judgment. And a faint song came yet from the donkey-drivers, wavering
over the flowers.
"Master," Morano said, "there are men like those vile sin-mongers, who
have taken delight in peace. It may be that peace has been brought upon
the world by one of these lousy likings."
"The delight of peace," said Rodriguez, "is in its contrast to war. If
war were banished this delight were gone. And man lost none of his
delights in any chapter I read."
The word and the meaning of CONTRAST were such as is understood by
reflective minds, the product of education. Morano felt rather than
reflected; and the word CONTRAST meant nothing to him. This ended their
conversation. And the songs of the donkey-drivers, light though they
were, being too heavy to be carried farther by the idle air of Spring,
Morano ceased cursing their sins.
And now the mountains rose up taller, seeming to stretch themselves and
raise their heads. In a while they seemed to be peering over the plain.
They that were as pale ghosts, far off, dim like Fate, in the early
part of the morning, now appeared darker, more furrowed, more sinister,
more careworn; more immediately concerned with the affairs of Earth,
and so more menacing to earthly things.
Still they went on and still the mountains grew. And noon came, when
Spain sleeps.
And now the plain was altering, as though cool winds from the mountains
brought other growths to birth, so that they met with bushes straggling
wild; free, careless and mysterious, as they do, where there is none to
teach great Nature how to be tidy.
The wanderers chose a clump of these that were gathered near the way,
like gypsies camped awhile midway on a wonderful journey, who at dawn
will rise and go, leaving but a bare trace of their resting and no
guess of their destiny; so fairy-like, so free, so phantasmal those
dark shrubs seemed.
Morano lay down on the very edge of the shade of one, and Rodriguez lay
fair in the midst of the shade of another, whereby anyone passing that
way would have known which was the older traveller. Morano, according
to his custom, was asleep almost immediately; but Rodriguez, with
wonder and speculation each toying with novelty and pulling it
different ways between them, stayed awhile wakeful. Then he too slept,
and a bird thought it safe to return to an azalea of its own; which it
lately fled from troubled by the arrival of these two.
And Rodriguez the last to sleep was the first awake, for the shade of
the shrub left him, and he awoke in the blaze of the sun to see Morano
still sheltered, well in the middle now of the shadow he chose. The
gross sleep of Morano I will not describe to you, reader. I have chosen
a pleasant tale for you in a happy land, in the fairest time of year,
in a golden age: I have youth to show you and an ancient sword, birds,
flowers and sunlight, in a plain unharmed by any dream of commerce: why
should I show you the sleep of that inelegant man whose bulk lay
cumbering the earth like a low, unseemly mountain?
Rodriguez overtook the shade he had lost and lay there resting until
Morano awoke, driven all at once from sleep by a dream or by mere
choking. Then from the intricacies of his clothing, which to him after
those two days was what home is to some far wanderer, Morano drew out
once more a lump of bacon. Then came the fry-pan and then a fire: it
was the Wanderers' Mess. That mess-room has stood in many lands and has
only one roof. We are proud of that roof, all we who belong to that
Mess. We boast of it when we show it to our friends when it is all set
out at night. It has Aldebaran in it, the Bear and Orion, and at the
other end the Southern Cross. Yes we are proud of our roof when it is
at its best.
What am I saying? I should be talking of bacon. Yes, but there is a way
of cooking it in our Mess that I want to tell you and cannot. I've
tasted bacon there that isn't the same as what you get at the Ritz. And
I want to tell you how that bacon tastes; and I can't so I talk about
stars. But perhaps you are one of us, reader, and then you will
understand. Only why the hell don't we get back there again where the
Evening Star swings low on the wall of the Mess?
When they rose from table, when they got up from the earth, and the
frying-pan was slung on Morano's back, adding grease to the mere
surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more, they pushed on
briskly for they saw no sign of houses, unless what Rodriguez saw now
dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the mountains.
They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering. They must
have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue. And now,
every mile they went, on the most awful of the dark ridges the object
Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house. Yet neither then, nor
as they drew still nearer, nor when they saw it close, nor looking back
on it after years, did it somehow seem quite right. And Morano
sometimes crossed himself as he looked at it, and said nothing.
Rodriguez, as they walked ceaselessly through the afternoon, seeing his
servant show some sign of weariness, which comes not to youth, pointed
out the house looking nearer than it really was on the mountain, and
told him that he should find there straw, and they would sup and stay
the night. Afterwards, when the strange appearance of the house,
varying with different angles, filled him with curious forebodings,
Rodriguez would make no admission to his servant, but held to the plan
he had announced, and so approached the queer roofs, neglecting the
friendly stars.
