mandolin and that he
would climb away again, well warned of his guest's astuteness, into the
heights of the ceiling to devise some fearfuller scheme; but he was
only looking for the shoulder. And then mine host dropped; poniard
first, he went down with all his weight behind it and drove it through
the bolster below where the shoulder should be, just where we slant our
arms across our bodies, when we lie asleep on our sides, leaving the
ribs exposed: and the soft bed received him. And the moment that mine
host let go of his rope Rodriguez leaped to his feet. He saw Rodriguez,
indeed their eyes met as he dropped through the air, but what could
mine host do? He was already committed to his stroke, and his poniard
was already deep in the mattress when the good Castilian blade passed
through his ribs.




THE SECOND CHRONICLE

HOW HE HIRED A MEMORABLE SERVANT


When Rodriguez woke, the birds were singing gloriously. The sun was up
and the air was sparkling over Spain. The gloom had left his high
chamber, and much of the menace had gone from it that overnight had
seemed to bode in the corners. It had not become suddenly tidy; it was
still more suitable for spiders than men, it still mourned and brooded
over the great family that it had nursed and that evil days had so
obviously overtaken; but it no longer had the air of finger to lips, no
longer seemed to share a secret with you, and that secret Murder. The
rats still ran round the wainscot, but the song of the birds and the
jolly, dazzling sunshine were so much larger than the sombre room that
the young man's thoughts escaped from it and ran free to the fields. It
may have been only his fancy but the world seemed somehow brighter for
the demise of mine host of the Dragon and Knight, whose body still lay
hunched up on the foot of his bed. Rodriguez jumped up and went to the
high, barred window and looked out of it at the morning: far below him
a little town with red roofs lay; the smoke came up from the chimneys
toward him slowly, and spread out flat and did not reach so high.
Between him and the roofs swallows were sailing.

He found water for washing in a cracked pitcher of earthenware and as
he dressed he looked up at the ceiling and admired mine host's device,
for there was an open hole that had come noiselessly, without any
sounds of bolts or lifting of trap-doors, but seemed to have opened out
all round on perfectly oiled grooves, to fit that well-to-do body, and
down from the middle of it from some higher beam hung the rope down
which mine host had made his last journey.

Before taking leave of his host Rodriguez looked at his poniard, which
was a good two feet in length, not counting the hilt, and was surprised
to find it an excellent blade. It bore a design on the steel
representing a town, which Rodriguez recognised for the towers of
Toledo; and had held moreover a jewel at the end of the hilt, but the
little gold socket was empty. Rodriguez therefore perceived that the
poniard was that of a gallant, and surmised that mine host had begun
his trade with a butcher's knife, but having come by the poniard had
found it to be handier for his business. Rodriguez being now fully
dressed, girt his own blade about him, and putting the poniard under
his cloak, for he thought to find a use for it at the wars, set his
plumed hat upon him and jauntily stepped from the chamber. By the light
of day he saw clearly at what point the passages of the inn had dared
to make their intrusion on the corridors of the fortress, for he walked
for four paces between walls of huge grey rocks which had never been
plastered and were clearly a breach in the fortress, though whether the
breach were made by one of the evil days that had come upon the family
in their fastness, and whether men had poured through it with torches
and swords, or whether the gap had been cut in later years for mine
host of the Dragon and Knight, and he had gone quietly through it
rubbing his hands, nothing remained to show Rodriguez now.

When he came to the dining-chamber he found Morano astir. Morano looked
up from his overwhelming task of tidying the Inn of the Dragon and
Knight and then went on with his pretended work, for he felt a little
ashamed of the knowledge he had concerning the ways of that inn, which
was more than an honest man should know about such a place.

"Good morning, Morano," said Rodriguez blithely.

"Good morning," answered the servant of the Dragon and Knight.

"I am looking for the wars. Would you like a new master, Morano?"

"Indeed," said Morano, "a good master is better to some men's minds
than a bad one. Yet, you see señor, my bad master has me bound never to
leave him, by oaths that I do not properly understand the meaning of,
and that might blast me in any world were I to forswear them. He hath
bound me by San Sathanas, with many others. I do not like the sound of
that San Sathanas. And so you see, señor, my bad master suits me better
than perhaps to be whithered in this world by a levin-stroke, and in
the next world who knows?"

"Morano," said Rodriguez, "there is a dead spider on my bed."

"A dead spider, master?" said Morano, with as much concern in his voice
as though no spider had ever sullied that chamber before.

"Yes," said Rodriguez, "I shall require you to keep my bed tidy on our
way to the wars."

"Master," said Morano, "no spider shall come near it, living or dead."

And so our company of one going northward through Spain looking for
romance became a company of two.

"Master," said Morano, "as I do not see him whom I serve, and his ways
are early ways, I fear some evil has overtaken him, whereby we shall be
suspect, for none other dwells here: and he is under special protection
of the Garda Civil; it would be well therefore to start for the wars
right early."

"The guard protect mine host then." Rodriguez said with as much
surprise in his tones as he ever permitted himself.

"Master," Morano said, "it could not be otherwise. For so many gallants
have entered the door of this inn and supped in this chamber and never
been seen again, and so many suspicious things have been found here,
such as blood, that it became necessary for him to pay the guard well,
and so they protect him." And Morano hastily slung over his shoulder by
leather straps an iron pot and a frying-pan and took his broad felt hat
from a peg on the wall.

Rodriguez' eyes looked so curiously at the great cooking utensils
dangling there from the straps that Morano perceived his young master
did not fully understand these preparations: he therefore instructed
him thus: "Master, there be two things necessary in the wars, strategy
and cooking. Now the first of these comes in use when the captains
speak of their achievements and the historians write of the wars.
Strategy is a learned thing, master, and the wars may not be told of
without it, but while the war rageth and men be camped upon the
foughten field then is the time for cooking; for many a man that fights
the wars, if he hath not his food, were well content to let the enemy
live, but feed him and at once he becometh proud at heart and cannot
a-bear the sight of the enemy walking among his tents but must needs
slay him outright. Aye, master, the cooking for the wars; and when the
wars are over you who are learned shall study strategy."

And Rodriguez perceived that there was wisdom in the world that was not
taught in the College of San Josephus, near to his father's valleys,
where he had learned in his youth the ways of books.

"Morano," he said, "let us now leave mine host to entertain la Garda."

And at the mention of the guard hurry came on Morano, he closed his
lips upon his store of wisdom, and together they left the Inn of the
Dragon and Knight. And when Rodriguez saw shut behind him that dark
door of oak that he had so persistently entered, and through which he
had come again to the light of the sun by many precautions and some
luck, he felt gratitude to Morano. For had it not been for Morano's
sinister hints, and above all his remark that mine host would have
driven him thence because he liked him, the evil look of the sombre
chamber alone might not have been enough to persuade him to the
precautions that cut short the dreadful business of that inn. And with
his gratitude was a feeling not unlike remorse, for he felt that he had
deprived this poor man of a part of his regular wages, which would have
been his own gold ring and the setting that held the sapphire, had all
gone well with the business. So he slipped the ring from his finger and
gave it to Morano, sapphire and all.

Morano's expressions of gratitude were in keeping with that flowery
period in Spain, and might appear ridiculous were I to expose them to
the eyes of an age in which one in Morano's place on such an occasion
would have merely said, "Damned good of you old nut, not half," and let
the matter drop.

I merely record therefore that Morano was grateful and so expressed
himself; while Rodriguez, in addition to the pleasant glow in the mind
that comes from a generous action, had another feeling that gives all
of us pleasure, or comfort at least (until it grows monotonous), a
feeling of increased safety; for while he had the ring upon his finger
and Morano went unpaid the thought could not help occurring, even to a
generous mind, that one of these windy nights Morano might come for his
wages.

"Master," said Morano looking at the sapphire now on his own little
finger near the top joint, the only stone amongst his row of rings,
"you must surely have great wealth."

"Yes," said Rodriguez slapping the scabbard that held his Castilian
blade. And when he saw that Morano's eyes were staring at the little
emeralds that were dotted along the velvet of the scabbard he explained
that it was the sword that was his wealth:

"For in the wars," he said, "are all things to be won, and nothing is
unobtainable to the sword. For parchment and custom govern all the
possessions of man, as they taught me in the College of San Josephus.
Yet the sword is at first the founder and discoverer of all
possessions; and this my father told me before he gave me this sword,
which hath already acquired in the old time fair castles with many a
tower."

"And those that dwelt in the castles, master, before the sword came?"
said Morano.

"They died and went dismally to Hell," said Rodriguez, "as the old
songs say."

They walked on then in silence. Morano, with his low forehead and
greater girth of body than of brain to the superficial observer, was
not incapable of thought. However slow his thoughts may have come,
Morano was pondering surely. Suddenly the puckers on his little
forehead cleared and he brightly looked at Rodriguez as they went on
side by side.

"Master," Morano said, "when you choose a castle in the wars, let it
above all things be one of those that is easy to be defended; for
castles are easily got, as the old songs tell, and in the heat of
combat positions are quickly stormed, and no more ado; but, when wars
are over, then is the time for ease and languorous days and the
imperilling of the soul, though not beyond the point where our good
fathers may save it."

"Nay, Morano," Rodriguez said, "no man, as they taught me well in the
College of San Josephus, should ever imperil his soul."

"But, master," Morano said, "a man imperils his body in the wars yet
hopes by dexterity and his sword to draw it safely thence: so a man of
courage and high heart may surely imperil his soul and still hope to
bring it at the last to salvation."

"Not so," said Rodriguez, and gave his mind to pondering upon the exact
teaching he had received on this very point, but could not clearly
remember.

So they walked in silence, Rodriguez thinking still of this spiritual
problem, Morano turning, though with infinite slowness, to another
thought upon a lower plane.

And after a while Rodriguez' eyes turned again to the flowers, and he
felt his meditation, as youth will, and looking abroad he saw the
wonder of Spring calling forth the beauty of Spain, and he lifted up
his head and his heart rejoiced with the anemones, as hearts at his age
do: but Morano clung to his thought.

It was long before Rodriguez' fanciful thoughts came back from among
the flowers, for among those delicate earliest blooms of Spring his
youthful visions felt they were with familiars; so they tarried,
neglecting the dusty road and poor gross Morano. But when his fancies
left the flowers at last and looked again at Morano, Rodriguez
perceived that his servant was all troubled with thought: so he left
Morano in silence for his thought to come to maturity, for he had
formed a liking already for the judgments of Morano's simple mind.

They walked in silence for the space of an hour, and at last Morano
spoke. It was then noon. "Master," he said, "at this hour it is the
custom of la Garda to enter the Inn of the Dragon and to dine at the
expense of mine host."

"A merry custom," said Rodriguez.

"Master," said Morano, "if they find him in less than his usual health
they will get their dinners for themselves in the larder and dine and
afterwards sleep. But after that; master, after that, should anything
inauspicious have befallen mine host, they will seek out and ask many
questions concerning all travellers, too many for our liking."

"We are many good miles from the Inn of the Dragon and Knight," said
Rodriguez.

"Master, when they have eaten and slept and asked questions they will
follow on horses," said Morano.

"We can hide," said Rodriguez, and he looked round over the plain, very
full of flowers, but empty and bare under the blue sky of any place in
which a man might hide to escape from pursuers on horse back. He
perceived then that he had no plan.

"Master," said Morano, "there is no hiding like disguises."

Once more Rodriguez looked round him over the plain, seeing no houses,
no men; and his opinion of Morano's judgment sank when he said
disguises. But then Morano unfolded to him that plan which up to that
day had never been tried before, so far as records tell, in all the
straits in which fugitive men have been; and which seems from my
researches in verse and prose never to have been attempted since.

The plan was this, astute as Morano, and simple as his naive mind. The
clothing for which Rodriguez searched the plain vainly was ready to
hand. No disguise was effective against la Garda, they had too many
suspicions, their skill was to discover disguises. But in the moment of
la Garda's triumph, when they had found out the disguise, when success
had lulled the suspicions for which they were infamous, then was the
time to trick la Garda. Rodriguez wondered; but the slow mind of Morano
was sure, and now he came to the point, the fruit of his hour's
thinking. Rodriguez should disguise himself as Morano. When la Garda
discovered that he was not the man he appeared to be, a study to which
they devoted their lives, their suspicions would rest and there would
be an end of it. And Morano should disguise himself as Rodriguez.

It was a new idea. Had Rodriguez been twice his age he would have
discarded it at once; for age is guided by precedent which, when
pursued, is a dangerous guide indeed. Even as it was he was critical,
for the novelty of the thing coming thus from his gross servant
surprised him as much as though Morano had uttered poetry of his own
when he sang, as he sometimes did, certain merry lascivious songs of
Spain that any one of the last few centuries knew as well as any of the
others.

And would not la Garda find out that he was himself, Rodriguez asked,
as quickly as they found out he was not Morano.

"That," said Morano, "is not the way of la Garda. For once let la Garda
come by a suspicion, such as that you, master, are but Morano, and they
will cling to it even to the last, and not abandon it until they needs
must, and then throw it away as it were in disgust and ride hence at
once, for they like not tarrying long near one who has seen them
mistaken."

"They will soon then come by another suspicion," said Rodriguez.

"Not so, master," answered Morano, "for those that are as suspicious as
la Garda change their suspicions but slowly. A suspicion is an old song
to them."

"Then," said Rodriguez, "I shall be hard set ever to show that I am not
you if they ever suspect I am."

"It will be hard, master," Morano answered; "but we shall do it, for we
shall have truth upon our side."

"How shall we disguise ourselves?" said Rodriguez.

"Master," said Morano, "when you came to our town none knew you and all
marked your clothes. As for me my fat body is better known than my
clothes, yet am I not too well known by la Garda, for, being an honest
man, whenever la Garda came I used to hide."

"You did well," said Rodriguez.

"Certainly I did well," said Morano, "for had they seen me they might,
on account of certain matters, have taken me to prison, and prison is
no place for an honest man."

"Let us disguise ourselves," said Rodriguez.

"Master," answered Morano, "the brain is greater than the stomach, and
now more than at any time we need the counsel of the brain; let us
therefore appease the clamours of the stomach that it be silent."

And he drew out from amongst his clothing a piece of sacking in which
was a mass of bacon and some lard, and unslung his huge frying-pan.
Rodriguez had entirely forgotten the need of food, but now the memory
of it had rushed upon him like a flood over a barrier, as soon as he
saw the bacon. And when they had collected enough of tiny inflammable
things, for it was a treeless plain, and Morano had made a fire, and
the odour of the bacon became perceptible, this memory was hugely
intensified.

"Let us eat while they eat, master," said Morano, "and plan while they
sleep, and disguise ourselves while they pursue."

And this they did: for after they had eaten they dug up earth and
gathered leaves with which to fill the gaps in Morano's garments when
they should hang on Rodriguez, they plucked a geranium with whose dye
they deepened Rodriguez' complexion, and with the sap from the stalk of
a weed Morano toned to a pallor the ruddy brown of his tough cheeks.
Then they changed clothes altogether, which made Morano gasp: and after
that nothing remained but to cut off the delicate black moustachios of
Rodriguez and to stick them to the face of Morano with the juice of
another flower that he knew where to find. Rodriguez sighed when he saw
them go. He had pictured ecstatic glances cast some day at those
moustachios, glances from under long eyelashes twinkling at evening
from balconies; and looking at them where they were now, he felt that
this was impossible.

For one moment Morano raised his head with an air, as it were preening
himself, when the new moustachios had stuck; but as soon as he saw, or
felt, his master's sorrow at their loss he immediately hung his head,
showing nothing but shame for the loss he had caused his master, or for
the impropriety of those delicate growths that so ill become his jowl.
And now they took the road again, Rodriguez with the great frying-pan
and cooking-pot; no longer together, but not too far apart for la Garda
to take them both at once, and to make the doubly false charge that
should so confound their errand. And Morano wore that old triumphant
sword, and carried the mandolin that was ever young.

They had not gone far when it was as Morano had said; for, looking
back, as they often did, to the spot where their road touched the
sky-line, they saw la Garda spurring, seven of them in their
unmistakable looped hats, very clear against the sky which a moment ago
seemed so fair.

When the seven saw the two they did not spare the dust; and first they
came to Morano.

"You," they said, "are Rodriguez Trinidad Fernandez, Concepcion
Henrique Maria, a Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez."

"No, masters," said Morano.

Oh but denials were lost upon la Garda.

Denials inflamed their suspicions as no other evidence could. Many a
man had they seen with his throat in the hands of the public garrotter;
and all had begun with denials who ended thus. They looked at the
mandolin, at the gay cloak, at the emeralds in the scabbard, for
wherever emeralds go there is evidence to identify them, until the
nature of man changes or the price of emeralds. They spoke hastily
among themselves.

