The Spanish Bride

Chapter Seven. Skerrett

By the middle of July, the Light division was encamped on the Santa Barbara height above Vera, within ten miles of the French frontier. From Pampeluna, which they had left to the Spaniards, and a few British units, to blockade, they had marched north into the Pyrenees, plunging farther and farther into a wild, lovely country of valleys rich with olive groves and fruit-trees, and great stretches of Indian corn; and towering hills, whose lower slopes were thickly covered with chestnut-trees, feathery larches, and grey-stemmed beeches, and whose peaks were lost for six days out of seven in wreaths of cloud. There were rivers in the valleys, tumbling down from the mountainsides, and purling over rocky beds; the villages were better than in Spain, with larger houses, owned by a people who spoke the queer, unintelligible Basque language. When the foothills were passed, marching became more difficult, and sometimes, when only narrow sheep-tracks led up the steep mountain passes, dangerous, since a false step would send one hurtling down a precipice on to craggy outcrops of rock hundreds of feet below. But nobody cared a penny for that when wild strawberries grew beside the way, and every step carried one nearer to the frontier. The Johnny Petits had run back to France, and, by all accounts, their retreat had more closely resembled a rout than a retiring movement. It was said that King Joseph never drew rein until he reached St Jean de Luz. Poor Pepe Botellas! He had lost everything at Vittoria: his treasure, and his guns, and his love-letters, and even the support of his Imperial brother; and the last humiliation was not long delayed. Soult, the Marshal-Duke of Dalmatia, whom he had wanted the Emperor to disgrace, reached Bayonne on the 11th July to take command of the demoralized Armies of Spain, and with orders to place King Joseph under arrest, if the King should prove troublesome. There were to be no more separate commands in Spain, no more quarrels between jealous Marshals, no more vacillations of a puppet-king. Supreme, Soult was going to drive Lord Wellington out of the Pyrenees, over the Ebro, over the Douro, back to his Portuguese lines, just as soon as the great military storehouses at Bayonne could furnish him with artillery, ammunition, and fresh accoutrements for the troops.

But, meanwhile, Sir Thomas Graham was besieging the town and fortress of San Sebastian, on the coast; English convoys were landing supplies at Passages and Bilbao; and Lord Wellington’s army held all the passes from the coast to Roncesvalles: a forty-mile front as the crow flies, with Sir Rowland Hill holding the right wing, from Roncesvalles to Maya, and Graham the left, and with the Light division between them, maintaining their communications.

It was an odd situation, Vera: not as pleasant as Santesteban, where the Light Bobs had camped for a week, amongst the most charming surroundings, but decidedly better then Lesaca, four miles to the rear, where his lordship had fixed his headquarters. Lesaca was pretty enough, lying in a cup of the densely wooded hills, but it had the reputation of being a damp, unhealthy town, and it was certainly very dirty. The headquarters Staff complained that you could actually see the fleas hopping on the floors in all the houses, while the racket in the overcrowded streets was appalling. When you tried to concentrate your mind upon your work, ten to one someone would start killing a pig under your window, your landlord would begin to thresh his garnered wheat in the loft above your head, or a shrill-voiced street-seller would linger under your window, calling interminably: ‘Aqua ardente! Aqua ardente!’

There was nothing like that about Vera. It was a small town on the twisting Bidassoa river, which ran fast there, through irregular and often precipitous banks to the sea, not ten miles away. When the Light division had chased the French out of it, the whole valley of Vera became more or less neutral ground, where foraging parties from each army met on terms of perfect cordiality in their search for corn and timber. The Light division placed advanced pickets in the town, but their main body camped on the Santa Barbara height, by the ruins of a convent. In front of the position, a steep hill was held by the French. English and French sentries stood within pistol-shot of one another, but there was never the least unpleasantness, either on the heights or in the valley. Only raw troops committed the folly of driving in pickets for no purpose: the English and French veterans never dreamed of fretting each other uselessly; and since each held the other in respect, they were able to meet on neutral ground without any appearance of animosity.

From Santa Barbara, the most extensive views could be enjoyed, when the hill was not enveloped in fog. When the Light Bobs had first climbed up the slope, it had been a clear day, and far away to the left, misty in the distance, they had caught a glimpse of the sea. Such a shout as had gone up when the first man, hardly able to believe his eyes, had gasped: ‘Look! look!’ Nobody knew why the sight of the sea filled him with sudden excitement ‘I suppose it makes us think of home,’ said Captain Leach. ‘Island blood, eh? My fellows have been snuffing the air and swearing they can smell the salt. Docs it give you nostalgia, George?’

George shook his head. ‘No. I often think that to be living in England after this wild, romantic existence would not give me half as much satisfaction. Campaigning is the life for me. I have never felt such happiness since I became a soldier.’

‘The man’s mad!’ said Jack Molloy. ‘George, old fellow, you’ve got a touch of the sun!’ ‘He’s right,’ said Harry.

‘Nonsense, you’re both mad! Jonathan, too, because he thinks one trout stream constitutes paradise.’

Leach smiled, but said seriously: ‘Surtees tells me he saw a salmon, but failed to land him. If it had been anyone but Surtees, I should have disbelieved him, for I’ve never seen one. However,-’

‘Now, that’ll do!’ begged Molloy. ‘We’ve heard all about Surtees’s salmon, and the enormous trout you got yesterday, and it’s my belief you’re both liars. If it was such a wonderful fish, why didn’t we see it?’

‘I gave it to the Smiths. Ask Harry!’

‘Well!’ said George, roused from his dreaming thoughts. ‘Of all the treacherous things to do! Just you let those lazy beggars in the and brigade fish for themselves!’ ‘Did you share it with your gallant Brigadier, Harry?’ asked Molloy, grinning. ‘Not I!’ said Harry. ‘I don’t dine with my Brigadier these days unless I’m invited, I’ll have you know!’

