The Lamp and the Guitar
by By "Q"
(A.T. Quiller-Couch)
[from Shakespeare's Christmas and Other Stories, New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905]
[FROM THE MEMOIRS OF MANUEL, OR MANUS, MAcNEILL, AN AGENT IN THE SECRET SERVICE OF GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGNS OF 18o8-13]
I Have not the precise date in 1811 when Fuentes and I set out for Salamanca, but it must have been either in the third or fourth week of July.
In Portugal just then Lord Wellington was fencing, so to speak, with the points of three French armies at once. On the south he had Soult, on the north Dorsenne, and between them Marmont's troops were scattered along the valley of the Tagus, with Madrid as their far base. Being solidly concentrated, by short and rapid movements he could keep these three armies impotent for offence; but en revanche, he could make no overmastering attack upon any one of them. If he advanced far against Soult or against Dorsenne he must bring Marmont down on his flank, left or right; while, if he reached out and struck for the Tagus Valley, Marmont could borrow from right and left without absolutely crippling his colleagues, and roll up seventy thousand men to bar the road on Madrid. In short, the opposing armies stood at a deadlock, and there were rumours that Napoleon, who was pouring troops into Spain from the north, meant to follow and take the war into his own hands.
Now, the strength and the weakness of the whole position lay with Marmont; while the key of it, curiously enough, was Ciudad Rodrigo, garrisoned by Dorsenne —as in due time appeared. For the present, Wellington, groping for the vital spot, was learning all that could be learnt about Marmont's strength, its disposition, and (a matter of first importance) its victualling, Spain being a country where large armies starve. How many men were being drafted down from the north? How was Marmont scattering his cantonments to feed them? What was the state of the harvest? What provisions did Salamanca contain? And what stores were accumulating at Madrid, Valladolid, Burgos?
I had just arrived at Lisbon in a chassemarée of San Sebastian, bringing a report of the French troops, which for a month past had been pouring across the bridge of Irun: and how I had learnt this is worth telling. There was a cobbler, Martinez by name —a little man with a green shade over his eyes —who plied his trade in a wooden hutch at the end of the famous bridge. While he worked he counted every man, horse, standard, wagon, or gun that passed, and forwarded the numbers without help of speech or writing (for he could not even write his own name). He managed it all with his hammer, tapping out a code known to our fellows who roamed the shore below on the pretence of hunting for shellfish, but were prevented by the French cordon from getting within sight of the bridge. As for Martinez, the French Generals themselves gossipped around his hutch while he cobbled industriously at the soldiers' shoes.
I had presented my report to Lord Wellington, who happened to be in Lisbon quarrelling with the Portuguese Government and re-embarking (apparently for Cadiz) a battering train of guns and mortars which had just arrived from England: and after two days' holiday I was spending an idle morning in a wine-shop by the quay, where the proprietor, a fervid politician, kept on file his copies of the Government newspaper, the Lisbon Gazette. A week at sea had sharpened my appetite for news; and I was wrapped in study of the Gazette when an orderly arrived from headquarters with word that Lord Wellington requested my attendance there at once.
I found him in conference with a handsome, slightly built man —a Spaniard by his face —who stepped back as I entered, but without offering to retire. Instead, he took up his stand with his back to one of the three windows overlooking the street, and so continued to observe me, all the while keeping his own face in shade.
The General, as his habit was, came to business at once.
"I have sent for you," said he, "on a serious affair. Our correspondents in Salamanca have suddenly ceased to write."
"If your Excellency's correspondents are the same as the Government's," said I, "'tis small wonder," and I glanced at the newspaper in his hand —a copy of the same Gazette I had been reading.
"Then you also think this is the explanation?" He held out the paper with the face of a man handling vermin.
"The Government publishes its reports, the English newspapers copy them: these in turn reach Paris; the Emperor reads them: and," concluded I, with a shrug, "your correspondents cease to write, probably for the good reason that they are dead."
"That is just what I want you to find out," said he.
"Your Excellency wishes me to go to Salamanca? Very good. And, supposing these correspondents to be dead?"
"You will find others."
"That may not be easy: nevertheless, I can try. Your Excellency, by the way, will allow me to promise that future reports are not for publication?"
Wellington smiled grimly, doubtless from recollection of a recent interview with Silveira and the Portuguese Ministry. "You may rest assured of that," said he; and added: "There may be some delay, as you suggest, in finding fresh correspondents: and it is very necessary for me to know quickly how Salamanca stands for stores."
"Then I must pick up some information on my own account."
"The service will be hazardous ——"
"Oh, as for that ——" I put in, with another shrug.
"——and I propose to give you a companion," pursued Wellington, with a half-turn toward the man in the recess of the window. "This is Señor Fuentes. You are not acquainted, I believe? — as you ought to be."
Now from choice I have always worked alone: and had the General uttered any other name I should have been minded to protest, with the old Greek, that two were not enough for an army, while for any other purpose they were too many. But on hearsay the performances of this man Fuentes and his methods and his character had for months possessed a singular fascination for me. He was at once a strolling guitar-player and a licentiate of the University of Salamanca, a consorter with gypsies, and by birth a pure-blooded Castilian hidalgo. Some said that patriotism was a passion with him; with a face made for the love of women, he had a heart only for the woes of Spain. Others averred that hatred of the French was always his master impulse; that they, by demolishing the colleges of his University, and in particular his own beloved College of San Lorenzo, had broken his heart and first driven him to wander. Rewards he disdained; dangers he laughed at: his feats in the service had sometimes a touch of high comedy and always a touch of heroic grace. In short, I believe that if Spain had held a poet in those days, Fuentes would have passed into song and lived as one of his country's demigods.
