Don Rodriguez; Chronicles of Shadow Valley Read online

  THE FOURTH CHRONICLE

  HOW HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SUN

  The Professor said that in curiosity alone had been found the seeds ofall that is needful for our damnation. Nevertheless, he said, ifRodriguez cared to see more of his mighty art the mysteries ofSaragossa were all at his guest's disposal.

  Rodriguez, sad and horrified though he was, forgot none of hiscourtesy. He thanked the Professor and praised the art of Saragossa,but his faith in man and his hope for the world having been newlydisappointed, he cared little enough for the things we should care tosee or for any of the amusements that are usually dear to youth.

  "I shall be happy to see anything, senor," he said to the Slave ofOrion, "that is further from our poor Earth, and to study therein andadmire your famous art."

  The Professor bowed. He drew small curtains over the windows, matchinghis cloak. Morano sought a glimpse through the right-hand window beforethe curtains covered it. Rodriguez held him back. Enough had been seenalready, he thought, through that window for the peace of mind of theworld: but he said no word to Morano. He held him by the arm, and theProfessor covered the windows. When the little mauve curtains weredrawn it seemed to Rodriguez that the windows behind them disappearedand were there no more; but this he only guessed from uncertainindications.

  Then the Professor drew forth his wand and went to his cupboard ofwonder. Thence he brought condiments, oils, and dews of amazement.These he poured into a vessel that was in the midst of the room, a bowlof agate standing alone on a table. He lit it and it all welled up inflame, a low broad flame of the colour of pale emerald. Over this hewaved his wand, which was of exceeding blackness. Morano watched aschildren watch the dancer, who goes from village to village when springis come, with some new dance out of Asia or some new song.[Footnote: Hedoesn't, but why shouldn't he?] Rodriguez sat and waited. The Professorexplained that to leave this Earth alive, or even dead, was prohibitedto our bodies, unless to a very few, whose names were hidden. Yet thespirits of men could by incantation be liberated, and being liberated,could be directed on journeys by such minds as had that power passeddown to them from of old. Such journeys, he said, were by no meansconfined by the hills of Earth. "The Saints," exclaimed Morano, "guardus utterly!" But Rodriguez smiled a little. His faith was given to theSaints of Heaven. He wondered at their wonders, he admired theirmiracles, he had little faith to spare for other marvels; in fact hedid not believe the Slave of Orion.

  "Do you desire such a journey?" said the Professor.

  "It will delight me," answered Rodriguez, "to see this example of yourart."

  "And you?" he said to Morano.

  The question seemed to alarm the placid Morano, but "I follow mymaster," he said.

  At once the Professor stretched out his ebony wand, calling the greenflame higher. Then he put out his hands over the flame, without thewand, moving them slowly with constantly tremulous fingers. And all atonce they heard him begin to speak. His deep voice flowed musicallywhile he scarcely seemed to be speaking but seemed only to be concernedwith moving his hands. It came soft, as though blown faint fromfabulous valleys, illimitably far from the land of Spain. It seemedfull not so much of magic as mere sleep, either sleep in an unknowncountry of alien men, or sleep in a land dreamed sleeping a long whilesince. As the travellers heard it they thought of things far away, ofmythical journeys and their own earliest years.

  They did not know what he said or what language he used. At firstRodriguez thought Moorish, then he deemed it some secret language comedown from magicians of old, while Morano merely wondered; and then theywere lulled by the rhythm of those strange words, and so enquired nomore. Rodriguez pictured some sad wandering angel, upon somemountain-peak of African lands, resting a moment and talking to thesolitudes, telling the lonely valley the mysteries of his home. Whilelulled though Morano was he gave up his alertness uneasily. All thewhile the green flame flooded upwards: all the while the tremulousfingers made curious shadows. The shadow seemed to run to Rodriguez andbeckon him thence: even Morano felt them calling. Rodriguez closed hiseyes. The voice and the Moorish spells made now a more haunting melody:they were now like a golden organ on undiscoverable mountains. Fearcame on Morano at the thought: who had power to speak like this? Hegrasped Rodriguez by the wrist. "Master!" he said, but at that momenton one of those golden spells the spirit of Rodriguez drifted away fromhis body, and out of the greenish light of the curious room; unhamperedby weight, or fatigue, or pain, or sleep; and it rose above the rocksand over the mountain, an unencumbered spirit: and the spirit of Moranofollowed.

