|
|
|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
HOW HE MET AND SAID FAREWELL TO MINE HOST OF THE DRAGON AND KNIGHT
Being convinced that his end was nearly come, and having lived
long on earth (and all those years in Spain, in the golden time),
the Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez, whose heights see not
Valladolid, called for his eldest son. And so he addressed him
when he was come to his chamber, dim with its strange red hangings
and august with the splendour of Spain: "O eldest son of mine,
your younger brother being dull and clever, on whom those traits
that women love have not been bestowed by God; and know my eldest
son that here on earth, and for ought I know Hereafter, but
certainly here on earth, these women be the arbiters of all
things; and how this be so God knoweth only, for they are vain and
variable, yet it is surely so: your younger brother then not
having been given those ways that women prize, and God knows why
they prize them for they are vain ways that I have in my mind and
that won me the Valleys of Arguento Harez, from whose heights
Angelico swore he saw Valladolid once, and that won me moreover
also ... but that is long ago and is all gone now ... ah well,
well ... what was I saying?" And being reminded of his discourse,
the old lord continued, saying, "For himself he will win nothing,
and therefore I will leave him these my valleys, for not unlikely
it was for some sin of mine that his spirit was visited with
dullness, as Holy Writ sets forth, the sins of the fathers being
visited on the children; and thus I make him amends. But to you I
leave my long, most flexible, ancient Castilian blade, which
infidels dreaded if old songs be true. Merry and lithe it is, and
its true temper singeth when it meets another blade as two friends
sing when met after many years. It is most subtle, nimble and
exultant; and what it will not win for you in the wars, that shall
be won for you by your mandolin, for you have a way with it that
goes well with the old airs of Spain. And choose, my son, rather a
moonlight night when you sing under those curved balconies that I
knew, ah me, so well; for there is much advantage in the moon. In
the first place maidens see in the light of the moon, especially
in the Spring, more romance than you might credit, for it adds for
them a mystery to the darkness which the night has not when it is
merely black. And if any statue should gleam on the grass near by,
or if the magnolia be in blossom, or even the nightingale singing,
or if anything be beautiful in the night, in any of these things
also there is advantage; for a maiden will attribute to her lover
all manner of things that are not his at all, but are only
outpourings from the hand of God. There is this advantage also in
the moon, that, if interrupters come, the moonlight is better
suited to the play of a blade than the mere darkness of night;
indeed but the merry play of my sword in the moonlight was often a
joy to see, it so flashed, so danced, so sparkled. In the
moonlight also one makes no unworthy stroke, but hath scope for
those fair passes that Sevastiani taught, which were long ago the
wonder of Madrid."
The old lord paused, and breathed for a little space, as it were
gathering breath for his last words to his son. He breathed
deliberately, then spoke again. "I leave you," he said, "well
content that you have the two accomplishments, my son, that are
most needful in a Christian man, skill with the sword and a way
with the mandolin. There be other arts indeed among the heathen,
for the world is wide and hath full many customs, but these two
alone are needful." And then with that grand manner that they had
at that time in Spain, although his strength was failing, he gave
to his eldest son his Castilian sword. He lay back then in the
huge, carved, canopied bed; his eyes closed, the red silk curtains
rustled, and there was no sound of his breathing. But the old
lord's spirit, whatever journey it purposed, lingered yet in its
ancient habitation, and his voice came again, but feebly now and
rambling; he muttered awhile of gardens, such gardens no doubt as
the hidalgos guarded in that fertile region of sunshine in the
proudest period of Spain; he would have known no others. So for
awhile his memory seemed to stray, half blind among those perfumed
earthly wonders; perhaps among these memories his spirit halted,
and tarried those last few moments, mistaking those Spanish
gardens, remembered by moonlight in Spring, for the other end of
his journey, the glades of Paradise. However it be, it tarried.
