The Spanish Bride (44 page)

4

Brigade-Major Smith’s duties kept him busy until after dusk. When he came back to his billet, Barnard was pulling off his muddied boots before the fire, and an agreeable aroma of cooking pervaded the cottage.

‘ Is that you, Harry?’ Barnard said, turning his head. ‘Shut the door: there’s a devilish draught blowing in! Have you seen that scamp Bob?’

‘No, sir. I thought he was with you,’ replied Harry, hanging up his cloak. ‘I haven’t set eyes on him all day.’

‘I daresay he went off to see how poor March is going on. Where’s Juana?’ ‘I don’t know. Your rascally servant said she went off this morning to visit a wounded friend.’ Harry looked a little startled. ‘So she did, but she ought to be back by now.’ ‘I hope to God nothing has happened to her!’

‘Oh no! She has far too much sense to get into a scrape. I remember now: she said she might be back late. Will you dine, sir?’

‘No, no, we must wait for Juana!’ said Barnard. ‘The baggage has come up, so you had better change those wet clothes, or I shall have you laid-up on my hands, no good to anyone.’

By the time Harry had followed this piece of advice, Barnard’s French cook, who had arrived that morning with the baggage-train, had bounced into his master’s presence to remonstrate with him in person. ‘The dinner he is spoiled!’ he announced tragically. ‘Go away, sir, go away!’ said Barnard testily. ‘We wait for madame.’ ‘The dinner he will not wait!’

‘Well, it must wait! Keep it hot, and don’t come waving your hands at me!’ ‘Ah, mon Dieu! groaned the cook in anguished tones, ‘Keep it hot, you say! What a pleasantry!’

‘I wish you will have your dinner, sir,’ said Harry, who had just come back into the room. ‘There is no need for you to wait, after all! If only I knew in which direction she had gone!’ ‘Now, don’t begin to get into a fret!’ said Barnard, who had been looking at his watch every other minute since Harry had gone to change his clothes. ‘She will be in directly! Of course we shall wait for her!’

Hearing this, the cook said: ‘It ‘s the death-knell!’ and tottered away to the kitchen, presumably to mourn over the ruin of his art.

‘If that fellow weren’t such a devilish fine cook, I’m damned if I’d put up with him another hour!’ said Barnard. ‘Don’t fidget about the room! Sit down, and be quiet!’ ‘I can’t sit down and be quiet!’ said Harry irritably. ‘If it were your wife, a nice way you’d be in!”

‘Nonsense! What should have happened to her? Depend upon it, she is perfectly safe! And don’t be an impudent young dog, Harry! I may have to swallow that damned cook’s impertinence, but I’ll be hanged if I’ll swallow impertinence from my Brigade-Major! What in the world can be keeping the child?’

‘I don’t know, but if she doesn’t come in within the next quarter of an hour, I shall go and look for her.’

‘In the dark? I never heard such folly! You would miss her for a certainty! Besides, I am convinced there is not the slightest need!’

However, when fifteen minutes had lagged by, and Harry said insubordinately: ‘You may say what you like, Colonel: I am going in search of my wife!’ he did not attempt to dissuade him, but replied in a worried tone that it was very disturbing, and he did not know what to do for the best.

Harry reached for his cloak, but before he had time to take it off the peg, the door opened, and Juana came in, very cold and wet, and splashed all over with mud. She raised her brows at sight of the bare table, and said with a little laugh: ‘Well, why did you wait dinner? Order it: I shall soon have my habit off!’

‘Where have you been?’ demanded Harry and Barnard together, in such explosive tones that Juana was quite startled.

She said coaxingly: ‘Oh, don’t be angry! I am not taken prisoner, as you see! I’ve been to Mont de Marsan, to take back the poor widow’s basin.’

‘To Mont de Marsan!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Upon my word!’ said Barnard. ‘Well done, Juana! You’re a heroine! Why, the Maid of Saragossa is nothing to you!’

She laughed, but stole rather an anxious glance at Harry’s face. ‘Oh no! Only I could not be comfortable until the bowl was given back, so I thought it would be nice to take it myself. I was so glad! She cried with joy when she saw me, and she wanted me very much to keep the bowl, but of course I would not do that.’

‘Juana, you have never deceived me before!’

‘No, mi querido, but I did not think you would let me go if I told you the truth,’ she explained ingenuously.

‘Little devil!’ Harry said. ‘Little abominable varmint! You might have been taken prisoner! Weren’t you afraid of that?’

‘No, because we kept a good look-out, and I had my dear Tiny. And Bob came with me too, so I was quite safe.’

‘Oh, so that’s where he’s been!’ said Barnard. ‘A fine Staff I have, I must say! Where is the rascal?’