  The mountain dwindled at once; the Earth swept out all round them andgrew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They saw thenthat they were launched upon some astounding journey. Does my readerwonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as they had never seenbefore, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible.Our eyes gather in light, and with the little rays of light that theybring us we gather a few images of things as we suppose them to be.Pardon me, reader, if I call them things as we suppose them to be; callthem by all means Things As They Really Are, if you wish. These imagesthen, this tiny little brainful that we gather from the immensities,are all brought in by our eyesight upside-down, and the brain correctsthem again; and so, and so we know something. An oculist will tell youhow it all works. He may admit it is all a little clumsy, or for thedignity of his profession he may say it is not at all. But be this asit may, our eyes are but barriers between us and the immensities. Allour five senses that grope a little here and touch a little there, andseize, and compare notes, and get a little knowledge sometimes, theyare only barriers between us and what there is to know. Rodriguez andMorano were outside these barriers. They saw without the imperfectionsof eyesight; they heard on that journey what would have deafened ears;they went through our atmosphere unburned by speed, and were unchilledin the bleak of the outer spaces. Thus freed of the imperfections ofthe body they sped, no less upon a terrible journey, whose direction asyet Rodriguez only began to fear.

  They had seen the stars pale rapidly and then the flash of dawn. TheSun rushed up and at once began to grow larger. Earth, with her curvedsides still diminishing violently, was soon a small round garden inblue and filmy space, in which mountains were planted. And still theSun was growing wider and wider. And now Rodriguez, though he knewnothing of Sun or planets, perceived the obvious truth of theirterrible journey: they were heading straight for the Sun. But thespirit of Morano was merely astounded; yet, being free of the body hesuffered none of those inconveniences that perturbation may bring tous: spirits do not gasp, or palpitate, or weaken, or sicken.

  The dwindling Earth seemed now no more than the size of some unmappedisland seen from a mountain-top, an island a hundred yards or soacross, looking like a big table.

  Speed is comparative: compared to sound, their pace was beyondcomparison; nor could any modern projectile attain any velocitycomparable to it; even the speed of explosion was slow to it. And yetfor spirits they were moving slowly, who being independent of allmaterial things, travel with such velocities as that, for instance, ofthought. But they were controlled by one still dwelling on Earth, whoused material things, and the material that the Professor was using tohurl them upon their journey was light, the adaptation of which to thispurpose he had learned at Saragossa. At the pace of light they weretravelling towards the Sun.

  They crossed the path of Venus, far from where Venus then was, so thatshe scarcely seemed larger to them; Earth was but little bigger thanthe Evening Star, looking dim in that monstrous daylight.

  Crossing the path of Mercury, Mercury appeared huger than our Moon, anobject weirdly unnatural; and they saw ahead of them the terrific glarein which Mercury basks, from a Sun whose withering orb had more thandoubled its width since they came from the hills of Earth. And afterthis the Sun grew terribly larger, filling the centre of the sky, andspreading and spreading and spreading. It was now that they saw whatwould have dazzled eyes, would have
burned up flesh and would haveshrivelled every protection that our scientists' ingenuity could havedevised even today. To speak of time there is meaningless. There isnothing in the empty space between the Sun and Mercury with which timeis at all concerned. Far less is there meaning in time wherever thespirits of men are under stress. A few minutes' bombardment in atrench, a few hours in a battle, a few weeks' travelling in a tracklesscountry; these minutes, these hours, these weeks can never be few.

  Rodriguez and Morano had been travelling about six or seven minutes,but it seems idle to say so.

  And then the Sun began to fill the whole sky in front of them. And inanother minute, if minutes had any meaning, they were heading for aboundless region of flame that, left and right, was everywhere, and nowtowered above them, and went below them into a flaming abyss.

  And now Morano spoke to Rodriguez. He thought towards him, andRodriguez was aware of his thinking: it is thus that spiritscommunicate.

