An Infamous Army (58 page)

Barbara pushed her into a chair, saying: "Confound you, Judith, if you set me off crying, I'll never forgive you!" She looked at the Duke. "Well, sir, my compliments! You must be quite the only man to come into Brussels today! Did you come because there was a battle being fought, or in despite of it?"

"I came," replied his Grace, "on account of the intelligence received by your grandmother from Vidal. So you have jilted Charles Audley, have you? I congratulate you!"

"Your congratulations are out of place. I never did anything more damnable in my life."

"Why, Bab, my girl!" said his Grace, surprised. He put his arm round her, and said gruffly: "There, that will do! You are a baggage, but at least you have some spirit in you! When I think of that white-livered cur, Vidal, running for his life -"

"Oh, that was Gussie's doing! Did you meet them on your way here?"

"I? No, nor wish to! We landed at Ostend, and drove here through Ghent. If it had not been for the rabble choking the road we should have been here yesterday."

"Yes," said his wife. "They warned us in Ghent not to proceed farther, as we should certainly be obliged to fly from Brussels, so naturally your grandfather had the horses put to immediately."

He regarded her with a grim little smile. "You were not behind hand, Mary!"

"Certainly not. All this dashing about makes me feel myself a young woman again. Which reminds me that I must call upon my new granddaughter. You will give me her uncle's direction, Bab."

"Understand me, Mary -"

"I will give it to you, ma'am, but you must know that Mr Fisher regards the match with quite as much dislike as does my grandfather."

This remark brought a sparkle into the Duke's eye. "He does, does he? Go on, Miss! Go on! What the devil has he against my grandson?"

"He thinks him a spendthrift, sir."

"Ha! Damned Cit! He may consider himself lucky to have caught George for his nobody of a niece!"

"As to that, Lucy is his heir. I fancy he was looking higher for her. Her fortune will not be inconsiderable, you know, and in these days -"

"So he was looking higher, was he? An Alastair is not good enough for him! I'll see this greasy merchant!"

The Duchess said in her matter-of-fact way: "You should certainly do so. It will be much more the thing than that wild notion you had taken into your head of riding out with Lord Worth towards the battlefield."

"Fisher can wait," replied his Grace. "I have every intention of going to see what news can be got the instant I have swallowed my dinner."

"Dinner!" Judith exclaimed. "How shocking of me! I had forgotten the time. You must know, Duchess, that here in Brussels we have got into the way of dining at four. I hope you will not mind. You must please stay and join us."

"You should warn them that Charles bore off our Sunday dinner," Barbara said, with a wry smile.

"You may be sure my cook will have contrived something."

The Avons were putting up at the Hotel de Belle Vue, and the Duchess at once suggested that the whole party should walk round to dine there. It was declined, however; Judith's confidence in her cook was found not to have been misplaced; and in a very few minutes they were all seated round the table in the dining-parlour.

The conversation was mostly of the war. The wildest rumours were current in Ghent, and the Duke was glad to listen to a calm account from Worth of all that had so far passed. When he heard that the Life Guards had driven the French lancers out of Genappe, he looked pleased, but beyond saying that if George did not get his brevet for this he supposed he would be obliged to purchase promotion for him, he made no remark. As soon as they rose from the table, he and Worth took their departure, to ride towards the Forest of Soignes in search of intelligence, and Judith, excusing herself, left Barbara alone with her grandmother.

"I have surpassed myself, ma'am," Barbara said in a bitter tone. "Did Vidal write you the whole?"

"Quite enough," replied the Duchess. "I wish, dearest, you will try to get the better of this shocking disposition of yours."

"If Charles comes back to me there is nothing I will not do!"

"We will hope he may do so. Your grandfather was very much pleased with the civil letter Colonel Audley wrote to him. How came you to throw him off as you did, my love?"

"0 God, Grandmama!" Barbara whispered, and fell on her knees beside the Duchess, and buried her face in her lap.

It was long before she could be calm. The Duchess listened in understanding silence to the disjointed sentences gasped out, merely saying presently: "Don't cry, Bab. It will ruin your face, you know."

"I don't give a damn for my face!"

"I am very sure that you do."

