The Spanish Bride (51 page)

‘You entered Washington!’

‘Yes, for the amiable purpose of burning the city to ashes! Never was there anything so barbarous! To those of us, fresh from Wellington’s methods of warfare, it was too shocking to be borne! Ross felt it: it was thanks to him the flames stopped where they did. That damned Admiral would have set fire to everything! As it was, all the public buildings were set light to. Oh, it was melancholy to see the elegant Capitol and the President’s House being destroyed in such a way! It made one ashamed to be an Englishman. We felt more like a band of Red Savages of the woods! However, you won’t spread that about, remember! Juana, this won’t do! I must be off!’

She would not hear of his going to Downing Street until he had brushed his hair, changed his shirt, and put on his best sash. To see him tossing the contents of his portmanteau all over her bedchamber brought home to her the realization of his return far more than anything else could have done. The quiet house seemed to be full of his energetic personality; his voice shouting to her for God’s sake to come at once, because he could not find his neckcloth, was the sweetest music she had heard for months. She ran in, and found the neckcloth without the least difficulty, of course; and ten minutes later was waving good-bye to him from the window.

On his arrival in Downing Street, Harry had reason to be grateful to his wife for insisting on his furbishing up his person, for after receiving him very kindly, and putting a number of questions to him, Lord Bathurst said: ‘Well, Captain Smith, the intelligence you bring is of such importance that the Prince Regent desires to see you. We’ll go immediately.’ ‘What, my lord, to Carlton House?’ exclaimed Harry.

‘To be sure,’ smiled Bathurst.

‘Then be so good as to allow me to take the map I brought you,’ said Harry, recovering his poise with considerable aplomb.

‘A very good notion: I have it here,’ approved Bathurst.

The summons to the Regent’s presence was not, of course, quite unexpected, but never having been in such exalted circles before Harry, for once in his life, felt extremely nervous. When the carriage drew up behind the colonnade, and he and Bathurst were admitted into Carlton House, the magnificence of his surroundings at first exercised a most. oppressive effect upon his naturally vivacious spirits, and he could almost have wished that Tom Falls had been well enough to have been the bearer of the dispatch. But upon being shown into a large apartment, and left there for half an hour, while Lord Bathurst went off alone to confer with the Regent, he soon recovered his self-possession, in spite of the stunning effect of the Regent’s taste in house-decoration, and reflected that never having quailed under the piercing eye of old Douro there was no need for him to be afraid of meeting even the Prince Regent.

‘Anyway, General Ross begged me to talk, if I were asked to!’ he told an unresponsive gilt chair, just as Bathurst came back into the room.

‘Come along!’ said his lordship. ‘The Prince will see you.’

Harry got up, but said frankly: ‘My lord, if we were in camp, I could take your lordship all about, but I know nothing of the etiquette of a court.’

‘Oh, just behave as you would to any gentleman!’ Bathurst replied. ‘Call him “Sir”, and don’t turn your back on him.’

‘No, I know that!’ said Harry, following him out of the room.

‘You’ll do very well. His Highness’s manner will soon put you at ease. And don’t be afraid to talk! He is for ever complaining that the bearer of dispatches will never do so. Now, here we are: Captain Smith, Sir!’

The Prince Regent had, for a number of years, been providing the British public with a surfeit of scandal. His debts, his matrimonial affairs, his quarrels with his daughter, the vulgarity of his expensive tastes, his succession of mistresses, were all perfectly well known even to a young officer from the Peninsula. He was the subject of the grossest caricatures in the newspapers; his treatment of his wife; his predilection for the bottle; the way he had done his best to hound his father into a madhouse; his countless follies: all these were subjects bandied from lip to lip, but when Harry stepped into his dressing-room he straightway forgot them.

The Regent, who was seated before an opulent dressing-table, rose at once, and came forward, holding out his hand in the most natural way. ‘I am very glad to see you, Captain Smith. General Ross has strongly recommended you to my notice as an officer who can afford me every information of the service you come to report—the importance of which,’ he added, with an unexpectedly charming smile—’is marked by the firing of the guns you can now hear.’

Harry quite blushed to think of all London being in an uproar at the news he had brought, and himself actually shaking hands with his future sovereign. The Regent drew him over to a table, and begged him to be seated, and to spread out ‘that map I see you have under your arm.’

