The Spanish Bride

7

With the recovery of her pet, Juana’s spirit’s rose mercurially. The discomforts of bivouacking for several days without the least vestige of baggage became at once very good fun, and when the French were finally driven back, and the brigade returned to Casteilleur, not even the discovery that some of her belongings had been stolen had the power to depress her. Tom Fane was loudly and indignantly condemning the French thieves who had rifled the contents of his portmanteau, and Billy Mein was bewailing the loss of the goose, ‘just as he was fattening up!’ but Juana said that although it was a great pity Ugly Tom had been robbed, she was not at all sorry the goose had gone. ‘For I don’t think we could have eaten him, do you?’ she said seriously.

‘Oh, couldn’t we just!’ said Mein.

‘No, Billy, because we had become too fond of him, and besides, the Coronel gave him bad things to eat.’

‘Shame!’ said Colborne, looking up with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Good-bye to our grand dinner!’ said Mein.

‘Not a bit of it!’ said Harry briskly. ‘I know how we can contrive to make up for losing the goose.’

‘You would, of course,’ said Fane. ‘Found some more smugglers?’ ‘Devil a one! But we’ll invite the Commissary to the party!’

‘Harry,’ said Colborne, ‘if you’re not cashiered for impudence, you ought to go far. I foresee a brilliant career.’

‘Well, I hope we may still be here at Christmas,’ said Fane, somewhat pessimistically. There did indeed seem to be some doubt about the matter, for the French in their front showed enough liveliness to keep them continually on the alert. Officers responsible for posting pickets found the frequent alarms wearing, and Harry, never one to take his duties lightly, began to look red-eyed again from lack of sleep.

On one occasion, when he was posting the night’s sentries after a day of skirmishing, he encountered a French officer performing the same duty. Harry thought he was placing his vedettes too close to the British advance-posts, and as he had no notion of withdrawing his own pickets, he walked over to remonstrate with the Frenchman.

‘Hallo there, I want to speak to you!’ he called out.

The officer seemed to be a little amused, but came to meet Harry without the smallest hesitation. ‘But certainly, monsieur! What is it, then?’

‘Your vedette,’ said Harry. ‘There’s mine, over there, and if you post yours so far in advance, it will lead to nothing but alarms being given when they’re relieved. I wish you will retire a little way!’

The Frenchman raised his brows. ‘I do not see that, monsieur, but if you will point out to me where you wish my vedette to be, I shall be enchanted to oblige you by moving him.’ ‘Very good of you,’ said Harry. ‘Let us take a look at the ground!’

This they did. The Frenchman moved his vedette to a place of Harry’s choosing, and before they parted company, offered Harry a drink of his excellent brandy. Harry accepted it gratefully, for it was a cold night, bade his new acquaintance good-bye, and rode back to Chateau Castilleur.

It was late when he arrived, and he found Colborne asleep on a mattress before the fire. He was fully clothed, even to his boots, for there had been so many alarms since the brigade’s arrival at Castilleur that neither he nor Harry ever thought of undressing at night. Harry, himself dog-weary, did not wake him; but after wondering whether it was worth while to go to forage for some supper, decided that it was not, and lay down as he was on the mattress which he kept in Colborne’s room. He dropped asleep almost immediately but whether from fatigue, or from lack of food, the rest which he so badly needed was disturbed by a dream vivid enough to wake him with a terrific start, and a shout of: ‘Stand to your arms!’ Colborne woke, and was on his feet in an instant. The flickering firelight showed Harry standing in the middle of the room, blinking as though still half-asleep. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir! I’ve been dreaming,’ he said in an uncertain voice. ‘Never mind,’ said Colborne. ‘It’s near daylight, and it shows anyway that asleep or awake you’re intent on your duty. Did you dream that we were being attacked?’ ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Not us. I-Damn it, it has taken such possession of my senses I can’t throw it off! I thought the enemy were attacking my father’s house. There’s a door at the back which leads into the garden. My father had my mother in his arms; I saw them as plainly as ever I did in my life: he was carrying her through the Black Door, as we always called it when we were children, and calling out: “Now, someone shut the door! She is safe and rescued.” Then I woke. Such nonsense! And to have roused you, too, sir!’

