Mr. Fortescue by William Westall

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The lodge-keeper in question (an old fellow with a wooden leg) had not
been able to make the two vagabonds in question understand this. They
insisted on coming in, and the lodge-keeper said that if I had not
appeared he verily believed they would have entered in spite of him. They
seemed to know very little English; but as I knew a little Italian, which
I eked out with a few significant gestures, I speedily enlightened them,
and they sheered off, looking daggers, and muttering what sounded like
curses.

The man who carried the organ was of the usual type--short, thick-set,
hairy, and unwashed. His companion, rather to my surprise, was just the
reverse--tall, shapely, well set up, and comparatively well clad; and with
his dark eyes, black mustache, broad-brimmed hat, and red tie loosely
knotted round his brawny throat, he looked decidedly picturesque.

On the following day, as I was going to the stables (which were a few
hundred yards below the house) I found my picturesque Italian in the back
garden, singing a barcarole to the accompaniment of a guitar. But as he
had complied with the condition of which I had informed him, I made no
objection. So far from that I gave him a shilling, and as the maids (who
were greatly taken with his appearance) got up a collection for him and
gave him a feed, he did not do badly.

A few days later, while out riding, I called at the station for an evening
paper, and there he was again, "touching his guitar," and singing
something that sounded very sentimental.

"That fellow is like a bad shilling," I said to one of the
porters--"always turning up."

"He is never away. I think he must have taken it into his head to live
here."

"What does he do?"

"Oh, he just hangs about, and watches the trains, as if he had never seen
any before. I suppose there are none in the country he comes from. Between
whiles he sometimes plays on his banjo and sings a bit for us. I cannot
quite make him out; but as he is very quiet and well-behaved, and never
interferes with nobody, it is no business of mine."

Neither was it any business of mine; so after buying my paper I dismissed
the subject from my mind and rode on to Kingscote.

As a rule, I found the morning papers quite as much as I could struggle
with; but at this time a poisoning case was being tried which interested
me so much that while it lasted I sent for or fetched an evening paper
every afternoon. The day after my conversation with the porter I adopted
the former course, the day after that I adopted the latter, and, contrary
to my usual practice, I walked.

There were two ways from Kingscote to the station; one by the road, the
other by a little-used footpath. I went by the road, and as I was buying
my paper at Smith's bookstall the station-master told me that Mr.
Fortescue had returned by a train which came in about ten minutes
previously.

"He must be walking home by the fields, then, or we should have met," I
said; and pocketing my paper, I set off with the intention of overtaking
him.

As I have already observed, the field way was little frequented, most
people preferring the high-road as being equally direct and, except in the
height of summer, both dryer and less lonesome.

After traversing two or three fields the foot-path ran through a thick
wood, once part of the great forest of Essex, then descending into a deep
hollow, it made a sudden bend and crossed a rambling old brook by a
dilapidated bridge.

As I reached the bend I heard a shout, and looking down I saw what at
first sight (the day being on the wane and the wood gloomy) I took to be
three men amusing themselves with a little cudgel-play. But a second
glance showed me that something much more like murder than cudgel-play was
going on; and shortening my Irish blackthorn, I rushed at breakneck speed
down the hollow.

I was just in time. Mr. Fortescue, with his back against the tree, was
defending himself with his sword-stick against the two Italians, each of
whom, armed with a long dagger, was doing his best to get at him without
falling foul of the sword.

The rascals were so intent on their murderous business that they neither
heard nor saw me, and, taking them in the rear, I fetched the
guitar-player a crack on his skull that stretched him senseless on the
ground, whereupon the other villain, without more ado, took to his heels.

"Thank you," said Mr. Fortescue, quietly, as he put up his weapon. "I
don't think I could have kept the brigands at bay much longer. A
sword-stick is no match for a pair of Corsican daggers. The next time I
take a walk I must have a revolver. Is that fellow dead, do you think? If
he is, I shall be still more in your debt."

I looked at the prostrate man's face, then at his head. "No," I said,
"there is no fracture. He is only stunned." My diagnosis was verified
almost as soon as it was spoken. The next moment the Italian opened his
eyes and sat up, and had I not threatened him with my blackthorn would
have sprung to his feet.

"You have to thank this gentleman for saving your life," said Mr.
Fortescue, in French.

"How?" asked the fellow in the same language.

