by the author of "Lady Flavia," and "Lord Lynn's Wife," etc. [John Berwick Harwood]
Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.5 #19 (May 1868).
"Just like your luck, Phil!"
"Never knew such a fellow in my life!"
"Gets on the captain's blind side; and while the rest of us are thankful for a six hours' run ashore, and can scarcely have that for the asking, Wilmot here has leave to travel to the Rocky Mountains or the Rio Grande, or wherever his roving fancy leads him. I call it shocking partiality; and I only wish my governor would get up in his place in the House of Commons and give the Admiralty bigwigs a bit of his mind for allowing nepotism of that sort, to the ruin of her Majesty's service."
Thus far the junior members of the ward-room mess ran on unchecked in their half-serious, half-jocular comments on my remarkable good fortune in procuring an indulgence always dear to naval men in harbour, a long leave, when old Eagles, the grizzled first lieutenant, who always took a jest literally, interposed.
"Nonsense about blind sides and nepotism, and that! You youngsters are always grumbling and finding fault. If Captain Holmes has given Wilmot leave for a journey inland here in Mexico, it's much less because Phil here is a steady chap for his years, or because he's a cousin of the skipper's, than on account of his having a travelling-companion that is sure to bring him back to us safe, and to keep him out of scrapes. Osborne goes with him, remember that; and Osborne is a credit to the ship."
Lieutenant Eagles was quite right. Henry Osborne, our officer of marines, would have been a credit to any ship in the British navy; and we all of us cheerfully acknowledged his superiority in half a score of attainments and accomplishments. The marine officer on board a frigate is usually a dandy, and often a sad idler; but we who sailed in H.M.S. Crusher were especially fortunate in ours. Osborne's good-nature was as conspicuous as his good sense; he was popular with all ranks, and respected by all his shipmates, from the bluff boatswain to the dry doctor, who used to hold elaborate arguments with him on the Darwinian theory. Not that dear old Henry was the least of a prig or a charlatan; far from it. He was merely a modest, manly, well-read fellow of thirty or thereabouts; an excellent officer, and as good a sportsman as he was an artist. But it was true that but for Osborne's intercession with the captain, and but for the fact that he was to be my companion in our cruise ashore, I should never have obtained permission to absent myself for several weeks from my duty on board.
As for myself, Philip Wilmot, I was simply the youngest lieutenant of the Crusher, and had not long worn the epaulette. I cannot claim for myself any great share of learning, or much acumen in antiquarian matters; but I am quite sensible of the charms of a glorious landscape, and not incapable of being impressed by the hoary grandeur of some giant ruin of bygone days; and I had gladly accepted the proposition that I should accompany Osborne in a long-projected expedition into the interior of Mexico. Our motives were, indeed, different. My friend was an enthusiast not only in scenery, but in botany and archeology, and I believe half a dozen "ologies" besides; and he had projects not merely for sketching Aztec teocallis and palaces, but also for bringing back in his tin specimen-boxes a goodly store of bright-winged butterflies and jewelled beetles, and flowers and ferns of rare growths, if not of kinds wholly unknown as yet to the naturalists of Europe.
Now I, Lieutenant Philip Wilmot, scarcely knew a Purple Emperor from a Sphinx, or a Cape heath from an Alpine gentian; and my real reason for soliciting leave to visit the very interesting country inland was that I, like most of us, was heartily sick of Vera Cruz and
all that belonged to it. There, in that roadstead, in front of that half-baked-looking citadel and dreary fever-haunted town, had we been lying for months, until the very paint on the ship's sides was blistered by the fierce Mexican sun, and there really did seem to be some chance that, as the old master said, we should "ground upon our beef-bones." Thanks to our captain's care, and to the strict discipline which he enforced on crew and officers, the health of the ship's company was good; but the monotony of the life told heavily upon the tempers of some, and the spirits of nearly all. The rust of inaction was eating into our very souls as we lay at anchor, longing for the time when the furious cold wind, which the Mexicans call the norte, should lash the waters into foam, and make our station off Vera Cruz untenable. For then we must make sail and bear up for the Havannah, or for some port in the Antilles, and cease to lie sweltering under that blazing sun, "protecting," as the official phrase goes, "the interests of British subjects" in Mexico.
The country, a prey to civil war, was then in a very disturbed state, and the road from the coast to the capital was even more dangerous and difficult to traverse than before the life-and-death struggle between the Empire and the Republic, which was then at its crisis. Captain Holmes had been very sparing of leave to his officers, for anything, that is to say, beyond a lounge through the not-too-inviting streets of dismal Vera Cruz; and it was only his confidence in Osborne's tact and prudence, and in his knowledge of the Spanish tongue, which he spoke fluently, that induced him to permit us to take a journey through the theatre of the war. Of any immediate call to duty there was but small chance. Our presence off the coast may have been of some moral benefit to our countrymen on shore, but we were quite inactive; and it was nearly certain that we should continue to play the part of King Log until the season of storms should compel the shipping to quit the roads.
"Good-bye, my boys!" said the captain, as he shook our hands at parting; "and don't get into any entanglement, either with Dons or Doñas, if you can help it. Remember, life is cheap in Mexico; and I should never forgive myself if harm were to come of this."
