I asked the priest what I could send him from Paris, and his eyes filled with tears as he asked, hesitating a little for fear it was too much, if I could send just a little white paper and half a dozen pencils. The ink was almost gone; they could make more from berries, but he would like the boys to see pencils and learn how to use them. And, of course, when the two copy books were filled, there would be no more paper.
Returning from the dusky schoolroom through the gray slant of the rain, we found in the bishop’s house the most handsome man we had yet seen. Tall and lithe, wearing the tight black jacket, scarlet sash, and snowy woolen trousers braided in black, he amazed us by his animal beauty and grace. His silver chain was of the finest pattern, a ring was on a hand that might have been perfectly gloved on Fifth Avenue, and his quiet air of the aristocrat would have made him remarkable in any company. Beside him was a manly little boy perhaps seven years old. He wore with the same grace a miniature copy of the mountain costume. His manners were perfection of grave courtesy, his eyes were keen and intelligent, and his frank smile was charming.
They were father and son, come to arrange for the boy’s schooling. The father spoke to the boy with the courtesy he would have used to an equal, and the boy replied as one. There was such pride and love in their eyes that it was beautiful to see them together. For a little while the father spoke of his ambitions for his son; he hoped to be able to send him to the American school in Tirana, he dreamed even of a university in Europe. He was proud that he and the boy were mountain men, but he wanted the boy to be wiser, more learned, than the mountain life had let his father be.
“I,” he said, “am Plum [Pigeon], but my son is Sokol [Eagle]. I gave him that name because his wings shall be stronger, his eyes keener, and his flight higher, than mine.”
Having been thus presented to the bishop, Sokol knelt for a blessing, Plum on one knee beside him. Then the two went across the courtyard to the schoolhouse, and I shall not forget the two against the dusky doorway, the father looking down at the boy, and the boy visibly courageous and resolute before the mysteries he was facing.
“Long may you live,” said the father. “Go on a smooth trail.”
“Long may you live,” said the boy. “God take you safely home.” Then he went into the schoolhouse, and Plum followed the trail toward the mountains.
“He is a good man, and brave,” said the bishop, “and little Sokol will be a great one.”
At noon the rain was still pouring from apparently inexhaustible skies, but Cheremi, Rexh, and Perolli assumed, as a matter of course, that we would go on; the difficulty was that there were no mules. There should have been a mule in the village, whose houses were scattered, miles apart, all the way down the deep-walled gorge to the banks of the River Shala, twenty-five miles away, but when Cheremi hastened lightly up a twelve-hundred-foot peak and cried to the farthest house that we wanted mules, the answer came back that there were none since the war.
So he found an aged man—seventy-five years old, he was, but still agile and bright eyed—and put our packs on his back, and at noon we started out on foot, with fresh-peeled staffs provided by Rexh, and new-baked corn bread in the saddlebags.