He came forward now with a winning smile and saluted me cordially, not omitting a handsome compliment on my work. You could see that the man had not an ounce of meanness in his nature.
"We shall be friends," said he, turning to the Commander-in-Chief. "And that will be to the credit of both, since Señor MacNeill has an objection to comrades."
"I never said so."
"Excuse me, but I have studied your methods."
"Well, then," I replied, "I had the strongest objection, but you have made me forget it —as you have forgotten your repugnance to visit Salamanca." For although Fuentes flitted up and down and across Spain like a will-o'-the-wisp, I had heard that he ever avoided the city where he had lived and studied.
His fine eyes clouded, and he muttered some Latin words as it were with a voice indrawn.
"I beg your pardon?" put in Wellington sharply.
"Cecidit, cecidit Salmantica illa fortis," Fuentes repeated.
"'Cecidit' —ah! I see —a quotation. Yes, they are knocking the place about: as many as fifteen or sixteen colleges razed to the ground." He opened the newspaper again and ran his eyes down the report. "You'll excuse me: in England we have our own way of pronouncing Latin, and for the moment I didn't quite catch ——Yes, sixteen colleges; a clean sweep! But before long, Señor Fuentes, we'll return the compliment upon their fortifications."
"That must be my consolation, your Excellency," Fuentes made answer with a smile which scarcely hid its irony.
The General began to discuss our route: our precautions he left to us. He was well aware of the extreme risk we ran, and once again made allusion to it as he dismissed us.
"If that were all your Excellency demanded!"
Fuentes' gaiety returned as we found ourselves in the street. "We shall get on together like a pair of schoolboys," he assured me. "We understand each other, you and I. But oh, those islanders!"
We left Lisbon that same evening on muleback, taking the road for Abrantes. So universally were the French hated that the odds were we might have dispensed with precautions at this stage, and indeed for the greater part of the journey. The frontier once passed we should be travelling in our native country —Fuentes as a gypsy and I as an Asturian, moving from one harvest-job to another. We carried no compromising papers: and if the French wanted to arrest folks on mere suspicion they had the entire population to practise on. Nevertheless, having ridden north-east for some leagues beyond Abrantes —on the direct road leading past Ciudad Rodrigo to Salamanca —we halted at Amendoa, bartered one of our mules for a couple of skins of wine and ten days' provisions, and, having made our new toilet in a chestnut grove outside the town, headed back for the road leading east through Villa Velha into the Tagus valley.
Beyond the frontier we were among Marmont's cantonments: but these lay scattered, and we avoided them easily. Keeping to the hill-tracks on the northern bank of the river, and giving a wide berth to the French posts in front of Alcantara, we struck away boldly for the north through the Sierras: reached the Alagon, and, following up its gorges, crossed the mountains in the rear of Bejar, where a French force guarded the military pass.
So far we had travelled unmolested, if toilsomely; and a pleasanter comrade than Fuentes no man could ask for. His gaiety never failed him: yet it was ever gentle, and I suspected that it covered either a native melancholy or some settled sorrow —sorrow for his country, belike —but there were depths he never allowed me to sound. He did everything well, from singing a love-song to tickling a trout and cooking it for our supper: and it was after such a supper, as we lay and smoked on a heathery slope beyond Bejar, that he unfolded his further plans.
"My friend," said he, "there were once two brothers, students of Salamanca, and not far removed in age. Of these the elder was given to love-making and playing on the guitar; while the other stuck to his books —which was all the more creditable because his eyes were weak. I hope you are enjoying this story?"
"It begins to be interesting."
"Yet these two brothers —they were nearly of one height, by the way —obtained their bachelor's degrees, and in time their licentiates, though as rewards for different degrees of learning. They were from Villacastin, beyond Avila in Old Castille: but their father, a hidalgo of small estates there, possessed also a farm and the remains of a castle across the frontier in the kingdom of Leon, a league to the west of Salvatierra on the Tormes. It had come to him as security for a loan which was never paid: and, dying, he left this property to his younger son Andrea. Now when the French set a Corsican upon the throne of our kingdoms, these two brothers withdrew from Salamanca; but while Andrea took up his abode on his small heritage, and gave security for his good behaviour, Eugenio, the elder, turned his back on the paternal home (which the French had ravaged), and became a rebel, a nameless, landless man and a wanderer, with his guitar for company. You follow me?"
"I follow you, Señor Don Eugenio ——"
"Not 'de Fuentes,"' he put in with a smile. "The real name you shall read upon certain papers and parchments of which I hope to possess myself to-night. In short, my friend, since we are on the way to Salamanca, why should I not apply there for my doctor's degree?"
"It requires a thesis, I have always understood."
"That is written."
"May I ask upon what subject?"
"The fiend take me if I know yet! But it is written, safe enough."
"Ah, I see! We go to Salvatierra? Yes, yes, but what of me, who know scarcely any Latin beyond my credo?"
"Why, that is where I feel a certain delicacy. Having respect to your rank, caballero, I do not like to propose that you should become my servant."
"I am your servant already, and for a week past I have been an Asturian. It will be promotion."
He sprang up gaily. "What a comrade is mine!" he cried, flinging away the end of his cigarette. "To Salvatierra, then —Santiago, and close Spain!"