  "Master," he said, "when it was all spring in Spain, years ago when Iwas thin and young, twenty years gone at least; and the butterflieswere come, and song was everywhere; there came a maid bare-footed overa stream, walking through flowers, and all to pluck the anemones." Howfair she seemed even now, how bright that far spring day. Morano toldRodriguez not with his blundering lips: they were closed and restingdeeply millions of miles away: he told him as spirits tell. And in thatclear communication Rodriguez saw all that shone in Morano's memory,the grace of the young girl's ankles, the thrill of Spring, theanemones larger and brighter than anemones ever were, the hawks stillin clear sky; earth happy and heaven blue, and the dreams of youthbetween. You would not have said, had you seen Morano's coarse fatbody, asleep in a chair in the Professor's room, that his spirittreasured such delicate, nymph-like, pastoral memories as now shoneclear to Rodriguez. No words the blunt man had ever been able to utterhad ever hinted that he sometimes thought like a dream of pictures byWatteau. And now in that awful space before the power of the terribleSun, spirit communed with spirit, and Rodriguez saw the beauty of thatfar day, framed all about the beauty of one young girl, just as it hadbeen for years in Morano's memory. How shall I tell with words whatspirit sang wordless to spirit? We poets may compete with each other inwords; but when spirits give up the purest gold of their store, thathas shone far down the road of their earthly journey, cheering tiredhearts and guiding mortal feet, our words shall barely interpret.

  Love, coming long ago over flowers in Spain, found Morano; words didnot tell the story, words cannot tell it; as a lake reflects a cloud inthe blue of heaven, so Rodriguez understood and felt and knew thismemory out of the days of Morano's youth. "And so, master," saidMorano, "I sinned, and would indeed repent, and yet even now at thislast dread hour I cannot abjure that day; and this is indeed Hell, asthe good father said."

  Rodriguez tried to comfort Morano with such knowledge as he had ofastronomy, if knowledge it could be called. Indeed, if he had knownanything he would have perplexed Morano more, and his little pieces ofignorance were well adapted for comfort. But Morano had given up hope,having long been taught to expect this very fire: his spirit was nowiser than it had been on Earth, it was merely freed of theimperfections of the five senses and so had observation and expressionbeyond those of any artist the world has known. This was the naturalresult of being freed of the body; but he was not suddenly wiser; andso, as he moved towards this boundless flame, he expected every momentto see Satan charge out to meet him: and having no hope for the futurehe turned to the past and fondled the memory of that one spring day.His was a backsliding, unrepentant spirit.

  As that monstrous sea of flame grew ruthlessly larger Rodriguez felt nofear, for spirits have no fear of material things: but Morano feared.He feared as spirits fear spiritual things; he thought he neared thehome of vast spirits of evil and that the arena of conflict waseternity. He feared with a fear too great to be borne by bodies.Perhaps the fat body that slept on a chair on earth was troubled indreams by some echo of that fear that gripped the spirit so sorely. Andit may be from such far fears that all our nightmares come.

  When they had travelled nearly ten minutes from Earth and were about topass into the midst of the flame, that magician who controlled theirjourney halted them suddenly in Space, among the upper mountain-peaksof the Sun. There they hovered as the clouds hover that leave theircompanions and drift among crags of the Alps: below them those awfulmountains heaved and thundered. All Atlas, and Teneriffe, and lonelyKenia might have lain amongst them unnoticed. As often as theearthquake rocked their bases it loosened from near their summits wildavalanches of gold that swept down their flaming slopes withunthinkable tumult. As they watched, new mountains rode past them,crowned with their frightful flames; for, whether man knew it or not,the Sun was rotating, but the force of its gravity that swung theplanets had no grip upon spirits, who were held by the power of thattremendous spell that the Professor had learned one midnight atSaragossa from one of that dread line who have their secrets from asource that we do not know in a distant age.

  There is always something tremendous in the form of great mountains;but these swept by, not only huger than anything Earth knows, buttroubled by horrible commotions, as though overtaken in flight by someceaseless calamity.