Barbara sat up, smiling through her tears. "Confound you, ma'am, you know too much! There, I have done! You don't wish me to remove to the Hotel de Belle Vue, do you? I cannot leave Judith at this present."

"By all means stay here, my love. But tell me about this child George has married, if you please!"

"I cannot conceive what possessed George to look twice at her. She is quite insipid."

"Dear me! I had better go and call upon her aunt."

She very soon took her leave, setting out on foot to the Fishers' lodging. Her visit did much to sooth Lucy's agitation; and her calm good sense almost reconciled Mr Fisher to an alliance which he had been regarding with the deepest misgiving. Neither his appearance nor the obsequiousness of his manners could be expected to please the Duchess, but she was agreeably surprised in Lucy, and although not placing much dependence upon her being able to hold George's volatile fancy, went back presently to her hotel feeling that things might have been much worse.

Worth returned at about six o'clock, having parted from the Duke at the end of the street. He had very little news to report. He described meeting Creevey in the suburbs, and their mutual surprise at finding the Sunday population of Brussels drinking beer, and making merry, round little tables, for all the world as though no pitched battle were being fought not more than ten miles to the south of them. It had been found to be impossible to penetrate far into the Forest, on account of the baggage choking the road, but they had met with a number of wounded soldiers making their way back to Brussels, and had had speech with a Life Guardsman, who reported that the French were getting on in such a way that he did not see what was to stop them.

"He had taken part in a charge of the whole Household Brigade, and says that they have lost, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, more than half their number. George, however, was safe when the man left the field. A private soldier's opinion of the battle is not to be depended on, but I don't like the look of things."

Scarcely an hour later, the town was thrown into an uproar by the Cumberland Hussars galloping in through the Namur Gate, and stampeding through the streets, shouting that all was lost, and the French hard on their heels. They seemed not to have drawn rein in their flight from the battlefield, and went through Brussels scattering the inhabitants before them.

People began once more to run about, crying: "Les Franqais sons ici! Its's'emparent a porte de la ville! Nous sommes tons perdus! Que ferons nous?" Many people kept their horses at their doors, but no more troops followed the hussars, and the panic gradually abated. A little later, a large number of French prisoners entered the town under escort, and were marched to the barracks of Petit Chateau. The sight of two captured Eagles caused complete strangers to shake one another by the hand; more prisoners arrived, and hopes ran high, only to be dashed by the intelligence conveyed by one or two wounded officers that everything had been going as badly as possible when they had left the field. The Adjutant-General's chaise-and-four was seen by Mr Creevey to set out from his house in the Park and bowl away, as fast as the horses could drag it, to the Namur Gate. More and more wounded arrived in town, all telling the same tale: it was the most sanguinary battle they had ever known; men were dropping like flies; there was no saying in the smoke and the carnage who was still alive or who had been killed; no time should be lost by civilians in getting away.

In curious contrast to this scene of agitation, light shone in the Theatre de la Monnaie, where Mlle Ternaux was playing in Edipe a Colonne before an audience composed of persons who either had no relatives or friends engaged in the battle or who looked forward with pleasure to the entrance of Bonaparte into Brussels.

At half past eight o'clock, Worth, who had gone out some time before in quest of news, came abruptly into the salon where Judith and Barbara were sitting in the most dreadful suspense, and said, with more sharpness in his voice than his wife had ever heard: "Judith, be so good as to have pillows put immediately into the chaise! I am going at once towards Waterloo: Charles is there, very badly wounded. Cherry has just come to me with the news."

He did not wait, but strode out to his own room, to make what preparations for the journey were necessary. Both ladies ran after him, imploring him to tell them more.

"I know nothing more than what I have told you. Cherry had no idea how things were going - badly, he thinks. I may be away some time: the road is almost blocked by the carts overturned by the German cavalry's rout. Have Charles's bed made up - but you will know what to do!"

"I will have the pillows put in the chaise," Barbara said in a voice of repressed anguish, and left the room.The chaise was already at the door, and Colonel Audley's groom waiting impatiently beside it. He was too overcome to be able to tell Barbara much, but the little he did say was enough to appal her.

Colonel Audley had been carried to Mont St Jean by some foreigners; he did not know whether Dutch or German.

"It does not signify. Go on!"

