narrow stream of gold and silver between the huge red curtains had sent
away the shadows that had stalked overnight through the room, and had
scattered the eeriness that had lurked on the far side of furniture,
and all the dimness was gone that the long red room had harboured. And
for a while Rodriguez did not know where he was; and for a while, when
he remembered, he could not believe it true. He dressed with care,
almost with fear, and preened his small moustachios, which at last had
grown again just when he would have despaired. Then he descended, and
found that he had slept late, though the three of that ancient house
were seated yet at the table, and Serafina all dressed in white seemed
to Rodriguez to be shining in rivalry with the morning. Ah dreams and
fancies of youth!
THE ELEVENTH CHRONICLE
HOW HE TURNED TO GARDENING AND HIS SWORD RESTED
These were the days that Rodriguez always remembered; and, side by side
with them, there lodged in his memory, and went down with them into his
latter years, the days and nights when he went through the Pyrenees and
walked when he would have slept but had to walk or freeze: and by some
queer rule that guides us he treasured them both in his memory, these
happy days in this garden and the frozen nights on the peaks.
For Serafina showed Rodriguez the garden that behind the house ran
narrow and long to the wild. There were rocks with heliotrope pouring
over them and flowers peeping behind them, and great azaleas all in
triumphant bloom, and ropes of flowering creepers coming down from
trees, and oleanders, and a plant named popularly Joy of the South, and
small paths went along it edged with shells brought from the far sea.
There was only one street in the village, and you did not go far among
the great azaleas before you lost sight of the gables; and you did not
go far before the small paths ended with their shells from the distant
sea, and there was the mistress of all gardeners facing you, Mother
Nature nursing her children, the things of the wild. She too had
azaleas and oleanders, but they stood more solitary in their greater
garden than those that grew in the garden of Dona Mirana; and she too
had little paths, only they were without borders and without end. Yet
looking from the long and narrow garden at the back of that house in
Lowlight to the wider garden that sweeps round the world, and is fenced
by Space from the garden in Venus and by Space from the garden in Mars,
you scarce saw any difference or noticed where they met: the solitary
azaleas beyond were gathered together by distance, and from Lowlight to
the horizon seemed all one garden in bloom. And afterwards, all his
years, whenever Rodriguez heard the name of Spain, spoken by loyal men,
it was thus that he thought of it, as he saw it now.
And here he used to walk with Serafina when she tended flowers in the
cool of the morning or went at evening to water favourite blooms. And
Rodriguez would bring with him his mandolin, and sometimes he touched
it lightly or even sang, as they rested on some carved seat at the
garden's end, looking out towards shadowy shrubs on the shining hill,
but mostly he heard her speak of the things she loved, of what moths
flew to their garden, and which birds sang, and how the flowers grew.
Serafina sat no longer in her balcony but, disguising idleness by other
names, they loitered along those paths that the seashells narrowed; yet
there was a grace in their loitering such as we have not in our dances
now. And evening stealing in from the wild places, from darkening
azaleas upon distant hills, still found them in the garden, found
Rodriguez singing in idleness undisguised, or anxiously helping in some
trivial task, tying up some tendril that had gone awry, helping some
magnolia that the wind had wounded. Almost unnoticed by him the
sunlight would disappear, and the coloured blaze of the sunset, and
then the gloaming; till the colours of all the flowers queerly changed
and they shone with that curious glow which they wear in the dusk. They
returned then to the house, the garden behind them with its dim hushed
air of a secret, before them the candlelight like a different land. And
after the evening meal Alderon and Rodriguez would sit late together
discussing the future of the world, Rodriguez holding that it was
intended that the earth should be ruled by Spain, and Alderon fearing
it would all go to the Moors.
Days passed thus.
And then one evening Rodriguez was in the garden with Serafina; the
flowers, dim and pale and more mysterious than ever, poured out their
scent towards the coming night, luring huge hawk-moths from the far
dusk that was gathering about the garden, to hover before each bloom on
myriad wingbeats too rapid for human eye: another inch and the fairies
had peeped out from behind azaleas, yet both of these late loiterers
felt fairies were surely there: it seemed to be Nature's own most
secret hour, upon which man trespasses if he venture forth from his
house: an owl from his hidden haunt flew nearer the garden and uttered
a clear call once to remind Rodriguez of this: and Rodriguez did not
heed, but walked in silence.