  Rodriguez and Morano, as they looked at them, forgetting the gardens ofEarth, forgetting Spring and Summer and the sweet beneficence ofsunshine, felt that the purpose of Creation was evil! So shocking athought may well astound us here, where green hills slope to lawns orpeer at a peaceful sea; but there among the flames of those dreadfulpeaks the Sun seemed not the giver of joy and colour and life, but onlya catastrophe huger than everlasting war, a centre of hideous violenceand ruin and anger and terror. There came by mountains of copperburning everlasting, hurling up to unthinkable heights their mass ofemerald flame. And mountains of iron raged by and mountains of salt,quaking and thundering and clothed with their colours, the iron alwaysscarlet and the salt blue. And sometimes there came by pinnacles athousand miles high that from base to summit were fire, mountains ofpure flame that had no other substance. And these explosive mountains,born of thunder and earthquake, hurling down avalanches the size of ourcontinents, and drawing upward out of the deeps of the Sun new materialfor splendour and horror, this roaring waste, this extravagantdestruction, were necessary for every tint that our butterflies wear ontheir wings. Without those flaming ranges of mountains of iron theywould have no red to show; even the poppy could have no red for herpetals: without the flames that were blasting the mountains of saltthere could be no answering blue in any wing, or one blue flower forall the bees of Earth: without the nightmare light of those frightfulcanyons of copper that awed the two spirits watching their ceaselessruin, the very leaves of the woods we love would be without their greenwith which to welcome Spring; for from the flames of the various metalsand wonders that for ever blaze in the Sun, our sunshine gets all itscolours that it conveys to us almost unseen, and thence the wise littleinsects and patient flowers softly draw the gay tints that they gloryin; there is nowhere else to get them.

  And yet to Rodriguez and Morano all that they saw seemed wholly andhideously evil.

  How long they may have watched there they tried to guess afterwards,but as they looked on those terrific scenes they had no way to separatedays from minutes: nothing about them seemed to escape destruction, andtime itself seemed no calmer than were those shuddering mountains.

  Then the thundering ranges passed; and afterwards there came a gleamingmountain, one huge and lonely peak, seemingly all of gold. Had ourwhole world been set beside it and shaped as it was shaped, that goldenmountain would yet have towered above it: it would have taken our moonas well to reach that flashing peak. It rode on toward them in itsgolden majesty, higher than all the flames, save now and then when somewild gas seemed to flee from the dread earthquakes of the Sun, and wasovertaken in the height by fire, even above that mountain.

  As that mass of gold that was higher than all the world drew near toRodriguez
and Morano they felt its unearthly menace; and though itcould not overcome their spirits they knew there was a hideous terrorabout it. It was in its awful scale that its terror lurked for anycreature of our planet. Though they could not quake or tremble theyfelt that terror. The mountain dwarfed Earth.

  Man knows his littleness, his own mountains remind him; many countriesare small, and some nations: but the dreams of Man make up for ourfaults and failings, for the brevity of our lives, for the narrownessof our scope; they leap over boundaries and are away and away. But thisgreat mountain belittled the world and all: who gazed on it knew allhis dreams to be puny. Before this mountain Man seemed a trivial thing,and Earth, and all the dreams Man had of himself and his home.

  The golden mass drew opposite those two watchers and seemed tochallenge with its towering head the pettiness of the tiny world theyknew. And then the whole gleaming mountain gave one shudder and fellinto the awful plains of the Sun. Straight down before Rodriguez andMorano it slipped roaring, till the golden peak was gone, and themolten plain closed over it; and only ripples remained, the size ofEurope, as when a tumbling river strikes the rocks of its bed and onits surface heaving circles widen and disappear. And then, as thoughthis horror left nothing more to be shown, they felt the Professorbeckon to them from Earth.

  Over the plains of the Sun a storm was sweeping in gusts of howlingflame as they felt the Professor's spell drawing them home. For themagnitude of that storm there are no words in use among us; itsvelocity, if expressed in figures, would have no meaning; its heat wasimmeasurable. Suffice it to say that if such a tempest could have sweptover Earth for a second, both the poles would have boiled. Thetravellers left it galloping over that plain, rippled from underneathby the restless earthquake and whipped into flaming foam by the forceof the storm. The Sun already was receding from them, already growingsmaller. Soon the storm seemed but a cloud of light sweeping over theempty plain, like a murderous mourner rushing swiftly away from thegrave of that mighty mountain.

  And now the Professor's spell gripped them in earnest: rapidly the Sungrew smaller. As swiftly as he had sent them upon that journey he wasnow drawing them home. They overtook thunders that they had heardalready, and passed them, and came again to the silent spaces which thethunders of the Sun are unable to cross, so that even Mercury isundisturbed by them.

