"Lord Dunsany - Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

When he had breakfasted and paid his due in silver he and Morano departed, leaving mine host upon his
doorstep bowing with an almost perplexed look on his shrewd face as he took the points of moustachios and
beard lightly in turn between finger and thumb: for we of our day enter vague details about ourselves in the book
downstairs when we stay at inns, but it was mine host's custom to gather all that with his sharp eyes. Whatever
he gathered, Rodriguez and Morano were gone.
But soon their pace dwindled, the trot slackening and falling to a walk; soon Rodriguez learned what it is to
travel with tired horses. To Morano riding was merely riding, and the discomforts of that were so great that he
noticed no difference. But to Rodriguez, his continual hitting and kicking his horse's sides, his dislike of doing it, the
uselessness of it when done, his ambition before and the tired beast underneath, the body always some yards
behind the beckoning spirit, were as great vexation as a traveller knows. It came to dismounting and walking miles
on foot; even then the horses hung back. They halted an hour over dinner while the horses grazed and rested,
and they returned to their road refreshed by the magic that was in the frying-pan, but the horses were no
fresher.
When our bodies are slothful and lie heavy, never responding to the spirit's bright promptings, then we know
dullness: and the burden of it is the graver for hearing our spirits call faintly, as the chains of a buccaneer in some
deep prison, who hears a snatch of his comrades' singing as they ride free by the coast, would grow more
unbearable than ever before. But the weight of his tired horse seemed to hang heavier on the fanciful hopes that
Rodriguez' dreams had made. Farther than ever seemed the Pyrenees, huger than ever their barrier, dimmer and
dimmer grew the lands of romance.
If the hopes of Rodriguez were low, if his fancies were faint, what material have I left with which to make a
story with glitter enough to hold my readers' eyes to the page: for know that mere dreams and idle fancies, and
all amorous, lyrical, unsubstantial things, are all that we writers have of which to make a tale, as they are all that
the Dim Ones have to make the story of man.
Sometimes riding, sometimes going on foot, with the thought of the long, long miles always crowding upon
Rodriguez, overwhelming his hopes; till even the castle he was to win in the wars grew too pale for his fancy to
see, tired and without illusions, they came at last by starlight to the glow of a smith's forge. He must have done
forty-five miles and he knew they were near Caspe.
The smith was working late, and looked up when Rodriguez halted. Yes, he knew Gonzalez, a master in the
trade: there was a welcome for his horses.
But for the two human travellers there were excuses, even apologies, but no spare beds. It was the same in
the next three or four houses that stood together by the road. And the fever of Rodriguez' ambition drove him
on, though Morano would have lain down and slept where they stood, though he himself was weary. The smith
had received his horses; after that he cared not whether they gave him shelter or not, the alternative being the
road, and that bringing nearer his wars and the castle he was to win. And that fancy that led his master Morano
allowed always to lead him too, though a few more miles and he would have fallen asleep as he walked and
dropped by the roadside and slept on. Luckily they had gone barely two miles from the forge where the horses
rested, when they saw a high, dark house by the road and knocked on the door and found shelter. It was an old
woman who let them in, a farmer's wife, and she had room for them and one mattress, but no bed. They were
too tired to eat and did not ask for food, but at once followed her up the booming stairs of her house, which
were all dark but for her candle, and so came among huge minuetting shadows to the long loft at the top. There
was a mattress there which the old woman laid out for Rodriguez, and a heap of hay for Morano. Just for a
moment, as Rodriguez climbed the last step of the stair and entered the loft where the huge shadows twirled
between the one candle's light and the unbeaten darkness in corners, just for a moment romance seemed to
beckon to him; for a moment, in spite of his fatigue and dejection, in spite of the possibility of his quest being
crazy, for a moment he felt that great shadows and echoing boards, the very cobwebs even that hung from the
black rafters, were all romantic things; he felt that his was a glorious adventure and that all these things that filled
the loft in the night were such as should fitly attend on youth and glory. In a moment that feeling was gone he
knew not why it had come. And though he remembered it till grey old age, when he came to know the causes of
many things, he never knew what romance might have to do with shadows or echoes at night in an empty room,
and only knew of such fancies that they came from beyond his understanding, whether from wisdom or folly.