Читать книгу The Bandolero; Or, A Marriage among the Mountains - Майн Рид - Страница 10

From that day, each return of twilight’s gentle hour saw me in the Calle del Obispo. The sun was not more certain to set behind the snow-crowned Cordilleras, than I to traverse the street where dwelt Mercedes Villa-Señor.

Her name and condition had been easily ascertained. Any stray passenger encountered in the street could tell, who lived in the grand casa with the frescoed front.

“Don Eusebio Villa-Señor—un rico—with two daughters, muchachas muy lindas!” was the reply of him, to whom I addressed the inquiry.

I was further informed, that Don Eusebio was of Spanish descent, though a Mexican by birth; that in the veins of his daughters flowed only the Andalusian blood—the pure sangre azul. His was one of the familias principales of Puebla.

There was nothing in this knowledge to check my incipient admiration of Don Eusebio’s daughter. Quite the contrary.

As I had predicted, I was soon in the vortex of an impetuous passion; and without ever having spoken to her who inspired it!

There was no chance to hold converse with her. We were permitted no correspondence with the familias principales, beyond the dry formalities which occasionally occurred in official intercourse. But this was confined to the men. The señoritas were closely kept within doors, and as jealously concealed from us as if every house had been a harem.

My admiration was too earnest to be restrained by such trifling obstructions; and I succeeded in obtaining an occasional, though distant, view of her who had so interested me.

My glances—given with all the fervour of a persistent passion—with all its audacity—could scarce be misconstrued.

I had the vanity to think they were not; and that they were returned with looks that meant more than kindness.

I was full of hope and joy. My love affair appeared to be progressing towards a favourable issue; when that change, already recorded, came over the inhabitants of Puebla—causing them to assume towards us the attitude of hostility.

It is scarce necessary to say that the new state of things was not to my individual liking. My twilight saunterings had, of necessity, to be discontinued; and upon rare occasions, when I found a chance of resuming them, I no longer saw aught of Mercedes Villa-Señor!

She, too, had no doubt been terrified into that hermitical retirement—among the señoritas now universal.

Before this terrible time came about, my passion had proceeded too far to be restrained by any ideas of danger. My hopes had grown in proportion; and stimulated by these, I lost no opportunity of stealing out of quarters, and seeking the Calle del Obispo.

I was alike indifferent to danger in the streets, and the standing order to keep out of them. For a stray glance at her to whom I had surrendered my sword-knot, I would have given up my commission; and to obtain the former, almost daily did I risk losing the latter!

It was all to no purpose. Mercedes was no more to be seen.

Uncertainty about her soon became a torture; I could endure it no longer. I resolved to seek some mode of communication.

How fortunate for lovers that their thoughts can be symbolised upon paper! I thought so as I indited a letter, and addressed it to the “Dona Mercedes Villa-Señor.”

How to get it conveyed to her, was a more difficult problem.

There were men servants who came and went through the great gateway of the mansion. Which of them was the one least likely to betray me?

I soon fixed my reflections upon the cochero—a tall fellow in velveteens, whom I had seen taking out the sleek carriage horses. There was enough of the “picaro” in his countenance, to inspire me with confidence that he could be suborned for my purpose.

I determined on making trial of him. If a doubloon should prove sufficient bribe, my letter would be delivered.

In my twilight strolls, often prolonged to a late hour, I had noticed that this domestic sallied forth: as if, having done his day’s duty, he had permission to spend his evenings at the pulqueria. The plan would be to waylay him, on one of his nocturnal sorties; and this was what I determined on doing.

On the night of that same day on which I indited the epistle, the Officer of the Guard chanced to be my particular friend. It was not chance either: since I had chosen the occasion. I had no difficulty, therefore, in giving the countersign; and, wrapped in a cloth cloak—intended less as a protection against the cold than to conceal my uniform—I proceeded onward upon my errand of intrigue.

I was favoured by the complexion of the night. It was dark as coal tar—the sky shrouded with a thick stratum of thunder clouds.

It was not yet late enough for the citizens to have forsaken the streets. There were hundreds of them, strolling to and fro, all natives of the place—most of them men of the lower classes—with a large proportion of “leperos.”

There was not a soldier to be seen—except here and there the solitary sentry, whose presence betokened the entrance to some military cuartel.

The troops were all inside—in obedience to the standing order. There were not even the usual squads of drunken stragglers in uniform. The fear of assault and assassination was stronger than the propensity for “raking”—even among regiments whose rank and file was almost entirely composed of the countrymen of Saint Patrick.

A stranger passing through the place could scarce have suspected that the city was under American occupation. There was but slight sign of such control. The Poblanos appeared to have the place to themselves.

They were gay and noisy—some half intoxicated with pulque, and inclined to be quarrelsome. The leperos, no longer in awe of their own national authorities, were demeaning themselves with a degree of licence allowed by the abnormal character of the times.

In my progress along the pavement I was several times accosted in a coarse bantering mariner; not on account of my American uniform—for my cloak concealed this—but because I wore a cloak! I was taken for a native “aristocrat.”

Better that it was so: since the insults were only verbal, and offered in a spirit of rude badinage. Had my real character been known, they might have been accompanied by personal violence.

I had not gone far before becoming aware of this; and that I had started upon a rash, not to say perilous, enterprise.

It was of that nature, however, that I could not give it up; even had I been threatened with ten times the danger.

I continued on, holding my cloak in such a fashion, that it might not flap open.

By good luck I had taken the precaution to cover my head with a Mexican sombrero, instead of the military cap; and as for the gold stripes on my trowsers, they were but the fashion of the Mexican majo.

A walk of twenty minutes brought me into the Calle del Obispo.

Compared with some of the streets, through which I had been passing, it seemed deserted. Only two or three solitary pedestrians could be seen traversing it, under the dim light of half a dozen oil lamps set at long distances apart.

One of these was in front of the Casa Villa-Señor. More than once it had been my beacon before, and it guided me now.

On the opposite side of the street there was another grand house with a portico. Under the shadow of this I took my stand, to await the coming forth of the cochero.