_ THE EIGHTH CHRONICLE
HOW HE TRAVELLED FAR
One blackbird on a twig near Rodriguez' window sang, then there
were fifty singing, and morning arose over Spain all golden and
wonderful.
Rodriguez descended and found mine host rubbing his hands by his
good table, with a look on his face that seemed to welcome the day
and to find good auguries concerning it. But Morano looked as one
that, having fallen from some far better place, is ill-content
with earth and the mundane way.
He had scorned breakfast; but Rodriguez breakfasted. And soon the
two were bidding mine host farewell. They found their horses
saddled, they mounted at once, and rode off slowly in the early
day. The horses were tired and, slowly trotting and walking, and
sometimes dismounting and dragging the horses on, it was nearly
two hours before they had done ten miles and come to the house of
the smith in a rocky village: the street was cobbled and the
houses were all of stone.
The early sparkle had gone from the dew, but it was still morning,
and many a man but now sat down to his breakfast, as they arrived
and beat on the door.
Gonzalez the smith opened it, a round and ruddy man past fifty, a
citizen following a reputable trade, but once, ah once, a bowman.
"Senor," said Rodriguez, "our horses are weary. We have been told
you will change them for us."
"Who told you that?" said Gonzalez.
"The green bowmen in Shadow Valley," the young man answered.
As a meteor at night lights up with its greenish glare flowers and
blades of grass, twisting long shadows behind them, lights up
lawns and bushes and the deep places of woods, scattering quiet
night for a moment, so the unexpected answer of Rodriguez lit
memories in the mind of the smith all down the long years; and a
twinkle and a sparkle of those memories dancing in woods long
forsaken flashed from his eyes.
"The green bowmen, senor," said Gonzalez. "Ah, Shadow Valley!"
"We left it yesterday," said Rodriguez.
When Gonzalez heard this he poured forth questions. "The forest,
senor; how is it now with the forest? Do the boars still drink at
Heather Pool? Do the geese go still to Greatmarsh? They should
have come early this year. How is it with Larios, Raphael, Migada?
Who shoots woodcock now?"
The questions flowed on past answering, past remembering: he had
not spoken of the forest for years. And Rodriguez answered as such
questions are always answered, saying that all was well, and
giving Gonzalez some little detail of some trifling affair of the
forest, which he treasured as small shells are treasured in inland
places when travellers bring them from the sea; but all that he
heard of the forest seemed to the smith like something gathered on
a far shore of time. Yes, he had been a bowman once.
But he had no horses. One horse that drew a cart, but no horses
for riding at all. And Rodriguez thought of the immense miles
lying between him and the foreign land, keeping him back from his
ambition; they all pressed on his mind at once. The smith was
sorry, but he could not make horses.
"Show him your coin, master," said Morano.
"Ah, a small token," said Rodriguez, drawing it forth still on its
green ribbon under his clothing. "The bowman's badge, is it not?"
Gonzalez looked at it, then looked at Rodriguez.
"Master," he said, "you shall have your horses. Give me time: you
shall have them. Enter, master." And he bowed and widely opened
the door. "If you will breakfast in my house while I go to the
neighbours you shall have some horses, master."
So they entered the house, and the smith with many bows gave the
travellers over to the care of his wife, who saw from her
husband's manner that these were persons of importance and as such
she treated them both, and as such entertained them to their
second breakfast. And this meant they ate heartily, as travellers
can, who can go without a breakfast or eat two; and those who
dwell in cities can do neither.
And while the plump dame did them honour they spoke no word of the
forest, for they knew not what place her husband's early years had
in her imagination.
They had barely finished their meal when the sound of hooves on
cobbles was heard and Gonzalez beat on the door. They all went to
the door and found him there with two horses. The horses were
saddled and bridled. They fixed the stirrups to please them, then
the travellers mounted at once. Rodriguez made his grateful
farewell to the wife of the smith: then, turning to Gonzalez, he
pointed to the two tired horses which had waited all the while
with their reins thrown over a hook on the wall.