Darkness overtook us as we climbed down the slopes: but we pushed on, Fuentes leading the way boldly. Evidently he had come to familiar ground. But it was midnight before he brought me, by an abominable road, to a farmstead the walls of which showed themselves ruinous even in the starlight —for moon there was none. At an angle of the building, which once upon a time had been whitewashed, rose a solid tower, with a doorway and an iron-studded door, and a narrow window overlooking it. In spite of the hour, Fuentes advanced nonchalantly and began to bang the door, making noise enough to wake the dead. The window above was presently opened —one could hear, with a shaking hand.
"Who is there?" asked a man's voice no less tremulous. "Who are you, for the love of God?"
"Gente de paz, my dear brother! —not your friends the French. I hope, by the way, you are entertaining none."
"I have been in bed these four hours or five. 'Peace,' say you? I wish you would take your own risks and leave me in peace! What is it you want, this time?"
"'Tis a good six weeks, brother, since my last visit: and, as you know, I never call without need."
"Well, what is it you need?"
"I need," said Fuentes with great gravity, "the loan of your spectacles."
"Be serious, for God's sake! And do not raise your voice so: the French may be following you ——"
"Dear Andrea, and if the French were to hear it, surely mine is an innocent request. A pair of spectacles!"
"The French ——" began Don Andrea and broke off, peering down short-sightedly into the courtyard. "Ah, there is someone else! Who is it? Who is it you have therein the darkness?"
"Dios! A moment since you were begging for silence, and now you want me to call out my friend's name —to who knows what ears? He has a mule, here, and I —oh yes, beside the spectacles I shall require a horse: a horse, and —let me see —a treatise."
"Have you been drinking, brother?"
"No: and, since you mention it, a cup of wine, too, would not come amiss. Is this a way to treat the caballero my friend? For the honour of the family, brother, step down and open the door."
Don Andrea closed the window, and by-and-by we heard the bolts withdrawn, one by one —and they were heavy. The door opened at length, and a thin man in a nightcap peered out upon us with an oil-lamp held aloft over the hand shading his eyes.
"You had best call Juan," said his brother easily, "and bid him stable the mule. For the remainder of the night we are your guests; and, to ensure our sleeping well, you shall fetch out the choicest of the theses you have composed for your doctorate and read us a portion over our wine."
We lay that night, after a repast of thin wine and chestnuts, in a spare chamber, and on beds across the feet of which the rats scudded. I did not see Don Andrea again: but his brother, who had risen betimes, awakened me from uneasy slumber and showed me his spoil. Sure enough it included a pair of spectacles and a bulky roll of manuscript, a leathern jerkin, a white shirt, and a pair of velvet-fustian breeches, tawny yellow in hue and something the worse for wear. Belowstairs, in the courtyard, we found a white-haired retainer waiting, with his grip on the bridles of my mule and a raw-boned grey mare.
"The caballero will bring them back when he has done with them?" said this old man as I mounted. The request puzzled me for a moment until I met his eyes and found them fastened wistfully on my breeches.
Assuredly Fuentes was an artist. Besides the spectacles, which in themselves transformed him, he had borrowed a broad-brimmed hat and a rusty black sleeveless mancha, which, by the way he contrived it to hang, gave his frame an extraordinary lankiness. But his final and really triumphant touch was simply a lengthening of the stirrups, so that his legs dangled beneath the mare's belly like a couple of ropes with shoes attached. If Don Andrea watched us out of sight from his tower —as I doubt not he did —his emotions as he recognised his portrait must have been lively.
In this guise we ambled steadily all day along the old Roman road leading to Salamanca, and came within sight of the city as the sun was sinking. It stood on the eastern bank of the river, fronting the level rays, its walls rising tier upon tier, its towers and cupolas of cream-coloured stone bathed in gold, with recesses of shadowy purple. A bridge of twenty-five or six arches spanned the cool river-beds, and towards this we descended between cornfields, of which the light swept the topmost ears while the stalks stood already in twilight. Truly it was a noble city yet, and so I cried aloud to Fuentes. But his eyes, I believe, saw only what the French had marred or demolished.
A group of their soldiery idled by the bridge-end, waiting for the guard to be relieved, and lolled against the parapet watching the bathers, whose shouts came up to me from the chasm below. But instead of riding up and presenting our passes, Fuentes, a furlong from the bridge, turned his mare's head to the left and reined up at the door of a small riverside tavern.
The innkeeper —a brisk, athletic man, with the air of a retired servant —appeared at the door as we dismounted. He scanned Fuentes narrowly, while giving him affable welcome. Plainly he recognised him as an old patron, yet plainly the recognition was imperfect.
"Eh, my good Bartolomé, and so you still cling above the river? I hope custom clings here too?"
"But —but can it be the Señor Don ——"
"Eugenio, my friend. The spectacles puzzle you: they belong to my brother, Don Andrea, and I may tell you that after a day's wear I find them trying to the eyes. But, you understand, there are reasons . . . and so you will suppose me to be Don Andrea, while bringing a cup of wine, and another for my servant, to Don Eugenio's favourite seat, which was at the end of the garden beyond the mulberry-tree, if you remember."
"Assuredly this poor house is your Lordship's, and all that belongs to it. The wine shall be fetched with speed. But as for the table at the end of the garden, I regret to tell your Lordship that it is occupied for a while. If for this evening, I might recommend the parlour ——" The innkeeper made his excuse with a certain quick trepidation which Fuentes did not fail to note.
"What is this? Your garden full? It appears then, my good Bartolomé, that your custom has not suffered in these bad times."