"If you had killed me you would have been hanged. If I hand you over to
the police you will get twenty years at the hulks for attempted murder,
and unless you answer my questions truly I shall hand you over to the
police. You are a Griscelli."

"Yes, sir."

"Which of them?"

"I am Giuseppe, the son of Giuseppe."

"In that case you are _his_ grandson. How did you find me out?"

"You were at Paris last summer."

"But you did not see me there."

"No, but Giacomo did; and from your name and appearance we felt sure you
were the same."

"Who is Giacomo--your brother?"

"No, my cousin, the son of Luigi."

"What is he?"

"He belongs to the secret police."

"So Giacomo put you on the scent?"

"Yes, sir. He ascertained that you were living in England. The rest was
easy."

"Oh, it was, was it? You don't find yourself very much at ease just now, I
fancy. And now, my young friend, I am going to treat you better than you
deserve. I can afford to do so, for, as you see, and, as your grandfather
and your father discovered to their cost, I bear a charmed life. You
cannot kill me. You may go. And I advise you to return to France or
Corsica, or wherever may be your home, with all speed, for to-morrow I
shall denounce you to the police, and if you are caught you know what to
expect. Who is your accomplice--a kinsman?"

"No, only compatriot, whose acquaintance I made in London. He is a
coward."

"Evidently. One more question and I have done. Have you any brothers?"

"Yes, sir; two."

"And about a dozen cousins, I suppose, all of whom would be delighted to
murder me--if they could. Now, give that gentleman your dagger, and march,
_au pas gymnastique_."

With a very ill grace, Giuseppe Griscelli did as he was bid, and then,
rising to his feet, he marched, not, however, at the _pas gymnastique_,
but slowly and deliberately; and as he reached a bend in the path a few
yards farther on, he turned round and cast at Mr. Fortescue the most
diabolically ferocious glance I ever saw on a human countenance.

CHAPTER V.

THEREBY HANGS A TALE.

"You believe now, I hope," said Mr. Fortescue, as we walked homeward.

"Believe what, sir?"

"That I have relentless enemies who seek my life. When I first told you of
this you did not believe me. You thought I was the victim of an
hallucination, else had I been more frank with you."

"I am really very sorry."

"Don't protest! I cannot blame you. It is hard for people who have led
uneventful lives and seen little of the seamy side of human nature to
believe that under the veneer of civilization and the mask of convention,
hatreds are still as fierce, men still as revengeful as ever they were in
olden times.... I hope I did not make a mistake in sparing young
Griscelli's life."

"Sparing his life! How?"

"He sought my life, and I had a perfect right to take his."

"That is not a very Christian sentiment, Mr. Fortescue."

"I did not say it was. Do you always repay good for evil and turn your
check to the smiter, Mr. Bacon?"

"If you put it in that way, I fear I don't."

"Do you know anybody who does?"

After a moment's reflection I was again compelled to answer in the
negative. I could not call to mind a single individual of my acquaintance
who acted on the principle of returning good for evil.

"Well, then, if I am no better than other people, I am no worse. Yet,
after all, I think I did well to let him go. Had I killed the brigand,
there would have been a coroner's inquest, and questions asked which might
have been troublesome to answer, and he has brothers and cousins. If I
could destroy the entire brood! Did you see the look he gave me as he went
away? It meant murder. We have not seen the last of Giuseppe Griscelli,
Mr. Bacon."

"I am afraid we have not. I never saw such an expression of intense hatred
in my life! Has he cause for it?"

"I dare say he thinks so. I killed his father and his grand-father."

This, uttered as indifferently as if it were a question of killing hares
and foxes, was more than I could stand. I am not strait-laced, but I draw
the line at murder.

"You did what?" I exclaimed, as, horror-struck and indignant, I stopped in
the path and looked him full in the face.

I thought I had never seen him so Mephistopheles-like. A sinister smile
parted his lips, showing his small white teeth gleaming under his gray
mustache, and he regarded me with a look of cynical amusement, in which
there was perhaps a slight touch of contempt.