"Let the owner of these have them till his own come back," he
said, and added: "How far may I take these?"
"They are good horses," said the smith.
"Yes," said Rodriguez.
"They could do fifty miles to-day," Gonzalez continued, "and to-
morrow, why, forty, or a little more."
"And where will that bring me?" said Rodriguez, pointing to the
straight road which was going his way, north-eastward.
"That," said Gonzalez, "that should bring you some ten or twenty
miles short of Saspe."
"And where shall I leave the horses?" Rodriguez asked.
"Master," Gonzalez said, "in any village where there be a smith,
if you say 'these are the horses of the smith Gonzalez, who will
come for them one day from here,' they will take them in for you,
master."
"But," and Gonzalez walked a little away from his wife, and the
horses walked and he went beside them, "north of here none knows
the bowmen. You will get no fresh horses, master. What will you
do?"
"Walk," said Rodriguez.
Then they said farewell, and there was a look on the face of the
smith almost such as the sons of men might have worn in Genesis
when angels visited them briefly.
They settled down into a steady trot and trotted thus for three
hours. Noon came, and still there was no rest for Morano, but only
dust and the monotonous sight of the road, on which his eyes were
fixed: nearly an hour more passed, and at last he saw his master
halt and turn round in his saddle.
"Dinner," Rodriguez said.
All Morano's weariness vanished: it was the hour of the frying-pan
once more.
They had done more than twenty-one miles from the house of
Gonzalez. Nimbly enough, in his joy at feeling the ground again,
Morano ran and gathered sticks from the bushes. And soon he had a
fire, and a thin column of grey smoke going up from it that to him
was always home.
When the frying-pan warmed and lard sizzled, when the smell of
bacon mingled with the smoke, then Morano was where all wise men
and all unwise try to be, and where some of one or the other some
times come for awhile, by unthought paths and are gone again; for
that smoky, mixed odour was happiness.
Not for long men and horses rested, for soon Rodriguez' ambition
was drawing him down the road again, of which he knew that there
remained to be travelled over two hundred miles in Spain, and how
much beyond that he knew not, nor greatly cared, for beyond the
frontier of Spain he believed there lay the dim, desired country
of romance where roads were long no more and no rain fell. They
mounted again and pushed on for this country. Not a village they
saw but that Morano hoped that here his affliction would end and
that he would dismount and rest; and always Rodriguez rode on and
Morano followed, and with a barking of dogs they were gone and the
village rested behind them. For many an hour their slow trot
carried them on; and Morano, clutching the saddle with worn arms,
already was close to despair, when Rodriguez halted in a little
village at evening before an inn. They had done their fifty miles
from the house of Gonzalez, and even a little more.
Morano rolled from his horse and beat on the small green door.
Mine host came out and eyed them, preening the point of his beard;
and Rodriguez sat his horse and looked at him. They had not the
welcome here that Gonzalez gave them; but there was a room to
spare for Rodriguez, and Morano was promised what he asked for,
straw; and there was shelter to be had for the horses. It was all
the travellers needed.
Children peered at the strangers, gossips peeped out of doors to
gather material concerning them, dogs noted their coming, the eyes
of the little village watched them curiously, but Rodriguez and
Morano passed into the house unheeding; and past those two tired
men the mellow evening glided by like a dream. Tired though
Rodriguez was he noticed a certain politeness in mine host while
he waited at supper, which had not been noticeable when he had
first received him, and rightly put this down to some talk of
Morano's; but he did not guess that Morano had opened wide blue
eyes and, babbling to his host, had guilelessly told him that his
master a week ago had killed an uncivil inn-keeper.
Scarcely were late birds home before Rodriguez sought his bed, and
not all of them were sleeping before he slept.
Another morning shone, and appeared to Spain, and all at once
Rodriguez was wide awake. It was the eighth day of his wanderings.
When he had breakfasted and paid his due in silver he and Morano
departed, leaving mine host upon his doorstep bowing with an
almost perplexed look on his shrewd face as he took the points of
moustachios and beard lightly in turn between finger and thumb:
for we of our day enter vague details about ourselves in the book
downstairs when we stay at inns, but it was mine host's custom to
gather all that with his sharp eyes. Whatever he gathered,
Rodriguez and Morano were gone.
