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HOW HE SANG TO HIS MANDOLIN AND WHAT CAME OF HIS SINGING
They walked back slowly in silence up the street down which they
had ridden. Earth darkened, the moon grew brighter: and Rodriguez
gazing at the pale golden disk began to wonder who dwelt in the
lunar valleys; and what message, if folk were there, they had for
our peoples; and in what language such message could ever be, and
how it could fare across that limpid remoteness that wafted light
on to the coasts of Earth and lapped in silence on the lunar
shores. And as he wondered he thought of his mandolin.
"Morano," he said, "buy bacon."
Morano's eyes brightened: they were forty-five miles from the
hills on which he had last tasted bacon. He selected his house
with a glance, and then he was gone. And Rodriguez reflected too
late that he had forgotten to tell Morano where he should find
him, and this with night coming on in a strange village. Scarcely,
Rodriguez reflected, he knew where he was going himself. Yet if
old tunes lurking in its hollows, echoing though imperceptibly
from long-faded evenings, gave the mandolin any knowledge of human
affairs that other inanimate things cannot possess, the mandolin
knew.
Let us in fancy call up the shade of Morano from that far
generation. Let us ask him where Rodriguez is going. Those blue
eyes, dim with the distance over which our fancy has called them,
look in our eyes with wonder.
"I do not know," he says, "where Don Rodriguez is going. My master
did not tell me."
Did he notice nothing as they rode by that balcony?
"Nothing," Morano answers, "except my master riding."
We may let Morano's shade drift hence again, for we shall discover
nothing: nor is this an age to which to call back spirits.
Rodriguez strolled slowly on the deep dust of that street as
though wondering all the while where he should go; and soon he and
his mandolin were below that very balcony whereon he had seen the
white neck of Serafina gleam with the last of the daylight. And
now the spells of the moon charmed Earth with their full power.
The balcony was empty. How should it have been otherwise? And yet
Rodriguez grieved. For between the vision that had drawn his
footsteps and that bare balcony below shuttered windows was the
difference between a haven, sought over leagues of sea, and sheer,
uncharted cliff. It brought a wistfulness into the music he
played, and a melancholy that was all new to Rodriguez, yet often
and often before had that mandolin sent up through evening against
unheeding Space that cry that man cannot utter; for the spirit of
man needs a mandolin as a comrade to face the verdict of the
chilly stars as he needs a bulldog for more mundane things.
Soon out of the depth of that stout old mandolin, in which so many
human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders
spin misty grey webs, till it was all haunted with music, soon the
old cry went up to the stars again, a thread of supplication spun
of the matter which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it
knew not what. And, but that Fate is deaf, all that man asks in
music had been granted then.
What sorrows had Rodriguez known in his life that he made so sad a
melody? I know not. It was the mandolin. When the mandolin was
made it knew at once all the sorrows of man, and all the old
unnamed longings that none defines. It knew them as the dog knows
the alliance that its forefathers made with man. A mandolin weeps
the tears that its master cannot shed, or utters the prayers that
are deeper than its master's lips can draw, as a dog will fight
for his master with teeth that are longer than man's. And if the
moonlight streamed on untroubled, and though Fate was deaf, yet
beauty of those fresh strains going starward from under his
fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and gilded his
dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory, until
he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with limpid voice
along the edge of tears, a love-song old as the woods of his
father's valleys at whose edge he had heard it once drift through
the evening. And as he played and sang with his young soul in the
music he fancied (and why not, if they care aught for our souls in
Heaven?) he fancied the angles putting their hands each one on a
star and leaning out of Heaven through the constellations to
listen.
"A vile song, senor, and a vile tune with it," said a voice quite
close.
However much the words hurt his pride in his mandolin Rodriguez
recognised in the voice the hidalgo's accent and knew that it was
an equal that now approached him in the moonlight round a corner
of the house with the balcony; and he knew that the request he
courteously made would be as courteously granted.
"Senor," he said, "I pray you to permit me to lean my mandolin
against the wall securely before we speak of my song."
"Most surely, senor," the stranger replied, "for there is no fault
with the mandolin."
"Senor," Rodriguez said, "I thank you profoundly." And he bowed to
the gallant, whom he now perceived to be young, a youth tall and
lithe like himself, one whom we might have chosen for these
chronicles had we not found Rodriguez.
