The Spanish Bride (9 page)

‘Damme, the camp looks like a lousy fairground!” exploded Charlie Beckwith, glaring at a knot of bargainers vociferously besieging a gentleman in a French grenadier’s coat, and a Rifleman’s green-tufted shako, who was offering to the highest bidder a roll of cloth, and a picture in a gilt frame. A soldier, who looked as though the sack of Badajos had exhausted him more than the siege, stood owlishly at gaze. ‘Get to your quarters, you drunken swine!’ rasped Beckwith. ‘I’ll tell you what, Harry: you’ll do well to keep that wife of yours under guard! I never saw the men in such a state!’

‘Damn all sieges!’ said Harry heartily. ‘Juana’s safe enough. Thank God, we’re to shake the dust of this hellish place off our feet at once!’

But before he could collect all his men from the ravaged city, Lord Wellington was forced to march a regiment of Portuguese into the market-place, and to erect three grim gallows there. He hanged one or two men, and the rest took timely warning, for they knew his lordship’s temper, and slunk back to camp. There, the officers wrought with them to such purpose that on 11th April, five days after the storm of Badajos, the Light division was able to break camp, and march north to Campo Mayor.

They left behind them scores of smouldering bonfires, for every man, before he marched, was ordered to open up his kit-bag, and to disgorge any plunder he had hidden there. Every illicit possession that could be burnt was flung on to the fires, but most of the soldiers had contrived to sell what they had brought out of the town, and cherished in place of useless treasures a few precious coins.

It was a division sated with excesses that marched away from Badajos. Some men returned cheerfully to the normal routine of army life; some grumbled, and some were dangerously sulky. ‘Give us but a week on the march, and the Sweeps will be themselves again!’ said Jack Molloy, casting a fierce, affectionate glance over his ragged company. 5

They had a fortnight. They marched out of Spain into the deadly Alemtejo province of Portugal. They did not linger there. ‘Once in Alemtejo, never out of it again alive,’ ran the proverb. For six days, until they reached Castello Branco, they marched every day, always northward. They went by way of Campo Mayor, Arronches (where Juana, wrapped in Harry’s boat-cloak, bivouacked in a wood, sleeping soundly on the ground by the embers of a camp-fire), and Portalegre, somewhat battered, but still one of the best of the Portuguese border towns. They crossed the Tagus by Villa Velha, a ruined village built on the side of a ravine, and reached Castello Branco on 16th April, there to halt for a day, to rest the men, and to give the supplies time to come up.

If Harry had doubted Juana’s ability to keep up with the division, or to bear with equanimity the fatigue of long marches, and the discomfort of primitive lodgings, his doubts were very soon put to rest. She was a born campaigner. She rode her Portuguese horse in the rear of the column, with West, when Harry went ahead, and never a murmur of complaint was heard to pass her lips. Unused to riding, she was, during those first days, so stiff and cramped when she was lifted down from her saddle that sometimes her legs would not bear her, and she would have fallen had no arm been there to support her. But there was always an arm: if not Harry’s, West’s, or, very soon, the arm of any officer or private who was at hand. She had a genius for making friends, and this quality in her, coupled with the romantic circumstances of her marriage (the story of which was, in a very short time, known to everyone in the division), made her an interesting figure. The men’s imaginations were fired before ever they saw her; when they became familiar with her friendly smile, and saw how her gallant, erect little figure never sagged in the saddle, they took her to their hearts, and were even pleased when she rode with the column, a thing not generally popular with infantry regiments.

Nothing could quench Juana’s spirits. The weather was inclement, but if it rained she buttoned up the frieze cloak Harry had procured for her, and laughed at the mud which spattered her from head to foot. If her teeth chattered with cold, she clenched them, and twisted her bridle round her hand that it might not slip from her benumbed fingers. A lodging in a half-ruined cottage, flea-ridden and filthy, drew from her no ladylike shudders or fits of the vapours, but only a pungent and unflattering comparison of the Portuguese nation with the Spanish. She and Jenny Bates would immediately set to work to make their quarters habitable, and by the time Harry came to join her he would find a temporary home, no mere billet.

