the road by which they had ridden when Rodriguez still had his dream,
the way from Shadow Valley to the Ebro. And so they turned into the
road they knew, as wanderers always will; and, still without aim or
plan, they faced towards Shadow Valley. And in the evening of the day
that followed that, as they looked about for a camping-ground, there
came in sight the village on the hill which Rodriguez knew to be fifty
miles from the forest: it was the village in which they had rested the
first night after leaving Shadow Valley. They did not camp but went on
to the village and knocked at the door of the inn. Habit guides us all
at times, even kings are the slaves of it (though in their presence it
takes the prouder name of precedent); and here were two wanderers
without any plans at all; they were therefore defenceless in the grip
of habit and, seeing an inn they knew, they loitered up to it. Mine
host came again to the door. He cheerfully asked Rodriguez how he had
fared on his journey, but Rodriguez would say nothing. He asked for
lodging for himself and Morano and stabling for the horses: he ate and
slept and paid his due, and in the morning was gone.
Whatever impulses guided Rodriguez as he rode and Morano followed, he
knew not what they were or even that there could be any. He followed
the road without hope and only travelled to change his camping-grounds.
And that night he was half-way between the village and Shadow Valley.
Morano never spoke, for he saw that his master's disappointment was
still raw; but it pleased him to notice, as he had done all day, that
they were heading for the great forest. He cooked their evening meal in
their camp by the wayside and they both ate it in silence. For awhile
Rodriguez sat and gazed at the might-have-beens in the camp-fire: and
when these began to be hidden by white ash he went to his blankets and
slept. And Morano went quietly about the little camp, doing all that
needed to be done, with never a word. When the horses were seen to and
fed, when the knives were cleaned, when everything was ready for the
start next morning, Morano went to his blankets and slept too. And in
the morning again they wandered on.
That evening they saw the low gold rays of the sun enchanting the tops
of a forest. It almost surprised Rodriguez, travelling without an aim,
to recognise Shadow Valley. They quickened their slow pace and, before
twilight faded, they were under the great oaks; but the last of the
twilight could not pierce the dimness of Shadow Valley, and it seemed
as if night had entered the forest with them.
They chose a camping-ground as well as they could in the darkness and
Morano tied the horses to trees a little way off from the camp. Then he
returned to Rodriguez and tied a blanket to the windward side of two
trees to make a kind of bedroom for his master, for they had all the
blankets they needed. And when this was done he set the emblem and
banner of camps, anywhere all over the world in any time, for he
gathered sticks and branches and lit a camp-fire. The first red flames
went up and waved and proclaimed a camp: the light made a little
circle, shadows ran away to the forest, and the circle of light on the
ground and on the trees that stood round it became for that one night
home.
They heard the horses stamp as they always did in the early part of the
night; and then Morano went to give them their fodder. Rodriguez sat
and gazed into the fire, his mind as full of thoughts as the fire was
full of pictures: one by one the pictures in the fire fell in; and all
his thoughts led nowhere.
He heard Morano running back the thirty or forty yards he had gone from
the camp-fire "Master," Morano said, "the three horses are gone."
"Gone?" said Rodriguez. There was little more to say; it was too dark
to track them and he knew that to find three horses in Shadow Valley
was a task that might take years. And after more thought than might
seem to have been needed he said; "We must go on foot."
"Have we far to go, master?" said Morano, for the first time daring to
question him since they left the cottage in Spain.
"I have nowhere to go," said Rodriguez. His head was downcast as he sat
by the fire: Morano stood and looked at him unhappily, full of a
sympathy that he found no words to express. A light wind slipped
through the branches and everything else was still. It was some while
before he lifted his head; and then he saw before him on the other side
of the fire, standing with folded arms, the man in the brown leather
jacket.
"Nowhere to go!" said he. "Who needs go anywhere from Shadow Valley?"
Rodriguez stared at him. "But I can't stay here!" he said.
"There is no fairer forest known to man," said the other. "I know many
songs that prove it."
Rodriguez made no answer but dropped his eyes, gazing with listless
glance once more at the ground. "Come, señor," said the man in the
leather jacket. "None are unhappy in Shadow Valley."
"Who are you?" said Rodriguez. Both he and Morano were gazing curiously
at the man whom they had saved three weeks ago from the noose.
