The Spanish Bride (23 page)

Mr Larpent found General Vandeleur chuckling at his elbow. ‘By Jove, that young devil of mine has married a tartar!’ said the General. ‘Dear little soul, isn’t she?’ Mr Larpent was unable to agree with him. Juana, waltzing with Kincaid, still flushed and raging, did not look in the least like a dear little soul.

‘Malvada,’ Kincaid scolded softly. ‘What do you think you deserve for making scenes in public?’

‘I don’t care! I wish I had hit him harder!’

‘He’d have murdered you! Now, you know you are behaving disgracefully! English ladies don’t box their husbands’ ears—at least, not at masquerades!’

‘I am not English! I do not want to be English! He is faithless—

no se inqirieta par nada!

‘You little devil, he’ll care for being made a fool of in public fast enough! Besides, you know he doesn’t mean anything by just flirting a little.’

‘He is dancing with her!’ Juana said in a shaking voice.

‘Of course he is! I would myself, if my wife came and slapped my face for putting an arm round a pretty girl’s waist!’

‘You are as horrible as he is, and I am going home—instantaneamente!’ ‘No, no, you can’t do that! Everyone will laugh at you if you do!’

Juana informed him between gritted teeth that the whole army was at liberty to laugh at her. He led her off the floor at the end of the dance, and was still persuasively arguing with her when the band struck up the next waltz. Juana said. ‘Either you will take me home now, or I go by myself!’ and suddenly saw Harry, his mask discarded, descending upon her. ‘You’ll dance this with me!’ Harry said, grasping her hand, and pulling her roughly into his arms.

‘I won’t!’ Juana said, but in rather a frightened voice.

He paid no attention, but began to waltz with her. He held her in an arm that felt like steel, and his grip on her hand crushed all her fingers together. He said in a molten under-voice: ‘What the hades did you mean by slapping my face? Answer me!’

‘You know very well, and if you don’t let me go I will do it again!’ whispered Juana. He looked down at her for an instant, his face rather white, and his eyes bright with anger. ‘You had better not, mi muchacha!’

Juana thought that perhaps she had better not. She said: “Then you had better not flirt with that—that ramera!’

‘I’ll flirt with whom I damned well please! And don’t let me hear that word on your tongue again! How dare you use such language?’

‘If I knew a worse word, I would say it! I shall say anything I like!’ ‘You’re a vulgar, stupid, jealous, ill-conditioned brat!’ ‘And you are a libertine!’

Harry gave a sudden crack of scornful laughter. ‘It would serve you right if I was! If you ever dare to make a fool of me in public again, I’ll leave you! Comprende?’ Her steps faltered; she replied with difficulty: ‘You would like to be rid of me, I daresay.’ ‘Very much, when you serve me a trick like that!’

The music stopped. Juana wrenched her hand out of his, and walked away to where Kincaid was lounging against the wall. He straightened himself, and said: ‘You know, Juana, you and Harry are the best dancers in the room!’

‘I am going home,’ said Juana, in a stifled voice. ‘Very well,” Kincaid said, catching the glint of a tear on her cheek. I’ll take you, then.’ There was a light crust of snow in the cobbled street, and the night air was very cold. Juana pulled the hood of her camlet cloak over her head, and walked beside her tall escort in silence. At the door of her lodging, he said: ‘Mi querida amiga, cheer up! If Harry has a regular pepper-pot of a temper, so have you, you know!”

‘Yes,’ said Juana. ‘I know.’

She said good night, and went into the house. The fire had sunk very low in the room she and Harry slept in, and a biting draught whistled under the rickety door. Juana put some charcoal into the brazier with shaking hands, shed all her finery, turned down the lamp, and crept shivering into bed. Half-an-hour later, sobs still catching her breath, she heard the outer door open, and shut with a crash. She shrank under the blankets, pulling them over her head, and clenched her teeth on her damp handkerchief in an effort to suppress her convulsive sobs. Harry’s quick step sounded; he came into the room. ‘Juana!’ he said sharply.

She lay mouse-still. He turned up the lamp again, saw the pathetic mound under the blankets, and went up to the bed, and relentlessly pulled the clothes from over his wife’s head. ‘Don’t pretend you’re asleep!’ he said wrathfully. ‘If this doesn’t beat all! First you slap my face, then you—’ He broke off, his anger suddenly evaporating at the sight of Juana’s wet eyelashes, and shivering limbs. ‘Oh, you wicked, precious, little varmint!’ he exclaimed, gathering her into his arms. ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry, my poor baby! It was all my fault!’ ‘Oh no! Oh no!’