These rambling memories ceased and silence fell again, with
scarcely the sound of breathing. Then gathering up his strength
for the last time and looking at his son, "The sword to the wars,"
he said. "The mandolin to the balconies." With that he fell back
dead.
Now there were no wars at that time so far as was known in Spain,
but that old lord's eldest son, regarding those last words of his
father as a commandment, determined then and there in that dim,
vast chamber to gird his legacy to him and seek for the wars,
wherever the wars might be, so soon as the obsequies of the
sepulture were ended. And of those obsequies I tell not here, for
they are fully told in the Black Books of Spain, and the deeds of
that old lord's youth are told in the Golden Stories. The Book of
Maidens mentions him, and again we read of him in Gardens of
Spain. I take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise, for he
had himself the accomplishments that he held needful in a
Christian, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin; and
if there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow
that which we believe to be good, then are we all damned. So he
was buried, and his eldest son fared forth with his legacy
dangling from his girdle in its long, straight, lovely scabbard,
blue velvet, with emeralds on it, fared forth on foot along a road
of Spain. And though the road turned left and right and sometimes
nearly ceased, as though to let the small wild flowers grow, out
of sheer good will such as some roads never have; though it ran
west and east and sometimes south, yet in the main it ran
northward, though wandered is a better word than ran, and the Lord
of the Valleys of Arguento Harez who owned no valleys, or anything
but a sword, kept company with it looking for the wars. Upon his
back he had slung his mandolin. Now the time of the year was
Spring, not Spring as we know it in England, for it was but early
March, but it was the time when Spring coming up out of Africa, or
unknown lands to the south, first touches Spain, and multitudes of
anemones come forth at her feet.
Thence she comes north to our islands, no less wonderful in our
woods than in Andalusian valleys, fresh as a new song, fabulous as
a rune, but a little pale through travel, so that our flowers do
not quite flare forth with all the myriad blaze of the flowers of
Spain.
And all the way as he went the young man looked at the flame of
those southern flowers, flashing on either side of him all the
way, as though the rainbow had been broken in Heaven and its
fragments fallen on Spain. All the way as he went he gazed at
those flowers, the first anemones of the year; and long after,
whenever he sang to old airs of Spain, he thought of Spain as it
appeared that day in all the wonder of Spring; the memory lent a
beauty to his voice and a wistfulness to his eyes that accorded
not ill with the theme of the songs he sang, and were more than
once to melt proud hearts deemed cold. And so gazing he came to a
town that stood on a hill, before he was yet tired, though he had
done nigh twenty of those flowery miles of Spain; and since it was
evening and the light was fading away, he went to an inn and drew
his sword in the twilight and knocked with the hilt of it on the
oaken door. The name of it was the Inn of the Dragon and Knight. A
light was lit in one of the upper windows, the darkness seemed to
deepen at that moment, a step was heard coming heavily down a
stairway; and having named the inn to you, gentle reader, it is
time for me to name the young man also, the landless lord of the
Valleys of Arguento Harez, as the step comes slowly down the inner
stairway, as the gloaming darkens over the first house in which he
has ever sought shelter so far from his father's valleys, as he
stands upon the threshold of romance. He was named Rodriguez
Trinidad Fernandez, Concepcion Henrique Maria; but we shall
briefly name him Rodriguez in this story; you and I, reader, will
know whom we mean; there is no need therefore to give him his full
names, unless I do it here and there to remind you.
The steps came thumping on down the inner stairway, different
windows took the light of the candle, and none other shone in the
house; it was clear that it was moving with the steps all down
that echoing stairway. The sound of the steps ceased to
reverberate upon the wood, and now they slowly moved over stone
flags; Rodriguez now heard breathing, one breath with every step,
and at length the sound of bolts and chains undone and the
breathing now very close. The door was opened swiftly; a man with
mean eyes, and expression devoted to evil, stood watching him for
an instant; then the door slammed to again, the bolts were heard
going back again to their places, the steps and the breathing
moved away over the stone floor, and the inner stairway began
again to echo.
