The Spanish Bride (38 page)

She was right about the rain. She had barely dropped into her first sleep when a sudden storm rose. Harry, still awake, heard the rain pelting down, and was just congratulating himself on his dry quarters when a clod of earth fell on to his face. Before he had time to do more than look up at the roof of black sods, the rain was pouring between the cracks, crumbling away the sods, and smothering everything in the hut with mud. Fane started up with a shout of dismay, but Juana, rudely awakened by a shower of rain and slime, broke into peals of laughter. In a few seconds the hut seemed to be full of water. The fire, extinguished by the rain, belched clouds of smoke, and the hut’

s unfortunate owners tumbled out of it, quite drenched, and as black as mudlarks. ‘Oh, wasn’t it nice of Gilmour?’ said Harry. ‘Just wait till I see him! My poor darling, are you very wet?’

‘Oh, I am soaked, but wasn’t it funny, Enrique? Oh, look at Tom’s face! He is just like a blackamoor!”

They spent the rest of the night in the despised tent, dispossessing the servants without ceremony, and never again braved the dangers of Gilmour’s mud hut. The weather was becoming very cold, and as the convoys were late in arriving from Portugal, the soldiers began to be sorry they had been parted from their overcoats. A disagreeable feature of the district started to manifest itself in the sudden springs which broke through the ground in all the most unexpected places, and transformed reasonably dry bivouacs into swamps. Kincaid, who had made a most ingenious fire-place in his tent by digging a hole, and carrying vie smoke out under the canvas wall to a turf chimney,—returned from dining in a friend’s tent to find a fountain springing out of his fireplace, and playing over his bed and all his baggage.

‘It couldn’t have happened to anyone else!’ said Charlie Eeles, trying, as well as he could for laughing, to help Kincaid to remove his belongings to a drier spot.

‘No, because no one else had the sense to think of such a fine invention,’ retorted Kincaid. The morning fogs grew thicker. It was a beautiful sight, George said, to watch the peaks emerge, like islands, from the clouds, while the dense vapour, iridescent with the rays of the sun, hung heavily over all the valleys.

‘Ugh!’ said Molloy, shivering. ‘We shall have the whole division down with ague, that’s all I know.’ Oddly enough (for frequent hail-storms alternated with the fogs) the health of the men was good. They grumbled a great deal, for it was not only cold and wet on the Rhune, but the sight of the rich plains of France below them was tantalizing, and they all longed for the order to dislodge the French from the opposite height of La Petite Rhune. Moreover, while the Allied army remained inactive, every French soldier seemed to be busy casting up fortifications, so it looked as though they meant to defend their front pretty desperately. When the weather was at its worst, pickets at the foot of La Petite Rhune used to call hopefully to the British outposts: ‘You can’t remain in these bleak mountains much longer. We suppose you will soon retire into Spain for the whiter?’

‘Very likely we may, if we are ordered to,’ was all the answer they got. ‘Spain or France, it’s all the same to me,’ said fat Johnny Castles, crawling out from under the wet folds of a collapsed tent. ‘Hail brings snow in its tail, and it’s time we came down from the clouds.’

‘Ah!’ remarked a Scot. ‘I was hearing that Hill’s fellys are under a gude twa feet of snow the noo, so set that doon on the backside o’ your count-book!’

“The way our Colonel’s spying out the land looks to me like we’ll soon be knocking Johnny Petit off his perch there,* said a private from the 52nd, with a jerk of his thumb towards the Lesser Rhune.

It was quite true: Colonel Colborne, imparting his wisdom to Harry, was reconnoitring every yard of ground in his front, for with the surrender of Pampeluna, at the end of October, orders for a general advance were daily expected. From the commanding heights of the Grande Rhune, all the French lines could be seen. Colborne and Harry used to watch the progress made on the enemy’s fortifications, and often Wellington would join them, walking about on one of the northern ridges of the hill, and staring in his high-nosed way over the rich terrain below him. He used to talk to Colborne, sometimes with a good deal of animation, more often in staccato sentences. He said he “would be obliged to send the greater part of the Spanish troops home before venturing into France, and even Colborne, who, from having served with the Spaniards in the past was always inclined to defend them, could not deny that it would be hazardous to march them into France. As for the British, discipline must be strengthened, said his lordship; and indeed, between them, he and the Judge Advocate were imposing the stiffest punishments for plundering.

