The Spanish Bride (37 page)

Jenny Bates, elbowing West out of the way, pushed her back on to her pillow. ‘Now, you lie still, missus, do! That’s enough of watching nasty battles! If some people had the sense they was born with, they never would have let you go agaping out of the window!’ ‘Not Old Chap!’ Juana said in a husky voice. ‘I saw. It was poor Algeo! Oh, West, look out and tell me what is happening!’

‘He’ll tell you our men are safe on top of the hill, and no need for any of us to worry our heads over them!’ said Jenny, in such minatory accents that West took the hint, and reported the brigade to be in possession of the heights.

‘Oh, is it true?’ Juana said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Why, where else would they be?’ demanded Jenny scornfully. ‘You don’t want to fret about master, for he’s enjoying himself, same as my man will be, if I know them! Men! Yes, there’s nothing they like better than to go mixing themselves up in a nasty, bloody battle, fair frightening the wits out of decent women, and themselves like a set of pesky lads out of school! You lie quiet now, and see if master don’t come bounding in presently, as right as a ram’s horn, and telling you what a rare day’s fighting he’s had!’

‘If you are sure it is all over!’ Juana said, with a shudder. ‘But I can still hear firing!’ ‘Ay, but it’s not our men,’ West assured her. ‘Of course it’s all over! I daresay master will be standing there, atop of the hill with the Colonel, at this very moment.’

3

But the brigade, in spite of having possessed themselves of the first redoubt, had still some way to go before they reached the defences on the ridge of the Bayonette, and Harry, so far from standing there with his Colonel, was riding back as hard as he could to Cole’s supporting division.

The Enthusiastics had pushed forward up the slope of the bill, and as soon as Cole heard that Colborne meant to press on, he said in his quick way: ‘Rely on my support! By God, you’ll need it, for you have a tough struggle before you! Magnificently done, sir! magnificently done, indeed! Everyone is talking of your charge!’

Harry turned, and spurred Old Chap up the hill again. As soon as he was assured of Cole’s support, Colborne threw out a screen of Riflemen in skirmishing order, and advanced the whole brigade under a murderous fire from the ridge. Many of the shots, however, went over the heads of the men, while the Riflemen, firing uphill, found their marks with awful precision. The French continued firing from behind the parapets until the British, advancing steadily all the time, were almost upon ,them. A very short hand-to-hand fight followed, but instead of defending their rather formidable position with the determination the British had expected them to show, the French suddenly abandoned it, rushing away down the steep side of the ravine in their rear.

Colborne, Harry, Winterbottom, the Adjutant of the 52nd, and Tom Smith were in the forefront of the fight, and upon the Frenchmen’s flight into the ravine, they all four of them pushed on in pursuit, with some ten of the swiftest-footed men in the brigade racing after them. On the opposite side of the ravine, they saw a small detachment of the Riflemen from Kempt’s brigade, who had reached the crest of the opposite spur, and were pushing forward.

‘Where are you going to, Colonel?’ shouted Harry, his eyes blazing with excitement. ‘Why, to reconnoitre a little, to be sure!’ replied Colborne.

The ravine expanded rather unexpectedly, and a column of quite four hundred Frenchmen was suddenly exposed.

Harry began to laugh. Tor God’s sake, Colonel, take care what you are about! You have clean outstripped our own column! What shall we do?’

‘Oh, there’s nothing for it but to put a good face on the matter!’ said Colborne. ‘I daresay they will think Kempt’s fellows on the other ridge the head of a column. Come on!’ He clapped his spurs into his horse’s flanks, and galloped up to the officer at the head of the enemy column. ‘You are cut off,’ he said in French, and for all the world (thought Harry) as though he were supported by ten thousand men. ‘Lay down your arms!’ The officer, though taken by surprise, remained perfectly cool. He glanced up at the Riflemen on the ridge, and for a moment Harry thought that he had guessed that the ten men in sight comprised the whole force. But apparently he supposed them to be the head of a large column, for he turned back to Colborne, and, presenting the hilt of his sword, said: ‘I surrender to you a sword which has ever done its duty, monsieur!’

