THE young girls of the village were returning from the fountain with their water-jars on their heads; they were returning with song and laughter, a merry confusion of sound comparable only to the gleeful twitter of a flock of swallows when, thick as hail, they circle around the weather-vane of a belfry.
Just in front of the church porch, seated at the foot of a juniper tree, was Uncle Gregorio. Uncle Gregorio was the patriarch of the village; he was nearly ninety years old, with white hair, smiling lips, roguish eyes and trembling hands. In childhood he had been a shepherd; in his young manhood, a soldier; then he tilled a little piece of fruitful land inherited from his parents, until at last his strength was spent and he sat tranquilly awaiting death which he neither dreaded nor longed for. Nobody retailed a bit of gossip more spicily than he, nor knew more marvellous tales, nor could bring so neatly to bear an old refrain, proverb or adage.
The girls, on seeing him, quickened their steps, eager for his talk, and when they were in the porch they all began to tease him for a story to pass away the time still left them before nightfall—not much, for the setting sun was slanting his rays across the earth, and the shadows of the mountains grew larger moment by moment all along the plain.
Uncle Gregorio smiled as he listened to the pleading of the lasses, who, having once coaxed from him a promise to tell them something, let down their water-jars upon the ground, and sitting all about him, made a circle with the patriarch in the centre; then he began to talk to them after this fashion:
“I will not tell you a story, for though several come into my mind this minute, they have to do with such weighty matters that the attention of a group of giddypates, like you, would never hold out to the end; besides, with the afternoon so nearly gone, I would not have time to tell them through. So I will give you instead a piece of good counsel.”
“Good counsel!” exclaimed the girls with undisguised vexation. “Bah! it isn’t to hear good counsel that we are stopping here; when we have need of that, his Reverence the priest will give it to us.”
“But perhaps,” went on the old man with his habitual smile, speaking in his broken, tremulous voice, “his Reverence the priest will not know how to give you, this once, such timely advice as Uncle Gregorio; for the priest, busy with his liturgies and litanies, will not have noticed, as I have noticed, that every day you go earlier to the fountain and come back later.”
The girls looked at one another with hardly perceptible smiles of derision, while some of those who were placed behind Uncle Gregorio touched finger to forehead, accompanying the action with a significant gesture.
“And what harm do you find in our lingering at the fountain to chat a minute with our friends and neighbors?” asked one of them. “Do slanders, perhaps, go about the village because the lads step out on to the road for a pleasant word or two, or come offering to carry our water-jars till we are in sight of the houses?”
“Ay, people talk,” replied the old man to the girl who had asked him the question for them all. “The old dames of the village murmur that to-day the girls resort for fun and frolic to a spot whither they used to go swiftly and in fear to draw the water, since only there can water be had; and I find it much amiss that you are losing little by little the dread which the vicinity of the fountain inspires in all your elders,—for so it might come to pass that some time the night should overtake you there.”
Uncle Gregorio spoke these last words in a tone so full of mystery that the lasses opened wide their frightened eyes to look at him, and with blended curiosity and mischief, again pressed their questions:
“The night! But what goes on in that place by night that you should scare us so and throw out such dark and dreadful hints of what might befall? Do you think the wolves will eat us?”
“When the Moncayo is covered with snow, the wolves, driven from their dens, come down in packs and range over its slope; more than once we have heard them howling in horrible concert, not only in the neighborhood of the fountain, but in the very streets of the village; yet the wolves are not the most terrible tenants of the Moncayo; in its deep and dark caverns, on its wild and lonely summits, in its hollow heart there live certain diabolical spirits that, during the night, pour down its cascades in swarms and people the empty spaces, thronging like ants upon the plain, leaping from rock to rock, sporting in the waters and swinging on the bare boughs of the trees. It is these spirits that cry from the clefts of the crags, that roll up and push along those immense snowballs which come rolling down from the lofty peaks and sweep away and crush whatever they find in their path,—theirs are the voices calling in the hail at our windows on stormy nights,—theirs the forms that flit like thin, blue flames over the marshes. Among these spirits—who, driven from the lowlands by the sacred services and exorcisms of the Church, have taken refuge on the inaccessible crests of the mountains,—are those of diverse natures, that on appearing to our eyes clothe themselves in varied forms. Yet the most dangerous, those who with sweet words win their way into the hearts of maidens and dazzle them with magnificent promises, are the gnomes. The gnomes live in the inner recesses of the mountains; they know their subterranean roads and, eternal guardians of the treasures hidden in the heart of the hills, they keep watch day and night over the veins of metal and the precious stones. Do you see—” continued the old man, pointing with the stick which served him for a prop to the summit of the Moncayo, that rose at his right, looming dark and gigantic against the misted, violet sky of twilight—“do you see that mighty mass still crowned with snow? In its deep cavities these diabolical spirits have their dwellings. The palace they inhabit is terrible and glorious to see.
Many years ago a shepherd, following some stray of his flock, penetrated into the mouth of one of those caves whose entrances are covered by thick growths of bushes and whose outlets no man has ever seen. When he came back to the village, he was pale as death; he had surprised the secret of the gnomes; he had breathed their poisonous atmosphere, and he paid for his rashness with his life; but before he died he related marvellous things. Going on along that cavern, he had come at last to vast subterranean galleries lighted by a fitful, fantastic splendor shed from the phosphorescence in the rocks, which there were like great boulders of quartz crystallized into a thousand strange, fantastic forms. The floor, the vaulted ceiling and the walls of those immense halls, the work of nature, seemed variegated like the richest marbles; but the veins which crossed them were of gold and silver, and among those shining veins, as if incrusted in the rock, were seen jewels, a multitude of precious stones of all colors and sizes. There were jacinths and emeralds in heaps, and diamonds and rubies, and sapphires and—how should I know?—many other gems unrecognized—more than he could name but all so great and beautiful that his eyes dazzled at the sight. No noise of the outer world reached the depths of that weird cavern; the only perceptible sounds were, at intervals, the prolonged and pitiful groans of the air which blew through that enchanted labyrinth, a vague roar of subterranean fire furious in its prison, and murmurs of running water which flowed on not knowing whither they went.