He had played his mandolin. It had uttered to the solemn hush of the
understanding evening all it was able to tell; and after that cry,
grown piteous with so many human longings, for it was an old mandolin,
Rodriguez felt there was nothing left for his poor words to say. So he
went dumb and mournful.
Serafina would have heard him had he spoken, for her thoughts vibrated
yet with the voice of the mandolin, which had come to her hearing as an
ambassador from Rodriguez, but he found no words to match with the
mandolin's high mood. His eyes said, and his sighs told, what the
mandolin had uttered; but his tongue was silent.
And then Serafina said, as he walked all heavy with silence past a
curving slope of dimly glowing azaleas, "You like flowers, señor?"
"Señorita, I adore them," he replied.
"Indeed?" said Dona Serafina.
"Indeed I do," said Rodriguez.
"And yet," asked Dona Serafina, "was it not a somewhat withered or
altogether faded flower that you carried, unless I fancied wrong, when
you rode past our balcony?"
"It was indeed faded," said Rodriguez, "for the rose was some weeks
old."
"One who loved flowers, I thought," said Serafina, "would perhaps care
more for them fresh."
Half-dumb though Rodriguez was his shrewdness did not desert him. To
have said that he had the rose from Serafina would have been to claim
as though proven what was yet no more than a hope.
"Señorita," he said, "I found the flower on holy ground."
"I did not know," she said, "that you had travelled so far."
"I found it here," he said, "under your balcony."
"Perchance I let it fall," said she. "It was idle of me."
"I guard it still," he said, and drew forth that worn brown rose.
"It was idle of me," said Serafina.
But then in that scented garden among the dim lights of late evening
the ghost of that rose introduced their spirits one to the other, so
that the listening flowers heard Rodriguez telling the story of his
heart, and, bending over the shell-bordered path, heard Serafina's
answer; and all they seemed to do was but to watch the evening, with
leaves uplifted in the hope of rain.
Film after film of dusk dropped down from where twilight had been, like
an army of darkness slowly pitching their tents on ground that had been
lost to the children of light. Out of the wild lands all the owls flew
nearer: their long, clear cries and the huge hush between them warned
all those lands that this was not man's hour. And neither Rodriguez nor
Serafina heard them.
In pale blue sky where none had thought to see it one smiling star
appeared. It was Venus watching lovers, as men of the crumbled
centuries had besought her to do, when they named her so long ago,
kneeling upon their hills with bended heads, and arms stretched out to
her sweet eternal scrutiny. Beneath her wandering rays as they danced
down to bless them Rodriguez and Serafina talked low in the sight of
the goddess, and their voices swayed through the flowers with whispers
and winds, not troubling the little wild creatures that steal out shy
in the dusk, and Nature forgave them for being abroad in that hour;
although, so near that a single azalea seemed to hide it, so near
seemed to beckon and whisper old Nature's eldest secret.
When flowers glimmered and Venus smiled and all things else were dim,
they turned on one of those little paths hand in hand homeward.
Dona Mirana glanced once at her daughter's eyes and said nothing. Don
Alderon renewed his talk with Rodriguez, giving reasons for his
apprehension of the conquest of the world by the Moors, which he had
thought of since last night; and Rodriguez agreed with all that Don
Alderon said, but understood little, being full of dreams that seemed
to dance on the further, side of the candlelight to a strange, new,
unheard tune that his heart was aware of. He gazed much at Serafina and
said little.
He drank no wine that night with Don Alderon: what need had he of wine?
On wonderful journeys that my pen cannot follow, for all the swiftness
of the wing from which it came; on darting journeys outspeeding the
lithe swallow or that great wanderer the white-fronted goose, his young
thoughts raced by a myriad of golden evenings far down the future
years. And what of the days he saw? Did he see them truly? Enough that
he saw them in vision. Saw them as some lone shepherd on lifted downs
sees once go by with music a galleon out of the East, with windy sails,
and masts ablaze with pennants, and heroes in strange dress singing new
songs; and the galleon goes nameless by till the singing dies away.
What ship was it? Whither bound? Why there? Enough that he has seen it.