Colborne received it, bowing gravely. The three officers behind him, taken as much by surprise as the Frenchman, wondered what he would do next, but with his usual presence of mind, he said: ‘Face your men to the left, and move out of the ravine.’ His tone was so calm, his bearing so assured that Harry was not at all surprised that the order was immediately obeyed. He was extremely glad to see the Frenchmen separated from their weapons, but while he stood, trying to suppress the laughter that was consuming him, Colborne turned, and said: ‘Quick, Smith, what are you doing there? Get a few men together, or we are yet in a scrape!’

Harry, recalled to his duty, said hastily: ‘Yes, sir!’ and rode off to hasten the march of the men behind Colborne. He found them on the ridge, forming up, and soon brought them down to where Colborne was exchanging civilities with the French officer. Young Cargill, a very Scotch subaltern of the 52nd, marched the prisoners off to the rear under escort, while the rest of the column pushed on into French territory.

By this time it was growing dark, and Harry was sent to halt the brigade, just as one of Lowry Cole’s ADCs came riding up to ask Colborne, with General Cole’s compliments, how much farther he intended to go. ‘For Sir Lowry says, sir, that he don’t intend to go any farther!’ ‘Oh, I have gone quite far enough!’ replied Colborne.

The brigade bivouacked on the ground it had won, the men lying by their arms, and a fine drizzle of rain falling all night. No baggage having come up, conditions were miserable, but everyone seemed to be in excellent spirits. Fires were laboriously kindled, rum washed down the ration of biscuit, and Colborne had the satisfaction of overhearing a private of his own regiment sing out: “The Colonel’s health! and damn the man who gets a shot into him!’ Morning brought young Cargill back to the brigade. Having marched his prisoners to the rear, he had spent the night snugly in Vera, a piece of intelligence which made his fellow-officers, rubbing cramped limbs, swear at him. He went off to make his report to Colborne, whom he found toasting sausages with his Staff.

‘Well, you look very spruce, Mr Cargill,’ said Colborne, himself unshaven and dirty. ‘Get those prisoners safely to the rear?’

‘Yes, sir. And I met Lord Wellington on the way, sir, just about dusk, it would be.’ ‘You did, did you?’

‘Yes, sir. His lordship called out to me, “Hallo, sir, where did you get those fellows?” and I told him, “In France: Colonel Colborne’s brigade took them!”

‘Oh, that’s why you’re looking so confoundedly pleased with yourself, is it?’ said Harry. ‘Well, it was his lordship himself,’ replied Cargill, with simple pride. ‘And he said to me, “How the devil do you know it was France?” Och, I knew that! “Because I saw a lot of our fellows coming into the column with pigs and poultry, which we had not got on the Spanish side,” I told him.’

Colborne started up, a very black look on his face. ‘Why, Mr Cargill, you were not such a blockhead as to tell his lordship that, were you?’

‘What for would I not? It was true as death!’ said Cargill, round-eyed.

‘You young fool, don’t you know better than to talk about the men’s plundering to Wellington? Get back to your regiment, sir, get back to your regiment!”

Cargill withdrew, very crestfallen. Harry was laughing, but Colborne said: ‘I shall hear more of this.’

However, when he rode off to headquarters a little later, he found his lordship in a very good humour.

‘By God, Colborne, your fellows did damned well!’ said his lordship energetically. ‘But you know, though your brigade have distinguished themselves even more than usual, we must respect the property of the country.’

‘I’m fully aware of it, my lord. I can rely on the discipline of my soldiers, but your lordship well knows that in the very heat of action a little irregularity will occur.’

‘Ah, ah!’ said his lordship. ‘Stop it in future, Colborne!’

Such a mild reproof, accompanied as it was by a smile and a nod, quite staggered Colborne. He told Lord Fitzroy Somerset, whom he applied to on Harry’s behalf, that he had never known his lordship to be in such excellent temper.

‘Oh, he was watching your little affair yesterday!’ replied Fitzroy. ‘There was nothing ever like it, Colonel! I wish you might have heard his lordship: he said the charge of the 52nd was the finest thing he ever saw. You’ll be mentioned in the dispatch.’

‘Well, I don’t care about that, but I want a brevet-majority for Smith.’ ‘I don’t think there will be any difficulty about that,’ said Fitzroy. ‘I’ll see to it.’ So back went Colborne to the brigade, and, finding Harry presently, said: ‘Well, give me your hand, Major Smith!’

