The Spanish Bride

5

Harry was up long before Tom Falls in the morning, and ate a hasty breakfast in the coffee-room under the eye of a depressed-looking waiter, who was engaged in dusting the chairs, and setting the furniture straight for the day. As soon as he had swallowed his eggs and bacon and coffee, Harry ran up to take his leave of poor Tom, still snug in bed, called for a hackney, bundled himself and West into it, and drove off to the barracks where he knew he would find some Rifle comrades quartered.

The porter there seemed surprised to see an officer abroad so early. He was not a quick-witted man, and when Harry accosted him with a demand to know the names of any officers in the building, he stood gaping until Harry said impatiently: ‘Come on, man, come on! You must know who’s inside!’

‘Yes, sir, for sure I do. There’s-let me see now-there’s Mr Dixon, and-and Captain Logan.’ ‘No, no good. Think again!’

‘Yes, sir. Well-well-Mr Fry, and Captain Macnamara, and Colonel Ross, and young Mr Milligan.’

‘

Hold a minute! Colonel Ross? What regiment?’ ‘He had a green jacket when he came up,’ said the porter. ‘John Ross!’ exclaimed Harry. ‘Where’s the room?’ ‘Oh, but, sir! don’t disturb the gentleman: he’s only just gone to bed!’

‘My friend,’ said Harry, ‘I’ve often turned him out, and he shall be broad-awake in a couple of minutes! Come now, show me his room, and be quick about it!’

‘Well, sir, if you say so!’ said the porter.

He conducted Harry to Colonel Ross’s room, but when he would have tapped discreetly, Harry elbowed him aside, flung open the door, and bounced into the room, calling out: ‘Hallo, Ross! Stand to your arms!’

The Colonel, who had come in after a very late night, and was peacefully sleeping, leaped up at this all too familiar shout, realized where he was, and demanded: ‘Who the devil are you?”

‘Harry Smith: fall in!’ said Harry, drawing back the blinds with a ruthless hand. ‘Harry!’ exclaimed Ross. ‘Well, upon my soul! You old ruffian, where do you spring from?’ ‘The Chesapeake, with dispatches. How are you? Is the regiment home? By God, it is good to see you again!’

Ross, wringing him by the hand, began to pelt him with questions. He was quite as excited as Harry, and there was a great deal of laughing, and back-slapping, until Harry said: Well, John, but quiet! Is my wife alive and well?’

‘All right, thank God, Harry! In every respect as you would wish! I was with her yesterday.’ ‘Where, John, where?’

‘In Panton Square, No. 11.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ Harry exclaimed, and burst into tears. ‘Now, Harry! now, Harry!’ Ross said. ‘I tell you she’s safe and well!’

‘If you knew what I’ve suffered! The anxiety-not knowing where she was-her youth-her dependance on me! But that’s enough! I’ll see you presently, John: I can’t wait now!’ He left as abruptly as he had come, jumped into the waiting hackney, and shouted to the coachman to drive like mad to Panton Square. The hackney rattled over the cobbles in fine style, and had no sooner turned into the little square than Harry leaned forward eagerly, his hand on the door. He expected to find Juana breakfasting, if not still in bed, but just as he was scanning the numbers over the doors on one side of the square, a shriek reached his ears.

‘Oh Dios! la mono de mi Enrique!’

‘Stop!’ shouted Harry to the coachman. Almost before the hackney had pulled up, he had thrust open the door, and jumped out, just as Juana, who was walking along the opposite side of the square, came running across the broad road.

She was sobbing with mingled joy and shock; he flung open his arms, and she fell into them, right in the middle of the square, under the interested gaze of the coachman, two errand-boys, and a chambermaid who happened to be leaning out of an upper window. ‘My soul, my darling!’ Harry said, holding his wife so close that the breath was almost squeezed out of her.

West, who had descended more sedately from the hackney and was observing the grins of the errand-boys with great disfavour, coughed apologetically. His employers paid no heed to him. Oblivious of their surroundings, they clung together in such an ecstasy of joy that not even the arrival on the scene of a coalheaver’s cart penetrated, their consciousness. ‘Hey, soldier! Sweetheart and honey-bird keeps no house!’ shouted the coal-heaver, grinning broadly. ‘Mi Enrique, mi esposo!’ Juana sobbed, arms locked round Harry’s neck. ‘Alma mia de mi corazon!’

