Among these appointments Major Belgrano was entrusted with the construction of two of the defences to the south of the Plaza Mayor. Captain Lorea, with his own company, had charge of the block in which his own house stood, which was considered to be one of the most important outposts; his brother-in-law, Don Felipe Navarro, had command of the block situated to the west of the Church of Santo Domingo; and Don Marcelino Ponce de Leon and his negroes were appointed to the block contiguous to the Church of San Miguel. All these appointments were provisional, for nothing positive was known as yet as to the losses which the army had suffered in the action at the Corrales de la Miserere.
The plan of defence thus adopted was a part only of that sketched out by Don Carlos Evaña, which was modified by the suppression of an exterior line of defence and of sundry details, for the carrying out of which the time was too short. The garrisons of the Retiro and the Residencia, which formed two most important outposts to the north and south of the central Plazas, were to be instructed to defend themselves to the last extremity.
Two hours after sundown on that night of sorrow, Doña Dalmacia Navarro sat alone in her sala, alone and in darkness, save for a lamp which burned dimly in the ante-sala on the writing-table of her husband. So had she sat alone ever since the firing had ceased on the Plaza Miserere, communing anxiously with herself, refusing all attention or sympathy from those who would gladly have shared her anxiety with her, replying only to those who would at times approach her with this one question:
"Yet has no one come?"
And the answer was always, no. Men hurried across the wide, open space before her sala windows and along the adjacent street; eagerly listening, she heard something of the words they spoke as they passed on—these words were ever of disaster, ruin and despair, and as she listened her heart sank within her. The army was evidently completely beaten; and Isidro and the gallant men he led, she knew them well, they were not the men to fly like frightened boys, they would have withstood the onset of the English even if left alone; and those volleys she had heard, and that roaring of the guns, at whom had they been directed? who had fired them? She shuddered to herself as she thought how she had exulted at the sound, and had pictured to herself hundreds of prostrate foes, stretched in wounds and death on her native soil.
Unable to bear her anxious thoughts in the quiet darkness of her sala, she rose from her seat and went into the ante-sala, drawing her heavy mantle round her with a shiver. She went and sat in her husband's chair, and leaned upon his desk, turning over his papers mechanically, scarce knowing what she did. She took up his pen and fondled it in her hands; beside it lay a tinsel penwiper, heavily embroidered with beads and gold cord, which she had made for him herself; she bent over it and kissed it, as she had seen him do the day she had given it to him, his saint's day, not two short months ago. Then she looked under the sofa and saw his slippers lying there, and drew them out and laid them beside his chair ready for him when he should come in. Would he ever put them on again? As she asked herself that question a low moan broke from her, she could look at them no longer, she could no longer bear the sight and neighbourhood of all these things which spoke to her of him, and seemed to ask her were they his no more? She left the ante-sala and the dim light, and went back to the darkness of her sala, crouching down on a low chair and burying her face in her hands.
Then there came a footstep and a voice, two voices, both of them she knew. They were safe—her husband and her brother. What mattered defeat and shame, they might be retrieved, but from death there is no return. A wild joy succeeded to her anxious sorrow, she started to her feet; as she reached the folding-doors, her husband stood before her, but oh! so changed. Dripping wet—for it was raining heavily,—with clothes torn and covered with mud, his face pale and haggard, his eyes deep sunk in his head; but for his voice she would scarce have known him.
"Isidro!" she exclaimed, opening her arms to him.
But he shrank from her, and, throwing himself upon the sofa, buried his face in the cushions.
"Do not touch me, do not come near me," he said, as she bent over him. "You know not what has happened."