The Spanish Bride

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.

Tom Smith thought that Harry ought to teach his wife to speak English, but Harry never did. Harry spoke Spanish like a native, and saw not the slightest need to plague Juana with lessons in his own tongue. A little English she picked up, some of it from the soldiers, which made Harry laugh, when she reproduced it; French she spoke fluently, so if she encountered anyone who could not converse in Spanish (which was seldom), she was quite ready to turn to French, and chatter away to the visitor as easily as you pleased.

‘Well, but when you take her home to Whittlesey?’ Tom said dubiously. ‘That’s a long way off,’ replied Harry. ‘Time enough!’

‘Yes, but if she can’t make my father and mother understand her, it will be doubly hard for her.’

‘Doubly hard? What do you mean?’ demanded Harry.

‘Well, for them too!’ said Tom, persevering. ‘I mean, she’s a foreigner, and it is bound to seem odd to them-I mean, it will be difficult Harry!’

‘Nonsense!’ Harry said impatiently. ‘They will love her the instant they clap eyes on her!’ ‘I’m sure I hope they may,’ said Tom, trying to picture the scene, and not quite succeeding. ‘You have written to tell them, haven’t you?’

‘That comes well from you! Of course I have! Why, what a fellow you think me!’ ‘No, I don’t, only you are a careless devil, and you can’t deny it will come as rather a shock to the old people. Alice, too!’

‘Oh, Alice be hanged!’ said Harry, recklessly disposing of his favourite sister. ‘You can say that, but you know very well it won’t do.’

‘I’m not afraid of Alice!’ declared Harry.

‘No, not while she’s in England and you are in Portugal!’ responded Tom, with a grin. ‘Nonsense!’ was all Harry would say.

Tom did not care to pursue the matter. He was only five years younger than Harry, but there was quite a considerable difference between Brother Harry, a mere member of a large family, and Captain Smith, Tom’s superior officer.

So Juana was not troubled with English lessons, but concentrated her energies instead on the arts of horsemanship and housewifery. A provident little lady, Mrs Harry Smith: she hoarded the money Harry handed over to her; chaffered in the market (Harry said) like any Portuguese matron; darned socks which another woman would have pronounced beyond repair; and was very saving over such precious commodities as lamp-oil and candles. The army remained in cantonments for nearly six weeks, while supplies were collected, and clothing renewed, troops rested, and Lord Wellington’s plans for the summer campaign completed.

Lord Wellington’s original plan had been to strike at Soult, had Soult lingered in Estremadura. But Soult, harassed by the incalculable movements of the Spanish General Ballasteros about Cadiz, retired, after the fall of Badajos, into Andalusia, whither Lord Wellington was far too cautious to follow him. His lordship, furthermore, had received disquieting intelligence from Don Carlos de Espana, skirmishing to the north, that Ciudad Rodrigo, though perfectly tenable, had most unfortunately only sufficient provisions to withstand a twenty-day siege.

‘This damned policy of manana!’ snapped his lordship, preparing to march northward, to force Marmont to retreat.

Marshal Marmont, commanding the French Army of Portugal, had received express orders from his Emperor not to attempt the relief of Badajos, and had been occupied for some weeks in raiding Beira Baixa, while General Brennier blockaded Ciudad Rodrigo. His lordship left a Portuguese force in Badajos, entrusted the task of containing Drouet to General Sir Rowland Hill, and himself marched north with the main body of his army. Marmont, in Sabugal on 8th April, in Castello Branco on 12th April, executing a raid on Guarda two days later, retreated before his lordship, not because of the Allied army’s advance, of which he had no intelligence, but because he could not find, in all that ravaged countryside, sufficient provender for even a third of his army. By the time he was aware of Wellington’s proximity, he had reached Fuente Guinaldo, on the wrong side of the Agueda. Rains had swollen the river, and held the Marshal at Fuente Guinaldo until the 21st April. But by the 23rd April he had got his army across, not without difficulty, by the fords near Ciudad Rodrigo, and had begun to retreat upon Salamanca.

So his lordship abandoned the pursuit for the time being; his army went into its winter cantonments; and Juana Smith learned to waltz.