The Old Well—A Voice—Visions—Infimis"It is locked, Señor."Pepito had dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez on the hillside."Shout, Pepito," replied Jack from the saddle of his mule. "Perhaps the old man will hear us from the house."The gipsy put his hands to his mouth, and called shrilly. There was no answer, no sound save the hum of bees and the song of birds."We must climb the wall, then," said Jack, springing to the ground."See, Señor, a face in the bush!" cried Pepito, pointing through the iron railings into the garden.Looking, Jack saw, framed in the foliage of a dense laurel, the face of the old gardener."Adelante, hombre!" he said.Instantly the face vanished. Jack called again; no voice answered, no footstep was heard. The two riders tied their steeds to trees in the plantation on the right, then scaled the wall and hastened towards the house.Nearly two months had elapsed since Jack's night adventure. He was struck by the alteration in the place. It had looked untidy, ill-cared-for, then; it was now a wilderness. Flowers and shrubs bloomed in unchecked luxuriance; hollyhocks drooped their heavy heads, sprays of woodbine twined in and out among the laurels, unpruned vines crept over the weedy paths, the sweltering air was sickly with mingled perfumes. The house stood white and brown in the glowing sunlight; lush creepers almost hid the door; the dry wood-work was blistered, the lattices falling away; all was decay, silence, and desolation.It was high noon of a sultry summer day, yet Jack shivered. He rapped at the door. There was no response save an echo. He walked round the house; every window was shuttered, every door barred. He went on down the garden at the back, following the directions given him by Juanita, and Pepito crept along behind him, his big eyes wide with awe. A vulture flew up in front, and clattered away on creaking wings. He stepped from the path, and pushed his way through tangled shrubs and matted undergrowth towards a broad chestnut in the angle of the wall. Tendrils of convolvulus clung around his feet, the scent of thyme came in gusts with the cloying odour of gardenias. Suddenly the rank vegetation ceased, and before him, in a clear space, he saw the circular covering of the old well.Frame and winch had been removed. A broken moss-grown bucket lay hard by; near it was a long bar of wood. Around the well was a broad patch of soft black earth. As Jack approached to remove the wooden cover from the well-mouth, Pepito touched him on the arm."Marks, Señor!" he said under his breath; "footsteps, and marks of a mule's hoofs; fresh, Señor; made to-day."Jack started. A green lizard, sunning itself at the edge of the well, disappeared in a flash. He saw the hoof-marks in the soil; his heart sank with a sudden misgiving. The well-cover seemed to have been clumsily replaced."Help me lift it," said Jack.They removed the heavy cover. The well opened black before them. Pepito peered over the edge; he saw nothing; there was neither rope nor ladder."How can we get down?" said Jack.Looking around, he saw what appeared to be the end of a ladder projecting from beneath a bush. He dragged it out; a snake dropped from it and vanished in the grass; it was a ladder some sixteen feet long."It will not reach the bottom of the well," said Jack. His eye caught the bar of wood."Bring me that, Pepito."He laid it across the well-mouth; on its mossy side there was a dull splash of red. The bar stretched across the opening. Lifting it again, Jack gave it to Pepito, and, taking the ladder, lowered this into the well till only the topmost rungs were above the brickwork."Put the wood through," he said.Thus the ladder hung dangling on its support, fifteen feet into the well. Pepito looked at his master enquiringly."Yes, you are to climb down. Stay!" he added, as the boy prepared to step down on to the swinging ladder.He took some papers from his pocket, twisted them into a loose mass, and wound about them the end of a long vine tendril. Then he kindled them from his tinder-box, and let the flaming mass down quickly into the well. It burned until it was consumed."There is air enough. Go down, Pepito."He steadied the ladder as the boy descended step by step. Jack counted twelve rungs, then ordered the boy to stop."Do you see anything, Pepito?"A few moments passed. The gipsy's eyes were adjusting themselves to the gloom."A hole, Señor, a big hole in the wall.""Can you get into it?""No, Señor, it is on the other side, too far away."Bidding the boy ascend, Jack shifted the ladder across the bar. Pepito went down again, and soon Jack heard his muffled voice exclaim that he was in the hole."Do you find anything there? Search thoroughly."A minute passed. Jack was crouched at the brink, holding the joists of the ladder firmly with both hands."There is nothing, Señor; all emptiness.""Come up again."He stepped out on to the brickwork, and Jack rose to his feet."Dead! dead! dead!" said a quavering voice behind him.He turned with a nervous start. While he had been engaged at the well, a figure had been slowly approaching from a thicket of laurel, furtively, with hesitation, stopping for a moment, then taking another unsteady step and stopping again. Jack recognized the old gardener, but how altered! His limbs shook as with a palsy; his lips mumbled without sound; his eyes were wild."What is it, hombre?" said Jack quietly without moving.The old man stood as if listening. Then, raising his shaking right hand, the long fingers working convulsively, he murmured:"I saw it! ... Dead!"Then he smiled, a thin wan smile, and tottering forward pointed waveringly to the well. Jack recoiled. The old man's smile was more awful than a sob of agony."They came through the gate;" he pointed across the garden to the farther wall. "There were two; I was hidden in the copse; I watched them. I watched them. They brought a mule; it was a fine mule, with gay trappings,—a fine mule..." The old man passed his hand across his brow. "What was I saying? I have forgotten.""They brought a mule," said Jack."Yes, they brought a mule. They led it across the garden, trampling down the poor flowers—my flowers! I saw them! There were two. One was in front—the cursed afrancesado; I knew him; yes, did I not serve him at my master's table? the afrancesado! He was in front; behind him a man, a long thin man, a one-eyed man, with the mule. They crushed the flowers—my flowers ... what was I saying?""They came across the garden," said Jack."They came across the garden. They came here, here! where we are standing. The man, the one-eyed man, fastened the mule to yonder tree; then they stooped down and lifted the cover. It was heavy...I watched them. They peered down into the well, into the deep well, but they could see nothing. Then the tall man, the man with the one eye, went away; the other, the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, waited, and while he waited he cast pebbles into the well ... horrible! horrible!" He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out some dreadful thing. "What was I saying?""The tall man came back," said Jack."The tall man came back; he brought a ladder; he fetched a beam, that beam, and they let down the ladder into the well, the deep well ... I watched them. 'Twelve steps,' said the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, and the tall man, the man with the one eye, went down ... Twelve steps! ... The other, the afrancesado, bent over; there was a noise below; the afrancesado said 'Bien!'—I heard him. Then the man, the long man, the man with the one eye, came up, slowly; there was a box, a heavy box; the other took it, and the man, the one-eyed man, went down, ... twelve steps ... He came up again; there was another box, a small box. I knew it; it was the master's. Then he went down again, ... twelve steps, ... and the other, the afrancesado, the accursed afrancesado, drew his knife, silently; it flashed in the sun; I watched him..." The old man stared fixedly before him. "What was I saying?" he whispered."He drew his knife," said Jack."He drew his knife," said the old man, still in a whisper. "The other, the long man, the man with one eye, came slowly, slowly, up. He stretched his left hand for the box, he raised the arm with the knife. He was behind him. He leant forward; I saw him—him, and the long man, the man with one eye—he drove it between his shoulders..."The old man made as if to brush a cobweb from before his eyes."Horrible! horrible! ... down! down! down! ... What was I saying?"CHAPTER XXXVDoomOutcast—Spectres—Conscience—Tracked—Vanity—Scylla— Charybdis—José—Faithful unto DeathWithin a few miles of Calatayud, a narrow path, little more than a foot-track, leads down from the hills on to the highroad to Saragossa. Just before joining the highway, the path winds between two low bluffs that screen it from the sight of wayfarers below. Indeed, any muleteer or arriero unacquainted with the country might almost pass unawares the spot where road and hill-path meet, so completely is it hidden by the ash-gray contours of the hills.About the time when Jack dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez, a man was making his way downward along this narrow track, urging a heavily-laden mule with low cries to hasten its flagging pace. He was a young man, in the costume of a muleteer; his cheeks were pale and sunken, his eyes unnaturally bright. Every now and again he would throw an anxious backward glance over his shoulder, not consciously, as if he feared pursuit, but as though in obedience to some impulse of which he was hardly aware.When he approached the point where the track joined the road he stepped to the mule's head and brought the animal to a stand-still, looking from left to right as if in doubt. After a moment's hesitation he tied the mule to one of the rare saplings that grew at the side of the track, and advanced warily towards the highway, pausing at short intervals, and bending his head forward to listen. There was no sound save the silver trill of a lark far above, and the soughing of a light breeze as it lapped the edges of the hills. The man moved forward again, still more cautiously; rounding a knoll, he came to the road, that stretched in gentle undulations for several hundreds of yards in a straight line east and west. No one was in sight. The man gave a sigh of relief, followed by one of those quick uneasy backward glances that seemed to be habitual with him. Rapidly scanning the road once more, he returned to the mule, released the bridle from the tree, and slowly led the laden animal down the path.He was within a dozen paces of the dusty highway when he halted suddenly, dragging heavily upon the reins. His dusky, olive-hued features paled, the hand that grasped the bridle trembled nervously; his whole attitude was one of dire apprehension. For a moment he stood intently listening, his eyes fixed in a wide stare; then, wheeling the mule sharply round and prodding the weary beast desperately with the knife he drew from his belt, he raced back along the track. For a full quarter of a mile he continued his upward course; then he stopped, and again turned his head towards the road in the attitude of listening. At first he could hear nothing but the throbbing of his heart and the quick breathing of the mule by his side; but gradually the clatter of many hoofs on the hard road became more and more audible through the clear air, though the horsemen were hidden from view by the obstructing hills. They arrived at what he judged to be the place he had just left. He heard "Halt!" in a rough stentorian tone. The voice was Spanish, and its effect on the anxious listening man was as that of a galvanic shock. With a smothered cry he dashed forward, dragging the unwilling mule, which he goaded with alternate stabs of the knife and whispered words half of menace half of entreaty.There was no halting now. For mile after mile they continued their flight, until, when both mule and man were exhausted, they at length stopped at the edge of a wild gorge high up in the mountains. There, for the first time since he fled the voice, the man looked carefully around. The place was evidently new to him. In his flight he had diverged at the first opportunity from the track, along which he had come, not then alone, earlier in the day. The new path was more difficult than the old; it wound away from his obvious destination; it led, indeed, almost due north into the heart of the mountain country—the Sierra de Moncayo, the precipitous granite range where King Æolus had his mythic throne. But the fugitive knew not, cared not, whither he went, so long as it was away from the voice of his countrymen. And he avoided, with the shrinking of dread, the track he knew.One thing was remarkable during his late impetuous