But soon their pace dwindled, the trot slackening and falling to a
walk; soon Rodriguez learned what it is to travel with tired
horses. To Morano riding was merely riding, and the discomforts of
that were so great that he noticed no difference. But to
Rodriguez, his continual hitting and kicking his horse's sides,
his dislike of doing it, the uselessness of it when done, his
ambition before and the tired beast underneath, the body always
some yards behind the beckoning spirit, were as great vexation as
a traveller knows. It came to dismounting and walking miles on
foot; even then the horses hung back. They halted an hour over
dinner while the horses grazed and rested, and they returned to
their road refreshed by the magic that was in the frying-pan, but
the horses were no fresher.
When our bodies are slothful and lie heavy, never responding to
the spirit's bright promptings, then we know dullness: and the
burden of it is the graver for hearing our spirits call faintly,
as the chains of a buccaneer in some deep prison, who hears a
snatch of his comrades' singing as they ride free by the coast,
would grow more unbearable than ever before. But the weight of his
tired horse seemed to hang heavier on the fanciful hopes that
Rodriguez' dreams had made. Farther than ever seemed the Pyrenees,
huger than ever their barrier, dimmer and dimmer grew the lands of
romance.
If the hopes of Rodriguez were low, if his fancies were faint,
what material have I left with which to make a story with glitter
enough to hold my readers' eyes to the page: for know that mere
dreams and idle fancies, and all amorous, lyrical, unsubstantial
things, are all that we writers have of which to make a tale, as
they are all that the Dim Ones have to make the story of man.
Sometimes riding, sometimes going on foot, with the thought of the
long, long miles always crowding upon Rodriguez, overwhelming his
hopes; till even the castle he was to win in the wars grew too
pale for his fancy to see, tired and without illusions, they came
at last by starlight to the glow of a smith's forge. He must have
done forty-five miles and he knew they were near Caspe.
The smith was working late, and looked up when Rodriguez halted.
Yes, he knew Gonzalez, a master in the trade: there was a welcome
for his horses.
But for the two human travellers there were excuses, even
apologies, but no spare beds. It was the same in the next three or
four houses that stood together by the road. And the fever of
Rodriguez' ambition drove him on, though Morano would have lain
down and slept where they stood, though he himself was weary. The
smith had received his horses; after that he cared not whether
they gave him shelter or not, the alternative being the road, and
that bringing nearer his wars and the castle he was to win. And
that fancy that led his master Morano allowed always to lead him
too, though a few more miles and he would have fallen asleep as he
walked and dropped by the roadside and slept on. Luckily they had
gone barely two miles from the forge where the horses rested, when
they saw a high, dark house by the road and knocked on the door
and found shelter. It was an old woman who let them in, a farmer's
wife, and she had room for them and one mattress, but no bed. They
were too tired to eat and did not ask for food, but at once
followed her up the booming stairs of her house, which were all
dark but for her candle, and so came among huge minuetting shadows
to the long loft at the top. There was a mattress there which the
old woman laid out for Rodriguez, and a heap of hay for Morano.
Just for a moment, as Rodriguez climbed the last step of the stair
and entered the loft where the huge shadows twirled between the
one candle's light and the unbeaten darkness in corners, just for
a moment romance seemed to beckon to him; for a moment, in spite
of his fatigue and dejection, in spite of the possibility of his
quest being crazy, for a moment he felt that great shadows and
echoing boards, the very cobwebs even that hung from the black
rafters, were all romantic things; he felt that his was a glorious
adventure and that all these things that filled the loft in the
night were such as should fitly attend on youth and glory. In a
moment that feeling was gone he knew not why it had come. And
though he remembered it till grey old age, when he came to know
the causes of many things, he never knew what romance might have
to do with shadows or echoes at night in an empty room, and only
knew of such fancies that they came from beyond his understanding,
whether from wisdom or folly.
