Georgina sniffed. 'Since you found her such a paragon and have ample money of your own, I wonder that you did not marry her.'
'Is it likely?' he replied in quick remonstrance, giving her nearest curl a little tug. 'You wicked piece! How dare you suggest such a thing when you are married to a man near twice your age. Old K can last but a year or two. And nothing would induce me to jeopardize my prospect of making you mine for ever, once the old fellow has snuffed it.'
She sighed. 'Alas, dear Roger, I fear fate has decreed that we'll never be man and wife, at all events not for a long time to come. I've had no chance to tell you before, but early in April he had a stroke. He is now paralyzed, poor wretch, and can neither rise from his bed nor talk. Yet the doctors declare him to be in all other respects as healthy as a man of fifty. His sexual activities apart, he has never indulged in any excesses. He gave up drink long ago that he might disport himself more vigorously in bed. Country pursuits and regular exercise have kept all his muscles in good trim and now he is fed only on simple, sustaining foods. With naught to age him further, the doctors say he may last another ten years.'
For some minutes Roger was silent, then he said, 'What you tell me is a sad blow to my hopes. Even so, I have no mind to marry again, and I am now home for good. Half a loaf was ever better than no bread. As long as we can be together frequently, I'll be content with that,'
Lifting her face, she kissed him. 'As a mistress, I am yours, and will be only yours as long as you remain in England. Now, my beloved, nibble my ears and make love to me again.'
For the rich it was a halcyon summer. Regardless of the eighteen long years of a war that still showed no prospect of ending, they danced, drank, gambled, dueled, gossiped and flirted. For the middle classes it was a period of increasing strain from shortage of money. More and more merchants went bankrupt and the rest were hard put to it to meet their bills. For the poor, it dragged by, in week after week of ever-greater penury and distress. The harvests had been bad or indifferent for many years in succession, so food was scarce and expensive. Owing to the decline in commerce, many thousands of workers had been laid off from the new factories. In the old days, the country folk had at least had their cottage industries to support them and, in hard times, their lords of the manor had regarded it as a duty to tide them over. But during the past five decades great numbers of workers had migrated to the towns and had become slave labour. The industrialists were hard men arid felt no obligation to give money to hands for whom they could no longer find work. In consequence, the slums teemed with poor, idle, wretches, watching their children starve for lack of a crust.
For that Roger was no more to blame than others of his generation and station, few of whom were even aware of the misery being endured by their fellow men in the Midlands and northern towns.
Old Dan had, as ever, taken good care of Thatched House Lodge and, as Roger had not expected to be in Lisbon for much more than a month, he had kept on his excellent cook-housekeeper, Mrs Muffet. A week after his arrival in London, he again took up his residence there, and sent for Mrs. Marsham and Susan to join him. Every week he rode up to the metropolis and spent two or three nights there, sometimes escorting Georgina to big receptions and dancing the night away; at others with her in the delightful seclusion of her studio out at Kensington.
The war in the Peninsula dragged on. Massena, having withdrawn from Portugal, had left as the fruit of his exhausting nine-month campaign and the loss of twenty-five thousand men, only the great fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. Wellington proceeded to lay siege to the latter, while Massena endeavored to inject new life into his exhausted army in the neighborhood of Salamanca. He had lost nearly all his cavalry and had not enough horses to pull his guns; but he had never lacked courage, and was determined not to let Wellington take Almeida without a fight. Being so heavily handicapped, he appealed to his colleague, Bessieres, who was commanding in the north, for a loan of cavalry and artillery. The younger Marshal came to look on, but brought with him only fifteen hundred horse and a single battery. With some forty thousand men, Massena marched to the relief of Almeida.
On May 5th, he found Wellington, with an army of some six thousand fewer than his own, blocking his path on the heights of Fuentes d'Onoro. A two-day battle ensued. Twice Massena sent his massed columns against the British line; both times the line held. But the Marshal had dispatched a strong column round the southern flank of the British. This forced them to retire, but the French were too exhausted to follow them up and again fell back on Salamanca. A few days later General Brainier, the commander in Almeida, blew up the walls of the city and gallantly cut his way with his garrison through the besiegers. Thus fell the last stronghold held by the French on Portuguese soil.
Meanwhile the Emperor, furious at Massena's having abandoned the attempt to take Lisbon, had appointed the young and ambitious Marmont to supersede him. On the 12th May the great soldier who had held the bastion of Switzerland against the Russians in '98, while Bonaparte was in Egypt, made Napoleon's victory at Marengo possible by holding starving Genoa, played a leading part in a score of victories since and was accounted by the French people second only to the Emperor as a leader of armies, handed over his command. His career was finished.
There followed a series of marches and countermarches. General Beresford, who had been detached to protect the British lines of communication against an attack from, the south, had attempted to re-take Badajoz. Soult came up and the bloodiest battle of the whole war took place. The French lost six thousand men and, of the British army which totaled only eight thousand and narrowly escaped defeat, one out of every two men was either killed or wounded.
Having left a considerable part of his army to watch the French, who were again regrouping in the neighborhood of Salamanca, Wellington marched south, but arrived too late to assist Beresford and, soon afterward, found himself confronted with the combined armies of Soult and Mortier. By stripping Leon and Andalusia of troops, they had mustered an army of sixty-two thousand men, whereas Wellington had only fifty-two thousand. Retiring behind the river Gaya, from June 22nd to the 4th July, with great anxiety, he awaited their attack. It never came. Soult learned that a Spanish army under General Blake was threatening Seville, so he marched away to defend the city that he had hoped to make his capital.
Mortier's army, covering Badajoz, was too strong for there to be any hope of taking the place, so Wellington marched north again and laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo.
Marmont swiftly assembled his men from their cantonments about Salamanca and arrived on the scene with sixty thousand men, compelling the British to abandon the siege and retire from the frontier. The active Marmont followed them up and in September Wellington was forced to fight two rearguard actions. But the young Marshal did not feel himself strong enough to invade Portugal and, soon afterwards, both armies retired into winter quarters.