Then Rodriguez stepped back a short way and placed his kerchief on
the ground; and upon this he put his mandolin and leaned it
against the wall. When the mandolin was safe from dust or accident
he approached the stranger and drew his sword.
"Senor," he said, "we will now discuss music."
"Right gladly, senor," said the young man, who now drew his sword
also. There were no clouds; the moon was full; the evening
promised well.
Scarcely had the flash of thin rapiers crossing each other by
moonlight begun to gleam in the street when Morano appeared beside
them and stood there watching. He had bought his bacon and gone
straight to the house with the balcony. For though he knew no
Latin he had not missed the silent greeting that had welcomed his
master to that village, or failed to interpret the gist of the
words that Rodriguez' dumb glance would have said. He stood there
watching while each combatant stood his ground.
And Rodriguez remembered all those passes and feints that he had
had from his father, and which Sevastiani, a master of arms in
Madrid, had taught in his father's youth: and some were famous and
some were little known. And all these passes, as he tried them one
by one, his unknown antagonist parried. And for a moment Rodriguez
feared that Morano would see those passes in which he trusted
foiled by that unknown sword, and then he reflected that Morano
knew nothing of the craft of the rapier, and with more content at
that thought he parried thrusts that were strange to him. But
something told Morano that in this fight the stranger was master
and that along that pale-blue, moonlit, unknown sword lurked a
sure death for Rodriguez. He moved from his place of vantage and
was soon lost in large shadows; while the rapiers played and blade
rippled on blade with a sound as though Death were gently
sharpening his scythe in the dark. And now Rodriguez was giving
ground, now his antagonist pressed him; thrusts that he believed
invincible had failed; now he parried wearily and had at once to
parry again; the unknown pressed on, was upon him, was scattering
his weakening parries; drew back his rapier for a deadlier pass,
learned in a secret school, in a hut on mountains he knew, and
practised surely; and fell in a heap upon Rodriguez' feet, struck
full on the back of the head by Morano's frying-pan.
"Most vile knave," shouted Rodriguez as he saw Morano before him
with his frying-pan in his hand, and with something of the stupid
expression that you see on the face of a dog that has done some
foolish thing which it thinks will delight its master.
"Master! I am your servant," said Morano.
"Vile, miserable knave," replied Rodriguez.
"Master," Morano said plaintively, "shall I see to your comforts,
your food, and not to your life?"
"Silence," thundered Rodriguez as he stooped anxiously to his
antagonist, who was not unconscious but only very giddy and who
now rose to his feet with the help of Rodriguez.
"Alas, senor," said Rodriguez, "the foul knave is my servant. He
shall be flogged. He shall be flayed. His vile flesh shall be cut
off him. Does the hurt pain you, senor? Sit and rest while I beat
the knave, and then we will continue our meeting."
And he ran to his kerchief on which rested his mandolin and laid
it upon the dust for the stranger.
"No, no," said he. "My head clears again. It is nothing."
"But rest, senor, rest," said Rodriguez. "It is always well to
rest before an encounter. Rest while I punish the knave."
And he led him to where the kerchief lay on the ground. "Let me
see the hurt, senor," he continued. And the stranger removed his
plumed hat as Rodriguez compelled him to sit down. He straightened
out the hat as he sat, and the hurt was shown to be of no great
consequence.
"The blessed Saints be praised," Rodriguez said. "It need not stop
our encounter. But rest awhile, senor."
"Indeed, it is nothing," he answered.
"But the indignity is immeasurable," sighed Rodriguez. "Would you
care, senor, when you are well rested to give the chastisement
yourself?"
"As far as that goes," said the stranger, "I can chastise him
now."
"If you are fully recovered, senor," Rodriguez said, "my own sword
is at your disposal to beat him sore with the flat of it, or how
you will. Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin
of so vile a knave."
The stranger smiled: the idea appealed to him.
"You make a noble amend, senor," he said as he bowed over
Rodriguez' proffered sword.
Morano had not moved far, but stood near, wondering. "What should
a servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how
work for him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through
his own fault if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived
him about to do so. He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw
the stranger coming angrily towards him in the clear moonlight
with a sword. Morano was frightened.
As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to
seize Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger
parried, but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and
for the second time he went down in the dust with a reeling head.