"If the wars are here," said Rodriguez to himself and his sword,
"good, and I sleep under the stars." And he listened in the street
for the sound of war and, hearing none, continued his discourse.
"But if I have not come as yet to the wars I sleep beneath a
roof."
For the second time therefore he drew his sword, and began to
strike methodically at the door, noting the grain in the wood and
hitting where it was softest. Scarcely had he got a good strip of
the oak to look like coming away, when the steps once more
descended the wooden stair and came lumbering over the stones;
both the steps and the breathing were quicker, for mine host of
the Dragon and Knight was hurrying to save his door.
When he heard the sound of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez
ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he
saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too
much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow
suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at
him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a
spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in her way.
Mine host said nothing; and Rodriguez, who seldom concerned
himself with the past, holding that the future is all we can order
the scheme of (and maybe even here he was wrong), made no mention
of bolts or door and merely demanded a bed for himself for the
night.
Mine host rubbed his chin; he had neither beard nor moustache but
wore hideous whiskers; he rubbed it thoughtfully and looked at
Rodriguez. Yes, he said, he could have a bed for the night. No
more words he said, but turned and led the way; while Rodriguez,
who could sing to the mandolin, wasted none of his words on this
discourteous object. They ascended the short oak stairway down
which mine host had come, the great timbers of which were gnawed
by a myriad rats, and they went by passages with the light of one
candle into the interior of the inn, which went back farther from
the street than the young man had supposed; indeed he perceived
when they came to the great corridor at the end of which was his
appointed chamber, that here was no ordinary inn, as it had
appeared from outside, but that it penetrated into the fastness of
some great family of former times which had fallen on evil days.
The vast size of it, the noble design where the rats had spared
the carving, what the moths had left of the tapestries, all
testified to that; and, as for the evil days, they hung about the
place, evident even by the light of one candle guttering with
every draught that blew from the haunts of the rats, an
inseparable heirloom for all who disturbed those corridors.
And so they came to the chamber.
Mine host entered, bowed without grace in the doorway, and
extended his left hand, pointing into the room. The draughts that
blew from the rat-holes in the wainscot, or the mere action of
entering, beat down the flame of the squat, guttering candle so
that the chamber remained dim for a moment, in spite of the
candle, as would naturally be the case. Yet the impression made
upon Rodriguez was as of some old darkness that had been long
undisturbed and that yielded reluctantly to that candle's
intrusion, a darkness that properly became the place and was a
part of it and had long been so, in the face of which the candle
appeared an ephemeral thing devoid of grace or dignity or
tradition. And indeed there was room for darkness in that chamber,
for the walls went up and up into such an altitude that you could
scarcely see the ceiling, at which mine host's eyes glanced, and
Rodriguez followed his look.
He accepted his accommodation with a nod; as indeed he would have
accepted any room in that inn, for the young are swift judges of
character, and one who had accepted such a host was unlikely to
find fault with rats or the profusion of giant cobwebs, dark with
the dust of years, that added so much to the dimness of that
sinister inn. They turned now and went back, in the wake of that
guttering candle, till they came again to the humbler part of the
building. Here mine host, pushing open a door of blackened oak,
indicated his dining-chamber. There a long table stood, and on it
parts of the head and hams of a boar; and at the far end of the
table a plump and sturdy man was seated in shirt-sleeves feasting
himself on the boar's meat. He leaped up at once from his chair as
soon as his master entered, for he was the servant at the Dragon
and Knight; mine host may have said much to him with a flash of
his eyes, but he said no more with his tongue than the one word,
"Dog": he then bowed himself out, leaving Rodriguez to take the
only chair and to be waited upon by its recent possessor. The
boar's meat was cold and gnarled, another piece of meat stood on a
plate on a shelf and a loaf of bread near by, but the rats had had
most of the bread: Rodriguez demanded what the meat was.