"Without doubt," said one of them, "you are whom we said." And they
arrested Morano.

Then they spurred on to Rodriguez. "You are," they said, "as no man
doubts, one Morano, servant at the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, whose
good master is, as we allege, dead."

"Masters," answered Rodriguez, "I am but a poor traveller, and no
servant at any inn."

Now la Garda, as I have indicated, will hear all things except denials;
and thus to receive two within the space of two moments infuriated them
so fiercely that they were incapable of forming any other theory that
day except the one they held.

There are many men like this; they can form a plausible theory and
grasp its logical points, but take it away from them and destroy it
utterly before their eyes, and they will not so easily lash their tired
brains at once to build another theory in place of the one that is
ruined.

"As the saints live," they said, "you are Morano." And they arrested
Rodriguez too.

Now when they began to turn back by the way they had come Rodriguez
began to fear overmuch identification, so he assured la Garda that in
the next village ahead of them were those who would answer all
questions concerning him, as well as being the possessors of the finest
vintage of wine in the kingdom of Spain.

Now it may be that the mention of this wine soothed the anger caused in
the men of la Garda by two denials, or it may be that curiosity guided
them, at any rate they took the road that led away from last night's
sinister shelter, Rodriguez and five of la Garda. Two of them stayed
behind with Morano, undecided as yet which way to take, though looking
wistfully the way that that wine was said to be; and Rodriguez left
Morano to his own devices, in which he trusted profoundly.

Now Rodriguez knew not the name of the next village that they would
come to nor the names of any of the dwellers in it.

Yet he had a plan. As he went by the side of one of the horses he
questioned the rider.

"Can Morano write?" he said. La Garda laughed.

"Can Morano talk Latin?" he said. La Garda crossed themselves, all five
men. And after some while of riding, and hard walking for Rodriguez, to
whom they allowed a hand on a stirrup leather, there came in sight the
tops of the brown roofs of a village over a fold of the plain. "Is this
your village?" said one of his captors.

"Surely," answered Rodriguez.

"What is its name?" said one.

"It has many names," said Rodriguez.

And then another one of them recognised it from the shape of its roofs.
"It is Saint Judas-not-Iscariot," he said.

"Aye, so strangers call it," said Rodriguez.

And where the road turned round that fold of the plain, lolling a
little to its left in the idle Spanish air, they came upon the village
all in view. I do not know how to describe this village to you, my
reader, for the words that mean to you what it was are all the wrong
words to use. "Antique," "old-world," "quaint," seem words with which
to tell of it. Yet it had no antiquity denied to the other villages; it
had been brought to birth like them by the passing of time, and was
nursed like them in the lap of plains or valleys of Spain. Nor was it
quainter than any of its neighbours, though it was like itself alone,
as they had their characters also; and, though no village in the world
was like it, it differed only from the next as sister differs from
sister. To those that dwelt in it, it was wholly apart from all the
world of man.

Most of its tall white houses with green doors were gathered about the
market-place, in which were pigeons and smells and declining sunlight,
as Rodriguez and his escort came towards it, and from round a corner at
the back of it the short, repeated song of one who would sell a
commodity went up piercingly.

This was all very long ago. Time has wrecked that village now.
Centuries have flowed over it, some stormily, some smoothly, but so
many that, of the village Rodriguez saw, there can be now no more than
wreckage. For all I know a village of that name may stand on that same
plain, but the Saint Judas-not-Iscariot that Rodriguez knew is gone
like youth.

Queerly tiled, sheltered by small dense trees, and standing a little
apart, Rodriguez recognised the house of the Priest. He recognised it
by a certain air it had. Thither he pointed and la Garda rode. Again he
spoke to them. "Can Morano speak Latin?" he said.

"God forbid!" said la Garda.

They dismounted and opened a gate that was gilded all over, in a low
wall of round boulders. They went up a narrow path between thick ilices
and came to the green door. They pulled a bell whose handle was a
symbol carved in copper, one of the Priest's mysteries. The bell boomed
through the house, a tiny musical boom, and the Priest opened the door;
and Rodriguez addressed him in Latin. And the Priest answered him.

At first la Garda had not realised what had happened. And then the
Priest beckoned and they all entered his house, for Rodriguez had asked
him for ink. Into a room they came where a silver ink-pot was, and the
grey plume of the goose. Picture no such ink-pot, my reader, as they
sell to-day in shops, the silver no thicker than paper, and perhaps a
pattern all over it guaranteed artistic. It was molten silver well
wrought, and hollowed for ink. And in the hollow there was the magical
fluid, the stuff that rules the world and hinders time; that in which
flows the will of a king, to establish his laws for ever; that which
gives valleys unto new possessors; that whereby towers are held by
their lawful owners; that which, used grimly by the King's judge, is
death; that which, when poets play, is mirth for ever and ever.

No wonder la Garda looked at it in awe, no wonder they crossed
themselves again: and then Rodriguez wrote. In the silence that
followed the jaws of la Garda dropped, while the old Priest slightly
smiled, for he somewhat divined the situation already; and, being the
people's friend, he loved not la Garda more than he was bound by the
rules of his duty to man.

Then one of la Garda spoke, bringing back his confidence with a
bluster. "Morano has sold his soul to Satan," he said, "in exchange for
Satan's aid, and Satan has taught his tongue Latin and guides his
fingers in the affairs of the pen." And so said all la Garda, rejoicing
at finding an explanation where a moment ago there was none, as all men
at such times do: little it matters what the explanation be: does a man
in Sahara, who finds water suddenly, inquire with precision what its
qualities are?

And then the Priest said a word and made a sign, against which Satan
himself can only prevail with difficulty, and in presence of which his
spells can never endure. And after this Rodriguez wrote again. Then
were la Garda silent.

And at length the leader said, and he called on them all to testify,
that he had made no charge whatever against this traveller; moreover,
they had escorted him on his way out of respect for him, because the
roads were dangerous, and must now depart because they had higher
duties. So la Garda departed, looking before them with stern,
preoccupied faces and urging their horses on, as men who go on an
errand of great urgency. And Rodriguez, having thanked them for their
protection upon the road, turned back into the house and the two sat
down together, and Rodriguez told his rescuer the story of the
hospitality of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight.

Not as confession he told it, but as a pleasant tale, for he looked on
the swift demise of la Garda's friend, in the night, in the spidery
room, as a fair blessing for Spain, a thing most suited to the sweet
days of Spring. The spiritual man rejoiced to hear such a tale, as do
all men of peace to hear talk of violent deeds in which they may not
share. And when the tale was ended he reproved Rodriguez exceedingly,
explaining to him the nature of the sin of blood, and telling him that
absolution could be come by now, though hardly, but how on some future
occasion there might be none to be had. And Rodriguez listened with all
the gravity of expression that youth knows well how to wear while its
thoughts are nimbly dancing far away in fair fields of adventure or
love.

And darkness came down and lamps were carried in: and the reverend
father asked Rodriguez in what other affairs of violence his sword had
unhappily been. And Rodriguez knew well the history of that sword,
having gathered all that concerned it out of spoken legend or song. And
although the reverend man frowned minatorily whenever he heard of its
passings through the ribs of the faithful, and nodded as though his
head gave benediction when he heard of the destruction of God's most
vile enemy the infidel, and though he gasped a little through his lips
when he heard of certain tarryings of that sword, in scented gardens,
while Christian knights should sleep and their swords hang on the wall,
though sometimes even a little he raised his hands, yet he leaned
forward always, listening well, and picturing clearly as though his
gleaming eyes could see them, each doleful tale of violence or sin. And
so night came, and began to wear away, and neither knew how late the
hour was. And then as Rodriguez spoke of an evening in a garden, of
which some old song told well, a night in early summer under the
evening star, and that sword there as always; as he told of his
grandfather as poets had loved to tell, going among the scents of the
huge flowers, familiar with the dark garden as the moths that drifted
by him; as he spoke of a sigh heard faintly, as he spoke of danger
near, whether to body or soul; as the reverend father was about to
raise both his hands; there came a thunder of knockings upon the locked
green door.




THE THIRD CHRONICLE

HOW HE CAME TO THE HOUSE OF WONDER


It was the gross Morano. Here he had tracked Rodriguez, for where la
Garda goes is always known, and rumour of it remains long behind them,
like the scent of a fox. He told no tale of his escape more than a dog
does who comes home some hours late; a dog comes back to his master,
that is all, panting a little perhaps; someone perhaps had caught him
and he escaped and came home, a thing too natural to attempt to speak
of by any of the signs that a dog knows.

Part of Morano's method seems to have resembled Rodriguez', for just as
Rodriguez spoke Latin, so Morano fell back upon his own natural speech,
that he as it were unbridled and allowed to run free, the coarseness of
which had at first astounded, and then delighted, la Garda.

"And did they not suspect that you were yourself?" said Rodriguez.

"No, master," Morano answered, "for I said that I was the brother of
the King of Aragon."

"The King of Aragon!" Rodriguez said, going to the length of showing
surprise. "Yes, indeed, master." said Morano, "and they recognised me."

"Recognised you!" exclaimed the Priest.

"Indeed so," said Morano, "for they said that they were themselves the
Kings of Aragon; and so, father, they recognised me for their brother."

"That you should not have said," the Priest told Morano.

"Reverend father," replied Morano, "as Heaven shines, I believed that
what I said was true." And Morano sighed deeply. "And now," he said, "I
know it is true no more."

Whether he sighed for the loss of his belief in that exalted
relationship, or whether for the loss of that state of mind in which
such beliefs come easily, there was nothing in his sigh to show. They
questioned him further, but he said no more: he was here, there was no
more to say: he was here and la Garda was gone.

And then the reverend man brought for them a great supper, even at that
late hour, for many an hour had slipped softly by as he heard the sins
of the sword; and wine he set out, too, of a certain golden vintage,
long lost--I fear--my reader: but this he gave not to Morano lest he
should be once more, what the reverend father feared to entertain, that
dread hidalgo, the King of Aragon's brother. And after that, the stars
having then gone far on their ways, the old Priest rose and offered a
bed to Rodriguez; and even as he eyed Morano, wondering where to put
him, and was about to speak, for he had no other bed, Morano went to a
corner of the room and curled up and lay down. And by the time his host
had walked over to him and spoken, asking anxiously if he needed
nothing more, he was almost already asleep, and muttered in answer,
after having been spoken to twice, no more than "Straw, reverend
father, straw."

An armful of this the good man brought him, and then showed Rodriguez
to his room; and they can scarcely have reached it before Morano was
back in Aragon again, walking on golden shoes (which were sometimes
wings), proud among lesser princes.

As precaution for the night Rodriguez took one more glance at his
host's kind face; and then, with sword out of reach and an unlocked
door, he slept till the songs of birds out of the deeps of the ilices
made sleep any longer impossible.

The third morning of Rodriguez' wandering blazed over Spain like brass;
flowers and grass and sky were twinkling all together.

When Rodriguez greeted his host Morano was long astir, having awakened
with dawn, for the simpler and humbler the creature the nearer it is
akin to the earth and the sun. The forces that woke the birds and
opened the flowers stirred the gross lump of Morano, ending his sleep
as they ended the nightingale's song.

They breakfasted hurriedly and Rodriguez rose to depart, feeling that
he had taken hospitality that had not been offered. But against his
departure was the barrier of all the politeness of Spain. The house was
his, said his host, and even the small grove of ilices.

If I told you half of the things that the reverend man said, you would
say: "This writer is affected. I do not like all this flowery mush." I
think it safer, my reader, not to tell you any of it. Let us suppose
that he merely said, "Quite all right," and that when Rodriguez thanked
him on one knee he answered, "Not at all;" and that so Rodriguez and
Morano left. If here it miss some flash of the fair form of Truth it is
the fault of the age I write for.

The road again, dust again, birds and the blaze of leaves, these were
the background of my wanderers, until the eye had gone as far as the
eye can roam, and there were the tips of some far pale-blue mountains
that now came into view.

They were still in each other's clothes; but the village was not behind
them very far when Morano explained, for he knew the ways of la Garda,
that having arrested two men upon this road, they would now arrest two
men each on all the other roads, in order to show the impartiality of
the Law, which constantly needs to be exhibited; and that therefore all
men were safe on the road they were on for a long while to come.

Now there seemed to Rodriguez to be much good sense in what Morano had
said; and so indeed there was for they had good laws in Spain, and they
differed little, though so long ago, from our own excellent system.
Therefore they changed once more, giving back to each other everything
but, alas, those delicate black moustachios; and these to Rodriguez
seemed gone for ever, for the growth of new ones seemed so far ahead to
the long days of youth that his hopes could scarce reach to them.

When Morano found himself once more in those clothes that had been with
him night and day for so many years he seemed to expand; I mean no
metaphor here; he grew visibly fatter.

"Ah," said Morano after a huge breath, "last night I dreamed, in your
illustrious clothes, that I was in lofty station. And now, master, I am
comfortable."

"Which were best, think you," said Rodriguez, "if you could have but
one, a lofty place or comfort?" Even in those days such a question was
trite, but Rodriguez uttered it only thinking to dip in the store of
Morano's simple wisdom, as one may throw a mere worm to catch a worthy
fish. But in this he was disappointed; for Morano made no neat
comparison nor even gave an opinion, saying only, "Master, while I have
comfort how shall I judge the case of any who have not?" And no more
would he say. His new found comfort, lost for a day and night, seemed
so to have soothed his body that it closed the gates of the mind, as
too much luxury may, even with poets.

And now Rodriguez thought of his quest again, and the two of them
pushed on briskly to find the wars.

For an hour they walked in silence an empty road. And then they came
upon a row of donkeys; piled high with the bark of the cork-tree, that
men were bringing slowly from far woods. Some of the men were singing
as they went. They passed slow in the sunshine.

"Oh, master," said Morano when they were gone, "I like not that
lascivious loitering."

"Why, Morano?" said Rodriguez. "It was not God that made hurry."

"Master," answered Morano, "I know well who made hurry. And may he not
overtake my soul at the last. Yet it is bad for our fortunes that these
men should loiter thus. You want your castle, master; and I, I want not
always to wander roads, with la Garda perhaps behind and no certain
place to curl up and sleep in front. I look for a heap of straw in the
cellar of your great castle."

"Yes, yes, you shall have it," his master said, "but how do these folks
hinder you?" For Morano was scowling at them over his shoulder in a way
that was somehow spoiling the gladness of Spring.

"The air is full of their singing," Morano said. "It is as though their
souls were already flying to Hell, and cawing hoarse with sin all the
way as they go. And they loiter, and they linger..." Oh, but Morano was
angry.

"But," said Rodriguez, "how does their lingering harm you?"

"Where are the wars, master? Where are the wars?" blurted Morano, his
round face turning redder. "The donkeys would be dead, the men would be
running, there would be shouts, cries, and confusion, if the wars were
anywhere near. There would be all things but this."

The men strolled on singing and so passed slow into distance. Morano
was right, though I know not how he knew.

And now the men and the donkeys were nearly out of sight, but had not
yet at all emerged from the wrath of Morano. "Lascivious knaves,"
muttered that disappointed man. And whenever he faintly heard dim
snatches of their far song that a breeze here, and another there,
brought over the plain as it ran on the errands of Spring, he cursed
their sins under his breath. Though it seemed not so much their sins
that moved his wrath as the leisure they had for committing them.

"Peace, peace, Morano," said Rodriguez.

"It is that," said Morano, "that is troubling me."

"What?"

"This same peace."

"Morano," said Rodriguez, "I had when young to study the affairs of
men; and this is put into books, and so they make history. Now I
learned that there is no thing in which men have taken delight, that is
ever put away from them; for it seems that time, which altereth every
custom, hath altered none of our likings: and in every chapter they
taught me there were these wars to be found."

"Master, the times are altered," said Morano sadly. "It is not now as
in old days."

And this was not the wisdom of Morano, for anger had clouded his
judgment. And a faint song came yet from the donkey-drivers, wavering
over the flowers.

"Master," Morano said, "there are men like those vile sin-mongers, who
have taken delight in peace. It may be that peace has been brought upon
the world by one of these lousy likings."

"The delight of peace," said Rodriguez, "is in its contrast to war. If
war were banished this delight were gone. And man lost none of his
delights in any chapter I read."

The word and the meaning of CONTRAST were such as is understood by
reflective minds, the product of education. Morano felt rather than
reflected; and the word CONTRAST meant nothing to him. This ended their
conversation. And the songs of the donkey-drivers, light though they
were, being too heavy to be carried farther by the idle air of Spring,
Morano ceased cursing their sins.

