Well, he was cold meat, like Stokes, and Crampton, and Balvaird, and McDermid, like the hundreds of rank-and-file who lay piled up at the foot of the breach, in a fantastic, incredible mound. George brushed away the tear-drops, rejecting with the detachment of those who had fought in many engagements and had learned to look upon the loss in battle of friends as passing griefs, sharp yet soon over, that it was a bad soldier who mourned the dead over long, as bad a soldier as the man who dwelt on the chances of his own death. A friend was killed, and one wept over him; but soon, one would find another friend, not dead but miraculously alive, and a spring of gladness would make one forget the first sorrow. Such a spring George felt when he saw Harry presently. His honest face grew lighter, its dejection vanished in a beaming smile. He grasped Harry’s hand, ejaculating: “Thank God! You’re safe! Well done, old fellow!’
‘If only we had carried it!’ Harry said, casting a fierce, hungry look upwards at the breach. ‘Never mind, they’re all saying it was our attacks that made it possible for Leith’s and Picton’s fellows to break in. And Johnny’s safe too, and dear old Charlie Beckwith! Oh, but Harry, though there’s no denying we are The Division, it makes one’s heart swell, indeed it does, to think of those noble fellows of Picton’s scaling the Castle-hill as they did! And the Pioneers, too, winning the river-bastion, with everyone ready to swear they must fail!’ ‘Yes!’ Harry said, kindling with ready enthusiasm. ‘Noble fellows, all of them, and the bloodiest, most glorious action, George! By God, I would fight every one of our battles again, but not this one!’
‘Oh, no, not this one again!’ George agreed, with a shudder.
‘I hate sieges!’ Harry said, viciously jerking the knot of his sash. ‘The men behave like heroes, brave, drunken blackguards that they are! and then they go straight to the devil, as they’re doing now!’
‘Very true,’ George said. ‘It is melancholy, and upon more counts than one.’ ‘It plays the dickens with the brigade!’ snapped Harry.
8
When the living had been disentangled from the dead, and carried to the camp; and fatigue-parties of Portuguese had begun to dig great pits to receive the hundreds of the slain, there was nothing for even the keenest duty-officer to do but to visit wounded friends, or kick his heels in camp until it should please his men to reel out of Badajos, sick, probably, from excess of wine; richer, certainly, by the value of the goods they had plundered; sullen, some of them, from the knowledge of beastliness committed while they were mad with battle-fury and the wicked magic of unlimited liquor; elated, others, and bragging of unspeakable deeds; demoralized, all of them: heartrending objects to officers whose business was their welfare, and whose pride their efficiency; and who cared for them, in a queer, rough way, even when they cursed them for a set of black-hearted, gutter-born scoundrels. It would take time to shoot, and flog, and bully the divisions into shape again; and the best men were dead, and their bodies heaved one on top of the other into deep, stinking pits. New draughts would arrive presently from England: regular Johnny Raws, landing at Lisbon, and working their way goggle-eyed through Portugal to join the army, under a subaltern as raw as themselves, who would thus early in his career be given a painful chance to prove his worth. If there was stuff in him, he would get his draught to its destination intact, with most of its baggage, and without leaving a trail of pillaged farmsteads in its wake; if he lacked confidence in himself, or was found to have a strain of weakness in him, he would bring only the more tractable of his men to the division, and have a shameful tale to tell his Colonel of desertions on the road.
‘And if we get all the new draughts it will take months licking them into shape!’ said Harry, fretting at forced inaction, and so in a brittle temper, snapping at every ill. ‘And the old hands sunk to the level of gutter-sweepings after this filthy, bloody, damnable sack!’ ‘Don’t be downhearted, Harry: we shall be on the march again before the week’s out, if all I hear is true,’ said Kincaid, who had lounged over to Harry’s tent to talk over the assault with him. ‘Nothing like a few hard marches to pull the men together. You should look on the lighter side of things.’
Harry acknowledged the bantering note with one of his quick smiles, but shook his head. ‘Damned little lighter side to this affair!’
‘Oh, isn’t there, by God! You should have been with me in the small hours, when I was posting the pickets in the streets. A man of ours brought a prisoner up to me. Said he was the Governor, and plainly thought he would get a big reward for taking him.’ ‘I thought Phillipon escaped to the San Cristobal?”
‘He may have, for anything I know. A very fine fellow-by Jove, he was a fine fellow, too! quite the dandy, and with enough gold lace for a hussar!-well, he made no bones about admitting to me that he wasn’t the Governor, but had told poor Allen he was to ensure protection. He told me he was the Colonel of one of the regiments-I forget which-and that all his surviving officers were waiting in his quarters hard-by, to surrender themselves to any English officer who would be so obliging as to go to them. Ah well! I’m a Scot myself, but I went.’
‘Ambush!’ said Harry, his eyes beginning to dance.
‘Devil a bit! I took two or three men with me, and there, sure enough, were these precious French officers-fifteen or more of ’em-all assembled in the Colonel’s quarters, and not one of ’em able to understand why the town was lost, or how the devil I got in. I didn’t chose to tell ’em that. I said I’d entered at the breach, which was true enough; though how we any of us got in, when you consider the way the Johnny Crapauds hurled us back like so many recruits, was a thing that was puzzling me as much as it was puzzling them. I never saw a set of fellows so dejected! All except the Major, a big, jolly-looking Dutchman, with medals enough on his breast to have furnished the window of a tolerable toy-shop. He was a good fellow: cracked as many jokes as corks out of wine-bottles. Damme if I remember the jokes, but the wine was excellent.’
‘You villain, Johnny, do you tell me you stood there and drank with them?’ Harry demanded. ‘Stood! We sat round the table, to a dish of cold meat, and drank each others’ healths! After supper, off went my Colonel to secure his valuables. He was so grateful to me for allowing it that he told me he had a couple of good horses in the stable, which, as he wouldn’t be permitted to keep ’em, he recommended me to take. So, as a horse is the only prize we poor devils of officers can consider strictly legal, I had one of ’em saddled. And a handsome black beauty she is, my boy. Three hundred guineas at Tatt’s: not a penny less!’ Harry, always on the look-out for a good horse, was loudly envious of so much good-fortune, and proposed that he should instantly go with Kincaid to his quarters to inspect the animal. They were on the point of strolling off together when Kincaid saw two ladies coming towards them from the direction of the city. ‘Hallo, what’s this?’ he said, detaining Harry. Harry bestowed no more than a cursory glance on the approaching women. ‘What should it be but a couple of camp-followers? Come on, man! You don’t need a woman today!’ ‘No, but wait!’ Kincaid said. ‘They’re ladies. Look at their mantillas!’
By this time the two veiled figures, the smaller and slighter of the pair supported by the arm of the other, had come within earshot. Harry, a little impatient, favoured them with another look, more searching this time. He decided that Kincaid was right. Ladies they were, if quiet elegance of dress was anything to go by. He stood still, waiting beside Kincaid to see what they could want in the British camp.