Rodriguez turned toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is
all very well, and I know that my duty as author is to tell all
that happened, and I could win mighty praise as a bold,
unconventional writer; at the same time, some young lady will be
reading all this next year in some far country, or in twenty years
in England, and I would sooner she should not read what Rodriguez
said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of it was
that he should leave that place now and depart from his service
for ever. And hearing those words Morano turned mournfully away
and was at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once
more to help his fallen antagonist. "Senor, senor," he said with
an emotion that some wearing centuries and a cold climate have
taught us not to show, and beyond those words he could find no
more to say.
"Giddy, only giddy," said the stranger.
A tear fell on his forehead as Rodriguez helped him to his feet.
"Senor," Rodriguez said fervently, "we will finish our encounter
come what may. The knave is gone and ..."
"But I am somewhat giddy," said the other.
"I will take off one of my shoes," said Rodriguez, "leaving the
other on. It will equalise our unsteadiness, and you shall not be
disappointed in our encounter. Come," he added kindly.
"I cannot see so clearly as before," the young hidalgo murmured.
"I will bandage my right eye also," said Rodriguez, "and if this
cannot equalise it ..."
"It is a most fair offer," said the young man.
"I could not bear that you should be disappointed of your
encounter," Rodriguez said, "by this spirit of Hell that has got
itself clothed in fat and dares to usurp the dignity of man."
"It is a right fair offer," the young man said again.
"Rest yourself, senor," said Rodriguez, "while I take off my
shoe," and he indicated his kerchief which was still on the
ground.
The stranger sat down a little wearily, and Rodriguez sitting upon
the dust took off his left shoe. And now he began to think a
little wistfully of the face that had shone from that balcony,
where all was dark now in black shadow unlit by the moon. The
emptiness of the balcony and its darkness oppressed him; for he
could scarcely hope to survive an encounter with that swordsman,
whose skill he now recognised as being of a different class from
his own, a class of which he knew nothing. All his own feints and
passes were known, while those of his antagonist had been strange
and new, and he might well have even others. The stranger's
giddiness did not alter the situation, for Rodriguez knew that his
handicap was fair and even generous. He believed he was near his
grave, and could see no spark of light to banish that dark belief;
yet more chances than we can see often guard us on such occasions.
The absence of Serafina saddened him like a sorrowful sunset.
Rodriguez rose and limped with his one shoe off to the stranger,
who was sitting upon his kerchief.
"I will bandage my right eye now, senor," he said.
The young man rose and shook the dust from the kerchief and gave
it to Rodriguez with a renewed expression of his gratitude at the
fairness of the strange handicap. When Rodriguez had bandaged his
eye the stranger returned his sword to him, which he had held in
his hand since his effort to beat Morano, and drawing his own
stepped back a few paces from him. Rodriguez took one hopeless
look at the balcony, saw it as empty and as black as ever, then he
faced his antagonist, waiting.
"Bandage one eye, indeed!" muttered Morano as he stepped up behind
the stranger and knocked him down for the third time with a blow
over the head from his frying-pan.
The young hidalgo dropped silently.
Rodriguez uttered one scream of anger and rushed at Morano with
his sword. Morano had already started to run; and, knowing well
that he was running for his life, he kept for awhile the start
that he had of the rapier. Rodriguez knew that no plump man of
over forty could last against his lithe speed long. He saw Morano
clearly before him, then lost sight of him for a moment and ran
confidently on pursuing. He ran on and on. And at last he
recognised that Morano had slipped into the darkness, which lies
always so near to the moonlight, and was not in front of him at
all. So he returned to his fallen antagonist and found him
breathing heavily where he fell, scarcely conscious. The third
stroke of the frying-pan had done its work surely. Rodriguez' fury
died down, only because it is difficult to feel two emotions at
once: it died down as pity took its place, though every now and
then it would suddenly flare and fall again. He returned his sword
and lifted the young hidalgo and carried him to the door of the
house under which they had fought.
With one fist he beat on the door without putting the hurt man
down, and continued to hit it until steps were heard, and bolts
began to grumble, as though disturbed too early from their rusty
sleep in stone sockets.
