‘I should hardly have known you!’ John Smith managed to say at last, still holding him tightly by the hands.
‘I should have known you anywhere!’ Harry declared. *You haven’t altered-not a scrap!’ ‘Well, I don’t know that you’ve altered so much either, now I come to look at you again,’ said John, releasing him to draw out a handkerchief, and blow his nose with unnecessary violence. ‘If your mother were alive, how proud she would be!’ Harry’s lip trembled. ‘Don’t! Don’t speak of that! I cannot bear to!’ he said sharply. ‘When I think-But, come! You are well, sir! And my sisters?’
‘Yes, yes, all of us! But you will be sorry to hear about that horse you had from Stewart!’ ‘Alas! Old Chap! Not dead?’
“Yes. There was nothing to be done, my boy. I knew you would feel it, and a lovely creature he must have been before he took ill! But never mind! Your wife’s horse is in famous shape. But how came you to mount a lady on such a varmint, Harry? I am surprised you should do such a thing!’
‘Oh, she manages him to perfection, sir, I assure you! She. is a splendid horsewoman!’ ‘She must be indeed! You know, we were very sorry she was so resolute in refusing to come to Whittlesey. I am afraid she will find us very simple people, and our way of living not what she has been accustomed to.’
‘True, very true!’ Harry said, casting down his eyes to hide the laughter in them. ‘She has been used to a very different life!’
‘I hope she will be comfortable,’ John said doubtfully. ‘Your sisters are quite frightened to meet her, you know! They feel sure she must be very proud.’
‘Oh, well, you know how it is with Spaniards of the hidalgo class!’ said Harry airily. ‘They are all a trifle stiff, to be sure, and devilish particular in matters of etiquette, but one grows accustomed to it! Don’t be surprised if she is a little stately at first: I am persuaded you will soon come to like her.’
A very little of this kind of teasing was enough to make John Smith look forward to making Juana’s acquaintance with a sinking heart; and by the time she came into the room, dressed in full Spanish costume, he had reached the stage of dreading her arrival. She paused for a moment on the threshold, looking so beautiful that she took Harry’s breath away, and so haughty that John Smith wondered what in the world had possessed his son to marry such a stiff-necked young woman.
‘Juana, my love! Allow me to present my father!’ said Harry. ‘My dear-’ began John, and stopped.
The play broke down. The doubtful, rather wistful look in John Smith’s face was too much for Juana. The fan she was waving shut with a click, and tossed aside. ‘Oh no! I cannot!’ she cried, and ran across the room, straight into her father-in-law’s arms. ‘I am not at all proud-not a bit! It was Enrique’s fault! He is a villain, a wretch, altogether abominable! No vale nada!’
‘Well, Father?’ said Harry, wickedly grinning. ‘Do you like my little peacock?’
7
Did he like her? He adored her. She was his little love, and his pretty rogue, and by the time he got her down to Whittlesey he so doted on her that it began to be quite a question whether he would ever be able to let her out of his sight again. The sisters-sedate Mary, playful Eleanor, brisk Betsy, and lively little Anna-confided to Harry that they had not seen their father so cheerful since Mama’s death. They were such good girls, Harry’s sisters: they never thought of being jealous of his wife. They were tolerably handsome, all of them, but Juana cast them in the shade, for if Eleanor had more classical features, Juana had the glow and sparkle Eleanor lacked; and if Anna’s teeth were seen to be more even when she smiled, Juana’s were the whiter.
As for the brothers, they used to sit and watch her shyly, quite fascinated by her quick little movements, and her pretty, broken English. Grave Samuel, who was going to be a surgeon, like his father, said in his slow way that his new sister was just like a boy; but Charlie, living with his Uncle Davie, but spending a large part of his time at home, laughed such a notion to scorn. She was not in the least like a boy, he said. She was like-well, he didn’t quite know what, but he thought Harry the luckiest devil going. Charles was plaguing the life out of his father to let him join the army as a volunteer; William, the staidest of the brothers, said it was a piece of nonsense, and he would do better to attend to his books.
There were so many aunts and uncles and cousins living in Whittlesey that Juana was quite bewildered at first. They used to call in St Mary’s Street, on the slimmest of pretexts, Grounds and Moores, and sit looking at Harry’s Spanish wife as though she were a strange animal on show. ‘You must not mind them, Jenny dear,’ Eleanor said. ‘You see, they have never seen a Spanish lady before.’
Mary offered to help Juana with her studies of the English tongue, but the brothers cried out against it. Why, she would not be half as jolly if she did not set them all laughing at the funny words she used, or break into a flood of swift, fierce Spanish when they teased her more than she liked. ‘Whew! What a spitfire!’ Charlie said admiringly, the first time she rounded on him.
‘I must say,’ Betsy conceded handsomely, ‘one would never have supposed Jenny had not been used to living in a large family!’
‘No,’ agreed Eleanor. ‘Does it not bring home to one shocking ignorance of other lands and peoples? I am sure I shall never again be prejudiced against foreigners. Why, only think how we feared she would be stiff and prim, and always wanting to have a duenna with her!’ ‘The most remarkable thing about her,’ said Mary gravely, ’is that she should have gone through such adventures with dear Harry without losing the delicacy of mind which I must hold to be a female’s chief attribute. I own, I had dreaded to detect a certain degree of impropriety; for, you know, to be obliged to live amongst soldiers for so long is enough to blunt the keenest sensibility. The very thought of all the evils of such a situation quite makes one shudder.’
‘Oh, does it, though!’ cried Anna, distressingly tomboy-ish still. ‘Wouldn’t I just love to follow the drum, and have a Spanish horse to follow me like a dog, and eat acorns, and all the rest of it!”
If anything had been needed to win John Smith’s heart, it would have been supplied by Juana’s handling of Tiny. The little horse had been so unmanageable, even with John, who, Harry said, was the finest horseman he knew, that when Juana led him out of his stall, and loosed him, poor John was quite alarmed, expecting him to bolt into his cherished flower-garden. But Tiny minced delicately behind Juana, with Vitty trotting beside him, right up the neat path, and into the drawing-room. The Smiths could hardly believe their eyes. Then of course nothing would do for Harry but to make his wife change into her habit, and show off herself and the horse, figuring him as well as any Mameluke. Harry was allowed just three weeks at home before letters reached him from the Horse Guards. The first he opened ordered his immediate return to London; the second drew from him a shocked groan that brought Juana quickly to his side.
‘Ross!’ he said. ‘Oh, the fool, the dear, kind fool! I might have known it!’ ‘John Ross?’ she cried. ‘Oh, what?’
‘No, no! Poor General Ross! He let them persuade him-De Lacy Evans and those damned Admirals!-and attempted Baltimore on the 12th September, failed, of course, and lost his life there! Good God, he was dead when we were congratulating his poor wife on his success at Washington! It does not bear thinking about!’