"On the contrary, Señor, it has fallen off woefully! My garden has been deserted for months, and is empty now, save for two gentlemen, who, as luck will have it, have chosen to seat themselves in your Lordship's favourite corner. Ah, yes, the old times were the best! and I was a fool to grumble, as I sometimes did, when my patrons ran me off my legs."
"But steady, Bartolomé: not so fast! Surely there used to be three tables beyond the mulberry-tree, or my memory is sadly at fault."
"Three tables? Yes, it is true there are three tables. Nevertheless ——"
"I cannot see," pursued Fuentes with a musing air —"no, for the life of me I cannot see how two gentlemen should require three tables to drink their wine at."
"Nor I, Señor. It must, as you say, be a caprice: nevertheless they charged me that on all accounts they were to have that part of the garden to themselves."
"A very churlish caprice, then! They are Frenchmen, doubtless?"
"No, indeed, your Lordship: but two lads of good birth, gentlemen of Spain, the one a bachelor, the other a student of the University."
"All the more, then, they deserve a lesson. Bartolomé, you will tell your tapster to bring my wine to the vacant table beyond the mulberry-tree."
"But, Señor ——" As Fuentes moved off, the inn-keeper put forth a hand to entreat if not to restrain him.
"Eh?" Fuentes halted as if amazed at his impudence. "Ah, to be sure, I am Don Andrea: but do not forget, my friend, that Don Eugenio used to be quick-tempered, and that in members of one family these little likenesses crop up in the most unexpected fashion." He strode away down the shadowy garden-path over which in the tree-tops a last beam or two of sunset lingered: and I, having hitched up our beasts, followed him, carrying the saddle-bags and his guitar-case.
Three tables, as he had premised, stood in the patch of garden beyond the mulberry-tree, hedged in closely on three sides, giving a view in front upon the towers and fortifications across the river; a nook secluded as a stage-box facing a scene that might have been built and lit up for our delectation. The tables, with benches alongside, stood moderately close together —two by the river-wall, the third in the rear, where the hedge formed an angle: and the two gentlemen so jealous of their privacy were seated at the nearer of the two tables overlooking the river, and on the same bench —though at the extreme ends of it and something more than a yard apart.
They stared up angrily at our intrusion, and for the moment the elder of the pair seemed about to demand our business. But Fuentes walked calmly by, took his seat at the next table, pulled out his bundle of manuscript, adjusted his spectacles, and began to read. Having deposited my baggage, I took up a respectful position behind him, ignoring —somewhat ostentatiously perhaps —the strangers' presence, yet not without observing them from the corner of my eye.
They were young: the elder, maybe, three-and-twenty, short, thick-set, with features just now darkened by his ill-humour, but probably sullen enough at the best of times: the younger, tall and nervous and extraordinarily fair for a Spaniard, with a weak, restless mouth and restless, passionate eyes. Indeed, either this restlessness was a disease with him or he was suffering just now from an uncontrollable agitation. Eyes, mouth, feet, fingers —the whole man seemed to be twitching. I set down his age at eighteen. On the table stood a large flask of wine, from which he helped himself fiercely, and beside the flask lay a long bundle wrapped in a cloak.
This young man, having drained his glass at a gulp, let out an oath and sprang up suddenly with a glare upon Fuentes, who had stretched out his legs and was already absorbed in his reading.
"Señor Stranger," he began impetuously, "we would have you to know, if the innkeeper has not already told you ——"
"Gently!" interposed his comrade. "You are going the wrong way to work. My friend, Sir" —he addressed Fuentes, who looked up with a mild surprise —"my friend, Sir, was about to suggest that the light is poor for reading."
"Oh," answered Fuentes, smiling easily, "for a minute or two —until they bring my wine. Moreover, I wear excellent glasses,"
"But the place is not too well chosen."
Fuentes appeared to digest this for a moment, then turned around upon me with a puzzled air.
"My good Pedro, you have not misled me, I hope? I am short-sighted, gentlemen; and if we have strayed into a private garden I offer you my profoundest apologies." He gathered his manuscript into a roll and stood up.
"To be plain with you, Sir," said the dark man sullenly, "this is not precisely a private garden, and yet we desire privacy."
"Oho?" After a glance around, Fuentes fixed his eyes on the bundle lying on the table. "And at the point of the sword —eh?"
The two young men started and at once began to eye each other suspiciously.
"No, no," Fuentes assured them, smiling; "this is no trap, believe me, but a chance encounter; and I am no alguacil in disguise, but a poor scholar returning to Salamanca for his doctorate. Nor do I seek to know the cause of your quarrel. But here comes the wine!" He waited until the tapster had set flask and glasses on the table and withdrawn. "In the interval, before your friends arrive you will not grudge me, Sirs, the draining of a glass to remembrance in a garden where I too have loved my friends, and quarrelled with them, in days gone by —days older now than I care to reckon." . He raised the wine and held it up for a moment against the sunset. "Youth —youth!" be sighed.
"You are welcome, Sir," said the younger man a trifle more graciously; "but we expect no seconds, and, believe me, we shall presently be pressed for time."
Fuentes raised his eyebrows. "You surprise and shock me, Sirs. In the days to which I drank just now it was not customary for gentlemen of the University of Salamanca to fight without witnesses. We left that to porters and grooms."
"And pray," sneered the darker young man, "may we know the name of him who from the height of his years and experience presumes to intrude this lecture on us?"
