The young girls of the village were returning from the fountain with
their water-jars on their heads; they were returning with song and
laughter, a merry confusion of sound comparable only to the gleeful
twitter of a flock of swallows when, thick as hail, they circle around
the weather-vane of a belfry.
Just in front of the church porch, seated at the foot of a juniper tree,
was Uncle Gregorio. Uncle Gregorio was the patriarch of the village; he
was nearly ninety years old, with white hair, smiling lips, roguish eyes
and trembling hands. In childhood he had been a shepherd; in his young
manhood, a soldier; then he tilled a little piece of fruitful land
inherited from his parents, until at last his strength was spent and he
sat tranquilly awaiting death which he neither dreaded nor longed for.
Nobody retailed a bit of gossip more spicily than he, nor knew more
marvellous tales, nor could bring so neatly to bear an old refrain,
proverb or adage.
The girls, on seeing him, quickened their steps, eager for his talk, and
when they were in the porch they all began to tease him for a story to
pass away the time still left them before nightfall--not much, for the
setting sun was slanting his rays across the earth, and the shadows of
the mountains grew larger moment by moment all along the plain.
Uncle Gregorio smiled as he listened to the pleading of the lasses, who,
having once coaxed from him a promise to tell them something, let down
their water-jars upon the ground, and sitting all about him, made a
circle with the patriarch in the centre; then he began to talk to them
after this fashion:
“I will not tell you a story, for though several come into my mind this
minute, they have to do with such weighty matters that the attention of
a group of giddypates, like you, would never hold out to the end;
besides, with the afternoon so nearly gone, I would not have time to
tell them through. So I will give you instead a piece of good counsel.”
“Good counsel!” exclaimed the girls with undisguised vexation. “Bah! it
isn’t to hear good counsel that we are stopping here; when we have need
of that, his Reverence the priest will give it to us.”
“But perhaps,” went on the old man with his habitual smile, speaking in
his broken, tremulous voice, “his Reverence the priest will not know how
to give you, this once, such timely advice as Uncle Gregorio; for the
priest, busy with his liturgies and litanies, will not have noticed, as
I have noticed, that every day you go earlier to the fountain and come
back later.”
The girls looked at one another with hardly perceptible smiles of
derision, while some of those who were placed behind Uncle Gregorio
touched finger to forehead, accompanying the action with a significant
gesture.
“And what harm do you find in our lingering at the fountain to chat a
minute with our friends and neighbors?” asked one of them. “Do slanders,
perhaps, go about the village because the lads step out on to the road
for a pleasant word or two, or come offering to carry our water-jars
till we are in sight of the houses?”
“Ay, people talk,” replied the old man to the girl who had asked him the
question for them all. “The old dames of the village murmur that to-day
the girls resort for fun and frolic to a spot whither they used to go
swiftly and in fear to draw the water, since only there can water be
had; and I find it much amiss that you are losing little by little the
dread which the vicinity of the fountain inspires in all your
elders,--for so it might come to pass that some time the night should
overtake you there.”
Uncle Gregorio spoke these last words in a tone so full of mystery that
the lasses opened wide their frightened eyes to look at him, and with
blended curiosity and mischief, again pressed their questions:
“The night! But what goes on in that place by night that you should
scare us so and throw out such dark and dreadful hints of what might
befall? Do you think the wolves will eat us?”