flight. He seemed to have forgotten his strange trick of glancing backward over his shoulder. Many times he turned half round to see if he was followed, but consciously, less abjectly, for all his panic fear.When he had rested for a few minutes, he rose and carefully scanned the surrounding country, debating with himself what course to follow. His view was circumscribed by the irregular masses of bare rock and sparsely wooded slopes that formed the horizon. But he appeared at last to have made up his mind, for, pulling the mule slowly round on the narrow track, he took a few steps as if to return in the direction from which he had come. But his bearing was timid, uncertain, vacillating, and when a mountain eagle swept from its eyry, and screamed just above his head, he started as if struck, hauled his poor beast feverishly across the track, and once more pressed in hot haste towards the north.For some time he marched on rapidly. Then the fatigue of travelling over the steep uneven track again made itself felt; his pace slackened; he moved along behind the mule as if mechanically, while mechanically he still urged it forward with his knife. For minutes at a stretch he seemed as in a dream, immersed in dark thought. Again he glanced fearfully backward, not as though seeking a visible object of menace, not at the frowning hills, but with eyes that attempted to pierce the infinite for a something beyond. At moments he started from his waking nightmare to a full consciousness of his position among these bleak inhospitable hills. The phantoms dogging his thoughts then vanished, giving place to real cares—physical pain, a sense of desolation. At such times he searched anxiously for a path to the west, whereby making a circuit he might reach his goal, avoiding the highroad, where he had so narrowly escaped the hands of his countrymen the guerrilleros. But the track wound on, swerving sometimes to right or left, yet leading remorselessly northward, no by-path branching towards Calatayud. He dared not turn back. The danger of the road, had he known it, was past; but the awful risk of capture made him sick with fear. He plodded on, sunk more and more in dark imaginings, until at last, when the red sun was sinking below the distant purple peaks on his left, the mule suddenly stopped, and, breathing heavily, dropped upon its knees. The poor brute was spent. The man awoke with a start from his reverie. He was on the edge of a deep gully; giant rocks hemmed him in on either side; the path—there was no path! For the first time he realized that the granite hills held him in their grip.He looked at the mule, that lay with lolling tongue and starting eyes. The animal was famished. He had no food for it, none for himself; only now was he conscious of his own gnawing hunger. He loosened the girths, and, removing the heavy panniers from the mule's back, enabled it to rise. There was nothing to tie it to. Sinking down on a flat rock, he held the bridle and peered into the deepening gloom. He dared not move forward; one careless step in this wild place might hurl them both into an abyss. There he sat, and the darkness gathered, and the chill of night wrapped him round.What were his thoughts as he waited and endured? Who shall say? Human justice may falter, may be long upon the road; Eternal Justice is instant, relentless, inevitable. The sense of doom was upon this man, as he held sombre vigil with the cold accusing stars.It was an unkempt, haggard, agued figure that rose stiffly and dizzily from his hard couch as soon as the pale dawn came creeping through the narrow gully among the hills. He could just see the mule standing motionless a few yards away. He shuddered as his eye fell upon the brass-clamped coffers at its feet. Then he moved as if to pass away, leaving behind him both mule and treasure, the visible links that bound him to the past. But after a few staggering steps he hesitated, set his teeth in desperate resolve, and returning, painfully lifted the boxes on to the panniers, the mule standing with drooped ears, and shivering in the raw air. In the half-light he led the famished beast away from the ravine, searching the rocky ground narrowly for marks of its track. Here and there appeared a stone covered with gray lichen; at these the mule halted and licked a scanty, bitter meal. At one point a silver rivulet poured from a fissure and fell clattering upon the rocks far down the steep. There Miguel dropped to his knees and drank with the animal, then went on again.It was nearly two hours before he saw, on the far side of a deep ravine, a foot-path winding about a wall of rock. Was it the path he had left? He did not know. Only the guerrilleros he feared to meet could have told him that but one other path led across these barren heights. Leading the mule cautiously down one face of the ravine, he hauled it with infinite difficulty up the other. The poor beast, faint with hunger, had scarcely strength to crawl when at last it scrambled with its burden on to the track. But for the constant goad it would have fallen by the way. The path ran north and south; Miguel hesitated which direction to take. Northward he would have to scale steeper heights, but would increase his distance from the garden of his fear; southward, he might reach Calatayud and safety with the French, but who knew what danger might lie between? As the question beat this way and that in his tortured brain, his eyes lit upon a long, thin, jagged rock in which, in the gloom of the preceding evening, he had marked with a shudder a grotesque resemblance to a human form he would have given worlds to forget. Then he knew that he was upon the track from which he had wandered; he would persevere in the attempt to find a cross-path to the west. Surely there must be one that would lead, by however long a circuit, to his goal?He turned wearily towards the north and instinctively glanced back across the hills, now variously tinted by the ascending sun. As he did so his eyes dilated, and for some moments he stood as if rooted to the ground. In the clear distance two figures mounted on mules were coming towards him. Even while he looked he saw one, the smaller of the two, pointing in his direction. The other drew rein for an instant, then both urged their mules to a trot. A bend in the path hid them from view, and Miguel leapt round, knowing that he was in very truth a hunted man. For nearly a day he had been pursued by the phantom of his crime. He had run from the shadow of a sound, fled from the perils his own imagination had created. Terror of he knew not what had left him all unstrung. But now that vengeance dogged him in real bodily form his mind braced itself to meet it. Only for a moment did his heart quail with misgiving; he reeled slightly, and clutched at the mule's bridle for support; then, recovering himself instantly, he struck the jaded beast, and with a fierce cry drove it before him up the path.Suddenly the track bent eastward, it ceased to rise, he seemed to be on the northern slope of the watershed up which he had toiled during the previous day. He topped the crest. The path stretched downwards before him; and, scattering the loose stones to right and left, Miguel raced on with the mule until at a turn in the track a vast and brilliant panorama opened before his yearning eyes. Below him, at the edge of the long slope, stretched a rolling wooded country intersected by numerous watercourses shining in the morning sun. Far away on the horizon a silver streak wound and doubled on itself. It must be the river Ebro. Could he but gain the rich champaign below, he hoped that, for a time at least, he would be safe. In some copse or covert, vineyard or olive-ground, even in the byways of some hamlet, he might find a temporary refuge. But with the thought itself its utter hopelessness was borne in upon him. His pursuers must be closing in fast, although the windings of the track hid them from him when at intervals he turned to see. Panting himself, he dragged his panting beast with reckless haste, though in his inmost consciousness sure that the road was too long, the time too short. One solitary hope remained to him. If he left the mule with its retarding load, abandoned the prize for which he had staked his all, he might perhaps even yet find some rocky defile, some favouring grove, wherein to hide and baffle pursuit. But no, the renunciation was too great for his blighted soul. For the treasure he had schemed and sinned; he could not, dared not, let it go.Scrambling on down the mountain track, he spied at length, some hundreds of feet below him, a narrow hillroad to which his headlong course must lead him by and by. Its farther side bordered a ravine. The road seemed near at hand, but as he continued his flight he found that the downward track zigzagged on the face of the slope, so that sometimes two or three of its coils lay immediately beneath him. There was no shorter way. Approaching the end of the last of these windings, he was warned by the clatter of dislodged stones that his pursuers were now hard upon his heels. He threw a quick glance upward; there, two hundred feet above him, the riders crossed his sight, following at headlong speed the first winding of the track. Without pause he raced staggeringly along.All unknowing, he had himself been watched for some time from below. At the edge of the hill-road, hidden from him by a jutting mass of rock, a man was resting, seated on a boulder, eating a frugal meal from a wallet hung at his neck. He was a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, with wasted cheeks; thin, unkempt locks straggled from beneath his cap; his long tangled beard was snowy white. His attitude was of one in pain. At first he watched the impetuous muleteer dully, without attention; then he started, paused in lifting a piece of bread, and stared long with quickening breath. As the mule turned the last of the zigzags a sunbeam flashed on the brass of one of the boxes. The seated man rose; his eyes, opened to their fullest width, now fixed themselves with a glare of the intensest hatred upon the fugitive approaching, until once more he was hidden from sight.Then with the stealthy movement of a cat the worn, panting wayfarer glided from the brink of the ravine to the opposite side of the road, and crouched down under cover of the rocks that had hidden him from the man above. Almost ceasing to breathe, he drew his knife, and waited. His movements suggested that he expected the muleteer to emerge into the road between himself and the animal. But not thus was the event ordered. Rounding the last turn of the path, Miguel, to avoid a projecting rock, had changed sides; thus when, after a few seconds, he reached the junction of path and road, the mule was between him and the man who lay there waiting, ready to strike. The anticipated moment was come. But Miguel was snatched from human vengeance; for him was reserved another fate. With an inarticulate cry of baffled rage the ambuscader sprang forward as if to overtake the mule, but, under the impetus gained during the last few yards of the hill-path, the beast was still moving quickly in an oblique direction across the road. Miguel at one and the same moment heard the cry and saw the flash of the knife. Till then he was unaware of his enemy's presence, so absorbed was his attention with the path ahead and the progress of the pursuers behind. At the cry he gave a startled side-long glance at the wild menacing features glaring at him across the mule's neck. In that dark look he read his doom.It fell more quickly than any of the four persons—the actors themselves, the spectators above—could have thought possible. The two riders on the steep hill-path had now come within full sight of the scene passing on the road. As they gazed, holding their breath, they saw the mule between the two men staggering across the road. Startled by the sudden flash of the uplifted blade, the poor beast swerved towards the ravine, driving Miguel, all unconscious, on to the brink. He had already slipped towards the almost perpendicular descent before he realized his peril; then he clutched wildly at the slackened bridle, dragging the mule after him. It stumbled at the edge; burdened with its treasure-laden panniers it could not recover its footing, and in a moment man and beast, with one mingled scream of terror, disappeared into the yawning gulf.The spectators above had halted, transfixed by the appalling tragedy. Then they hastened downward impetuously. The older man had fallen forward on the very edge of the ravine. Jack feared that he would follow Miguel Priego to destruction. But when, reaching the road, he threw himself from his mule and stooped to the prone figure, he found that the man had fainted, overcome by his fierce passion and the