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.
"Señores," 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.
"Señor, your name," said the stranger.
"Lord of Arguento Harez," said Rodriguez.
"Señor," 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 ..."
"Señor," 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, señor?" 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. "Señor," 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, señor?" 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.