"Unicorn's tongue," said the servant, and Rodriguez bade him set
the dish before him, and he set to well content, though I fear the
unicorn's tongue was only horse: it was a credulous age, as all
ages are. At the same time he pointed to a three-legged stool that
he perceived in a corner of the room, then to the table, then to
the boar's meat, and lastly at the servant, who perceived that he
was permitted to return to his feast, to which he ran with
alacrity. "Your name?" said Rodriguez as soon as both were eating.
"Morano," replied the servant, though it must not be supposed that
when answering Rodriguez he spoke as curtly as this; I merely give
the reader the gist of his answer, for he added Spanish words that
correspond in our depraved and decadent language of to-day to such
words as "top dog," "nut" and "boss," so that his speech had a
certain grace about it in that far-away time in Spain.
I have said that Rodriguez seldom concerned himself with the past,
but considered chiefly the future: it was of the future that he
was thinking now as he asked Morano this question:
"Why did my worthy and entirely excellent host shut his door in my
face?"
"Did he so?" said Morano.
"He then bolted it and found it necessary to put the chains back,
doubtless for some good reason."
"Yes," said Morano thoughtfully, and looking at Rodriguez, "and so
he might. He must have liked you."
Verily Rodriguez was just the young man to send out with a sword
and a mandolin into the wide world, for he had much shrewd sense.
He never pressed a point, but when something had been said that
might mean much he preferred to store it, as it were, in his mind
and pass on to other things, somewhat as one might kill game and
pass on and kill more and bring it all home, while a savage would
cook the first kill where it fell and eat it on the spot. Pardon
me, reader, but at Morano's remark you may perhaps have exclaimed,
"That is not the way to treat one you like." Not so did Rodriguez.
His attention passed on to notice Morano's rings which he wore in
great profusion upon his little fingers; they were gold and of
exquisite work and had once held precious stones, as large gaps
testified; in these days they would have been priceless, but in an
age when workers only worked at arts that they understood, and
then worked for the joy of it, before the word artistic became
ridiculous, exquisite work went without saying; and as the rings
were slender they were of little value. Rodriguez made no comment
upon the rings; it was enough for him to have noticed them. He
merely noted that they were not ladies' rings, for no lady's ring
would have fitted on to any one of those fingers: the rings
therefore of gallants: and not given to Morano by their owners,
for whoever wore precious stone needed a ring to wear it in, and
rings did not wear out like hose, which a gallant might give to a
servant. Nor, thought he, had Morano stolen them, for whoever
stole them would keep them whole, or part with them whole and get
a better price. Besides Morano had an honest face, or a face at
least that seemed honest in such an inn: and while these thoughts
were passing through his mind Morano spoke again: "Good hams,"
said Morano. He had already eaten one and was starting upon the
next. Perhaps he spoke out of gratitude for the honour and
physical advantage of being permitted to sit there and eat those
hams, perhaps tentatively, to find out whether he might consume
the second, perhaps merely to start a conversation, being
attracted by the honest looks of Rodriguez.
"You are hungry," said Rodriguez.
"Praise God I am always hungry," answered Morano. "If I were not
hungry I should starve."
"Is it so?" said Rodriguez.
"You see," said Morano, "the manner of it is this: my master gives
me no food, and it is only when I am hungry that I dare to rob him
by breaking in, as you saw me, upon his viands; were I not hungry
I should not dare to do so, and so ..." He made a sad and
expressive movement with both his hands suggestive of autumn
leaves blown hence to die.
"He gives you no food?" said Rodriguez.
"It is the way of many men with their dog," said Morano. "They
give him no food," and then he rubbed his hands cheerfully, "and
yet the dog does not die."
"And he gives you no wages?" said Rodriguez.
"Just these rings."
Now Rodriguez had himself a ring upon his finger (as a gallant
should), a slender piece of gold with four tiny angels holding a
sapphire, and for a moment he pictured the sapphire passing into
the hands of mine host and the ring of gold and the four small
angels being flung to Morano; the thought darkened his gaiety for
no longer than one of those fleecy clouds in Spring shadows the
fields of Spain.