"You may address me, if you will, as Don Andrea Galazza de Villacastin, a licentiate of your University ——"
To my astonishment the younger man stopped him with a short offensive laugh. "You may spare us the rest, Sir. Don Andrea Galazza is known to us and to all honest patriots by repute: we can supply the rest of his titles for ourselves, beginning with renegado ——"
"Hist!" interposed his comrade, at the same time catching up the swords from the table. "Don't be a fool, Sebastian —speak lower, for God's sake! —the very soldiers at the bridge will hear you!"
"Ay, Sir," chimed in Fuentes gravely; "listen to your friend's advice, and do not increase the peril of your remarks by the foolishness of shouting them."
But the youngster, flushed with wine and overstrung, had lost for the moment all self-control. "I accept that risk," cried he, "for the pleasure of telling Don Andrea Galazza what kind of man he passes for among honourable folk. He, the brother of Don Eugenio —of our hero, the noble Fuentes! He, that signed his peace while that noble heart preferred to break! He spat in furious contempt.
Fuentes turned to me quietly. "Behold one of the enthusiasts we came to seek," he murmured; "and one who will not fear risks. But these testimonials are embarrassing, and this fame of mine swells to a nuisance." He faced his accuser. "Nevertheless," answered he aloud, "you make a noise that must disconcert your friend, who is in two minds about assassinating me. Why spoil his game by arousing the neighbourhood?"
"Señor Don Andrea, you know too much —thanks to my friend here," said the dark man slowly.
"But we are not assassins," put in the youngster. "Renegade though you be, Don Andrea, I give you your chance." He snatched the foil from his senior's hand and presented it solemnly, hilt foremost, to Fuentes.
"Youth —youth!" murmured Fuentes with an appreciative laugh, as he tucked the foil under his arm, took off his spectacles and rubbed them, laughing again. He readjusted them carefully and, saluting, fell on guard. "I am at your service, Sir."
The youth stepped forward hotly, touched blades, and almost immediately lunged. An instant later his sword, as though it had been a bird released from his hand, flew over his shoulder into the twilight behind.
"That was ill-luck for you, Señor," said Fuentes lowering his point. "But who can be sure of himself in this confounded twilight?" He swung half-about towards the river-wall, with a glance across at the city, where already a few lights began to twinkle in the dusk. And, so turning, he seemed on a sudden to catch his breath.
And almost on that instant the youngster, who had fallen back disconcerted, sprang forward in a fresh fury and gripped his comrade by the arm, pointing excitedly towards a group of houses above the fortifications, whence from a high upper storey, deeply recessed between flanking walls, a light redder than the rest twinkled across to us.
"The proof!" cried he. "She knew you would be here, and that is the proof! You at least I will kill before I leave this garden, as I came to kill you to-night."
In his new gust of fury he seemed to have forgotten his discomfiture —to have forgotten even the existence of Fuentes, who now faced them both with a smile which (unless the dusk distorted it) had some bitterness in its raillery.
"If I mistake not, Sirs, the light you were discussing signals to us from an upper chamber in the Lesser Street of the Virgins. It can only be seen from this garden and from the far end of it, where we now stand. I will not ask you who lights it now: but she who lit it in former days was named Luisa. Oh yes, she was circumspect —a good maid then, and no doubt a good maid now: in that street of the Virgins there was at least one prudent. Youth flies, ay de mi! But youth also, as I perceive to-night, repeats itself; and Luisa —who was always circumspect, though a conspirator —apparently repeats herself too."
"Luisa? What do you know of Luisa?" stammered the younger man. The name seemed to have fallen on him like the touch of an enchanter's wand, stiffening him to stone. Like a statue he stood there, peering forward with a white face.
"My friend" —Fuentes turned to me —"be so good as to unstrap the case yonder and hand me my guitar."
He laid his foil on the table, took the guitar from me, and, having seated himself on the bench, tried the strings softly, all the while looking up with grave raillery at the two young men.
"What do I know of Luisa? Listen!" Under his voice he began a light-hearted little song, which in English might run like this, or as nearly as I can contrive ——
My love, she lives in Salamanca
All up a dozen flights of stairs;
There with the sparrows night and morning
Under the roof she chirps her prayers.
They say her wisdom comes from heaven —
So near the clouds and chimneys meet —
I rather think Luisa's sparrows
Fetch it aloft there from the street!
What would you have? In la Verdura
All the day long she keeps a stall:
Students, bachelors buy her nosegays,
Given with a look and —well, that's all!
Go, silly boy, believe you first with her —
Twenty at once she'll entertain.
Why love a mistress and be curst with her?
Copy Luisa —love all Spain!"
|
He paused, still eyeing them. "You recognise the tune, Sirs? Does she play it yet? Well, then, I made it for her.
"You? How came you to make her that tune?" The younger man had found his voice at length. "No, Sir; coquette she may be, but that she ever was friends with such a one as Andrea Galazza I will not yet believe."
"And you are right. Sirs, you have not yet told me your names: but in your generous heat you have given me your secret —that you are two lovers of Spain, and even such a pair as my friend and I have travelled some distance to seek. In return you shall have mine. I tricked you just now. I am not Don Andrea, but his brother Eugenio —or, as some call him, Fuentes."
"Fuentes! You!"
"Upon my honour, yes." He pulled off his spectacles, meeting their incredulity with a frank laugh. "What proof can I give you?" The guitar still lay across his knees: he picked it up as if to play, but set it down after a moment with another laugh, hard and bitter. "Let us go together, gentlemen, to the Street of the Virgins, and ask Luisa if she remembers me."
