The Spanish Bride (8 page)

No, his lordship was not worrying over the conduct of troops who had cracked the hardest nut of all his Peninsular campaigns. Truth to tell, his lordship had very little sympathy to spare for his Spanish allies. He had suffered too much at their hands.

His lordship was all attention to Juana and her sister, all joviality towards Harry Smith, whom he knew to be one of his promising young officers. He had found time, in the midst of his worries, to arrange for the elder lady to be set on her way through the British lines. You would not have thought, seeing his lordship clapping Harry upon the back, cutting a jest, giving that laugh of his that was like the neighing of a horse, that Soult was on the march, that the Spanish garrison he had left at Ciudad Rodrigo was proving itself utterly incapable, that his own troops were out of hand, and most of them roaring drunk, that he must break camp, and march as soon as possible.

Such preoccupations, shelved for the moment in his lordship’s mind, were yet present in Harry’s brain, when he received Juana’s little hand in his. No moment, surely, could have been more inauspicious for an officer in Lord Wellington’s army to take a wife to himself. The month was April, the summer lay ahead: charming for a civilian, of course; but for a soldier summer meant campaigning. No cosy, happy-go-lucky winter quarters for Harry

’s child-wife, with balls, and amateur theatricals, or trips to Lisbon to break the monotony of a domestic existence. Lord Wellington kept his plans to himself, but everyone knew that in a very short time now he would launch his summer campaign, driving a wedge into Spain, making Marshal Marmont, who had succeeded to Massena’s uneasy command and was reported to be a conceited fellow, look as silly as every other French general who had come against him.

‘Blur-an-ouns, boys, ain’t he the man to stand by? Don’t he take the rough and the smooth with us, and ain’t he afther kicking the French before him, just as we’d kick an old football?’ No one doubted that that was just how his lordship would serve the French. He might have political opponents in England who declared his victories to be exaggerated, too hardly won; but the men who fought under his Generalship had a serene faith in him which only defeat could shake. For his lordship had never lost a battle. Roliça, Vimiero, Talavera, the Coa, Bussaco, Sabugal, Fuentes de Onoro, El Bodon: the long list of his Peninsular victories stretched over three years—difficult, hampered years, when lack of money, the incompetence of some of his Generals, scepticism at home, jealousies in Spain, machinations in Portugal, all combined to build up obstacles that would have driven a lesser man to suicide or insanity. They made his lordship querulous (awful, his temper was, some days), but they never made him lose heart. Harry, as much as his friends, had tried to warn Juana of what lay before her. He spoke Spanish like a native, so she could have no excuse for misunderstanding him. Jack Molloy thought that words conveyed little to a girl whose life had been bounded by convent walls; he thought she listened to Harry, yet, through her inexperience, formed no mental picture of the hardships and the alarms lying in wait for a lady travelling with Wellington’s army. She insisted that she would enjoy the life very much. No qualms shook her; she knew no virginal shrinking; when she and Harry were pronounced man and wife, she looked up at him trustingly, her eyes quite unshadowed. Johnny Kincaid saw that look, and his smile was more twisted than ever, but he was the first to step forward and wish the bride good luck.

3

No honeymoon for this bride; no driving away in a chaise-and-four, with the wedding-guests waving farewell, and corded trunks full of bride-clothes piled high on the roof. One small portmanteau contained the few necessaries which had been procured for Juana at Elvas, and one small tent was her first home. She and Harry walked to it by moonlight through the silent camp, when they rose from the wedding feast which the officers of Harry’s regiment had given in their honour. Juana leaned lightly on Harry’s arm, and felt it trembling. When they reached his tent, he would have trimmed the lamp which hung there, but Juana said no, that was her work. She stood on tiptoe to do it, absorbed in this first wifely duty. He watched her, wondering at her, amused by the little serious air she had. The lamplight filled the tent; Juana took off her cloak, and folded it, and laid it neatly away; and began to move about the constricted space, setting small disorders to rights, as though she had kept house all her life. She found a sock of Harry’s, with a great hole worn in the heel. She lifted her eyes to Harry’s face, laughing at him, and said: ‘Oh, how bad! I think you need a wife very much indeed, mi Enrique! When we go to Elvas, I will buy needles and wool, and there shall be no more holes.’

To see her with his sock in her hand made his heart swell; he said unsteadily: ‘Can you darn such holes as that, alma mia?’

