_ 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, senor," 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.
"Senor," 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 senor."
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, senor."
"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. _