It was agreed that the young men —who gave their names as Diego de Ribalta and Sebastian Paz —should not accompany us into the city, but wend their way back across the bridge, while we finished our wine and mounted our beasts at leisure. The officer at the bridge-end made no pother about our passports (borrowed, I need scarcely say, from the estimable Don Andrea, who, as his brother explained, was a careful man, and zealous in all dealings with the authorities); and by-and-by we were clattering up-hill through the ill-lighted streets of Salamanca. At the head of the first street our two friends stepped out of the shadow and joined us in silence. In silence, too, Fuentes regreeted them, and led the way to an inn first, the Four Crowns, standing almost under the shadow of the Old Cathedral, where we stabled mare and mule; then, on foot, through a maze of zigzagging lanes and alleys, back into the depths of a waterside quarter. Once he was at fault —the lane we followed ending abruptly in an open space strewn with rubble-heaps, a broad area where the French had lately been at work. Among these heaps he blundered for a while in the darkness, and then, retracing his steps, took up the scent again and led us down one narrow street, across another; turned to the right, counting the houses as he went, and knocked at the twelfth door without hesitation. The knock was a peculiar one —five quick taps, followed, after a pause, by one distinct and heavy.
"But I must ask these gentlemen to do what remains," said he, turning and addressing our companions. "Luisa has doubtless changed the password since my time."
"Willingly, Señor Fuentes," agreed de Ribalta. "You will not, of course, object to be blindfolded? —a formality, merely, in your case."
The porter, having received the password in a whisper through the grille, unbolted to us, and opened the door upon a pitch-dark passage. Here we submitted to have our eyes bandaged, and Sebastian Paz took my hand to guide me. Eight flights of stairs we mounted before the hubbub of many voices and the tinkle of a guitar saluted my ears; two more, and the hubbub grew louder; another, and it grew obstreperous, deafening. At the head of the twelfth flight one of our guides rapped on a door; the noise died down suddenly; a bolt was shot back and the bandage dragged from my eyes.
I found myself blinking and staring across a room filled with tobacco-smoke, and upon a company which at first glance I took for a crew of demons. They were, in fact, a students' chorus —young men in black, with black silk masks covering the upper half of their faces. All wore the same uniform —black tunic, short black cloak, knee-breeches, and stockings. Some squatted on the floor, two lolled on a divan by the window —each with a guitar across his knees. The man who had opened to us held a tambourine, and he alone wore a little round cap. The others wore black cocked hats, or had flung them off for better ease. In a deep armchair beside the fireplace sat a stiff-backed, middle-aged woman in black —a duenna evidently who regarded us with eyes like large black beads, but did not interrupt her knitting. In the corner behind the door stood a bed, with a crucifix above it: and on the bed, between two crates, the one of them heaped with flowers, sat a young woman dangling a pretty pair of feet and smoking a cigarette while she made up a posy.
In spite of their masks one could tell that all the men were young —mere lads, indeed. And if this were Luisa, Fuentes had slandered her sorely. She seemed scarcely eighteen —and we had taken her, too, at unawares, when a woman forgets for a moment her endless vigilant parry against Time. She tossed her posy into the half-filled basket, clapped her hands, and sprang off the bed.
"Two new recruits! Bravo, Sebastianillo!"
With that, as she stepped gaily forward, her eyes fell on Fuentes, and she swayed and fell back a pace, catching at the foot of the bed.
"Don Eugenio!"
"Your servant, Señorita." He bowed elaborately and coldly. "You keep the lamp burning and I accepted its invitation. Your cheeks, too, Señorita, keep the old colour. I congratulate you —and you, Doña Isabel." He bowed to the old lady. "To live with youth —that is the way to live always young."
She had moved forward again, as if to take him by both hands: but faltered. "Yes, we have kept the lamp burning, Don Eugenio," she answered with a voice curiously strained. "My friends" —she turned to the young men —"rise and salute our guest of guests, Don Eugenio Fuentes!"
"Fuentes!"
"What are you telling us, Luisa? The Fuentes? But it is impossible!"
"Impossible! Fuentes comes no more to Salamanca."
Nevertheless all had sprung to their feet, and Fuentes comprehended them all in an ironical bow.
"That is the name by which I call myself, Sirs, since leaving the University."
Luisa made a dumb signal, and one of the youths handed him a guitar. He struck but one chord to assure himself of its tune ——
There's one that lives in Salamanca
All up a dozen flights of stairs;
There with the sparrows, night and morning,
Under the roof she chirps her prayers.
They say her wisdom comes from heaven —
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Will you not take a guitar, Señorita, and help me with the old song?
So near the clouds and chimneys meet —
I rather think Luisa's sparrows
Fetch it aloft there from the street!"
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Above all things women suspect and fear irony: it is not one of their weapons. Luisa glanced at Fuentes doubtfully, I could see, and with some pain in her doubt. But it was the old song, after all, and he was singing it de bon cœur. She caught up a guitar and chimed in with the second verse, taking up the soprano's part, while he at once obeyed and dropped from treble to alto ——
Which will you have? In la Verdura
Pretty Luisa keeps a stall:
Hands you a rose for your peseta,
Nothing to pay but a thorn —that's all!
King of her love, with no Prime Minister,
Lord of an attic blithe I'd reign.
But ay de mil! from here to Finisterre
Pretty Luisa loves all Spain.
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His eyes, as he sang, were fastened on young Sebastian Paz, and she, noting them, played the verse to its ringing close, turned abruptly, and laid the guitar on the bed between the flower-baskets.
"But I think it is business brings you here, Don Eugenio."
He had stepped to the open lattice, and with an upward glance at the lamp, burning steadily in the windless air, leaned on the sill and looked out over the city. Somewhere below by the waterside a dull noise sounded —the thud of a falling beam. The French down there were working by lantern-light, clearing away the houses from their fortifications.