agitation of the last tense moments. Then for the first time Jack was aware of the thunderous roar of a torrent, and looking into the ravine he saw a white flood swirling over the rocks hundreds of feet below."Pepito," he said in a strained voice, "clamber down carefully. See what has become of Don Miguel—if anything can be done for him."While the boy was gone on his perilous errand Jack loosened the clothing of the prostrate man, fetched water from a mountain-rill, and bathed his head. He opened his eyes, but there was no speculation in them. They wandered vacantly and closed again. Jack looked at him pityingly, and, as he looked, felt vaguely that the worn features were familiar to him. They reminded him of someone he had known as a child in Barcelona, a man who had mended his toys for him, and carried him on his back when tired; who had petted him and scolded him by turns, and whom he had alternately plagued and domineered over. Was it José Pinzon? Jack could scarcely believe it. The José he had known was a man touching his prime, strong, stalwart, bright-eyed, raven-haired; the man lying before him was bent and aged, wasted, hoary, decrepit. Yet the likeness to the old José was remarkable. Was it possible that the faithful servant had not been killed in Galindo's sortie, as Juanita had believed?It was three-quarters of an hour before Pepito returned from his descent of the precipice. Nothing living could have survived so terrible a fall; Miguel must instantaneously have gone to his account. Fragments of the boxes, but for which the mule might have regained its footing, lay scattered on the rocks, and out of the ruin Pepito had recovered but one relic—one gold pendant,—which he handed to his master; all else had been swept away by the torrent. Then he helped him lift the poor wayfarer to the back of his mule, and together they bore him to a muleteer's cabin in the hills.For three days the man lingered there, unconscious for the most part, and in intervals of consciousness talking at random of people and things that were quite strange to his hearers. Jack nursed him with every care; but it was evident from the first that his days were numbered. On the third evening, when the sun was near setting and the cicalas had commenced their chant, the man opened his eyes wide and looked amazedly about him. He made an effort to rise, but fell back upon the rough blanket that formed his bed. He seemed to be listening. Jack, watching him, saw for the first time a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes. Through the open door came the sound of hoofs rapidly approaching. There was a strange eagerness in the man's upward gaze. The sound ceased; Pepito came into the hut, followed by a young lady and a priest fetched in hot haste from Cariñena. The former bent over the bed and looked hard at the pallid face; the latter fell on his knees and began to recite the prayers for the dying."José! José!" whispered Juanita; "you know me, my dear friend?""My mistress!" he murmured faintly.She clasped his hand; a look of glad content shone for a brief moment in the sick man's eyes. There was a silence; then, as the light faded, came the solemn voice of Padre Consolacion:"Domine, in manus tuas animam suam commendamus!"CHAPTER XXXVISergeant Wilkes wants to knowMr. Lumsden and Me—Me and Mr. Lumsden—A Lady in the Case—The Pleasure of your Company—O'Hare and the Ladies—The Grampus takes Cover—The Eve of Parting—The Age Limit—Poor Mr. Dugdale!—The Question"Want to know about the fight at Corunna, do you? Hanged if you ain't always wanting to know something. Well, attention! dress by the right! and stand easy while I endeavour to reconstruct the situation."The scene was the quay at Lisbon; the speaker was Sergeant Wilkes; the audience was a knot of green-coated recruits who, to judge by their docility, regarded the sergeant with admiration and awe. Since he had won the three stripes Wilkes had lost nothing of his loquacity, and had, indeed, cultivated a vocabulary of words long enough to match his new importance."Here you are, then; that there stands for the formidable French battery at the summit of the eminence"—he placed a jack-knife on the wall before him,—"this here stands for General Disney's brigade"—he put a plug of black tobacco at a distance from the knife,—"this here stands for the Reserve of that exemplary and notorious general Ted Paget"—he ranged two pebbles to the right of the tobacco,—"and this here," taking up one of the pebbles, "is Captain O'Hare's company. Look at him well, 'cos 'twas Captain O'Hare's company, and me in it, that won the battle on that most fatal and obstrepolous day. We was a-going up the hill towards that there battery, when blowed if we didn't get variegated with a lot of French dragoons in among the farmyards. Then up comes Mr. Lumsden, and says to me, 'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says—I was only a corp'ril then, you understand—'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says, 'we've got to shove down that there wall and drive the mounseers out. You an' me can do it if we puts our backs into it,' says he. 'Right you are, sir,' says I, 'we'll fustigate the mounseers and extipulate them to the last individual.' Them were the words I used. Well—""I say, sargint," said Corporal Bates, strolling across the road, "that's a smart little craft a-spanking up the river there. Looks like a despatch-boat, eh?""Don't interjeculate," said Wilkes irritably. "You always must put your spoke in. I was just telling the young 'uns how Mr. Lumsden and me won the fight at Corunna; who cares for a despatch-boat?—which it ain't, but only a common sloop.""Go on, sargint, if you please," said one of the men."Well, as I was saying, Mr. Lumsden and me was just a-going to shove down the wall what was intermediate between us and the mounseers when—""Hold hard a bit, sargint," put in Bates; "ain't that there little chap on the boat there rather like the gipsy brat what Mr. Lumsden took up with?""Corp'ril Bates, if you keep on interrupting your superior orficer I shall rejuce you. Gipsy brats is neither here nor there; what the young 'uns want to know is how me and Mr. Lumsden licked the French at Corunna.""That's him; that's Pepito!" cried Bates, heedless of Wilkes' increasing irritation. "P'r'aps he'll be able to tell us what's become of his master."Bates sheered off, and Wilkes resumed his much-interrupted narrative. He was in the middle of a very vivid description of how Mr. Lumsden and himself fought eight Frenchmen at the wall, when he became aware of a commotion at some distance along the quay. Chagrined to find the attention of his audience wandering, he stood up, exclaiming:"What are the rampaging Vamooses at now?—hang them!"But he saw, not Portuguese, but a number of men in the well-known green of the 95th Rifles, marching up the street, cheering vigorously. Among them, in the middle of the causeway, strode two young Spaniards, the one slim and lissom, the other broad and bulky. Both walked buoyantly, and seemed in high good-humour. Behind them, over their heads, could be seen the antic figure of Pepito, perched on Bates's shoulders, and looking as proud as a peacock. Wilkes stared at the procession as it approached, wondering to see two Spaniards with the unprecedented escort of British Riflemen. All at once he drew himself up, struck his feet together, and, just as the head of the procession reached him, brought his hand to his eyebrow in the stiff military salute. His face was a study in its successive expressions of perplexity, vexation, and pleasure.The recruits were taken too much aback to be able to make their salute before the procession had passed."Who's that ragged Don you're saluting, sargint?" asked one of them."Who's that, you dough-faced clod-hopping chaw-bacon, you!" cried Wilkes, seizing the opportunity of venting his feelings. "Why, that's Lieutenant Jack Lumsden, him what helped me to lick the mounseers at Corunna. And I'll make it warm for Charley Bates," he muttered, "stealing a march on me like that. Why didn't I perpetrate the disguise? That's what I want to know."Meanwhile Jack and the Grampus had continued their progress until they arrived at the head-quarters of the 95th. There, two or three subalterns were seated at an open window, to catch a breath of air from the sea, grateful on that hot June day."Hullo!" said Pomeroy, catching sight of the procession, "what are the rascals up to now?""Some mischief, you may be sure," said Smith, looking over his shoulder. "I shall be glad when we get marching orders to join Sir Arthur. The men will get horribly loose if we're here long.""By George!" said Pomeroy, "they appear to have got two Spaniards among them. Why—what—look here, Shirley, isn't that Lumsden's boy Pepito grinning like a monkey on Bates's shoulder?""Eh! What? Where?" said Smith, pushing his head out. "Jehoshaphat! That fat Spaniard—ha! ha!—don't you see, you fellows?—ha! ha!—he's the Grampus, bigger than ever. Gad! I shall die of this! The Grampus in Spanish toggery!""And the other fellow's Jack himself!" shouted Pomeroy excitedly. "Hurray! hurray!""'Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!'" quoted Shirley. "Hurray! Three cheers for Lumsden! But what am I to do with my epitaph?""What's all this pandemonium about?" cried a loud voice from the door of the room. "I wish you gentlemen would behave less like a pack of schoolb—""Lumsden's back, sir," said Smith. "The men are escorting him up the street.""Good gad!" ejaculated Colonel Beckwith. Then, without more ado, he caught up Smith's cap from the table, stuck it on his head, and ran downstairs buttoning up his jacket on the way. He reached the door just in time to meet Jack before he entered."'Pon my honour—how d'e do?—glad to see you, hang it! You're not dead, then, after all?""Not a bit, sir," said Jack, heartily returning his handgrip. "Come to report myself, sir.""Good gad! What a—what a villainous brigand you look! But we'll soon put that right. 'Pon my honour, I am deuced glad to see you."The colonel shook hands again, and for some minutes Jack's arm was going up and down like a pump handle as he returned the greetings of his old friends, who meanwhile volleyed questions at him with clamorous excitement."Uncommonly kind of you fellows," he panted, "but if you'll excuse me—""Not a bit of it," cried Smith. "Excuse you, indeed!""No, begad," said the colonel. "You'll come in and let us drink your health—three times three. Come along.""Most happy, sir, if you'll just allow me five or six minutes. The fact is, there's a lady on board, and—""Good gad! A lady!""And I came to get a coach to fetch her.""Of course. A lady! My barouche is at your service. Here, Ogbourne, bring the barouche round in two minutes, for Mr. Lumsden.—Used to be your man, I think; a useful fellow.—Hang me! I must go and find Captain O'Hare."Not many minutes later the subalterns at the window were as much surprised as interested to see the colonel's heavy rumbling chariot draw up at a house almost exactly opposite."I say, you fellows," cried Smith, "get out of sight. We don't want the lady to think we're a lot of peeping Toms.""She's probably as old as your grandmother," said Pomeroy, "and long past blushing. Still—"Consequently, when Juanita and her old duenna stepped out of the coach and entered the opposite house, there were no spectators of the scene. But when Jack returned to head-quarters he was instantly the mark of a running fire of questions. His fellow-officers, from the colonel downwards, were consumed with curiosity to know whether she was young or old, tall or short, dark or fair; where he had found her; what was her name. Shirley eagerly asked whether she was the famous Maid of Saragossa; Pomeroy was boiling with impatience because the Grampus had absolutely refused to give any information."Gentlemen, gentlemen," cried Jack, "I can't attend to you all at once. The lady is the Señorita Juanita Alvarez, daughter of my father's old partner, on her way to England, and the friend with whom she is staying has invited the officers of my company to dinner to-morrow, so that if you care to go I'll introduce you en bloc.""Bedad now," said Captain O'Hare, "that's mighty perlite. I must practise my best bow, and get my hair cut. 