The forecastle Jacks and Osborne's marines gave us a cheer as we stepped into the boat to be rowed ashore; and the paymaster and the surgeon, and the lieutenants, mates, and middies, all envied us our anticipated pleasant journey. As for myself, I was in the highest possible spirits: my mood might have been different had I only had the remotest idea of what lay before me.
The diligence, which affords the chief means of communication between Vera Cruz and the city of Mexico, was at that time unable to carry passengers so far. The capital, then holding out for Maximilian, and containing a strong garrison of imperialist troops, native and foreign, was beleaguered by a considerable army of Mexican Liberals, and the traffic between it and the provinces was virtually at an end. But the lumbering vehicle still made its slow trips, sometimes to Xalapa, in the temperate region of the Mexican highlands, and sometimes to Puebla itself. From either of these places it would be quite practicable to make our way, by the help of mules or saddle-horses, to the metropolis, always supposing that a certain passport or recommendation in writing, which Osborne had procured from an agent of the Juarist party, and by which he set much store, should be recognised by the general in command of the blockading force. But before going to Mexico, it was Osborne's plan to visit a variety of carefully-selected spots, where ancient ruins little known to fame invited the sketcher, or where pathless forests and unexplored sierras promised a rich treat to the lover of nature.
"As they say the diligence is regularly robbed twice out of every three journeys," said Osborne laughingly, as we took our seats in the clumsy, bulbous public carriage, a queer construction of wood and leather drawn by a team of big mules, red-tasselled, hung with bells and bits of brass wherever there was room to sew some scrap of tawdry decoration to the harness, "we have no particular right to expect immunity from what is, after all, a national practice. Have you your pistol ready to hand? Here's mine. The rogues are rank cowards, and the only real danger is that they sometimes take a Parthian shot at the old coach with their carbines when some English or American travellers have beaten them off."
My revolver and cartridges were forthcoming, and in good order, as were those of my companion; and I can answer for my own feelings when I say that a skirmish with some of those Mexican mounted highwaymen who beset the road to the capital would have appeared rather in the light of an agreeable excitement than of a misfortune. It was but a fortnight since two Cornish miners and a Yankee surveyor had successfully repulsed an attack of this kind; and indeed the robbers are notoriously unwilling to run the risk of a collision with foreigners, though Mexican travellers invariably give up their purses at the first demand.
It did so happen, however, in spite of Osborne's prediction, that our progress was accomplished without molestation. Once or twice, indeed, a well-mounted horseman, in the picturesque garb of Spanish America, with floating scarf and flowing poncho, galloped swiftly past us, his sabre and long-rowelled spurs jingling in unison, and his gun slung brigand-fashion across his shoulders. But nothing came of these encounters, and we went pacifically on, without any hindrance other than those which were due to steep hills, rough roads, and feeble teams of ill-fed mules and horses, which not even the heavy strokes of the ox-hide whip could urge into a livelier pace than their normal crawl. We journeyed slowly, and found but poor accommodation at the halting-places on our way; but we met with no adventure worthy of the name.
There was only one of our fellow-travellers in whom it was easy to take an interest, and this was a young American lady, quite a girl, and excessively pretty, with that delicate complexion and that fine golden hair for which these Transatlantic beauties have earned a high renown at every court in Europe. She was travelling under the care of her gouvernante, an elderly mulatto-woman, splendid in grass-green silk, and whose woolly head was decorated by a gay yellow turban and a pair of enormous earrings. Miss Louisa, however (the coloured attendant always addressed her as "Miss Louisa," although, with the exception of these two English words, her conversation with her young mistress was wholly conducted in the Spanish tongue, or rather in some barbarous dialect of corrupted Castilian mixed with negroisms and Indian words), was bewitchingly well-dressed, and of singularly pleasing manners. There was a peculiar charm in her address, at once so frank and so modest—a something equally remote from the self-sufficient pertness of those Yankee damsels whom I remembered at New York and Boston, and from the awkward bashfulness of a good many of my own youthful countrywomen. And such was not only my opinion, but that of Osborne, who had seen more of the world and of fashionable life than I had done.
Of course we held much conversation together. Mexico is not a country in which, especially on a journey, the cold formality of European etiquette is regarded as essential; and the mere fact of a community in dangers and hardships establishes a bond of union between travellers who in England or France would take their seats silently opposite to one another in a first-class carriage, and never dream of exchanging a syllable during the smooth and easy transit behind the panting steam-horse. It was not long, therefore, before our beautiful acquaintance was tolerably familiar with the names and the more striking peculiarities of all the officers of H.M.S. Crusher, as well as with the stations on which we had been employed since the frigate had been put into commission, and the most memorable events of our cruise in search of slavers off the Brazilian coast. Miss Louisa, to give her the name by which her mulatto duenna addressed her, and by which alone we knew her, was less explicit with respect to her own antecedents; but we gathered from what she said, that though a native of the United States, she had been from childhood accustomed to the tropics, and had indeed been brought up to speak Spanish quite as readily as her own language. She described one or two "haciendas" where she had dwelt in her infancy, and lovely spots they must have been; with glorious flowers, such as we at home only see in a hothouse, blooming in rich profusion around the pretty house, with its white walls and deep cool verandahs; fireflies sparkling by night among the thickets of glistening shrubs, the slender stems and drooping leaves of the palmettos rising like so many columns of a ruined temple from the emerald lawn; humming-birds, in all the magnificence of their gemmed plumage, darting from blossom to blossom, and perhaps the plash of the blue sea below the rocky cliff mingling its low sound with the tinkling music of the fountain above.