"Your friend," answered the stranger.
"No friend can help me," said Rodriguez.
"Señor," said the stranger across the fire, still standing with folded
arms, "I remain under an obligation to no man. If you have an enemy or
love a lady, and if they dwell within a hundred miles, either shall be
before you within a week."
Rodriguez shook his head, and silence fell by the camp-fire. And after
awhile Rodriguez, who was accustomed to dismiss a subject when it was
ended, saw the stranger's eyes on him yet, still waiting for him to say
more. And those clear blue eyes seemed to do more than wait, seemed
almost to command, till they overcame Rodriguez' will and he obeyed and
said, although he could feel each word struggling to stay unuttered,
"Señor, I went to the wars to win a castle and a piece of land thereby;
and might perchance have wed and ended my wanderings, with those of my
servant here; but the wars are over and no castle is won."
And the stranger saw by his face in the firelight, and knew from the
tones of his voice in the still night, the trouble that his words had
not expressed.
"I remain under an obligation to no man," said the stranger. "Be at
this place in four weeks' time, and you shall have a castle as large as
any that men win by war, and a goodly park thereby."
"Your castle, master!" said Morano delighted, whose only thought up to
then was as to who had got his horses. But Rodriguez only stared: and
the stranger said no more but turned on his heel. And then Rodriguez
awoke out of his silence and wonder. "But where?" he said. "What
castle?"
"That you will see," said the stranger.
"But, but how ..." said Rodriguez. What he meant was, "How can I
believe you?" but he did not put it in words.
"My word was never broken," said the other. And that is a good boast to
make, for those of us who can make it; if we need boast at all.
"Whose word?" said Rodriguez, looking him in the eyes.
The smoke from the fire between them was thickening greyly as though
something had been cast on it. "The word," he said, "of the King of
Shadow Valley."
Rodriguez gazing through the increasing smoke saw not to the other
side. He rose and walked round the fire, but the strange man was gone.
Rodriguez came back to his place by the fire and sat long there in
silence. Morano was bubbling over to speak, but respected his master's
silence: for Rodriguez was gazing into the deeps of the fire seeing
pictures there that were brighter than any that he had known. They were
so clear now that they seemed almost true. He saw Serafina's face there
looking full at him. He watched it long until other pictures hid it,
visions that had no meaning for Rodriguez. And not till then he spoke.
And when he spoke his face was almost smiling.
"Well, Morano," he said, "have we come by that castle at last?"
"That man does not lie, master," he answered: and his eyes were
glittering with shrewd conviction.
"What shall we do then?" said Rodriguez.
"Let us go to some village, master," said Morano, "until the time he
said."
"What village?" Rodriguez asked.
"I know not, master," answered Morano, his face a puzzle of innocence
and wonder; and Rodriguez fell back into thought again. And the dancing
flames calmed down to a deep, quiet glow; and soon Rodriguez stepped
back a yard or two from the fire to where Morano had prepared his bed;
and, watching the fire still, and turning over thoughts that flashed
and changed as fast as the embers, he went to wonderful dreams that
were no more strange or elusive than that valley's wonderful king.
When he spoke in the morning the camp-fire was newly lit and there was
a smell of bacon; and Morano, out of breath and puzzled, was calling to
him.
"Master," he said, "I was mistaken about those horses."
"Mistaken?" said Rodriguez.
"They were just as I left them, master, all tied to the tree with my
knots."
Rodriguez left it at that. Morano could make mistakes and the forest
was full of wonders: anything might happen. "We will ride," he said.
Morano's breakfast was as good as ever; and, when he had packed up
those few belongings that make a dwelling-place of any chance spot in
the wilderness, they mounted the horses, which were surely there, and
rode away through sunlight and green leaves. They rode slow, for the
branches were low over the path, and whoever canters in a forest and
closes his eyes against a branch has to consider whether he will open
them to be whipped by the next branch or close them till he bumps his
head into a tree. And it suited Rodriguez to loiter, for he thought
thus to meet the King of Shadow Valley again or his green bowmen and
learn the answers to innumerable questions about his castle which were
wandering through his mind.
They ate and slept at noon in the forest's glittering greenness.
They passed afterwards by the old house in the wood, in which the
bowmen feasted, for they followed the track that they had taken before.