And now the mountains rose up taller, seeming to stretch themselves and
raise their heads. In a while they seemed to be peering over the plain.
They that were as pale ghosts, far off, dim like Fate, in the early
part of the morning, now appeared darker, more furrowed, more sinister,
more careworn; more immediately concerned with the affairs of Earth,
and so more menacing to earthly things.

Still they went on and still the mountains grew. And noon came, when
Spain sleeps.

And now the plain was altering, as though cool winds from the mountains
brought other growths to birth, so that they met with bushes straggling
wild; free, careless and mysterious, as they do, where there is none to
teach great Nature how to be tidy.

The wanderers chose a clump of these that were gathered near the way,
like gypsies camped awhile midway on a wonderful journey, who at dawn
will rise and go, leaving but a bare trace of their resting and no
guess of their destiny; so fairy-like, so free, so phantasmal those
dark shrubs seemed.

Morano lay down on the very edge of the shade of one, and Rodriguez lay
fair in the midst of the shade of another, whereby anyone passing that
way would have known which was the older traveller. Morano, according
to his custom, was asleep almost immediately; but Rodriguez, with
wonder and speculation each toying with novelty and pulling it
different ways between them, stayed awhile wakeful. Then he too slept,
and a bird thought it safe to return to an azalea of its own; which it
lately fled from troubled by the arrival of these two.

And Rodriguez the last to sleep was the first awake, for the shade of
the shrub left him, and he awoke in the blaze of the sun to see Morano
still sheltered, well in the middle now of the shadow he chose. The
gross sleep of Morano I will not describe to you, reader. I have chosen
a pleasant tale for you in a happy land, in the fairest time of year,
in a golden age: I have youth to show you and an ancient sword, birds,
flowers and sunlight, in a plain unharmed by any dream of commerce: why
should I show you the sleep of that inelegant man whose bulk lay
cumbering the earth like a low, unseemly mountain?

Rodriguez overtook the shade he had lost and lay there resting until
Morano awoke, driven all at once from sleep by a dream or by mere
choking. Then from the intricacies of his clothing, which to him after
those two days was what home is to some far wanderer, Morano drew out
once more a lump of bacon. Then came the fry-pan and then a fire: it
was the Wanderers' Mess. That mess-room has stood in many lands and has
only one roof. We are proud of that roof, all we who belong to that
Mess. We boast of it when we show it to our friends when it is all set
out at night. It has Aldebaran in it, the Bear and Orion, and at the
other end the Southern Cross. Yes we are proud of our roof when it is
at its best.

What am I saying? I should be talking of bacon. Yes, but there is a way
of cooking it in our Mess that I want to tell you and cannot. I've
tasted bacon there that isn't the same as what you get at the Ritz. And
I want to tell you how that bacon tastes; and I can't so I talk about
stars. But perhaps you are one of us, reader, and then you will
understand. Only why the hell don't we get back there again where the
Evening Star swings low on the wall of the Mess?

When they rose from table, when they got up from the earth, and the
frying-pan was slung on Morano's back, adding grease to the mere
surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more, they pushed on
briskly for they saw no sign of houses, unless what Rodriguez saw now
dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the mountains.

They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering. They must
have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue. And now,
every mile they went, on the most awful of the dark ridges the object
Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house. Yet neither then, nor
as they drew still nearer, nor when they saw it close, nor looking back
on it after years, did it somehow seem quite right. And Morano
sometimes crossed himself as he looked at it, and said nothing.

Rodriguez, as they walked ceaselessly through the afternoon, seeing his
servant show some sign of weariness, which comes not to youth, pointed
out the house looking nearer than it really was on the mountain, and
told him that he should find there straw, and they would sup and stay
the night. Afterwards, when the strange appearance of the house,
varying with different angles, filled him with curious forebodings,
Rodriguez would make no admission to his servant, but held to the plan
he had announced, and so approached the queer roofs, neglecting the
friendly stars.

Through the afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in silence,
for the glances that house seemed to give him from the edge of its
perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez and had even
checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher Morano, if garrulity
can be ascribed to him whose words seldom welled up unless some simple
philosophy troubled his deeps. The house seemed indeed to glance at
him, for as their road wound on, the house showed different aspects,
different walls and edges of walls, and different curious roofs; all
these walls seemed to peer at him. One after another they peered, new
ones glided imperceptibly into sight as though to say, We see too.

The mountains were not before them but a little to the right of their
path, until new ones appeared ahead of them like giants arising from
sleep, and then their path seemed blocked as though by a mighty wall
against which its feeble wanderings went in vain. In the end it turned
a bit to its right and went straight for a dark mountain, where a wild
track seemed to come down out of the rocks to meet it, and upon this
track looked down that sinister house. Had you been there, my reader,
you would have said, any of us had said, Why not choose some other
house? There were no other houses. He who dwelt on the edge of the
ravine that ran into that dark mountain was wholly without neighbours.

And evening came, and still they were far from the mountain.

The sun set on their left. But it was in the eastern sky that the
greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up some
stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and turned their
gloomy forms to an astounding purple.

And after this their road began to rise toward the ridges. The
mountains darkened and the sinister house was about to merge with
their shadows, when he who dwelt there lit candles.

The act astonished the wayfarers. All through half the day they had
seen the house, until it seemed part of the mountains; evil it seemed
like their ridges, that were black and bleak and forbidding, and
strange it seemed with a strangeness that moved no fears they could
name, yet it seemed inactive as night.

Now lights appeared showing that someone moved. Window after window
showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare; there in
the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed kin to it, by
glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the beasts that haunted
them could not do: this was the lair of man. Here was the light of
flame but the rocks remained dark and cold as the wind of night that
went over them, he who dwelt now with the lights had forsaken the
rocks, his neighbours.

And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green. These
lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to Rodriguez
and to tell him nothing. And Morano wondered, as he seldom troubled to
do.

They pushed on up the steepening path.

"Like you the looks of it?" said Rodriguez once.

"Aye, master," answered Morano, "so there be straw."

"You see nothing strange there, then?" Rodriguez said.

"Master," Morano said, "there be saints for all requirements."

Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it were
gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus worked
Morano's philosophy. And he turned his thoughts to the achievements
upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and showed to the
sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of the Church.

It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew nearer
the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing from room to
room. The ascent was steep now and the pathway stopped. No track of any
kind approached the house. It stood on a precipice-edge as though one
of the rocks of the mountain: they climbed over rocks to reach it. The
windows flickered and blinked at them.

Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they were now
in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found; they were all
among edges of rock as black as the night and hard as the material of
which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos' brink. The sound of their
climbing ran noisily up the mountain but no sound came from the house:
only the shadows moved more swiftly across a room, passed into other
rooms and came hurrying back. Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed
to peer; and when the travellers stood and watched to see what they
were they would disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the
rooms were filled instead with their wondering speculation. Then they
pushed on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were
they and slanting, all piled together: it seemed the last waste, to
which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.

Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme;
indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw
pieces of Chaos. Morano climbed over their edges with moans and
discomfort. Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans when
he came to the top of each sharp rock.

The rocks became savager, huger, even more sharp and more angular. They
were there in the dark in multitudes. Over these Rodriguez staggered,
and Morano clambered and tumbled; and so they came, breathing hard, to
the lonely house.

In the wall that their hands had reached there was no door, so they
felt along it till they came to the corner, and beyond the corner was
the front wall of the house. In it was the front door. But so nearly
did this door open upon the abyss that the bats that fled from their
coming, from where they hung above the door of oak, had little more to
do than fall from their crannies, slanting ever so slightly, to find
themselves safe from man in the velvet darkness, that lay between
cliffs so lonely they were almost strangers to Echo. And here they
floated upon errands far from our knowledge; while the travellers
coming along the rocky ledge between destruction and shelter, knocked
on the oaken door.

The sound of their knocking boomed huge and slow through the house as
though they had struck the door of the very mountain. And no one came.
And then Rodriguez saw dimly in the darkness the great handle of a
bell, carved like a dragon running down the wall: he pulled it and a
cry of pain arose from the basement of the house.

Even Morano wondered. It was like a terrible spirit in distress. It was
long before Rodriguez dare touch the handle again. Could it have been
the bell? He felt the iron handle and the iron chain that went up from
it. How could it have been the bell! The bell had not sounded: he had
not pulled hard enough: that scream was fortuitous. The night on that
rocky ledge had jangled his nerves. He pulled again and more firmly.
The answering scream was more terrible. Rodriguez could doubt no
longer, as he sprang back from the bell-handle, that with the chain he
had pulled he inflicted some unknown agony.

The scream had awakened slow steps that now came towards the
travellers, down corridors, as it sounded, of stone. And then chains
fell on stone and the door of oak was opened by some one older than
what man hopes to come to, with small, peaked lips as those of some
woodland thing.

"Señores," the old one said, "the Professor welcomes you."

They stood and stared at his age, and Morano blurted uncouthly what
both of them felt. "You are old, grandfather," he said.

"Ah, Señores," the old man sighed, "the Professor does not allow me to
be young. I have been here years and years but he never allowed it. I
have served him well but it is still the same. I say to him, 'Master, I
have served you long ...' but he interrupts me for he will have none of
youth. Young servants go among the villages, he says. And so, and so..."

"You do not think your master can give you youth!" said Rodriguez.

The old man knew that he had talked too much, voicing that grievance
again of which even the rocks were weary. "Yes," he said briefly, and
bowed and led the way into the house. In one of the corridors running
out of the hall down which he was leading silently, Rodriguez overtook
that old man and questioned him to his face.

"Who is this professor?" he said.

By the light of a torch that spluttered in an iron clamp on the wall
Rodriguez questioned him with these words, and Morano with his
wondering, wistful eyes. The old man halted and turned half round, and
lifted his head and answered. "In the University of Saragossa," he said
with pride, "he holds the Chair of Magic."

Even the names of Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Yale or Princeton,
move some respect, and even yet in these unlearned days. What wonder
then that the name of Saragossa heard on that lonely mountain awoke in
Rodriguez some emotion of reverence and even awed Morano. As for the
Chair of Magic, it was of all the royal endowments of that illustrious
University the most honoured and dreaded.

"At Saragossa!" Rodriguez muttered.

"At Saragossa," the old man affirmed.

Between that ancient citadel of learning and this most savage mountain
appeared a gulf scarce to be bridged by thought.

"The Professor rests in his mountain," the old man said, "because of a
conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class have gone
to their homes for many weeks." He bowed again and led on along that
corridor of dismal stone. The others followed, and still as Rodriguez
went that famous name Saragossa echoed within his mind.

And then they came to a door set deep in the stone, and their guide
opened it and they went in; and there was the Professor in a mystical
hat and a robe of dim purple, seated with his back to them at a table,
studying the ways of the stars. "Welcome, Don Rodriguez," said the
Professor before he turned round; and then he rose, and with small
steps backwards and sideways and many bows, he displayed all those
formulae of politeness that Saragossa knew in the golden age and which
her professors loved to execute. In later years they became more
elaborate still, and afterwards were lost.

Rodriguez replied rather by instinct than knowledge; he came of a house
whose bows had never missed graceful ease and which had in some
generations been a joy to the Court of Spain. Morano followed behind
him; but his servile presence intruded upon that elaborate ceremony,
and the Professor held up his hand, and Morano was held in mid stride
as though the air had gripped him. There he stood motionless, having
never felt magic before. And when the Professor had welcomed Rodriguez
in a manner worthy of the dignity of the Chair that he held at
Saragossa, he made an easy gesture and Morano was free again.

"Master," said Morano to the Professor, as soon as he found he could
move, "master, it looks like magic." Picture to yourself some yokel
shown into the library of a professor of Greek at Oxford, taking down
from a shelf one of the books of the Odyssey, and saying to the
Professor, "It looks like Greek"!

Rodriguez felt grieved by Morano's boorish ignorance. Neither he nor
his host answered him.

The Professor explained that he followed the mysteries dimly, owing to
a certain aspect of Orion, and that therefore his class were gone to
their homes and were hunting; and so he studied alone under
unfavourable auspices. And once more he welcomed Rodriguez to his roof,
and would command straw to be laid down for the man that Rodriguez had
brought from the Inn of the Dragon and Knight; for he, the Professor,
saw all things, though certain stars would hide everything.

And when Rodriguez had appropriately uttered his thanks, he added with
all humility and delicate choice of phrase a petition that he might be
shown some mere rudiment of the studies for which that illustrious
chair in Saragossa was famous. The Professor bowed again and, in
accepting the well-rounded compliments that Rodriguez paid to the
honoured post he occupied, he introduced himself by name. He had been
once, he said, the Count of the Mountain, but when his astral studies
had made him eminent and he had mastered the ways of the planet nearest
the sun he took the title Magister Mercurii, and by this had long been
known; but had now forsaken this title, great as it was, for a more
glorious nomenclature, and was called in the Arabic language the Slave
of Orion. When Rodriguez heard this he bowed very low.

And now the Professor asked Rodriguez in which of the activities of
life his interest lay; for the Chair of Magic at Saragossa, he said,
was concerned with them all.

"In war," said Rodriguez.

And Morano unostentatiously rubbed his hands; for here was one, he
thought, who would soon put his master on the right way, and matters
would come to a head and they would find the wars. But far from
concerning himself with the wars of that age, the Slave of Orion
explained that as events came nearer they became grosser or more
material, and that their grossness did not leave them until they were
some while passed away; so that to one whose studies were with
aetherial things, near events were opaque and dim. He had a window, he
explained, through which Rodriguez should see clearly the ancient wars,
while another window beside it looked on all wars of the future except
those which were planned already or were coming soon to earth, and
which were either invisible or seen dim as through mist.

Rodriguez said that to be privileged to see so classical an example of
magic would be to him both a delight and honour. Yet, as is the way of
youth, he more desired to have a sight of the wars than he cared for
all the learning of the Professor.

And to him who held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa it was a precious
thing that his windows could be made to show these marvels, while the
guest to whom he was about to display these two gems of his learning
was thinking of little but what he should see through the windows, and
not at all of what spells, what midnight oil, what incantations, what
witchcrafts, what lonely hours among bats, had gone to the
gratification of his young curiosity. It is usually thus.

The Professor rose: his cloak floated out from him as he left the
chamber, and Rodriguez following where he guided saw, by the torchlight
in the corridors, upon the dim purple border signs that, to his
untutored ignorance of magic, were no more than hints of the affairs of
the Zodiac. And if these signs were obscure it were better they were
obscurer, for they dealt with powers that man needs not to possess, who
has the whole earth to regulate and control; why then should he seek to
govern the course of any star?

And Morano followed behind them, hoping to be allowed to get a sight of
the wars.

They came to a room where two round windows were; each of them larger
than the very largest plate, and of very thick glass indeed, and of a
wonderful blue. The blue was like the blue of the Mediterranean at
evening, when lights are in it both of ships and of sunset, and lights
of harbours being lit one by one, and the light of Venus perhaps and
about two other stars, so deeply did it stare and so twinkled, near its
edges, with lights that were strange to that room, and so triumphed
with its clear beauty over the night outside. No, it was more magical
than the Mediterranean at evening, even though the peaks of the
Esterels be purple and their bases melting in gold and the blue sea
lying below them smiling at early stars: these windows were more
mysterious than that; it was a more triumphant blue; it was like the
Mediterranean seen with the eyes of Shelley, on a happy day in his
youth, or like the sea round Western islands of fable seen by the fancy
of Keats. They were no windows for any need of ours, unless our dreams
be needs, unless our cries for the moon be urged by the same Necessity
as makes us cry for bread. They were clearly concerned only with magic
or poetry; though the Professor claimed that poetry was but a branch of
his subject; and it was so regarded at Saragossa, where it was taught
by the name of theoretical magic, while by the name of practical magic
they taught dooms, brews, hauntings, and spells.

The Professor stood before the left-hand window and pointed to its
deep-blue centre. "Through this," he said, "we see the wars that were."

Rodriguez looked into the deep-blue centre where the great bulge of the
glass came out towards him; it was near to the edges where the glass
seemed thinner that the little strange lights were dancing; Morano
dared to tiptoe a little nearer. Rodriguez looked and saw no night
outside. Just below and near to the window was white mist, and the dim
lines and smoke of what may have been recent wars; but farther away on
a plain of strangely vast dimensions he saw old wars that were. War
after war he saw. Battles that long ago had passed into history and had
been for many ages skilled, glorious and pleasant encounters he saw
even now tumbling before him in their savage confusion and dirt. He saw
a leader, long glorious in histories he had read, looking round
puzzled, to see what was happening, and in a very famous fight that he
had planned very well. He saw retreats that History called routs, and
routs that he had seen History calling retreats. He saw men winning
victories without knowing they had won. Never had man pried before so
shamelessly upon History, or found her such a liar. With his eyes on
the great blue glass Rodriguez forgot the room, forgot time, forgot his
host and poor excited Morano, as he watched those famous fights.

