The Argosy — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

250 THE ARGOSY. day, I would not, for that, go back to the devils of Portugal Street or the hades they found for me in the Marylebone Road.’’ The old man straightened himself up, and looked me full in the' face. ‘‘ We shall never go back there, sir—God grant it.’’ He shuffled off to bed and I to my room. It was the hour of dawn, and the Spanish town shimmered in the first glow of the terrible sunshine. I saw her spires standing up like needles against the sluggish and muddy Ebro. Her narrow streets were alive, and blocked already with the primitive carts of the countrymen awaiting market. Church bells called the peasants to mass. A-haze of white and spreading mists steamed up from the fertile plains beyond the city’s bounds, promising a day of surpassing heat to come: Even in my airy room at the Casa de Arifio, the morning air was heavy as a breath from a city’s lung. I could not sleep, was too tired to walk, too excited to think of aught but the strange fortune which had carried me—a bankrupt soldier—from England toa service the nature of which I could not even guess at, to a city which hitherto had been no more than a name to me. Often since I set out from England had I stood a moment to ask myself upon what enterprise I was embarking, or what good I was seeking? I would say at such times that Isabella de Gavarnie was a creature of my own imagination ; that her desire for me to go to Spain and wait there until her messenger should find me out, was a desire of my fancy. But in Zaragoza, at the window of the hotel which looked out upon the dirty city of northern Spain, I could hide the reality from me no longer. No miracle, I said, now- adays would carry a bankrupt ina sleeping car from Paris to Zaragoza; no miracle would put five hundred pounds in the pockets of him who yesterday had not five hundred pence. Yet answers to the other questions which came rushing upon my mind were not to be found. ‘The great mystery remained— the mystery of the noble woman who had sent me upon the errand, the mys- tery of the man I had set out to find. Who was she, this stately creature, upon whose house I had stumbled so strangely in that devilish street of Bayswater? What service of the sword could there be in Spain for a ruined officer of English hussars? ‘These things she had neglected to speak of. I had ‘her letter, it is true; the letter sealed with the black seal, and laid upon my table so delicately in that garret in London. But it gave me no clue to her purpose, as you shall learn presently. Many times I read the few lines she had written upon a plain piece of note paper. ‘They seemed to be lines in keeping with the dramatic character of the woman I had encountered so dramatically. At the Casa de Arifio, in the town of Zaragoza, he to whom you are sent will seek for you. Let no mention of my name cross your lips. Forget that you have heard it, as you value your life. Yet in your heart may there be friendship for | | ISABELIA DE GAVARNIE. So ran the letter which she had left upon my table. It was twice folded and wrapped in English bank notes to the value of five hundred pounds, Beyond these, a slip cut from a French newspaper made up the contents of her envelope. I read the cutting in London, but could make nothing of it. Eomicbooks (E(0)