Morano was first asleep, as enormous snores testified, almost
before the echoes had died away of the footsteps of the old woman
descending the stairs; but soon Rodriguez followed him into the
region of dreams, where fantastic ambitions can live with less of
a struggle than in the broad light of day: he dreamed he walked at
night down a street of castles strangely colossal in an awful
starlight, with doors too vast for any human need, whose
battlements were far in the heights of night; and chose, it being
in time of war, the one that should be his; but the gargoyles on
it were angry and spoiled the dream.
Dream followed dream with furious rapidity, as the dreams of tired
men do, racing each other, jostling and mingling and dancing, an
ill-assorted company: myriads went by, a wild, grey, cloudy
multitude; and with the last walked dawn.
Rodriguez rose more relieved to quit so tumultuous a rest than
refreshed by having had it.
He descended, leaving Morano to sleep on, and not till the old
dame had made a breakfast ready did he return to interrupt his
snores.
Even as he awoke upon his heap of hay Morano remained as true to
his master's fantastic quest as the camel is true to the
pilgrimage to Mecca. He awoke grumbling, as the camel grumbles at
dawn when the packs are put on him where he lies, but never did he
doubt that they went to victorious wars where his master would win
a castle splendid with towers.
Breakfast cheered both the travellers. And then the old lady told
Rodriguez that Caspe was but a three hours' walk, and that cheered
them even more, for Caspe is on the Ebro, which seemed to mark for
Rodriguez a stage in his journey, being carried easily in his
imagination, like the Pyrenees. What road he would take when he
reached Caspe he had not planned. And soon Rodriguez expressed his
gratitude, full of fervour, with many a flowery phrase which lived
long in the old dame's mind; and the visit of those two travellers
became one of the strange events of that house and was chief of
the memories that faintly haunted the rafters of the loft for
years.
They did not reach Caspe in three hours, but went lazily, being
weary; for however long a man defies fatigue the hour comes when
it claims him. The knowledge that Caspe lay near with sure lodging
for the night, soothed Rodriguez' impatience. And as they loitered
they talked, and they decided that la Garda must now be too far
behind to pursue any longer. They came in four hours to the bank
of the Ebro and there saw Caspe near them; but they dined once
more on the grass, sitting beside the river, rather than enter the
town at once, for there had grown in both travellers a liking for
the wanderers' green table of earth.
It was a time to make plans. The country of romance was far away
and they were without horses.
"Will you buy horses, master?" said Morano.
"We might not get them over the Pyrenees," said Rodriguez, though
he had a better reason, which was that three gold pieces did not
buy two saddled horses. There were no more friends to hire from.
Morano grew thoughtful. He sat with his feet dangling over the
bank of the Ebro.
"Master," he said after a while, "this river goes our way. Let us
come by boat, master, and drift down to France at our ease."
To get a river over a range of mountains is harder than to get
horses. Some such difficulty Rodriguez implied to him; but Morano,
having come slowly by an idea, parted not so easily with it.
"It goes our way, master," he repeated, and pointed a finger at
the Ebro.
At this moment a certain song that boatmen sing on that river,
when the current is with them and they have nothing to do but be
idle and their lazy thoughts run to lascivious things, came to the
ears of Rodriguez and Morano; and a man with a bright blue sash
steered down the Ebro. He had been fishing and was returning home.
"Master," Morano said, "that knave shall row us there."
Rodriguez seeing that the idea was fixed in Morano's mind
determined that events would move it sooner than argument, and so
made no reply.
"Shall I tell him, master?" asked Morano.
"Yes," said Rodriguez, "if he can row us over the Pyrenees."
This was the permission that Morano sought, and a hideous yell
broke from his throat hailing the boatman. The boatman looked up
lazily, a young man with strong brown arms, turning black
moustaches towards Morano. Again Morano hailed him and ran along
the bank, while the boat drifted down and the boatman steered in
towards Morano. Somehow Morano persuaded him to come in to see
what he wanted; and in a creek he ran his boat aground, and there
he and Morano argued and bargained. But Rodriguez remained where
he was, wondering why it took so long to turn his servant's mind
from that curious fancy. At last Morano returned.