The mulatto serving-woman—one of those dusky Goodies, half-housekeeper, half-nurse, who are common in New Spain, and whose affection for their masters' children is proverbial—said very little, and was, indeed, except at meal-times, for the most part asleep; while the only other occupant of our compartment of the diligence was a wretched little monkey of a man, a storekeeper from Vera Cruz, who was going to Xalapa to squeeze payment out of some recalcitrant customers, and who saw a thief in every bush, and was perpetually mistaking the wild-looking peons who passed us in the forest, armed with the cutlasses with which they clear away the brushwood and matted vines from their path when seeking for vanilla, cochineal, and other woodland products, for bloodthirsty robbers about to bid us stand and deliver.
Our fair friend told us that she was going to Puebla, near which town, as I gleaned from some chance expression of hers, she had relatives settled. She seemed to know Mexico and its ways very well, but I could not induce her to take the slightest apparent interest in Mexican politics, or in the probable results of the sanguinary and exhausting struggle then being waged between the Emperor and the Liberals. For these things she seemed to care little or not at all; while, on the other hand, she was willing to talk and listen respecting my favourite pursuits, the books I had read, my sisters at home in England, my hopes and aspirations, and such glimpses of the world as fall to the lot of a young sailor.
"As for this miserable Mexican civil war," she said once, with a smile, in answer to some remark of mine, "I detest the very name of it. As an American girl, I suppose I ought to give my sympathies to the Republican side; but I am not wise enough to form an opinion as to which is the best government for the country. Poor, dear, pretty Mexico! what a pity that both sides cannot agree to live in peace and enjoy all the good things around them, without murdering one another in the midst of what, but for men and their quarrels, might be a perfect Eden." And indeed we passed, in our gradual progress from the hot sickly strip of low-lying country near the coast, first to the temperate region of hill and forest, and then to the high table-lands, the bold sierras, and fertile valleys of Anahuac, by many and many a spot that looked lovely enough to be accounted as a fragment of some earthly paradise.
We were very fortunate, both with respect to the regular thieves who levy black-mail upon the highway, and to the perhaps more dangerous bands of half-disciplined soldiery by which the disturbed districts were infested. Thrice we encountered bodies of armed men hurrying to join the levies of Juarez, and once we fell in with a mounted troop of guerilleros belonging to the imperial faction. But after the officer in command had asked a question or two, we were invariably suffered to pass on without being subjected to loss or annoyance, and we finally arrived in Puebla unharmed. In Puebla—where Osborne and I took up our quarters in a fonda, or inn, built almost on the pattern of the Oriental caravanseries, and the walls of which, built of sun-dried bricks, still showed the dints of the French cannonballs that had hailed upon the town during the famous siege—we were to part with our beautiful travelling-companion.
Our own design—Osborne's and mine—was to visit the ruined Aztec city of Chaztoltepec, which lies between Puebla and Cholula, and which was reported to contain relics of antiquity as interesting and as worthy of attention as those of the better-known Tehuantepec. But Miss Louisa and her dark-skinned attendant were to repair forthwith to some country house situated a few miles from Puebla, and of course it was extremely unlikely that we should ever meet again. I have drawn very near to the brink of a confession here, and I may as well own the truth at once. I was falling desperately in love with Miss Louisa, with this lovely American girl whose very surname was unknown to me, but whose every glance and utterance possessed a witchery that would have stolen away the hearts of nine junior lieutenants out of any ten in her Majesty's naval service. As for Osborne, who was engaged to be married to some cousin of his in Yorkshire, he was steeled against the fascinations of this enchantress; but I possessed no such talisman, and I scarcely care to own what a heartache it cost me when this short and sudden intimacy between our beautiful fellow-traveller and ourselves was perforce brought to an end.
That the charming American in any degree reciprocated this sentiment was more than even the natural hopefulness of sanguine youth could induce me to believe. Yet there were times when I doubted whether, had our intercourse been less abruptly cut short, she might not have learned to like me. She certainly, in her artless ways, evinced the pleasure which my society afforded her, and even appeared (which I took as no slight compliment to my personal merits) to prefer my conversation to that of Henry Osborne. There was no love-making, be it understood, nothing deserving to be classed as a flirtation; but we two young persons seemed to be sincerely pleased with one another, and our talk, alternately grave and gay, ranged over almost all topics congenial to our years, and evidenced a great similarity of taste between us, save only on the subject of Mexican politics.
