‘God damn them!’ Harry said, in English, and under his breath, ‘God damn their souls to hell!’
She sat up, disengaging herself from the sister’s embrace. The fright had quite disappeared; a delicate colour had come into her cheeks; her mouth began to tilt at the corners. It gave her an enchanting look, but it was decidedly mischievous: not a doubt of that, thought Kincaid, silently adoring the pretty creature.
‘Please, I do not understand English,’ Juana said.
‘I will teach you,’ Harry answered, in a lover’s voice, smiling down into her eyes. ‘
Will you let me take care of you, mi pobrecita?’
She nodded trustfully. ‘Toda mi vida!’ he said, as though recording a vow.
Good God, where is this leading us? thought Kincaid, catching the low-spoken words. All my life indeed! Harry, take care!
Juana seemed to think the promise quite natural. She gave back Harry’s smile with such a beaming look in her own dark eyes that Kincaid was not surprised to see Harry lift her hand to his lips.
‘I do not know your name, señor?’ Juana suggested hopefully. ‘Harry Smith,’ he replied, holding her hand between both of his.
She repeated it hesitantly. ‘Harry?’ she said, trilling it, and shaking her head at her own pronunciation.
‘Enrique,’ he translated.
That pleased her; her whole face quickened with sudden laughter. ‘I like it better so!’ ‘Señor!’ the sister intervened. ‘May I count upon your protection for this fatherless child?’ Harry replied, without taking his eyes from Juana’s face: ‘She stays with me. You need have no fear. I will arrange everything.’
Kincaid, aghast, thought it time to call a halt. He touched Harry’s arm, saying in English: ‘Harry, what the devil are you about? She can’t stay with you! A child-a lady!’ ‘She’s not a child. Oh, in years-!’
‘But you crazy fool, you can’t keep her with you! A gently-born girl, reared in a convent, thrown upon your generosity-’
‘Yes I can.’
‘Harry, will you listen to reason? This won’t do! She’s of the true hidalgo class! What can you do with such a girl? She’s not-’
‘Do with her? I’m going to marry her!’ replied Brigade-Major Smith.
Chapter Two. ‘A Treasure Invaluable’
Marry her he did. He would listen to no argument; he snapped his fingers at every impediment. The same ardent spirit which sent him headlong into the thickest part of any battle drove him headlong into marriage. To look at Juana was to love her, said Kincaid, adding, years later, with his twisted, rueful smile: ‘And I did love her, but I never told my love, and in the meantime another and a more impudent fellow stepped in and won her.’ But Juana did not think Harry impudent. A kindred spirit in her had leapt to meet his. Kincaid, offering protection to her sister, had scarcely made an impression upon her; half-fainting, his pleasant voice had had no power to rouse her from her state of terror. If he was good to look at, she did not know it. Sunk in the chair he had set for her, shrinking within the shelter of her sister’s arm, she had become aware of Harry, intently watching her. Though he had not been able to see her face through the mesh of her mantilla, she had seen his, deeply tanned, with a close-gripped mouth, a masterful, aquiline nose, and bright almond-shaped eyes, tremendously alive under their rather heavy lids. He was fined down to bone and muscle; the line of his jaw stood out sharply; there were clefts running from his nose to the upward-tilting corners of his mouth. His hands seemed all sinew; his slight frame a small, tough thing, compact of energy. Not a handsome man, Harry Smith: he would improve with age, like his Commander-in-chief; not a big man, nor one to use many graces in his dealings with his fellow-men; but a vivid, vital creature, instinct with a force, far removed from mere charm, which was a strong magnetism: the quality which made him, in spite of his impetuosity, his quick temper, and his flaming impatience, a born leader of men. There was something fierce about Harry, the look of a hawk in his eyes: a similar spirit in Juana, the daughter of a long line of hidalgos, responded to it. They were made for each other, and were simple and direct enough, both of them, Kincaid reflected to know it at a glance.
After his first astonishment, he refrained from expostulation. Harry, held for those initial moments in a trance of wonder, awoke soon to a fit of whirlwind energy. Arrangements had to be made for the marriage, for the sister’s safe conduct through the lines, for Juana’s comfort, for both ladies’ lodging for the night. He might have escorted them to Elvas, but he would not let this treasure he had found out of his sight. She and her sister must be accommodated in his tent; he sent his batman, Joe Kitchen, providentially returned in a moderately sober condition from Badajos, to beg, borrow, or steal a mattress for his love. He wrested a pillow from Stewart, a blanket from Jack Molloy, and would not stay to listen to their arguments against his hasty, ruinous marriage.
The sister, blinking at Juana’s amazing lover, demurred at his autocratic decree that they should take possession of his tent. Having seen the British troops in Badajos, she placed small dependence on the protection of canvas walls. ‘Shall we be safe? Will not the soldiers break in?’ she asked nervously.
Harry stared at her in astonishment. ‘Break in?’ he repeated, even his swift brain finding it hard to assimilate the enormity of her suggestion. ‘The men break into an officer’s tent? By God, they will not!’
She seemed to be doubtful; to set her mind at rest, he called up his private groom, a stolidly respectable person who inspired even a nervous Spanish lady with confidence, and laid on him strict orders to keep his guests’ privacy inviolate.
‘Yessir,’ said English West woodenly, betraying no surprise. He took a look at the elder lady, and decided that there was nothing in it; he looked at Juana, all her alarms now ended, sitting on the edge of Harry’s bed, like an inquisitive robin, and encountered a shy smile that reminded him of an urchin detected in crime. He was visibly shaken, and retired with his head in a whirl.
Despairing of getting Harry to listen to reason, James Stewart, seeing in the marriage the ruin of his friend’s career, suggested desperately that it was not fair to pitchfork so young a girl into matrimony. Speaking to her in halting Spanish (for he could never achieve any fluency in a foreign tongue), he tried to ask her what her real wishes were, at the same time assuring her of protection in the camp.
She caught at his meaning, and smiled happily. ‘Please, I will marry Enrique,’ she said. She was quite sure, neither bashful nor coquettish. Life in the tail of an army held no terrors for her. She liked soldiers, she told Jack Molloy sunnily. Her own brother had been a soldier. Dead now, of course: killed by the French. Jack, seizing the opportunity afforded by Harry’s temporary absence, tried hard to paint for the little Spanish lady a true picture of the privations and the dangers ahead of her if she became Harry’s wife. She listened to him politely, encouraging his stumbling Spanish, occasionally supplying him with an elusive word, but she did not seem to be in the least impressed by what he said. When he described the discomforts of travelling in the rear of the army, all amongst the cumbrous baggage-train, and surrounded by camp-followers, perhaps not setting eyes on Harry for days together, she looked wise, and said with considerable decision that she thought better, perhaps, not to travel in the rear of the army
‘Much better!’ Molloy assured her. ‘You see, you did not entirely realize, señorita, what such a life would mean to a delicate female.’
‘It is very true. Besides, if I could not see my Enrique for days together I should not like it,’ said Juana.
‘How should you, indeed? And for him, consider the anxiety of being separated from you, not knowing how you fared, and unable to go to you!’