  I have said that spirits neither fade nor weary. But a great sadnesswas on them; they felt as men feel who come whole away from periods ofperil. They had seen cataclysms too vast for our imagination, and amournfulness and a satiety were upon them. They could have gazed at oneflower for days and needed no other experience, as a wounded man may behappy staring at the flame of a candle.

  Crossing the paths of Mercury and Venus, they saw that these planetshad not appreciably moved, and Rodriguez, who knew that planets wanderin the night, guessed thereby that they had not been absent from Earthfor many hours.

  They rejoiced to see the Sun diminishing steadily. Only for a moment asthey started their journey had they seen that solar storm rushing overthe plains of the Sun; but now it appeared to hang halted in its midanger, as though blasting one region eternally.

  Moving on with the pace of light, they saw Earth, soon after crossingthe path of Venus, beginning to grow larger than a star. Never had homeappeared more welcome to wanderers, who see their house far off,returning home.

  And as Earth grew larger, and they began to see forms that seemed likeseas and mountains, they looked for their own country, but could notfind it: for, travelling straight from the Sun, they approached thatpart of the world that was then turned towards it, and were headingstraight for China, while Spain lay still in darkness.

  But when they came near Earth and its mountains were clear, then theProfessor drew them across the world, into the darkness and over Spain;so that those two spirits ended their marvellous journey much as thesnipe ends his, a drop out of heaven and a swoop low over marshes. Sothey came home, while Earth seemed calling to them with all her voices;with memories, sights and scents, and little sounds; calling anxiously,as though they had been too long away and must be home soon. They hearda cock crow on the edge of the night; they heard more little soundsthan words can say; only the organ can hint at them. It was Earthcalling. For, talk as we may of our dreams that transcend this sphere,or our hopes that build beyond it, Mother Earth has yet a mighty holdupon us; and her myriad sounds were blending in one cry now, knowingthat it was late and that these two children of hers were nearly lost.For our spirits that sometimes cross the path of the angels, and onrare evenings hear a word of their talk, and have brief equality withthe Powers of Light, have the duty also of moving fingers and toes,which freeze if our proud spirits forget their task for too long.

  And just as Earth was despairing they reached the Professor's mountainand entered the room in which their bodies were.

  Blue and cold and ugly looked the body of Morano, but for all itspallor there was beauty in the young face of Rodriguez.

  The Professor stood before them as he had stood when their spiritsleft, with the table between him and the bodies, and the bowl on thetable which held the green flame, now low and flickering desperately,which the Professor watched as it leaped and failed, with an air ofanxiety that seemed to pinch his thin features.

  With an impatience strange to him he waved a swift hand towards each ofthe two bodies where they sat stiff, illumined by the last of the greenlight; and at those rapid gestures the travellers returned to theirhabitations.

  They seemed to be just awakening out of deep sleep. Again they saw theProfessor standing before them. But they saw him only with blinkingeyes, they saw him only as eyes can see, guessing at his mind from thelines of his face, at his thoughts from the movements of his hands,guessing as men guess, blindly: only a moment before they had known himutterly. Now they were dazed and forgetting: slow blood began to creepagain to their toes and to come again to its place under fingernails:it came with intense pain: they forgot their spirits. Then all the woesof Earth crowded their minds at once, so that they wished to weep, asinfants weep.

  The Professor gave this mood time to change, as change it presentlydid. For the warm blood came back and lit their cheeks, and a tinglingsucceeded the pain in their fingers and toes, and a mild warmthsucceeded the tingling: their thoughts came back to the things of everyday, to mundane things and the affairs of the body. Therein theyrejoiced, and Morano no less than Rodriguez; though it was a coarse andcommon body that Morano's spirit inhabited. And when the Professor sawthat the first sorrow of Earth, which all spirits feel when they landhere, had passed away, and that they were feeling again the joy ofmundane things, only then did he speak.

  "Senor," he said, "beyond the path of Mars run many worlds that I wouldhave you know. The greatest of these is Jupiter, towards whom all thatfollow my most sacred art show reverent affection. The smallest arethose that sometimes strike our world, flaming all green upon Novembernights, and are even as small as apples." He spoke of our world with acertain air and a pride, as though, through virtue of his transcendentart, the world were only his. "The world that we name Argola," he said,"is far smaller than Spain and, being invisible from Earth, is onlyknown to the few who have spoken to spirits whose wanderings havesurpassed the path of Mars. Nearly half of Argola you shall findcovered with forests, which though very dense are no deeper than moss,and the elephants in them are not larger than beetles. You shall seemany wonders of smallness in this world of Argola, which I desire inespecial to show you, since it is the orb with which we who study theArt are most familiar, of all the worlds that the vulgar have notknown. It is indeed the prize of our traffic in those things that fartranscend the laws that have forbidden them."

