_ 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.
"Senores," 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.
"Senor, your name," said the stranger.
"Lord of Arguento Harez," said Rodriguez.
"Senor," 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 ..."
"Senor," 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, senor?" 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. "Senor," 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, senor?" 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, senor?" 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 _