In a few minutes, Harry was perfectly at his ease, securely mounted on his own hobby-horse. He was astonished at the grasp of military affairs shown by the Regent. The most pertinent questions were put to him, and he found his Royal interlocutor so knowledgeable, so sincerely interested in the conduct of the war, that he spoke out with the greatest frankness, even saying bluntly that it was to be regretted a sufficient force had not been sent out to hold Washington.

‘What do you call a sufficient force?’ asked the Regent ‘Fourteen thousand men, Sir.’

‘On what do you base such an opinion?’

If the Regent thought to convict Harry of speaking at random, he soon discovered his mistake. Harry had no hesitation in stating his reasons. He asked about the present state of affairs in America, and was told that Harry had left half the army sick from dysentery, which made him look grave.

‘Then there can be no attempting Baltimore!’ he exclaimed.

‘Captain Smith has told me, Sir, that General Ross assured him, when he left the country, that he would not do so,’ interposed Bathurst, forbearing to add that Harry had also told him that Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn had done their utmost to urge Ross to move against Baltimore.

‘We induced the enemy, by a ruse, to concentrate on Baltimore, Sir,’ said Harry. ‘A coup de main, like the conflagration of Washington, may be effected once during a war, but can rarely be repeated. The entrance to the harbour, moreover, will be effectually obstructed.’ The Regent seemed to appreciate this reasoning; he asked Harry a great many more questions, drawing him out so skilfully that Harry presently found himself recounting one or two funny episodes, which, made his Royal Highness roar with laughter. When he at last backed his way out of the room, the Regent came after him to ask if he were a relation of his friend, Sir Edward Smith, of Shropshire. He looked disappointed upon being told No, but shook hands with Harry again, saying graciously: ‘I and the country are much obliged to you all. Ross’s recommendations will not be forgotten; and, Bathurst! don’t forget this officer’s promotion!’

6

As though a reunion with his wife, and a visit to Carlton House were not enough to cram into one day of an obscure officer’s life, Lord Bathurst, as he and Harry drove back to Downing Street, invited him most cordially to dine with him at his house on Putney Heath that evening. There was no refusing such an invitation, however much Harry would have preferred to have spent the evening with Juana. Nor, when she presently learned of it, did she raise the least demur. She said, on the contrary, that it was most fortunate that she had had the forethought to press out his mess jacket and to launder his muslin neckcloths.

Bathurst’s secretary, a lively young gentleman owning to the name of Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville, but answering equally readily to the more simple nickname of Punch, had offered to drive Harry out in his tilbury. He called for him in Panton Square just after seven o’clock, and regaled him all the way to Putney with a flow of the most amusing conversation, most of it far too scandalous to be seriously attended to. When they were ushered into the drawing-room of Lord Bathurst’s house, they found a large party assembled, amongst whom were Lord Fitzroy Somerset, and his bride. Fitzroy moved across the room to shake hands with Harry at once, congratulating him on the success achieved in America, and introducing him to his wife, whom Harry presently took in to dinner.

Lady Fitzroy, a gentle creature with a decided look of her famous uncle in her rather long but handsome face, accorded Harry a flattering degree of attention. To his surprise, he discovered that he was the lion of the evening, his host being at pains to draw him out, and everyone quite hanging on his lips. Lord Fitzroy being placed opposite to him, it was not long before the conversation turned on the late campaign in the Peninsula. Well-fed, and well-wined, Harry was not a bit shy of talking before such a distinguished company, and upon a gentleman’s saying, from the other end of the table, that the Duke of Wellington was certainly unequalled in defence, he picked up the cudgels without an instant’s hesitation, and said, that in his army’s eyes the Duke was unequalled in any form of warfare. Fitzroy laughed. ‘Well done!’

Seated beside Harry was an elderly gentleman, with very dark brows arched above large, lustrous eyes, and a skin so white that it might have been lacquered. He inclined his head courteously, saying in a deep, soft voice: ‘You entertain a high opinion of the Duke, Captain Smith?’

‘All who have had the honour of serving under him must do so,’ responded Harry. ‘To us he is elevated beyond any other human being!’

The gentleman smiled. ‘I am very glad to hear you speak in such raptures of him. He is my brother.’