'Tis a powerful pity pigtails are just gone out of fashion, for sure I always looked killing in a pigtail. Ah well!""Come, Mr. Lumsden," said the colonel, "the Señorita has driven you out of our heads. What have you been doing with yourself? We learnt when Mr. Frere came home that you had gone to Saragossa, and not a man of us expected to see you again. Ogbourne, get some tumblers, and we'll do the honours."It was late before the meeting broke up, and then not one of the company was satisfied. Jack had given them, indeed, a full and interesting account of the siege of Saragossa in general, but he appeared to be woefully lacking in detailed information about his own part in it. He was not so affectedly modest as to conceal the facts that Palafox had entrusted him with the defence of a certain district, and that the district was still in Spanish hands when the siege ended; but of the weeks of ceaseless work, unresting vigilance and anxious thought which had purchased his success he said never a word. Colonel Beckwith watched him closely as he told his story, and at its conclusion made a brief comment which gave him a thrill of pleasure."Gentlemen," he said, rising, "I speak for you all when I say that we're glad to have Lumsden back at the mess. There are big gaps in his story which somebody has to fill; but we don't want 'em filled to know that he's been an honour to the British army, and a credit to the Rifles. I give you Mr. Lumsden!"When the cheers that followed the toast had died away, Jack on his side was eager to learn what had brought his old friends back to the Peninsula. Hearing that a new campaign was opening under Sir Arthur Wellesley, his face clouded for a moment."Sure an' ye've done enough for glory," said Captain O'Hare, noticing the expression, "and there's never a doubt the colonel will let ye go home to your sorrowing mother,—not to speak of escorting the colleen."Jack blushed."Thank 'ee!" he said, "but I'm not going to run away from the regiment. Have you got a uniform to spare?""What, aren't ye in love then? Sure an' when I was your age I was desp'rately in love with half a dozen at once—the milkmaid, and the doctor's daughter, and the girl in the haberdasher's in Sackville Street, and a lot more.""'I could not love thee, dear, so much,Loved I not honour more,'"quoted Shirley lugubriously."Honour, bedad! That's what I said to Patsy O'Dowd when she taxed me with making eyes at Honour O'Grady, and she boxed my ears,—and Patsy had a powerful heavy hand, begore. And if ye're not afraid of someone cutting you out—Mr. Dugdale, for instance ... By the way, is he going home too?""Not a doubt of that, sir," said the Grampus himself. "Amateuring isn't such fun as you'd think; why, I had to peel the onions till the Frenchman came! I'm sick of it; and I'm going home to practise doctoring on a new plan.""What's that about onions?" called Colonel Beckwith from the head of the table.The Grampus proceeded to relate his capture by the guerrilleros, and to expatiate on various little grievances incident to his state of bondage, which the company appeared to find vastly entertaining. This want of sympathy with his misadventures nettled even the good-natured Grampus, who became more and more red and indignant, until at length he burst out:"Well, at any rate I did some good, and that was no laughing matter. If it hadn't been for me they'd have tortured some scores of poor devils of Frenchmen that Lumsden bagged—so there!""Story! story!" was shouted round the table."You must get Lumsden to tell you that. He caught 'em; but 'twas a speech I made saved 'em from being fried or boiled or something.""Now, Lumsden, fill up that gap," said the colonel.Seeing that there was no help for it, Jack gave a brief account of his adventure with the commissary's party at Morata, awarding a due meed of praise to Antonio the guerrilla captain."He was a good sort," he added, "quite mild-mannered for a Spaniard. None of them knew a word of English, and he complained that his men had been roused to fury against the prisoners by the violent harangue of the English senior. He could hardly hold them.""Oh, come now!" expostulated Dugdale. "I didn't know Spanish, but I made myself clear enough.""Exactly," said Jack; "when you pointed to your throat and then to the fire, the poor simple guerrilleros were only in doubt as to whether you meant roasting or garrotting."A roar of laughter completed the Grampus's discomfiture."Bet you—" he began in desperation; but finding himself unable to state a wager that would meet the case, he buried his face in a tankard, from which it took a considerable time to emerge.Next day it was a quiet and subdued group that crossed to the house opposite. Captain O'Hare was unmistakeably nervous, Pomeroy self-consciously gorgeous, and Shirley pale with sitting up late the previous night over a Spanish grammar, conjugating the verb Amor in all its moods and tenses. The Grampus took his revenge in chaffing them, and they all grunted approval when Captain O'Hare exclaimed:"Bedad, if 'twas on Shannon's shore 'tis meself that would be at home, but 'tis a mighty different thing meeting a Spanish lady on the banks of the Taygus without a word of the lingo to turn a compliment."But they were agreeably surprised when, after being welcomed in broken English by their portly and amiable Portuguese hostess, they were greeted in the same tongue, spoken with the prettiest accent imaginable, by a charming young señorita. Her beauty made an instant and visible impression on Captain O'Hare's susceptible soul.The dinner was long remembered and talked of by the officers of O'Hare's company. There was a numerous party, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Jack was unwillingly the hero of the evening, and the flattering attentions paid him would have been still more embarrassing had he not been so preoccupied in watching Juanita, who appeared to him in a quite unaccustomed light. He had admired her courage during the dark days of the siege; he had got an inkling even then of the essential brightness of her temperament; but he was hardly prepared for her perfect ease and self-possession, the vivacity of her conversation, and her social tact. He felt an inexplicable sinking at the heart; Juanita seemed to be farther away from him than at any time since he had first met her in Saragossa. They had been frank comrades during the hazardous journey across country to the coast, and the delightful voyage that had just closed their adventures, and under stress of circumstances Jack had for so long taken the lead that it was a sort of awakening to find that she was now independent of his counsel and protection. Moreover, she was going to England. He had intended to go with her, but the return of his regiment had altered all that. Till this moment he had not realized what a separation might really mean. He felt that they were at the parting of the ways.It was from Juanita's lips that his brother officers heard the full story of his work in Saragossa, and after. Simply, without exaggeration, yet glowingly, she described how, with unfailing resource, he had met and frustrated all the attacks of the French on his little garrison and kept the flag flying to the last. Captain O'Hare followed her story with unwavering interest. He was not the man to praise lightly. Indeed, it was not the custom in that age of hard fighters to scatter vain compliments; his subalterns were therefore the more deeply impressed when, in a pause, he turned to Juanita and said in a tone vibrant with earnestness:"By my faith, Señorita, yours is a story of which every soldier, British or Spanish, may be proud. I honour your countrymen and countrywomen for their glorious defence of Saragossa—there is nothing finer that I know in all history. And we British officers are proud to think that one of ours, one of the 95th, is among the heroes of the siege. We all try to do our duty; few of us get the chance, like my friend Lumsden, of doing so much more than our mere duty; and by my soul, if we do get the chance, I only hope we'll make as good a use of it."Jack, who had spent a most uncomfortable half-hour, was greatly relieved when the ladies withdrew. But his troubles were not over, for Captain O'Hare, resuming the brogue which had disappeared during his late outburst, said with a chuckle:"By Vanus and all the Graces, 'tis a lucky thing for you, you young scamp, that Peter O'Hare is not fifteen years younger. 'Tis meself would have tried a fall wid ye—ay, and come in at a canter. Indeed an' I'm not sure 'tis too late even now. She was mighty civil to me at dinner, indeed she was."The worthy captain laughed heartily, and turned to make himself agreeable, in halting French, to a colonel of Portuguese artillery."Hang it, Lumsden," said Pomeroy, "I call it a crying shame, that merely because a man happens to patter a little Spanish he should not only be shoved over the heads of better men than himself, but cut out more presentable ones with the jolliest girl I've seen this end of the Bay."Jack smiled and held his peace."I say, you fellows," said Shirley, "give me a rhyme for Saragossa, someone. I've just knocked off a little gem of a thing—'Lines to J——a A——z', but hang me if I can tag the last of 'em.""A good job too!" said Smith. "The whole company seems to be moonstruck. 'Pon my word, I believe I'm the only one of you that can keep his head.""Ah," said the Grampus with a capacious sigh, "'tisn't the head, it's the heart!" There was a general laugh at his lugubrious accent; whereupon, with a sudden return to everyday life, he cried: "And I'll bet you, Harry George Wakelyn Smith, you're one of the first to find it out."Smith snorted scornfully. He little imagined that long before the war was over he would himself meet the lovely Spanish damsel in distress who was to become Lady Smith of Aliwal and give her name to a certain little town, the Saragossa of South Africa.Jack, who had taken his comrades' good-humoured banter with unfailing cheerfulness, now slipped away to join the ladies in the sala. When he entered the room, he noticed at once a deeper flush than usual on Juanita's cheeks, and felt that something was amiss. It was some little time before he could escape the renewed attentions of the circle. Then, seating himself beside Juanita, he said anxiously:"Is anything wrong, Juanita?""Wrong! No, of course not. Why should anything be wrong?"She turned her head away, and tapped her hand impatiently with her fan. Jack, noting the flush on her cheek, felt uneasily that her manner belied her words."I don't know," he said. "I was afraid there was something. I wanted to tell you, Juanita, that—that—well, things have changed, you know. There is to be another campaign; I shall have to march with the regiment. There's no help for it. I can't go back to England—not yet.""I knew; I was told it—by somebody else."There was that in her tone which made Jack wish that he had told her earlier of what his unexpected meeting with his old comrades must inevitably involve. He had shrunk from the explanation—he did not quite know why.After a moment's silence she added slowly: "I am sorry for Mr. Dugdale; he will have a lonely journey, I fear, and he's so very fond of company.""Lonely! But you get on very well together.""Oh yes! I like Mr. Dugdale very much, but you see—I shall not be there. I have made up my mind, quite decided, not to go after all. England is a cold, foggy, horrid country, and I'm sure I shouldn't like the English. I ought never to have come so far." She rose from her seat. "I will go back to the dear Sisters at Cariñena."As she moved towards the balcony at the far end of the room, Jack caught the sparkle of tears in her eyes. He felt that he must be in fault; how or why he could not tell, and he was too much perturbed at Juanita's distress to think the matter out. He merely followed her. When they reached the balcony they stood for a few moments silent in the twilight, looking with unseeing eyes at the dim plaza below. There was a murmur of voices from the dusk, at first vague and indistinct, the words gradually stealing upon their consciousness with clearer and clearer meaning."There he was, poor little beggar, crying his eyes out. 'Ogbourne,' says I, 'what's amiss with Pepito?' 'Oh!' says he, 'crying for the moon. He wants to go with the Spanish señorita and stay with Mr. Lumsden at the same time; which ain't possible.' 'Well,' says I, 'I ain't so sure o' that. They do say he rescued her from old Boney himself and from a rascally Don too—yes, and they say she's main fond of him, which is only natural—considering.'"Even in the dusk Jack, stealing a look at Juanita, saw that she had flushed hotly. As she half-turned to re-enter the room, he imprisoned the little hand that lay on the balustrade. She did not draw it away."But," continued the insistent voice, "what I want to know is, when's it to be?—that's what I want to know."
The Old Well—A Voice—Visions—Infimis
"It is locked, Señor."
Pepito had dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez on the hillside.
"Shout, Pepito," replied Jack from the saddle of his mule. "Perhaps the old man will hear us from the house."
The gipsy put his hands to his mouth, and called shrilly. There was no answer, no sound save the hum of bees and the song of birds.