But a disappointment was in store for Harry. Colonel Barnard, hearing of the Brevet, went immediately to Fitzroy to demand it for one of his own captains. ‘Damme, you can’t give it to young Smith!’ he said. ‘I’m very fond of the boy, and I daresay he deserves it, but he can’t be made a major over the heads of twenty other fellows in the regiment!’

There was no getting over that, of course, and Fitzroy had to break the sad news to Harry. He softened the blow by telling Harry that his lordship, when the difficulty had been explained to him, had said forcibly: ‘A pity, by God! If he will go and serve as Brigade-Major to another brigade, I’ll give him the rank after the next battle.’

‘You had better do so, Smith,’ Colborne said, angry and mortified.

‘No, dear Colonel!’ said Harry, swallowing his own chagrin. ‘Not to be made of your rank!’ 4

The baggage arrived during the morning, and with it Juana, still so much upset by the shock of mistaking Algeo’s horse for Old Chap that she was quite unlike herself, subdued enough to make Harry anxious, and starting at every unexpected sound. Several days passed before her spirits recovered their usual buoyancy, but, happily, having won the Grande Rhune, Lord Wellington condemned his army to another month, of inactivity, so that no further alarms occurred to set her back again.

The division now took possession of the great ridge of hills. It was a wonderful position, if you had a fancy for long views and morning fogs. On a clear day, even Bayonne could be seen in the distance, while St Jean de Luz seemed to be like a toy town below the division. The waters of the Bay of Biscay sparkled to the west, with little ships dotted everywhere along the coast. They were British cruisers, and great was the excitement when one was seen chasing a French brig-of-war. Thousands of soldiers, straining their eyes from the top of the Grande Rhune, burst into wild cheering when the brig blew up.

‘How delighted the tars would be if they knew that so many of their countrymen were observing and applauding them from the tops of the Pyrenees!’ remarked George Simmons, beaming with pleasure.

‘Oh, George, George!’ chuckled Tom Smith. ‘How are your horn-players?’ George’s company had captured a couple of French horn-players at the Pass of Vera. He shook his head. ‘Oh, no good at all! We tried to get ’em to play us the latest French songs, but the poor fellows were so scared they made wretched work of it.’

George’s horn-players were a great joke, of course, but Juana could not quite understand how George was able to laugh so light-heartedly, for he had just come back from San Sebastian where he had been visiting a close friend, who had been desperately wounded in the storming of the citadel. So many friends had fallen there, and at the Grossing of the Bidassoa, that she herself felt such an oppression of the spirits that laughter, for many days, seemed impossible.

However, a diversion soon occurred which made her forget such gloomy thoughts. In the redisposition of the forces on the ridge, the extreme right of the division became the left, and the Smiths had to pack up and move their ground. When the brigade reached the new position, they found the first battalion of the Rifles just evacuating it Major Gilmour, in command of the battalion during the temporary absence of Barnard, had built a mud hut for himself, and as soon as Juana came riding up, he hailed her, and pointed to this grand erection with a flourish of his hat. ‘Jump off, my dear, and come into your own castle, which I in perpetuity bequeath to you!’ he declaimed.

Juana slid off Tiny’s back at once. She was delighted with the hut, and clapped her hands at its elegant appointments. ‘Oh, a chimney, and a fireplace! Oh, how did you contrive to make a door? It is the dearest house!’

‘Quite a gentleman’s residence, I flatter myself,’ said Gilmour. ‘Ten foot square, you observe: door of the best wattles and bullock-hide: situation commanding unrivalled views! Bless you, my child: may you find it watertight! Where’s Harry?’

‘Oh, he has gone to post the pickets! He will be so astonished when he sees our lovely house! Dear Gilmour, I am so grateful! It is horrid in our tent now!’

By the time Harry and Fane came in, a fire was burning brightly in the hut, supper was ready, and the servants had set up the tent for their own use.

‘By Jove, nothing was ever so snug!’ Fane exclaimed, warming his chilled hands at the fire. ‘What a good fellow Gilmour is! Only to think of sleeping in the warm!’ After the rigours of damp autumn nights under canvas, the hut did indeed seem the height of luxury. As soon as supper was cleared away, they stoked the fire, spread a couple of mattresses on the floor, and lay down under their blankets in quite a glow of content. Snuggled in the crook of Harry’s arm, Juana said drowsily: ‘Listen to the wind! It will rain soon. How sorry I am for West and Kitchen in my horrid tent!’