He lay down again, but could not sleep, the dream oppressing him to such an extent that every time he closed his eyes the picture of it returned to him. When morning came, he looked rather haggard, and was quieter than usual, and very brittle-tempered. It was a tiresome day, with incessant skirmishes of outposts. The Caçadores had the advance, and were attacked early in the morning. Harry said he had not seen the French as daring since the retreat to Corunna. ‘I don’t know what the devil we’ve got in our front today!’ he said, when Colborne came riding up to the advanced posts. He added irritably: ‘Don’t stand there! You will be shot in a moment!’

Colborne laughed, but, sure enough, a minute later a ball went through his hat. He did not seem much disturbed, but he moved to a safer place, remarking: ‘Look at the fellows! It’s evident it’s no general attack, for the troops in the bivouac are not under arms. They want this post.’

‘Which they will have in ten minutes,’ said Harry, ‘unless I bring up the and Rifle battalion. The Caçadores aren’t equal to the task.’

‘Fetch them!’ said Colborne, inspecting the hole through his hat. ‘What a narrow escape, to be sure!’

Harry only said, as he prepared to ride off: ‘You should not expose yourself so, sir!’ ‘What is the matter with Harry?’ demanded Mein, after three days of the Brigade-Major’s moodiness. ‘There’s not a laugh to be got out of him! What’s worrying him?’ Nobody knew; but not many days later the English mail arrived, bringing a letter for Harry, from his father. When he saw the writing, Harry turned pale. ‘I know what it is,’ he said, breaking the. seal with trembling fingers. ‘I have known ever since that dream!’ Juana watched him timidly as he read his father’s letter. A groan broke from him; she said. ‘Is it-is it your mother, Enrique?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. He stood still for a moment, then quite suddenly flung himself on his knees beside Juana, and wept and wept, with his face buried in her hands. She did not know how to comfort him. His grief frightened her, because he had always seemed to her so strong that she had not known that he could be broken to pieces like this for any care in the world. She cried a little, too, because she was so sorry for him. Later, when the cloud did not lift from Harry’s brow, she cried for herself, because the repressed, silent man who shared her bed was not Harry, who loved and bullied her, but a stranger too sad to quarrel with her, too listless to ask even how she had spent her day. Harry found her crying once, and stopped dead upon the threshold. ‘Hija!’ She started up, trying to hide her face, stammering: ‘The toothache! It is nothing!’ He came across the room, not slowly as though he were worn out, but with his own quick tread. ‘My darling! What is it?’

She said: ‘Enrique, I have lost father and mother, and my brother died of his wounds in my arms. You still have your home and your father left. I-I live alone for you, my all!’ He held her tightly against his breast ‘And I for you! There is no one else.’ ‘I cannot comfort you, Enrique,’ she said sadly. ‘It is not enough, that you have me.’ ‘Yes, it w enough,’ he replied. ‘This is nonsense! Why, you bad little varmint, are you telling me I don’t love you? What do you think you deserve for that?’

She flung her arms round his neck, overjoyed at hearing the teasing note in his voice. Later, pondering the matter, she saw that her efforts to be good, and patient, and sympathetic, had not helped Harry to recover from his grief nearly as much as the weakness she had tried to hide from him. So when next he sat staring into the fire, with his head propped on his hand, she picked a quarrel with him over a trifle; and when he was abstracted, sighing heavily at his own thoughts, she treated him to such an exhibition of sheer naughtiness, that after a week of wondering from hour to hour what dangerous prank she would play next, Harry was in a fair way to forgetting his unhappiness in worrying over his wife’s abominable behaviour. By the time he had descended to the most ferocious threats of what he would do if Juana risked her neck and his horses by trying to ride up a flight of stairs, Brigade-Major Smith was himself again, and Mrs Harry Smith judged it to be time to hang a meek head, and promise to be good.