"We must climb the wall, then," said Jack, springing to the ground.
"See, Señor, a face in the bush!" cried Pepito, pointing through the iron railings into the garden.
Looking, Jack saw, framed in the foliage of a dense laurel, the face of the old gardener.
"Adelante, hombre!" he said.
Instantly the face vanished. Jack called again; no voice answered, no footstep was heard. The two riders tied their steeds to trees in the plantation on the right, then scaled the wall and hastened towards the house.
Nearly two months had elapsed since Jack's night adventure. He was struck by the alteration in the place. It had looked untidy, ill-cared-for, then; it was now a wilderness. Flowers and shrubs bloomed in unchecked luxuriance; hollyhocks drooped their heavy heads, sprays of woodbine twined in and out among the laurels, unpruned vines crept over the weedy paths, the sweltering air was sickly with mingled perfumes. The house stood white and brown in the glowing sunlight; lush creepers almost hid the door; the dry wood-work was blistered, the lattices falling away; all was decay, silence, and desolation.
It was high noon of a sultry summer day, yet Jack shivered. He rapped at the door. There was no response save an echo. He walked round the house; every window was shuttered, every door barred. He went on down the garden at the back, following the directions given him by Juanita, and Pepito crept along behind him, his big eyes wide with awe. A vulture flew up in front, and clattered away on creaking wings. He stepped from the path, and pushed his way through tangled shrubs and matted undergrowth towards a broad chestnut in the angle of the wall. Tendrils of convolvulus clung around his feet, the scent of thyme came in gusts with the cloying odour of gardenias. Suddenly the rank vegetation ceased, and before him, in a clear space, he saw the circular covering of the old well.
Frame and winch had been removed. A broken moss-grown bucket lay hard by; near it was a long bar of wood. Around the well was a broad patch of soft black earth. As Jack approached to remove the wooden cover from the well-mouth, Pepito touched him on the arm.
"Marks, Señor!" he said under his breath; "footsteps, and marks of a mule's hoofs; fresh, Señor; made to-day."
Jack started. A green lizard, sunning itself at the edge of the well, disappeared in a flash. He saw the hoof-marks in the soil; his heart sank with a sudden misgiving. The well-cover seemed to have been clumsily replaced.
"Help me lift it," said Jack.
They removed the heavy cover. The well opened black before them. Pepito peered over the edge; he saw nothing; there was neither rope nor ladder.
"How can we get down?" said Jack.
Looking around, he saw what appeared to be the end of a ladder projecting from beneath a bush. He dragged it out; a snake dropped from it and vanished in the grass; it was a ladder some sixteen feet long.
"It will not reach the bottom of the well," said Jack. His eye caught the bar of wood.
"Bring me that, Pepito."
He laid it across the well-mouth; on its mossy side there was a dull splash of red. The bar stretched across the opening. Lifting it again, Jack gave it to Pepito, and, taking the ladder, lowered this into the well till only the topmost rungs were above the brickwork.
"Put the wood through," he said.
Thus the ladder hung dangling on its support, fifteen feet into the well. Pepito looked at his master enquiringly.
"Yes, you are to climb down. Stay!" he added, as the boy prepared to step down on to the swinging ladder.
He took some papers from his pocket, twisted them into a loose mass, and wound about them the end of a long vine tendril. Then he kindled them from his tinder-box, and let the flaming mass down quickly into the well. It burned until it was consumed.
"There is air enough. Go down, Pepito."
He steadied the ladder as the boy descended step by step. Jack counted twelve rungs, then ordered the boy to stop.
"Do you see anything, Pepito?"
A few moments passed. The gipsy's eyes were adjusting themselves to the gloom.
"A hole, Señor, a big hole in the wall."
"Can you get into it?"
"No, Señor, it is on the other side, too far away."
Bidding the boy ascend, Jack shifted the ladder across the bar. Pepito went down again, and soon Jack heard his muffled voice exclaim that he was in the hole.
"Do you find anything there? Search thoroughly."
A minute passed. Jack was crouched at the brink, holding the joists of the ladder firmly with both hands.
"There is nothing, Señor; all emptiness."
"Come up again."
He stepped out on to the brickwork, and Jack rose to his feet.
"Dead! dead! dead!" said a quavering voice behind him.
He turned with a nervous start. While he had been engaged at the well, a figure had been slowly approaching from a thicket of laurel, furtively, with hesitation, stopping for a moment, then taking another unsteady step and stopping again. Jack recognized the old gardener, but how altered! His limbs shook as with a palsy; his lips mumbled without sound; his eyes were wild.
"What is it, hombre?" said Jack quietly without moving.
The old man stood as if listening. Then, raising his shaking right hand, the long fingers working convulsively, he murmured:
"I saw it! ... Dead!"
Then he smiled, a thin wan smile, and tottering forward pointed waveringly to the well. Jack recoiled. The old man's smile was more awful than a sob of agony.
"They came through the gate;" he pointed across the garden to the farther wall. "There were two; I was hidden in the copse; I watched them. I watched them. They brought a mule; it was a fine mule, with gay trappings,—a fine mule..." The old man passed his hand across his brow. "What was I saying? I have forgotten."
"They brought a mule," said Jack.
"Yes, they brought a mule. They led it across the garden, trampling down the poor flowers—my flowers! I saw them! There were two. One was in front—the cursed afrancesado; I knew him; yes, did I not serve him at my master's table? the afrancesado! He was in front; behind him a man, a long thin man, a one-eyed man, with the mule. They crushed the flowers—my flowers ... what was I saying?"
"They came across the garden," said Jack.
"They came across the garden. They came here, here! where we are standing. The man, the one-eyed man, fastened the mule to yonder tree; then they stooped down and lifted the cover. It was heavy...I watched them. They peered down into the well, into the deep well, but they could see nothing. Then the tall man, the man with the one eye, went away; the other, the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, waited, and while he waited he cast pebbles into the well ... horrible! horrible!" He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out some dreadful thing. "What was I saying?"
"The tall man came back," said Jack.
"The tall man came back; he brought a ladder; he fetched a beam, that beam, and they let down the ladder into the well, the deep well ... I watched them. 'Twelve steps,' said the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, and the tall man, the man with the one eye, went down ... Twelve steps! ... The other, the afrancesado, bent over; there was a noise below; the afrancesado said 'Bien!'—I heard him. Then the man, the long man, the man with the one eye, came up, slowly; there was a box, a heavy box; the other took it, and the man, the one-eyed man, went down, ... twelve steps ... He came up again; there was another box, a small box. I knew it; it was the master's. Then he went down again, ... twelve steps, ... and the other, the afrancesado, the accursed afrancesado, drew his knife, silently; it flashed in the sun; I watched him..." The old man stared fixedly before him. "What was I saying?" he whispered.
"He drew his knife," said Jack.
"He drew his knife," said the old man, still in a whisper. "The other, the long man, the man with one eye, came slowly, slowly, up. He stretched his left hand for the box, he raised the arm with the knife. He was behind him. He leant forward; I saw him—him, and the long man, the man with one eye—he drove it between his shoulders..."
The old man made as if to brush a cobweb from before his eyes.
"Horrible! horrible! ... down! down! down! ... What was I saying?"
CHAPTER XXXV
Doom
Outcast—Spectres—Conscience—Tracked—Vanity—Scylla— Charybdis—José—Faithful unto Death
Within a few miles of Calatayud, a narrow path, little more than a foot-track, leads down from the hills on to the highroad to Saragossa. Just before joining the highway, the path winds between two low bluffs that screen it from the sight of wayfarers below. Indeed, any muleteer or arriero unacquainted with the country might almost pass unawares the spot where road and hill-path meet, so completely is it hidden by the ash-gray contours of the hills.
About the time when Jack dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez, a man was making his way downward along this narrow track, urging a heavily-laden mule with low cries to hasten its flagging pace. He was a young man, in the costume of a muleteer; his cheeks were pale and sunken, his eyes unnaturally bright. Every now and again he would throw an anxious backward glance over his shoulder, not consciously, as if he feared pursuit, but as though in obedience to some impulse of which he was hardly aware.
When he approached the point where the track joined the road he stepped to the mule's head and brought the animal to a stand-still, looking from left to right as if in doubt. After a moment's hesitation he tied the mule to one of the rare saplings that grew at the side of the track, and advanced warily towards the highway, pausing at short intervals, and bending his head forward to listen. There was no sound save the silver trill of a lark far above, and the soughing of a light breeze as it lapped the edges of the hills. The man moved forward again, still more cautiously; rounding a knoll, he came to the road, that stretched in gentle undulations for several hundreds of yards in a straight line east and west. No one was in sight. The man gave a sigh of relief, followed by one of those quick uneasy backward glances that seemed to be habitual with him. Rapidly scanning the road once more, he returned to the mule, released the bridle from the tree, and slowly led the laden animal down the path.
He was within a dozen paces of the dusty highway when he halted suddenly, dragging heavily upon the reins. His dusky, olive-hued features paled, the hand that grasped the bridle trembled nervously; his whole attitude was one of dire apprehension. For a moment he stood intently listening, his eyes fixed in a wide stare; then, wheeling the mule sharply round and prodding the weary beast desperately with the knife he drew from his belt, he raced back along the track. For a full quarter of a mile he continued his upward course; then he stopped, and again turned his head towards the road in the attitude of listening. At first he could hear nothing but the throbbing of his heart and the quick breathing of the mule by his side; but gradually the clatter of many hoofs on the hard road became more and more audible through the clear air, though the horsemen were hidden from view by the obstructing hills. They arrived at what he judged to be the place he had just left. He heard "Halt!" in a rough stentorian tone. The voice was Spanish, and its effect on the anxious listening man was as that of a galvanic shock. With a smothered cry he dashed forward, dragging the unwilling mule, which he goaded with alternate stabs of the knife and whispered words half of menace half of entreaty.
There was no halting now. For mile after mile they continued their flight, until, when both mule and man were exhausted, they at length stopped at the edge of a wild gorge high up in the mountains. There, for the first time since he fled the voice, the man looked carefully around. The place was evidently new to him. In his flight he had diverged at the first opportunity from the track, along which he had come, not then alone, earlier in the day. The new path was more difficult than the old; it wound away from his obvious destination; it led, indeed, almost due north into the heart of the mountain country—the Sierra de Moncayo, the precipitous granite range where King Æolus had his mythic throne. But the fugitive knew not, cared not, whither he went, so long as it was away from the voice of his countrymen. And he avoided, with the shrinking of dread, the track he knew.
One thing was remarkable during his late impetuous flight. He seemed to have forgotten his strange trick of glancing backward over his shoulder. Many times he turned half round to see if he was followed, but consciously, less abjectly, for all his panic fear.