"Yes, I come on business, and from Lord Wellington. The good citizens in Salamanca have ceased to write."
"And small blame to them," one of the young men answered.
"Small blame to them, I agree. And yet they must send news —this time to Lord Wellington, who knows better than to print it."
His eyes interrogated Luisa, who raised hers at length to meet them.
"That will not be easy," said she, with a pucker of her pretty forehead. "They are scared and afraid for their heads: nevertheless, Don Eugenio might bring back their confidence, if only we can bring him face to face with them." She seated herself on the bed's edge and mused awhile with her hands in her lap.
"You know where to find them?" asked Fuentes, addressing the company in general.
"Oh, yes, Señor —assuredly we know where to find them!" answered one or two.
"Then the whole thing is very simple. You must let me join your choir, gentlemen."
"Yes, yes, that is simple enough," put in Luisa impatiently: "the more so, as our chorus is popular not only in the taverns, but at the French officers' messes. But these spies of ours are slow and dull to a degree: I think sometimes it takes a quite special clumsiness to be a clerk of the arsenal or to swindle the country in the military stores. We can get you into communication with them, Don Eugenio: but how are they to pass their information to you? They are born bunglers, and the French begin to use their eyes." She pursed her lips for a moment. "Is your friend new to this work?" she asked, suddenly turning toward me a gaze of frank inspection.
Fuentes smiled. "You would not say so, Señorita, were I free to tell you his name."
"As for that," said I, "where Señor Don Eugenio entrusts his secret I may not hesitate to entrust mine. My name is Manuel MacNeill, Señorita, and I kiss your hands and am at your service."
Luisa rose and dropped me a very stately curtsey. "Happy were I, Don Manuel MacNeill, to welcome you, even if you did not solve our difficulty. You are clever at disguises, I have been told. Well, I have a disguise for you —though not, to be sure, a pleasant one."
"I take the downs with the ups," said I.
"Well, then, Don Diego here is an artist. He can paint you a bunch of grapes so that the birds come to peck at it: moreover, he has studied at the hospital. We must find you a suit of rags, Sir, and Don Diego shall paint you as full of sores as Lazarus."
"And after that?"
"After that you will go to the porch of the New Cathedral, to the shady side of it —look you how I study your comfort —facing on the Square of the Old College: and there you shall collect the alms of the charitable. Many things, I am told, find their way into a beggar's hat."
"Señorita," said Fuentes gravely, with a glance up at the lamp, "it was a good star that led us here to-night."
"The star, as you call it, has not failed in all these years," she answered, with a look of timid appeal which hardened to one of defiance.
"Nay," answered be coldly and lightly, "I never doubted it would —while there was oil to feed it."
On the morrow, then, I took up my station by the porch of the Cathedral, with a highly artistic wound in my left leg, a shade over my right eye, and beside me a crutch and a ragged cap. The first day brought me coppers only: but late on the second afternoon a stout citizen, pausing on the steps and catching his breath asthmatically before entering the Cathedral, dropped a paper pellet in with his penny. On the third day it began to rain pellets, and I drank that night to the assured success of our campaign.
I saw nothing of Fuentes. It had been agreed between us that I should play my part in my own fashion, and I played it so thoroughly as to take lodgings in the beggars' quarter, in a thieves' den —it was little better —off the Street of the Rosary. It was enough for me that, however Fuentes went about the sowing, the harvest kept pouring in. As for the Street of the Virgins, I had been brought to it and had quitted it in the dark, and it is a question if by daylight I could have found it again. At any rate, I did not try.
But on the fourth day, at about five in the afternoon, as the day's heat began to grow tolerable, I caught sight of Luisa herself picking her way towards the Cathedral porch along the pavement under the faqade of the University. Before entering the great doors she paused on the step beside me, bent to drop a coin into my cap, and whispered —
"When I come out, follow me."
She passed on into the Cathedral and did not reappear for a quarter of an hour, perhaps. In this time I had made up my mind that, whatever the risk of my obeying her, she had probably weighed it against some risk more urgent, and perhaps brought the message direct from Fuentes. So when she came forth, and after pausing a moment to readjust her mantilla, tripped down the steps and away to the left down the street leading to the Porta del Rio, I picked up my crutch, yawned, shook the coppers in my wallet, and hobbled after her at a decent distance.
All the way I kept my eyes open and my ears too. In the streets around the Porta del Rio the city's traffic was beginning to flow again after the day's siesta: but I made pretty sure that we were not being tracked. Through half-a-dozen streets she led me, and so to one which I supposed to be the Street of the Virgins, and to a door which I recognised for that to which Fuentes had brought me four nights ago.
She had already knocked and been admitted: but the door opened again as I came abreast of it, and I stepped past the porter into the passage. Luisa stood halfway up the first flight of stairs under a sunny window and beckoned, and aloft I climbed after her to her attic. With her hand on the latch of her own door, she turned.
"You will find your clothes within," she said, and opened the door for me to pass. "Dress —dress with speed —and find Don Eugenio. Your work is done, and you must both be beyond the bridge before sunset."
"Is there treachery, Señorita ?" I asked.
"There is treachery of a kind, but not of the kind you guess. It is important that Don Eugenio should be beyond the bridge to-night. Your beasts at the Four Crowns are ready saddled. Find your friend, and help him to go with all speed."
"But where shall I find him, Señorita ? I have not set eyes on him for three or four days."
"Yet he has done his work surely, has he not?"