"I know nothing about them," Miss Louisa would say, pursing-up her red lips and shaking her little head with immense solemnity. "I don't know anything; and, if I were not afraid of seeming selfish, I should add that I don't care anything, about their battles and big words. Why can't they live and let live, and be good and happy? Heigho! I wish I were back at dear old San Isidore, where the very cura of the parish could not have interpreted the meaning of that dreadful thing with the eagles stamped upon it, there!" And as she spoke she pointed to a printed paper, emblazoned with the arms of the Mexican Republic, and which figured conspicuously among the playbills, the puffs of the vendors of patent-medicines, and the announcements of sales of European goods, that were pasted to a brown wall of sun-baked adobe bricks, in the outskirts of the city of Puebla. It is easier to read Spanish, when one has a smattering of the language, than to understand it when spoken; and ever so imperfect a scholar of the tongue could make out that the paper was a pronunciamento, or banda, threatening death by military execution against anyone conveying contraband of war or intelligence to the army of Maximilian. I read enough to be sure of the purport of the proclamation, little dreaming that I myself could ever come to have an all-engrossing concern in the matter.
Osborne and I had installed ourselves in the best apartments which our ingenuity could obtain from mine host of the Fonda de los Cuatros Nacioñes, and my shipmate, as the better linguist, had taken on himself to explore the great ghostly kitchen, and persuade the flat-capped cooks to give us for our supper something less strictly Spanish than the inevitable olla and puchero, when a black waiter came, rolling his goggleeyes with an air of infinite mystery and importance, to beckon me from the room.
"Señorita want massa," said the black, who was a runaway slave from Cuba, in his broken English. "Wait in carrossa, down dar, in Calle de San Dominic. Me come fetch."
I easily guessed that the señorita spoken of could be no other than Miss Louisa, and I hurried downstairs to obey her summons.
True enough. In the street stood a carriage,—a queer old ark on wheels, dating, it might be supposed, from the reign of Charles V.,—and from the window of this vehicle looked out the lovely young face of our late travelling-companion.
"O, Mr. Wilmot, how kind of you to come directly!" she said, with a blush. "I am going to the Villa de las Noches immediately, since I have seen my uncle's agent here in town, and have ascertained that the family are at the country house, where they generally spend the hot season. We shall not therefore meet again for some time—if ever," she added with a sigh, and a glance that thrilled my nerves, and sent the blood coursing fast through my veins; "but—but I have mustered courage at last to ask you a favour that I have not had the courage to mention all through our journey from the coast—a very pleasant journey to me, at least," she added softly, and with a sort of tender, pensive regret that would have made a fool of an older and a wiser man than Philip Wilmot.
How was I to know that I was the sport of a cruel coquette; that all this apparent artlessness was a mask; that a hard, deliberate purpose lurked, like a snake among the flowers of some tropical wilderness, behind all this fair semblance of girlish timidity? All I knew was that my heart was beating wildly, and that my cheeks were burning. Nothing but the presence of the stout old mulatto housekeeper, in her grass-green silk and flaring turban, restrained the passionate declaration of attachment that rose to my lips; but I have no doubt that my eyes were more eloquent, for she shrank back with a charming coyness that made her prettier than ever, and the eyelids drooped over her lovely eyes like the petals of a closing flower.
"Won't you do me this little service, then, Mr. Wilmot?" she said shyly.
What I answered to the above question I do not recollect. I only know that I stammered out something very incoherent and absurd about going through fire and water to obey her lightest command; but she seemed to know what was going on in my heart a great deal better than I myself did, for in the next minute she was speaking earnestly on the subject of her request.
It was my intention, was it not, to visit the city of Mexico? Well, then, on my way, my direct way, but within the lines of the besieging army, lay the hamlet of Itzlitechtuan, once a flourishing town, and where the remains of a summer palace of Montezuma were yet to be seen. Close to this was a country house called the Quinta Negra; and at this place dwelt the aged relative to whom my fair acquaintance desired to send by my hands a small, a very small parcel.
"It will not incommode you much," she said beseechingly, producing a tiny wooden case, which she opened, revealing what was inside. This was a really splendid snuffbox—a gold box, richly enamelled in blue, and set with small brilliants. "This is grandpapa's pet snuffbox, and he values it as the apple of his eye," said the little beauty; "he has never been so long separated from it before, and I know how his eyes will sparkle when he sees it again. You have heard me speak of grandpapa? No? how odd! His name is Dr. Anderson; and he is old, very old now, dear man! But he is a delightful talker, and so clever. He is famous among the scientific men of the day, and belongs to all sorts of learned societies; but he was a great courtier once, and United-States minister at Vienna, Paris, and Madrid. He was an immense favourite with King Louis XVIII., who gave him this box, and he prizes it very much; for he and the king were great friends, and used to argue over their rival translations of Horace, and to try which could recite most Latin verses. I wish you would take charge of this, and give it safely to grandpapa."
A wonderful man he must have been, this grandfather of Miss Louisa's. He was not only a diplomatist, a courtier, and a scholar, but as a naturalist he was highly distinguished. His collection of medals and coins was reputed the best in the New World; and his archeological discoveries, and the book he was writing about them, would immortalise the name of Anderson, which I began to feel much ashamed not to have heard of. The good doctor was at Quinta Negra at present, on account of the prosecution of his researches into Mexican antiquities; and as the distracted condition of the country made it unsafe for a lady to travel so near the actual scene of hostilities, his devoted granddaughter could not rejoin him. But if I would convey the snuffbox, the royal gift, to its rightful owner, with Louisa's love, the darling old gentleman would be so pleased; and she, my fair friend, O how should she thank me sufficiently for my great, great kindness!