"You are a young man, Mr. Bacon," he observed, gently, "and, like most
young men, and a great many old men, you make false deductions. Killing is
not always murder. If it were, we should consign our conquerors to
everlasting infamy, instead of crowning them with laurels and erecting
statues to their memory. I am no murderer, Mr. Bacon. At the same time I
do not cherish illusions. Unpremeditated murder is by no means the worst
of crimes. Taking a life is only anticipating the inevitable; and of all
murderers, Nature is the greatest and the cruellest. I have--if I could
only tell you--make you see what I have seen--Even now, O God! though half
a century has run its course--"

Here Mr. Fortescue's voice failed him; he turned deadly pale, and his
countenance took an expression of the keenest anguish. But the signs of
emotion passed away as quickly as they had appeared. Another moment and he
had fully regained his composure, and he added, in his usual
self-possessed manner:

"All this must seem very strange to you, Mr. Bacon. I suppose you consider
me somewhat of a mystery."

"Not somewhat, but very much."

Mr. Fortescue smiled (he never laughed) and reflected a moment.

"I am thinking," he said, "how strangely things come about, and, so to
speak, hang together. The greatest of all mysteries is fate. If that horse
had not run away with you, these rascals would almost certainly have made
away with me; and the incident of to-day is one of the consequences of
that which I mentioned at our first interview."

"When we had that good run from Latton. I remember it very well. You said
you had been hunted yourself."

"Yes."

"How was it, Mr. Fortescue?"

"Ah! Thereby hangs a tale."

"Tell it me, Mr. Fortescue," I said, eagerly.

"And a very long tale."

"So much the better; it is sure to be interesting."

"Ah, yes, I dare say you would find it interesting. My life has been
stirring and stormy enough, in all conscience--except for the ten years I
spent in heaven," said Mr. Fortescue, in a voice and with a look of
intense sadness.

"Ten years in heaven!" I exclaimed, as much astonished as I had just been
horrified. Was the man mad, after all, or did he speak in paradoxes? "Ten
years in heaven!"

Mr. Fortescue smiled again, and then it occurred to me that his ten years
of heaven might have some connection with the veiled portrait and the
shrine in his room up-stairs.

"You take me too literally," he said. "I spoke metaphorically. I did not
mean that, like Swedenborg and Mohammed, I have made excursions to
Paradise. I merely meant that I once spent ten years of such serene
happiness as it seldom falls to the lot of man to enjoy. But to return to
our subject. You would like to know more of my past; but as it would not
be satisfactory to tell you an incomplete history, and to tell you
all--Yet why not? I have done nothing that I am ashamed of; and it is well
you should know something of the man whose life you have saved once, and
may possibly save again. You are trustworthy, straightforward, and
vigilant, and albeit you are not overburdened with intelligence--"

Here Mr. Fortescue paused, as if to reflect; and, though the observation
was not very flattering--hardly civil, indeed--I was so anxious to hear
this story that I took it in good part, and waited patiently for his
decision.

"To relate it _viva voce_" he went on, thoughtfully, "would be troublesome
to both of us."

"I am sure I should find it anything but troublesome."

"Well, I should. It would take too much time, and I hate travelling over
old ground. But that is a difficulty which I think we can get over. For
many years I have made a record of the principal events of my life, in the
form of a personal narrative; and though I have sometimes let it run
behind for a while, I have always written it up."

"That is exactly the thing. As you say, telling a long story is
troublesome. I can read it."

"I am afraid not. It is written in a sort of stenographic cipher of my own
invention."

"That is very awkward," I said, despondently. "I know no more of shorthand
than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only
tangible result was a splitting headache."

"With the key, which I will give you, a little instruction and practice,
you should have no difficulty in making out my cipher. It will be an
exercise for your intelligence"--smiling. "Will you try?"

"My very best."

"And now for the conditions. In the first place, you must, in stenographic
phrase, 'extend' my notes, write out the narrative in a legible hand and
good English. If there be any blanks, I will fill them up; if you require
explanations, I will give them. Do you agree?"

"I agree."

"The second condition is that you neither make use of the narrative for
any purpose of your own, nor disclose the whole or any part of it to
anybody until and unless I give you leave. What say you?"

"I say yes."

"The third and last condition is, that you engage to stay with me in your
present capacity until it pleases me to give you your _conge_. Again what
say you?"

This was rather a "big order," and very one-sided. It bound me to remain
with Mr. Fortescue for an indefinite period, yet left him at liberty to
dismiss me at a moment's notice; and if he went on living, I might have to
stay at Kingscote till I was old and gray. All the same, the position was
a good one. I had four hundred a year (the price at which I had modestly
appraised my services), free quarters, a pleasant life, and lots of
hunting--all I could wish for, in fact; and what can a man have more? So
again I said, "Yes."