“When the Moncayo is covered with snow, the wolves, driven from their
dens, come down in packs and range over its slope; more than once we
have heard them howling in horrible concert, not only in the
neighborhood of the fountain, but in the very streets of the village;
yet the wolves are not the most terrible tenants of the Moncayo; in its
deep and dark caverns, on its wild and lonely summits, in its hollow
heart there live certain diabolical spirits that, during the night, pour
down its cascades in swarms and people the empty spaces, thronging like
ants upon the plain, leaping from rock to rock, sporting in the waters
and swinging on the bare boughs of the trees. It is these spirits that
cry from the clefts of the crags, that roll up and push along those
immense snowballs which come rolling down from the lofty peaks and sweep
away and crush whatever they find in their path,--theirs are the voices
calling in the hail at our windows on stormy nights,--theirs the forms
that flit like thin, blue flames over the marshes. Among these
spirits--who, driven from the lowlands by the sacred services and
exorcisms of the Church, have taken refuge on the inaccessible crests of
the mountains,--are those of diverse natures, that on appearing to our
eyes clothe themselves in
[Illustration: GIRLS AT THE FOUNTAIN]
varied forms. Yet the most dangerous, those who with sweet words win
their way into the hearts of maidens and dazzle them with magnificent
promises, are the gnomes. The gnomes live in the inner recesses of the
mountains; they know their subterranean roads and, eternal guardians of
the treasures hidden in the heart of the hills, they keep watch day and
night over the veins of metal and the precious stones. Do you see--”
continued the old man, pointing with the stick which served him for a
prop to the summit of the Moncayo, that rose at his right, looming dark
and gigantic against the misted, violet sky of twilight--“do you see
that mighty mass still crowned with snow? In its deep cavities these
diabolical spirits have their dwellings. The palace they inhabit is
terrible and glorious to see. Many years ago a shepherd, following some
stray of his flock, penetrated into the mouth of one of those caves
whose entrances are covered by thick growths of bushes and whose outlets
no man has ever seen. When he came back to the village, he was pale as
death; he had surprised the secret of the gnomes; he had breathed their
poisonous atmosphere, and he paid for his rashness with his life; but
before he died he related marvellous things. Going on along that cavern,
he had come at last to vast subterranean galleries lighted by a fitful,
fantastic splendor shed from the phosphorescence in the rocks, which
there were like great boulders of quartz crystallized into a thousand
strange, fantastic forms. The floor, the vaulted ceiling and the walls
of those immense halls, the work of nature, seemed variegated like the
richest marbles; but the veins which crossed them were of gold and
silver, and among those shining veins, as if incrusted in the rock, were
seen jewels, a multitude of precious stones of all colors and sizes.
There were jacinths and emeralds in heaps, and diamonds and rubies, and
sapphires and--how should I know?--many other gems unrecognized--more
than he could name but all so great and beautiful that his eyes dazzled
at the sight. No noise of the outer world reached the depths of that
weird cavern; the only perceptible sounds were, at intervals, the
prolonged and pitiful groans of the air which blew through that
enchanted labyrinth, a vague roar of subterranean fire furious in its
prison, and murmurs of running water which flowed on not knowing whither
they went. The shepherd, alone and lost in that immensity, wandered I
know not how many hours without finding any outlet, until at last he
chanced upon the source of a spring whose murmur he had heard. This
broke from the ground like a miraculous fountain, a leap of foam-crowned
water that fell in an exquisite cascade, singing a silver song as it
slipped away through the crannies of the rocks. About him grew plants
that he had never seen, some with wide, thick leaves, and others
delicate and long like floating ribbons. Half hidden in that humid
foliage were running about a number of extraordinary creatures, some of
them manlike, some reptilian, or both at once, changing shape
continually, at one moment appearing like human beings, deformed and
tiny, the next like gleaming salamanders or fugitive flames that danced
in circles above the tip of the fountain-jet. There, darting in all
directions, running across the floor in form of repugnant, hunchbacked
dwarfs, scrambling up the walls, wriggling along, reptile-shaped, in
their slime, dancing like Will-o-the-wisps on the pool of water, went
the gnomes, the lords of those recesses, counting over and shifting from
place to place their fabulous riches. They know where misers store those
treasures which, afterwards, the heirs seek in vain; they know the spot
where the Moors, before their flight, hid their jewels; and the
ornaments which are lost, the money that is missing, everything that has
value and disappears, they search for, find and steal, to hide in their
caves, for they know how to go to and fro through all the world by
secret, unimagined paths beneath the earth. So there they were keeping
stored up in heaps all manner of rare and precious things. There were
jewels of inestimable worth; chains and necklaces of pearls and
exquisite gems; golden jars of classic form, full of rubies; chiseled
cups, armor richly wrought, coins with images and superscriptions that
it is no longer possible to recognize or decipher; treasures, in short,
so fabulous and limitless that scarcely may imagination picture them.
