servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how work for
him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through his own fault
if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived him about to do so.
He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw the stranger coming angrily
towards him in the clear moonlight with a sword. Morano was frightened.
As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to seize
Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger parried,
but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and for the second
time he went down in the dust with a reeling head. Rodriguez turned
toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is all very well, and I
know that my duty as author is to tell all that happened, and I could
win mighty praise as a bold, unconventional writer; at the same time,
some young lady will be reading all this next year in some far country,
or in twenty years in England, and I would sooner she should not read
what Rodriguez said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of
it was that he should leave that place now and depart from his service
for ever. And hearing those words Morano turned mournfully away and was
at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once more to help his
fallen antagonist. "Señor, señor," he said with an emotion that some
wearing centuries and a cold climate have taught us not to show, and
beyond those words he could find no more to say.
"Giddy, only giddy," said the stranger.
A tear fell on his forehead as Rodriguez helped him to his feet.
"Señor," Rodriguez said fervently, "we will finish our encounter come
what may. The knave is gone and ..."
"But I am somewhat giddy," said the other.
"I will take off one of my shoes," said Rodriguez, "leaving the other
on. It will equalise our unsteadiness, and you shall not be
disappointed in our encounter. Come," he added kindly.
"I cannot see so clearly as before," the young hidalgo murmured.
"I will bandage my right eye also," said Rodriguez, "and if this cannot
equalise it ..."
"It is a most fair offer," said the young man.
"I could not bear that you should be disappointed of your encounter,"
Rodriguez said, "by this spirit of Hell that has got itself clothed in
fat and dares to usurp the dignity of man."
"It is a right fair offer," the young man said again.
"Rest yourself, señor," said Rodriguez, "while I take off my shoe," and
he indicated his kerchief which was still on the ground.
The stranger sat down a little wearily, and Rodriguez sitting upon the
dust took off his left shoe. And now he began to think a little
wistfully of the face that had shone from that balcony, where all was
dark now in black shadow unlit by the moon. The emptiness of the
balcony and its darkness oppressed him; for he could scarcely hope to
survive an encounter with that swordsman, whose skill he now recognised
as being of a different class from his own, a class of which he knew
nothing. All his own feints and passes were known, while those of his
antagonist had been strange and new, and he might well have even
others. The stranger's giddiness did not alter the situation, for
Rodriguez knew that his handicap was fair and even generous. He
believed he was near his grave, and could see no spark of light to
banish that dark belief; yet more chances than we can see often guard
us on such occasions. The absence of Serafina saddened him like a
sorrowful sunset.
Rodriguez rose and limped with his one shoe off to the stranger, who
was sitting upon his kerchief.
"I will bandage my right eye now, señor," he said.
The young man rose and shook the dust from the kerchief and gave it to
Rodriguez with a renewed expression of his gratitude at the fairness of
the strange handicap. When Rodriguez had bandaged his eye the stranger
returned his sword to him, which he had held in his hand since his
effort to beat Morano, and drawing his own stepped back a few paces
from him. Rodriguez took one hopeless look at the balcony, saw it as
empty and as black as ever, then he faced his antagonist, waiting.
"Bandage one eye, indeed!" muttered Morano as he stepped up behind the
stranger and knocked him down for the third time with a blow over the
head from his frying-pan.
The young hidalgo dropped silently.
Rodriguez uttered one scream of anger and rushed at Morano with his
sword. Morano had already started to run; and, knowing well that he was
running for his life, he kept for awhile the start that he had of the
rapier. Rodriguez knew that no plump man of over forty could last
against his lithe speed long. He saw Morano clearly before him, then
lost sight of him for a moment and ran confidently on pursuing. He ran
on and on. And at last he recognised that Morano had slipped into the
darkness, which lies always so near to the moonlight, and was not in
front of him at all. So he returned to his fallen antagonist and found
him breathing heavily where he fell, scarcely conscious. The third
stroke of the frying-pan had done its work surely. Rodriguez' fury died
down, only because it is difficult to feel two emotions at once: it
died down as pity took its place, though every now and then it would
suddenly flare and fall again. He returned his sword and lifted the
young hidalgo and carried him to the door of the house under which they
had fought.