Harry realized that he was sitting beside the Marquis Wellesley, and blushed, but said, with a laugh: ‘I have not exceeded in anything, sir, to the best of my judgement!’ After dinner, when they rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, Fitzroy came over to Harry, and they had a long talk. Fitzroy had gone to Cadiz with the Duke, after the armistice, and had naturally had a good-deal of conversation with him about the late war. ‘You know, Smith, the Duke often said to me, “The Light, 3rd, and 4th divisions were the Mite of my army, but the Light had this peculiar perfection: no matter what was the arduous service they were employed on, when I rode up next day, I still found a division. They never lost one half the men other divisions did.”

‘No! Did he indeed say that?’ cried Harry, quite delighted. ‘Oh, famous, for that was what we so prided ourselves on! I have actually heard our soldiers bullying one another about the number such-and-such a company had lost, always attaching discredit to the loss!’ Altogether, Harry, in spite of being separated from Juana, spent a charming evening. He got back to Panton Square after midnight, and found Juana waiting for him, with such a beaming look in her eyes, such a welcoming smile on her lips, that he caught her up bodily in his arms, exclaiming in a suddenly thickened voice: ‘To know that I shall find you when I get back to my quarters! Mi muger! mi queridissima muger!’

She took his face between her palms, pushing back his head so that she could look into his eyes, her own full of mischief. ‘Ah, ah! Do you think I shall believe that there have been no beautiful American women, mi Enrique?’

‘

Never one! Siempre tu fiel, fiel Enrique!’

She laughed, but kissed him. ‘I don’t believe you, because I know you for a bad, wicked man, but I love you, I love you!’

Later, dropping asleep in his arms, she roused herself to murmur: ‘Now I can go to your home!’

‘So you shall, as soon as we get back from Bath,’ he responded. ‘Bath?’ she said, bewildered.

‘Didn’t I tell you, hija? I promised Ross I would go to call on his wife there, and take her a letter from him. Shall you mind going?’

‘I mind nothing,’ said Juana, tucking her head under his chin. ‘When do we march?” They ‘marched’ the very next day, travelling all the way in a private chaise, an extravagance justified, they thought, by the prospect of Harry’s promotion.

‘Oh,’ said Juana, leaning back luxuriously against the squabs of the chaise, ‘we have journeyed so many miles together, but never like this before! I feel so grand! Did you remember to write to your father?’

Yes, Harry had done all that a dutiful son should, even to begging Mr Smith to come up to town in a few days to meet him on his return from Bath. There was nothing, in fact, on his conscience, and he was able to give himself up to a week’s bliss.

They found Bath a delightful town, and Mrs Ross very amiable and hospitable. A few days crammed with sightseeing were spent there, and then off the Smiths set for London again, quite astonishing Mrs Ross by such meteoric movements.

They reached Panton Square again in the highest fettle, Juana having read in a newspaper bought at the last stage of Harry’s promotion to the rank of Major. ‘The reward of our separation!’ she called it.

Madame Dupont met them at the door of No. 11, with the intelligence that Mr Smith had arrived in town the day before, and was actually upstairs in the parlour at that very moment. Juana had told Harry of how Tom had found his family living in dread of her being a haughty Spanish dame, and as soon as he heard of his father’s arrival, he was seized by a mischievous desire to tease him a little. He would not hear of Juana’s going straight in to Mr Smith; he wanted to show her off, not tumbled from a long journey, but looking her best. ‘Do, do put on your Spanish dress!’ he coaxed. ‘I shall tell my father you’re as stately as a swan and about as proud as a peacock! It will be a famous joke!’

So Juana slipped upstairs to her bedchamber, while Harry went in to his father. It was easy to see from where Harry got his long, narrow eyes, and aquiline nose. The resemblance between Mr Smith and his favourite son was most pronounced. Even the upward tilt of their mouths at the corners was the same; the only difference was in expression. John Smith’s was a milder’ face than Harry’s. His chin was not so aggressive; his lips not so close-gripped; nor had he that look of scarcely curbed energy. When Harry opened the door, he looked round, and stayed for a moment, grasping the arms of his chair, and gazing at his son. ‘Harry!’ he said. ‘My boy!’