When he had rested for a few minutes, he rose and carefully scanned the surrounding country, debating with himself what course to follow. His view was circumscribed by the irregular masses of bare rock and sparsely wooded slopes that formed the horizon. But he appeared at last to have made up his mind, for, pulling the mule slowly round on the narrow track, he took a few steps as if to return in the direction from which he had come. But his bearing was timid, uncertain, vacillating, and when a mountain eagle swept from its eyry, and screamed just above his head, he started as if struck, hauled his poor beast feverishly across the track, and once more pressed in hot haste towards the north.
For some time he marched on rapidly. Then the fatigue of travelling over the steep uneven track again made itself felt; his pace slackened; he moved along behind the mule as if mechanically, while mechanically he still urged it forward with his knife. For minutes at a stretch he seemed as in a dream, immersed in dark thought. Again he glanced fearfully backward, not as though seeking a visible object of menace, not at the frowning hills, but with eyes that attempted to pierce the infinite for a something beyond. At moments he started from his waking nightmare to a full consciousness of his position among these bleak inhospitable hills. The phantoms dogging his thoughts then vanished, giving place to real cares—physical pain, a sense of desolation. At such times he searched anxiously for a path to the west, whereby making a circuit he might reach his goal, avoiding the highroad, where he had so narrowly escaped the hands of his countrymen the guerrilleros. But the track wound on, swerving sometimes to right or left, yet leading remorselessly northward, no by-path branching towards Calatayud. He dared not turn back. The danger of the road, had he known it, was past; but the awful risk of capture made him sick with fear. He plodded on, sunk more and more in dark imaginings, until at last, when the red sun was sinking below the distant purple peaks on his left, the mule suddenly stopped, and, breathing heavily, dropped upon its knees. The poor brute was spent. The man awoke with a start from his reverie. He was on the edge of a deep gully; giant rocks hemmed him in on either side; the path—there was no path! For the first time he realized that the granite hills held him in their grip.
He looked at the mule, that lay with lolling tongue and starting eyes. The animal was famished. He had no food for it, none for himself; only now was he conscious of his own gnawing hunger. He loosened the girths, and, removing the heavy panniers from the mule's back, enabled it to rise. There was nothing to tie it to. Sinking down on a flat rock, he held the bridle and peered into the deepening gloom. He dared not move forward; one careless step in this wild place might hurl them both into an abyss. There he sat, and the darkness gathered, and the chill of night wrapped him round.
What were his thoughts as he waited and endured? Who shall say? Human justice may falter, may be long upon the road; Eternal Justice is instant, relentless, inevitable. The sense of doom was upon this man, as he held sombre vigil with the cold accusing stars.
It was an unkempt, haggard, agued figure that rose stiffly and dizzily from his hard couch as soon as the pale dawn came creeping through the narrow gully among the hills. He could just see the mule standing motionless a few yards away. He shuddered as his eye fell upon the brass-clamped coffers at its feet. Then he moved as if to pass away, leaving behind him both mule and treasure, the visible links that bound him to the past. But after a few staggering steps he hesitated, set his teeth in desperate resolve, and returning, painfully lifted the boxes on to the panniers, the mule standing with drooped ears, and shivering in the raw air. In the half-light he led the famished beast away from the ravine, searching the rocky ground narrowly for marks of its track. Here and there appeared a stone covered with gray lichen; at these the mule halted and licked a scanty, bitter meal. At one point a silver rivulet poured from a fissure and fell clattering upon the rocks far down the steep. There Miguel dropped to his knees and drank with the animal, then went on again.
It was nearly two hours before he saw, on the far side of a deep ravine, a foot-path winding about a wall of rock. Was it the path he had left? He did not know. Only the guerrilleros he feared to meet could have told him that but one other path led across these barren heights. Leading the mule cautiously down one face of the ravine, he hauled it with infinite difficulty up the other. The poor beast, faint with hunger, had scarcely strength to crawl when at last it scrambled with its burden on to the track. But for the constant goad it would have fallen by the way. The path ran north and south; Miguel hesitated which direction to take. Northward he would have to scale steeper heights, but would increase his distance from the garden of his fear; southward, he might reach Calatayud and safety with the French, but who knew what danger might lie between? As the question beat this way and that in his tortured brain, his eyes lit upon a long, thin, jagged rock in which, in the gloom of the preceding evening, he had marked with a shudder a grotesque resemblance to a human form he would have given worlds to forget. Then he knew that he was upon the track from which he had wandered; he would persevere in the attempt to find a cross-path to the west. Surely there must be one that would lead, by however long a circuit, to his goal?
He turned wearily towards the north and instinctively glanced back across the hills, now variously tinted by the ascending sun. As he did so his eyes dilated, and for some moments he stood as if rooted to the ground. In the clear distance two figures mounted on mules were coming towards him. Even while he looked he saw one, the smaller of the two, pointing in his direction. The other drew rein for an instant, then both urged their mules to a trot. A bend in the path hid them from view, and Miguel leapt round, knowing that he was in very truth a hunted man. For nearly a day he had been pursued by the phantom of his crime. He had run from the shadow of a sound, fled from the perils his own imagination had created. Terror of he knew not what had left him all unstrung. But now that vengeance dogged him in real bodily form his mind braced itself to meet it. Only for a moment did his heart quail with misgiving; he reeled slightly, and clutched at the mule's bridle for support; then, recovering himself instantly, he struck the jaded beast, and with a fierce cry drove it before him up the path.
Suddenly the track bent eastward, it ceased to rise, he seemed to be on the northern slope of the watershed up which he had toiled during the previous day. He topped the crest. The path stretched downwards before him; and, scattering the loose stones to right and left, Miguel raced on with the mule until at a turn in the track a vast and brilliant panorama opened before his yearning eyes. Below him, at the edge of the long slope, stretched a rolling wooded country intersected by numerous watercourses shining in the morning sun. Far away on the horizon a silver streak wound and doubled on itself. It must be the river Ebro. Could he but gain the rich champaign below, he hoped that, for a time at least, he would be safe. In some copse or covert, vineyard or olive-ground, even in the byways of some hamlet, he might find a temporary refuge. But with the thought itself its utter hopelessness was borne in upon him. His pursuers must be closing in fast, although the windings of the track hid them from him when at intervals he turned to see. Panting himself, he dragged his panting beast with reckless haste, though in his inmost consciousness sure that the road was too long, the time too short. One solitary hope remained to him. If he left the mule with its retarding load, abandoned the prize for which he had staked his all, he might perhaps even yet find some rocky defile, some favouring grove, wherein to hide and baffle pursuit. But no, the renunciation was too great for his blighted soul. For the treasure he had schemed and sinned; he could not, dared not, let it go.
Scrambling on down the mountain track, he spied at length, some hundreds of feet below him, a narrow hillroad to which his headlong course must lead him by and by. Its farther side bordered a ravine. The road seemed near at hand, but as he continued his flight he found that the downward track zigzagged on the face of the slope, so that sometimes two or three of its coils lay immediately beneath him. There was no shorter way. Approaching the end of the last of these windings, he was warned by the clatter of dislodged stones that his pursuers were now hard upon his heels. He threw a quick glance upward; there, two hundred feet above him, the riders crossed his sight, following at headlong speed the first winding of the track. Without pause he raced staggeringly along.
All unknowing, he had himself been watched for some time from below. At the edge of the hill-road, hidden from him by a jutting mass of rock, a man was resting, seated on a boulder, eating a frugal meal from a wallet hung at his neck. He was a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, with wasted cheeks; thin, unkempt locks straggled from beneath his cap; his long tangled beard was snowy white. His attitude was of one in pain. At first he watched the impetuous muleteer dully, without attention; then he started, paused in lifting a piece of bread, and stared long with quickening breath. As the mule turned the last of the zigzags a sunbeam flashed on the brass of one of the boxes. The seated man rose; his eyes, opened to their fullest width, now fixed themselves with a glare of the intensest hatred upon the fugitive approaching, until once more he was hidden from sight.
Then with the stealthy movement of a cat the worn, panting wayfarer glided from the brink of the ravine to the opposite side of the road, and crouched down under cover of the rocks that had hidden him from the man above. Almost ceasing to breathe, he drew his knife, and waited. His movements suggested that he expected the muleteer to emerge into the road between himself and the animal. But not thus was the event ordered. Rounding the last turn of the path, Miguel, to avoid a projecting rock, had changed sides; thus when, after a few seconds, he reached the junction of path and road, the mule was between him and the man who lay there waiting, ready to strike. The anticipated moment was come. But Miguel was snatched from human vengeance; for him was reserved another fate. With an inarticulate cry of baffled rage the ambuscader sprang forward as if to overtake the mule, but, under the impetus gained during the last few yards of the hill-path, the beast was still moving quickly in an oblique direction across the road. Miguel at one and the same moment heard the cry and saw the flash of the knife. Till then he was unaware of his enemy's presence, so absorbed was his attention with the path ahead and the progress of the pursuers behind. At the cry he gave a startled side-long glance at the wild menacing features glaring at him across the mule's neck. In that dark look he read his doom.
It fell more quickly than any of the four persons—the actors themselves, the spectators above—could have thought possible. The two riders on the steep hill-path had now come within full sight of the scene passing on the road. As they gazed, holding their breath, they saw the mule between the two men staggering across the road. Startled by the sudden flash of the uplifted blade, the poor beast swerved towards the ravine, driving Miguel, all unconscious, on to the brink. He had already slipped towards the almost perpendicular descent before he realized his peril; then he clutched wildly at the slackened bridle, dragging the mule after him. It stumbled at the edge; burdened with its treasure-laden panniers it could not recover its footing, and in a moment man and beast, with one mingled scream of terror, disappeared into the yawning gulf.
The spectators above had halted, transfixed by the appalling tragedy. Then they hastened downward impetuously. The older man had fallen forward on the very edge of the ravine. Jack feared that he would follow Miguel Priego to destruction. But when, reaching the road, he threw himself from his mule and stooped to the prone figure, he found that the man had fainted, overcome by his fierce passion and the agitation of the last tense moments. Then for the first time Jack was aware of the thunderous roar of a torrent, and looking into the ravine he saw a white flood swirling over the rocks hundreds of feet below.
"Pepito," he said in a strained voice, "clamber down carefully. See what has become of Don Miguel—if anything can be done for him."
While the boy was gone on his perilous errand Jack loosened the clothing of the prostrate man, fetched water from a mountain-rill, and bathed his head. He opened his eyes, but there was no speculation in them. They wandered vacantly and closed again. Jack looked at him pityingly, and, as he looked, felt vaguely that the worn features were familiar to him. They reminded him of someone he had known as a child in Barcelona, a man who had mended his toys for him, and carried him on his back when tired; who had petted him and scolded him by turns, and whom he had alternately plagued and domineered over. Was it José Pinzon? Jack could scarcely believe it. The José he had known was a man touching his prime, strong, stalwart, bright-eyed, raven-haired; the man lying before him was bent and aged, wasted, hoary, decrepit. Yet the likeness to the old José was remarkable. Was it possible that the faithful servant had not been killed in Galindo's sortie, as Juanita had believed?