With one fist he beat on the door without putting the hurt man down,
and continued to hit it until steps were heard, and bolts began to
grumble, as though disturbed too early from their rusty sleep in stone
sockets.
The door of the house with the balcony was opened by a servant who,
when he saw who it was that Rodriguez carried, fled into the house in
alarm, as one who runs with bad news. He carried one candle and, when
he had disappeared with the steaming flame, Rodriguez found himself in
a long hall lit by the moonlight only, which was looking in through the
small contorted panes of the upper part of a high window. Alone with
echoes and shadows Rodriguez carried the hurt man through the hall, who
was muttering now as he came back to consciousness. And, as he went,
there came to Rodriguez thoughts between wonder and hope, for he had
had no thought at all when he beat on the door except to get shelter
and help for the hurt man. At the end of the hall they came to an open
door that led into a chamber partly shining with moonlight.
"In there," said the man that he carried.
Rodriguez carried him in and laid him on a long couch at the end of the
room. Large pictures of men in the blackness, out of the moon's rays,
frowned at Rodriguez mysteriously. He could not see their faces in the
darkness, but he somehow knew they frowned. Two portraits that were
clear in the moonlight eyed him with absolute apathy. So cold a welcome
from that house's past generations boded no good to him from those that
dwelt there today. Rodriguez knew that in carrying the hurt man there
he helped at a Christian deed; and yet there was no putting the merits
of the case against the omens that crowded the chamber, lurking along
the edge of moonlight and darkness, disappearing and reappearing till
the gloom was heavy with portent. The omens knew. In a weak voice and
few words the hurt man thanked him, but the apathetic faces seemed to
say What of that? And the frowning faces that he could not see still
filled the darkness with anger.
And then from the end of the chamber, dressed in white, and all shining
with moonlight, came Serafina.
Rodriguez in awed silence watched her come. He saw her pass through the
moonlight and grow dimmer, and glide to the moonlight again that
streamed through another window. A great dim golden circle appeared at
the far end of the chamber whence she had come, as the servant returned
with his candle and held it high to give light for Dona Serafina. But
that one flame seemed to make the darkness only blacker; and for any
cheerfulness it brought to the gloom it had better never have
challenged those masses of darkness at all in that high chamber among
the brooding portraits it seemed trivial, ephemeral, modern, ill able
to cope with the power of ancient things, dead days and forgotten
voices, which make their home in the darkness because the days that
have usurped them have stolen the light of the sun.
And there the man stood holding his candle high, and the rays of the
moon became more magical still beside that little mundane, flickering
thing. And Serafina was moving through the moonlight as though its rays
were her sisters, which she met noiselessly and brightly upon some
island, as it seemed to Rodriguez, beyond the coasts of Earth, so
quietly and so brightly did her slender figure move and so aloof from
him appeared her eyes. And there came on Rodriguez that feeling that
some deride and that others explain away, the feeling of which romance
is mainly made and which is the aim and goal of all the earth. And his
love for Serafina seemed to him not only to be an event in his life but
to have some part in veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the
blessing of most distant days: grey beards seemed to look out of graves
in forgotten places to wag approval: hands seemed to beckon to him out
of far-future times, where faces were smiling quietly: and, dreaming on
further still, this vast approval that gave benediction to his heart's
youthful fancy seemed to widen and widen like the gold of a summer's
evening or, the humming of bees in summer in endless rows of limes,
until it became a part of the story of man. Spring days of his earliest
memory seemed to have their part in it, as well as wonderful evenings
of days that were yet to be, till his love for Serafina was one with
the fate of earth; and, wandering far on their courses, he knew that
the stars blessed it. But Serafina went up to the man on the couch with
no look for Rodriguez.
With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken hidalgo. He
raised himself a little on one elbow. "It is nothing," he said,
"Serafina."
Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with open
and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead, she spoke in a low
voice to him; she lavished upon him sympathy for which Rodriguez would
have offered his head to swords; and all, thought Rodriguez for three
blows from a knave's frying-pan: and his anger against Morano flared up
again fiercely. Then there came another thought to him out of the
shadows, where Serafina was standing all white, a figure of solace. Who
was this man who so mysteriously blended with the other unknown things
that haunted the gloom of that chamber? Why had he fought him at night?
What was he to Serafina? Thoughts crowded up to him from the interior
of the darkness, sombre and foreboding as the shadows that nursed them.
He stood there never daring to speak to Serafina; looking for
permission to speak, such as a glance might give. And no glance came.
And now, as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his eyes.
Serafina stood beside him anxious and silent, gleaming in that dim
place. The servant at the far end of the chamber still held his one
candle high, as though some light of earth were needed against the
fantastic moon, which if unopposed would give everything over to magic.
Rodriguez stood there, scarcely breathing. All was silent. And then
through the door by which Serafina had come, past that lonely, golden,
moon-defying candle, all down the long room across moonlight and
blackness, came the lady of the house, Serafina's mother. She came, as
Serafina came, straight toward the man on the couch, giving no look to
Rodriguez, walking something as Serafina walked, with the same poise,
the same dignity, though the years had carried away from her the grace
Serafina had: so that, though you saw that they were mother and
daughter, the elder lady called to mind the lovely things of earth,
large gardens at evening, statues dim in the dusk, summer and
whatsoever binds us to earthly things; but Serafina turned Rodriguez'
thoughts to the twilight in which he first saw her, and he pictured her
native place as far from here, in mellow fields near the moon, wherein
she had walked on twilight outlasting any we know, with all delicate
things of our fancy, too fair for the rugged earth.
As the lady approached the couch upon which the young man was lying,
and still no look was turned towards Rodriguez, his young dreams fled
as butterflies sailing high in the heat of June that are suddenly
plunged in night by a total eclipse of the sun. He had never spoken to
Serafina, or seen before her mother, and they did not know his name; he
knew that he, Rodriguez, had no claim to a welcome. But his dreams had
flocked so much about Serafina's face, basking so much in her beauty,
that they now fell back dying; and when a man's dreams die what
remains, if he lingers awhile behind them?
Rodriguez suddenly felt that his left shoe was off and his right eye
still bandaged, things that he had not noticed while his only thought
was for the man he carried to shelter, but torturing his consciousness
now that he thought of himself. He opened his lips to explain; but
before words came to him, looking at the face of Serafina's mother,
standing now by the couch, he felt that, not knowing how, he had
somehow wronged the Penates of this house, or whatever was hid in the
dimness of that long chamber, by carrying in this young man there to
rest from his hurt.
Rodriguez' depression arose from these causes, but having arisen, it
grew of its own might: he had had nothing to eat since morning, and in
the favouring atmosphere of hunger his depression grew gigantic. He
opened his lips once more to say farewell, was oppressed by all manner
of thoughts that held him dumb, and turned away in silence and left the
house. Outside he recovered his mandolin and his shoe. He was tired
with the weariness of defeated dreams that slept in his spirit
exhausted, rather than with any fatigue his young muscles had from the
journey. He needed sleep; he looked at the shuttered houses; then at
the soft dust of the road in which dogs lay during the daylight. But
the dust was near to his mood, so he lay down where he had fought the
unknown hidalgo. A light wind wandered the street like a visitor come
to the village out of a friendly valley, but Rodriguez' four days on
the roads had made him familiar with all wandering things, and the
breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all: before it had wearied
of wandering in the night Rodriguez had fallen asleep. Just by the edge
of sleep, upon which side he knew not, he heard the window of the
balcony creak, and looked up wide awake all in a moment. But nothing
stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the window was fast shut. So
whatever sound came from the window came not from its opening but
shutting: for a while he wondered; and then his tired thoughts rested,
and that was sleep.