"Far better than I could have hoped."
"You ask where he is to be found? But where else than by the Archbishop's College, near by where the French have pulled down his own College of San Lorenzo, and are destroying more? You men!" She broke out into sudden passionate contempt. "The past is all you have eyes for —the poor, wild, blundering past. You have no eyes for the present, and with the past you poison its living joy. We women cannot be always seventeen: yet because we are not, you kill us —you kill us, I say!" Then, while I stared at her in downright amaze, "Go, dress!" she cried, thrusting me into the room. "In your coat you will find two letters. That without address you will give to Don Eugenio when you find him: that which is marked with a cross you will hand to him when you shall have passed the bridge —on no account before. And now be quick, I beseech you: for this one room is all my house."
Almost she thrust me within, and closed the door gently upon me. When I emerged, in my right and proper clothes, it was to find her yet waiting there upon the landing.
"I thank you for your speed, Señor Don Manuel; for I, too, am in haste to change my dress: and my dress will require care to-night, since I go to a masquerade." She gave me her hand. "Farewell, friend!" she said.
I found Don Eugenio behind the College of the Archbishop, seated on a mound and watching the French sappers at their work. I gave him Luisa's letter.
"The wench," said he calmly, having read it, "is a born conspirator. She cannot be happy unless she has a card hidden even from her fellow-plotters. Still, it is usually safe to follow her advice. Our work is pretty thoroughly done, I fancy?"
I nodded.
"We will see to our beasts then."
"She tells me they are ready saddled."
"Saints! She is in a hurry, that girl! Ah, well, then let us go and ask no questions."
We found our mare and mule, paid our reckoning, and rode forth from Salamanca. At the bridge-end we showed the passports, and were bidden to go in peace. As we climbed the hill beyond, I handed Fuentes Luisa's second letter.
"She bade me deliver it here," I explained.
He read it, turned in his saddle, and looked back towards the twilit sky. "A likely tale," said he, crushing the letter into his pocket.
Scarcely a year later —to be precise, on the 17th of June, 1812 —the Allied forces crossed the fords above and below Salamanca, and invested the fortifications which still commanded the bridge. In the suburbs and outlying quarters the inhabitants lit up their houses and, cheering and weeping, thronged the streets to press the hands of the deliverers.
On the 27th the forts fell, and these scenes were renewed. I was passing through the Plaza Mayor that night, about eight o'clock, when a man plucked me by the sleeve, and, turning in the light of a bonfire, I confronted Fuentes. I had not seen him since our return to Lisbon: and his face, in the bonfire's glare, seemed to me to have aged woefully.
"The shells may have spared her house," said he. "Do you care to go with me and see what remains of it?"
He linked his arm in mine. We dived into the dark streets together.
The Street of the Virgins had suffered from the Allies' artillery, and we picked our way over fallen chimney-stacks and heaps of rubble to the remembered door. It stood open, no porter guarding it: but a lamp smoked in the stairway, and by the light of it we mounted together.
On the topmost landing all was dark, but here within the half-open door a light shone. Fuentes tapped on the door and pressed it open. From a deep armchair beside the empty fireplace a woman rose to greet us. It was the duenna, Doña Isabel. Behind her in the open window a lamp shone within a red shade, swaying a little in the draught.
"I give you welcome, Sirs," quavered the old lady in a voice that seemed to flicker, too, in the draught. "By the shouting I understood that the forts have fallen, and for some while I have been expecting you. . . . It is dull up here, and a poor welcome for young gentlemen since my darling died. But on such a night as this ——"
She gazed around her, resting both hands on the arms of her chair.
"Luisa! Where is Luisa?" cried Fuentes sharply.
"They come very seldom now," pursued the old woman, not hearing or not comprehending. "It is dull, you understand. You, Sir, are Don Eugenio, are you not?" She nodded palsywise toward the white bed, where a broken guitar lay between two baskets of withered flowers.
"I was to tell you ——" She broke off and lifted a hand half-way to her brow, but let it drop. "I was to tell you, if you came, that her letter was true, and always the lamp had been lit for you only. It burns still, you see. She loved you, my little one did; and she was good —always, though she laughed, she was good."
Fuentes stepped to the bed and took the guitar in his hands. Some blow had broken in the sounding-board, and one of the strings had snapped.
"There is no blood upon it," went on the old woman in the same tone that seemed pitilessly striving not to hurt. "The little one scarcely bled at all. But Don Diego struck hard, and somehow the guitar was broken, yet it may have been with her elbow as she fell. It was not treachery, you understand. At first she believed that in his jealousy he meant to betray you, but he meant only to murder. And she, discovering this, dressed herself in your clothes and took your place in the line that night: I heard her playing down the stairs: they were all playing 'My love, she lives in Salamanca' —that was the tune —your own tune, Don Eugenio —and she, with her mask on, singing, bravely, the third in the line. She was short, you remember —oh, perhaps a head and shoulders shorter than you! —but Don Diego, outside the door in the darkness, could not see well, or maybe he was misled by your guitar. And, afterwards, Don Sebastian ran him through. They brought her upstairs to me and laid her on the bed. She was breathing yet, but for a very little while: and I was to tell you —I was to tell you ——" She broke off again, seeking to remember.
"Was it something about the lamp, Doña Isabel?"
"Yes, that was it —but I have told you already, eh? Only for you she had ever lit it: for years, yet always and only for you. . . . "
He crept past me, the guitar beneath his arm, and I followed. He went like a blind man, groping between the stair-rail and the wall.
[The End]
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