And now my reader wishes to know what he saw and how it was that he was
able to see it.

As regards the second, my reader will readily understand that the
secrets of magic are very carefully guarded, and any smatterings of it
that I may ever have come by I possess, for what they are worth,
subjects to oaths and penalties at which even bad men shudder. My
reader will be satisfied that even those intimate bonds between reader
and writer are of no use to him here. I say him as though I had only
male readers, but if my reader be a lady I leave the situation
confidently to her intuition. As for the things he saw, of all of these
I am at full liberty to write, and yet, my reader, they would differ
from History's version: never a battle that Rodriguez saw on all the
plain that swept away from that circular window, but History wrote
differently. And now, my reader, the situation is this: who am I?
History was a goddess among the Greeks, or is at least a distinguished
personage, perhaps with a well-earned knighthood, and certainly with
widespread recognition amongst the Right Kind of People. I have none of
these things. Whom, then, would you believe?

Yet I would lay my story confidently before you, my reader, trusting in
the justice of my case and in your judicial discernment, but for one
other thing. What will the Goddess Clio say, or the well-deserving
knight, if I offend History? She has stated her case, Sir Bartimeus has
written it, and then so late in the day I come with a different story,
a truer but different story. What will they do? Reader, the future is
dark, uncertain and long; I dare not trust myself to it if I offend
History. Clio and Sir Bartimeus will make hay of my reputation; an
innuendo here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a
soul will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian
of pique. Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window, forgetful
of all around, on battles that had not all the elegance or neatness of
which our histories so tidily tell. And as he gazed upon a merry
encounter between two men on the fringe of an ancient fight he felt a
touch on his shoulder and then almost a tug, and turning round beheld
the room he was in. How long he had been absent from it in thought he
did not know, but the Professor was still standing with folded arms
where he had left him, probably well satisfied with the wonder that his
most secret art had awakened in his guest. It was Morano who touched
his shoulder, unable to hold back any longer his impatience to see the
wars; his eyes as Rodriguez turned round were gazing at his master with
dog-like wistfulness.

The absurd eagerness of Morano, his uncouth touch on his shoulder,
seemed only pathetic to Rodriguez. He looked at the Professor's face,
the nose like a hawk's beak, the small eyes deep down beside it, dark
of hue and dreadfully bright, the silent lips. He stood there uttering
no actual prohibition, concerning which Rodriguez's eyes had sought;
so, stepping aside from his window, Rodriguez beckoned Morano, who at
once ran forward delighted to see those ancient wars.

A slight look of scorn showed faint upon the Professor's face such as
you may see anywhere when a master-craftsman perceives the gaze of the
ignorant turned towards his particular subject. But he said no word,
and soon speech would have been difficult, for the loud clamour of
Morano filled the room: he had seen the wars and his ecstasies were
ungoverned. As soon as he saw those fights he looked for the Infidels,
for his religious mind most loved to see the Infidel slain. And if my
reader discern or suppose some gulf between religion and the recent
business of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, Morano, if driven to
admit any connection between murder and his daily bread, would have
said, "All the more need then for God's mercy through the intercession
of His most blessed Saints." But these words had never passed Morano's
lips, for shrewd as he was in enquiry into any matter that he desired
to know, his shrewdness was no less in avoiding enquiry where there
might be something that he desired not to know, such as the origin of
his wages as servant of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, those
delicate gold rings with settings empty of jewels.

Morano soon recognized the Infidel by his dress, and after that no
other wars concerned him. He slapped his thigh, he shouted
encouragement, he howled vile words of abuse, partly because he
believed that this foul abuse was rightly the due of the Infidel, and
partly because he believed it delighted God.

Rodriguez stood and watched, pleased at the huge joy of the simple man.
The Slave of Orion stood watching in silence too, but who knows if he
felt pleasure or any other emotion? Perhaps his mind was simply like
ours; perhaps, as has been claimed by learned men of the best-informed
period, that mind had some control upon the comet, even when farthest
out from the paths we know. Morano turned round for a moment to
Rodriguez:

"Good wars, master, good wars," he said with a vast zest, and at once
his head was back again at that calm blue window. In that flash of the
head Rodriguez had seen his eyes, blue, round and bulging; the round
man was like a boy who in some shop window has seen, unexpected, huge
forbidden sweets. Clearly, in the war he watched things were going well
for the Cross, for such cries came from Morano as "A pretty stroke,"
"There now, the dirty Infidel," "Now see God's power shown," "Spare him
not, good knight; spare him not," and many more, till, uttered faster
and faster, they merged into mere clamorous rejoicing.

But the battles beyond the blue window seemed to move fast, and now a
change was passing across Morano's rejoicings. It was not that he swore
more for the cause of the Cross, but brief, impatient, meaningless
oaths slipped from him now; he was becoming irritable; a puzzled look,
so far as Rodriguez could see, was settling down on his features. For a
while he was silent except for the little, meaningless oaths. Then he
turned round from the glass, his hands stretched out, his face full of
urgent appeal.

"Masters," he said, "God's enemy wins!"

In answer to Morano's pitiful look Rodriguez' hand went to his
sword-hilt; the Slave of Orion merely smiled with his lips; Morano
stood there with his hands still stretched out, his face still all
appeal, and something more for there was reproach in his eyes that men
could tarry while the Cross was in danger and the Infidel lived. He did
not know that it was all finished and over hundreds of years ago, a
page of history upon which many pages were turned, and which lay as
unalterable as the fate of some warm swift creature of early Eocene
days over whose fossil today the strata lie long and silent.

"But can nothing be done, master?" he said when Rodriguez told him
this. And when Rodriguez failed him here, he turned away from the
window. To him the Infidel were game, but to see them defeating
Christian knights violated the deeps of his feelings.

Morano sulky excited little more notice from his host and his master
who had watched his rejoicings, and they seem to have forgotten this
humble champion of Christendom. The Professor slightly bowed to
Rodriguez and extended a graceful hand. He pointed to the other window.

Reader, your friend shows you his collection of stamps, his fossils,
his poems, or his luggage labels. One of them interests you, you look
at it awhile, you are ready to go away: then your friend shows you
another. This also must be seen; for your friend's collection is a
precious thing; it is that point upon huge Earth on which his spirit
has lit, on which it rests, on which it shelters even (who knows from
what storms?). To slight it were to weaken such hold as his spirit has,
in its allotted time, upon this sphere. It were like breaking the twig
of a plant upon which a butterfly rests, and on some stormy day and
late in the year.

Rodriguez felt all this dimly, but no less surely; and went to the
other window.

Below the window were those wars that were soon coming to Spain, hooded
in mist and invisible. In the centre of the window swam as profound a
blue, dwindling to paler splendour at the edge, the wandering lights
were as lovely, as in the other window just to the left; but in the
view from the right-hand window how sombre a difference. A bare yard
separated the two. Through the window to the left was colour, courtesy,
splendour; there was Death at least disguising himself, well cloaked,
taking mincing steps, bowing, wearing a plume in his hat and a decent
mask. In the right-hand window all the colours were fading, war after
war they grew dimmer; and as the colours paled Death's sole purpose
showed clearer. Through the beautiful left-hand window were killings to
be seen, and less mercy than History supposes, yet some of the fighters
were merciful, and mercy was sometimes a part of Death's courtly pose,
which went with the cloak and the plume. But in the other window
through that deep, beautiful blue Rodriguez saw Man make a new ally, an
ally who was only cruel and strong and had no purpose but killing, who
had no pretences or pose, no mask and no manner, but was only the slave
of Death and had no care but for his business. He saw it grow bigger
and stronger. Heart it had none, but he saw its cold steel core
scheming methodical plans and dreaming always destruction. Before it
faded men and their fields and their houses. Rodriguez saw the machine.

Many a proud invention of ours that Rodriguez saw raging on that
ruinous plain he might have anticipated, but not for all Spain would he
have done so: it was for the sake of Spain that he was silent about
much that he saw through that window. As he looked from war to war he
saw almost the same men fighting, men with always the same attitude to
the moment and with similar dim conception of larger, vaguer things;
grandson differed imperceptibly from grandfather; he saw them fight
sometimes mercifully, sometimes murderously, but in all the wars beyond
that twinkling window he saw the machine spare nothing.

Then he looked farther, for the wars that were farthest from him in
time were farther away from the window. He looked farther and saw the
ruins of Peronne. He saw them all alone with their doom at night, all
drenched in white moonlight, sheltering huge darkness in their stricken
hollows. Down the white street, past darkness after darkness as he went
by the gaping rooms that the moon left mourning alone, Rodriguez saw a
captain going back to the wars in that far-future time, who turned his
head a moment as he passed, looking Rodriguez in the face, and so went
on through the ruins to find a floor on which to lie down for the
night. When he was gone the street was all alone with disaster, and
moonlight pouring down, and the black gloom in the houses.

Rodriguez lifted his eyes and glanced from city to city, to Albert,
Bapaume, and Arras, his gaze moved over a plain with its harvest of
desolation lying forlorn and ungathered, lit by the flashing clouds and
the moon and peering rockets. He turned from the window and wept.

The deep round window glowed with serene blue glory. It seemed a
foolish thing to weep by that beautiful glass. Morano tried to comfort
him. That calm, deep blue, he felt, and those little lights, surely,
could hurt no one.

What had Rodriguez seen? Morano asked. But that Rodriguez would not
answer, and told no man ever after what he had seen through that window.

The Professor stood silent still: he had no comfort to offer; indeed
his magical wisdom had found none for the world.

You wonder perhaps why the Professor did not give long ago to the world
some of these marvels that are the pride of our age. Reader, let us put
aside my tale for a moment to answer this. For all the darkness of his
sinister art there may well have been some good in the Slave of Orion;
and any good there was, and mere particle even, would surely have
spared the world many of those inventions that our age has not spared
it. Blame not the age, it is now too late to stop; it is in the grip of
inventions now, and has to go on; we cannot stop content with
mustard-gas; it is the age of Progress, and our motto is Onwards. And
if there was no good in this magical man, then may it not have been he
who in due course, long after he himself was safe from life, caused our
inventions to be so deadly divulged? Some evil spirit has done it, then
why not he?

He stood there silent: let us return to our story.

Perhaps the efforts of poor clumsy Morano to comfort him cheered
Rodriguez and sent him back to the window, perhaps he turned from them
to find comfort of his own; but, however he came by it, he had a hope
that this was a passing curse that had come on the world, whose welfare
he cared for whether he lived or died, and that looking a little
farther into the future he would see Mother Earth smiling and her
children happy again. So he looked through the deep-blue luminous
window once more, beyond the battles we know. From this he turned back
shuddering.

Again he saw the Professor smile with his lips, though whether at his
own weakness, or whether with cynical mirth at the fate of the world,
Rodriguez could not say.




THE FOURTH CHRONICLE

HOW HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SUN


The Professor said that in curiosity alone had been found the seeds of
all that is needful for our damnation. Nevertheless, he said, if
Rodriguez cared to see more of his mighty art the mysteries of
Saragossa were all at his guest's disposal.

Rodriguez, sad and horrified though he was, forgot none of his
courtesy. He thanked the Professor and praised the art of Saragossa,
but his faith in man and his hope for the world having been newly
disappointed, he cared little enough for the things we should care to
see or for any of the amusements that are usually dear to youth.

"I shall be happy to see anything, señor," he said to the Slave of
Orion, "that is further from our poor Earth, and to study therein and
admire your famous art."

The Professor bowed. He drew small curtains over the windows, matching
his cloak. Morano sought a glimpse through the right-hand window before
the curtains covered it. Rodriguez held him back. Enough had been seen
already, he thought, through that window for the peace of mind of the
world: but he said no word to Morano. He held him by the arm, and the
Professor covered the windows. When the little mauve curtains were
drawn it seemed to Rodriguez that the windows behind them disappeared
and were there no more; but this he only guessed from uncertain
indications.

Then the Professor drew forth his wand and went to his cupboard of
wonder. Thence he brought condiments, oils, and dews of amazement.
These he poured into a vessel that was in the midst of the room, a bowl
of agate standing alone on a table. He lit it and it all welled up in
flame, a low broad flame of the colour of pale emerald. Over this he
waved his wand, which was of exceeding blackness. Morano watched as
children watch the dancer, who goes from village to village when spring
is come, with some new dance out of Asia or some new song.[Footnote: He
doesn't, but why shouldn't he?] Rodriguez sat and waited. The Professor
explained that to leave this Earth alive, or even dead, was prohibited
to our bodies, unless to a very few, whose names were hidden. Yet the
spirits of men could by incantation be liberated, and being liberated,
could be directed on journeys by such minds as had that power passed
down to them from of old. Such journeys, he said, were by no means
confined by the hills of Earth. "The Saints," exclaimed Morano, "guard
us utterly!" But Rodriguez smiled a little. His faith was given to the
Saints of Heaven. He wondered at their wonders, he admired their
miracles, he had little faith to spare for other marvels; in fact he
did not believe the Slave of Orion.

"Do you desire such a journey?" said the Professor.

"It will delight me," answered Rodriguez, "to see this example of your
art."

"And you?" he said to Morano.

The question seemed to alarm the placid Morano, but "I follow my
master," he said.

At once the Professor stretched out his ebony wand, calling the green
flame higher. Then he put out his hands over the flame, without the
wand, moving them slowly with constantly tremulous fingers. And all at
once they heard him begin to speak. His deep voice flowed musically
while he scarcely seemed to be speaking but seemed only to be concerned
with moving his hands. It came soft, as though blown faint from
fabulous valleys, illimitably far from the land of Spain. It seemed
full not so much of magic as mere sleep, either sleep in an unknown
country of alien men, or sleep in a land dreamed sleeping a long while
since. As the travellers heard it they thought of things far away, of
mythical journeys and their own earliest years.

They did not know what he said or what language he used. At first
Rodriguez thought Moorish, then he deemed it some secret language come
down from magicians of old, while Morano merely wondered; and then they
were lulled by the rhythm of those strange words, and so enquired no
more. Rodriguez pictured some sad wandering angel, upon some
mountain-peak of African lands, resting a moment and talking to the
solitudes, telling the lonely valley the mysteries of his home. While
lulled though Morano was he gave up his alertness uneasily. All the
while the green flame flooded upwards: all the while the tremulous
fingers made curious shadows. The shadow seemed to run to Rodriguez and
beckon him thence: even Morano felt them calling. Rodriguez closed his
eyes. The voice and the Moorish spells made now a more haunting melody:
they were now like a golden organ on undiscoverable mountains. Fear
came on Morano at the thought: who had power to speak like this? He
grasped Rodriguez by the wrist. "Master!" he said, but at that moment
on one of those golden spells the spirit of Rodriguez drifted away from
his body, and out of the greenish light of the curious room; unhampered
by weight, or fatigue, or pain, or sleep; and it rose above the rocks
and over the mountain, an unencumbered spirit: and the spirit of Morano
followed.

The mountain dwindled at once; the Earth swept out all round them and
grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They saw then
that they were launched upon some astounding journey. Does my reader
wonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as they had never seen
before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible.
Our eyes gather in light, and with the little rays of light that they
bring us we gather a few images of things as we suppose them to be.
Pardon me, reader, if I call them things as we suppose them to be; call
them by all means Things As They Really Are, if you wish. These images
then, this tiny little brainful that we gather from the immensities,
are all brought in by our eyesight upside-down, and the brain corrects
them again; and so, and so we know something. An oculist will tell you
how it all works. He may admit it is all a little clumsy, or for the
dignity of his profession he may say it is not at all. But be this as
it may, our eyes are but barriers between us and the immensities. All
our five senses that grope a little here and touch a little there, and
seize, and compare notes, and get a little knowledge sometimes, they
are only barriers between us and what there is to know. Rodriguez and
Morano were outside these barriers. They saw without the imperfections
of eyesight; they heard on that journey what would have deafened ears;
they went through our atmosphere unburned by speed, and were unchilled
in the bleak of the outer spaces. Thus freed of the imperfections of
the body they sped, no less upon a terrible journey, whose direction as
yet Rodriguez only began to fear.