A light rain woke Rodriguez, drizzling upon his face; the first light
rain that had fallen in a romantic tale. Storms there had been, lashing
oaks to terrific shapes seen at night by flashes of lightning, through
which villains rode abroad or heroes sought shelter at midnight;
hurricanes there had been, flapping huge cloaks, fierce hail and
copious snow; but until now no drizzle. It was morning; dawn was old;
and pale and grey and unhappy.
The balcony above him, still empty, scarcely even held romance now.
Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed worse than
the most sinister shadows of night.
And then Rodriguez saw a rose lying on the ground beside him. And for
all the dreams, fancies, and hopes that leaped up in Rodriguez' mind,
rising and falling and fading, one thing alone he knew and all the rest
was mystery: the rose had lain there before the rain had fallen.
Beneath the rose was white dust, while all around it the dust was
turning grey with rain.
Rodriguez tried to guess how long the rain had fallen. The rose may
have lain beside him all night long. But the shadows of mystery receded
no farther than this one fact that the rose was there before the rain
began. No sign of any kind came from the house.
Rodriguez put the rose safe under his coat, wrapped in the kerchief
that had guarded the mandolin, to carry it far from Lowlight, through
places familiar with roses and places strange to them; but it remained
for him a thing of mystery until a day far from then.
Sadly he left the house in the sad rain, marching away alone to look
for his wars.
THE SEVENTH CHRONICLE
HOW HE CAME TO SHADOW VALLEY
Rodriguez still believed it to be the duty of any Christian man to kill
Morano. Yet, more than comfort, more than dryness, he missed Morano's
cheerful chatter, and his philosophy into which all occasions so easily
slipped. Upon his first day's journey all was new; the very anemones
kept him company; but now he made the discovery that lonely roads are
long.
When he had suggested food or rest Morano had fallen in with his
wishes; when he had suggested winning a castle in vague wars Morano had
agreed with him. Now he had dismissed Morano and had driven him away at
the rapier's point. There was no one now either to cook his food or to
believe in the schemes his ambition made. There was no one now to speak
of the wars as the natural end of the journey. Alone in the rain the
wars seemed far away and castles hard to come by. The unromantic rain
in which no dreams thrive fell on and on.
The village of Lowlight was some way behind him, as he went with
mournful thoughts through the drizzling rain, when he caught the smell
of bacon. He looked for a house but the plain was bare except for small
bushes. He looked up wind, which was blowing from the west, whence came
the unmistakable smell of bacon: and there was a small fire smoking
greyly against a bush; and the fat figure crouching beside it, although
the face was averted, was clearly none but Morano. And when Rodriguez
saw that he was tenderly holding the infamous frying-pan, the very
weapon that had done the accursed deed, then he almost felt righteous
anger; but that frying-pan held other memories too, and Rodriguez felt
less fury than what he thought he felt. As for killing Morano,
Rodriguez believed, or thought he believed, that he was too far from
the road for it to be possible to overtake him to mete out his just
punishment. As for the bacon, Rodriguez scorned it and marched on down
the road. Now one side of the frying-pan was very hot, for it was
tilted a little and the lard had run sideways. By tilting it back again
slowly Morano could make the fat run back bit by bit over the heated
metal, and whenever it did so it sizzled. He now picked up the
frying-pan and one log that was burning well and walked parallel with
Rodriguez. He was up-wind of him, and whenever the bacon-fat sizzled
Rodriguez caught the smell of it. A small matter to inspire thoughts;
but Rodriguez had eaten nothing since the morning before, and ideas
surged through his head; and though they began with moral indignation
they adapted themselves more and more to hunger, until there came the
idea that since his money had bought the bacon the food was rightfully
his, and he had every right to eat it wherever he found it. So much can
slaves sometimes control the master, and the body rule the brain.
So Rodriguez suddenly turned and strode up to Morano. "My bacon," he
said.
"Master," Morano said, for it was beginning to cool, "let me make
another small fire."
"Knave, call me not master," said Rodriguez.
