The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 17

All this I had the honour to predict to Lord Wellington just twelve hours before Bonnet's arrival on the scene. I staked my reputation that Caffarelli (on whom I had been watching and waiting for a month past) would not move. And Lord Wellington on the spot granted me the few days' rest I deserved--not so much in joy of the news (which, nevertheless, was gratifying) as because for the moment he had no work for me. The knot was tied. He could not attack except at great disadvantage, for the fords were deep, and Marmont held the one bridge at Tordesillas. His business was to hold on, covering Salamanca and the road back to Portugal, and await Marmont's first move.

The French front stretched as a chord across an arc of the river, which here takes a long sweep to the south; and the British faced it around this arc, with their left, centre, and right, upon three tributary streams--the Guarena, Trabancos, and Zapardiel--over which last, and just before it joins the Douro, towers the rock of Rueda, crowned with a ruinated castle.

Upon this rock--for my quarters lay in face of it, on the opposite bank of the stream--I had been gazing for the best part of an idle afternoon.

I was comfortable; my _cigarritos_ lay within reach; my tent gave shade enough; and through the flapway I found myself watching a mighty pretty comedy, with the rock of Rueda for its back-scene.

A more satisfactory one I could not have wished, and I have something of a connoisseur's eye. To be sure, the triangular flapway narrowed the picture, and although the upstanding rock and castle fell admirably within the frame, it cut off an animated scene on the left, where their distant shouts and laughter told me that French and British were bathing together in the river below and rallying each other on the battles yet to be fought. For during these weeks, and indeed through the operations which followed up to the moment of fighting, the armies behaved less like foes than like two teams before a cricket-match, or two wrestlers who shake hands and afterwards grin amicably as they move in circles seeking for a hitch. As I lay, however, the bathing-place could only be brought into view by craning my neck beyond the tent-door: and my posture was too well chosen to be shifted. Moreover, I had a more singular example of these amenities in face of me, on the rock of Rueda itself.

The cliff, standing out against the sun's glare like ivory beneath the blue, and quivering with heat, was flecked here and there with small lilac shadows; and these shadows marked the entrances of the caves with which Rueda was honeycombed. I had once or twice resolved to visit these caves; for I had heard much of their renown, and even (although this I disbelieved) that they contained wine enough to intoxicate all the troops in the Peninsula. Wine in abundance they certainly contained, and all the afternoon men singly and in cl.u.s.ters had been swarming in and out of these entrances like flies about a honeypot.

For whatever might be happening on the Trabancos under Lord Wellington's eye, here at Rueda, on the extreme right, discipline for the while had disappeared: and presumably the like was true of Marmont's extreme left holding the bridge of Tordesillas. For from the bridge a short roadway leads to Rueda; and among the figures moving about the rock, diminished by distance though they were, I counted quite a respectable proportion of Frenchmen. No one who loves his calling ever quite forgets it: and though no one could well have appeared (or indeed felt) lazier, I was really giving my eye practice in discriminating, on this ant-hill, the drunk from the sober, and even the moderately drunk from the incapable.

There could be no doubt, at any rate, concerning one little Frenchman whom two tall British grenadiers were guiding down the cliff towards the road. And against my will I had to drop my cigarette and laugh aloud: for the two guides were themselves unsteady, yet as desperately intent upon the job as though they handled a chest of treasure. Now they would prop him up and run him over a few yards of easy ground: anon, at a sharp descent, one would clamber down ahead and catch the burden his comrade lowered by the collar, with a subsidiary grip upon belt or pantaloons. But to the Frenchman all smooth and rugged came alike: his legs sprawled impartially: and once, having floundered on top of the leading Samaritan with a shock which rolled the pair to the very verge of a precipice, he recovered himself, and sat up in an att.i.tude which, at half a mile's distance, was eloquent of tipsy reproach. In short, when the procession had filed past the edge of my tent-flap, I crawled out to watch: and then it occurred to me as worth a lazy man's while to cross the Zapardiel by the pontoon bridge below and head these comedians off upon the highroad. They promised to repay a closer view.

So I did; gained the road, and, seating myself beside it, hailed them as they came.

"My friend," said I to the leading grenadier, "you are taking a deal of trouble with your prisoner."

The grenadier stared at his comrade, and his comrade at him. As if by signal they mopped their brows with their coat-sleeves. The Frenchman sat down on the road without more ado.

"Prisoner?" mumbled the first grenadier.

"Ay," said I. "Who is he? He doesn't look like a general of brigade."

"Devil take me if _I_ know. Who will he be, Bill?"

Bill stared at the Frenchman blankly, and rooted him out of the dust with his toe. "I wonder, now! 'Picked him up, somewheres--Get up, you little pig, and carry your liquor like a gentleman. It was Mike intojuced him."

"I did not," said Mike.

"Very well, then, ye did not. I must have come by him some other way."

"It was yourself tripped over him in the cellar, up yandhar." He broke off and eyed me, meditating a sudden thought. "It seems mighty queer, that--speaking of a cellar as 'up yandhar.' Now a cellar, by rights, should be in the ground, under your fut."

"And so it is," argued Bill; "slap in the bowels of it."

"Ah, be quiet wid your bowels! As I was saying, sor, Bill tripped over the little fellow: and the next I knew he was crying to be tuk home to camp, and Bill swearing to do it if it cost him his stripes.