It was three-quarters of an hour before Pepito returned from his descent of the precipice. Nothing living could have survived so terrible a fall; Miguel must instantaneously have gone to his account. Fragments of the boxes, but for which the mule might have regained its footing, lay scattered on the rocks, and out of the ruin Pepito had recovered but one relic—one gold pendant,—which he handed to his master; all else had been swept away by the torrent. Then he helped him lift the poor wayfarer to the back of his mule, and together they bore him to a muleteer's cabin in the hills.
For three days the man lingered there, unconscious for the most part, and in intervals of consciousness talking at random of people and things that were quite strange to his hearers. Jack nursed him with every care; but it was evident from the first that his days were numbered. On the third evening, when the sun was near setting and the cicalas had commenced their chant, the man opened his eyes wide and looked amazedly about him. He made an effort to rise, but fell back upon the rough blanket that formed his bed. He seemed to be listening. Jack, watching him, saw for the first time a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes. Through the open door came the sound of hoofs rapidly approaching. There was a strange eagerness in the man's upward gaze. The sound ceased; Pepito came into the hut, followed by a young lady and a priest fetched in hot haste from Cariñena. The former bent over the bed and looked hard at the pallid face; the latter fell on his knees and began to recite the prayers for the dying.
"José! José!" whispered Juanita; "you know me, my dear friend?"
"My mistress!" he murmured faintly.
She clasped his hand; a look of glad content shone for a brief moment in the sick man's eyes. There was a silence; then, as the light faded, came the solemn voice of Padre Consolacion:
"Domine, in manus tuas animam suam commendamus!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
Sergeant Wilkes wants to know
Mr. Lumsden and Me—Me and Mr. Lumsden—A Lady in the Case—The Pleasure of your Company—O'Hare and the Ladies—The Grampus takes Cover—The Eve of Parting—The Age Limit—Poor Mr. Dugdale!—The Question
"Want to know about the fight at Corunna, do you? Hanged if you ain't always wanting to know something. Well, attention! dress by the right! and stand easy while I endeavour to reconstruct the situation."
The scene was the quay at Lisbon; the speaker was Sergeant Wilkes; the audience was a knot of green-coated recruits who, to judge by their docility, regarded the sergeant with admiration and awe. Since he had won the three stripes Wilkes had lost nothing of his loquacity, and had, indeed, cultivated a vocabulary of words long enough to match his new importance.
"Here you are, then; that there stands for the formidable French battery at the summit of the eminence"—he placed a jack-knife on the wall before him,—"this here stands for General Disney's brigade"—he put a plug of black tobacco at a distance from the knife,—"this here stands for the Reserve of that exemplary and notorious general Ted Paget"—he ranged two pebbles to the right of the tobacco,—"and this here," taking up one of the pebbles, "is Captain O'Hare's company. Look at him well, 'cos 'twas Captain O'Hare's company, and me in it, that won the battle on that most fatal and obstrepolous day. We was a-going up the hill towards that there battery, when blowed if we didn't get variegated with a lot of French dragoons in among the farmyards. Then up comes Mr. Lumsden, and says to me, 'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says—I was only a corp'ril then, you understand—'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says, 'we've got to shove down that there wall and drive the mounseers out. You an' me can do it if we puts our backs into it,' says he. 'Right you are, sir,' says I, 'we'll fustigate the mounseers and extipulate them to the last individual.' Them were the words I used. Well—"
"I say, sargint," said Corporal Bates, strolling across the road, "that's a smart little craft a-spanking up the river there. Looks like a despatch-boat, eh?"
"Don't interjeculate," said Wilkes irritably. "You always must put your spoke in. I was just telling the young 'uns how Mr. Lumsden and me won the fight at Corunna; who cares for a despatch-boat?—which it ain't, but only a common sloop."
"Go on, sargint, if you please," said one of the men.
"Well, as I was saying, Mr. Lumsden and me was just a-going to shove down the wall what was intermediate between us and the mounseers when—"
"Hold hard a bit, sargint," put in Bates; "ain't that there little chap on the boat there rather like the gipsy brat what Mr. Lumsden took up with?"
"Corp'ril Bates, if you keep on interrupting your superior orficer I shall rejuce you. Gipsy brats is neither here nor there; what the young 'uns want to know is how me and Mr. Lumsden licked the French at Corunna."
"That's him; that's Pepito!" cried Bates, heedless of Wilkes' increasing irritation. "P'r'aps he'll be able to tell us what's become of his master."
Bates sheered off, and Wilkes resumed his much-interrupted narrative. He was in the middle of a very vivid description of how Mr. Lumsden and himself fought eight Frenchmen at the wall, when he became aware of a commotion at some distance along the quay. Chagrined to find the attention of his audience wandering, he stood up, exclaiming:
"What are the rampaging Vamooses at now?—hang them!"
But he saw, not Portuguese, but a number of men in the well-known green of the 95th Rifles, marching up the street, cheering vigorously. Among them, in the middle of the causeway, strode two young Spaniards, the one slim and lissom, the other broad and bulky. Both walked buoyantly, and seemed in high good-humour. Behind them, over their heads, could be seen the antic figure of Pepito, perched on Bates's shoulders, and looking as proud as a peacock. Wilkes stared at the procession as it approached, wondering to see two Spaniards with the unprecedented escort of British Riflemen. All at once he drew himself up, struck his feet together, and, just as the head of the procession reached him, brought his hand to his eyebrow in the stiff military salute. His face was a study in its successive expressions of perplexity, vexation, and pleasure.
The recruits were taken too much aback to be able to make their salute before the procession had passed.
"Who's that ragged Don you're saluting, sargint?" asked one of them.
"Who's that, you dough-faced clod-hopping chaw-bacon, you!" cried Wilkes, seizing the opportunity of venting his feelings. "Why, that's Lieutenant Jack Lumsden, him what helped me to lick the mounseers at Corunna. And I'll make it warm for Charley Bates," he muttered, "stealing a march on me like that. Why didn't I perpetrate the disguise? That's what I want to know."
Meanwhile Jack and the Grampus had continued their progress until they arrived at the head-quarters of the 95th. There, two or three subalterns were seated at an open window, to catch a breath of air from the sea, grateful on that hot June day.
"Hullo!" said Pomeroy, catching sight of the procession, "what are the rascals up to now?"
"Some mischief, you may be sure," said Smith, looking over his shoulder. "I shall be glad when we get marching orders to join Sir Arthur. The men will get horribly loose if we're here long."
"By George!" said Pomeroy, "they appear to have got two Spaniards among them. Why—what—look here, Shirley, isn't that Lumsden's boy Pepito grinning like a monkey on Bates's shoulder?"
"Eh! What? Where?" said Smith, pushing his head out. "Jehoshaphat! That fat Spaniard—ha! ha!—don't you see, you fellows?—ha! ha!—he's the Grampus, bigger than ever. Gad! I shall die of this! The Grampus in Spanish toggery!"
"And the other fellow's Jack himself!" shouted Pomeroy excitedly. "Hurray! hurray!"
"'Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!'" quoted Shirley. "Hurray! Three cheers for Lumsden! But what am I to do with my epitaph?"
"What's all this pandemonium about?" cried a loud voice from the door of the room. "I wish you gentlemen would behave less like a pack of schoolb—"
"Lumsden's back, sir," said Smith. "The men are escorting him up the street."
"Good gad!" ejaculated Colonel Beckwith. Then, without more ado, he caught up Smith's cap from the table, stuck it on his head, and ran downstairs buttoning up his jacket on the way. He reached the door just in time to meet Jack before he entered.
"'Pon my honour—how d'e do?—glad to see you, hang it! You're not dead, then, after all?"
"Not a bit, sir," said Jack, heartily returning his handgrip. "Come to report myself, sir."
"Good gad! What a—what a villainous brigand you look! But we'll soon put that right. 'Pon my honour, I am deuced glad to see you."
The colonel shook hands again, and for some minutes Jack's arm was going up and down like a pump handle as he returned the greetings of his old friends, who meanwhile volleyed questions at him with clamorous excitement.
"Uncommonly kind of you fellows," he panted, "but if you'll excuse me—"
"Not a bit of it," cried Smith. "Excuse you, indeed!"
"No, begad," said the colonel. "You'll come in and let us drink your health—three times three. Come along."
"Most happy, sir, if you'll just allow me five or six minutes. The fact is, there's a lady on board, and—"
"Good gad! A lady!"
"And I came to get a coach to fetch her."
"Of course. A lady! My barouche is at your service. Here, Ogbourne, bring the barouche round in two minutes, for Mr. Lumsden.—Used to be your man, I think; a useful fellow.—Hang me! I must go and find Captain O'Hare."
Not many minutes later the subalterns at the window were as much surprised as interested to see the colonel's heavy rumbling chariot draw up at a house almost exactly opposite.
"I say, you fellows," cried Smith, "get out of sight. We don't want the lady to think we're a lot of peeping Toms."
"She's probably as old as your grandmother," said Pomeroy, "and long past blushing. Still—"
Consequently, when Juanita and her old duenna stepped out of the coach and entered the opposite house, there were no spectators of the scene. But when Jack returned to head-quarters he was instantly the mark of a running fire of questions. His fellow-officers, from the colonel downwards, were consumed with curiosity to know whether she was young or old, tall or short, dark or fair; where he had found her; what was her name. Shirley eagerly asked whether she was the famous Maid of Saragossa; Pomeroy was boiling with impatience because the Grampus had absolutely refused to give any information.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," cried Jack, "I can't attend to you all at once. The lady is the Señorita Juanita Alvarez, daughter of my father's old partner, on her way to England, and the friend with whom she is staying has invited the officers of my company to dinner to-morrow, so that if you care to go I'll introduce you en bloc."
"Bedad now," said Captain O'Hare, "that's mighty perlite. I must practise my best bow, and get my hair cut. 'Tis a powerful pity pigtails are just gone out of fashion, for sure I always looked killing in a pigtail. Ah well!"
"Come, Mr. Lumsden," said the colonel, "the Señorita has driven you out of our heads. What have you been doing with yourself? We learnt when Mr. Frere came home that you had gone to Saragossa, and not a man of us expected to see you again. Ogbourne, get some tumblers, and we'll do the honours."