They knocked loud on the door as they passed but the house was empty.
They heard the sound of a multitude felling trees, but whenever they
approached the sound of chopping ceased. Again and again they left the
track and rode towards the sound of chopping, and every time the
chopping died away just as they drew close. They saw many a tree half
felled, but never a green bowman. And at last they left it as one of
the wonders of the forest and returned to the track lest they lose it,
for the track was more important to them than curiosity, and evening
had come and was filling the forest with dimness, and shadows stealing
across the track were beginning to hide it away. In the distance they
heard the invisible woodmen chopping.
And then they camped again and lit their fire; and night came down and
the two wanderers slept.
The nightingale sang until he woke the cuckoo: and the cuckoo filled
the leafy air so full of his two limpid notes that the dreams of
Rodriguez heard them and went away, back over their border to
dreamland. Rodriguez awoke Morano, who lit his fire: and soon they had
struck their camp and were riding on.
By noon they saw that if they hurried on they could come to Lowlight by
nightfall. But this was not Rodriguez' plan, for he had planned to ride
into Lowlight, as he had done once before, at the hour when Serafina
sat in her balcony in the cool of the evening, as Spanish ladies in
those days sometimes did. So they tarried long by their resting-place
at noon and then rode slowly on. And when they camped that night they
were still in the forest.
"Morano," said Rodriguez over the camp-fire, "tomorrow brings me to
Lowlight."
"Aye, master," said Morano, "we shall be there tomorrow."
"That señor with whom I had a meeting there," said Rodriguez, "he ..."
"He loves me not," said Morano.
"He would surely kill you," replied Rodriguez.
Morano looked sideways at his frying-pan.
"It would therefore be better," continued Rodriguez, "that you should
stay in this camp while I give such greetings of ceremony in Lowlight
as courtesy demands."
"I will stay, master," said Morano.
Rodriguez was glad that this was settled, for he felt that to follow
his dreams of so many nights to that balconied house in Lowlight with
Morano would be no better than visiting a house accompanied by a dog
that had bitten one of the family.
"I will stay," repeated Morano. "But, master ..." The fat man's eyes
were all supplication.
"Yes?" said Rodriguez.
"Leave me your mandolin," implored Morano.
"My mandolin?" said Rodriguez.
"Master," said Morano, "that señor who likes my fat body so ill he
would kill me, he ..."
"Well?" said Rodriguez, for Morano was hesitating.
"He likes your mandolin no better, master."
Rodriguez resented a slight to his mandolin as much as a slight to his
sword, but he smiled as he looked at Morano's anxious face.
"He would kill you for your mandolin," Morano went on eagerly, "as he
would kill me for my frying-pan."
And at the mention of that frying-pan Rodriguez frowned, although it
had given him many a good meal since the night it offended in Lowlight.
And he would sooner have gone to the wars without a sword than under
the balcony of his heart's desire without a mandolin.
So Rodriguez would hear no more of Morano's request; and soon he left
the fire and went to lie down; but Morano sighed and sat gazing on into
the embers unhappily; while thoughts plodded slow through his mind,
leading to nothing. Late that night he threw fresh logs on the
camp-fire, so that when they awoke there was still fire in the embers
And when they had eaten their breakfast Rodriguez said farewell to
Morano, saying that he had business in Lowlight that might keep him a
few days. But Morano said not farewell then, for he would follow his
master as far as the midday halt to cook his next meal. And when noon
came they were beyond the forest.
Once more Morano cooked bacon. Then while Rodriguez slept Morano took
his cloak and did all that could be done by brushing and smoothing to
give back to it that air that it some time had, before it had flapped
upon so many winds and wrapped Rodriguez on such various beds, and met
the vicissitudes that make this story.
For the plume he could do little.
And his master awoke, late in the afternoon, and went to his horse and
gave Morano his orders. He was to go back with two of the horses to
their last camp in the forest and take with him all their kit except
one blanket and make himself comfortable there and wait till Rodriguez
came.
And then Rodriguez rode slowly away, and Morano stood gazing mournfully
and warningly at the mandolin; and the warnings were not lost upon
Rodriguez, though he would never admit that he saw in Morano's staring
eyes any wise hint that he heeded.
And Morano sighed, and went and untethered his horses; and soon he was
riding lonely back to the forest. And Rodriguez taking the other way
saw at once the towers of Lowlight.