The door of the house with the balcony was opened by a servant
who, when he saw who it was that Rodriguez carried, fled into the
house in alarm, as one who runs with bad news. He carried one
candle and, when he had disappeared with the steaming flame,
Rodriguez found himself in a long hall lit by the moonlight only,
which was looking in through the small contorted panes of the
upper part of a high window. Alone with echoes and shadows
Rodriguez carried the hurt man through the hall, who was muttering
now as he came back to consciousness. And, as he went, there came
to Rodriguez thoughts between wonder and hope, for he had had no
thought at all when he beat on the door except to get shelter and
help for the hurt man. At the end of the hall they came to an open
door that led into a chamber partly shining with moonlight.
"In there," said the man that he carried.
Rodriguez carried him in and laid him on a long couch at the end
of the room. Large pictures of men in the blackness, out of the
moon's rays, frowned at Rodriguez mysteriously. He could not see
their faces in the darkness, but he somehow knew they frowned. Two
portraits that were clear in the moonlight eyed him with absolute
apathy. So cold a welcome from that house's past generations boded
no good to him from those that dwelt there today. Rodriguez knew
that in carrying the hurt man there he helped at a Christian deed;
and yet there was no putting the merits of the case against the
omens that crowded the chamber, lurking along the edge of
moonlight and darkness, disappearing and reappearing till the
gloom was heavy with portent. The omens knew. In a weak voice and
few words the hurt man thanked him, but the apathetic faces seemed
to say What of that? And the frowning faces that he could not see
still filled the darkness with anger.
And then from the end of the chamber, dressed in white, and all
shining with moonlight, came Serafina.
Rodriguez in awed silence watched her come. He saw her pass
through the moonlight and grow dimmer, and glide to the moonlight
again that streamed through another window. A great dim golden
circle appeared at the far end of the chamber whence she had come,
as the servent returned with his candle and held it high to give
light for Dona Serafina. But that one flame seemed to make the
darkness only blacker; and for any cheerfulness it brought to the
gloom it had better never have challenged those masses of darkness
at all in that high chamber among the brooding portraits it seemed
trivial, ephemeral, modern, ill able to cope with the power of
ancient things, dead days and forgotten voices, which make their
home in the darkness because the days that have usurped them have
stolen the light of the sun.
And there the man stood holding his candle high, and the rays of
the moon became more magical still beside that little mundane,
flickering thing. And Serafina was moving through the moonlight as
though its rays were her sisters, which she met noiselessly and
brightly upon some island, as it seemed to Rodriguez, beyond the
costs of Earth, so quietly and so brightly did her slender figure
move and so aloof from him appeared her eyes. And there came on
Rodriguez that feeling that some deride and that others explain
away, the feeling of which romance is mainly made and which is the
aim and goal of all the earth. And his love for Serafina seemed to
him not only to be an event in his life but to have some part in
veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the blessing of most
distant days: grey beards seemed to look out of graves in
forgotten places to wag approval: hands seemed to beckon to him
out of far-future times, where faces were smiling quietly: and,
dreaming on further still, this vast approval that gave
benediction to his heart's youthful fancy seemed to widen and
widen like the gold of a summer's evening or, the humming of bees
in summer in endless rows of limes, until it became a part of the
story of man. Spring days of his earliest memory seemed to have
their part in it, as well as wonderful evenings of days that were
yet to be, till his love for Serafina was one with the fate of
earth; and, wandering far on their courses, he knew that the stars
blessed it. But Serafina went up to the man on the couch with no
look for Rodriguez.
With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken hidalgo. He
raised himself a little on one elbow. "It is nothing," he said,
"Serafina."
Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with
open and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead, she
spoke in a low voice to him; she lavished upon him sympathy for
which Rodriguez would have offered his head to swords; and all,
thought Rodriguez for three blows from a knave's frying-pan: and
his anger against Morano flared up again fiercely. Then there came
another thought to him out of the shadows, where Serafina was
standing all white, a figure of solace. Who was this man who so
mysteriously blended with the other unknown things that haunted
the gloom of that chamber? Why had he fought him at night? What
was he to Serafina? Thoughts crowded up to him from the interior
of the darkness, sombre and foreboding as the shadows that nursed
them. He stood there never daring to speak to Serafina; looking
for permission to speak, such as a glance might give. And no
glance came.