‘Ah!’ said the coal-heaver, shaking a waggish head. ‘Free of her lips, free of her hips!’ ‘Here!’ said West menacingly. ‘You be off out of this, or I’ll make you!’ ‘Gip with an ill-rubbing, quoth Badger, when his mare kicked!’ retorted the coal-heaver. It seemed for a moment as though the quiet square would be further enlivened by a brawl, but happily Harry lifted his head just then, and became aware of his audience. ‘Oh, the devil!’ he said, bursting out laughing, ‘Hija, where do you live? Take me in!’ ‘Ho, a furriner!’ remarked the coal-heaver, who had by this time descended from his cart. ‘As English as yourself!’ said Harry. ‘Hallo, Vitty! I declare she remembers me as well as you do, Juanita!’

Vitty, who had been leaping up at him quite unheeded, began to bark shrilly; several heads were poked out of windows, and Juana, blushing and laughing, seized Harry by the hand, and fairly ran with him through the open doorway of No. 11.

‘Well there’s a light-skirt for you!’ remarked the coal-heaver.

‘If you want to have your cork drawn, say the word!’ said West. ‘She’s my master’s lawful wedded wife!’

‘You don’t say!’ gasped the coal-heaver. ‘No offence, I’m sure!’ Meanwhile, in the narrow hallway of No. 11, Juana, encountering Madame Dupont, stammered out the joyful tidings, allowed Harry just time enough to shake the good lady’s hand, and then swept him upstairs to her sitting-room. She was so overcome by the shock of having him unexpectedly restored to her that for a time she could scarcely speak, or believe that she was not dreaming. A storm of tears shook her; she lay in his arms, gripping his coat with both hands, sobbing out disjointed exclamations. But presently she grew calmer, and was able to lift her head from his shoulder, and to release her clutch on his coat. ‘I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!’ she said, stroking his tanned cheek. ‘Oh, mi Enrique, you have grown thinner! How did you come? Is the war over at last?’

‘No, not over, but please God, it soon will be! Poor Tom Falls-Ross’s ADC, you know-was sent home on sick leave, so Ross gave the dispatch to me. Oh, querida, do you know you are more beautiful than ever? Have you been well? Has Tom taken good care of you? Have you seen my father?’

‘No, no, I would not go to your home until I could speak English!’ ‘Oh, you bad child, can’t you do so yet?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I speak it very well: it is quite estra-ordinary how well I speak it!’ He kissed her, laughing at her. ‘Indeed, it is most estra-ordinary how oo-ell you speak it!” ‘Don’t queeze me, espadachin,’ she said, pinching the lobe of his ear. ‘Ah, Enrique, tirano odioso, I have been so unhappy!’

‘And I! You don’t know!’

‘I shall never let you go again, not a step out of my sight!’

‘Oh, by Jupiter!’ Harry said, recalled to a sense of his duties. ‘My poor darling, you’ll have to! I must be off to wait on Lord Bathurst!’

‘It is your duty? Then of course you must go. I do not forget that I am a good soldier! But, Enrique, tell me, is all well in America?’

‘I hope to God it is! But oh, the times I have sighed, “Oh, for dear John Colborne!” Ross is the kindest fellow in the world, but he is no more fit for such a command,-But, there! I should not say so! Yet if you could have seen our battle at Bladensburg, General Juana, with all we learned from old Douro given in full to the enemy, you would have been shocked!’ ‘Oh, Enrique, we were not defeated?’

‘No, we licked the Yankees, and took all their guns, but lost upwards of three hundred men in the engagement. Colborne would have done the same thing with a loss of forty or fifty at most! However, we entered Washington, with Admiral Cockburn.’

‘You entered Washington!’

‘Yes, for the amiable purpose of burning the city to ashes! Never was there anything so barbarous! To those of us, fresh from Wellington’s methods of warfare, it was too shocking to be borne! Ross felt it: it was thanks to him the flames stopped where they did. That damned Admiral would have set fire to everything! As it was, all the public buildings were set light to. Oh, it was melancholy to see the elegant Capitol and the President’s House being destroyed in such a way! It made one ashamed to be an Englishman. We felt more like a band of Red Savages of the woods! However, you won’t spread that about, remember! Juana, this won’t do! I must be off!’

She would not hear of his going to Downing Street until he had brushed his hair, changed his shirt, and put on his best sash. To see him tossing the contents of his portmanteau all over her bedchamber brought home to her the realization of his return far more than anything else could have done. The quiet house seemed to be full of his energetic personality; his voice shouting to her for God’s sake to come at once, because he could not find his neckcloth, was the sweetest music she had heard for months. She ran in, and found the neckcloth without the least difficulty, of course; and ten minutes later was waving good-bye to him from the window.

On his arrival in Downing Street, Harry had reason to be grateful to his wife for insisting on his furbishing up his person, for after receiving him very kindly, and putting a number of questions to him, Lord Bathurst said: ‘Well, Captain Smith, the intelligence you bring is of such importance that the Prince Regent desires to see you. We’ll go immediately.’ ‘What, my lord, to Carlton House?’ exclaimed Harry.