Does my reader think that he then set spurs to his horse, galloping
towards that house about whose balcony his dreams flew every night? No,
it was far from evening; far yet from the colour and calm in which the
light with never a whisper says farewell to Earth, but with a gesture
that the horizon hides takes silent leave of the fields on which she
has danced with joy; far yet from the hour that shone for Serafina like
a great halo round her and round her mother's house.
We cannot believe that one hour more than another shone upon Serafina,
or that the dim end of the evening was only hers: but these are the
Chronicles of Rodriguez, who of all the things that befell him
treasured most his memory of Serafina in the twilight, and who held
that this hour was hers as much as her raiment and her balcony: such
therefore it is in these chronicles.
And so he loitered, waiting for the slow sun to set: and when at last a
tint on the walls of Lowlight came with the magic of Earth's most faery
hour he rode in slowly not perhaps wholly unwitting, for all his
anxious thoughts of Serafina, that a little air of romance from the
Spring and the evening followed this lonely rider.
From some way off he saw that balcony that had drawn him back from the
other side of the far Pyrenees. Sometimes he knew that it drew him and
mostly he knew it not; yet always that curved balcony brought him
nearer, ever since he turned from the field of the false Don Alvidar:
the balcony held him with invisible threads, such as those with which
Earth draws in the birds at evening. And there was Serafina in her
balcony.
When Rodriguez saw Serafina sitting there in the twilight, just as he
had often dreamed, he looked no more but lowered his head to the
withered rose that he carried now in his hand, the rose that he had
found by that very balcony under another moon. And, gazing still at the
rose, he rode on under the balcony, and passed it, until his hoof-beats
were heard no more in Lowlight and he and his horse were one dim shape
between the night and the twilight. And still he held on.
He knew not yet, but only guessed, who had thrown that rose from the
balcony on the night when he slept on the dust: he knew not who it was
that he fought on the same night, and dared not guess what that unknown
hidalgo might be to Serafina. He had no claim to more from that house,
which once gave him so cold a welcome, than thus to ride by it in
silence. And he knew as he rode that the cloak and the plume that he
wore scarce seemed the same as those that had floated by when more than
a month ago he had ridden past that balcony; and the withered rose that
he carried added one more note of autumn. And yet he hoped.
And so he rode into twilight and was hid from the sight of the village,
a worn, pathetic figure, trusting vaguely to vague powers of good
fortune that govern all men, but that favour youth.
And, sure enough, it was not yet wholly moonlight when cantering hooves
came down the road behind him. It was once more that young hidalgo. And
as soon as he drew rein beside Rodriguez both reached out merry hands
as though their former meeting had been some errand of joy. And as
Rodriguez looked him in the eyes, while the two men leaned over
clasping hands, in light still clear though faded, he could not doubt
Serafina was his sister.
"Señor," said his old enemy, "will you tarry with us, in our house a
few days, if your journey is not urgent?"
Rodriguez gasped for joy; for the messenger from Lowlight, the
certainty that here was no rival, the summons to the house of his
dreams' pilgrimage, came all together: his hand still clasped the
stranger's. Yet he answered with the due ceremony that that age and
land demanded: then they turned and rode together towards Lowlight. And
first the young men told each other their names; and the stranger told
how he dwelt with his mother and sister in the house that Rodriguez
knew, and his name was Don Alderon of the Valley of Dawnlight. His
house had dwelt in that valley since times out of knowledge; but then
the Moors had come and his forbears had fled to Lowlight: the Moors
were gone now, for which Saint Michael and all fighting Saints be
praised; but there were certain difficulties about his right to the
Valley of Dawnlight. So they dwelt in Lowlight still.