Through the afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in silence,
for the glances that house seemed to give him from the edge of its
perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez and had even
checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher Morano, if garrulity
can be ascribed to him whose words seldom welled up unless some simple
philosophy troubled his deeps. The house seemed indeed to glance at
him, for as their road wound on, the house showed different aspects,
different walls and edges of walls, and different curious roofs; all
these walls seemed to peer at him. One after another they peered, new
ones glided imperceptibly into sight as though to say, We see too.
The mountains were not before them but a little to the right of their
path, until new ones appeared ahead of them like giants arising from
sleep, and then their path seemed blocked as though by a mighty wall
against which its feeble wanderings went in vain. In the end it turned
a bit to its right and went straight for a dark mountain, where a wild
track seemed to come down out of the rocks to meet it, and upon this
track looked down that sinister house. Had you been there, my reader,
you would have said, any of us had said, Why not choose some other
house? There were no other houses. He who dwelt on the edge of the
ravine that ran into that dark mountain was wholly without neighbours.
And evening came, and still they were far from the mountain.
The sun set on their left. But it was in the eastern sky that the
greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up some
stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and turned their
gloomy forms to an astounding purple.
And after this their road began to rise toward the ridges. The
mountains darkened and the sinister house was about to merge with
their shadows, when he who dwelt there lit candles.
The act astonished the wayfarers. All through half the day they had
seen the house, until it seemed part of the mountains; evil it seemed
like their ridges, that were black and bleak and forbidding, and
strange it seemed with a strangeness that moved no fears they could
name, yet it seemed inactive as night.
Now lights appeared showing that someone moved. Window after window
showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare; there in
the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed kin to it, by
glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the beasts that haunted
them could not do: this was the lair of man. Here was the light of
flame but the rocks remained dark and cold as the wind of night that
went over them, he who dwelt now with the lights had forsaken the
rocks, his neighbours.
And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green. These
lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to Rodriguez
and to tell him nothing. And Morano wondered, as he seldom troubled to
do.
They pushed on up the steepening path.
"Like you the looks of it?" said Rodriguez once.
"Aye, master," answered Morano, "so there be straw."
"You see nothing strange there, then?" Rodriguez said.
"Master," Morano said, "there be saints for all requirements."
Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it were
gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus worked
Morano's philosophy. And he turned his thoughts to the achievements
upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and showed to the
sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of the Church.
It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew nearer
the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing from room to
room. The ascent was steep now and the pathway stopped. No track of any
kind approached the house. It stood on a precipice-edge as though one
of the rocks of the mountain: they climbed over rocks to reach it. The
windows flickered and blinked at them.
Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they were now
in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found; they were all
among edges of rock as black as the night and hard as the material of
which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos' brink. The sound of their
climbing ran noisily up the mountain but no sound came from the house:
only the shadows moved more swiftly across a room, passed into other
rooms and came hurrying back. Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed
to peer; and when the travellers stood and watched to see what they
were they would disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the
rooms were filled instead with their wondering speculation. Then they
pushed on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were
they and slanting, all piled together: it seemed the last waste, to
which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.
Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme;
indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw
pieces of Chaos. Morano climbed over their edges with moans and
discomfort. Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans when
he came to the top of each sharp rock.
The rocks became savager, huger, even more sharp and more angular. They
were there in the dark in multitudes. Over these Rodriguez staggered,
and Morano clambered and tumbled; and so they came, breathing hard, to
the lonely house.
In the wall that their hands had reached there was no door, so they
felt along it till they came to the corner, and beyond the corner was
the front wall of the house. In it was the front door. But so nearly
did this door open upon the abyss that the bats that fled from their
coming, from where they hung above the door of oak, had little more to
do than fall from their crannies, slanting ever so slightly, to find
themselves safe from man in the velvet darkness, that lay between
cliffs so lonely they were almost strangers to Echo. And here they
floated upon errands far from our knowledge; while the travellers
coming along the rocky ledge between destruction and shelter, knocked
on the oaken door.
The sound of their knocking boomed huge and slow through the house as
though they had struck the door of the very mountain. And no one came.
And then Rodriguez saw dimly in the darkness the great handle of a
bell, carved like a dragon running down the wall: he pulled it and a
cry of pain arose from the basement of the house.
Even Morano wondered. It was like a terrible spirit in distress. It was
long before Rodriguez dare touch the handle again. Could it have been
the bell? He felt the iron handle and the iron chain that went up from
it. How could it have been the bell! The bell had not sounded: he had
not pulled hard enough: that scream was fortuitous. The night on that
rocky ledge had jangled his nerves. He pulled again and more firmly.
The answering scream was more terrible. Rodriguez could doubt no
longer, as he sprang back from the bell-handle, that with the chain he
had pulled he inflicted some unknown agony.