As a matter of course I accepted the trust, and undertook the commission. I was very glad to be of use, and only wished that the service to be rendered had been of a more romantic character. After all, to carry a valuable snuffbox to an old gentleman was a light task that the most selfish of mortals would scarcely have scrupled to accept. And when Miss Louisa lifted the golden lid, and showed me some highly-scented and dark-colored snuff below, laughingly asking whether I could resist temptation, and restore the precious powder to its proprietor without myself taking toll of it on the journey, I laughed too, and was glad that the fair girl had asked this trifling favour of me and not of Osborne. We parted; and I thought that Miss Louisa's hand returned the fervent pressure of mine with a timid, yet lingering pressure, while her voice trembled as she said sadly, "Good-bye, and thanks, dear Mr. Wilmot; and I hope we shall meet again."
Why I did not show the box, or relate the incidents of the interview just described, to Henry Osborne, is more than I can easily explain. Perhaps I was afraid to encounter his good-natured raillery; or it may be that I did not know the state of my own feelings with sufficient accuracy to make me willing to lay them bare to another; but at any rate I kept my own counsel. We did but remain a day or two in Puebla, and soon started for the ruins which Osborne so longed to sketch and to explore. It was not long, however, before I found Chaztoltepec pall upon me very much indeed. I could respect, but not share, the rapturous enthusiasm with which my comrade devoted himself to the delineation of crumbling walls, and to excavations that, slight as they were, brought to light a quantity of Aztec pottery, spearheads, and bone or shell ornaments; and at the end of a few days I announced my intention of travelling on as far at any rate as the posts of the republican army blockading Mexico, where I should be sure to come in for plenty of stir and excitement, and where I might have a chance of witnessing the active operations of the siege.
"Well, well," said Osborne kindly, after one or two efforts to dissuade me from my project, "a wilful man must have his way; and I've no right, Phil, to expect you to be crazy about a parcel of old stones and potsherds, like myself. Go, then, since you will go, but be careful; and I'll join you as soon as I can."
No public carriage at that time continued to run between Puebla and the capital; but I easily came to terms with the capitan of a company of carriers bound for Mexico, and who proved ready and willing to provide me with a saddle-mule, and to act as my guard, guide, and commissariat during the journey. Indeed, these hardy brethren of the road—an institution of New as of Old Spain—furnish what is often the only available means of locomotion to the traveller among the shark-toothed sierras and tangled chapparal of Mexico, and I was glad to be able to take my place in their caravan. They numbered five-and-forty well-armed men, all stout fellows, of resolute demeanour; and their united force was sufficient to repel any assault on the part of mere thieves, while their written protections from both republican and imperialist generals would secure them against military aggression. If refused permission, as was probable, to enter Mexico city with their goods, the caravan could shape its course for the north, for Durango and Chihuahua, where increased prices would repay the toil of the expedition.
Again my journey through a country swarming with light-fingered and heavy-handed gentry of all sorts, from the disbanded soldier to the professional robber of the roads, was unattended by any adventure. There were hardships, of course, but no exciting incidents; and indeed the only event worth mentioning was that once we came upon an Indian boy sitting beside a dead horse, around which the vultures were already gathering, and weeping piteously, as he sat with the bridle across his knees, and the old-fashioned Moorish-looking saddle, with its broad brass stirrups and a lasso fastened to the pommel, beside him. I thought of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and the dead ass by the roadside; but this was no case of sentiment, but of sheer physical pain. The lad, as we found out by questioning him, was a farm-servant at Itzlitechtuan, the very village whither I was going; and he had been despatched on horseback to Puebla to carry his master's rent to the owner of the estate, a rico, or wealthy landlord, of that town. But in taking a short cut through the brushwood, the horse, bitten by a rattlesnake that had been disturbed in its lair among the tall grass near the road, had reared and fallen back, bruising the young rider severely, and presently died in considerable suffering. This had occurred on the lad's return homewards, and after he had parted with the ranchero's bag of dollars in exchange for a receipt; but it was no joke for the poor boy to find himself far from home, and with only a few small coins in his pocket, unhorsed, and reduced to the necessity of limping on to the Quinta as well as a sprained ankle would permit.
Mexicans are not the most tender-hearted variety of the great human family; and the capitan of the carriers, when his curiosity was satisfied, gave himself but little concern as to the aching bones or friendless position of a mere Indian peon, and would have left him behind had I not interceded in his behalf. A gratuity of four piastres, however, procured for the poor fellow the use of one of the spare mules, to the back of which the saddle of the dead horse was transferred, and permission to accompany our march and to share our spare diet of dried beef, maize-porridge, and stewed beans, flavoured with red pepper and coarse oil. Martin—that was the name of the Indian lad—was extravagant in his expressions of gratitude for this trifling kindness on my part; and indeed the Indios manzos, or domesticated aborigines of Mexico, deserve their reputation for being a gentle tractable race, affectionate and reverential, and even industrious, when compared with the white inhabitants of Anahuac. I thought little of poor Martin and his exuberant thankfulness at the time; but it was not long before I had good reason to bless the day when we found the young peon sitting forlorn beside the stony road, with the carcass of the dead horse lying near.