  And as he said this the green flame in the bowl before him died, and hemoved towards his cupboard of wonder. Rodriguez hastily thanked theProfessor for his great courtesy in laying bare before him secrets thatthe centuries hid, and then he referred to his own great unworthiness,to the lateness of the hour, to the fatigu
e of the Professor, and tothe importance to Learning of adequate rest to refresh his illustriousmind. And all that he said the Professor parried with bows, and drewenchantments from his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on thetable. And Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, onewho having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasuresto the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less tothe Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and insists onshowing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some terriblejourney, perhaps some bare escape; for though no material thing canquite encompass a spirit, he knew not what wanderers he might not meetin lonely spaces beyond the path of Mars. So when his last politeremonstrance failed, being turned aside with a pleasant phrase and asmile from the grim lips, and looking at Morano he saw that he sharedhis fears, then he determined to show whatever resistance were neededto keep himself and Morano in this old world that we know, or thatyouth at least believes that it knows.

  He watched the Professor return with his packets of wonder; dust from afallen star, phials of tears of lost lovers, poison and gold out ofelf-land, and all manner of things. But the moment that he put theminto the bowl Rodriguez' hand flew to his sword-hilt. He heaved up hiselbow, but no sword came forth, for it lay magnetised to its scabbardby the grip of a current of magic. When Rodriguez saw this he knew notwhat to do.

  The Professor went on pouring into the bowl. He added an odourdistilled out of dream-roses, three drops from the gall-bladder of afabulous beast, and a little dust that had been man. More too he added,so that my reader might wonder were I to tell him all; yet it is not soeasy to free our spirits from the gross grip of our bodies. Wonder notthen, my reader, if the Professor exerted strange powers. And all thewhile Morano was picking at a nail that fastened on the handle to hisfrying-pan.

  And just as the last few mysteries were shaken into the bowl,--andthere were two among them of which even Asia is ignorant,--just as thedews were blended with the powers in a grey-green sinister harmony,Morano untwisted his nail and got the handle loose.

  The Professor kindled the mixture in the bowl; again green flame arose,again that voice of his began to call to their spirits, and its beautyand the power of its spell were as of some fallen angel. The spirit ofRodriguez was nearly passing helplessly forth again on some frightfuljourney, when Morano losed his scabbard and sword from its girdle andtied the handle of his frying-pan across it a little below the hiltwith a piece of string. Across the table the Professor intoned hisspell, across a narrow table, but it seemed to come from the far sideof the twilight, a twilight red and golden in long layers, of anevening wonderfully long ago. It seemed to take its music out of thelights that it flowed through and to call Rodriguez from immediatelyfar away, with a call which it were sacrilege to refuse, and anguisheven, and hard toil such as there was no strength to do. And thenMorano held up the sword in its scabbard with the handle of thefrying-pan tied across. Rodriguez, disturbed by a stammer in the spell,looked up and saw the Professor staring at the sword where Morano heldit up before his face in the green light of the flame from the bowl. Hedid not seem like a fallen angel now. His spell had stopped. He seemedlike a professor who had forgotten the theme of his lecture, while theclass waits. For Morano was holding up the sign of the cross.

  "You have betrayed me!" shouted the Slave of Orion: the green flamedied, and he strode out of the room, his purple cloak floating behindhim.

  "Master," Morano said, "it was always good against magic."

  The sword was loose in the scabbard as Rodriguez took it back; therewas no longer a current of magic gripping the steel.

  A little uneasily Rodriguez thanked Morano: he was not sure if Moranohad behaved as a guest's servant should. But when he thought of theProfessor's terrible spells, which had driven them to the awful cragsof the sun, and might send them who knows where to hob-nob with whoknows what, his second thoughts perceived that Morano was right to cutshort those arts that the Slave of Orion loved, even by so extreme astep: and he praised Morano as his ready shrewdness deserved.

  "We were very nearly too late back from that outing, master," remarkedMorano.

