The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 19

II.

CAPTAIN MCNEILL'S ADVENTURES.

"But how on earth came you here?" was the unspoken question in the eyes of both of us; and, each reading the reflection of his own, we both broke out together into a laugh--though my kinsman's was all but inaudible--and after it he lay back on his pillow (an old knapsack) and panted.

"My story must needs be the shorter," said I; "so let us have it over and get it out of the way. I come from watching Caffarelli in the north, and for the last four days have been taking a holiday and twiddling my fingers in camp here, just across the Zapardiel.

Happening this afternoon to stroll to this amazing rock, I fell in with the reverend father here, and most incautiously told him my name: since which he has been leading me a dance which may or may not have turned my hair grey."

"The reverend father?" echoed Captain Alan.

"He has not," said I, turning upon my guide, who stood apart with a baffling smile, "as yet done me the honour to reciprocate my weak confidences."

Captain Alan too stared at him. "Are you a priest, sir?" he demanded.

He was answered by a bow. "You didn't know it?" cried I. "It's the one thing he has allowed me to discover."

"But I understood that you were a scholar, sir--"

"The two callings are not incompatible, I hope?"

"--of the University of Salamanca: a Doctor, too. My memory is yet weak, but surely I had it from your own lips that you were a Doctor?"

"--of Moral Philosophy," the old man answered with another bow.

"Of the College of the Conception--now, alas! destroyed."

"The care with which you have tended me, sir, has helped my mistake: and now my grat.i.tude for it must help my apologies. I fear I have, from time to time, allowed my tongue to take many liberties with your profession."

"You have, to be sure, been somewhat hard with us."

"My prejudice is an honest one, sir."

"Of that there can be no possible doubt."

"But it must frequently have pained you."

"Not the least in the world," the old Doctor a.s.sured him, almost with _bonhomie_. "Besides, you were suffering from sunstroke."

My kinsman eyed him; and I could have laughed to watch it--that gaze betrayed a faint expiring hope that, after all, his diatribes against the Scarlet Woman had shaken the Doctor--upon whom (I need scarcely say) they had produced about as much effect as upon the rock of Rueda itself.

And I think that, though regretfully, he must at length have realised this, for he sank back on the pillow again with a gentle weariness in every line of his Don Quixote face.

"Ah, yes, from sunstroke! My cousin"--here he turned towards me--"this gentleman--or, as I must now learn to call him, this most reverend Doctor of Philosophy, Gil Gonsalvez de Covadonga--found me some days ago stretched unconscious beside the highroad to Tordesillas, and in two ways has saved my life: first, by conveying me to this hiding-place, for the whole _terrain_ was occupied by Marmont's troops, and I lay there in my scarlet tunic, a windfall for the first French patrol that might pa.s.s; and, secondly, by nursing me through delirium back to health of mind and strength of body."

"The latter has yet to come, Senor Capitano," the Doctor interposed.

And I: "My cousin, your distaste for disguise will yet be the death of you. But tell me, what were you doing in this neighbourhood?"

"Why, watching Marmont, to be sure, as my orders were."

"Your orders? You don't mean to tell me that Lord Wellington knows of your return!"

"I reported myself to him on the nineteenth of last month in the camp on San Christoval: he gave me my directions that same evening."

"But, Heavens!" I cried, "it is barely a week ago that I returned from the north and had an hour's interview with him; and he never mentioned your name, though aware (as he must be) that no news in the world could give me more joy."

"Is that so, cousin?" He gazed at me earnestly and wistfully, as I thought.

"You know it is so," I answered, turning my face away that he might not see my emotion.

"As for Lord Wellington's silence," Captain Alan went on, after musing a while, "he has a great capacity for it, as you know; and perhaps he has persuaded himself that we work better apart. Our later performances in and around Sabugal might well excuse that belief."

"But now I suppose you have some message for him. Is it urgent?

Or will you satisfy me first how you came here--you, whom I left a prisoner on the road to Bayonne and, as I desperately thought, to execution?"

"There is no message, for I broke down before my work had well recommenced; and Wellington knows of my illness and my whereabouts, so there is no urgency."

He glanced at the Doctor and so did I. "The reverend father's behaviour a.s.suredly suggested urgency," I said.

"And was there none?" asked the old man quietly. "You sons of war chase the oldest of human illusions: to you nothing is of moment but the impact of brutal forces or the earthly cunning which arrays and moves them. To me all this is less hateful than contemptible, in moment not comparable with the joy of a single human soul. Believe me, my sons, although the French have destroyed my peerless University--fortis Salamantina, arx sapientia--I were less eager to hurry G.o.d's avenging hand on them than to bring together two souls which in the pure joy of meeting soar for a moment together, and, fraternising, forget this world. Nay, deny it not: for I saw it, standing by. Least of all be ashamed of it."

"I am not sure that I understand you, holy father," I answered.

"But you have done us a true service, and shall be rewarded by a confession--from a stubborn heretic, too." I glanced at Captain Alan mischievously.

My kinsman put up a hand in protest.

"Oh, I will prepare the way for you," said I: "and by and by you will be astonished to find how easy it comes." I turned to the Doctor Gonsalvez. "You must know, then, my father, that the Captain and I, though we follow the same business and with degrees of success we are too amiable to dispute about, yet employ very different methods.

He, for instance, scorns disguises, while I pride myself upon mine.

And, by the way, as a Professor of Moral Philosophy, you are doubtless used to deciding questions of casuistry?"

"For twenty years, more or less, I have presided at the public disputations in the Sala del Claustro of our University."

"Then perhaps you will resolve me the moral difference between hiding in a truss of hay and hiding under a wig? For, in faith, I can see none."

"That is matter for the private conscience," broke in Captain Alan.

"Pardon me," suggested the Doctor; "you promised me a narrative, I believe."

"We'll proceed, then. Our methods--this, at least, is important--were different: which made it the more distressing that the similarity of our names confused us in our enemies' minds, who grossly mistook us for one and the same person: which not only humiliated us as artists but ended in positive inconvenience. At Sabugal, in April last, after a bewildering comedy of errors, the Duke of Ragusa captured my kinsman here, and held him to account for some escapade of mine, of which, as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge whatever. You follow me?"

The Doctor nodded gravely.

"Well, Marmont showed no vindictiveness, but said in effect, 'You have done, sir, much damage to our arms, and without stretching a point I might have you hanged for a spy. I shall, however, treat you leniently, and send you to France into safe keeping, merely exacting your promise that you will not consent to be released by any of the _partidas_ on the journey through Spain.' My cousin might have answered that he had never done an hour's scouting in his life save in the uniform of a British officer, and nothing whatever to deserve the death of a spy.

Suspecting, however, that I might be mixed up in the business, he gave his parole and set out for the frontier under the guard of a young cavalry officer and one trooper.

"Meanwhile I had word of his capture: and knowing nothing of this parole, I posted to Lord Wellington, obtained a bond for twelve thousand francs payable for my kinsman's rescue, sought out the guerilla chief, Mina, borrowed two men on Wellington's bond--the scoundrel would lend no more--and actually brought off the rescue at Beasain, a few miles on this side of the frontier. One of our shots broke the young officer's sword-arm, the trooper was pitched from his horse and stunned, and behold! my kinsman in our hands, safe and sound.

"It was then, reverend father, that I first heard of his parole.