‘You silly, naughty child, you’re ice-cold! Do you want to catch your death, bad one?’ ‘I don’t c-care, for you w-wish to be rid of me!’

‘Never!’

‘You said you did!’ ‘No, no, I didn’t say that!’

‘But you did, and I wish very much to die!’ wept Juana. ‘If I said it, it was a black lie! Mi queridissima muger!’

‘Oh, mi Enrique, I am so very, very sorry!’ Juana said, flinging her arms round his neck. ‘It was bad of me to hit you, and vulgar, and—and ill-conditioned, and I expect she was not that thing which you have forbidden me to say! And perhaps you were not flirting with her after all, and it was only my wicked jealousy!’

‘Alas, alas!’ Harry said, kissing first one eyelid and then the other, ‘I was, and she was, and I deserve to have both my ears boxed!’

‘Oh, malvado!’ Juana said, her tears turning to laughter. ‘Shameless one!’ ‘Libertine!’ grinned Harry. ‘Oh, Juana, you absurd infant, what should I do without you?’ 5

They were never going to quarrel again, not even when the ladies of Guinaldo tied ribbons to Harry’s coat, and blew him kisses in the street. Luckily the Greenjackets were not as popular as the officers of the 52nd, now quartered in the town, and so much caressed by the natives that it was a wonder their heads were not turned.

Reinforcements of cavalry, arriving from England, provoked some admiration and a good deal of ribaldry from the shabby, weather-beaten Peninsular veterans. ‘As fair and beautiful as lilies!’ mocked Captain Leach, encountering a squadron of Life Guards in all their unsoiled magnificence, Cadoux shook his head, murmuring wistfully: ‘If I could afford it, I think I should exchange into a cavalry regiment. Really, you would be hard put to it to find smarter uniforms ! I do what I can, of course, but one is terribly hampered.’ ‘Oh no, don’t leave us!’ begged Jack Molloy. ‘You couldn’t indulge your taste in fancy waistcoats if you joined the Life Guards!’

‘True, very true!’ Cadoux said, the lurking smile, which Harry could never be brought to see, narrowing his sleepy eyes. ‘I have such a pretty new one for the party, too.’ ‘Oh, are you going to it?’ asked Molloy. ‘No one sent me an invitation.” Yes, Cadoux, obtaining his invitation through God knew what underground channels, said his brother-officers, was certainly going to the party. He had not been able to get himself asked to the dinner, however.

The party was being given by Lord Wellington, in Ciudad Rodrigo, on the occasion of the investiture of General Lowry Cole with the Order of the Bath. It was to consist of a select dinner, followed by a ball and supper. Never having given one of his grand parties at Rodrigo, of which battered city he had been made Duque, his lordship was anxious to do the thing in style. All the headquarters plate was requisitioned; wagon-loads of glass were sent from Almeida, twenty-five miles away; and as soon as Colonel Colin Campbell, who managed his lordship’s household, reported that there was no possibility of getting a banquet prepared in Rodrigo, arrangements were made to carry a half-cooked dinner there on carts and mule-back from Frenada. Colin Campbell swore, and said in his rough way that he could not imagine what could possess a sane man to go to such trouble for the sake of a dinner-party. But his lordship liked parties, and he could not see that to carry every dish seventeen miles would be the least trouble in the world. Depend upon it, the headquarters cooks would make nothing of it.

Harry, happening to accompany his Brigadier to Frenada on business, had the good fortune to come under his lordship’s notice. His lordship liked young Smith, who never applied for leave, nor went sick when he was most needed, and he remembered that he was married to a charming representative of one of the best families in Estremadura. He told him that he must be sure to bring his little guerrtire to the ball, and promised him an invitation. Harry thought that twenty miles was too far to take his wife, but Juana speedily undeceived him.

‘You will be too tired to dance,’ Harry said. ‘I am never too tired to dance,’ replied Juana simply.

So the Smiths were going to the party, too, and Harry rode all the way to Almeida, no little journey from Guinaldo, to buy the most handsome Braganza shawl there for his Juana to wear.

Cadoux drawled that he would make it his business to dance with Juana, to annoy Harry. ‘I doubt whether it will,’ said Kincaid. ‘Why annoy him, in any case?’