  "How know you that?" said Rodriguez.

  "This old body knew," said Morano. "Those heart-thumpings, thiswarmness, and all the things that make a fat body comfortable, theywere stopping, master, they were spoiling, they were getting cold andstrange: I go no more errands for that senor."

  A certain diffidence about criticising his host even now; and a verypractical vein that ran through his nature, now showing itself inanxiety for a bed at so late an hour, led Rodriguez to change thesubject. He wanted that aged butler, yet dare not ring the bell; for hefeared lest with all the bells there might be in use that frightfulpractice that he had met by the outer door, a chain connected with somehideous hook that gave anguish to something in the basement wheneverone touched the handle, so that the menials of that grim Professor wereshrilly summoned by screams. And therefore Rodriguez sought counsel ofMorano, who straightway volunteered to find the butler's quarters, by acertain sense that he had of the fitness of things: and forth he went,but would not leave the room without the scabbard and the handle of thefrying-pan lashed to it, which he bore high before him in both hishands as though he were leading some austere procession. And even so hereturned with that aged man the butler, who led them down dim corridorsof stone; but, though he showed the way, Morano would go in front,still holding up that scabbard and handle before him, while Rodriguezheld the bare sword. And so they came to a room lit by the flare of onecandle, which their guide told them the Professor had prepared for hisguest. In the vastness of it was a great bed. Shadows and a whir as ofwings passed out of the door as they entered. "Bats," said the ancientguide. But Morano believed he had routed powers of evil with the handleof his frying-pan and his master's scabbard. Who could say what theywere in such a house, where bats and evil spirits sheltered perenniallyfrom the brooms of the just? Then that ancient man with the lips ofsome woodland thing departed, and Rodriguez went to the great bed. On apile of straw that had been cast into the room Morano lay down acrossthe door, setting the scabbard upright in a rat-hole near his head,while Rodriguez lay down with the bare sword in his hand. There wasonly one door in the room, and this Morano guarded. Windows there were,but they were shuttered with raw oak of enormous thickness. He hadalready enquired with his sword behind the velvet curtains. He feltsecure in the bulk of Morano across the only door, at least fromcreatures of this world: and Morano feared no longer either spirit orspell, believing that he had vanquished the Professor with his symbol,and all such allies as he may have had here or elsewhere. But not thuseasily do we overcome the powers of evil.

  A step was heard such as man walks with at the close of his lateryears, coming along the corridor of stone; and they knew it for theProfessor's butler returning. The latch of the door trembled andlifted, and the great oak door bumped slowly against Morano, who arosegrumbling, and the old man appeared.

  "The Professor," he said, while Morano watched him grudgingly, "returnswith all his household to Saragossa at once, to resume those studiesfor which his name resounds, a certain conjunction of the stars havingcome favourably."

  Even Morano doubted that so suddenly the courses of the stars, which hedeemed to be gradual, should have altered from antagonism towards theProfessor's art into a favourable aspect. Rodriguez sleepilyacknowledged the news and settled himself to sleep, still sword inhand, when the servitor repeated with as much emphasis as his agedvoice could utter, "With all his household, senor."

  "Yes," muttered Rodriguez. "Farewell."

  And repeating again, "He takes his household with him," the old manshuffled back from the room and hesitatingly closed the door. Beforethe sound of his slow footsteps had failed to reach the room Morano wasasleep under his cross. Rodriguez still watched for a while the shadowsleaping and shuddering away from the candle, riding over the ceiling,striding hugely along the walls, towards him and from him, as draughtsswayed the
ruddy flame; then, gripping his sword still firmer in hishand, as though that could avail against magic, he fell into the sleepof tired men.

  No sound disturbed Rodriguez or Morano till both awoke in late morningupon the rocks of the mountain. The sun had climbed over the crags andnow shone on their faces. Rodriguez was still lying with his swordgripped in his hand, but the cross had fallen by Morano and now lay onthe rocks beside him with the handle of the frying-pan still tied inits place by string. A young, wild, woodland squirrel gambolled near,though there were no woods for it anywhere within sight: it leaped andplayed as though rejoicing in youth, with such merriment as thoughyouth had but come to it newly or been lost and restored again.

  All over the mountain they looked but there was no house, nor any signof dwelling of man or spirit.