But there was no need for that jealous sparkle: Juana would melt into his arms, transparently happy to be wrested by him from other claimants.
‘Do you love me, little devil?’ Harry would say fiercely into her ear, as they circled round the hall.
The pressure of her hand answered him, the glow in her eyes. ‘Mi esposo!’ Juana would breathe, on an adoring sigh.
‘Don’t you forget it!’ said Harry, his arms like steel round her waist. “These admirers of yours!’
‘You do not like that I should dance with those others?’
His arm tightened; her fingers whitened under the grip of his. ‘Never think it! Of course I do! I deserve to have my ears boxed!’
‘But not here,’ she said seriously.
Tom Smith thought that Harry ought to teach his wife to speak English, but Harry never did. Harry spoke Spanish like a native, and saw not the slightest need to plague Juana with lessons in his own tongue. A little English she picked up, some of it from the soldiers, which made Harry laugh, when she reproduced it; French she spoke fluently, so if she encountered anyone who could not converse in Spanish (which was seldom), she was quite ready to turn to French, and chatter away to the visitor as easily as you pleased.
‘Well, but when you take her home to Whittlesey?’ Tom said dubiously. ‘That’s a long way off,’ replied Harry. ‘Time enough!’
‘Yes, but if she can’t make my father and mother understand her, it will be doubly hard for her.’
‘Doubly hard? What do you mean?’ demanded Harry.
‘Well, for them too!’ said Tom, persevering. ‘I mean, she’s a foreigner, and it is bound to seem odd to them-I mean, it will be difficult Harry!’
‘Nonsense!’ Harry said impatiently. ‘They will love her the instant they clap eyes on her!’ ‘I’m sure I hope they may,’ said Tom, trying to picture the scene, and not quite succeeding. ‘You have written to tell them, haven’t you?’
‘That comes well from you! Of course I have! Why, what a fellow you think me!’ ‘No, I don’t, only you are a careless devil, and you can’t deny it will come as rather a shock to the old people. Alice, too!’
‘Oh, Alice be hanged!’ said Harry, recklessly disposing of his favourite sister. ‘You can say that, but you know very well it won’t do.’
‘I’m not afraid of Alice!’ declared Harry.
‘No, not while she’s in England and you are in Portugal!’ responded Tom, with a grin. ‘Nonsense!’ was all Harry would say.
Tom did not care to pursue the matter. He was only five years younger than Harry, but there was quite a considerable difference between Brother Harry, a mere member of a large family, and Captain Smith, Tom’s superior officer.
So Juana was not troubled with English lessons, but concentrated her energies instead on the arts of horsemanship and housewifery. A provident little lady, Mrs Harry Smith: she hoarded the money Harry handed over to her; chaffered in the market (Harry said) like any Portuguese matron; darned socks which another woman would have pronounced beyond repair; and was very saving over such precious commodities as lamp-oil and candles. The army remained in cantonments for nearly six weeks, while supplies were collected, and clothing renewed, troops rested, and Lord Wellington’s plans for the summer campaign completed.
Lord Wellington’s original plan had been to strike at Soult, had Soult lingered in Estremadura. But Soult, harassed by the incalculable movements of the Spanish General Ballasteros about Cadiz, retired, after the fall of Badajos, into Andalusia, whither Lord Wellington was far too cautious to follow him. His lordship, furthermore, had received disquieting intelligence from Don Carlos de Espana, skirmishing to the north, that Ciudad Rodrigo, though perfectly tenable, had most unfortunately only sufficient provisions to withstand a twenty-day siege.
‘This damned policy of manana!’ snapped his lordship, preparing to march northward, to force Marmont to retreat.
Marshal Marmont, commanding the French Army of Portugal, had received express orders from his Emperor not to attempt the relief of Badajos, and had been occupied for some weeks in raiding Beira Baixa, while General Brennier blockaded Ciudad Rodrigo. His lordship left a Portuguese force in Badajos, entrusted the task of containing Drouet to General Sir Rowland Hill, and himself marched north with the main body of his army. Marmont, in Sabugal on 8th April, in Castello Branco on 12th April, executing a raid on Guarda two days later, retreated before his lordship, not because of the Allied army’s advance, of which he had no intelligence, but because he could not find, in all that ravaged countryside, sufficient provender for even a third of his army. By the time he was aware of Wellington’s proximity, he had reached Fuente Guinaldo, on the wrong side of the Agueda. Rains had swollen the river, and held the Marshal at Fuente Guinaldo until the 21st April. But by the 23rd April he had got his army across, not without difficulty, by the fords near Ciudad Rodrigo, and had begun to retreat upon Salamanca.
So his lordship abandoned the pursuit for the time being; his army went into its winter cantonments; and Juana Smith learned to waltz.
7
Early in May, Major-General Baron Charles Alten, of the King’s German Legion, was appointed to the command of the Light division. He was forty-eight years old, a hard-bitten warrior with a dark hatchet-face, stern, bright eyes, and a strong German accent. Rather an odd choice of General for The Division? Not at alclass="underline" no Englishman had anything but the most profound respect for the King’s German Legion. As for Baron Alten, he was just the kind of leader the Light Bobs liked: a General who knew his work; never, even under the most trying circumstances, lost an atom of his cool presence of mind; was calm in action; and did not irritate those under his command with unnecessary orders, or the teasing habits of many an English General. It was by no means an easy task to command the Light division to the Light division’s satisfaction; it was a very hard task indeed to fill the place of General Craufurd. ‘The fellow who commands us will have to be a damned good fellow,’ said Charles Beckwith. ‘None of your old women, thank you!’
‘And no marches and counter-marches for God alone knows what reason!’ ‘And no damned reviews and inspections!’
‘Must understand outpost duty!’
‘Mustn’t be one of these cats on hot bricks who won’t go into action unless they’re pushed!’ ‘Take heart!’ said Harry Smith, entering in the middle of this discussion. ‘The news is out. It’s old Alten.’
‘Alten?’ There was a pause. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Eeles cautiously. “They say he’s a good fellow. Won’t worry us, will he?’
‘Devil a bit!’ said Kincaid. ‘He’s a gentleman, is old Alten. If we can’t have dear Barnard, I’d as soon have the Baron as any other I can call to mind. Except Erskine, of course,’ he added, dulcetly.
‘Oh, my God! Sabugal!’ groaned Beckwith.
‘Well, nothing like that will happen under Alten,’ said Harry, ‘even if he isn’t a Craufurd.’ But it was not everyone who desired Alten to be a Craufurd. Craufurd had made the Light division the superb fighting unit that it was, but he had been no easy man to serve under. A less irascible General, thought some of his officers, would be a relief. General Alten was neither irascible nor fussy. He noticed as little as Lord Wellington himself irregularities of dress, and made not the slightest attempt to correct the slouch which the Light Bobs found so much less tiring than a correct military carriage. They were not at all the sort of troops a general would wish to review in Hyde Park, but old Alten did not care a jot for that. They did everything in the easiest way possible; though they might not march smartly, they could march far; and though their uniforms might be patched with strange colours, and their shakos shapeless through being exposed to much rain, their pieces were always in perfect order, with never a speck of rust in the well-oiled barrels. ‘H’m! They look remarkably well, and in good fighting order,’ said Wellington, when he reviewed them near El Bodon, late in May.