Thus do we glimpse the glory of rare days as we swing round the sun;
and youth is like some high headland from which to see.
On the next day he spoke with Dona Mirano. There was little to say but
to observe the courtesies appropriate to this occasion, for Dona Mirana
and her daughter had spoken long together already; and of one thing he
could say little, and indeed was dumb when asked of it, and that was
the question of his home. And then he said that he had a castle; and
when Dona Mirana asked him where it was he said vaguely it was to the
North. He trusted the word of the King of Shadow Valley and so he spoke
of his castle as a man speaks the truth. And when she asked him of his
castle again, whether on rock or river or in leafy lands, he began to
describe how its ten towers stood, being builded of a rock that was
slightly pink, and how they glowed across a hundred fields, especially
at evening; and suddenly he ceased, perceiving all in a moment he was
speaking unwittingly in the words of Don Alvidar and describing to Dona
Mirana that rose-pink castle on Ebro. And Dona Mirana knew then that
there was some mystery about Rodriguez' home.
She spoke kindly to Rodriguez, yet she neither gave her consent nor yet
withheld it, and he knew there was no immediate hope in her words.
Graceful as were his bows as he withdrew, he left with scarcely another
word to say. All day his castle hung over him like a cloud, not
nebulous and evanescent only, but brooding darkly, boding storms, such
as the orange blossoms dread.
He walked again in the garden with Serafina, but Dona Mirana was never
far, and the glamour of the former evening, lit by one star, was driven
from the garden by his anxieties about that castle of which he could
not speak. Serafina asked him of his home. He would not parry her
question, and yet he could not tell her that all their future hung on
the promise of a man in an old leathern jacket calling himself a king.
So the mystery of his habitation deepened, spoiling the glamour of the
evening. He spoke, instead, of the forest, hoping she might know
something of that strange monarch to whom they dwelt so near; but she
glanced uneasily towards Shadow Valley and told him that none in
Lowlight went that way. Sorrow grew heavier round Rodriguez' heart at
this: believing in the promise of a man whose eyes he trusted he had
asked Serafina to marry him, and Serafina had said Yes; and now he
found she knew nothing of such a man, which seemed somehow to Rodriguez
to weaken his promise, and, worst of all, she feared the place where he
lived. He welcomed the approach of Dona Mirana, and all three returned
to the house. For the rest of that evening he spoke little; but he had
formed his project.
When the two ladies retired Rodriguez, who had seemed tongue-tied for
many hours, turned to Don Alderon. His mother had told Don Alderon
nothing yet; for she was troubled by the mystery of Rodriguez' castle,
and would give him time to make it clear if he could; for there was
something about Rodriguez of which with many pages I have tried to
acquaint my reader but which was clear when first she saw him to Dona
Mirana. In fact she liked him at once, as I hope that perhaps by now my
reader may. He turned to Don Alderon, who was surprised to see the
vehemence with which his guest suddenly spoke after those hours of
silence, and Rodriguez told him the story of his love and the story of
both his castles, that which had vanished from the bank of the Ebro and
that which was promised him by the King of Shadow Valley. And often Don
Alderon interrupted.
"Oh, Rodriguez," he said, "you are welcome to our ancient, unfortunate
house": and later he said, "I have met no man that had a prettier way
with the sword."
But Rodriguez held on to the end, telling all he had to tell; and
especially that he was landless and penniless but for that one promise;
and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the
sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so,
though there were a few cunning passes that he had learned, hoping that
the day might come for him to do God a service thereby by slaying some
of the Moors: and heartily he gave his consent and felicitation. But
this Rodriguez would not have: "Come with me," he said, "to the forest
to the place where I met this man, and if we find him not there we will
go to the house in which his bowmen feast and there have news of him,
and he shall show us the castle of his promise and, if it be such a
castle as you approve, then your consent shall be given, but if not ..."
"Gladly indeed," said Don Alderon. "We will start tomorrow."
And Rodriguez took his words literally, though his host had meant no
more than what we should call "one of these days," but Rodriguez was
being consumed with a great impatience. And so they arranged it, and
Don Alderon went to bed with a feeling, which is favourable to dreams,
that on the next day they went upon an adventure; for neither he nor
anyone in that village had entered Shadow Valley.