We reached Itzlitechtuan in safety, and there I parted with the carriers, who went on to the head-quarters of General Porfirio Diaz, the commander of the besieging army, to solicit a pass for Mexico. Martin, the young peon, readily volunteered to guide me to the Quinta Negra, within a very short distance of which his master's farm was situated. I found the house by no means cheerful of aspect. It had been the country residence of some wealthy government official in the days of the old Spanish domination, and deserved to be styled a palace, but it was mouldering to ruin: the walls were cracked, the flat roof broken and gone in many places; while the garden, and the once stately terraces, with their broken marbles, discoloured frescoes, and choked fountains, as well as the tangled and wild overgrowth of what had been a shrubbery and was now a jungle, told the same melancholy tale of neglect and decay.
A lean wiry serving-man, whose bronzed cheek was seamed by something suspiciously like the scar of a sabre-cut, came in answer to my reiterated knocking; and was with some difficulty prevailed upon to open the barred door, bound with iron, and so strong that I doubt if anything short of artillery could have forced an entry, and to usher me across broken floors and amid the tottering parti-walls of dilapidated saloons that were now the haunt of bats and lizards, to the only habitable part of the house, and into the presence of his master.
"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Wilmot," said the doctor, a fine-looking old man, with silver-gray hair floating in loose thin locks over the high collar of his brown coat, and wearing a white cravat, blue spectacles, and a waistcoat of black satin. His broad-brimmed hat lay beside him on the table, surrounded by a miscellaneous collection of incongruous objects: dried herbs, vials containing snakes, Aztec weapons and pottery, a new and handsome microscope, a pair of holsters with their bear-skin covering, and a bowie-knife peeping from beneath a mass of writing-materials. "I am very glad to see an Englishman always. Blood, as the Scottish proverb says, is thicker than water; and all Anglo-Saxons feel in some measure as brothers in this strange part of the world where I have spent so much of my life; and not, as I hope," this with a glance at the miscellany that strewed the table, "unprofitably."
I had been prepared to like Miss Louisa's grandfather, but I own that I should have been prepossessed in Dr. Anderson's favour, even had he not been so nearly related to my beautiful travelling-companion. He was, as I have said, a fine-looking old gentleman, a good deal bowed by age, but still in the full vigour of his intellect, and with a flow of conversation that never failed him. He made no parade of learning, nor did he affect, as some persons of his years and ability are prone to do, to disparage youth. He treated me as his equal; frankly, but with a sort of antique courtesy that became him well.
"You will dine with me, Lieutenant Wilmot, I hope? I cannot offer you very luxurious fare; but there are some flasks of old wine yet in the cellar, and I will tell Pedro to hasten the repast. A friend of—yes, of Miss Louisa's—is doubly welcome here."
The doctor went on to ask if I had bespoken lodgings in the village.
"For if you are not better provided," he said kindly, "I should esteem it an honour if you would take up your quarters with me. Bachelors of your age, and, I may add, gentlemen of your gallant and adventurous profession, are seldom over-particular about their accommodation in out-of-the-way places; and Pedro can give you a room that will at least be cleaner and more tranquil than those of the inn yonder, swarming as it is with soldiers and officers of the Liberal faction. Indeed, I question if you could be received there at all; whereas in this old ruin there is a chamber much at your service."
I thanked the good old gentleman warmly for his hospitality, and accepted the offer willingly enough, Indeed, it was a timely one, for I had noticed, during my short stay in the village, that the place was full of troops: a regiment of the line, a battalion of Caçadores, and a squadron of wild-eyed, brigand-looking cavalry from the north, being quartered there. Even from the terrace of the Quinta Negra I could see the white tents, while many of the military, unprovided with camp-equipage, bivouacked around fires in the open air; and groups of officers, in more or less irregular uniforms, smoked their paper-cigars at the door of the solitary inn.
"Here is your room, Señor," said Pedro curtly, inducting me and my scanty baggage into a great dark dismantled apartment, very sparingly furnished, and with walls from which the panelling of dark wood was peeling away, while the ceiling threatened to fall bodily on the head of an intruder. There was, however, a little iron camp-bed, with blankets and a buffalo-robe flung across it; and I thankfully took possession of this desolate chamber, which, after all, was better than anything I had seen since leaving Puebla. I made some alteration in my attire, in compliment to my host; and I had scarcely finished dressing when the bronzed serving-man knocked at the door to announce that dinner was ready. It was not a very luxurious repast that awaited us, consisting chiefly of eggs, lean bacon, maize-bread, and green corn stewed with red-pepper pods and various Mexican vegetables; but hunger is a priceless sauce, and I enjoyed the meal excessively. The wine—a Mexican growth—was excellent; and Dr. Anderson proved, as his granddaughter had predicted, a most agreeable host, with an immense flow of conversation, and manners of infinite urbanity. There was only one subject on which he abstained from talking, and that was the perilous topic of politics.