It was late before the meeting broke up, and then not one of the company was satisfied. Jack had given them, indeed, a full and interesting account of the siege of Saragossa in general, but he appeared to be woefully lacking in detailed information about his own part in it. He was not so affectedly modest as to conceal the facts that Palafox had entrusted him with the defence of a certain district, and that the district was still in Spanish hands when the siege ended; but of the weeks of ceaseless work, unresting vigilance and anxious thought which had purchased his success he said never a word. Colonel Beckwith watched him closely as he told his story, and at its conclusion made a brief comment which gave him a thrill of pleasure.
"Gentlemen," he said, rising, "I speak for you all when I say that we're glad to have Lumsden back at the mess. There are big gaps in his story which somebody has to fill; but we don't want 'em filled to know that he's been an honour to the British army, and a credit to the Rifles. I give you Mr. Lumsden!"
When the cheers that followed the toast had died away, Jack on his side was eager to learn what had brought his old friends back to the Peninsula. Hearing that a new campaign was opening under Sir Arthur Wellesley, his face clouded for a moment.
"Sure an' ye've done enough for glory," said Captain O'Hare, noticing the expression, "and there's never a doubt the colonel will let ye go home to your sorrowing mother,—not to speak of escorting the colleen."
Jack blushed.
"Thank 'ee!" he said, "but I'm not going to run away from the regiment. Have you got a uniform to spare?"
"What, aren't ye in love then? Sure an' when I was your age I was desp'rately in love with half a dozen at once—the milkmaid, and the doctor's daughter, and the girl in the haberdasher's in Sackville Street, and a lot more."
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,Loved I not honour more,'"
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,Loved I not honour more,'"
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more,'"
Loved I not honour more,'"
quoted Shirley lugubriously.
"Honour, bedad! That's what I said to Patsy O'Dowd when she taxed me with making eyes at Honour O'Grady, and she boxed my ears,—and Patsy had a powerful heavy hand, begore. And if ye're not afraid of someone cutting you out—Mr. Dugdale, for instance ... By the way, is he going home too?"
"Not a doubt of that, sir," said the Grampus himself. "Amateuring isn't such fun as you'd think; why, I had to peel the onions till the Frenchman came! I'm sick of it; and I'm going home to practise doctoring on a new plan."
"What's that about onions?" called Colonel Beckwith from the head of the table.
The Grampus proceeded to relate his capture by the guerrilleros, and to expatiate on various little grievances incident to his state of bondage, which the company appeared to find vastly entertaining. This want of sympathy with his misadventures nettled even the good-natured Grampus, who became more and more red and indignant, until at length he burst out:
"Well, at any rate I did some good, and that was no laughing matter. If it hadn't been for me they'd have tortured some scores of poor devils of Frenchmen that Lumsden bagged—so there!"
"Story! story!" was shouted round the table.
"You must get Lumsden to tell you that. He caught 'em; but 'twas a speech I made saved 'em from being fried or boiled or something."
"Now, Lumsden, fill up that gap," said the colonel.
Seeing that there was no help for it, Jack gave a brief account of his adventure with the commissary's party at Morata, awarding a due meed of praise to Antonio the guerrilla captain.
"He was a good sort," he added, "quite mild-mannered for a Spaniard. None of them knew a word of English, and he complained that his men had been roused to fury against the prisoners by the violent harangue of the English senior. He could hardly hold them."
"Oh, come now!" expostulated Dugdale. "I didn't know Spanish, but I made myself clear enough."
"Exactly," said Jack; "when you pointed to your throat and then to the fire, the poor simple guerrilleros were only in doubt as to whether you meant roasting or garrotting."
A roar of laughter completed the Grampus's discomfiture.
"Bet you—" he began in desperation; but finding himself unable to state a wager that would meet the case, he buried his face in a tankard, from which it took a considerable time to emerge.
Next day it was a quiet and subdued group that crossed to the house opposite. Captain O'Hare was unmistakeably nervous, Pomeroy self-consciously gorgeous, and Shirley pale with sitting up late the previous night over a Spanish grammar, conjugating the verb Amor in all its moods and tenses. The Grampus took his revenge in chaffing them, and they all grunted approval when Captain O'Hare exclaimed:
"Bedad, if 'twas on Shannon's shore 'tis meself that would be at home, but 'tis a mighty different thing meeting a Spanish lady on the banks of the Taygus without a word of the lingo to turn a compliment."
But they were agreeably surprised when, after being welcomed in broken English by their portly and amiable Portuguese hostess, they were greeted in the same tongue, spoken with the prettiest accent imaginable, by a charming young señorita. Her beauty made an instant and visible impression on Captain O'Hare's susceptible soul.
The dinner was long remembered and talked of by the officers of O'Hare's company. There was a numerous party, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Jack was unwillingly the hero of the evening, and the flattering attentions paid him would have been still more embarrassing had he not been so preoccupied in watching Juanita, who appeared to him in a quite unaccustomed light. He had admired her courage during the dark days of the siege; he had got an inkling even then of the essential brightness of her temperament; but he was hardly prepared for her perfect ease and self-possession, the vivacity of her conversation, and her social tact. He felt an inexplicable sinking at the heart; Juanita seemed to be farther away from him than at any time since he had first met her in Saragossa. They had been frank comrades during the hazardous journey across country to the coast, and the delightful voyage that had just closed their adventures, and under stress of circumstances Jack had for so long taken the lead that it was a sort of awakening to find that she was now independent of his counsel and protection. Moreover, she was going to England. He had intended to go with her, but the return of his regiment had altered all that. Till this moment he had not realized what a separation might really mean. He felt that they were at the parting of the ways.
It was from Juanita's lips that his brother officers heard the full story of his work in Saragossa, and after. Simply, without exaggeration, yet glowingly, she described how, with unfailing resource, he had met and frustrated all the attacks of the French on his little garrison and kept the flag flying to the last. Captain O'Hare followed her story with unwavering interest. He was not the man to praise lightly. Indeed, it was not the custom in that age of hard fighters to scatter vain compliments; his subalterns were therefore the more deeply impressed when, in a pause, he turned to Juanita and said in a tone vibrant with earnestness:
"By my faith, Señorita, yours is a story of which every soldier, British or Spanish, may be proud. I honour your countrymen and countrywomen for their glorious defence of Saragossa—there is nothing finer that I know in all history. And we British officers are proud to think that one of ours, one of the 95th, is among the heroes of the siege. We all try to do our duty; few of us get the chance, like my friend Lumsden, of doing so much more than our mere duty; and by my soul, if we do get the chance, I only hope we'll make as good a use of it."
Jack, who had spent a most uncomfortable half-hour, was greatly relieved when the ladies withdrew. But his troubles were not over, for Captain O'Hare, resuming the brogue which had disappeared during his late outburst, said with a chuckle:
"By Vanus and all the Graces, 'tis a lucky thing for you, you young scamp, that Peter O'Hare is not fifteen years younger. 'Tis meself would have tried a fall wid ye—ay, and come in at a canter. Indeed an' I'm not sure 'tis too late even now. She was mighty civil to me at dinner, indeed she was."
The worthy captain laughed heartily, and turned to make himself agreeable, in halting French, to a colonel of Portuguese artillery.
"Hang it, Lumsden," said Pomeroy, "I call it a crying shame, that merely because a man happens to patter a little Spanish he should not only be shoved over the heads of better men than himself, but cut out more presentable ones with the jolliest girl I've seen this end of the Bay."
Jack smiled and held his peace.
"I say, you fellows," said Shirley, "give me a rhyme for Saragossa, someone. I've just knocked off a little gem of a thing—'Lines to J——a A——z', but hang me if I can tag the last of 'em."
"A good job too!" said Smith. "The whole company seems to be moonstruck. 'Pon my word, I believe I'm the only one of you that can keep his head."
"Ah," said the Grampus with a capacious sigh, "'tisn't the head, it's the heart!" There was a general laugh at his lugubrious accent; whereupon, with a sudden return to everyday life, he cried: "And I'll bet you, Harry George Wakelyn Smith, you're one of the first to find it out."
Smith snorted scornfully. He little imagined that long before the war was over he would himself meet the lovely Spanish damsel in distress who was to become Lady Smith of Aliwal and give her name to a certain little town, the Saragossa of South Africa.
Jack, who had taken his comrades' good-humoured banter with unfailing cheerfulness, now slipped away to join the ladies in the sala. When he entered the room, he noticed at once a deeper flush than usual on Juanita's cheeks, and felt that something was amiss. It was some little time before he could escape the renewed attentions of the circle. Then, seating himself beside Juanita, he said anxiously:
"Is anything wrong, Juanita?"
"Wrong! No, of course not. Why should anything be wrong?"
She turned her head away, and tapped her hand impatiently with her fan. Jack, noting the flush on her cheek, felt uneasily that her manner belied her words.
"I don't know," he said. "I was afraid there was something. I wanted to tell you, Juanita, that—that—well, things have changed, you know. There is to be another campaign; I shall have to march with the regiment. There's no help for it. I can't go back to England—not yet."
"I knew; I was told it—by somebody else."
There was that in her tone which made Jack wish that he had told her earlier of what his unexpected meeting with his old comrades must inevitably involve. He had shrunk from the explanation—he did not quite know why.
After a moment's silence she added slowly: "I am sorry for Mr. Dugdale; he will have a lonely journey, I fear, and he's so very fond of company."
"Lonely! But you get on very well together."
"Oh yes! I like Mr. Dugdale very much, but you see—I shall not be there. I have made up my mind, quite decided, not to go after all. England is a cold, foggy, horrid country, and I'm sure I shouldn't like the English. I ought never to have come so far." She rose from her seat. "I will go back to the dear Sisters at Cariñena."
As she moved towards the balcony at the far end of the room, Jack caught the sparkle of tears in her eyes. He felt that he must be in fault; how or why he could not tell, and he was too much perturbed at Juanita's distress to think the matter out. He merely followed her. When they reached the balcony they stood for a few moments silent in the twilight, looking with unseeing eyes at the dim plaza below. There was a murmur of voices from the dusk, at first vague and indistinct, the words gradually stealing upon their consciousness with clearer and clearer meaning.
"There he was, poor little beggar, crying his eyes out. 'Ogbourne,' says I, 'what's amiss with Pepito?' 'Oh!' says he, 'crying for the moon. He wants to go with the Spanish señorita and stay with Mr. Lumsden at the same time; which ain't possible.' 'Well,' says I, 'I ain't so sure o' that. They do say he rescued her from old Boney himself and from a rascally Don too—yes, and they say she's main fond of him, which is only natural—considering.'"
Even in the dusk Jack, stealing a look at Juanita, saw that she had flushed hotly. As she half-turned to re-enter the room, he imprisoned the little hand that lay on the balustrade. She did not draw it away.
"But," continued the insistent voice, "what I want to know is, when's it to be?—that's what I want to know."