"Well?" said Rodriguez.
"Master," said Morano, "he will row us to the Pyrenees."
"The Pyrenees!" said Rodriguez. "The Ebro runs into the sea." For
they had taught him this at the college of San Josephus.
"He will row us there," said Morano, "for a gold piece a day,
rowing five hours each day."
Now between them they had but four gold pieces; but that did not
make the Ebro run northward. It seemed that the Ebro, after going
their way, as Morano had said, for twenty or thirty miles, was
joined by the river Segre, and that where the Ebro left them,
turning eastwards, the course of the Segre took them on their way:
but it would be rowing against the current.
"How far is it?" said Rodriguez.
"A hundred miles, he says," answered Morano. "He knows it well."
Rodriguez calculated swiftly. First he added thirty miles; for he
knew that his countrymen took a cheerful view of distance, seldom
allowing any distance to oppress them under its true name at the
out set of a journey; then he guessed that the boatman might row
five miles an hour for the first thirty miles with the stream of
the Ebro, and he hoped that he might row three against the Segre
until they came near the mountains, where the current might grow
too strong.
"Morano," he said, "we shall have to row too."
"Row, master?" said Morano.
"We can pay him for four days," said Rodriguez. "If we all row we
may go far on our way."
"It is better than riding," replied Morano with entire
resignation.
And so they walked to the creek and Rodriguez greeted the boatman,
whose name was Perez; and they entered the boat and he rowed them
down to Caspe. And, in the house of Perez, Rodriguez slept that
night in a large dim room, untidy with diverse wares: they slept
on heaps of things that pertained to the river and fishing. Yet it
was late before Rodriguez slept, for in sight of his mind came
glimpses at last of the end of his journey; and, when he slept at
last, he saw the Pyrenees. Through the long night their mighty
heads rejected him, staring immeasurably beyond him in silence,
and then in happier dreams they beckoned him for a moment. Till at
last a bird that had entered the city of Caspe sang clear and it
was dawn. With that first light Rodriguez arose and awoke Morano.
Together they left that long haven of lumber and found Perez
already stirring. They ate hastily and all went down to the boat,
the unknown that waits at the end of all strange journeys
quickening their steps as they went through the early light.
Perez rowed first and the others took their turns and so they went
all the morning down the broad flood of the Ebro, and came in the
afternoon to its meeting place with the Segre. And there they
landed and stretched their limbs on shore and lit a fire and
feasted, before they faced the current that would be henceforth
against them. Then they rowed on.
When they landed by starlight and unrolled a sheet of canvas that
Perez had put in the boat, and found what a bad time starlight is
for pitching a tent, Rodriguez and Morano had rowed for four hours
each and Perez had rowed for five. They carried no timber in the
boat but used the oars for tent-poles and cut tent-pegs with a
small hatchet that Perez had brought.
They stumbled on rocks, tore the canvas on bushes, lost the same
thing over and over again; in fact they were learning the craft of
wandering. Yet at last their tent was up and a good fire
comforting them outside, and Morano had cooked the food and they
had supped and talked, and after that they slept. And over them
sleeping the starlight faded away, and in the greyness that none
of them dreamed was dawn five clear notes were heard so shrill in
the night that Rodriguez half waking wondered what bird of the
darkness called, and learned from the answering chorus that it was
day.
He woke Morano who rose in that chilly hour and, striking sparks
among last night's embers, soon had a fire: they hastily made a
meal and wrapped up their tent and soon they were going onward
against the tide of the Segre. And that day Morano rowed more
skilfully; and Rodriguez unwrapped his mandolin and played,
reclining in the boat while he rested from rowing. And the
mandolin told them all, what the words of none could say, that
they fared to adventure in the land of Romance, to the overthrow
of dullness and the sameness of all drear schemes and the conquest
of discontent in the spirit of man; and perhaps it sang of a time
that has not yet come, or the mandolin lied.