One day, when his lordship rode to Colborne’s outpost, he stayed for longer than was usual, and after walking about for some time, lay down on the ground, supporting himself on his folded arms, and looking meditatively towards the Petite Rhune. His

Quartermaster-General, Sir George Murray, was with him, Fitzroy Somerset, and one of his ADCs; and an orderly was walking their horses about a little way behind them. Besides Colborne and Harry, Alten and Kempt had joined the party.

Wellington was silent for some time, but presently he turned his head towards Colborne, and said abruptly: “Those fellows think themselves invulnerable, but I shall beat them out, and with great ease.’

‘That we shall beat them, when your lordship attacks, I have no doubt,’ replied Colborne. ‘But for the ease—!’ ‘Ah, Colborne, with your local knowledge only you’re perfectly right!’ interrupted Wellington. ‘It appears difficult, but the fact is the enemy have not men to man the works and lines they occupy. They dare not concentrate a sufficient body to resist the attacks I shall make upon them. I can pour a greater force on certain points than they can concentrate to resist me.’ He turned towards Murray, seated beside him, and, dropping his voice to an earnest undertone, began to talk to him.

Alten, collecting the eyes of his Brigadiers, got up, as though to move away, but his lordship broke off his conversation to say: ‘Oh, lie still!’

He went on speaking to Murray, in his quick incisive way, outlining his plan for an attack of the whole army. Murray listened attentively, once or twice interpolating a question. When his lordship had finished speaking, he pulled writing materials out of his sabretache, and began methodically to set down the plans on paper. The chill wind rustled the sheets, and whipped the plume in his cocked-hat. It must have been very uncomfortable, Harry thought, sitting on damp ground, and trying at once to write with cold fingers, and to hold down the corner of the paper, but Sir George seemed to be quite unperturbed. When he had transcribed his chief’s plans, he read them aloud, while Wellington, with his telescope to his eye, scanned the French lines.

Harry had heard it said that, after Wellington’s, Murray’s was the best brain in the army, and by the time the Quartermaster-General had finished reading his notes aloud, he believed it. It was wonderful, he thought, that Murray had not missed one point, but had got it all down, almost precisely as Wellington had spoken it.

‘Is that your desire, my lord?’

Wellington had listened in silence to his orders being read, his cheeks a little sucked in, and his lips pursed. He put his telescope down, and smiled, ‘Murray, this will put us in possession of the fellows’ lines. Shall we be ready tomorrow?’ ‘I fear not, my lord, but next day.’

Wellington nodded, and sat up. ‘Now, Alten,’ he said, ‘if, during the night previous to the attack, the Light division could be formed on this very ground, so as to rush at La Petite Rhune just as day dawned, it would be of vast importance, and save great loss. And by thus throwing yourselves on the right of the works of La Petite Rhune, you would certainly carry them.’

Alten looked meditatively across the ravine at the jagged ridge of the Lesser Rhune, with its scarped front, and redoubts overhanging the steep slopes. His lordship’s tone was confident, but anyone with the smallest knowledge of the ground must have known how desperate a task he was asking of his crack troops. Alten’s lean, dark countenance gave nothing away; after a few moments’ consideration, he said calmly: ‘I dink I can, my lord.’ ‘My brigade has a road,’ said Kempt. ‘There can be no difficulty.’

‘For me, there’s no road,’ said Colborne, ‘but Smith and I know every bush and every stone. We’ve studied what we’ve daily expected, and I think we can engage to lead the brigade to this very spot on the darkest night.’

‘Well then, Alten,’ said his lordship briskly, ‘when you receive your orders for the attack, let it be so.’

5

Harry was agog with excitement at the prospect of the coming attack, but not even the hope of moving to dryer and warmer quarters could make Juana think of it with anything but misgiving. Harry had trained her so well that she did her best to conceal her fears from him. When Colborne, whose deep-set eyes saw so much more than Harry’s, talked reassuringly to her, she controlled a quivering lip, and said that indeed she was not going to be silly, and he must not on any account tell Enrique how afraid she was that she would never see him again.