‘He went to see the horses stabled. He will be in directly. He thought you would wish him to go with me. Don’t be angry, will you?’

‘Get along with you, and take off those wet clothes!’ Barnard said. ‘Don’t think to coax me! You are a bad child, and a great deal more trouble than the rest of the brigade put together.’ This stricture, however, failed to impress Juana, who knew that Barnard, quite one of her oldest friends, could be twisted round her finger whenever she chose. She blew him a kiss, and ran off to change her clothes.

Barnard was, in fact, so delighted with her exploit, that he spread the story through the division, so that Juana became quite embarrassed by the congratulations she received next day, and instead of accepting these gracefully, as a heroine should, scowled dreadfully, and threatened to throw the panella at the next person who dared to mention her ride to Mont de Marsan.

The Light division remained in cantonments about St Sever, where Wellington had fixed his headquarters, for eight days, no one having any very clear idea of what his lordship’s next move would be. Soult, retiring eastwards, and desperately trying to reorganize a much-shaken army, had plainly decided to fall back on Toulouse rather than to protect Bordeaux, the approach to which lay through sandy, bare country, sparsely populated, and intersected by the difficult Garonne river. To defend Bordeaux would be to leave the whole of southern France open to the invaders; much the better plan would be to draw Wellington off towards the Pyrenees, for it was not to be supposed that that most wary of Commanders would march on Bordeaux, leaving his flank exposed to an attack from the east. The Marshal was not aware that there had arrived at the Allied-headquarters, from Bordeaux, a very respectable old gentleman of Irish Jacobite extraction, who proposed, surprisingly, to raise the White Banner of the Bourbons in Bordeaux. Jean-Baptiste Lynch, a lawyer by profession, and Mayor of Bordeaux, was so extremely unlike the general run of gentlemen who plot risings, that Lord Wellington was inclined to look on him with a favourable eye. The obvious course was to set up the Duc d’Angouleme, still haunting headquarters under his official title of Comte de Pradel, at Bordeaux; but unfortunately the Allied powers had still not made up their minds whether or not to conclude a peace with Napoleon. Lord Wellington was forced, therefore, to proceed with great caution, but he let it be known that although he should take Bordeaux for military and not political reasons, he had no objection to the Royalists’ declaring for Louis XVIII. Only Beresford, whom he meant to send to Bordeaux, with the 7th and the 4th divisions, must on no account allow himself to be implicated in such a rising. Jean-Baptiste Lynch’s legal mind fully appreciated his lordship’s difficulty. He expressed himself as being perfectly satisfied, and went back to Bordeaux, presumably to distribute white cockades.

Meanwhile, Hope, investing Bayonne, was finding the task of reducing that town unexpectedly difficult. Lord Wellington, having under his hand a force of no more than forty thousand men, was obliged to call up two of Freire’s Spanish divisions from the siege, and to send for all his heavy cavalry out of Spain.

On the 8th March, these reinforcements, having come up, and Beresford being well on his way to Bordeaux, the army broke up from cantonments, and pushed forward to engage once more with Soult. The Light division moved to Gée, where they saw the and division, under the leadership of that intrepid but somewhat erratic warrior, Sir William Stewart, win fresh laurels for themselves by a very pretty little affair at Aire. One Rifleman was engaged in the skirmish, Sir William’s improvident nephew, Lord Charles Spencer, who was acting as his uncle’s ADC. Lord Charles had lately bought himself a superb hunter, far beyond the means of his purse. It was shot dead in the town, on the bank of a muddy horse-pond, and into the pond went Lord Charles, over its head, a misfortune which drew from his uncle nothing but a mild: ‘Ha! there goes my poor nephew and all his fortune!’

Sir William had the reputation of being the bravest man in the army. He could be very testy upon occasion, but no one had ever seen him moved from his calm upon the battlefield. ‘Damn the old ruffian!’ said one shaken officer, wiping the sweat from his brow. ‘A shell fell right between us when I was speaking to him just now, frightening me out of my wits! Would you believe it, all the old fire-eater said was, “A shell, sir! Very animating!”’ Harry’s brigade remained at Gée for several days. He had taken a large house for Barnard, Digby, himself, and Juana, and they all thought themselves on clover, until the housekeeper, finding Juana alone one day, suddenly seized her with the grip of a mad-woman, and swore she would put her to death for being an accursed Spaniard. Juana, for all her wiriness, was helpless in the woman’s grasp, and, seeing a hideously sharp carving-knife brandished before her eyes, nearly swooned with terror. Fortunately,—Joe Kitchen walked in at that moment, with a message from Harry, and promptly closed with the madwoman. She soon grew quiet, and a few inquiries elicited the information that such fits were only temporary. But Juana was not in the least comforted by this news, and would never afterwards stay in the house without Jenny Bates to protect her. Jenny, hearing of the adventure, folded her massive arms, and, looking the Frenchwoman up and down, delivered herself of one scathing monosyllable. ‘Ho!’ said Jenny awfully.