And all glittered together, flashing out such vivid sparks of light and
color that it seemed as if the whole hoard were on fire, quivering and
wavering. At least, the shepherd said that so it had seemed to him.” At
this point the old patriarch paused a moment. The girls, who in the
beginning had hearkened to Uncle Gregorio’s story with a mocking smile,
now maintained unbroken silence, hoping that he would go on,--waiting
with frightened eyes, with lips slightly parted, and with curiosity and
interest depicted on their faces. One of them finally broke the hush,
and unable to control herself, exclaimed, fascinated with the account of
the fabulous riches which had met the shepherd’s view:
“And what then? Did he take away nothing out of all that?”
“Nothing,” replied Uncle Gregorio.
“What a silly!” the girls exclaimed in concert.
“Heaven helped him in that moment of peril,” continued the old man, “for
at the very instant when avarice, the ruling passion, began to dispel
his fear and, bewitched by the sight of those jewels, one alone of which
would have made him wealthy, the shepherd was about to possess himself
of some small share of that treasure, he says he heard--listen and
marvel--clear and distinct in those profound abodes,--despite the shouts
of laughter and harsh voices of the gnomes, the roar of the subterranean
fire, the murmur of running water and the laments of the imprisoned
air, he heard, I say, as if he had been at the foot of the hill where it
stands, the pealing of the bell in the hermitage of Our Lady of the
Moncayo.
“On hearing the bell, which was ringing the _Ave Maria_, the shepherd
fell to his knees, calling on the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and
instantly, without knowing the means nor the way, he found himself on
the outside of the mountain, near the road which leads to the village,
thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great bewilderment as if
he had just been startled out of a dream.
“Since then everybody has understood why our village fountain sometimes
has in its waters a glint as of very fine gold-dust; and when night
falls, vague words are heard in its murmur, flattering words with which
the gnomes, that defile it from its source, try to entice the foolhardy
who lend them ear, promising them riches and treasures that are bound to
be the destruction of their souls.”
When Uncle Gregorio had reached this point in his relation, night had
fallen and the church bell commenced to call to prayer. The girls
crossed themselves devoutly, repeating in low voices an _Ave Maria_, and
after bidding good-night to Uncle Gregorio, who again counselled them
not to tarry at the fountain, each picked up her water-jar and all went
forth, silent and musing, from the churchyard. They were already far
from the spot where they had found the old man, and had, indeed, reached
the central square of the village whence they were to go their several
ways, before the more resolute and decided of them all broke out with
the question:
“Do you girls believe any of that nonsense Uncle Gregorio has been
telling us?”
“Not I,” said one.
“Nor I,” exclaimed another.
“Nor I! nor I!” chimed in the rest, laughing at their momentary
credulity.
The group of lasses melted away, each taking her course toward one or
another side of the square. Last of all, when the others had disappeared
down the better streets that led out from this market-place, two girls,
the only ones who had not opened their lips to make fun of Uncle
Gregorio’s veracity, but who, still musing on the marvellous tale,
seemed absorbed in their own meditations, went away together, with the
slow step natural to people deep in thought, by a dismal, narrow,
crooked alley.
Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be some twenty years old,
was called Marta; and the younger, who had not yet finished her
sixteenth year, Magdalena.
As long as the walk lasted, both kept complete silence; but when they
reached the threshold of their home and had set down their water-jars on
the stone bench by the door, Marta said to Magdalena: “And do you
believe in the marvels of the Moncayo and the spirits of the fountain?”
“Yes,” answered Magdalena simply, “I believe it all. But you, perhaps,
have doubts?” “Oh, no!” Marta hastily interrupted. “I, too, believe
everything, everything--that I wish to believe.”