That evening three wiser men made their camp before starlight.
They were now far up the Segre.
For thirteen hours next day they toiled at the oars or lay
languid. And while Rodriguez rested he played on his mandolin. The
Segre slipped by them.
They seemed like no men on their way to war, but seemed to loiter
as the bright river loitered, which slid seaward in careless ease
and was wholly freed from time.
On this day they heard men speak of the Pyrenees, two men and a
woman walking by the river; their voices came to the boat across
the water, and they spoke of the Pyrenees. And on the next day
they heard men speak of war. War that some farmers had fled from
on the other side of the mountain. When Rodriguez heard these
chance words his dreams came nearer till they almost touched the
edges of reality.
It was the last day of Perez' rowing. He rowed well although they
neared the cradle of the Segre and he struggled against them in
his youth. Grey peaks began to peer that had nursed that river.
Grey faces of stone began to look over green hills. They were the
Pyrenees.
When Rodriguez saw at last the Pyrenees he drew a breath and was
unable to speak. Soon they were gone again below the hills: they
had but peered for a moment to see who troubled the Segre.
And the sun set and still they did not camp, but Perez rowed on
into the starlight. That day he rowed six hours.
They pitched their tent as well as they could in the darkness;
and, breathing a clear new air all crisp from the Pyrenees, they
slept outside the threshold of adventure.
Rodriguez awoke cold. Once more he heard the first blackbird who
sings clear at the edge of night all alone in the greyness, the
nightingale's only rival; a rival like some unknown in the midst
of a crowd who for a moment leads some well-loved song, in notes
more liquid than a master-singer's; and all the crowd joins in and
his voice is lost, and no one learns his name. At once a host of
birds answered him out of dim bushes, whose shapes had barely as
yet emerged from night. And in this chorus Perez awoke, and even
Morano.
They all three breakfasted together, and then the wanderers said
good-bye to Perez. And soon he was gone with his bright blue sash,
drifting homewards with the Segre, well paid yet singing a little
sadly as he drifted; for he had been one of a quest, and now he
left it at the edge of adventure, near solemn mountains and,
beyond them, romantic, near-unknown lands. So Perez left and
Rodriguez and Morano turned again to the road, all the more
lightly because they had not done a full day's march for so long,
and now a great one unrolled its leagues before them.
The heads of the mountains showed themselves again. They tramped
as in the early days of their quest. And as they went the
mountains, unveiling themselves slowly, dropping film after film
of distance that hid their mighty forms, gradually revealed to
the wanderers the magnificence of their beauty. Till at evening
Rodriguez and Morano stood on a low hill, looking at that
tremendous range, which lifted far above the fields of Earth, as
though its mountains were no earthly things but sat with Fate and
watched us and did not care.
Rodriguez and Morano stood and gazed in silence. They had come
twenty miles since morning, they were tired and hungry, but the
mountains held them: they stood there looking neither for rest nor
food. Beyond them, sheltering under the low hills, they saw a
little village. Smoke straggled up from it high into the evening:
beyond the village woods sloped away upwards. But far above smoke
or woods the bare peaks brooded. Rodriguez gazed on their austere
solemnity, wondering what secret they guarded there for so long,
guessing what message they held and hid from man; until he learned
that the mystery they guarded among them was of things that he
knew not and could never know.
Tinkle-ting said the bells of a church, invisible among the houses
of that far village. Tinkle-ting said the crescent of hills that
sheltered it. And after a while, speaking out of their grim and
enormous silences with all the gravity of their hundred ages,
Tinkle-ting said the mountains. With this trivial message Echo
returned from among the homes of the mighty, where she had run
with the small bell's tiny cry to trouble their crowned aloofness.
Rodriguez and Morano pressed on, and the mountains cloaked
themselves as they went, in air of many colours; till the stars
came out and the lights of the village gleamed. In darkness, with
surprise in the tones of the barking dogs, the two wanderers came
to the village where so few ever came, for it lay at the end of
Spain, cut off by those mighty rocks, and they knew not much of
what lands lay beyond.