They had seen the stars pale rapidly and then the flash of dawn. The
Sun rushed up and at once began to grow larger. Earth, with her curved
sides still diminishing violently, was soon a small round garden in
blue and filmy space, in which mountains were planted. And still the
Sun was growing wider and wider. And now Rodriguez, though he knew
nothing of Sun or planets, perceived the obvious truth of their
terrible journey: they were heading straight for the Sun. But the
spirit of Morano was merely astounded; yet, being free of the body he
suffered none of those inconveniences that perturbation may bring to
us: spirits do not gasp, or palpitate, or weaken, or sicken.

The dwindling Earth seemed now no more than the size of some unmapped
island seen from a mountain-top, an island a hundred yards or so
across, looking like a big table.

Speed is comparative: compared to sound, their pace was beyond
comparison; nor could any modern projectile attain any velocity
comparable to it; even the speed of explosion was slow to it. And yet
for spirits they were moving slowly, who being independent of all
material things, travel with such velocities as that, for instance, of
thought. But they were controlled by one still dwelling on Earth, who
used material things, and the material that the Professor was using to
hurl them upon their journey was light, the adaptation of which to this
purpose he had learned at Saragossa. At the pace of light they were
travelling towards the Sun.

They crossed the path of Venus, far from where Venus then was, so that
she scarcely seemed larger to them; Earth was but little bigger than
the Evening Star, looking dim in that monstrous daylight.

Crossing the path of Mercury, Mercury appeared huger than our Moon, an
object weirdly unnatural; and they saw ahead of them the terrific glare
in which Mercury basks, from a Sun whose withering orb had more than
doubled its width since they came from the hills of Earth. And after
this the Sun grew terribly larger, filling the centre of the sky, and
spreading and spreading and spreading. It was now that they saw what
would have dazzled eyes, would have burned up flesh and would have
shrivelled every protection that our scientists' ingenuity could have
devised even today. To speak of time there is meaningless. There is
nothing in the empty space between the Sun and Mercury with which time
is at all concerned. Far less is there meaning in time wherever the
spirits of men are under stress. A few minutes' bombardment in a
trench, a few hours in a battle, a few weeks' travelling in a trackless
country; these minutes, these hours, these weeks can never be few.

Rodriguez and Morano had been travelling about six or seven minutes,
but it seems idle to say so.

And then the Sun began to fill the whole sky in front of them. And in
another minute, if minutes had any meaning, they were heading for a
boundless region of flame that, left and right, was everywhere, and now
towered above them, and went below them into a flaming abyss.

And now Morano spoke to Rodriguez. He thought towards him, and
Rodriguez was aware of his thinking: it is thus that spirits
communicate.

"Master," he said, "when it was all spring in Spain, years ago when I
was thin and young, twenty years gone at least; and the butterflies
were come, and song was everywhere; there came a maid bare-footed over
a stream, walking through flowers, and all to pluck the anemones." How
fair she seemed even now, how bright that far spring day. Morano told
Rodriguez not with his blundering lips: they were closed and resting
deeply millions of miles away: he told him as spirits tell. And in that
clear communication Rodriguez saw all that shone in Morano's memory,
the grace of the young girl's ankles, the thrill of Spring, the
anemones larger and brighter than anemones ever were, the hawks still
in clear sky; earth happy and heaven blue, and the dreams of youth
between. You would not have said, had you seen Morano's coarse fat
body, asleep in a chair in the Professor's room, that his spirit
treasured such delicate, nymph-like, pastoral memories as now shone
clear to Rodriguez. No words the blunt man had ever been able to utter
had ever hinted that he sometimes thought like a dream of pictures by
Watteau. And now in that awful space before the power of the terrible
Sun, spirit communed with spirit, and Rodriguez saw the beauty of that
far day, framed all about the beauty of one young girl, just as it had
been for years in Morano's memory. How shall I tell with words what
spirit sang wordless to spirit? We poets may compete with each other in
words; but when spirits give up the purest gold of their store, that
has shone far down the road of their earthly journey, cheering tired
hearts and guiding mortal feet, our words shall barely interpret.

Love, coming long ago over flowers in Spain, found Morano; words did
not tell the story, words cannot tell it; as a lake reflects a cloud in
the blue of heaven, so Rodriguez understood and felt and knew this
memory out of the days of Morano's youth. "And so, master," said
Morano, "I sinned, and would indeed repent, and yet even now at this
last dread hour I cannot abjure that day; and this is indeed Hell, as
the good father said."

Rodriguez tried to comfort Morano with such knowledge as he had of
astronomy, if knowledge it could be called. Indeed, if he had known
anything he would have perplexed Morano more, and his little pieces of
ignorance were well adapted for comfort. But Morano had given up hope,
having long been taught to expect this very fire: his spirit was no
wiser than it had been on Earth, it was merely freed of the
imperfections of the five senses and so had observation and expression
beyond those of any artist the world has known. This was the natural
result of being freed of the body; but he was not suddenly wiser; and
so, as he moved towards this boundless flame, he expected every moment
to see Satan charge out to meet him: and having no hope for the future
he turned to the past and fondled the memory of that one spring day.
His was a backsliding, unrepentant spirit.

As that monstrous sea of flame grew ruthlessly larger Rodriguez felt no
fear, for spirits have no fear of material things: but Morano feared.
He feared as spirits fear spiritual things; he thought he neared the
home of vast spirits of evil and that the arena of conflict was
eternity. He feared with a fear too great to be borne by bodies.
Perhaps the fat body that slept on a chair on earth was troubled in
dreams by some echo of that fear that gripped the spirit so sorely. And
it may be from such far fears that all our nightmares come.

When they had travelled nearly ten minutes from Earth and were about to
pass into the midst of the flame, that magician who controlled their
journey halted them suddenly in Space, among the upper mountain-peaks
of the Sun. There they hovered as the clouds hover that leave their
companions and drift among crags of the Alps: below them those awful
mountains heaved and thundered. All Atlas, and Teneriffe, and lonely
Kenia might have lain amongst them unnoticed. As often as the
earthquake rocked their bases it loosened from near their summits wild
avalanches of gold that swept down their flaming slopes with
unthinkable tumult. As they watched, new mountains rode past them,
crowned with their frightful flames; for, whether man knew it or not,
the Sun was rotating, but the force of its gravity that swung the
planets had no grip upon spirits, who were held by the power of that
tremendous spell that the Professor had learned one midnight at
Saragossa from one of that dread line who have their secrets from a
source that we do not know in a distant age.

There is always something tremendous in the form of great mountains;
but these swept by, not only huger than anything Earth knows, but
troubled by horrible commotions, as though overtaken in flight by some
ceaseless calamity.

Rodriguez and Morano, as they looked at them, forgetting the gardens of
Earth, forgetting Spring and Summer and the sweet beneficence of
sunshine, felt that the purpose of Creation was evil! So shocking a
thought may well astound us here, where green hills slope to lawns or
peer at a peaceful sea; but there among the flames of those dreadful
peaks the Sun seemed not the giver of joy and colour and life, but only
a catastrophe huger than everlasting war, a centre of hideous violence
and ruin and anger and terror. There came by mountains of copper
burning everlasting, hurling up to unthinkable heights their mass of
emerald flame. And mountains of iron raged by and mountains of salt,
quaking and thundering and clothed with their colours, the iron always
scarlet and the salt blue. And sometimes there came by pinnacles a
thousand miles high that from base to summit were fire, mountains of
pure flame that had no other substance. And these explosive mountains,
born of thunder and earthquake, hurling down avalanches the size of our
continents, and drawing upward out of the deeps of the Sun new material
for splendour and horror, this roaring waste, this extravagant
destruction, were necessary for every tint that our butterflies wear on
their wings. Without those flaming ranges of mountains of iron they
would have no red to show; even the poppy could have no red for her
petals: without the flames that were blasting the mountains of salt
there could be no answering blue in any wing, or one blue flower for
all the bees of Earth: without the nightmare light of those frightful
canyons of copper that awed the two spirits watching their ceaseless
ruin, the very leaves of the woods we love would be without their green
with which to welcome Spring; for from the flames of the various metals
and wonders that for ever blaze in the Sun, our sunshine gets all its
colours that it conveys to us almost unseen, and thence the wise little
insects and patient flowers softly draw the gay tints that they glory
in; there is nowhere else to get them.

And yet to Rodriguez and Morano all that they saw seemed wholly and
hideously evil.

How long they may have watched there they tried to guess afterwards,
but as they looked on those terrific scenes they had no way to separate
days from minutes: nothing about them seemed to escape destruction, and
time itself seemed no calmer than were those shuddering mountains.

Then the thundering ranges passed; and afterwards there came a gleaming
mountain, one huge and lonely peak, seemingly all of gold. Had our
whole world been set beside it and shaped as it was shaped, that golden
mountain would yet have towered above it: it would have taken our moon
as well to reach that flashing peak. It rode on toward them in its
golden majesty, higher than all the flames, save now and then when some
wild gas seemed to flee from the dread earthquakes of the Sun, and was
overtaken in the height by fire, even above that mountain.

As that mass of gold that was higher than all the world drew near to
Rodriguez and Morano they felt its unearthly menace; and though it
could not overcome their spirits they knew there was a hideous terror
about it. It was in its awful scale that its terror lurked for any
creature of our planet. Though they could not quake or tremble they
felt that terror. The mountain dwarfed Earth.

Man knows his littleness, his own mountains remind him; many countries
are small, and some nations: but the dreams of Man make up for our
faults and failings, for the brevity of our lives, for the narrowness
of our scope; they leap over boundaries and are away and away. But this
great mountain belittled the world and all: who gazed on it knew all
his dreams to be puny. Before this mountain Man seemed a trivial thing,
and Earth, and all the dreams Man had of himself and his home.

The golden mass drew opposite those two watchers and seemed to
challenge with its towering head the pettiness of the tiny world they
knew. And then the whole gleaming mountain gave one shudder and fell
into the awful plains of the Sun. Straight down before Rodriguez and
Morano it slipped roaring, till the golden peak was gone, and the
molten plain closed over it; and only ripples remained, the size of
Europe, as when a tumbling river strikes the rocks of its bed and on
its surface heaving circles widen and disappear. And then, as though
this horror left nothing more to be shown, they felt the Professor
beckon to them from Earth.

Over the plains of the Sun a storm was sweeping in gusts of howling
flame as they felt the Professor's spell drawing them home. For the
magnitude of that storm there are no words in use among us; its
velocity, if expressed in figures, would have no meaning; its heat was
immeasurable. Suffice it to say that if such a tempest could have swept
over Earth for a second, both the poles would have boiled. The
travellers left it galloping over that plain, rippled from underneath
by the restless earthquake and whipped into flaming foam by the force
of the storm. The Sun already was receding from them, already growing
smaller. Soon the storm seemed but a cloud of light sweeping over the
empty plain, like a murderous mourner rushing swiftly away from the
grave of that mighty mountain.

And now the Professor's spell gripped them in earnest: rapidly the Sun
grew smaller. As swiftly as he had sent them upon that journey he was
now drawing them home. They overtook thunders that they had heard
already, and passed them, and came again to the silent spaces which the
thunders of the Sun are unable to cross, so that even Mercury is
undisturbed by them.

I have said that spirits neither fade nor weary. But a great sadness
was on them; they felt as men feel who come whole away from periods of
peril. They had seen cataclysms too vast for our imagination, and a
mournfulness and a satiety were upon them. They could have gazed at one
flower for days and needed no other experience, as a wounded man may be
happy staring at the flame of a candle.

Crossing the paths of Mercury and Venus, they saw that these planets
had not appreciably moved, and Rodriguez, who knew that planets wander
in the night, guessed thereby that they had not been absent from Earth
for many hours.

They rejoiced to see the Sun diminishing steadily. Only for a moment as
they started their journey had they seen that solar storm rushing over
the plains of the Sun; but now it appeared to hang halted in its mid
anger, as though blasting one region eternally.

Moving on with the pace of light, they saw Earth, soon after crossing
the path of Venus, beginning to grow larger than a star. Never had home
appeared more welcome to wanderers, who see their house far off,
returning home.

And as Earth grew larger, and they began to see forms that seemed like
seas and mountains, they looked for their own country, but could not
find it: for, travelling straight from the Sun, they approached that
part of the world that was then turned towards it, and were heading
straight for China, while Spain lay still in darkness.

But when they came near Earth and its mountains were clear, then the
Professor drew them across the world, into the darkness and over Spain;
so that those two spirits ended their marvellous journey much as the
snipe ends his, a drop out of heaven and a swoop low over marshes. So
they came home, while Earth seemed calling to them with all her voices;
with memories, sights and scents, and little sounds; calling anxiously,
as though they had been too long away and must be home soon. They heard
a cock crow on the edge of the night; they heard more little sounds
than words can say; only the organ can hint at them. It was Earth
calling. For, talk as we may of our dreams that transcend this sphere,
or our hopes that build beyond it, Mother Earth has yet a mighty hold
upon us; and her myriad sounds were blending in one cry now, knowing
that it was late and that these two children of hers were nearly lost.
For our spirits that sometimes cross the path of the angels, and on
rare evenings hear a word of their talk, and have brief equality with
the Powers of Light, have the duty also of moving fingers and toes,
which freeze if our proud spirits forget their task for too long.

And just as Earth was despairing they reached the Professor's mountain
and entered the room in which their bodies were.

Blue and cold and ugly looked the body of Morano, but for all its
pallor there was beauty in the young face of Rodriguez.

The Professor stood before them as he had stood when their spirits
left, with the table between him and the bodies, and the bowl on the
table which held the green flame, now low and flickering desperately,
which the Professor watched as it leaped and failed, with an air of
anxiety that seemed to pinch his thin features.

With an impatience strange to him he waved a swift hand towards each of
the two bodies where they sat stiff, illumined by the last of the green
light; and at those rapid gestures the travellers returned to their
habitations.

They seemed to be just awakening out of deep sleep. Again they saw the
Professor standing before them. But they saw him only with blinking
eyes, they saw him only as eyes can see, guessing at his mind from the
lines of his face, at his thoughts from the movements of his hands,
guessing as men guess, blindly: only a moment before they had known him
utterly. Now they were dazed and forgetting: slow blood began to creep
again to their toes and to come again to its place under fingernails:
it came with intense pain: they forgot their spirits. Then all the woes
of Earth crowded their minds at once, so that they wished to weep, as
infants weep.

The Professor gave this mood time to change, as change it presently
did. For the warm blood came back and lit their cheeks, and a tingling
succeeded the pain in their fingers and toes, and a mild warmth
succeeded the tingling: their thoughts came back to the things of every
day, to mundane things and the affairs of the body. Therein they
rejoiced, and Morano no less than Rodriguez; though it was a coarse and
common body that Morano's spirit inhabited. And when the Professor saw
that the first sorrow of Earth, which all spirits feel when they land
here, had passed away, and that they were feeling again the joy of
mundane things, only then did he speak.

"Señor," he said, "beyond the path of Mars run many worlds that I would
have you know. The greatest of these is Jupiter, towards whom all that
follow my most sacred art show reverent affection. The smallest are
those that sometimes strike our world, flaming all green upon November
nights, and are even as small as apples." He spoke of our world with a
certain air and a pride, as though, through virtue of his transcendent
art, the world were only his. "The world that we name Argola," he said,
"is far smaller than Spain and, being invisible from Earth, is only
known to the few who have spoken to spirits whose wanderings have
surpassed the path of Mars. Nearly half of Argola you shall find
covered with forests, which though very dense are no deeper than moss,
and the elephants in them are not larger than beetles. You shall see
many wonders of smallness in this world of Argola, which I desire in
especial to show you, since it is the orb with which we who study the
Art are most familiar, of all the worlds that the vulgar have not
known. It is indeed the prize of our traffic in those things that far
transcend the laws that have forbidden them."

And as he said this the green flame in the bowl before him died, and he
moved towards his cupboard of wonder. Rodriguez hastily thanked the
Professor for his great courtesy in laying bare before him secrets that
the centuries hid, and then he referred to his own great unworthiness,
to the lateness of the hour, to the fatigue of the Professor, and to
the importance to Learning of adequate rest to refresh his illustrious
mind. And all that he said the Professor parried with bows, and drew
enchantments from his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on the
table. And Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, one
who having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasures
to the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less to
the Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and insists on
showing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some terrible
journey, perhaps some bare escape; for though no material thing can
quite encompass a spirit, he knew not what wanderers he might not meet
in lonely spaces beyond the path of Mars. So when his last polite
remonstrance failed, being turned aside with a pleasant phrase and a
smile from the grim lips, and looking at Morano he saw that he shared
his fears, then he determined to show whatever resistance were needed
to keep himself and Morano in this old world that we know, or that
youth at least believes that it knows.