And Rodriguez told of the war that there was beyond the Pyrenees and
how the just cause had won, but little more than that he was able to
tell, for he knew scarce more of the cause for which he had fought than
History knows of it, who chooses her incidents and seems to forget so
much. And as they talked they came to the house with the balcony. A
waning moon cast light over it that was now no longer twilight; but was
the light of wild things of the woods, and birds of prey, and men in
mountains outlawed by the King, and magic, and mystery, and the quests
of love. Serafina had left her place: lights gleamed now in the
windows. And when the door was opened the hall seemed to Rodriguez so
much less hugely hollow, so much less full of ominous whispered echoes,
that his courage rose high as he went through it with Alderon, and they
entered the room together that they had entered together before. In the
long room beyond many candles he saw Dona Serafina and her mother
rising up to greet him. Neither the ceremonies of that age nor
Rodriguez' natural calm would have entirely concealed his emotion had
not his face been hidden as he bowed. They spoke to him; they asked him
of his travels; Rodriguez answered with effort. He saw by their manner
that Don Alderon must have explained much in his favour. He had this
time, to cheer him, a very different greeting; and yet he felt little
more at ease than when he had stood there late at night before, with
one eye bandaged and wearing only one shoe, suspected of he knew not
what brawling and violence.
It was not until Dona Mirana, the mother of Serafina, asked him to play
to them on his mandolin that Rodriguez' ease returned. He bowed then
and brought round his mandolin, which had been slung behind him; and
knew a triumphant champion was by him now, one old in the ways of love
and wise in the sorrows of man, a slender but potent voice,
well-skilled to tell what there were not words to say; a voice
unhindered by language, unlimited even by thought, whose universal
meaning was heard and understood, sometimes perhaps by wandering
spirits of light, beaten far by some evil thought for their heavenly
courses and passing close along the coasts of Earth.
And Rodriguez played no tune he had ever known, nor any airs that he
had heard men play in lanes in Andalusia; but he told of things that he
knew not, of sadnesses that he had scarcely felt and undreamed
exaltations. It was the hour of need, and the mandolin knew.
And when all was told that the mandolin can tell of whatever is
wistfulest in the spirit of man, a mood of merriment entered its old
curved sides and there came from its hollows a measure such as they
dance to when laughter goes over the greens in Spain. Never a song sang
Rodriguez; the mandolin said all.
And what message did Serafina receive from those notes that were
strange even to Rodriguez? Were they not stranger to her? I have said
that spirits blown far out of their course and nearing the mundane
coasts hear mortal music sometimes, and hearing understand. And if they
cannot understand those snatches of song, all about mortal things and
human needs, that are wafted rarely to them by chance passions, how
much more surely a young mortal heart, so near Rodriguez, heard what he
would say and understood the message however strange.
When Dona Mirana and her daughter rose, exchanging their little
curtsies for the low bows of Rodriguez, and so retired for the night,
the long room seemed to Rodriguez now empty of threatening omens. The
great portraits that the moon had lit, and that had frowned at him in
the moonlight when he came here before, frowned at him now no longer.
The anger that he had known to lurk in the darkness on pictured faces
of dead generations had gone with the gloom that it haunted: they were
all passionless now in the quiet light of the candles. He looked again
at the portraits eye to eye, remembering looks they had given him in
the moonlight, and all looked back at him with ages of apathy; and he
knew that whatever glimmer of former selves there lurks about portraits
of the dead and gone was thinking only of their own past days in years
remote from Rodriguez. Whether their anger had flashed for a moment
over the ages on that night a month from now, or whether it was only
the moonlight, he never knew. Their spirits were back now surely
amongst their own days, whence they deigned not to look on the days
that make these chronicles.
Not till then did Rodriguez admit, or even know, that he had not eaten
since his noonday meal. But now he admitted this to Don Alderon's
questions; and Don Alderon led him to another chamber and there regaled
him with all the hospitality for which that time was famous. And when
Rodriguez had eaten, Don Alderon sent for wine, and the butler brought
it in an olden flagon, dark wine of a precious vintage: and soon the
two young men were drinking together and talking of the wickedness of
the Moors. And while they talked the night grew late and chilly and
still, and the hour came when moths are fewer and young men think of
bed. Then Don Alderon showed his guest to an upper room, a long room
dim with red hangings, and carvings in walnut and oak, which the one
candle he carried barely lit but only set queer shadows scampering. And
here he left Rodriguez, who was soon in bed, with the great red
hangings round him. And awhile he wondered at the huge silence of the
house all round him, with never a murmur, never an echo, never a sigh;
for he missed the passing of winds, branches waving, the stirring of
small beasts, birds of prey calling, and the hundred sounds of the
night; but soon through the silence came sleep.
He did not need to dream, for here in the home of Serafina he had come
to his dreams' end.