And that is where I come into this fatigue job: for the man's no friend of mine, and will not be looking it, I hope."

"Did I so?" Bill exclaimed, regarding himself suddenly from outside, as it were, and not without admiration. "Did I promise that?

Well, then"--he fixed a sternly disapproving stare on the Frenchman-- "the Lord knows what possessed me; but to the bridgehead you go, if I fight the whole of Clausel's division single-handed. Take his feet, Mike; I'm a man of my word. Hep!--ready is it? For'ard!"

For a minute or so, as they staggered down the road, I stared after them; and then upon an impulse mounted the track by which they had descended.

It was easy enough, or they had never come down alive; but the sun's rays smote hotly off the face of the rock, and at one point I narrowly missed being brained by a stone dislodged by some drunkard above me.

Already, however, the stream of tipplers had begun to set back towards the camp, and my main difficulty was to steer against it, avoiding disputes as to the rule of the road. I had no intention of climbing to the castle: my whim was--and herein again I set my training a test--to walk straight to the particular opening from which, across the Zapardiel, I had seen my comedians emerge.

I found it, not without difficulty--a broad archway of rock, so low that a man of ordinary stature must stoop to pa.s.s beneath it; with, for threshold, a sill of dry fine earth which sloped up to a ridge immediately beneath the archway, and on the inner side dipped down into darkness so abruptly that as I mounted on the outer side I found myself staring, at a distance of two yards or less, into the face of an old man seated within the cave, out of which his head and shoulders arose into view as if by magic.

"Ah!" said he calmly. "Good evening, senor. You will find good entertainment within." He pointed past him into absolute night, or so it seemed to my dazzled eyes.

He spoke in Spanish, which is my native tongue--although not my ancestral one. And as I crouched to pa.s.s the archway I found time to speculate on his business in this cavern. For clearly he had not come hither to drink, and as clearly he had nothing to do with either army.

At first glance I took him for a priest; but his bands, if he wore them, were hidden beneath a dark poncho fitting tightly about his throat, and his bald head baffled any search for a tonsure. Although a small book lay open on his lap, I had interrupted no reading; for when I came upon him his spectacles were perched high over his brows and gleamed upon me like a duplicate pair of eyes. He was patently sober, too, which perhaps came as the greatest shock of all to me, after meeting so many on my path who were patently the reverse.

I answered his salutation. "But you will pardon me, excellent sir, for saying that you perhaps mistake the entertainment I seek. We gentlemen of Spain are temperate livers, and I will confess that curiosity alone has brought me--or say, rather, the fame of your wonderful cellars of Rueda."

I put it thus, thinking he might perhaps be some official of the caves or of the castle above. But he let the shot pa.s.s. His lean hands from the first had been fumbling with his poncho, to throw back the folds of it in courtesy to a stranger; but this seemed no easy matter, and at a sign from me he desisted.

"I can promise you," he answered, "nothing more amusing than the group with which you paused to converse just now by the road."

"Eh? You saw me?"

"I was watching from the path outside; for I too can enjoy a timely laugh."

No one, I am bound to say, would have guessed it. With his long scrag neck and great moons of spectacles, which he had now drawn down, the better to study me, he suggested an absurd combination of the vulture and the owl.

"_Dios!_ You have good eyes, then."

"For long distances. But they cannot see Salamanca." His gaze wandered for a moment to the entrance beyond which, far below and away, a sunny landscape twinkled, and he sighed. But before I could read any meaning in the words or the sigh, his spectacles were turned upon me again.

"You are Spanish?" he asked abruptly.

"Of Castile, for that matter; though not, I may own to you, of pure descent. I come from Aranjuez, where a Scottish ancestor, whose name I bear, settled and married soon after the War of Succession."

"A Scot?" He leaned forward, and his hands, which had been resting on his lap, clutched the book nervously. "Of the Highlands?"

I nodded, wondering at his agitation.

"Even so, senor."

"They say that all Scotsmen in Spain know one another. Tell me, my son "--he was a priest, then, after all--"tell me, for the love of G.o.d, if you know where to find a certain Manuel McNeill, who, I hear, is a famous scout."

"That, reverend father, is not always easy, as the French would tell you; but for me, here, it happens to be very easy indeed, seeing that I am the unworthy sinner you condescend to compliment."

"You?" He drew back, incredulous. "You?" he repeated, thrusting the book into his pocket and groping on the rocky soil beside him.

"The finger of G.o.d, then, is in this. What have I done with my candle?

Ah, here it is. Oblige me by holding it--so--while I strike a light."

I heard the rattle of a tinder-box. "They sell these candles"--here he caught a spark and blew--"they sell these candles at the castle above.

The quality is indifferent and the price excessive; but I wander at night and pick up those which the soldiers drop--an astonishing number, I can a.s.sure you. See, it is lit!" He stretched out a hand and took the candle from me. "Be careful of your footsteps, for the floor is rough."

"But, pardon me; before I follow, I have a right to know upon what business."

He turned and peered at me, holding the candle high. "You are suspicious," he said, almost querulously.

"It goes with my trade."

"I take you to one who will be joyful to see you. Will that suffice, my son?"

"Your description, reverend father, would include many persons--from the Duke of Ragusa downwards--whom, nevertheless, I have no desire to meet."

"Well, I will tell you, though I was planning it for a happy surprise.