He watched the Professor return with his packets of wonder; dust from a
fallen star, phials of tears of lost lovers, poison and gold out of
elf-land, and all manner of things. But the moment that he put them
into the bowl Rodriguez' hand flew to his sword-hilt. He heaved up his
elbow, but no sword came forth, for it lay magnetised to its scabbard
by the grip of a current of magic. When Rodriguez saw this he knew not
what to do.

The Professor went on pouring into the bowl. He added an odour
distilled out of dream-roses, three drops from the gall-bladder of a
fabulous beast, and a little dust that had been man. More too he added,
so that my reader might wonder were I to tell him all; yet it is not so
easy to free our spirits from the gross grip of our bodies. Wonder not
then, my reader, if the Professor exerted strange powers. And all the
while Morano was picking at a nail that fastened on the handle to his
frying-pan.

And just as the last few mysteries were shaken into the bowl,--and
there were two among them of which even Asia is ignorant,--just as the
dews were blended with the powers in a grey-green sinister harmony,
Morano untwisted his nail and got the handle loose.

The Professor kindled the mixture in the bowl; again green flame arose,
again that voice of his began to call to their spirits, and its beauty
and the power of its spell were as of some fallen angel. The spirit of
Rodriguez was nearly passing helplessly forth again on some frightful
journey, when Morano losed his scabbard and sword from its girdle and
tied the handle of his frying-pan across it a little below the hilt
with a piece of string. Across the table the Professor intoned his
spell, across a narrow table, but it seemed to come from the far side
of the twilight, a twilight red and golden in long layers, of an
evening wonderfully long ago. It seemed to take its music out of the
lights that it flowed through and to call Rodriguez from immediately
far away, with a call which it were sacrilege to refuse, and anguish
even, and hard toil such as there was no strength to do. And then
Morano held up the sword in its scabbard with the handle of the
frying-pan tied across. Rodriguez, disturbed by a stammer in the spell,
looked up and saw the Professor staring at the sword where Morano held
it up before his face in the green light of the flame from the bowl. He
did not seem like a fallen angel now. His spell had stopped. He seemed
like a professor who had forgotten the theme of his lecture, while the
class waits. For Morano was holding up the sign of the cross.

"You have betrayed me!" shouted the Slave of Orion: the green flame
died, and he strode out of the room, his purple cloak floating behind
him.

"Master," Morano said, "it was always good against magic."

The sword was loose in the scabbard as Rodriguez took it back; there
was no longer a current of magic gripping the steel.

A little uneasily Rodriguez thanked Morano: he was not sure if Morano
had behaved as a guest's servant should. But when he thought of the
Professor's terrible spells, which had driven them to the awful crags
of the sun, and might send them who knows where to hob-nob with who
knows what, his second thoughts perceived that Morano was right to cut
short those arts that the Slave of Orion loved, even by so extreme a
step: and he praised Morano as his ready shrewdness deserved.

"We were very nearly too late back from that outing, master," remarked
Morano.

"How know you that?" said Rodriguez.

"This old body knew," said Morano. "Those heart-thumpings, this
warmness, and all the things that make a fat body comfortable, they
were stopping, master, they were spoiling, they were getting cold and
strange: I go no more errands for that señor."

A certain diffidence about criticising his host even now; and a very
practical vein that ran through his nature, now showing itself in
anxiety for a bed at so late an hour, led Rodriguez to change the
subject. He wanted that aged butler, yet dare not ring the bell; for he
feared lest with all the bells there might be in use that frightful
practice that he had met by the outer door, a chain connected with some
hideous hook that gave anguish to something in the basement whenever
one touched the handle, so that the menials of that grim Professor were
shrilly summoned by screams. And therefore Rodriguez sought counsel of
Morano, who straightway volunteered to find the butler's quarters, by a
certain sense that he had of the fitness of things: and forth he went,
but would not leave the room without the scabbard and the handle of the
frying-pan lashed to it, which he bore high before him in both his
hands as though he were leading some austere procession. And even so he
returned with that aged man the butler, who led them down dim corridors
of stone; but, though he showed the way, Morano would go in front,
still holding up that scabbard and handle before him, while Rodriguez
held the bare sword. And so they came to a room lit by the flare of one
candle, which their guide told them the Professor had prepared for his
guest. In the vastness of it was a great bed. Shadows and a whir as of
wings passed out of the door as they entered. "Bats," said the ancient
guide. But Morano believed he had routed powers of evil with the handle
of his frying-pan and his master's scabbard. Who could say what they
were in such a house, where bats and evil spirits sheltered perennially
from the brooms of the just? Then that ancient man with the lips of
some woodland thing departed, and Rodriguez went to the great bed. On a
pile of straw that had been cast into the room Morano lay down across
the door, setting the scabbard upright in a rat-hole near his head,
while Rodriguez lay down with the bare sword in his hand. There was
only one door in the room, and this Morano guarded. Windows there were,
but they were shuttered with raw oak of enormous thickness. He had
already enquired with his sword behind the velvet curtains. He felt
secure in the bulk of Morano across the only door, at least from
creatures of this world: and Morano feared no longer either spirit or
spell, believing that he had vanquished the Professor with his symbol,
and all such allies as he may have had here or elsewhere. But not thus
easily do we overcome the powers of evil.

A step was heard such as man walks with at the close of his later
years, coming along the corridor of stone; and they knew it for the
Professor's butler returning. The latch of the door trembled and
lifted, and the great oak door bumped slowly against Morano, who arose
grumbling, and the old man appeared.

"The Professor," he said, while Morano watched him grudgingly, "returns
with all his household to Saragossa at once, to resume those studies
for which his name resounds, a certain conjunction of the stars having
come favourably."

Even Morano doubted that so suddenly the courses of the stars, which he
deemed to be gradual, should have altered from antagonism towards the
Professor's art into a favourable aspect. Rodriguez sleepily
acknowledged the news and settled himself to sleep, still sword in
hand, when the servitor repeated with as much emphasis as his aged
voice could utter, "With all his household, señor."

"Yes," muttered Rodriguez. "Farewell."

And repeating again, "He takes his household with him," the old man
shuffled back from the room and hesitatingly closed the door. Before
the sound of his slow footsteps had failed to reach the room Morano was
asleep under his cross. Rodriguez still watched for a while the shadows
leaping and shuddering away from the candle, riding over the ceiling,
striding hugely along the walls, towards him and from him, as draughts
swayed the ruddy flame; then, gripping his sword still firmer in his
hand, as though that could avail against magic, he fell into the sleep
of tired men.

No sound disturbed Rodriguez or Morano till both awoke in late morning
upon the rocks of the mountain. The sun had climbed over the crags and
now shone on their faces. Rodriguez was still lying with his sword
gripped in his hand, but the cross had fallen by Morano and now lay on
the rocks beside him with the handle of the frying-pan still tied in
its place by string. A young, wild, woodland squirrel gambolled near,
though there were no woods for it anywhere within sight: it leaped and
played as though rejoicing in youth, with such merriment as though
youth had but come to it newly or been lost and restored again.

All over the mountain they looked but there was no house, nor any sign
of dwelling of man or spirit.




THE FIFTH CHRONICLE

HOW HE RODE IN THE TWILIGHT AND SAW SERAFINA


Rodriguez, who loved philosophy, turned his mind at once to the journey
that lay before him, deciding which was the north; for he knew that it
was by the north that he must leave Spain, which he still desired to
leave since there were no wars in that country.

Morano knew not clearly what philosophy was, yet he wasted no thoughts
upon the night that was gone; and, fitting up his frying-pan
immediately, he brought out what was left of his bacon and began to
look for material to make a fire. The bacon lay waiting in the
frying-pan for some while before this material was gathered, for
nothing grew on the mountain but a heath; and of that there were few
bushes, scattered here and there.

Rodriguez, far from ruminating upon the events of the previous night,
realised as he watched these preparations that he was enormously
hungry. And when Morano had kindled a fire and the smell of cooking
arose, he who had held the chair of magic at Saragossa was banished
from both their minds, although upon this very spot they had spent so
strange a night; but where bacon is, and there be hungry men, the
things of yesterday are often forgotten.

"Morano," said Rodriguez, "we must walk far to-day."

"Indeed, master," said Morano, "we must push on to these wars; for you
have no castle, master, no lands, no fortune ..."

"Come," said Rodriguez.

Morano slung his frying-pan behind him: they had eaten up the last of
his bacon: he stood up, and they were ready for the journey. The smoke
from their meagre fire went thinly into the air, the small grey clouds
of it went slowly up: nothing beside remained to bid them farewell, or
for them to thank for their strange night's hospitality. They climbed
till they reached the rugged crest of the mountain; thence they saw a
wide plain and the morning: the day was waiting for them.

The northern slope of the mountain was wholly different from that black
congregation of angry rocks through which they had climbed by night to
the House of Wonder.

The slope that now lay before them was smooth and grassy, flowing
before them far, a gentle slope that was soon to lend speed to
Rodriguez' feet, adding nimbleness even to youth. Soon, too, it was to
lift onward the dull weight of Morano as he followed his master towards
unknown wars, youth going before him like a spirit and the good slope
helping behind. But before they gave themselves to that waiting journey
they stood a moment and looked at the shining plain that lay before
them like an open page, on which was the whole chronicle of that day's
wayfaring. There was the road they should travel by, there were the
streams it crossed and narrow woods they might rest in, and dim on the
farthest edge was the place they must spend that night. It was all, as
it were written, upon the plain they watched, but in a writing not
intended for them, and, clear although it be, never to be interpreted
by one of our race. Thus they saw clear, from a height, the road they
would go by, but not one of all the events to which it would lead them.

"Master," said Morano, "shall we have more adventures to-day?"

"I trust so," said Rodriguez. "We have far to go, and it will be dull
journeying without them."

Morano turned his eyes from his master's face and looked back to the
plain. "There, master," he said, "where our road runs through a wood,
will our adventure be there, think you? Or there, perhaps," and he
waved his hand widely farther.

"No," said Rodriguez, "we pass that in bright daylight."

"Is that not good for adventure?" said Morano.

"The romances teach," said Rodriguez, "that twilight or night are
better. The shade of deep woods is favourable, but there are no such
woods on this plain. When we come to evening we shall doubtless meet
some adventure, far over there." And he pointed to the grey rim of the
plain where it started climbing towards hills.

"These are good days," said Morano. He forgot how short a time ago he
had said regretfully that these days were not as the old days. But our
race, speaking generally, is rarely satisfied with the present, and
Morano's cheerfulness had not come from his having risen suddenly
superior to this everyday trouble of ours; it came from his having
shifted his gaze to the future. Two things are highly tolerable to us,
and even alluring, the past and the future. It was only with the
present that Morano was ever dissatisfied.

When Morano said that the days were good Rodriguez set out to find
them, or at least that one that for some while now lay waiting for them
on the plain. He strode down the slope at once and, endowing nature
with his own impatience, he felt that he heard the morning call to him
wistfully. Morano followed.

For an hour these refugees escaping from peace went down the slope; and
in that hour they did five swift miles, miles that seemed to run by
them as they walked, and so they came lightly to the level plain. And
in the next hour they did four miles more. Words were few, either
because Morano brooded mainly upon one thought, the theme of which was
his lack of bacon, or because he kept his breath to follow his master
who, with youth and the morning, was coming out of the hills at a pace
not tuned to Morano's forty years or so. And at the end of these nine
miles Morano perceived a house, a little way from the road, on the
left, upon rising ground. A mile or so ahead they saw the narrow wood
that they had viewed in the morning from the mountain running across
the plain. They saw now by the lie of the ground that it probably
followed a stream, a pleasant place in which to take the rest demanded
by Spain at noon. It was just an hour to noon; so Rodriguez, keeping
the road, told Morano to join him where it entered the wood when he had
acquired his bacon. And then as they parted a thought occurred to
Rodriguez, which was that bacon cost money. It was purely an
afterthought, an accidental fancy, such as inspirations are, for he had
never had to buy bacon. So he gave Morano a fifth part of his money, a
large gold coin the size of one of our five-shilling pieces, engraved
of course upon one side with the glories and honours of that golden
period of Spain, and upon the other with the head of the lord the King.
It was only by chance he had brought any at all; he was not what our
newspapers will call, if they ever care to notice him, a level-headed
business man. At the sight of the gold piece Morano bowed, for he felt
this gift of gold to be an occasion; but he trusted more for the
purchase of the bacon to some few small silver coins of his own that he
kept among lumps of lard and pieces of string.

And so they parted for a while, Rodriguez looking for some great
shadowy oak with moss under it near a stream, Morano in quest of bacon.

When Rodriguez entered the wood he found his oak, but it was not such
an oak as he cared to rest beneath during the heat of the day, nor
would you have done so, my reader, even though you have been to the
wars and seen many a pretty mess; for four of la Garda were by it and
were arranging to hang a man from the best of the branches.

"La Garda again," said Rodriguez nearly aloud.

His eye drooped, his look was listless, he gazed at other things; while
a glance that you had not noticed, flashed slantingly at la Garda,
satisfied Rodriguez that all four were strangers: then he walked
straight towards them merrily. The man they proposed to hang was a
stranger too. He appeared at first to be as stout as Morano, and he was
nearly half a foot taller, but his stoutness turned out to be sheer
muscle. The broad man was clothed in old brown leather and had blue
eyes.

Now there was something about the poise of Rodriguez' young head which
gave him an air not unlike that which the King himself sometimes wore
when he went courting. It suited his noble sword and his merry plume.
When la Garda saw him they were all politeness at once, and invited him
to see the hanging, for which Rodriguez thanked them with amplest
courtesy.

"It is not a bull-fight," said the chief of la Garda almost
apologetically. But Rodriguez waved aside his deprecations and declared
himself charmed at the prospect of a hanging.

Bear with me, reader, while I champion a bad cause and seek to palliate
what is inexcusable. As we travel about the world on our way through
life we meet and pass here and there, in peace or in war, other men,
fellow-travellers: and sometimes there is no more than time for a
glance, eye to eye. And in that glance you see the sort of man: and
chiefly there are two sorts. The one sort always brooding, always
planning; mean, silent men, collecting properties and money; keeping
the law on their side, keeping everything on their side; except women
and heaven, and the late, leisurely judgment of simple people: and the
others merry folk, whose eyes twinkle, whose money flies, who will
sooner laugh than plan, who seem to inherit rightfully the happiness
that the others plot for, and fail to come by with all their schemes.
In the man who was to provide the entertainment Rodriguez recognised
the second kind.

Now even though the law had caught a saint that had strayed too far
outside the boundary of Heaven, and desired to hang him, Rodriguez knew
that it was his duty to help the law while help was needed, and to
applaud after the thing was done. The law to Rodriguez was the most
sacred thing man had made, if indeed it were not divine; but since the
privilege that two days ago had afforded him of studying it more
closely, it appeared to him the blindest, silliest thing with which he
had had to do since the kittens were drowned that his cat Tabitharina
had had at Arguento Harez.

It was in this deplorable state of mind that Rodriguez' glance fell on
the merry eyes and the solemn predicament of the man in the leather
coat, standing pinioned under a long branch of the oak-tree: and he
determined from that moment to disappoint la Garda and, I fear also, my
reader, perhaps to disappoint you, of the hanging that they at least
had promised themselves.

"Think you," said Rodriguez, "that for so stout a knave this branch of
yours suffices?"

Now it was an excellent branch. But it was not so much Rodriguez' words
as the anxious way in which he looked at the branch that aroused the
anxieties of la Garda: and soon they were looking about to find a
better tree; and when four men start doing this in a wood time quickly
passes. Meanwhile Morano drew near, and Rodriguez went to meet him.

"Master," said Morano, all out of breath, "they had no bacon. But I got
these two bottles of wine. It is strong wine, which is a rare deluder
of the senses, which will need to be deluded if we are to go hungry."

Rodriguez was about to cut short Morano's chatter when he thought of a
use for the wine, and was silent a moment. And as he pondered Morano
looked up and saw la Garda and at the same time perceived the
situation, for he had as quick an eye for a bad business as any man.

"No one with the horses," was his comment; for they were tethered a
little apart. But Rodriguez' mind had already explored a surer method
than the one that Morano seemed to be contemplating. This method he
told Morano. And now, from little tugs that they were giving to the
doubled rope that hung over the branch of the oak-tree, it was clear
enough that the men of the law were returning to their confidence in
that very sufficient branch.

They looked up with questions ripe to drop from their lips when they
saw Rodriguez returning with Morano. But before one of them spoke
Morano flung to them from far off a little piece of his wisdom: for
cast a truth into an occasion and it will always trouble the waters,
usually stirring up contradiction, but always bringing something to the
surface.

"Señores," he said, "no man can enjoy a hanging with a dry throat."