"I am an American citizen, and have a natural sympathy with republican forms of government," said the doctor with a smile; "and yet, as an old diplomatist, I have acquired some liking for courts and royalties. I wish well, then, to all mankind, and steer clear of their quarrels as best I may. My own quiet studious life, spent in harmless pursuits and meditation, gives no umbrage to Trojan or to Tyrian, to Imperialist or to Liberal, and I am suffered to classify my butterflies and to dissect my snakes in peace. Even Colonel Gomez, who commands here, and who is reckoned the most severe in enforcing martial law of all the Mexican chiefs—Marquez excepted—has not refused to allow a poor old bookworm to dwell unmolested within his lines, and to occupy himself with his broken Aztec pottery and Indian inscriptions unquestioned. But enough of this egotism. Did you not say, Mr. Wilmot, that you had kindly taken charge of some trifle sent me by—Miss Louisa?"
I could not help fancying that there was something a little odd in the doctor's tone as he pronounced these last words.
"Yes," I made answer; "it was a precious charge that your granddaughter—"
"My granddaughter!" exclaimed Dr. Anderson involuntarily; and then immediately added, in a tone of one who is annoyed with himself for some inadvertence, "yes, yes, to be sure. You mean your late companion in the diligence, Miss Louisa? I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but my thoughts were far away."
I thought this a little strange, but I forthwith produced the wooden case, and placed it in the doctor's hands. The old man opened it with a hand that was not quite steady; and, with evident impatience, lifted the lid of the splendid snuff-box. For a moment he looked perplexed, and then, plunging his fingers into the fragrant snuff, he drew out, to my surprise, a thick little packet of paper, closely folded, and which I saw at a glance was covered with writing.
While the old gentleman, apparently forgetful of my presence, was eagerly reading the contents of the now unfolded document, and while I was puzzled to conjecture what sort of letter it could be that needed to be conveyed to its destination with such cautious secrecy, and why, if Miss Louisa chose to send her written communications to her grandpapa by a private hand, she should have thought it necessary to keep me in ignorance of what the snuffbox really contained, I thought that I heard the distant call of a cavalry trumpet, and immediately afterwards a faint, far-distant sound like the measured tramp of marching men, blending with the thud of horsehoofs on the greensward. Then the sounds ceased, and I sat wondering. Why had my sweet young friend, why had the too-charming American damsel, acted thus? It was a quasi-deceit. It surely implied either a genius for fibbing or a distrust of myself; and yet, to think ill of her—
"Ah, what is this?" For the doctor had started to his feet, frowning, and in manifest agitation. Almost at the same moment Pedro rushed in.
"Señor," he cried hurriedly, "they come, horse and foot. I see the bayonets glancing down the avenue among the cotton-trees, even from here. And Colonel Gomez is there, on the gray horse. See!"
I stared from master to man and from man to master, thoroughly at my wits' end. What was the meaning of all this? What could it signify to this old gentleman, with his natural history and his archeology, whether troops moved one way or another? Surely to stuff birds and dry lizards was no treason to empire or republic? and yet—
"Are the horses saddled, Pedro?" cried the doctor, in quite a different tone of voice from any which I had heard him use as yet—ringing, sonorous, martial.
"Saddled! that they are, my captain," answered Pedro promptly.
At that moment twang, twang! rang out the shrill notes of the cavalry trumpet; and then followed a shout and the report of a musket, while a bullet smashed through a pane of the great window, and lodged in one of the hard wood panels of the wall, within a foot of my head.
"Vamos! away!" shouted the doctor, throwing open the window, and leaping out upon the lawn, followed by Pedro. "Excuse me, lieutenant," he added with a laugh, turning his head as he sprang out; "look to yourself."
And in the momentary glimpse that I had of him thus I could see that his green spectacles had fallen off, and that he had lost the stoop of age, and regained all his youthful litheness of movement, as if by miracle. But by this time the din was something fearful; horses trampling, men running and shouting, discharges of firearms, loud cries of "Death to the traitors!"
As I stood stupefied, like one in a feverish dream, I could see two mounted men gallop madly off across the lawn, leap the ditch, and take their headlong way across the fields under a heavy fire, aimed at by fifty riflemen who came running up in the green garb of the Caçadores, and pursued by a score of riders. Then the firing ceased, and presently the trumpet sounded the recall, and the disappointed pursuers came riding back by twos and threes. But I stood as though my feet were rooted to the carpet, until a clash of spurs and steel scabbards resounded, and Colonel Gomez, a savage-looking old officer with shaggy gray eyebrows and a face purple with rage, burst into the room, with a dozen of his troopers, to arrest me.
"A very likely story," said the colonel grimly, as he twirled his long iron-gray moustache round his bony forefinger, and glared fiercely on me; "a probable tale. You call yourself an officer of the British navy and an innocent traveller, yet you have no passport or papers, no uniform even. And you own that you gave this," holding up the luckless gold snuffbox, "to yonder arch-spy and prince of traitors—to the villain Fell, who has hoodwinked us for weeks, and has ridden off safe, with his scoundrel of an orderly, to Mexico City, to tell his comrades all he has observed within our lines, under the assumed character of a doctor and a man of science. The vile sorcerer! Our bullets missed him as if we had been shooting at the Gran Demonio himself. But they will not miss you, Señor rogue; for I swear by St. Jago to bring you face to face with the fire of a platoon, were you twenty times English!"