‘You don’t mean it?’ George sounded quite shocked. ‘Why, you used pretty well to live with dear Vandeleur!’

‘Well, I don’t live with Skerrett, make no mistake about that!’ said Harry. The 2nd brigade had had the misfortune to lose Vandeleur, who had been transferred at the beginning of the month to the command of a brigade of cavalry. In his room, the brigade had got General Skerrett, an officer of quite a different kidney. He came to the Light Bobs from the 4th division, but up till the time of the army’s being quartered about Madrid he had been with the force in Cadiz, so that no one knew very much about him. Harry found him affable enough, but was given a plain hint, within three days of his taking up his command, that when the General wished to see his Brigade-Major he would send an orderly to summon him. Harry, who had been in the habit of walking in and out of his Brigadier’s quarters as though they had been his own, and who had breakfasted or dined with him whenever he chose, could scarcely believe his ears when Skerrett’s ADC broke the news to him. ‘By Jupiter, he’ll never do for the Light division!’ he said.

‘He’s not a bad fellow,’ said Tom Fane apologetically. ‘Only a trifle starchy. He keeps a very indifferent table, too.’

‘Does he?’ said Harry. ‘You’d better come and share our quarters, then!’ ‘Oh, by Jove, wouldn’t I like to!’ said Fane, his pleasant, ugly countenance brightening. So Ugly Tom, as the brigade promptly christened the new ADC, joined the Smiths’ haphazard establishment, and shook down in it with astonishing ease, adoring Juana (who teased him unmercifully), taking a proper interest in Harry’s hounds, and treating Vitty with due respect.

Everyone voted Ugly Tom a capital fellow, but no one looked upon General Skerrett with anything but the deepest suspicion.

‘If he doesn’t turn out to be a damned grenadier in action, I don’t know the signs,’ Cadoux said softly, looking through his lashes at the smart figure of the Brigadier in the distance. ‘I think we shall live to rue the day.’

Harry and Cadoux had become great friends. Always impulsive, naturally warm-hearted, Harry, confronted by gallantry, at once forgot the affectations of speech and manner which had previously irritated him. If a man could behave as coolly as Dan Cadoux in the thick of a fight, he was a good fellow, and might assume all the airs and graces he chose. His estimate of Skerrett was probably correct, Harry thought. Fane said that Skerrett had a reputation for personal courage, amounting almost to rashness: a tribute which merely made the critical Light Bobs say that if he was one of those officers who set themselves up for targets to be shot at by the enemy, he was no commander for troops trained never to expose themselves foolishly.

The brigade, except for the 52nd regiment, was, in fact, a little disgruntled. The 52nd, however, had got their beloved Colonel back, and they did not care a jot for anything else. He had been absent from the Peninsula for eighteen months, ever since the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, and quite a number of his friends had taken the gloomiest view of his chances of rejoining the army. He had been on his back for ten months, suffering the most dreadful agony, but in the end the surgeons managed to wrench the ball out of his shoulder, and by July he had landed at San Sebastian, rather pale and thin, and with one shoulder falling away a little, and the arm stiff, but otherwise just the same as he had ever been. Everyone was delighted to see him back again, even Lord Wellington, who was not much given to demonstrations of welcome. ‘By God, I’m damned glad to see you, Colborne!’ said his lordship, in his blunt way. ‘You see how we have rompéd the French!’ He took a look at Colborne’s handsome face, with its high-arched nose, and fine, dark eyes, and added: ‘But I’m sorry to see you so pale and thin. Hope you’ve quite recovered? I hear I have to felicitate you.’

Colonel Colborne thanked him. No, he said, in answer to a quick question, he had not brought his bride out; he did not consider campaigning a suitable life for females. ‘By God, you are right!’ said his lordship forcibly.

His lordship had become a great man since Colborne had last seen him, but no trace of any added air of consequence was apparent in his manner. He did not seem to care a tinker’s damn for any of the honours that had been showered on him; there was not a scrap of difference between Viscount Wellington of Talavera, and Field-Marshal the Marquis of Wellington.

The Prince Regent had made him a Field-Marshal. Upon receiving Jourdan’s baton from him, his Royal Highness had written one of his graceful letters. ‘You have sent me, among the trophies of your unrivalled fame, the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England,’ wrote the Prince Regent, regardless of the fact that no such staff was in existence. When his agitated ministers pointed this out to him, he could see no difficulty at all: he would design one himself.

This thought was horrid enough to make the gentlemen at the Horse Guards turn pale. While every effort was made to divert his Royal Highness’s mind from his fell project, Colonel Torrens was told to get a baton prepared with all possible speed. ‘If I am not interfered with from the fountain of taste, I trust it will be found an appropriate badge of command,’ Torrens confided to Wellington, in a private letter.

But really it did not seem as though his lordship cared a button. All he said about his victories was that they had put him in the happy position of being able at last to do exactly as he chose. ‘I have great advantages now over every other General,’ he told the Judge Advocate, with one of his sardonic laughs. ‘I have the confidence of the three Allied powers, so that what I say, or order, is, right or wrong, always thought right.’ More seriously, and without a trace of affection, he added: ‘And the same with the troops. When I come myself, the soldiers think what they have to do the most important, as I am there, and that all will depend on their exertions. Of course, these are increased in proportion, and they will do for me what perhaps no one else can make them do.’

It was perfectly true. Yet you could not say that his men loved him; he had never been known to court popularity, and would very likely have greeted the suggestion that he was beloved with one of his chilling stares. ‘But the fact is,’ said Kincaid, ‘we would rather see his long nose in the fight than a reinforcement of ten thousand men any day.’