‘Of course! I can do everything!’ He smiled. ‘Ride?’

‘I can learn,’ she replied with dignity. ‘It will not be at all difficult, for already twice I have ridden upon a donkey.’

That made him laugh. The desire to take her in his arms was beginning to master him; he controlled it for a little while yet, afraid of frightening her, himself strangely moved, and diffident. His voice was rather strained, unnaturally light. ‘Bravo! And these great journeys?’ ‘Once I went to visit my grandmother; and once we went, all of us, to Olivença, to escape the siege of Badajos. Not this siege. And I rode on a donkey.’

‘Now you must learn to ride a horse.’

‘Naturally. A donkey is stupid and slow, besides being not at all English.’ ‘Do you wish to become English, hija?’

‘Yes, for I am your wife. Do you not wish it, Enrique?’ ‘I love my Spanish wife.’

She shook her head, frowning, but pleased. ‘What did they call me, your friends?’ ‘Mrs Harry Smith.’

She tried to repeat it, but stumbled over it, and gave a trill of laughter. ‘I am too Spanish!’ He moved a pace towards her, and removing the sock from her hand, tossed it aside, and gathered both her hands in his, holding them against his chest. She looked up at him, not timidly, but suddenly submissive. Staring down into her eyes, he read a girl’s hero-worship there. For the first time in his heedless life, he was afraid. His sinewy clasp on her hands tightened unconsciously; his face, in the lamplight, looked a little haggard. She said wonderingly: ‘How strongly your heart beats!’

‘Yes. It beats for you.’

She drew his hands away from his chest to lay them on her own slight breast. ‘And mine for you,’ she said simply.

He felt the flutter of her heart under his palms; he put his arms round her, but gently, and held her so, his cheek against her hair.

‘What are you thinking of, mi Enrique?’ ‘Praying to God you may not regret this!’ ‘Why?’

‘I am—I am a frippery, careless fellow, not worthy of you!’ he said, as though the words were wrung from him. ‘I’m selfish, and bad-tempered—’

‘Ah, ah!’ A gurgle of laughter escaped her. ‘I, too, amigo!’

‘No, listen, mi queridissima muger! I swear I will try to be worthy of you, but they’ll tell you—Stewart, Molloy, Beckwith, Charlie Eeles: all my dearest friends!—that I’m thoughtless, conceited, not fit to be your husband, and O God, it’s true, and I know it!’ ‘Mi esposo!’

‘Yes! And what a husband!’ he said. ‘Forgive me, forgive me! I should not have done it!’ ‘But how is this? Do you not love me?’

‘Con toda mi alma! With all my soul!’

‘It is enough. Think! I am only a silly girl: I know nothing, merely that I love you. I have all to learn: my sister told me I should make you a sad wife. Mi Enrique, I too will try.” He thrust her away from him, holding her so, at arm’s length, while his eyes stabbed hers. ‘No regrets? You’re not afraid? Even though your sister has gone, and you are left amongst a foreign people, to a life that’s hard, and bitter for a woman?’

‘But this is folly!’ she said. ‘How should I be afraid? Will you not take care of me, mi esposo?’

‘’Till death!’ he said in a shaking voice, and at last released that iron hold he had kept over himself, and seized her in a cruel embrace, crushing her mouth under his. Her body yielded adorably; one arm was pinned to his side, but the other she flung up round his neck, to hold him closer. He lifted her, and strode forward with her, checking under the lamp she had trimmed, and putting up a hand to turn it down. The little flame flickered blue, and went out.