And he caused me to be searched, ironed, and marched off to a tent, there to be guarded until the general should approve of my sentence—to be shot to death as a spy.
I had not been in the tent above two hours before the canvas was cautiously lifted, and the bright eyes and dusky face of Martin the Indian boy appeared in the opening.
"Hist!" he said in a whisper, with his finger on his lips; "the Señor Inglese was good to Martin; and Martin does not forget foe or friend. What can Indian boy do?"
The grateful creature had crept unheeded past my guards. I had, luckily, my pocket-book still about me, and I pencilled a note to Osborne, which Martin swore to deliver. He would saddle his master's best horse, he said, and ride night and day. But the gleam of comfort which the sight of this kindly lad, and his promise to hurry to my shipmate, had given me, died away when he was gone, and [ remembered the long ride that lay before him, and the probability that before intercession could be made my iniquitous sentence would have been carried out to the bitter end.
The next few days passed by in dreary monotony. I was not ill-treated. I had a tent to myself, and was sufficiently supplied with the coarse food that composes the rations of the Mexican soldier. But two sentinels, crossing one another in their regular walk, paced night and day before the door of my canvas prison, through the flimsy roof of which the hot sun of the tropics forced its way towards noon with a power that was all but intolerable, while at night the mosquitoes and white flies came in winged legions to plague me. I was denied writing-materials, and having no books or chance of conversation, found the time pass heavily indeed. Presently it was announced to me that the general had approved my sentence, and that I was to be shot at eight o'clock on the morning of the ensuing day.
That morning dawned at last, glorious and unclouded, with all the brilliancy of light, the vivid tints of the vegetation, the unsullied azure of the sky peculiar to those latitudes; and true to the appointed hour, the firing-party, commanded by a subaltern, marched to the tent and led me forth—to die. The place selected for the execution was an open space of trampled greensward in front of the cavalry quarters. Here a shallow grave had been scooped in the sand, and at this spot, on the edge of the grave, I was compelled to kneel, while my arms were pinioned tightly, and a sergeant proceeded to bandage my eyes with a silk-handkerchief.
"You have five minutes to pray, if you heretics ever do," said the sergeant gruffly, and then withdrew.
I had made no remonstrance, used no entreaty. Hopeless and desponding, I prepared to meet my fate calmly, aware that no argument of mine could avail me. I heard the word of command, and then the rattle of the muskets. The men of the platoon were falling-in, and ordering arms, in obedience to the call of their officer. The time was nearly spent. I fancied, too, that I heard a distant sound as of horses galloping on the soft turf; but of this I had little leisure to think, for now the muskets clanked again as they were brought to the "present."
"When I lift my sword, then fire!" called out the officer.
Again the trampling sound of hurrying horses, and the clash of accoutrements, and a shout of several eager voices. Next there was a hubbub of excited talk, and the jingling of swords and neighing of horses, and I was dragged to my feet, while someone cut the cord that bound my arms, and another hand tore the bandage from my eyes.
"Only just in time," said a well-known and friendly voice; "but we are in time, thank Heaven! Why, Phil, my poor fellow!"
It was Henry Osborne who was beside me, and who held me propped on his shoulder,—for I had fainted, or nearly so,—while behind him appeared the copper-coloured face of Martin the Indian boy. The travel-stained and dishevelled condition of both of them, as well as the bleeding and heaving flanks of their weary horses, told that they had, ridden fast and far. Behind them, on horseback, were Colonel Gomez and several other officers, as well as a mounted aide-de-camp of General Diaz, holding a paper which I afterwards learned was the order for my reprieve and liberation.
"I have made it all right with the general," whispered Osborne; "but what a touch-and-go business it was! Two minutes, and yonder old tiger would have carried out his own tyrannical sentence in full. But we are to be off to Vera Cruz, and get on board again with all speed. The Liberals are furious about the trick in which you were an innocent instrument. That Captain Fell, whom you took for an old doctor—Anderson he called himself—turns out to be an ex-Confederate officer, now on Miramon's staff, and the most active and unscrupulous young fellow in the imperialist army; a spy who—"
"What are you talking of, with your spies and Confederates and young fellows?" asked I in my bewilderment. ‘Surely you don't mean that Dr. Anderson—"
"Dr. Anderson," said Osborne, interrupting me in his turn, and with a good-humoured smile—"Dr. Anderson and Captain Fell, who is not above six- or seven-and-twenty, are one and the same person. The letter you conveyed to him, unknowingly, in the gold box, was a warning that he or his orderly Pedro had been recognised by someone who had sent information to the Liberals who it was that lurked, disguised as an aged naturalist, at the Quinta Negra, and who sent constant information to the Imperialists of the enemy's movements. And as for Miss Louisa—"
"What of her?" I exclaimed.
"As for Miss Louisa, as you call her," continued Osborne with much composure, "she is considered by the Republicans as very nearly as dangerous a spy as her husband, and I advise you to forget her sunny blue eyes as soon as you conveniently can, for her name is Mrs. Fell."
So it was. It was Captain Fell's wife who had with such seeming artlessness tricked me into carrying the message that warned her husband to fly, and I had been doubly duped; that was all.