Once more next morning Rodriguez walked with Serafina, with something
of the romance of the garden gone, for Dona Mirana walked there too;
and romance is like one of those sudden, wonderful colours that flash
for a moment out of a drop of dew; a passing shadow obscures them; and
ask another to see it, and the colour is not the same: move but a yard
and the ray of enchantment is gone. Dona Mirana saw the romance of that
garden, but she saw it from thirty years away; it was all different
what she saw, all changed from a certain day (for love was love in the
old days): and to Rodriguez and Serafina it seemed that she could not
see romance at all, and somehow that dimmed it. Almost their eyes
seemed to search amongst the azaleas for the romance of that other
evening.
And then Rodriguez told Serafina that he was riding away with her
brother to see about the affairs of his castle, and that they would
return in a few days. Scarcely a hint he gave that those affairs might
not prosper, for he trusted the word of the King of Shadow Valley. His
confidence had returned: and soon, with swords at side and cloaks
floating brilliant on light winds of April, Rodriguez and Alderon rode
away together.
Soon in the distance they saw Shadow Valley. And then Rodriguez
bethought him of Morano and of the foul wrong he committed against Don
Alderon with his frying-pan, and how he was there in the camp to which
he was bringing his friend. And so he said: "That vile knave Morano
still lives and insists on serving me."
"If he be near," said Don Alderon, "I pray you to disarm him of his
frying-pan for the sake of my honour, which does not suffer me to be
stricken with culinary weapons, but only with the sword, the lance, or
even bolts of cannon or arquebuss ..." He was thinking of yet more
weapons when Rodriguez put spurs to his horse. "He is near," he said;
"I will ride on and disarm him."
So Rodriguez came cantering into the forest while Don Alderon ambled a
mile or so behind him.
And there he found his old camp and saw Morano, sitting upon the ground
by a small fire. Morano sprang up at once with joy in his eyes, his
face wreathed with questions, which he did not put into words for he
did not pry openly into his master's affairs.
"Morano," said Rodriguez, "give me your frying-pan."
"My frying-pan?" said Morano.
"Yes," said Rodriguez. And when he held in his hand that blackened,
greasy utensil he told Morano, "That señor you met in Lowlight rides
with me."
The cheerfulness faded out of Morano's face as light fades at sunset.
"Master," he said, "he will surely slay me now."
"He will not slay you," said Rodriguez.
"Master," Morano said, "he hopes for my fat carcase as much as men hope
for the unicorn, when they wear their bright green coats and hunt him
with dogs in Spring." I know not what legend Morano stored in his mind,
nor how much of it was true. "And when he finds me without my
frying-pan he will surely slay me."
"That señor," said Rodriguez emphatically, "must not be hit with the
frying-pan."
"That is a hard rule, master," said Morano.
And Rodriguez was indignant, when he heard that, that anyone should
thus blaspheme against an obvious law of chivalry: while Morano's only
thought was upon the injustice of giving up the sweets of life for the
sake of a frying-pan. Thus they were at cross-purposes. And for some
while they stood silent, while Rodriguez hung the reins of his horse
over the broken branch of a tree. And then Don Alderon rode into the
wood.
All then that was most pathetic in Morano's sense of injustice looked
out of his eyes as he turned them upon his master. But Don Alderon
scarcely glanced at all at Morano, even when he handed to him the reins
of his horse as he walked on towards Rodriguez.
And there in that leafy place they rested all through the evening, for
they had not started so early upon their journey as travellers should.
Eight days had gone since Rodriguez had left that small camp to ride to
Lowlight, and to the apex of his life towards which all his days had
ascended; and in that time Morano had collected good store of wood and,
in little ways unthought of by dwellers in cities, had made the place
like such homes as wanderers find. Don Alderon was charmed with their
roof of towering greenness, and with the choirs of those which
inhabited it and which were now all coming home to sing. And at some
moment in the twilight, neither Rodriguez nor Alderon noticed when,
Morano repossessed himself of his frying-pan, unbidden by Rodriguez,
but acting on a certain tacit permission that there seemed to be in the
twilight or in the mood of the two young men as they sat by the fire.
And soon he was cooking once more, at a fire of his own, with something
of the air that you see upon a Field Marshal's face who has lost his
baton and found it again. Have you ever noticed it, reader?