She had promised Harry that never would she grudge the hours he must spend away from her, and she kept her promise to the letter. ‘Are you sure you have done all your duty?’ she would ask him, holding herself aloof. Then he would open his arms to her, and she would run into them, with no reproaches for neglect on a hard march, and no complaints of weariness, or the discomfort of their quarters.

She began to give Harry scraps of information about the men in his brigade. ‘George Green has eight children,’ she would say. ‘Five of them are boys, but he says they shall not join the army.’ Or, ‘Willy Dean gets boils in Alemtejo, and he has one now on his neck, which is why he holds his head so. But I have given him some ointment to put on it, and he says already it is better.’

How did she come by this knowledge? Harry never knew. Apparently she had no difficulty in understanding the men’s rough Spanish, or West must have translated their odd confidences to her. Harry was afraid she might meet with insult, but soon realized that for all her friendliness she knew how to command respect. Ladies who travelled in the wake of the army (and there were many of them), attended by abigails, nurses, squalling infants, and a wagon-load of comforts, were the subjects of much lewd ribaldry; but Brigade-Major Smith’s wife, sharing the roughest bivouac with her husband, laughing at hardships, greeting the most insignificant private as courteously as she greeted the Brigadier, was a lady quite out of the common run.

‘And a lady she is, and don’t nobody forget it!’ said Man-killer Palmer, re-nicknamed since Badajos, the Bombproof Man.

‘Ho!’ drawled Tom Crawley, sprawling by the camp-fire. ‘Nobody hadn’t better, considering the cut of our Brigade-Major’s jib.’

‘They got me to reckon with if they do,’ said the Bombproof Man, rolling a belligerent eye around the group. ‘She don’t hold her wipe to her nose because of the ungenteel smell of them horrid, rough soldiers! “Is your poor wife the better of her ague?” she says to me, as though I might be old Hooknose himself.’

‘And since when will you have been owning a wife?” inquired a black-browed Scot politely. ‘It’s Pepita she was talking of, ye cattle-thieving fool! Would you have me soil the ears of the likes of her (and she no more than a baby!) with explaining the true state of affairs? If you don’t know the way to treat a lady, there’s others as does, and will learn ye!’ ‘Och, spare yersel’ the trouble, ye miserable little Southron! I’ve naught against the bairn. She’s bonny enough,’ replied the Scot peaceably.

If the men regarded Juana with affectionate respect, the officers, from Barnard down to the latest joined Ensign, adored her. She was a sister to most of them, treating them as though she had known them all her life, yet with an instinctive discretion that gave evil tongues no food for slander. Though Juana, adopting the whole brigade, visited sick friends, darned holes in feckless lieutenants’ socks, sewed on buttons, and had always some kind of a meal prepared for anyone who chanced to visit her quarters at dinner-time, never, from first to last, did the least whisper of scandal attach to her name.

‘A treasure invaluable!’ Harry boasted, and even those who had most earnestly warned him against marriage agreed with him. His friends, lamenting the change that must take place in their relations with him, early discovered that Mrs Harry Smith was not one of those brides who made it their business to wean their husbands from old friends. No need to do the dandy on Juana’s account; no need to doubt one’s welcome in Harry’s quarters; no fear of boring Juana with the inevitable army-talk. You need not turn your baggage upside-down in the search for a respectable shirt if you were going to call on the Smiths, nor need you wait for an invitation to dine with them, and then spend a dull evening chatting of insipidities. You could stroll off to their quarters just as you were, and you would very likely find Juana cooking a savoury stew, and be told to come in, and set the table for her. You could lounge as you pleased, and fill the room with cigar-smoke: Juana had no objection. Ten to one, she would have the coat off your back to mend a torn lining, or tighten a button, while you sat talking to Harry.