After the combat of Aire, the army halted again for twelve days, while his lordship rested his troops, and observed the progress of Beresford and Dalhousie at Bordeaux. Jean-Baptiste Lynch had been as good as his word, and the English, marching into the town without the least opposition, had found the White Banner flying in place of the Tricolour.’ ‘A bas les aigles! Vivent les Bourbons.’ shouted the populace, waving little white flags. That was all very well, but his lordship was anything but pleased when the Duc d’Angouleme, collecting a few noted Royalists, abruptly left his headquarters, and appeared in Bordeaux, announcing that he had the support of the Allies. He actually had the effrontery to write to Wellington, desiring him to instruct Marshal Beresford to place himself at his Royal orders. All he got by that was one of his lordship’s coldest letters. His lordship sent for Beresford to rejoin the army with the 4th division, and left only Dalhousie, with the 7th, to keep a watch over Bordeaux.

When the army moved again, there was a good deal of skirmishing, but the Light division was not engaged until Soult, drawing Wellington ever southwards, reached Tarbes at the foot of the Pyrenees. Here the division experienced what many of its officers considered to be its hardest day’s fighting. All three Rifle battalions were engaged in a bitter, up-hill struggle, and the loss of life was very heavy. No less than twelve officers were killed and wounded, and great was the distress of his many friends when it was discovered that George Simmons was one of the casualties. Poor George was wounded in the knee-pan, and had only been saved from having another shot put into him by his servant’s standing over him until Colonel Barnard himself rode up, and had him carried off the field. So George had to be left behind at Tarbes, suffering a great deal of pain from his fractured knee, while the army pursued Soult on his retreat to Toulouse. Those of his friends who could spare the time visited him before they left the town. They found him invincibly cheerful, and apparently deriving much consolation from the fact that a part of his brother’s regiment was being left to guard the wounded. Maud had been appointed Town-Major, and had found George a good billet. He was sharing it with him, drinking George’s allowance of wine as well as his own, and enjoying himself very much. He did not think that George would see any more fighting, but George, subjecting his own knee to a keen examination, said that he felt sure he would soon be well enough to rejoin his regiment. He was delighted to hear how Barnard, on the day after the battle, had persuaded Lord Wellington to ride over the hill and see the ground the Rifles had fought over. No one, Barnard swore, could ever have seen the dead lie more thickly. Lord Wellington went with him in the end, saying: ‘Well, Barnard, to please you I will go, but I require no new proof of the destructive fire of your Rifles.’ ‘Oh, did he say that?’ exclaimed George, rather faintly, but with a beaming smile of gratification. ‘Why, that makes everything worth while!’

5

If the truth were told, Lord Wellington was by no means satisfied with the result of the action at Tarbes. Having driven Soult from every position during the three days of the Allied advance, with the intention of forcing him back against the barrier of the Pyrenees, it was exasperating to find that one road of retreat had been left open. Soult, keeping his army intact, escaped by the St Gaudens road, which, running along the line of the Pyrenees for some fifty miles, took a northward turn towards Toulouse at St Martory. His lordship, deciding that it was of more importance to strike at Toulouse than to pursue Soult in force, detached Hill to follow him, and himself led the main body of his army to Toulouse by the direct road running through Trie, Castelnau, and Lombex. Weather conditions were appalling. The whole of the surrounding countryside was waterlogged, and the road was worse than a Spanish mule-track. The artillery stuck fast in mud; the wagons foundered in deep pits and ruts; even his lordship’s barouche, with General Alava in it, had to be man-hauled out of clinging slime. The army’s progress was slow, partly owing to the state of the roads, partly owing to his lordship’s mistrust of the French population. This was soon discovered to be unfounded. Although Morillo’s Spaniards left a trail of rapine in their wake, the Allied army was welcomed with open arms. Every kind of foodstuff was offered for sale, from bales of corn to cackling geese. The army, in spite of having outdistanced its supplies, had never fared so well. It behaved well, too: there was really very little unpleasantness, although at Castelnau a vociferous female loudly and insistently demanded vengeance on a handsome young Rifleman, who, she said, had seduced her daughter. No evidence was forthcoming, and it was generally felt that fat Johnny Castles had summed the matter up very justly when he remarked, slicing a hunk of bacon on to his bread, that if the mother had never been in the oven, she would not have looked for her daughter there.