Thus he turned their attention a while from the business in hand,
changing their thoughts from the stout neck of the prisoner to their
own throats, wondering were they dry; and you do not wonder long about
this in the south without finding that what you feared is true. And
then he let them see the two great bottles, all full of wine, for the
invention of the false bottom that gives to our champagne-bottles the
place they rightly hold among famous deceptions had not as yet been
discovered.

"It is true," said la Garda. And Rodriguez made Morano put one of the
bottles away in a piece of a sack that he carried: and when la Garda
saw one of the two bottles disappear it somehow decided them to have
the other, though how this came to be so there is no saying; and thus
the hanging was postponed again.

Now the drink was a yellow wine, sweet and heavy and stronger than our
port; only our whisky could out-triumph it, but there in the warm south
it answered its purpose. Rodriguez beckoned Morano up and offered the
bottle to one of la Garda; but scarcely had he put it to his lips when
Rodriguez bade him stop, saying that he had had his share. And he did
the same with the next man.

Now there be few things indeed which la Garda resent more than meagre
hospitality in the matter of drink, and with all their wits striving to
cope with this vicious defect in Rodriguez, as they rightly or wrongly
regarded it, how should they have any to spare for obvious precautions?
As the third man drank, Rodriguez turned to speak to Morano; and the
representative of the law took such advantage of an opportunity that he
feared to be fleeting, that when Rodriguez turned round again the
bottle was just half empty. Rodriguez had timed it very nicely.

Next Rodriguez put the bottle to his lips and held it there a little
time, while the fourth man of the law, who was guarding the prisoner,
watched Rodriguez wistfully, and afterwards Morano, who took the bottle
next. Yet neither Rodriguez nor Morano drank.

"You can finish the bottle," said Rodriguez to this anxious watcher,
who came forward eagerly though full of doubts, which changed to warm
feelings of exuberant gratitude when he found how much remained. Thus
he obtained not much less than two tumblerfuls of wine that, as I have
said, was stronger than port; and noon was nearing and it was spring in
Spain. And then he returned to guard his prisoner under the oak-tree
and lay down there on the moss, remembering that it was his duty to
keep awake. And afterwards with one hand he took hold of a rope that
bound the prisoner's ankles, so that he might still guard his prisoner
even though he should fall asleep.

Now two of the men had had little more than the full of a sherry glass
each. To these Morano made signs that there was another bottle, and,
coming round behind his master, he covertly uncorked it and gave them
their heart's desire; and a little was left over for the man who drank
third on the first occasion. And presently the spirits of all four of
la Garda grew haughty and forgot their humble bodies, and would fain
have gone forth to dwell with the sons of light, while their bodies lay
on the moss and the sun grew warmer and warmer, shining dappled in
amongst the small green leaves. All seemed still but for the winged
insects flashing through shafts of the sunlight out of the gloom of the
trees and disappearing again like infinitesimal meteors. But our
concern is with the thoughts of man, of which deeds are but the
shadows: wherever these are active it is wrong to say all is still; for
whether they cast their shadows, which are actions, or whether they
remain a force not visibly stirring matter, they are the source of the
tales we write and the lives we lead; it is they that gave History her
material and they that bade her work it up into books.

And thoughts were very active about that oak-tree. For while the
thoughts of la Garda arose like dawn, and disappeared into mists, their
prisoner was silently living through the sunny days of his life, which
are at no time quite lost to us, and which flash vivid and bright and
near when memory touches them, herself awakened by the nearness of
death. He lived again days far from the day that had brought him where
he stood. He drew from those days (that is to say) that delight, that
essence of hours, that something which we call life. The sun, the wind,
the rough sand, the splash of the sea, on the star-fish, and all the
things that it feels during its span, are stored in something like its
memory, and are what we call its life: it is the same with all of us.
Life is feeling. The prisoner from the store of his memory was taking
all he had. His head was lifted, he was gazing northwards, far further
than his eyes could see, to shining spaces in great woods; and there
his threatened being walked in youth, with steps such as spirits take,
over immortal flowers, which were dim and faint but unfading because
they lived on in memory. In memory he walked with some who were now far
from his footsteps. And, seen through the gloaming of that perilous
day, how bright did those far days appear! Did they not seem sunnier
than they really were? No, reader; for all the radiance that glittered
so late in his mind was drawn from those very days; it was their own
brightness that was shining now: we are not done with the days that
were as soon as their sunsets have faded, but a light remains from them
and grows fairer and fairer, like an afterglow lingering among
tremendous peaks above immeasurable slopes of snow.

The prisoner had scarcely noticed Rodriguez or his servant, any more
than he noticed his captors; for there come an intensity to those who
walk near death that makes them a little alien from other men, life
flaring up in them at the last into so grand a flame that the lives of
the others seem a little cold and dim where they dwell remote from that
sunset that we call mortality. So he looked silently at the days that
were as they came dancing back again to him from where they had long
lain lost in chasms of time, to which they had slipped over dark edges
of years. Smiling they came, but all wistfully anxious, as though their
errand were paramount and their span short: he saw them cluster about
him, running now, bringing their tiny gifts, and scarcely heard the
heavy sigh of his guard as Rodriguez gagged him and Morano tied him up.

Had Rodriguez now released the prisoner they could have been three to
three, in the event of things going wrong with the sleep of la Garda;
but, since in the same time they could gag and bind another, the odds
would be the same at two to two, and Rodriguez preferred this to the
slight uncertainties that would be connected with the entry of another
partner. They accordingly gagged the next man and bound his wrists and
ankles. And that Spanish wine held good with the other two and bound
them far down among the deeps of dreams: and so it should, for it was
of a vine that grew in the vales of Spain and had ripened in one of the
years of the golden age.

They bound one as easily as they had bound the other two; and the last
Rodriguez watched while Morano cut the ropes off the prisoner, for he
had run out of bits of twine and all other improvisations. With these
ropes he ran back to his master, and they tied up the last prisoner but
did not gag him.

"Shall we gag him, master, like the rest?" said Morano.

"No," said Rodriguez. "He has nothing to say."

And though this remark turned out to be strictly untrue, it well enough
answered its purpose.

And then they saw standing before them the man they had freed. And he
bowed to Rodriguez like one that had never bowed before. I do not mean
that he bowed with awkwardness, like imitative men unused to
politeness, but he bowed as the oak bows to the woodman; he stood
straight, looking Rodriguez in the eyes, then he bowed as though he had
let his spirit break, which allowed him to bow to never a man before.
Thus, if my pen has been able dimly to tell of it, thus bowed the man
in the old leathern jacket. And Rodriguez bowed to him in answer with
the elegance that they that had dwelt at Arguento Harez had slowly
drawn from the ages.

"Señor, your name," said the stranger.

"Lord of Arguento Harez," said Rodriguez.

"Señor," he said, "being a busy man, I have seldom time to pray. And
the blessed Saints, being more busy than I, I think seldom hear my
prayers: yet your name shall go up to them. I will often tell it them
quietly in the forest, and not on their holy days when bells are
ringing and loud prayers fill Heaven. It may be ..."

"Señor," Rodriguez said, "I profoundly thank you."

Even in these days, when bullets are often thicker than prayers, we are
not quite thankless for the prayers of others: in those days they were
what "closing quotations" are on the Stock Exchange, ink in Fleet
Street, machinery in the Midlands; common but valued; and Rodriguez'
thanks were sincere.

And now that the curses of the ungagged one of la Garda were growing
monotonous, Rodriguez turned to Morano.

"Ungag the rest," he said, "and let them talk to each other."

"Master," Morano muttered, feeling that there was enough noise already
for a small wood, but he went and did as he was ordered. And Rodriguez
was justified of his humane decision, for the pent thoughts of all
three found expression together and, all four now talking at once,
mitigated any bitterness there may have been in those solitary curses.
And now Rodriguez could talk undisturbed.

"Whither?" said the stranger.

"To the wars," said Rodriguez, "if wars there be."

"Aye," said the stranger, "there be always wars somewhere. By which
road go you?"

"North," said Rodriguez, and he pointed. The stranger turned his eyes
to the way Rodriguez pointed.

"That brings you to the forest," he said, "unless you go far around, as
many do."

"What forest?" said Rodriguez.

"The great forest named Shadow Valley," said the stranger.

"How far?" said Rodriguez.

"Forty miles," said the stranger.

Rodriguez looked at la Garda and then at their horses, and thought. He
must be far from la Garda by nightfall.

"It is not easy to pass through Shadow Valley," said the stranger.

"Is it not?" said Rodriguez.

"Have you a gold great piece?" the stranger said.

Rodriguez held out one of his remaining four: the stranger took it. And
then he began to rub it on a stone, and continued to rub while
Rodriguez watched in silence, until the image of the lord the King was
gone and the face of the coin was scratchy and shiny and flat. And then
he produced from a pocket or pouch in his jacket a graving tool with a
round wooden handle, which he took in the palm of his hand, and the
edge of the steel came out between his forefinger and thumb: and with
this he cut at the coin. And Morano rejoined them from his merciful
mission and stood and wondered at the cutting. And while he cut they
talked.

They did not ask him how he came to be chosen for hanging, because in
every country there are about a hundred individualists, varying to
perhaps half a hundred in poor ages. They go their hundred ways, or
their half-dozen ways; and there is a hundred and first way, or a
seventh way, which is the way that is cut for the rest: and if some of
the rest catch one of the hundred, or one of the six, they naturally
hang him, if they have a rope, and if hanging is the custom of the
country, for different countries use different methods. And you saw by
this man's eyes that he was one of the hundred. Rodriguez therefore
only sought to know how he came to be caught.

"La Garda found you, señor?" he said.

"As you see," said the stranger. "I came too far from my home."

"You were travelling?" said Rodriguez.

"Shopping," he said.

At this word Morano's interest awakened wide. "Señor," he said, "what
is the right price for a bottle of this wine that la Garda drink?"

"I know not," said the man in the brown jacket; "they give me these
things."

"Where is your home, señor?" Rodriguez asked.

"It is Shadow Valley," he said.

One never saw Rodriguez fail to understand anything: if he could not
clear a situation up he did not struggle with it. Morano rubbed his
chin: he had heard of Shadow Valley only dimly, for all the travellers
he had known out of the north had gone round it. Rodriguez and Morano
bent their heads and watched a design that was growing out of the gold.
And as the design grew under the hand of the strange worker he began to
talk of the horses. He spoke as though his plans had been clearly
established by edict, and as though no others could be.

"When I have gone with two horses," he said, "ride hard with the other
two till you reach the village named Lowlight, and take them to the
forge of Fernandez the smith, where one will shoe them who is not
Fernandez."

And he waved his hand northwards. There was only one road. Then all his
attention fell back again to his work on the gold coin; and when those
blue eyes were turned away there seemed nothing left to question. And
now Rodriguez saw the design was a crown, a plain gold circlet with oak
leaves rising up from it. And this woodland emblem stood up out of the
gold, for the worker had hollowed the coin away all around it, and was
sloping it up to the edge. Little was said by the watchers in the
wonder of seeing the work, for no craft is very far from the line
beyond which is magic, and the man in the leather coat was clearly a
craftsman: and he said nothing for he worked at a craft. And when the
arboreal crown was finished, and its edges were straight and sharp, an
hour had passed since he began near noon. Then he drilled a hole near
the rim and, drawing a thin green ribbon from his pocket, he passed it
through the hole and, rising, he suddenly hung it round Rodriguez' neck.

"Wear it thus," he said, "while you go through Shadow Valley."

As he said this he stepped back among the trees, and Rodriguez followed
to thank him. Not finding him behind the tree where he thought to find
him, he walked round several others, and Morano joined his search; but
the stranger had vanished. When they returned again to the little
clearing they heard sounds of movement in the wood, and a little way
off where the four horses had grazed there were now only two, which
were standing there with their heads up.

"We must ride, Morano," said Rodriguez.

"Ride, master?" said Morano dolefully.

"If we walk away," said Rodriguez, "they will walk after us."

"They" meant la Garda. It was unnecessary for him to tell Morano what I
thus tell the reader, for in the wood it was hard to hear anyone else,
while to think of anyone else was out of the question.

"What shall I do to them, master?" said Morano.

They were now standing close to their captives and this simple question
calmed the four men's curses, all of a sudden, like shutting the door
on a storm.

"Leave them," Rodriguez said. And la Garda's spirits rose and they
cursed again.

"Ah. To die in the wood," said Morano. "No," said Rodriguez; and he
walked towards the horses. And something in that "No" sounding almost
contemptuous, Morano's feelings were hurt, and he blurted out to his
master "But how can they get away to get their food? It is good knots
that I tie, master."

"Morano," Rodriguez said, "I remember ten ways in the books of romance
whereby bound men untie themselves; and doubtless one or two more I
have read and forgot; and there may be other ways in the books that I
have not read, besides any way that there be of which no books tell.
And in addition to these ways, one of them may draw a comrade's sword
with his teeth and thus ..."

"Shall I pull out their teeth?" said Morano.

"Ride," said Rodriguez, for they were now come to the horses. And
sorrowfully Morano looked at the horse that was to be his, as a man
might look at a small, uncomfortable boat that is to carry him far upon
a stormy day. And then Rodriguez helped him into the saddle.

"Can you stay there?" Rodriguez said. "We have far to go."

"Master," Morano answered, "these hands can hold till evening."

And then Rodriguez mounted, leaving Morano gripping the high front of
the saddle with his large brown hands. But as soon as the horses
started he got a grip with his heels as well, and later on with his
knees. Rodriguez led the way on to the straggling road and was soon
galloping northwards, while Morano's heels kept his horse up close to
his master's. Morano rode as though trained in the same school that
some while later taught Macaulay's equestrian, who rode with "loose
rein and bloody spur." Yet the miles went swiftly by as they galloped
on soft white dust, which lifted and settled, some of it, back on the
lazy road, while some of it was breathed by Morano. The gold coin on
the green silk ribbon flapped up and down as Rodriguez rode, till he
stuffed it inside his clothing and remembered no more about it. Once
they saw before them the man they had snatched from the noose: he was
going hard and leading a loose horse. And then where the road bent
round a low hill he galloped out of sight and they saw him no more. He
had the loose horse to change on to as soon as the other was tired:
they had no prospect of overtaking him. And so he passed out of their
minds as their host had done who went away with his household to
Saragossa.

At first Rodriguez' mandolin, that was always slung on his back, bumped
up and down uncomfortably; but he eased it by altering the strap: small
things like this bring contentment. And then he settled down to ride.
But no contentment came near Morano nor did he look for it. On the
first day of his wanderings he had worn his master's clothes, which has
been an experience standing somewhat where toothache does, which is
somewhere about half-way between discomfort and agony. On the second
day he had climbed at the end of a weary journey over those sharp rocks
whose shape was adapted so ill to his body. On the third day he was
riding. He did not look for comfort. But he met discomfort with an easy
resignation that almost defeated the intention of Satan who sends it,
unless--as is very likely--it be from Heaven. And in spite of all
discomforts he gaily followed Rodriguez. In a thousand days at the Inn
of the Dragon and Knight no two were so different to Morano that one
stood out from the other, or any from the rest. It was all as though
one day were repeated again and again; and at some point in this
monotonous repetition, like a milestone shaped as the rest on a
perfectly featureless road, life would end and the meaningless
repetition stop: and looking back on it there would only be one day to
see, or, if he could not look back, it would be all gone for nothing.
And then, into that one day that he was living on in the gloaming of
that grim inn, Rodriguez had appeared, and Morano had known him for one
of those wandering lights that sometimes make sudden day among the
stars. He knew--no, he felt--that by following him, yesterday today and
tomorrow would be three separate possessions in memory. Morano gladly
gave up that one dull day he was living for the new strange days
through which Rodriguez was sure to lead him. Gladly he left it: if
this be not true how then has a man with a dream led thousands to
follow his fancy, from the Crusades to whatever gay madness be the
fashion when this is read? As they galloped the scent of the flowers
rushed into Rodriguez' nostrils, while Morano mainly breathed the dust
from the hooves of his master's horse. But the quest was favoured the
more by the scent of the flowers inspiring its leader's fancies. So
Morano gained even from this.