"We are agreed in all points, then. If you will come into my room "--we
were by this time arrived at the house--"you shall have your first lesson
in cryptography."

I assented with eagerness, for I was burning to begin, and, from what Mr.
Fortescue had said, I did not anticipate any great difficulty in making
out the cipher.

But when he produced a specimen page of his manuscript, my confidence,
like Bob Acre's courage, oozed out at my finger-ends, or rather, all over
me, for I broke out into a cold sweat.

The first few lines resembled a confused array of algebraic formula. (I
detest algebra.) Then came several lines that seemed to have been made by
the crawlings of tipsy flies with inky legs, followed by half a dozen or
so that looked like the ravings of a lunatic done into Welsh, while the
remainder consisted of Roman numerals and ordinary figures mixed up,
higgledy-piggledy.

"This is nothing less than appalling," I almost groaned. "It will take me
longer to learn than two or three languages."

"Oh, no! When you have got the clew, and learned the signs, you will read
the cipher with ease."

"Very likely; but when will that be?"

"Soon. The system is not nearly so complicated as it looks, and the
language being English--"

"English! It looks like a mixture of ancient Mexican and modern Chinese."

"The language being English, nothing could be easier for a man of ordinary
intelligence. If I had expected that my manuscript would fall into the
hands of a cryptographist, I should have contrived something much more
complicated and written it in several languages; and you have the key
ready to your hand. Come, let us begin."

After half an hour's instruction I began to see daylight, and to feel that
with patience and practice I should be able to write out the story in
legible English. The little I had read with Mr. Fortescue made me keen to
know more; but as the cryptographic narrative did not begin at the
beginning, he proposed that I should write this, as also any other missing
parts, to his dictation.

"Who knows that you may not make a book of it?" he said.

"Do you think I am intelligent Enough?" I asked, resentfully; for his
uncomplimentary references to my mental capacity were still rankling in my
mind.

"I should hope so. Everybody writes in these days. Don't worry yourself on
that score, my dear Mr. Bacon. Even though you may write a book, nobody
will accuse you of being exceptionally intelligent."

"But I cannot make a book of your narrative without your leave," I
observed, with a painful sense of having gained nothing by my motion.

"And that leave may be sooner or later forthcoming, on conditions."

As the reader will find in the sequel, the leave has been given and the
conditions have been fulfilled, and Mr. Fortescue's personal
narrative--partly taken down from his own dictation, but for the most part
extended from his manuscript--begins with the following chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TALE BEGINS.

The morning after the battle of Salamanca (through which I passed
unscathed) the regiment of dragoons to which I belonged (forming part of
Anson's brigade), together with Bock's Germans, was ordered to follow on
the traces of the flying French, who had retired across the River Tormes.
Though we started at daylight, we did not come up with their rear-guard
until noon. It consisted of a strong force of horse and foot, and made a
stand near La Serna; but the cavalry, who had received a severe lesson on
the previous day, bolted before we could cross swords with them. The
infantry, however, remained firm, and forming square, faced us like men.
The order was then given to charge; and when the two brigades broke into a
gallop and thundered down the slope, they raised so thick a cloud of dust
that all we could see of the enemy was the glitter of their bayonets and
the flash of their musket-fire. Saddles were emptied both to the right and
left of me, and one of the riderless horses, maddened by a wound in the
head, dashed wildly forward, and leaping among the bayonets and lashing
out furiously with his hind-legs, opened a way into the square. I was the
first man through the gap, and engaged the French colonel in a
hand-to-hand combat. At the very moment just as I gave him the point in
his throat he cut open my shoulder, my horse, mortally hurt by a bayonet
thrust, fell, half rolling over me and crushing my leg.

As I lay on the ground, faint with the loss of blood and unable to rise,
some of our fellows rode over me, and being hit on the head by one of
their horses, I lost consciousness. When I came to myself the skirmish was
over, nearly the whole of the French rear-guard had been taken prisoners
or cut to pieces, and a surgeon was dressing my wounds. This done, I was
removed in an ambulance to Salamanca.

The historic old city, with its steep, narrow streets, numerous convents,
and famous university, had been well-nigh ruined by the French, who had
pulled down half the convents and nearly all the colleges, and used the
stones for the building of forts, which, a few weeks previously,
Wellington had bombarded with red-hot shot.