They beat on a door below a hanging board, on which was written
"The Inn of the World's End": a wandering scholar had written it
and had been well paid for his work, for in those days writing was
rare. The door was opened for them by the host of the inn, and
they entered a room in which men who had supped were sitting at a
table. They were all of them men from the Spanish side of the
mountains, farmers come into the village on the affairs of Mother
Earth; next day they would be back at their farms again; and of
the land the other side of the mountains that was so near now they
knew nothing, so that it still remained for the wanderers a thing
of mystery wherein romance could dwell: and because they knew
nothing of that land the men at the inn treasured all the more the
rumours that sometimes came from it, and of these they talked, and
mine host listened eagerly, to whom all tales were brought soon or
late; and most he loved to hear tales from beyond the mountains.
Rodriguez and Morano sat still and listened, and the talk was all
of war. It was faint and vague like fable, but rumour clearly said
War, and the other side of the mountains. It may be that no man
has a crazy ambition without at moments suspecting it; but prove
it by the touchstone of fact and he becomes at once as a woman
whose invalid son, after years of seclusion indoors, wins
unexpectedly some athletic prize. When Rodriguez heard all this
talk of wars quite near he thought of his castle as already won;
his thoughts went further even, floating through Lowlight in the
glowing evening, and drifting up and down past Serafina's house
below the balcony where she sat for ever.
Some said the Duke would never attack the Prince because the
Duke's aunt was a princess from the Troubadour's country. Another
said that there would surely be war. Others said that there was
war already, and too late for man to stop it. All said it would
soon be over.
And one man said that it was the last war that would come, because
gunpowder made fighting impossible. It could smite a man down, he
said, at two hundred paces, and a man be slain not knowing whom he
fought. Some loved fighting and some loved peace, he said, but
gunpowder suited none.
"I like not the sound of that gunpowder, master," said Morano to
Rodriguez.
"Nobody likes it," said the man at the table. "It is the end of
war." And some sighed and some were glad. But Rodriguez determined
to push on before the last war was over.
Next morning Rodriguez paid the last of his silver pieces and set
off with Morano before any but mine host were astir. There was
nothing but the mountains in front of them.
They climbed all the morning and they came to the fir woods. There
they lit a good fire and Morano brought out his frying-pan. Over
the meal they took stock of their provisions and found that, for
all the store Morano had brought from the forest, they had now
only food for three days; and they were quite without money. Money
in those uplifted wastes seemed trivial, but the dwindling food
told Rodriguez that he must press on; for man came among those
rocky monsters supplied with all his needs, or perished unnoticed
before their stony faces. All the afternoon they passed through
the fir woods, and as shadows began to grow long they passed the
last tree. The village and all the fields about it and the road by
which they had come were all spread out below them like little
trivial things dimly remembered from very long ago by one whose
memory weakens. Distance had dwarfed them, and the cold regard of
those mighty peaks ignored them. And then a shadow fell on the
village, then tiny lights shone out. It was night down there.
Still the two wanderers climbed on in the daylight. With their
faces to the rocks they scarce saw night climb up behind them. But
when Rodriguez looked up at the sky to see how much light was
left, and met the calm gaze of the evening star, he saw that Night
and the peaks were met together, and understood all at once how
puny an intruder is man.
"Morano," said Rodriguez, "we must rest here for the night."
Morano looked round him with an air of discontent, not with his
master's words but with the rocks' angular hardness. There was
scarce a plant of any kind near them now. They were near the snow,
which had flushed like a wild rose at sunset but was now all grey.
Grey cliffs seemed to be gazing sheer at eternity; and here was
man, the creature of a moment, who had strayed in the cold all
homeless among his betters. There was no welcome for them there:
whatever feeling great mountains evoke, THAT feeling was clear in
Rodriguez and Morano. They were all amongst those that have other
aims, other ends, and know naught of man. A bitter chill from the
snow and from starry space drove this thought home.