In the first hour they shortened by fifteen miles the length of their
rambling quest. In the next hour they did five miles; and in the third
hour ten. After this they rode slowly. The sun was setting. Morano
regarded the sunset with delight, for it seemed to promise jovially the
end of his sufferings, which except for brief periods when they went on
foot, to rest--as Rodriguez said--the horses, had been continuous and
even increasing since they started. Rodriguez, perhaps a little weary
too, drew from the sunset a more sombre feeling, as sensitive minds do:
he responded to its farewell, he felt its beauty, and as little winds
turned cool and the shine of blades of grass faded, making all the
plain dimmer, he heard, or believed he heard, further off than he could
see, sounds on the plain beyond ridges, in hollows, behind clumps of
bushes; as though small creatures all unknown to his learning played
instruments cut from reeds upon unmapped streams. In this hour, among
these fancies, Rodriguez saw clear on a hill the white walls of the
village of Lowlight. And now they began to notice that a great round
moon was shining. The sunset grew dimmer and the moonlight stole in
softly, as a cat might walk through great doors on her silent feet into
a throne-room just as the king had gone: and they entered the village
slowly in the perfect moment of twilight.

The round horizon was brimming with a pale but magical colour, welling
up to the tips of trees and the battlements of white towers. Earth
seemed a mysterious cup overfull of this pigment of wonder. Clouds
wandering low, straying far from their azure fields, were dipped in it.
The towers of Lowlight turned slowly rose in that light, and glowed
together with the infinite gloaming, so that for this brief hour the
things of man were wed with the things of eternity. It was into this
wide, pale flame of aetherial rose that the moon came stealing like a
magician on tip-toe, to enchant the tips of the trees, low clouds and
the towers of Lowlight. A blue light from beyond our world touched the
pink that is Earth's at evening: and what was strange and a matter for
hushed voices, marvellous but yet of our earth, became at that touch
unearthly. All in a moment it was, and Rodriguez gasped to see it. Even
Morano's eyes grew round with the coming of wonder, or with some dim
feeling that an unnoticed moment had made all things strange and new.

For some moments the spell of moonlight on sunlight hovered: the air
was brimming and quivering with it: magic touched earth. For some
moments, some thirty beats of a heron's wing, had the angels sung to
men, had their songs gone earthward into that rosy glow, gliding past
layers of faintly tinted cloud, like moths at dusk towards a
briar-rose; in those few moments men would have known their language.
Rodriguez reined in his horse in the heavy silence and waited. For what
he waited he knew not: some unearthly answer perhaps to his questioning
thoughts that had wandered far from earth, though no words came to him
with which to ask their question and he did not know what question they
would ask. He was all vibrating with the human longing: I know not what
it is, but perhaps philosophers know. He sat there waiting while a late
bird sailed homeward, sat while Morano wondered. And nothing spake from
anywhere.

And now a dog began to notice the moon: now a child cried suddenly that
had been dragged back from the street, where it had wandered at
bedtime: an old dog rose from where it had lain in the sun and feebly
yet confidently scratched at a door: a cat peered round a corner: a man
spoke: Rodriguez knew there would be no answer now.

Rodriguez hit his horse, the tired animal went forward, and he and
Morano rode slowly up the street.

Dona Serafina of the Valley of Dawnlight had left the heat of the room
that looked on the fields, and into which the sun had all day been
streaming, and had gone at sunset to sit in the balcony that looked
along the street. Often she would do this at sunset; but she rather
dreamed as she sat there than watched the street, for all that it had
to show she knew without glancing. Evening after evening as soon as
winter was over the neighbour would come from next door and stretch
himself and yawn and sit on a chair by his doorway, and the neighbour
from opposite would saunter across the way to him, and they would talk
with eagerness of the sale of cattle, and sometimes, but more coldly,
of the affairs of kings. She knew, but cared not to know, just when the
two old men would begin their talk. She knew who owned every dog that
stretched itself in the dust until chilly winds blew in the dusk and
they rose up dissatisfied. She knew the affairs of that street like an
old, old lesson taught drearily, and her thoughts went far away to
vales of an imagination where they met with many another maiden fancy,
and they all danced there together through the long twilight in Spring.
And then her mother would come and warn her that the evening grew cold,
and Serafina would turn from the mystery of evening into the house and
the candle-light. This was so evening after evening all through spring
and summer for two long years of her youth. And then, this evening,
just as the two old neighbours began to discuss whether or not the
subjugation of the entire world by Spain would be for its benefit, just
as one of the dogs in the road was rising slowly to shake itself,
neighbours and dogs all raised their heads to look, and there was
Rodriguez riding down the street and Morano coming behind him. When
Serafina saw this she brought her eyes back from dreams, for she
dreamed not so deeply but that the cloak and plume of Rodriguez found
some place upon the boundaries of her day-dream. When she saw the way
he sat his horse and how he carried his head she let her eyes flash for
a little moment along the street from her balcony. And if some critical
reader ask how she did it I answer, "My good sir, I can't tell you,
because I don't know," or "My dear lady, what a question to ask!" And
where she learned to do it I cannot think, but nothing was easier. And
then she smiled to think that she had done the very thing that her
mother had warned her there was danger in doing.

"Serafina," her mother said in that moment at the large window, "the
evening grows cold. It might be dangerous to stay there longer." And
Serafina entered the house, as she had done at the coming of dusk on
many an evening.

Rodriguez missed as much of that flash of her eyes, shot from below the
darkness of her hair, as youth in its first glory and freedom misses.
For at the point on the road called life at which Rodriguez was then,
one is high on a crag above the promontories of watchmen, lower only
than the peaks of the prophets, from which to see such things. Yet it
did not need youth to notice Serafina. Beggars had blessed her for the
poise of her head.

She turned that head a little as she went between the windows, till
Rodriguez gazing up to her saw the fair shape of her neck: and almost
in that moment the last of the daylight died. The windows shut; and
Rodriguez rode on with Morano to find the forge that was kept by
Fernandez the smith. And presently they came to the village forge, a
cottage with huge, high roof whose beams were safe from sparks; and its
fire was glowing redly into the moonlight through the wide door made
for horses, although there seemed no work to be done, and a man with a
swart moustache was piling more logs on. Over the door was burned on
oak in ungainly great letters--

"FERNANDEZ"

"For whom do you seek, señor?" he said to Rodriguez, who had halted
before him with his horse's nose inside the doorway sniffing.

"I look," he said, "for him who is not Fernandez."

"I am he," said the man by the fire.

Rodriguez questioned no further but dismounted, and bade Morano lead
the horses in. And then he saw in the dark at the back of the forge the
other two horses that he had seen in the wood. And they were shod as he
had never seen horses shod before. For the front pair of shoes were
joined by a chain riveted stoutly to each, and the hind pair also; and
both horses were shod alike. The method was equally new to Morano. And
now the man with the swart moustache picked up another bunch of
horseshoes hanging in pairs on chains. And Rodriguez was not far out
when he guessed that whenever la Garda overtook their horses they would
find that Fernandez was far away making holiday, while he who shod them
now would be gone upon other business. And all this work seemed to
Rodriguez not to be his affair.

"Farewell," he said to the smith that was not Fernandez; and with a pat
for his horse he left it, having obtained a promise of oats. And so
Rodriguez and Morano went on foot again, Morano elated in spite of
fatigue and pain, rejoicing to feel the earth once more, flat under the
soles of his feet; Rodriguez a little humbled.




THE SIXTH CHRONICLE

HOW HE SANG TO HIS MANDOLIN AND WHAT CAME OF HIS SINGING


They walked back slowly in silence up the street down which they had
ridden. Earth darkened, the moon grew brighter: and Rodriguez gazing at
the pale golden disk began to wonder who dwelt in the lunar valleys;
and what message, if folk were there, they had for our peoples; and in
what language such message could ever be, and how it could fare across
that limpid remoteness that wafted light on to the coasts of Earth and
lapped in silence on the lunar shores. And as he wondered he thought of
his mandolin.

"Morano," he said, "buy bacon."

Morano's eyes brightened: they were forty-five miles from the hills on
which he had last tasted bacon. He selected his house with a glance,
and then he was gone. And Rodriguez reflected too late that he had
forgotten to tell Morano where he should find him, and this with night
coming on in a strange village. Scarcely, Rodriguez reflected, he knew
where he was going himself. Yet if old tunes lurking in its hollows,
echoing though imperceptibly from long-faded evenings, gave the
mandolin any knowledge of human affairs that other inanimate things
cannot possess, the mandolin knew.

Let us in fancy call up the shade of Morano from that far generation.
Let us ask him where Rodriguez is going. Those blue eyes, dim with the
distance over which our fancy has called them, look in our eyes with
wonder.

"I do not know," he says, "where Don Rodriguez is going. My master did
not tell me."

Did he notice nothing as they rode by that balcony?

"Nothing," Morano answers, "except my master riding."

We may let Morano's shade drift hence again, for we shall discover
nothing: nor is this an age to which to call back spirits.

Rodriguez strolled slowly on the deep dust of that street as though
wondering all the while where he should go; and soon he and his
mandolin were below that very balcony whereon he had seen the white
neck of Serafina gleam with the last of the daylight. And now the
spells of the moon charmed Earth with their full power.

The balcony was empty. How should it have been otherwise? And yet
Rodriguez grieved. For between the vision that had drawn his footsteps
and that bare balcony below shuttered windows was the difference
between a haven, sought over leagues of sea, and sheer, uncharted
cliff. It brought a wistfulness into the music he played, and a
melancholy that was all new to Rodriguez, yet often and often before
had that mandolin sent up through evening against unheeding Space that
cry that man cannot utter; for the spirit of man needs a mandolin as a
comrade to face the verdict of the chilly stars as he needs a bulldog
for more mundane things.

Soon out of the depth of that stout old mandolin, in which so many
human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders spin
misty grey webs, till it was all haunted with music, soon the old cry
went up to the stars again, a thread of supplication spun of the matter
which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it knew not what. And,
but that Fate is deaf, all that man asks in music had been granted then.

What sorrows had Rodriguez known in his life that he made so sad a
melody? I know not. It was the mandolin. When the mandolin was made it
knew at once all the sorrows of man, and all the old unnamed longings
that none defines. It knew them as the dog knows the alliance that its
forefathers made with man. A mandolin weeps the tears that its master
cannot shed, or utters the prayers that are deeper than its master's
lips can draw, as a dog will fight for his master with teeth that are
longer than man's. And if the moonlight streamed on untroubled, and
though Fate was deaf, yet beauty of those fresh strains going starward
from under his fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and
gilded his dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory,
until he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with limpid voice
along the edge of tears, a love-song old as the woods of his father's
valleys at whose edge he had heard it once drift through the evening.
And as he played and sang with his young soul in the music he fancied
(and why not, if they care aught for our souls in Heaven?) he fancied
the angles putting their hands each one on a star and leaning out of
Heaven through the constellations to listen.

"A vile song, señor, and a vile tune with it," said a voice quite close.

However much the words hurt his pride in his mandolin Rodriguez
recognised in the voice the hidalgo's accent and knew that it was an
equal that now approached him in the moonlight round a corner of the
house with the balcony; and he knew that the request he courteously
made would be as courteously granted.

"Señor," he said, "I pray you to permit me to lean my mandolin against
the wall securely before we speak of my song."

"Most surely, señor," the stranger replied, "for there is no fault with
the mandolin."

"Señor," Rodriguez said, "I thank you profoundly." And he bowed to the
gallant, whom he now perceived to be young, a youth tall and lithe like
himself, one whom we might have chosen for these chronicles had we not
found Rodriguez.

Then Rodriguez stepped back a short way and placed his kerchief on the
ground; and upon this he put his mandolin and leaned it against the
wall. When the mandolin was safe from dust or accident he approached
the stranger and drew his sword.

"Señor," he said, "we will now discuss music."

"Right gladly, señor," said the young man, who now drew his sword also.
There were no clouds; the moon was full; the evening promised well.

Scarcely had the flash of thin rapiers crossing each other by moonlight
begun to gleam in the street when Morano appeared beside them and stood
there watching. He had bought his bacon and gone straight to the house
with the balcony. For though he knew no Latin he had not missed the
silent greeting that had welcomed his master to that village, or failed
to interpret the gist of the words that Rodriguez' dumb glance would
have said. He stood there watching while each combatant stood his
ground.

And Rodriguez remembered all those passes and feints that he had had
from his father, and which Sevastiani, a master of arms in Madrid, had
taught in his father's youth: and some were famous and some were little
known. And all these passes, as he tried them one by one, his unknown
antagonist parried. And for a moment Rodriguez feared that Morano would
see those passes in which he trusted foiled by that unknown sword, and
then he reflected that Morano knew nothing of the craft of the rapier,
and with more content at that thought he parried thrusts that were
strange to him. But something told Morano that in this fight the
stranger was master and that along that pale-blue, moonlit, unknown
sword lurked a sure death for Rodriguez. He moved from his place of
vantage and was soon lost in large shadows; while the rapiers played
and blade rippled on blade with a sound as though Death were gently
sharpening his scythe in the dark. And now Rodriguez was giving ground,
now his antagonist pressed him; thrusts that he believed invincible had
failed; now he parried wearily and had at once to parry again; the
unknown pressed on, was upon him, was scattering his weakening parries;
drew back his rapier for a deadlier pass, learned in a secret school,
in a hut on mountains he knew, and practised surely; and fell in a heap
upon Rodriguez' feet, struck full on the back of the head by Morano's
frying-pan.

"Most vile knave," shouted Rodriguez as he saw Morano before him with
his frying-pan in his hand, and with something of the stupid expression
that you see on the face of a dog that has done some foolish thing
which it thinks will delight its master.

"Master! I am your servant," said Morano.

"Vile, miserable knave," replied Rodriguez.

"Master," Morano said plaintively, "shall I see to your comforts, your
food, and not to your life?"

"Silence," thundered Rodriguez as he stooped anxiously to his
antagonist, who was not unconscious but only very giddy and who now
rose to his feet with the help of Rodriguez.

"Alas, señor," said Rodriguez, "the foul knave is my servant. He shall
be flogged. He shall be flayed. His vile flesh shall be cut off him.
Does the hurt pain you, señor? Sit and rest while I beat the knave, and
then we will continue our meeting."

And he ran to his kerchief on which rested his mandolin and laid it
upon the dust for the stranger.

"No, no," said he. "My head clears again. It is nothing."

"But rest, señor, rest," said Rodriguez. "It is always well to rest
before an encounter. Rest while I punish the knave."

And he led him to where the kerchief lay on the ground. "Let me see the
hurt, señor," he continued. And the stranger removed his plumed hat as
Rodriguez compelled him to sit down. He straightened out the hat as he
sat, and the hurt was shown to be of no great consequence.

"The blessed Saints be praised," Rodriguez said. "It need not stop our
encounter. But rest awhile, señor."

"Indeed, it is nothing," he answered.

"But the indignity is immeasurable," sighed Rodriguez. "Would you care,
señor, when you are well rested to give the chastisement yourself?"

"As far as that goes," said the stranger, "I can chastise him now."

"If you are fully recovered, señor," Rodriguez said, "my own sword is
at your disposal to beat him sore with the flat of it, or how you will.
Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin of so vile a
knave."

The stranger smiled: the idea appealed to him.

"You make a noble amend, señor," he said as he bowed over Rodriguez'
proffered sword.

Morano had not moved far, but stood near, wondering. "What should a
servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how work for
him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through his own fault
if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived him about to do so.
He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw the stranger coming angrily
towards him in the clear moonlight with a sword. Morano was frightened.

As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to seize
Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger parried,
but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and for the second
time he went down in the dust with a reeling head. Rodriguez turned
toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is all very well, and I
know that my duty as author is to tell all that happened, and I could
win mighty praise as a bold, unconventional writer; at the same time,
some young lady will be reading all this next year in some far country,
or in twenty years in England, and I would sooner she should not read
what Rodriguez said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of
it was that he should leave that place now and depart from his service
for ever. And hearing those words Morano turned mournfully away and was
at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once more to help his
fallen antagonist. "Señor, señor," he said with an emotion that some
wearing centuries and a cold climate have taught us not to show, and
beyond those words he could find no more to say.

"Giddy, only giddy," said the stranger.

A tear fell on his forehead as Rodriguez helped him to his feet.

"Señor," Rodriguez said fervently, "we will finish our encounter come
what may. The knave is gone and ..."

"But I am somewhat giddy," said the other.

"I will take off one of my shoes," said Rodriguez, "leaving the other
on. It will equalise our unsteadiness, and you shall not be
disappointed in our encounter. Come," he added kindly.

"I cannot see so clearly as before," the young hidalgo murmured.

"I will bandage my right eye also," said Rodriguez, "and if this cannot
equalise it ..."

"It is a most fair offer," said the young man.

"I could not bear that you should be disappointed of your encounter,"
Rodriguez said, "by this spirit of Hell that has got itself clothed in
fat and dares to usurp the dignity of man."

"It is a right fair offer," the young man said again.

"Rest yourself, señor," said Rodriguez, "while

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