The Spanish Bride

3

There was every facility for dancing. Those who could not obtain tickets for the state balls could go any night of the week to the Principe, and enjoy themselves at the public balls held there. Nor was dancing all that Madrid had to offer its visitors. There were theatres; and concerts; plenty of sport to be had in the Grand Park, which abounded with game; public executions in the Plaza Mayor, if you had a fancy to witness a garrotting; and bull-fights in the Plaza de los Toros, shut for years, but opened again in honour of the British army. Business in Madrid on a bull-day was at a standstill. From ten o’clock in the morning onwards, crowds besieged the gates of the bull-ring, struggling and fighting for the best places, and apparently quite content, having won them, to sit for hours in all the heat and glare of the August sunshine, waiting for the show to begin, with nothing to do but to drink lemonade, and eat sticky sweetmeats fast melting into glutinous masses on the vendors’ trays.

The English liked some part of the bull-fights, but very few cared to see the slaughter of broken-down horses which formed an apparently essential feature of the spectacle; and all of them were agreed that it was no sight for women. Harry would not take Juana, which made her cross, until she heard that Kincaid had seen his erstwhile baggage-horse driven into the ring, and then she was glad, and quarrelled with Kincaid for laughing about it. The garrison of the Retiro surrendered within a few days, and Lord Wellington, having given a superlatively grand ball at the end of August, left Madrid, with the 1st, 5th, and 7th divisions, some Portuguese troops, and two brigades of heavy cavalry, to reinforce Clinton. He left the 4th division at Escurial, and the 3rd and Light divisions in and around Madrid. He had learned, late in the month, that Soult had at last begun to evacuate Andalusia, raising the siege of Cadiz, which had been dragging on for a little matter of three years. General Hill, commanding the containing force in Estremadura, wrote that Drouet’s troops in his front had vanished, presumably having marched off to join Soult, who was concentrating at Granada. Since King Joseph, with the Army of the Centre, and the most immense train of baggage and refugees ever seen, was marching slowly eastward to Valencia, to effect a junction with Suchet, there could be no possibility of Soult’s continuing to maintain himself in Andalusia. He, too, would in all probability march eastward. That would take him many weeks, and a warm welcome he would receive from King Joseph (if ever he got into touch with that much-harassed monarch), for he had been behaving in the most intransigent fashion, quarrelling with him in dispatch after dispatch, giving him quite erroneous information, and even refusing to obey his positive orders.

Lord Wellington, deciding that no immediate danger threatened Madrid, left the city on the last day of the month, instructing Hill, as soon as he could be assured of Soult’s departure for the east, to march on the capital, and to take over the command of the troops left there. When he should have settled accounts with the French Army of Portugal, which was lifting up its head again, under Clausel, his lordship meant to return to Madrid, to confront the combined forces of Joseph, Suchet, and Soult.

Meanwhile, the divisions left at Madrid continued to amuse themselves as well as they were able. Lack of money was, as always, the chief bar to enjoyment, but there were ways, if one was an old campaigner, of getting over this difficulty. One enterprising gentleman, instead of indulging in a little honest plunder, or some legitimate pilfering, took under his protection a singularly ill-favoured widow who owned, in addition to a large wart on her nose, quite a tidy little nest-egg. But such shifts as these were not much approved of in the ranks. ‘You’d marry a midden for muck, you would!’ a frank-spoken friend told the complacent bridegroom. The officers, most of them deep in the toils of moneylenders, contrived to go on indulging in all the usual amusements offered by a capital city. The Smiths, neither being handicapped by an imperfect knowledge of the language, made a number of friends, and began to lead, Harry said, quite a respectable and domestic existence.

‘If by respectable you mean that you’ve scraped up an acquaintance with a probably disreputable priest,’ drawled James Stewart, ‘and if by domestic you mean that your scoundrelly servant always manages to steal a hen or a sucking-pig for your dinner-’ ‘Ingrato!’ cried Juana. ‘You ate it! And as for Don Pedro, he is a very good man, very well educated, very intelligent, and not at all disreputable. Enrique likes him!’ ‘Your precious Enrique likes him because he’s a good shot, and as mad on sport as he is himself. Don’t tell me he cares a fig for his intelligence, because I’ll swear he doesn’t know anything about it!’

‘If you were not so stupid that you cannot speak Spanish, and only very bad French, you would know that Enrique has very interesting talks, very clever talks, with the Vicar,” said Juana, bristling in defence of Harry.

But Stewart only laughed, and shook his head, and nothing would make him admit the domestic nature of the Smith’s life. He said that the only sign of domesticity he had ever been able to perceive was Juana throwing cooking-pots at Harry’s head, a statement which made Juana quite speechless with indignation, but drew a shout of laughter from Harry. ‘But it is not true!’ stammered Juana. ‘Enrique! Tell him!’

‘It’s no use, queridissima: he knows you for the wiry, violent, ill-tempered little devil that you are!’

‘I am not! Oh, I am not!’

‘Who boxed my ears for spilling ink on the table? Who sulked for five hours because I wouldn’t take her to a bullfight? Who-’

‘If you say one word more-but one, comprende!-I will run away, and never come back!’ Juana said, with very bright eyes, and very red cheeks.

She spoke in her own tongue, and he answered her in the same. ‘I’m not afraid of that. You’re a loving, always-faithful little varmint, hija!’

Her expression softened; she whispered: ‘I do love you, yes, and I hate you, too!’