They walked on looking for a better place, as men will, but found
none. And at last they lay down on the cold earth under a rock
that seemed to give shelter from the wind, and there sought sleep;
but cold came instead, and sleep kept far from the tremendous
presences of the peaks of the Pyrenees that gazed on things far
from here.
An ageing moon arose, and Rodriguez touched Morano and rose up;
and the two went slowly on, tired though they were. Picture the
two tiny figures, bent, shivering and weary, walking with clumsy
sticks cut in the wood, amongst the scorn of those tremendous
peaks, which the moon showed all too clearly.
They got little warmth from walking, they were too weary to run;
and after a while they halted and burned their sticks, and got a
little warmth for some moments from their fire, which burned
feebly and strangely in those inhuman solitudes.
Then they went on again and their track grew steeper. They rested
again for fatigue, and rose and climbed again because of the cold;
and all the while the peaks stared over them to spaces far beyond
the thought of man.
Long before Spain knew anything of dawn a monster high in heaven
smiled at the sun, a peak out-towering all its aged children. It
greeted the sun as though this lonely thing, that scorned the race
of man since ever it came, had met a mighty equal out in Space.
The vast peak glowed, and the rest of its grey race took up the
greeting leisurely one by one. Still it was night in all Spanish
houses.
Rodriguez and Morano were warmed by that cold peak's glow, though
no warmth came from it at all; but the sight of it cheered them
and their pulses rallied, and so they grew warmer in that bitter
hour.
And then dawn came, and showed them that they were near the top of
the pass. They had come to the snow that gleams there
everlastingly.
There was no material for a fire but they ate cold meats, and went
wearily on. They passed through that awful assemblage of peaks. By
noon they were walking upon level ground.
In the afternoon Rodriguez, tired with the journey and with the
heat of the sun, decided that it was possible to sleep, and,
wrapping his cloak around him, he lay down, doing what Morano
would have done, by instinct. Morano was asleep at once and
Rodriguez soon after. They awoke with the cold at sunset.
Refreshed amazingly they ate some food and started their walk
again to keep themselves warm for the night. They were still on
level ground and set out with a good stride in their relief at
being done with climbing. Later they slowed down and wandered just
to keep warm. And some time in the starlight they felt their path
dip, and knew that they were going downward now to the land of
Rodriguez' dreams.
When the peaks glowed again, first meeting day in her earliest
dancing-grounds of filmy air, they stood now behind the wanderers.
Below them still in darkness lay the land of their dream, but
hitherto it had always faded at dawn. Now hills put up their heads
one by one through films of mist; woods showed, then hedges, and
afterwards fields, greyly at first and then, in the cold hard
light of morning, becoming more and more real. The sight of the
land so long sought, at moments believed by Morano not to exist on
earth, perhaps to have faded away when fables died, swept their
fatigue from the wanderers, and they stepped out helped by the
slope of the Pyrenees and cheered by the rising sun. They came at
last to things that welcome man, little shrubs flowering, and--at
noon--to the edge of a fir wood. They entered the wood and lit a
merry fire, and heard birds singing, at which they both rejoiced,
for the great peaks had said nothing.
They ate the food that Morano cooked, and drew warmth and cheer
from the fire, and then they slept a little: and, rising from
sleep, they pushed on through the wood, downward and downward
toward the land of their dreams, to see if it was true.
They passed the wood and came to curious paths, and little hills,
and heath, and rocky places, and wandering vales that twisted all
awry. They passed through them all with the slope of the mountain
behind them. When level rays from the sunset mellowed the fields
of France the wanderers were walking still, but the peaks were far
behind them, austerely gazing on the remotest things, forgetting
the footsteps of man. And walking on past soft fields in the
evening, all tilted a little about the mountain's feet, they had
scarcely welcomed the sight of the evening star, when they saw
before them the mild glow of a window and knew they were come
again to the earth that is mother to man. In their cold savagery
the inhuman mountains decked themselves out like gods with colours
they took from the sunset; then darkened, all those peaks, in
brooding conclave and disappeared in the night. And the hushed
night heard the tiny rap of Morano's hands on the door of the
house that had the glowing window. _