And now, as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his
eyes. Serafina stood beside him anxious and silent, gleaming in
that dim place. The servant at the far end of the chamber still
held his one candle high, as though some light of earth were
needed against the fantastic moon, which if unopposed would give
everything over to magic. Rodriguez stood there, scarcely
breathing. All was silent. And then through the door by which
Serafina had come, past that lonely, golden, moon-defying candle,
all down the long room across moonlight and blackness, came the
lady of the house, Serafina's mother. She came, as Serafina came,
straight toward the man on the couch, giving no look to Rodriguez,
walking something as Serafina walked, with the same poise, the
same dignity, though the years had carried away from her the grace
Serafina had: so that, though you saw that they were mother and
daughter, the elder lady called to mind the lovely things of
earth, large gardens at evening, statues dim in the dusk, summer
and whatsoever binds us to earthly things; but Serafina turned
Rodriguez' thoughts to the twilight in which he first saw her, and
he pictured her native place as far from here, in mellow fields
near the moon, wherein she had walked on twilight outlasting any
we know, with all delicate things of our fancy, too fair for the
rugged earth.
As the lady approached the couch upon which the young man was
lying, and still no look was turned towards Rodriguez, his young
dreams fled as butterflies sailing high in the heat of June that
are suddenly plunged in night by a total eclipse of the sun. He
had never spoken to Serafina, or seen before her mother, and they
did not know his name; he knew that he, Rodriguez, had no claim to
a welcome. But his dreams had flocked so much about Serafina's
face, basking so much in her beauty, that they now fell back
dying; and when a man's dreams die what remains, if he lingers
awhile behind them?
Rodriguez suddenly felt that his left shoe was off and his right
eye still bandaged, things that he had not noticed while his only
thought was for the man he carried to shelter, but torturing his
consciousness now that he thought of himself. He opened his lips
to explain; but before words came to him, looking at the face of
Serafina's mother, standing now by the couch, he felt that, not
knowing how, he had somehow wronged the Penates of this house, or
whatever was hid in the dimness of that long chamber, by carrying
in this young man there to rest from his hurt.
Rodriguez' depression arose from these causes, but having arisen,
it grew of its own might: he had had nothing to eat since morning,
and in the favouring atmosphere of hunger his depression grew
gigantic. He opened his lips once more to say farewell, was
oppressed by all manner of thoughts that held him dumb, and turned
away in silence and left the house. Outside he recovered his
mandolin and his shoe. He was tired with the weariness of defeated
dreams that slept in his spirit exhausted, rather than with any
fatigue his young muscles had from the journey. He needed sleep;
he looked at the shuttered houses; then at the soft dust of the
road in which dogs lay during the daylight. But the dust was near
to his mood, so he lay down where he had fought the unknown
hidalgo. A light wind wandered the street like a visitor come to
the village out of a friendly valley, but Rodriguez' four days on
the roads had made him familiar with all wandering things, and the
breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all: before it had
wearied of wandering in the night Rodriguez had fallen asleep.
Just by the edge of sleep, upon which side he knew not, he heard
the window of the balcony creak, and looked up wide awake all in a
moment. But nothing stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the
window was fast shut. So whatever sound came from the window came
not from its opening but shutting: for a while he wondered; and
then his tired thoughts rested, and that was sleep.
A light rain woke Rodriguez, drizzling upon his face; the first
light rain that had fallen in a romantic tale. Storms there had
been, lashing oaks to terrific shapes seen at night by flashes of
lightning, through which villains rode abroad or heroes sought
shelter at midnight; hurricanes there had been, flapping huge
cloaks, fierce hail and copious snow; but until now no drizzle. It
was morning; dawn was old; and pale and grey and unhappy.
The balcony above him, still empty, scarcely even held romance
now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed
worse than the most sinister shadows of night.
And then Rodriguez saw a rose lying on the ground beside him. And
for all the dreams, fancies, and hopes that leaped up in
Rodriguez' mind, rising and falling and fading, one thing alone he
knew and all the rest was mystery: the rose had lain there before
the rain had fallen. Beneath the rose was white dust, while all
around it the dust was turning grey with rain.
Rodriguez tried to guess how long the rain had fallen. The rose
may have lain beside him all night long. But the shadows of
mystery receded no farther than this one fact that the rose was
there before the rain began. No sign of any kind came from the
house.
Rodriguez put the rose safe under his coat, wrapped in the
kerchief that had guarded the mandolin, to carry it far from
Lowlight, through places familiar with roses and places strange to
them; but it remained for him a thing of mystery until a day far
from then.
Sadly he left the house in the sad rain, marching away alone to
look for his wars.
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