Major-General Vandeleur, rejoining the brigade on 5th April, and taking up his old command of it, was thunderstruck to discover that his efficient young dare-devil of a Brigade-Major had acquired a wife in his absence. He was inclined to be wrathful, but his gallant heart was not proof against the appeal of so youthful and pretty a creature. No one was in the least surprised to see the subjugation of old Vandeleur, for he was, said his men, the kindest man alive. He was very fatherly with Juana, and saw not the smallest reason why his marriage should interfere with Harry’s continuing to share his General’s quarters whenever there was a shortage of accommodation, or circumstances made it desirable for the General to have his Brigade-Major within call. A sociable old fellow, Vandeleur: not one of your stiff-necked, ceremonious Brigadiers. ‘What have you got for us today, Juana?’ he would say, as he took his seat at the dinner-table, Harry on one hand, his ADC on the other, and Juana opposite to him. ‘By jove, you make us so comfortable we shall be spoilt, m’dear. Eh, Harry?’ By the time the Light division reached Ituera, and went into cantonments on the Agueda, Mrs Harry Smith was the divisional pet. ‘Really remarkable!’ murmured Harry’s bête noire, Daniel Cadoux. ‘

What did she see in Smith?’

Kincaid knew that her unclouded instinct had recognized a kindred spirit in Harry. For himself, had she chosen him instead of his volatile friend, he would have adored and protected her, he thought, for his life long. There would have been no hard marches for Mrs John Kincaid; no dirty quarters in ruined Portuguese villages; no bivouacs in streaming woods, with the howling of wolves for an uneasy lullaby. He would have guarded her from every danger or discomfort, would have sent her home to England rather than have her face the hardships of campaigning. But Harry, not consciously wise, knew her better. Kincaid felt his heart ache for her weariness after long days in the saddle; Harry never weakened her by showing his sympathy. When he came to her with his duty done, he was her lover; but at all other times he was her commanding officer, treating her much as he treated his younger brother, Tom, who had taken command of his company whilst he himself continued to be employed on the Staff.

6

If Harry showed no sympathy, there were others who did. If the ground were muddy, half a dozen officers would spring up, all anxious to emulate the chivalry of Sir Walter Raleigh; if Juana expressed a desire, it would be a point of honour for her friends to fulfil it. Harry was at first inclined to be jealous, and the Smiths’ quarters were more than once enlivened by the reverberations of a royal quarrel. Juana’s hot temper was swift to match Harry’s; she could storm as well as he could, hurling insults as well as more tangible missiles at his head; but every quarrel ended soon or late in reluctant laughter, and no two hotheads could have been quicker to forgive.

By the time the Light division had reached the Agueda, Juana knew very nearly as much about the brigade as Harry. She did not appear to miss her own relations, or to regret, for the most fleeting minute, her precipitate marriage. If she had a preoccupation, it was with her progress in the art of horsemanship. The leading-rein had been early dispensed with, but Harry, for all his carelessness, would not permit her to ride any other of his horses than the placid Portuguese animal he had originally allotted to her. Juana wanted to ride the little Spanish horse, Tiny, which Stewart had given him.

‘When you can ride as well as you can dance and sing, you shall,’ Harry promised her. Dancing was very popular with the officers of Wellington’s army. Whenever opportunity served, some regiment or other would be bound to arrange an impromptu ball, often in a rickety barn with a defective roof, and a most uneven floor. Nothing pleased Brigade-Major Smith more than to see his Juana the undoubted belle of such functions. She danced beautifully, whether in the formal dances of her own country, or in the waltzes and the country-measures favoured by the English. There was never any dearth of females to grace the balls by the English officers, but Mrs Harry Smith never lacked a partner. There might be half a dozen more lovely women present, but the crowd round Juana was always so thick that Harry had very often to fight his way through it to claim her hand. ‘My dance, I think!’ would say Harry, measuring his rivals with a gleam in his eye which meant business.

But there was no need for that jealous sparkle: Juana would melt into his arms, transparently happy to be wrested by him from other claimants.

‘Do you love me, little devil?’ Harry would say fiercely into her ear, as they circled round the hall.

The pressure of her hand answered him, the glow in her eyes. ‘Mi esposo!’ Juana would breathe, on an adoring sigh.

‘Don’t you forget it!’ said Harry, his arms like steel round her waist. “These admirers of yours!’

‘You do not like that I should dance with those others?’

His arm tightened; her fingers whitened under the grip of his. ‘Never think it! Of course I do! I deserve to have my ears boxed!’

‘But not here,’ she said seriously.