Morano, who knew when speech was good, was silent now, and blew on the
smouldering end of the log he carried and gathered a handful of twigs
and shook the rain off them; and soon had a small fire again, warming
the bacon. He had nothing to say which bacon could not say better. And
when Rodriguez had finished up the bacon he carefully reconsidered the
case of Morano, and there were points in it which he had not thought of
before. He reflected that for the execution of knaves a suitable person
was provided. He should perhaps give Morano up to la Garda. His next
thought was where to find la Garda. And easily enough another thought
followed that one, which was that although on foot and still some way
behind four of la Garda were trying to find him. Rodriguez' mind, which
was looking at life from the point of view of a judge, changed somewhat
at this thought. He reflected next that, for the prevention of crime,
to make Morano see the true nature of his enormity so that he should
never commit it again might after all be as good as killing him. So
what we call his better nature, his calmer judgment, decided him now to
talk to Morano and not to kill him: but Morano, looking back upon this
merciful change, always attributed it to fried bacon.
"Morano," said Rodriguez' better nature, "to offend the laws of
Chivalry is to have against you the swords of all true men."
"Master," Morano said, "that were dreadful odds."
"And rightly," said Rodriguez.
"Master," said Morano, "I will keep those laws henceforth. I may cook
bacon for you when you are hungry, I may brush the dust from your
cloak, I may see to your comforts. This Chivalry forbids none of that.
But when I see anyone trying to kill you, master; why, kill you he
must, and welcome."
"Not always," said Rodriguez somewhat curtly, for it struck him that
Morano spoke somehow too lightly of sacred things.
"Not always?" asked Morano.
"No," said Rodriguez.
"Master, I implore you tell me," said Morano, "when they may kill you
and when they may not, so that I may never offend again."
Rodriguez cast a swift glance at him but found his face so full of
puzzled anxiety that he condescended to do what Morano had asked, and
began to explain to him the rudiments of the laws of Chivalry.
"In the wars," he said, "you may defend me whoever assails me, or if
robbers or any common persons attack me, but if I arrange a meeting
with a gentleman, and any knave basely interferes, then is he damned
hereafter as well as accursed now; for, the laws of Chivalry being
founded on true religion, the penalty for their breach is by no means
confined to this world."
"Master," replied Morano thoughtfully, "if I be not damned already I
will avoid those fires of Hell; and none shall kill you that you have
not chosen to kill you, and those that you choose shall kill you
whenever you have a mind."
Rodriguez opened his lips to correct Morano but reflected that, though
in his crude and base-born way, he had correctly interpreted the law so
far as his mind was able.
So he briefly said "Yes," and rose and returned to the road, giving
Morano no order to follow him; and this was the last concession he made
to the needs of Chivalry on account of the sin of Morano. Morano
gathered up the frying-pan and followed Rodriguez, and when they came
to the road he walked behind him in silence.
For three or four miles they walked thus, Morano knowing that he
followed on sufferance and calling no attention to himself with his
garrulous tongue. But at the end of an hour the rain lifted; and with
the coming out of the sun Morano talked again.
"Master," he said, "the next man that you choose to kill you, let him
be one too base-born to know the tricks of the rapier, too ignorant to
do aught but wish you well, some poor fat fool over forty who shall be
too heavy to elude your rapier's point and too elderly for it to matter
when you kill him at your Chivalry, the best of life being gone already
at forty-five."
"There is timber here," said Rodriguez. "We will have some more bacon
while you dry my cloak over a fire."
Thus he acknowledged Morano again for his servant but never
acknowledged that in Morano's words he had understood any poor sketch
of Morano's self, or that the words went to his heart.
"Timber, Master?" said Morano, though it did not need Rodriguez to
point out the great oaks that now began to stand beside their journey,
but he saw that the other matter was well and thus he left well alone.
Rodriguez waved an arm towards the great trees. "Yes, indeed," said
Morano, and began to polish up the frying-pan as he walked.
Rodriguez, who missed little, caught a glimpse of tears in Morano's
eyes, for all that his head was turned downward over the frying-pan;
yet he said nothing, for he knew that forgiveness was all that Morano
needed, and that he had now given him: and it was much to give,
reflected Rodriguez, for so great a crime, and dismissed the matter
from his mind.