Morano was also looking at the ring; he had followed the young
man's glance.
"Master," he said, "do you draw your sword of a night?"
"And you?" said Rodriguez.
"I have no sword," said Morano. "I am but as dog's meat that needs
no guarding, but you whose meat is rare like the flesh of the
unicorn need a sword to guard your meat. The unicorn has his horn
always, and even then he sometimes sleeps."
"It is bad, you think, to sleep," Rodriguez said.
"For some it is very bad, master. They say they never take the
unicorn waking. For me I am but dog's meat: when I have eaten hams
I curl up and sleep; but then you see, master, I know I shall wake
in the morning."
"Ah," said Rodriguez, "the morning's a pleasant time," and he
leaned back comfortably in his chair. Morano took one shrewd look
at him, and was soon asleep upon his three-legged stool.
The door opened after a while and mine host appeared. "It is
late," he said. Rodriguez smiled acquiescently and mine host
withdrew, and presently leaving Morano whom his master's voice had
waked, to curl up on the floor in a corner, Rodriguez took the
candle that lit the room and passed once more through the passages
of the inn and down the great corridor of the fastness of the
family that had fallen on evil days, and so came to his chamber. I
will not waste a multitude of words over that chamber; if you have
no picture of it in your mind already, my reader, you are reading
an unskilled writer, and if in that picture it appear a wholesome
room, tidy and well kept up, if it appear a place in which a
stranger might sleep without some faint foreboding of disaster,
then I am wasting your time, and will waste no more of it with
bits of "descriptive writing" about that dim, high room, whose
blackness towered before Rodriguez in the night. He entered and
shut the door, as many had done before him; but for all his youth
he took some wiser precautions than had they, perhaps, who closed
that door before. For first he drew his sword; then for some while
he stood quite still near the door and listened to the rats; then
he looked round the chamber and perceived only one door; then he
looked at the heavy oak furniture, carved by some artist, gnawed
by rats, and all blackened by time; then swiftly opened the door
of the largest cupboard and thrust his sword in to see who might
be inside, but the carved satyr's heads at the top of the cupboard
eyed him silently and nothing moved. Then he noted that though
there was no bolt on the door the furniture might be placed across
to make what in the wars is called a barricado, but the wiser
thought came at once that this was too easily done, and that if
the danger that the dim room seemed gloomily to forebode were to
come from a door so readily barricadoed, then those must have been
simple gallants who parted so easily with the rings that adorned
Morano's two little fingers. No, it was something more subtle than
any attack through that door that brought his regular wages to
Morano. Rodriguez looked at the window, which let in the light of
a moon that was getting low, for the curtains had years ago been
eaten up by the moths; but the window was barred with iron bars
that were not yet rusted away, and looked out, thus guarded, over
a sheer wall that even in the moonlight fell into blackness.
Rodriguez then looked round for some hidden door, the sword all
the while in his hand, and very soon he knew that room fairly
well, but not its secret, nor why those unknown gallants had given
up their rings.
It is much to know of an unknown danger that it really is unknown.
