The Spanish Bride

6

As though a reunion with his wife, and a visit to Carlton House were not enough to cram into one day of an obscure officer’s life, Lord Bathurst, as he and Harry drove back to Downing Street, invited him most cordially to dine with him at his house on Putney Heath that evening. There was no refusing such an invitation, however much Harry would have preferred to have spent the evening with Juana. Nor, when she presently learned of it, did she raise the least demur. She said, on the contrary, that it was most fortunate that she had had the forethought to press out his mess jacket and to launder his muslin neckcloths.

Bathurst’s secretary, a lively young gentleman owning to the name of Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville, but answering equally readily to the more simple nickname of Punch, had offered to drive Harry out in his tilbury. He called for him in Panton Square just after seven o’clock, and regaled him all the way to Putney with a flow of the most amusing conversation, most of it far too scandalous to be seriously attended to. When they were ushered into the drawing-room of Lord Bathurst’s house, they found a large party assembled, amongst whom were Lord Fitzroy Somerset, and his bride. Fitzroy moved across the room to shake hands with Harry at once, congratulating him on the success achieved in America, and introducing him to his wife, whom Harry presently took in to dinner.

Lady Fitzroy, a gentle creature with a decided look of her famous uncle in her rather long but handsome face, accorded Harry a flattering degree of attention. To his surprise, he discovered that he was the lion of the evening, his host being at pains to draw him out, and everyone quite hanging on his lips. Lord Fitzroy being placed opposite to him, it was not long before the conversation turned on the late campaign in the Peninsula. Well-fed, and well-wined, Harry was not a bit shy of talking before such a distinguished company, and upon a gentleman’s saying, from the other end of the table, that the Duke of Wellington was certainly unequalled in defence, he picked up the cudgels without an instant’s hesitation, and said, that in his army’s eyes the Duke was unequalled in any form of warfare. Fitzroy laughed. ‘Well done!’

Seated beside Harry was an elderly gentleman, with very dark brows arched above large, lustrous eyes, and a skin so white that it might have been lacquered. He inclined his head courteously, saying in a deep, soft voice: ‘You entertain a high opinion of the Duke, Captain Smith?’

‘All who have had the honour of serving under him must do so,’ responded Harry. ‘To us he is elevated beyond any other human being!’

The gentleman smiled. ‘I am very glad to hear you speak in such raptures of him. He is my brother.’

Harry realized that he was sitting beside the Marquis Wellesley, and blushed, but said, with a laugh: ‘I have not exceeded in anything, sir, to the best of my judgement!’ After dinner, when they rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, Fitzroy came over to Harry, and they had a long talk. Fitzroy had gone to Cadiz with the Duke, after the armistice, and had naturally had a good-deal of conversation with him about the late war. ‘You know, Smith, the Duke often said to me, “The Light, 3rd, and 4th divisions were the Mite of my army, but the Light had this peculiar perfection: no matter what was the arduous service they were employed on, when I rode up next day, I still found a division. They never lost one half the men other divisions did.”

‘No! Did he indeed say that?’ cried Harry, quite delighted. ‘Oh, famous, for that was what we so prided ourselves on! I have actually heard our soldiers bullying one another about the number such-and-such a company had lost, always attaching discredit to the loss!’ Altogether, Harry, in spite of being separated from Juana, spent a charming evening. He got back to Panton Square after midnight, and found Juana waiting for him, with such a beaming look in her eyes, such a welcoming smile on her lips, that he caught her up bodily in his arms, exclaiming in a suddenly thickened voice: ‘To know that I shall find you when I get back to my quarters! Mi muger! mi queridissima muger!’

She took his face between her palms, pushing back his head so that she could look into his eyes, her own full of mischief. ‘Ah, ah! Do you think I shall believe that there have been no beautiful American women, mi Enrique?’

‘Never one! Siempre tu fiel, fiel Enrique!’

She laughed, but kissed him. ‘I don’t believe you, because I know you for a bad, wicked man, but I love you, I love you!’

Later, dropping asleep in his arms, she roused herself to murmur: ‘Now I can go to your home!’

‘So you shall, as soon as we get back from Bath,’ he responded. ‘Bath?’ she said, bewildered.

‘Didn’t I tell you, hija? I promised Ross I would go to call on his wife there, and take her a letter from him. Shall you mind going?’

‘I mind nothing,’ said Juana, tucking her head under his chin. ‘When do we march?” They ‘marched’ the very next day, travelling all the way in a private chaise, an extravagance justified, they thought, by the prospect of Harry’s promotion.

‘Oh,’ said Juana, leaning back luxuriously against the squabs of the chaise, ‘we have journeyed so many miles together, but never like this before! I feel so grand! Did you remember to write to your father?’

Yes, Harry had done all that a dutiful son should, even to begging Mr Smith to come up to town in a few days to meet him on his return from Bath. There was nothing, in fact, on his conscience, and he was able to give himself up to a week’s bliss.

They found Bath a delightful town, and Mrs Ross very amiable and hospitable. A few days crammed with sightseeing were spent there, and then off the Smiths set for London again, quite astonishing Mrs Ross by such meteoric movements.

