“To such traditions,” he said, “a grave decorum were fitting.”
And the young man nodded his head, his face full of a fitting decorum. And the father remembered his own youth and wondered.
They parted then, the Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest going to find his lady, the young man still in his chair before the fire, pondering his journey and his future calling. These thoughts were too swift to follow: pursuing instead the slow steps of his father we find him come to a room in which, already, discernible shadows were cast by a want of gold. With its ancient sentinel chairs that seemed posted there to check lounging, and its treasure of tapestries hung to hide ruined panels or wherever the draughts blew most from untended rat-holes, that threatened room would scarce convey to our minds, could we see it across the centuries, any hint of impending need. And yet those shadows were there, moving softly as in slow dances with the solemn folds of the tapestry, or rising to welcome draughts in their secret manner, or lurking by the huge carved feet of the chairs; and always knowing with shadow-knowledge and whispering with shadow-talk, and hinting and prophesying and fearing, that a need was nearing the Tower to trouble its years. And here the Lord of the Tower found his lady, whose hair was whitening above a face unperturbed by the passing of time or anything that time brings; if great passions had shaken her mind or wandering imaginations often troubled it, they had passed across that plump and placid face with no more traces than the storms and the ships leave on the yellow sand of a sunny cove.
And he said to her: “I have spoken with Ramon Alonzo and have arranged everything with him. He is to leave us soon to work with a learned man that lives beyond Aragona, and will win for us the gold that we require and, afterwards, some more for himself.”
More than this he did not say upon that matter, for it was not his way, nor was it then the custom in Spain to speak of business to ladies.
And the lady rejoiced at this, for she had long tried to make her husband see that need that was sending its shadows to creep through the Tower, telling every nook of its coming; but the boars had to be hunted, and the hounds had to be fed, and a hundred things demanded his attention, so that she feared he might never have leisure to give his mind to this matter. But now it was all settled.
“Will Ramon Alonzo start soon?” she said.
“Not for some days,” said he. “There is no haste.”
But Ramon Alonzo’s swifter thoughts had outpaced all this. He was speaking now with his sister, telling her that he was to start next morning for that old house in the mountains of which they had often heard tales, and bidding her tend his great boarhound. They were in the garden though the gloaming was fading away, the garden that met the lawn on which they had lately played, a little lower down the slope where the Tower stood, and shut from the untamed earth and the rocks that were there before man by the same balustrade of marble that guarded the lawn. The hawk-moths appeared out of the darkening air from their deep homes in the forest and hovered by heavy blooms; it was in the midst of the days that are poised between Spring and Summer. Here Ramon and Mirandola said farewell in the little paths along which they often had played in years that appeared remote to them, under Spanish shrubs that were like tall fountains of flowers. And whatever the lady of the Tower guessed, neither her lord nor Ramon Alonzo had any knowledge that there was a glittering flash in the eyes of the slender girl that might laugh away demands for any dowry, and be deadlier and sweeter than gold, and might mock the men that sought it and bring their plans to derision, and overturn their illusion and fill their dreams with its ashes. Ramon Alonzo was troubled by no such fancy as this as he spoke earnestly of his boarhound, and as they spoke of his needs of combing and feeding and dryness they walked back to the Tower; and the gloaming was not yet gone, but it was midnight in Mirandola’s hair.
And so it was that on the following day, at evening, beyond Aragona, a young man was to be seen by such eyes as could peer so far, in his cloak on a rocky road with his back to the sheltered fields, bound for the mountain upon which frowned the woods; and night and a moaning wind were rising all round about him.
II
Ramon Alonzo Comes to the House in the Wood
Ramon Alonzo had travelled all day, and was twenty-five miles from his home; and now alone amongst darkness and storm and rocks he saw yet no sign of the house he sought, or any shelter at all. He had come past the sentinel oaks to the gloom of the wood, and neither saw light of window anywhere nor heard any of those sounds such as rise from the houses of men. He was in that mood that most attracts despair to come to men and tempt them; and indeed it would soon have come, luring him to forsake illusion and give up ambition and hope, but that just in that perilous moment he met a ragged man coming down through the wood. He came with strides, cloak and rags all flapping together, and would have passed the young traveller and hastened on towards the fields and the haunts of men, but Ramon Alonzo hailed him, demanding of him: “Where is the house in the wood?”
“Oh not there, young master, not there,” said the ragged stranger, waving his hands against something upon his left