‘But he annoys me,’ said Cadoux plaintively. ‘There’s no getting away from him. Wherever you go, there’s Smith: a skinny little devil, making enough noise for two of his size, never still, never thinking anyone can do anything but himself, and always so damned sure that there’s nothing he couldn’t do, if he did but wish to.’

Kincaid laughed, but said: ‘Oh, Harry brags atrociously! We all know that! But he’s a damned good Staff-officer, Dan. If you had served under some of the real bad ’uns I’ve met in my career, you’d thank God for a Harry Smith! You never see him tired—’ ‘I find that very annoying,’ murmured Cadoux. ‘When every man in the brigade is dropping with fatigue, it isn’t decent, it isn’t seemly, to be full of energy.’

Kincaid smiled, but shook his head. ‘All very well, but you wouldn’t get the men to agree with you. They know that no matter what may have occupied the day or night, or what elementary war may be raging, Smith will never be found off his horse until he’s seen every man in the brigade under cover.’

‘He damns them up hill and down dale,’ Cadoux complained.

But the men did not care a button for any of the fearful expletives their Brigade-Major was in the habit, in moments of stress, of flinging at their heads. In battle, there was no oath beyond the range of his vocabulary, but any officer who shared the hottest shell-fire with them, and wore himself down to bone and muscle in their interests, was welcome to call them individually and collectively the foulest names he could lay his tongue to. It was hardly to be expected that he and soft-spoken, dandified Cadoux would ever agree, but men who liked both tried several times to point out the good points of one to the other. George Simmons said that the silly enmity was mostly Cadoux’ fault, because he never let slip an opportunity to irritate Harry’s quick, intolerant temper.

But when Cadoux waltzed with Juana at Lord Wellington’s ball, Harry paid very little heed. He was sorry for Juana’s having to stand up with such a frippery fellow, and merely shrugged his incomprehension when she said she found Cadoux quite a pleasant companion. The ball was a great success, and everyone but Colin Campbell, and the Spanish General O’Lalor, who were responsible for its management, enjoyed it hugely. The best house left standing in the town had been taken for it, and the depredations of the siege were covered up by some very fine hangings of yellow damasked satin, which had been brought away from the Palace of St Ildefonso, and hidden in Rodrigo to save them from the French. General O’Lalor discovered these, and they were hung up tent-like in the ballroom, providing at once an air of magnificence and a certain degree of protection from the cold air which came into the room through a large hole knocked out of the roof by a cannon-ball. The supper-rooms were hung with crimson satin and gold, and looked very well too. Claret, champagne, and Lamego, which was like the best port, had been brought from Frenada in spring-wagons; the dinner, over which the agitated cooks tore their hair, did not seem to have suffered from having been partially prepared seventeen miles away; and the headquarters plate was enough to provide each guest with one change of silver during the meal. A blaspheming mob of batmen staggered about behind the scenes with immense cauldrons of hot water, and washed all the spoons and forks with feverish haste between courses; and the band of the 52nd regiment arrived after dinner to play the latest dance-tunes for the company.

It was rather chilly in the ballroom, and there was one dangerous hole in the floor; but dancing soon warmed one, and as for the hole, a mat laid over it, and a man posted to see that no one plunged a leg in it, made it of no particular consequence.

Lord Wellington, who had been hard at work in Frenada until half-past three in the afternoon, rode over to Rodrigo in excellent time for the dinner, and appeared at it, dressed in all his orders. He was quite the life and soul of the party. He danced himself, several times, quizzed his Staff, flirted with all the prettiest ladies, stayed to supper, and rode back by moonlight to Frenada, with every intention of being in his office again by midday. Of his family, only Colonel Gordon could be got to go back with him. Everyone else had procured a lodging in the town, so that the party did not break up until five in the morning. It got a little rough after his lordship’s departure, and Harry took Juana away to their quarters. When he had seen her safely into bed, however, he went back to the ball, and was in time to assist in teaching the excited Spanish guests to shout hip, hip, hip, hurrah in place of their vivas. The toasts were becoming incessant, the most popular being ‘The next campaign,’ and ‘Death to all Frenchmen!’ It presently seemed good to the other members of his lordship’s personal Staff to chair the young Prince of Orange, for no particular reason except that he was a nice lad, and they liked him. The idea took, and the next person to be carried on high round the room was General Vandeleur. There, however, the chairing stopped, for the General’s bearers were distinctly foxed, and they let him fall.