Part 17

"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.

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