How did she come by this knowledge? Harry never knew. Apparently she had no difficulty in understanding the men’s rough Spanish, or West must have translated their odd confidences to her. Harry was afraid she might meet with insult, but soon realized that for all her friendliness she knew how to command respect. Ladies who travelled in the wake of the army (and there were many of them), attended by abigails, nurses, squalling infants, and a wagon-load of comforts, were the subjects of much lewd ribaldry; but Brigade-Major Smith’s wife, sharing the roughest bivouac with her husband, laughing at hardships, greeting the most insignificant private as courteously as she greeted the Brigadier, was a lady quite out of the common run.
‘And a lady she is, and don’t nobody forget it!’ said Man-killer Palmer, re-nicknamed since Badajos, the Bombproof Man.
‘Ho!’ drawled Tom Crawley, sprawling by the camp-fire. ‘Nobody hadn’t better, considering the cut of our Brigade-Major’s jib.’
‘They got me to reckon with if they do,’ said the Bombproof Man, rolling a belligerent eye around the group. ‘She don’t hold her wipe to her nose because of the ungenteel smell of them horrid, rough soldiers! “Is your poor wife the better of her ague?” she says to me, as though I might be old Hooknose himself.’
‘And since when will you have been owning a wife?” inquired a black-browed Scot politely. ‘It’s Pepita she was talking of, ye cattle-thieving fool! Would you have me soil the ears of the likes of her (and she no more than a baby!) with explaining the true state of affairs? If you don’t know the way to treat a lady, there’s others as does, and will learn ye!’ ‘Och, spare yersel’ the trouble, ye miserable little Southron! I’ve naught against the bairn. She’s bonny enough,’ replied the Scot peaceably.
If the men regarded Juana with affectionate respect, the officers, from Barnard down to the latest joined Ensign, adored her. She was a sister to most of them, treating them as though she had known them all her life, yet with an instinctive discretion that gave evil tongues no food for slander. Though Juana, adopting the whole brigade, visited sick friends, darned holes in feckless lieutenants’ socks, sewed on buttons, and had always some kind of a meal prepared for anyone who chanced to visit her quarters at dinner-time, never, from first to last, did the least whisper of scandal attach to her name.
‘A treasure invaluable!’ Harry boasted, and even those who had most earnestly warned him against marriage agreed with him. His friends, lamenting the change that must take place in their relations with him, early discovered that Mrs Harry Smith was not one of those brides who made it their business to wean their husbands from old friends. No need to do the dandy on Juana’s account; no need to doubt one’s welcome in Harry’s quarters; no fear of boring Juana with the inevitable army-talk. You need not turn your baggage upside-down in the search for a respectable shirt if you were going to call on the Smiths, nor need you wait for an invitation to dine with them, and then spend a dull evening chatting of insipidities. You could stroll off to their quarters just as you were, and you would very likely find Juana cooking a savoury stew, and be told to come in, and set the table for her. You could lounge as you pleased, and fill the room with cigar-smoke: Juana had no objection. Ten to one, she would have the coat off your back to mend a torn lining, or tighten a button, while you sat talking to Harry.
Major-General Vandeleur, rejoining the brigade on 5th April, and taking up his old command of it, was thunderstruck to discover that his efficient young dare-devil of a Brigade-Major had acquired a wife in his absence. He was inclined to be wrathful, but his gallant heart was not proof against the appeal of so youthful and pretty a creature. No one was in the least surprised to see the subjugation of old Vandeleur, for he was, said his men, the kindest man alive. He was very fatherly with Juana, and saw not the smallest reason why his marriage should interfere with Harry’s continuing to share his General’s quarters whenever there was a shortage of accommodation, or circumstances made it desirable for the General to have his Brigade-Major within call. A sociable old fellow, Vandeleur: not one of your stiff-necked, ceremonious Brigadiers. ‘What have you got for us today, Juana?’ he would say, as he took his seat at the dinner-table, Harry on one hand, his ADC on the other, and Juana opposite to him. ‘By jove, you make us so comfortable we shall be spoilt, m’dear. Eh, Harry?’ By the time the Light division reached Ituera, and went into cantonments on the Agueda, Mrs Harry Smith was the divisional pet. ‘Really remarkable!’ murmured Harry’s bête noire, Daniel Cadoux. ‘
What did she see in Smith?’
Kincaid knew that her unclouded instinct had recognized a kindred spirit in Harry. For himself, had she chosen him instead of his volatile friend, he would have adored and protected her, he thought, for his life long. There would have been no hard marches for Mrs John Kincaid; no dirty quarters in ruined Portuguese villages; no bivouacs in streaming woods, with the howling of wolves for an uneasy lullaby. He would have guarded her from every danger or discomfort, would have sent her home to England rather than have her face the hardships of campaigning. But Harry, not consciously wise, knew her better. Kincaid felt his heart ache for her weariness after long days in the saddle; Harry never weakened her by showing his sympathy. When he came to her with his duty done, he was her lover; but at all other times he was her commanding officer, treating her much as he treated his younger brother, Tom, who had taken command of his company whilst he himself continued to be employed on the Staff.
6
If Harry showed no sympathy, there were others who did. If the ground were muddy, half a dozen officers would spring up, all anxious to emulate the chivalry of Sir Walter Raleigh; if Juana expressed a desire, it would be a point of honour for her friends to fulfil it. Harry was at first inclined to be jealous, and the Smiths’ quarters were more than once enlivened by the reverberations of a royal quarrel. Juana’s hot temper was swift to match Harry’s; she could storm as well as he could, hurling insults as well as more tangible missiles at his head; but every quarrel ended soon or late in reluctant laughter, and no two hotheads could have been quicker to forgive.
By the time the Light division had reached the Agueda, Juana knew very nearly as much about the brigade as Harry. She did not appear to miss her own relations, or to regret, for the most fleeting minute, her precipitate marriage. If she had a preoccupation, it was with her progress in the art of horsemanship. The leading-rein had been early dispensed with, but Harry, for all his carelessness, would not permit her to ride any other of his horses than the placid Portuguese animal he had originally allotted to her. Juana wanted to ride the little Spanish horse, Tiny, which Stewart had given him.
‘When you can ride as well as you can dance and sing, you shall,’ Harry promised her. Dancing was very popular with the officers of Wellington’s army. Whenever opportunity served, some regiment or other would be bound to arrange an impromptu ball, often in a rickety barn with a defective roof, and a most uneven floor. Nothing pleased Brigade-Major Smith more than to see his Juana the undoubted belle of such functions. She danced beautifully, whether in the formal dances of her own country, or in the waltzes and the country-measures favoured by the English. There was never any dearth of females to grace the balls by the English officers, but Mrs Harry Smith never lacked a partner. There might be half a dozen more lovely women present, but the crowd round Juana was always so thick that Harry had very often to fight his way through it to claim her hand. ‘My dance, I think!’ would say Harry, measuring his rivals with a gleam in his eye which meant business.