The hospitals being crowded with sick and wounded, I was billeted in the
house of a certain Senor Don Alberto Zamorra, which (probably owing to the
fact of its having been the quarters of a French colonel) had not taken
much harm, either during the French occupation of the town or the
subsequent siege of the forts.

Don Alberto gave me a hearty, albeit a dignified welcome, and being a
Spanish gentleman of the old school, he naturally placed his house, and
all that it contained, at my disposal. I did not, of course, take this
assurance literally, and had I not been on the right side, I should
doubtless have met with a very different reception. All the same, he made
a very agreeable host, and before I had been his guest many days we became
fast friends.

Don Zamorra was old, nearly as old as I am now; and as I speedily
discovered, he had passed the greater part of his life in Spanish America,
where he had held high office under the crown. He could hardly talk about
anything else, in fact, and once he began to discourse about his former
greatness and the marvels of the Indies (as South and Central America were
then sometimes called) he never knew when to stop. He had crossed the
Andes and seen the Amazon, sailed down the Orinoco and visited the mines
of Potosi and Guanajuata, beheld the fiery summit of Cotopaxi, and peeped
down the smoky crater of Acatenango. He told of fights with Indians and
wild animals, of being lost in the forest, and of perilous expeditions in
search of gold and precious stones. When Zamorra spoke of gold his whole
attitude changed, the fires of his youth blazed up afresh, his face glowed
with excitement, and his eyes sparkled with greed. At these times I saw in
him a true type of the old Spanish Conquestadores, who would baptize a
cacique to save him from hell one day, and kill him and loot his treasure
the next.

Don Alberto had, moreover, a firm belief in the existence of the fabled El
Dorado, and of the city of Manoa, with its resplendent house of the sun,
its hoards of silver and gold, and its gilded king. Thousands of
adventurers had gone forth in search of these wonders, and thousands had
perished in the attempt to find them. Senor Zamorra had sought El Dorado
on the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro; others, near the source of
the Rio Grande and the Maranon; others, again, among the volcanoes of
Salvador and the canons of the Cordilleras. Zamorra believed that it lay
either in the wilds of Guiana, or the unexplored confines of Peru and the
Brazils.

He had heard of and believed even greater wonders--of a stream on the
Pacific coast of Mexico, whose pebbles were silver, and whose sand was
gold; of a volcano in the Peruvian Cordillera, whose crater was lined with
the noblest of metals, and which once in every hundred years ejected, for
days together, diamonds, and rubies, and dust of gold.

"If that volcano could only be found," said the don, with a convulsive
clutching of his bony fingers, and a greedy glare in his aged eyes. "If
that volcano could only be found! Why, it must be made of gold, and
covered with precious stones! The man who found it would be the richest in
all the world--richer than all the people in the world put together!"

"Did you ever see it, Don Alberto?" I asked.

"Did I ever see it?" he cried, uplifting his withered hands. "If I had
seen that volcano you would never have seen me, but you would have heard
of me. I had it from an Indio whose father once saw it with his own eyes;
but I was too old, too old"--sighing--"to go on the quest. To undertake
such an enterprise a man should be in the prime of life and go alone. A
single companion, even though he were your own brother, might be fatal;
for what virtue could be proof against so great a temptation--millions of
diamonds and a mountain of gold?"

All this roused my curiosity and fired my imagination--not that I believed
it all, for Zamorra was evidently a visionary with a fixed idea, and as
touching his craze, credulous as a child; but in those days South America
had been very little written about and not half explored; for me it had
all the charm and fascination of the unknown--a land of romance and
adventure, abounding in grand scenery, peopled by strange races, and
containing the mightiest rivers, the greatest forests, and highest
mountains in the world.

When my host dismounted from his hobby he was an intelligent talker, and
told me much that was interesting about Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and the
Spanish Main. He had several books on the subject which I greedily
devoured. The expedition of Piedro de Ursua and Lope de Aguirre in search
of El Dorado and Omagua; "History of the Conquest of Mexico," by Don
Antonio de Solis; Piedrolieta's "General History of the Conquest of the
New Kingdom of Grenada," and others; and before we parted I had resolved
that, so soon as the war was over, I would make a voyage to the land of
the setting sun, and see for myself the wonders of which I had heard.

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