The scream had awakened slow steps that now came towards the
travellers, down corridors, as it sounded, of stone. And then chains
fell on stone and the door of oak was opened by some one older than
what man hopes to come to, with small, peaked lips as those of some
woodland thing.
"Señores," the old one said, "the Professor welcomes you."
They stood and stared at his age, and Morano blurted uncouthly what
both of them felt. "You are old, grandfather," he said.
"Ah, Señores," the old man sighed, "the Professor does not allow me to
be young. I have been here years and years but he never allowed it. I
have served him well but it is still the same. I say to him, 'Master, I
have served you long ...' but he interrupts me for he will have none of
youth. Young servants go among the villages, he says. And so, and so..."
"You do not think your master can give you youth!" said Rodriguez.
The old man knew that he had talked too much, voicing that grievance
again of which even the rocks were weary. "Yes," he said briefly, and
bowed and led the way into the house. In one of the corridors running
out of the hall down which he was leading silently, Rodriguez overtook
that old man and questioned him to his face.
"Who is this professor?" he said.
By the light of a torch that spluttered in an iron clamp on the wall
Rodriguez questioned him with these words, and Morano with his
wondering, wistful eyes. The old man halted and turned half round, and
lifted his head and answered. "In the University of Saragossa," he said
with pride, "he holds the Chair of Magic."
Even the names of Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Yale or Princeton,
move some respect, and even yet in these unlearned days. What wonder
then that the name of Saragossa heard on that lonely mountain awoke in
Rodriguez some emotion of reverence and even awed Morano. As for the
Chair of Magic, it was of all the royal endowments of that illustrious
University the most honoured and dreaded.
"At Saragossa!" Rodriguez muttered.
"At Saragossa," the old man affirmed.
Between that ancient citadel of learning and this most savage mountain
appeared a gulf scarce to be bridged by thought.
"The Professor rests in his mountain," the old man said, "because of a
conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class have gone
to their homes for many weeks." He bowed again and led on along that
corridor of dismal stone. The others followed, and still as Rodriguez
went that famous name Saragossa echoed within his mind.
And then they came to a door set deep in the stone, and their guide
opened it and they went in; and there was the Professor in a mystical
hat and a robe of dim purple, seated with his back to them at a table,
studying the ways of the stars. "Welcome, Don Rodriguez," said the
Professor before he turned round; and then he rose, and with small
steps backwards and sideways and many bows, he displayed all those
formulae of politeness that Saragossa knew in the golden age and which
her professors loved to execute. In later years they became more
elaborate still, and afterwards were lost.
Rodriguez replied rather by instinct than knowledge; he came of a house
whose bows had never missed graceful ease and which had in some
generations been a joy to the Court of Spain. Morano followed behind
him; but his servile presence intruded upon that elaborate ceremony,
and the Professor held up his hand, and Morano was held in mid stride
as though the air had gripped him. There he stood motionless, having
never felt magic before. And when the Professor had welcomed Rodriguez
in a manner worthy of the dignity of the Chair that he held at
Saragossa, he made an easy gesture and Morano was free again.
"Master," said Morano to the Professor, as soon as he found he could
move, "master, it looks like magic." Picture to yourself some yokel
shown into the library of a professor of Greek at Oxford, taking down
from a shelf one of the books of the Odyssey, and saying to the
Professor, "It looks like Greek"!
Rodriguez felt grieved by Morano's boorish ignorance. Neither he nor
his host answered him.
The Professor explained that he followed the mysteries dimly, owing to
a certain aspect of Orion, and that therefore his class were gone to
their homes and were hunting; and so he studied alone under
unfavourable auspices. And once more he welcomed Rodriguez to his roof,
and would command straw to be laid down for the man that Rodriguez had
brought from the Inn of the Dragon and Knight; for he, the Professor,
saw all things, though certain stars would hide everything.
And when Rodriguez had appropriately uttered his thanks, he added with
all humility and delicate choice of phrase a petition that he might be
shown some mere rudiment of the studies for which that illustrious
chair in Saragossa was famous. The Professor bowed again and, in
accepting the well-rounded compliments that Rodriguez paid to the
honoured post he occupied, he introduced himself by name. He had been
once, he said, the Count of the Mountain, but when his astral studies
had made him eminent and he had mastered the ways of the planet nearest
the sun he took the title Magister Mercurii, and by this had long been
known; but had now forsaken this title, great as it was, for a more
glorious nomenclature, and was called in the Arabic language the Slave
of Orion. When Rodriguez heard this he bowed very low.
And now the Professor asked Rodriguez in which of the activities of
life his interest lay; for the Chair of Magic at Saragossa, he said,
was concerned with them all.
"In war," said Rodriguez.