‘To be sure,’ smiled Bathurst.

‘Then be so good as to allow me to take the map I brought you,’ said Harry, recovering his poise with considerable aplomb.

‘A very good notion: I have it here,’ approved Bathurst.

The summons to the Regent’s presence was not, of course, quite unexpected, but never having been in such exalted circles before Harry, for once in his life, felt extremely nervous. When the carriage drew up behind the colonnade, and he and Bathurst were admitted into Carlton House, the magnificence of his surroundings at first exercised a most. oppressive effect upon his naturally vivacious spirits, and he could almost have wished that Tom Falls had been well enough to have been the bearer of the dispatch. But upon being shown into a large apartment, and left there for half an hour, while Lord Bathurst went off alone to confer with the Regent, he soon recovered his self-possession, in spite of the stunning effect of the Regent’s taste in house-decoration, and reflected that never having quailed under the piercing eye of old Douro there was no need for him to be afraid of meeting even the Prince Regent.

‘Anyway, General Ross begged me to talk, if I were asked to!’ he told an unresponsive gilt chair, just as Bathurst came back into the room.

‘Come along!’ said his lordship. ‘The Prince will see you.’

Harry got up, but said frankly: ‘My lord, if we were in camp, I could take your lordship all about, but I know nothing of the etiquette of a court.’

‘Oh, just behave as you would to any gentleman!’ Bathurst replied. ‘Call him “Sir”, and don’t turn your back on him.’

‘No, I know that!’ said Harry, following him out of the room.

‘You’ll do very well. His Highness’s manner will soon put you at ease. And don’t be afraid to talk! He is for ever complaining that the bearer of dispatches will never do so. Now, here we are: Captain Smith, Sir!’

The Prince Regent had, for a number of years, been providing the British public with a surfeit of scandal. His debts, his matrimonial affairs, his quarrels with his daughter, the vulgarity of his expensive tastes, his succession of mistresses, were all perfectly well known even to a young officer from the Peninsula. He was the subject of the grossest caricatures in the newspapers; his treatment of his wife; his predilection for the bottle; the way he had done his best to hound his father into a madhouse; his countless follies: all these were subjects bandied from lip to lip, but when Harry stepped into his dressing-room he straightway forgot them.

The Regent, who was seated before an opulent dressing-table, rose at once, and came forward, holding out his hand in the most natural way. ‘I am very glad to see you, Captain Smith. General Ross has strongly recommended you to my notice as an officer who can afford me every information of the service you come to report-the importance of which,’ he added, with an unexpectedly charming smile-’is marked by the firing of the guns you can now hear.’

Harry quite blushed to think of all London being in an uproar at the news he had brought, and himself actually shaking hands with his future sovereign. The Regent drew him over to a table, and begged him to be seated, and to spread out ‘that map I see you have under your arm.’

In a few minutes, Harry was perfectly at his ease, securely mounted on his own hobby-horse. He was astonished at the grasp of military affairs shown by the Regent. The most pertinent questions were put to him, and he found his Royal interlocutor so knowledgeable, so sincerely interested in the conduct of the war, that he spoke out with the greatest frankness, even saying bluntly that it was to be regretted a sufficient force had not been sent out to hold Washington.

‘What do you call a sufficient force?’ asked the Regent ‘Fourteen thousand men, Sir.’

‘On what do you base such an opinion?’

If the Regent thought to convict Harry of speaking at random, he soon discovered his mistake. Harry had no hesitation in stating his reasons. He asked about the present state of affairs in America, and was told that Harry had left half the army sick from dysentery, which made him look grave.

‘Then there can be no attempting Baltimore!’ he exclaimed.

‘Captain Smith has told me, Sir, that General Ross assured him, when he left the country, that he would not do so,’ interposed Bathurst, forbearing to add that Harry had also told him that Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn had done their utmost to urge Ross to move against Baltimore.

‘We induced the enemy, by a ruse, to concentrate on Baltimore, Sir,’ said Harry. ‘A coup de main, like the conflagration of Washington, may be effected once during a war, but can rarely be repeated. The entrance to the harbour, moreover, will be effectually obstructed.’ The Regent seemed to appreciate this reasoning; he asked Harry a great many more questions, drawing him out so skilfully that Harry presently found himself recounting one or two funny episodes, which, made his Royal Highness roar with laughter. When he at last backed his way out of the room, the Regent came after him to ask if he were a relation of his friend, Sir Edward Smith, of Shropshire. He looked disappointed upon being told No, but shook hands with Harry again, saying graciously: ‘I and the country are much obliged to you all. Ross’s recommendations will not be forgotten; and, Bathurst! don’t forget this officer’s promotion!’