Many have met their deaths through looking for danger from one
particular direction, whereas had they perceived that they were
ignorant of its direction they would have been wise in their
ignorance. Rodriguez had the great discretion to understand
clearly that he did not know the direction from which danger would
come. He accepted this as his only discovery about that portentous
room which seemed to beckon to him with every shadow and to sigh
over him with every mournful draught, and to whisper to him
unintelligible warnings with every rustle of tattered silk that
hung about his bed. And as soon as he discovered that this was his
only knowledge he began at once to make his preparations: he was a
right young man for the wars. He divested himself of his shoes and
doublet and the light cloak that hung from his shoulder and cast
the clothes on a chair. Over the back of the chair he slung his
girdle and the scabbard hanging therefrom and placed his plumed
hat so that none could see that his Castilian blade was not in its
resting-place. And when the sombre chamber had the appearance of
one having undressed in it before retiring Rodriguez turned his
attention to the bed, which he noticed to be of great depth and
softness. That something not unlike blood had been spilt on the
floor excited no wonder in Rodriguez; that vast chamber was
evidently, as I have said, in the fortress of some great family,
against one of whose walls the humble inn had once leaned for
protection; the great family were gone: how they were gone
Rodriguez did not know, but it excited no wonder in him to see
blood on the boards: besides, two gallants may have disagreed; or
one who loved not dumb animals might have been killing rats. Blood
did not disturb him; but what amazed him, and would have surprised
anyone who stood in that ruinous room, was that there were clean
new sheets on the bed. Had you seen the state of the furniture and
the floor, O my reader, and the vastness of the old cobwebs and
the black dust that they held, the dead spiders and huge dead
flies, and the living generation of spiders descending and
ascending through the gloom, I say that you also would have been
surprised at the sight of those nice clean sheets. Rodriguez noted
the fact and continued his preparations. He took the bolster from
underneath the pillow and laid it down the middle of the bed and
put the sheets back over it; then he stood back and looked at it,
much as a sculptor might stand back from his marble, then he
returned to it and bent it a little in the middle, and after that
he placed his mandolin on the pillow and nearly covered it with
the sheet, but not quite, for a little of the curved dark-brown
wood remained still to be seen. It looked wonderfully now like a
sleeper in the bed, but Rodriguez was not satisfied with his work
until he had placed his kerchief and one of his shoes where a
shoulder ought to be; then he stood back once more and eyed it
with satisfaction. Next he considered the light. He looked at the
light of the moon and remembered his father's advice, as the young
often do, but considered that this was not the occasion for it,
and decided to leave the light of his candle instead, so that
anyone who might be familiar with the moonlight in that shadowy
chamber should find instead a less sinister light. He therefore
dragged a table to the bedside, placed the candle upon it, and
opened a treasured book that he bore in his doublet, and laid it
on the bed near by, between the candle and his mandolin-headed
sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a Cathedral and dealt
with the confessions of a young girl, which the author claimed to
have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow near the
Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent. Lastly
he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of
it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping
his sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet and some silk
that hung from the bed, he concealed himself sufficient for his
purpose, which was to see before he should be seen by any intruder
that might enter that chamber.
And if Rodriguez appear to have been unduly suspicious, it should
be borne in mind not only that those empty rings needed much
explanation, but that every house suggests to the stranger
something; and that whereas one house seems to promise a welcome
in front of cosy fires, another good fare, another joyous wine,
this inn seemed to promise murder; or so the young man's intuition
said, and the young are wise to trust to their intuitions.
The reader will know, if he be one of us, who have been to the
wars and slept in curious ways, that it is hard to sleep when
sober upon a floor; it is not like the earth, or snow, or a
feather bed; even rock can be more accommodating; it is hard,
unyielding and level, all night unmistakable floor. Yet Rodriguez
took no risk of falling asleep, so he said over to himself in his
mind as much as he remembered of his treasured book, Notes in a
Cathedral, which he always read to himself before going to rest
and now so sadly missed. It told how a lady who had listened to a
lover longer than her soul's safety could warrant, as he played
languorous music in the moonlight and sang soft by her low
balcony, and how she being truly penitent, had gathered many
roses, the emblems of love (as surely, she said at confession, all
the world knows), and when her lover came again by moonlight had
cast them all from her from the balcony, showing that she had
renounced love; and her lover had entirely misunderstood her. It
told how she often tried to show him this again, and all the
misunderstandings are sweetly set forth and with true Christian
penitence. Sometimes some little matter escaped Rodriguez's memory
and then he longed to rise up and look at his dear book, yet he
lay still where he was: and all the while he listened to the rats,
and the rats went on gnawing and running regularly, scared by
nothing new; Rodriguez trusted as much to their myriad ears as to
his own two. The great spiders descended out of such heights that
you could not see whence they came, and ascended again into
blackness; it was a chamber of prodigious height. Sometimes the
shadow of a descending spider that had come close to the candle
assumed a frightening size, but Rodriguez gave little thought to
it; it was of murder he was thinking, not of shadows; still, in
its way it was ominous, and reminded Rodriguez horribly of his
host; but what of an omen, again, in a chamber full of omens. The
place itself was ominous; spiders could scarce make it more so.