And Morano unostentatiously rubbed his hands; for here was one, he
thought, who would soon put his master on the right way, and matters
would come to a head and they would find the wars. But far from
concerning himself with the wars of that age, the Slave of Orion
explained that as events came nearer they became grosser or more
material, and that their grossness did not leave them until they were
some while passed away; so that to one whose studies were with
aetherial things, near events were opaque and dim. He had a window, he
explained, through which Rodriguez should see clearly the ancient wars,
while another window beside it looked on all wars of the future except
those which were planned already or were coming soon to earth, and
which were either invisible or seen dim as through mist.
Rodriguez said that to be privileged to see so classical an example of
magic would be to him both a delight and honour. Yet, as is the way of
youth, he more desired to have a sight of the wars than he cared for
all the learning of the Professor.
And to him who held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa it was a precious
thing that his windows could be made to show these marvels, while the
guest to whom he was about to display these two gems of his learning
was thinking of little but what he should see through the windows, and
not at all of what spells, what midnight oil, what incantations, what
witchcrafts, what lonely hours among bats, had gone to the
gratification of his young curiosity. It is usually thus.
The Professor rose: his cloak floated out from him as he left the
chamber, and Rodriguez following where he guided saw, by the torchlight
in the corridors, upon the dim purple border signs that, to his
untutored ignorance of magic, were no more than hints of the affairs of
the Zodiac. And if these signs were obscure it were better they were
obscurer, for they dealt with powers that man needs not to possess, who
has the whole earth to regulate and control; why then should he seek to
govern the course of any star?
And Morano followed behind them, hoping to be allowed to get a sight of
the wars.
They came to a room where two round windows were; each of them larger
than the very largest plate, and of very thick glass indeed, and of a
wonderful blue. The blue was like the blue of the Mediterranean at
evening, when lights are in it both of ships and of sunset, and lights
of harbours being lit one by one, and the light of Venus perhaps and
about two other stars, so deeply did it stare and so twinkled, near its
edges, with lights that were strange to that room, and so triumphed
with its clear beauty over the night outside. No, it was more magical
than the Mediterranean at evening, even though the peaks of the
Esterels be purple and their bases melting in gold and the blue sea
lying below them smiling at early stars: these windows were more
mysterious than that; it was a more triumphant blue; it was like the
Mediterranean seen with the eyes of Shelley, on a happy day in his
youth, or like the sea round Western islands of fable seen by the fancy
of Keats. They were no windows for any need of ours, unless our dreams
be needs, unless our cries for the moon be urged by the same Necessity
as makes us cry for bread. They were clearly concerned only with magic
or poetry; though the Professor claimed that poetry was but a branch of
his subject; and it was so regarded at Saragossa, where it was taught
by the name of theoretical magic, while by the name of practical magic
they taught dooms, brews, hauntings, and spells.
The Professor stood before the left-hand window and pointed to its
deep-blue centre. "Through this," he said, "we see the wars that were."
Rodriguez looked into the deep-blue centre where the great bulge of the
glass came out towards him; it was near to the edges where the glass
seemed thinner that the little strange lights were dancing; Morano
dared to tiptoe a little nearer. Rodriguez looked and saw no night
outside. Just below and near to the window was white mist, and the dim
lines and smoke of what may have been recent wars; but farther away on
a plain of strangely vast dimensions he saw old wars that were. War
after war he saw. Battles that long ago had passed into history and had
been for many ages skilled, glorious and pleasant encounters he saw
even now tumbling before him in their savage confusion and dirt. He saw
a leader, long glorious in histories he had read, looking round
puzzled, to see what was happening, and in a very famous fight that he
had planned very well. He saw retreats that History called routs, and
routs that he had seen History calling retreats. He saw men winning
victories without knowing they had won. Never had man pried before so
shamelessly upon History, or found her such a liar. With his eyes on
the great blue glass Rodriguez forgot the room, forgot time, forgot his
host and poor excited Morano, as he watched those famous fights.
And now my reader wishes to know what he saw and how it was that he was
able to see it.
As regards the second, my reader will readily understand that the
secrets of magic are very carefully guarded, and any smatterings of it
that I may ever have come by I possess, for what they are worth,
subjects to oaths and penalties at which even bad men shudder. My
reader will be satisfied that even those intimate bonds between reader
and writer are of no use to him here. I say him as though I had only
male readers, but if my reader be a lady I leave the situation
confidently to her intuition. As for the things he saw, of all of these
I am at full liberty to write, and yet, my reader, they would differ
from History's version: never a battle that Rodriguez saw on all the
plain that swept away from that circular window, but History wrote
differently. And now, my reader, the situation is this: who am I?
History was a goddess among the Greeks, or is at least a distinguished
personage, perhaps with a well-earned knighthood, and certainly with
widespread recognition amongst the Right Kind of People. I have none of
these things. Whom, then, would you believe?