And when the meal was ready Morano served it in silence, moving
unobtrusively in the gloom of the wood; for he knew that he was
forgiven, yet not so openly that he wished to insist on his presence or
even to imply his possession of the weapon that fried the bacon. So,
like a dryad he moved from tree to tree, and like any fabulous creature
was gone again. And the two young men supped well, and sat on and on,
watching the sparks go up on innumerable journeys from the fire at
which they sat, to be lost to sight in huge wastes of blackness and
stars, lost to sight utterly, lost like the spirit of man to the gaze
of our wonder when we try to follow its journey beyond the hearths that
we know.
All the next day they rode on through the forest, till they came to the
black circle of the old fire of their next camp. And here Rodriguez
halted on account of the attraction that one of his old camps seems to
have for a wanderer. It drew his feet towards it, this blackened
circle, this hearth that for one night made one spot in the wilderness
home. Don Alderon did not care whether they tarried or hurried; he
loved his journey through this leafy land; the cool night-breeze
slipping round the tree-trunks was new to him, and new was the
comradeship of the abundant stars; the quest itself was a joy to him;
with his fancy he built Rodriguez' mysterious castle no less
magnificently than did Don Alvidar. Sometimes they talked of the
castle, each of the young men picturing it as he saw it; but in the
warmth of the camp-fire after Morano slept they talked of more than
these chronicles can tell.
In the morning they pressed on as fast as the forest's low boughs would
allow them. They passed somewhere near the great cottage in which the
bowmen feasted; but they held on, as they had decided after discussion
to do, for the last place in which Rodriguez had seen the King of
Shadow Valley, which was the place of his promise. And before any
dimness came even to the forest, or golden shafts down colonnades which
were before all cathedrals, they found the old camp that they sought,
which still had a clear flavour of magic for Morano on account of the
moth-like coming and going of his three horses after he had tied them
to that tree. And here they looked for the King of Shadow Valley; and
then Rodriguez called him; and then all three of them called him,
shouting "King of Shadow Valley" all together. No answer came: the
woods were without echo: nothing stirred but fallen leaves. But before
those miles of silence could depress them Rodriguez hit upon a simple
plan, which was that he and Alderon should search all round, far from
the track, while Morano stayed in the camp and shouted frequently, and
they would not go out of hearing of his voice: for Shadow Valley had a
reputation of being a bad forest for travellers to find their way
there; indeed, few ever attempted to. So they did as he said, he and
Alderon searching in different directions, while Morano remained in the
camp, lifting a large and melancholy voice. And though rumour said it
was hard to find the way when twenty yards from the track in Shadow
Valley, it did not say it was hard to find the green bowmen: and
Rodriguez, knowing that they guarded the forest as the shadows of trees
guard the coolness, was assured he would meet with some of them even
though he should miss their master. So he and Alderon searched till the
forest darkness came and only birds on high branches still had light;
and they never saw the King of Shadow Valley or any trace whatever of
any man. And Alderon first returned to the encampment; but Rodriguez
searched on into the night, searching and calling through the darkness,
and feeling, as every minute went by and every faint call of Morano,
that his castle was fading away, slipping past oak-tree and thorn-bush,
to take its place among the unpitying stars. And when he returned at
last from his useless search he found Morano standing by a good fire,
and the sight of it a little cheered Rodriguez, and the sight of the
firelight on Morano's face, and the homely comfort of the camp, for
everything is comparative.
And over their supper Rodriguez and Alderon agreed that they had come
to a part of the forest too remote from the home of the King of Shadow
Valley, and decided to go the next day to the house of the green
bowmen: and before he slept Rodriguez felt once more that all was well
with his castle.
Yet when the next day came they searched again, for Rodriguez
remembered how it was to this very place that the King of Shadow Valley
had bidden him come in four weeks, and though this period was not yet
accomplished, he felt, and Alderon fully agreed, they had waited long
enough: so they searched all the morning, and then fulfilled their
decision of overnight by riding for the great cottage Rodriguez knew.
All the way they met no one. And Rodriguez' gaiety came back as they
rode, for he and Don Alderon recognised more and more clearly that the
bowmen's great cottage was the place they should have gone at first.