The spider itself was big enough, he thought, to be impaled on his
Castilian blade; indeed, he would have done it but that he thought
it wiser to stay where he was and watch. And then the spider found
the candle too hot and climbed in a hurry all the way to the
ceiling, and his horrible shadow grew less and dwindled away.
It was not that the rats were frightened: whatever it was that
happened happened too quietly for that, but the volume of the
sound of their running had suddenly increased: it was not like
fear among them, for the running was no swifter, and it did not
fade away; it was as though the sound of rats running, which had
not been heard before, was suddenly heard now. Rodriguez looked at
the door, the door was shut. A young Englishman would long ago
have been afraid that he was making a fuss over nothing and would
have gone to sleep in the bed, and not seen what Rodriguez saw. He
might have thought that hearing more rats all at once was merely a
fancy, and that everything was all right. Rodriguez saw a rope
coming slowly down from the ceiling, he quickly determined whether
it was a rope or only the shadow of some huge spider's thread, and
then he watched it and saw it come down right over his bed and
stop within a few feet of it. Rodriguez looked up cautiously to
see who had sent him that strange addition to the portents that
troubled the chamber, but the ceiling was too high and dim for him
to perceive anything but the rope coming down out of the darkness.
Yet he surmised that the ceiling must have softly opened, without
any sound at all, at the moment that he heard the greater number
of rats. He waited then to see what the rope would do; and at
first it hung as still as the great festoons dead spiders had made
in the corners; then as he watched it it began to sway. He looked
up into the dimness then to see who was swaying the rope; and for
a long time, as it seemed to him lying gripping his Castilian
sword on the floor he saw nothing clearly. And then he saw mine
host coming down the rope, hand over hand quite nimbly, as though
he lived by this business. In his right hand he held a poniard of
exceptional length, yet he managed to clutch the rope and hold the
poniard all the time with the same hand.
If there had been something hideous about the shadow of the spider
that came down from that height the shadow of mine host was indeed
demoniac. He too was like a spider, with his body at no time
slender all bunched up on the rope, and his shadow was six times
his size: you could turn from the spider's shadow to the spider
and see that it was for the most part a fancy of the candle half
crazed by the draughts, but to turn from mine host's shadow to
himself and to see his wicked eyes was to say that the candle's
wildest fears were true. So he climbed down his rope holding his
poniard upward. But when he came within perhaps ten feet of the
bed he pointed it downward and began to sway about. It will be
readily seen that by swaying his rope at a height mine host could
drop on any part of the bed. Rodriguez as he watched him saw him
scrutinise closely and continue to sway on his rope. He feared
that mine host was ill satisfied with the look of the mandolin and
that he would climb away again, well warned of his guest's
astuteness, into the heights of the ceiling to devise some
fearfuller scheme; but he was only looking for the shoulder. And
then mine host dropped; poniard first, he went down with all his
weight behind it and drove it through the bolster below where the
shoulder should be, just where we slant our arms across our
bodies, when we lie asleep on our sides, leaving the ribs exposed:
and the soft bed received him. And the moment that mine host let
go of his rope Rodriguez leaped to his feet. He saw Rodriguez,
indeed their eyes met as he dropped through the air, but what
could mine host do? He was already committed to his stroke, and
his poniard was already deep in the mattress when the good
Castilian blade passed through his ribs.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|
|
|