The shepherd, alone and lost in that immensity, wandered I know not how many hours without finding any outlet, until at last he chanced upon the source of a spring whose murmur he had heard. This broke from the ground like a miraculous fountain, a leap of foam-crowned water that fell in an exquisite cascade, singing a silver song as it slipped away through the crannies of the rocks. About him grew plants that he had never seen, some with wide, thick leaves, and others delicate and long like floating ribbons. Half hidden in that humid foliage were running about a number of extraordinary creatures, some of them manlike, some reptilian, or both at once, changing shape continually, at one moment appearing like human beings, deformed and tiny, the next like gleaming salamanders or fugitive flames that danced in circles above the tip of the fountain-jet. There, darting in all directions, running across the floor in form of repugnant, hunchbacked dwarfs, scrambling up the walls, wriggling along, reptile-shaped, in their slime, dancing like Will-o-the-wisps on the pool of water, went the gnomes, the lords of those recesses, counting over and shifting from place to place their fabulous riches. They know where misers store those treasures which, afterwards, the heirs seek in vain; they know the spot where the Moors, before their flight, hid their jewels; and the ornaments which are lost, the money that is missing, everything that has value and disappears, they search for, find and steal, to hide in their caves, for they know how to go to and fro through all the world by secret, unimagined paths beneath the earth. So there they were keeping stored up in heaps all manner of rare and precious things. There were jewels of inestimable worth; chains and necklaces of pearls and exquisite gems; golden jars of classic form, full of rubies; chiseled cups, armor richly wrought, coins with images and superscriptions that it is no longer possible to recognize or decipher; treasures, in short, so fabulous and limitless that scarcely may imagination picture them. And all glittered together, flashing out such vivid sparks of light and color that it seemed as if the whole hoard were on fire, quivering and wavering. At least, the shepherd said that so it had seemed to him.”
At this point the old patriarch paused a moment. The girls, who in the beginning had hearkened to Uncle Gregorio’s story with a mocking smile, now maintained unbroken silence, hoping that he would go on,—waiting with frightened eyes, with lips slightly parted, and with curiosity and interest depicted on their faces. One of them finally broke the hush, and unable to control herself, exclaimed, fascinated with the account of the fabulous riches which had met the shepherd’s view:
“And what then? Did he take away nothing out of all that?”
“Nothing,” replied Uncle Gregorio.
“What a silly!” the girls exclaimed in concert.
“Heaven helped him in that moment of peril,” continued the old man, “for at the very instant when avarice, the ruling passion, began to dispel his fear and, bewitched by the sight of those jewels, one alone of which would have made him wealthy, the shepherd was about to possess himself of some small share of that treasure, he says he heard—listen and marvel—clear and distinct in those profound abodes,—despite the shouts of laughter and harsh voices of the gnomes, the roar of the subterranean fire, the murmur of running water and the laments of the imprisoned air, he heard, I say, as if he had been at the foot of the hill where it stands, the pealing of the bell in the hermitage of Our Lady of the Moncayo.
“On hearing the bell, which was ringing the Ave Maria, the shepherd fell to his knees, calling on the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and instantly, without knowing the means nor the way, he found himself on the outside of the mountain, near the road which leads to the village, thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great bewilderment as if he had just been startled out of a dream.
“Since then everybody has understood why our village fountain sometimes has in its waters a glint as of very fine gold-dust; and when night falls, vague words are heard in its murmur, flattering words with which the gnomes, that defile it from its source, try to entice the foolhardy who lend them ear, promising them riches and treasures that are bound to be the destruction of their souls.”
When Uncle Gregorio had reached this point in his relation, night had fallen and the church bell commenced to call to prayer. The girls crossed themselves devoutly, repeating in low voices an Ave Maria, and after bidding good-night to Uncle Gregorio, who again counselled them not to tarry at the fountain, each picked up her water-jar and all went forth, silent and musing, from the churchyard. They were already far from the spot where they had found the old man, and had, indeed, reached the central square of the village whence they were to go their several ways, before the more resolute and decided of them all broke out with the question:
“Do you girls believe any of that nonsense Uncle Gregorio has been telling us?”
“Not I,” said one.
“Nor I,” exclaimed another.
“Nor I! nor I!” chimed in the rest, laughing at their momentary credulity.
The group of lasses melted away, each taking her course toward one or another side of the square. Last of all, when the others had disappeared down the better streets that led out from this market-place, two girls, the only ones who had not opened their lips to make fun of Uncle Gregorio’s veracity, but who, still musing on the marvellous tale, seemed absorbed in their own meditations, went away together, with the slow step natural to people deep in thought, by a dismal, narrow, crooked alley.
Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be some twenty years old, was called Marta; and the younger, who had not yet finished her sixteenth year, Magdalena.
As long as the walk lasted, both kept complete silence; but when they reached the threshold of their home and had set down their water-jars on the stone bench by the door, Marta said to Magdalena: “And do you believe in the marvels of the Moncayo and the spirits of the fountain?” “Yes,” answered Magdalena simply, “I believe it all. But you, perhaps, have doubts?” “Oh, no!” Marta hastily interrupted. “I, too, believe everything, everything—that I wish to believe.”