They reached Panton Square again in the highest fettle, Juana having read in a newspaper bought at the last stage of Harry’s promotion to the rank of Major. ‘The reward of our separation!’ she called it.

Madame Dupont met them at the door of No. 11, with the intelligence that Mr Smith had arrived in town the day before, and was actually upstairs in the parlour at that very moment. Juana had told Harry of how Tom had found his family living in dread of her being a haughty Spanish dame, and as soon as he heard of his father’s arrival, he was seized by a mischievous desire to tease him a little. He would not hear of Juana’s going straight in to Mr Smith; he wanted to show her off, not tumbled from a long journey, but looking her best. ‘Do, do put on your Spanish dress!’ he coaxed. ‘I shall tell my father you’re as stately as a swan and about as proud as a peacock! It will be a famous joke!’

So Juana slipped upstairs to her bedchamber, while Harry went in to his father. It was easy to see from where Harry got his long, narrow eyes, and aquiline nose. The resemblance between Mr Smith and his favourite son was most pronounced. Even the upward tilt of their mouths at the corners was the same; the only difference was in expression. John Smith’s was a milder’ face than Harry’s. His chin was not so aggressive; his lips not so close-gripped; nor had he that look of scarcely curbed energy. When Harry opened the door, he looked round, and stayed for a moment, grasping the arms of his chair, and gazing at his son. ‘Harry!’ he said. ‘My boy!’

Harry reached him as he rose from his chair, and caught both his hands. ‘Father!’ he said, flushing with a quick surge of emotion. ‘My dear, dear Father!’

John Smith found it difficult to speak for a moment. He had last seen his son upon his return from the horrors of the retreat to Corunna. Harry had been worn down by dysentery, shuddering continuously with ague, his clothes verminous, his slight frame a pitiful skeleton. It had taken all his father’s skill in medicine, and all his mother’s cosseting, to set him on his feet again in time to join Sir Arthur Wellesley’s expedition to the Peninsula; and John Smith had never been able to rid himself of the last glimpse he had had of him, waving good-bye from the window of the chaise. He had only been twenty-two, and he had looked, in spite of his three years of strenuous service, much younger. Somehow, John Smith had gone on picturing him as a thin scrap of a white-faced boy. Well, he was still thin, but not boyish any longer, and certainly not white-faced. The bones of his face, more sharply defined than ever, gave him a look of maturity. There were little lines at the corner of his eyes, induced by constant narrowing of the eyes against the glare of sunlight; and deeper lines which made him look sometimes a little sardonic.

‘I should hardly have known you!’ John Smith managed to say at last, still holding him tightly by the hands.

‘I should have known you anywhere!’ Harry declared. *You haven’t altered-not a scrap!’ ‘Well, I don’t know that you’ve altered so much either, now I come to look at you again,’ said John, releasing him to draw out a handkerchief, and blow his nose with unnecessary violence. ‘If your mother were alive, how proud she would be!’ Harry’s lip trembled. ‘Don’t! Don’t speak of that! I cannot bear to!’ he said sharply. ‘When I think-But, come! You are well, sir! And my sisters?’

‘Yes, yes, all of us! But you will be sorry to hear about that horse you had from Stewart!’ ‘Alas! Old Chap! Not dead?’

“Yes. There was nothing to be done, my boy. I knew you would feel it, and a lovely creature he must have been before he took ill! But never mind! Your wife’s horse is in famous shape. But how came you to mount a lady on such a varmint, Harry? I am surprised you should do such a thing!’

‘Oh, she manages him to perfection, sir, I assure you! She. is a splendid horsewoman!’ ‘She must be indeed! You know, we were very sorry she was so resolute in refusing to come to Whittlesey. I am afraid she will find us very simple people, and our way of living not what she has been accustomed to.’

‘True, very true!’ Harry said, casting down his eyes to hide the laughter in them. ‘She has been used to a very different life!’

‘I hope she will be comfortable,’ John said doubtfully. ‘Your sisters are quite frightened to meet her, you know! They feel sure she must be very proud.’

‘Oh, well, you know how it is with Spaniards of the hidalgo class!’ said Harry airily. ‘They are all a trifle stiff, to be sure, and devilish particular in matters of etiquette, but one grows accustomed to it! Don’t be surprised if she is a little stately at first: I am persuaded you will soon come to like her.’

A very little of this kind of teasing was enough to make John Smith look forward to making Juana’s acquaintance with a sinking heart; and by the time she came into the room, dressed in full Spanish costume, he had reached the stage of dreading her arrival. She paused for a moment on the threshold, looking so beautiful that she took Harry’s breath away, and so haughty that John Smith wondered what in the world had possessed his son to marry such a stiff-necked young woman.

‘Juana, my love! Allow me to present my father!’ said Harry. ‘My dear-’ began John, and stopped.

The play broke down. The doubtful, rather wistful look in John Smith’s face was too much for Juana. The fan she was waving shut with a click, and tossed aside. ‘Oh no! I cannot!’ she cried, and ran across the room, straight into her father-in-law’s arms. ‘I am not at all proud-not a bit! It was Enrique’s fault! He is a villain, a wretch, altogether abominable! No vale nada!’

‘Well, Father?’ said Harry, wickedly grinning. ‘Do you like my little peacock?’