_ 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 emerge 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.
"Senores," 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, Senores," 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 as 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. _