“Or rather very like your grandmother”—and I burst into a loud laugh.
“Oh—I knew you would make fun of me. Well—no matter. She was the height of Serjeant Antony, and he’s six-feet-six without his shoes—and as white as your own shirt—not, in truth, that that’s anything remarkable, for worse washerwomen than we meet with here you could hardly find if you were on the look-out for a fortnight. But there’s no use in talking. There’s a tall white woman parades the garden; and if I live till the old Don is fast asleep, I’ll be through the window, if I break my neck.”
I confess, that although I could not listen without a smile, to Mark Antony’s description of the lady-like spectre that honoured the garden with her presence, and then and there discoursed “most eloquent music;” I felt, notwithstanding, a more than common curiosity on the subject,—and while I reprobated the fosterer’s removal of the bars which obstructed his communication with the spot she haunted, as an act but slightly removed from burglary itself, still my scruples were easily overcome when he proposed that I should keep watch with him that night. The retreat was beaten in the fortress—supper-hour came—the host, as usual, presented himself, to make inquiry whether aught was wanted that had not been already provided—and then, after wishing us “Good night,” we saw him secure his gate, and retire to that portion of his premises, from which, with all the jealous reserve observed in an Eastern harem, we had been, as we were pleased to call it, inhospitably excluded.
“Well,” said Mark Antony, “I suppose the man intends to be civil, but he has the quarest way of showing it. Although it’s his own wine we’re drinking, the divil a drop he would ever take in company. Give me that Empecinado, after all! God forgive me! I did’nt value him at the time, as I should have done. What, though he had an offhand way of shooting Frenchmen and hanging justices of the peace, the moment the job was over he was as pleasant a gentleman as ever stretched a boot under mahogany, But as to this dark-looking divil—why, we’re here well on to a month, and he was never the person to say, ‘Mister O’Toole, have ye a mouth upon ye?’”
An hour passed—we finished a second flask of the surly Spaniard’s montilano—and the fosterer proposed, that while we apparently retired for the night we should extinguish the lamps, and then commence our vigil.
It was accordingly done—and, gliding into Mark Antony’s dormitory, we began our “watch and ward.”
An unbroken stillness permitted the slightest sound to be heard distinctly; and we therefore conversed in whispers. The contrast that night in San Sebastian presented to the day, was singularly imposing. The deafening roar of the allied batteries had ceased, and the city was wrapt in a calm but ominous tranquillity. Too distant from the breaches, we did not hear the working-parties, who sedulously employed the hours of darkness in erecting new defences, and restoring others which the daily fire of the besiegers had destroyed. Another hour passed—no guitar was heard—no sprite “wicked or charitable,’’ flitted past the casement. We heard the reliefs go round—the sentries changed—and all again was silent.
“All—Mark!—Mark!” I whispered in the fosterer’s ear—“The senhor’s montilano has been uppermost in your brain, I fancy, on these same night* when this musical apparition was afoot. Are you sure that your imaginary guitar was anything but wind whistling through the window?”
“By all the crosses in a highlandman’s kilt, the music I heard,” returned the fosterer; “but whether it was a guitar or a fiddle I’ll not take on me to swear. Stop—hush!—Holy Mary! If that’s not music, the divil an ear has Mark Antony!”
The fosterer was right. It was the distant tinkle of a stringed instrument—and at times I fancied that I heard voices talking in suppressed tones, and in the direction of that part of the building which senhor La Pablos had reserved so exclusively to himself.