Cherry brushed his hand across his eyes. "I saw them carrying him along the road. Oh, my lady, in all the years I've served the Colonel I never thought to see such a sight as met my eyes! My poor master like one dead, and the blood soaked right through the horse-blanket they had laid him on! He was taken straight to the cottage at Mont St Jean, where those damned sawbones - saving your ladyship's presence! - was busy. I thought my master was gone, but he opened his eyes as they put him down, and said to me: 'Hallo, Cherry!' he said, 'I've got it, you see'."

He fairly broke down, but Barbara, gripping the open chaise door, merely said harshly: "Go on!"

"Yes, my lady! But I don't know how to tell your ladyship what they done to my master, Dr Hume, and them others, right there in the garden. Oh, my lady, they've taken his arm off! And he bore it all without a groan!"

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips. In a stifled voice, she said: "But he will live!"

"You would not say so if you could but see him, my lady. Four horses he's had shot under him this day, and a wound on his leg turning as black as my boot. We got him to the inn at Waterloo, but there's no staying there: they couldn't take in the Prince of Orange himself, for all he had a musketball in his shoulder. Poor Sir Alexander Gordon's laying there, and Lord Fitzroy too. Never till my dying day shall I forget the sound of Sir Alexander's sufferings - him as always was such a merry gentleman, and such a close friend of my master's! Not but what by the time we got my master to the inn he was too far gone to heed. I shouldn't have spoken of it to your ladyship, but I'm that upset I hardly know what I'm saying."

Worth ran down the steps of the house at that moment, and curtly told Cherry to get up on the box. As he drew on his driving-gloves, Barbara said: "I have put my smelling-salts inside the chaise, and a roll of lint. I would come with you, but I believe you will do better without me. 0 God, Worth, bring him safely back!"

"I shall certainly bring him back. Go in to Judith, and do not be imagining anything nonsensical if I'm away some hours. Goodbye! A man doesn't die because he has the misfortune to lose an arm, you know."

He mounted the box; the grooms let go the wheelers' heads, and as the chaise moved forward one of them jumped up behind.

For the next four hours Judith and Barbara, having made every preparation for the Colonel's arrival, waited, sick with suspense, for Worth's return. The Duke of Avon walked round the Hotel de Belle Vue at ten o'clock, and, learning of Colonel Audley's fate from Judith's faltering tongue, said promptly: "Good God, is that all! One would say he had been blown in pieces by a howitzer shell to look at your faces! Cheer up, Bab! Why, I once shot a man just above the heart, and he recovered!"

"That must have been a mistake, sir, I feel sure."

"It was," he admitted. "Only time I ever missed my mark."

At any other time both ladies would have wished to hear more of this anecdote, but in the agitation of spirits which they were suffering nothing that did not bear directly upon the present issue had the power to engage their attention. The Duke, after animadverting with peculiar violence upon Mr Fisher's manners and ideals, bade them goodnight, and went back to his hotel.

Hardly more than an hour later, Creevey called to bring the ladies news. His prospective stepson-in-law, Major Hamilton, had brought the Adjutant-General into Brussels a little after ten o'clock, and had immediately repaired to Mr Creevey's house to warn him that in General Barnes's opinion the battle was lost, and no time should be wasted in getting away from Brussels.

"I could not go to bed without informing you of this," Creevey said. "I thought it only right that you should know, and decide for yourselves what were best to do under the circumstances."

"Thank you," Judith said. "It was kind of you, but there is now no question of our leaving Brussels. My brother-in-law is severely wounded. Worth has gone to bring him in."

He looked genuinely concerned, and pressed her hand in the most speaking way. "I am excessively sorry to hear of this! But once you have Colonel Audley in your care you will see how quickly he will recover!"

"We hope - Do you and Mrs Creevey mean to go to Antwerp?"

"No, it is out of the question to move Mrs Creevey in her present state of health. I don't scruple to tell you, my dear ma'am, that General Barnes's prognostications do not convince me that all is over. Hamilton tells me he was shot through the body at about five o'clock, and borne off the field. I cannot but feel that if the battle had been lost we must by now have received intelligence of it. Do you know what I judge by? Why, I'll tell you! The baggage-train is still moving towards the battlefield! To my mind, that proves that all is well."