4

Harry had got a woman belonging to a man in the 52nd regiment to wait upon his bride. She was a rough, stalwart creature, but decent. If she knew little of an abigail’s work, she knew well how to guard a girl from the crudities of camp life. When Harry’s friends saw big Jenny Bates, standing belligerently at the entrance to his tent, they laughed, and asked him whether his soul were still his own. But Jenny, a gorgon to any interloper, knew her place, and seemed to respect the thin flame-like creature who possessed her mistress. She was gruff, and dour, and no man could greatly impress her. If Harry turned his tent upside-down in a storm of impatience, all for the sake of a handkerchief, which would finally be discovered in his own pocket, Jenny would stand over him with arms akimbo, a grim smile on her lips, ready to set things to rights when he should have done. If he cursed her, she took it in indulgent silence; if he praised her, she would very likely snort. But if he gave her an order for Juana’s well-being, she would obey it to the letter. Her knowledge of Spanish was elementary, yet she always seemed to understand her mistress. She watched over Juana, rather like a sour-tempered yet faithful mastiff. In her spare moments she pursued a never-ending feud with West, Harry’s groom, who was as devoted to Harry as she was to Harry’s wife. Joe Kitchen, his batman, she despised. He was a creature of no account, easily bullied. She did not hold with Harry’s greyhounds, but tolerated them, not because they were the pride of Harry’s heart, but because Juana loved and fondled them. A fine establishment, young Harry Smith’s: just the thing, mocked his friends, for an officer employed on active service! It consisted of a wife, her maid, a groom, a batman, a stud of horses, a string of five greyhounds, a Portuguese boy in charge of a cavalcade of goats, and a sprinkling of villainous-looking persons whom Harry always managed to collect, wherever he went, to act as guides through a strange country. Did any officer desire to find the way to some inaccessible village? Ask Harry Smith for one of his cut-throat guides! Harry, the very morning after his marriage, paraded his stud, and finally chose from it a big Portuguese horse of sluggish disposition to be his wife’s first mount. Captain Ross’s Chestnut Troop, of the Royal Horse Artillery, was attached to the Light division, and Captain Parker, temporarily in command, owing to Ross’s having been wounded during the siege, was beset by Harry, quite early, with an urgent demand that someone, anyone, should immediately convert one of his saddles into a lady’s saddle. Harry had the saddle over his arm, and Parker, though he might groan, knew him too well to expostulate. By nightfall Juana had a passable saddle, and next morning was taking her first lesson. It was her intrepidity, perched upon the back of Harry’s great brute of a horse, that won English West’s heart. ‘She’s a rare one, the missus!’ he said, chuckling over her gritted-teeth endeavours to master this difficult art of riding.

Juana cared nothing for the grins of the soldiers who watched her, nothing for her aching limbs, or bruises. All she thought of was to be rid of the obnoxious leading-rein, which Harry insisted on. He had to be very firm with her, so firm, in fact, that they found themselves, almost before they knew it, right in the middle of their first quarrel. Both being hot-tempered, the quarrel rose quickly to an alarming pitch.

‘Espadachin. Tirana odioso!’ Juana spat at Harry, transformed from a loving, eager child into a raging fury.

‘Estupida!’ Harry tossed back at her. ‘Why, you obstinate little devil, if ever I saw such a shrew!’

A torrent of swift Spanish invective drowned his words. He laughed, and Juana, wrenching at the riding-switch he had given her, struck at him. Harry caught the switch, twisted it out of her hold, and grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her till she caught her breath on an angry sob.

‘Now, listen, you!’ Harry said, in the voice his men knew well. ‘You will do as I bid you! Is it understood?’

‘No!’

‘Then you’ll ride on a pack-mule, with the baggage,’ said Harry coolly, releasing her. ‘I’ll procure one.’

‘You dare not!’ ‘Wait and see!’ said Harry, over his shoulder.

Tears sprang to her eyes; Harry whistled carelessly between his teeth, a snatch of one of the songs of the moment. Juana stamped her foot. ‘Insensate! I hate you!’ ‘It is seen!’ said Harry, flinging up his hand to show the weal her switch had raised across his palm.

There was an awful silence. ‘I did not do that!’ Juana said chokingly. ‘No! No!’ ‘Si!’

She flushed scarlet; the tears chased one another down her cheeks; she turned away, hanging her head. ‘I am sorry! Indeed, I am sorry!’

Two strides brought Harry to her side. ‘It’s nothing, hija, nothing at all! I was only teasing you!’

She nursed his hand against her wet cheek. ‘I am horrible and wicked! I am ashamed! Yet I do not wish to have my bridle held. Please, Enrique?’

‘No, you little varmint, no!’ Harry said, pinching her nose. ‘Not till you can ride well enough to satisfy me.’

‘When we go on the march?’ ‘I promise nothing.’

‘Ay de mi!’ sighed Juana, temporarily accepting defeat.

Harry would not let her stir beyond his quarters without himself or West’s being in attendance on her. Happily, her strict upbringing led her to yield without protest to this decree. The camp, ever since their marriage-day, fairly seethed with activity. Country people from miles round drifted in to buy the plunder which the soldiers, lurching out of Badajos, brought with them for sale,