When, at nightfall, on the 8th November, the brigade moved forward from its encampment, Harry had gone a short distance when he suddenly reined in, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, by Jupiter, I forgot to say good-bye to my wife!’ ‘You had better go back, then,’ said Colborne.

‘I had, indeed!’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know how I came to forget, but she will certainly box my ears!’

‘Well, I daresay it will serve you right. Be off with you, and make haste!’ Juana heard the thud of Old Chap’s hooves galloping up to the wooden hut which Harry had had built. She was sitting with her hands tightly clasped in her lap, and instead of greeting Harry with a storm of abuse, which he quite expected, she flung herself into his arms as soon as he came in, and clung to him in silence.

He felt how her heart beat against his, and said remorsefully: ‘Hija, forgive me! I was so busy, right up to the last, that I clean forgot!’

Only a deep sigh answered him. He held her away from him, and tilted up her chin. ‘Hallo, what’s the matter?’

‘Enrique!’ she said, her throat painfully constricted, ‘either you or your horse will be killed tomorrow! I know it, here!’ She pressed a hand to her breast, looking mournfully up at him. He laughed. ‘Well, of two such chances, I hope it may be the horse!’ ‘You don’t believe me.’

He took her face between his hands, and kissed her. ‘Sweetheart, no!’ ‘I should not have said it. But it is true.’

‘Nonsense! There, I must go! Take care of yourself, and be sure I’ll take good care of myself!’

He gave her another kiss, rather a rough one, because her eyes were full of tears, and ran out again to jump on Old Chap’s back, and ride off” after the brigade. The night was very dark, and as there was no road over the mountain ridge, leading the column to the appointed place was a ticklish business. But Colborne’s lessons stood Harry in good stead, and he found that even in the darkness he was able to recognize the boulders and bushes he had been made to study so minutely. Since quiet was essential for the success of the movement, Colborne remained near the brigade, and sent Harry on from point to point before he would allow the men to march forward. Even when Harry found his landmarks, he was not always satisfied, but several times rode up himself to make sure that no mistake had been made.

All talking in the ranks was forbidden, and the men were warned to tread carefully when they marched down the northern slope of the mountain. Once or twice a small boulder, dislodged by an unwary foot, went rolling and bounding down the hill, but the brigade finally crept up behind their advanced picket, a hundred and fifty yards from the enemy, without having betrayed their approach by any more serious noise.

Halting the column, Colborne and Harry rode forward to the picket, knowing that the French, if they heard them, would think that they were merely visiting outposts, in the usual way. They found the picket sitting round a camp-fire, their rifles across their knees, and every man quite as alert as the sentry posted a little in advance. Colborne was pleased, and commended them for their vigilance. The Sergeant said softly: ‘Well, sir, it don’t seem to be quite the time to be lying snoring, as you might say. But there’s nothing stirring in our front.’ Satisfied, Colborne returned to the brigade; and Harry, having seen the men all lying down under their blankets, snatched a couple of hours’ sleep himself. Fane, who had chosen to remain with him rather than go to the rear, tried to sleep too, but could not. He sat huddled in his greatcoat, keeping the cold out with frequent nips of brandy from his flask, and wondering how Harry could drop off so easily, and sleep so peacefully. ‘You are a callous devil, and I’m sure I don’t know why I like you so much,’ he said softly and sadly, tucking the boat-cloak under Harry’s unconscious form.

Harry was jerked awake, an hour before daylight, by the sudden report of a musket. He was up in a minute, an oath on his lips, but although some anxious moments had to be lived through, no alarm sounded from the French outpost. The soldier who had accidentally fired his piece was silently and scientifically kicked by his friends, and all was still again. There was not much sleep after that. The men lay watching the dim crests of the mountains for the first signs of dawn. While they had been eating a meal of meat and biscuits at two in the morning, Kempt’s brigade had arrived after a long march by road, and had silently taken up its position beside Colborne’s. Once again the brigades were going to engage the enemy separately, Kempt’s business being to get across the marsh in his front, and to assail the narrow hog’s-back ridge, two-thirds of the way up the side of the Rhune; and Colborne’s to work round the extreme west of the mountain, and to rush the table-land beyond the hog’s back, with its strong forts. To the right of the division, Giron’s Spaniards, and the Enthusiastics were to attack the Rhune on its eastern side.