An Infamous Army (61 page)

Yet in spite of all, as she sat hour after hour beside Charles, a contentment grew in her and the vision of the conquering hero, who should have come riding gallantly back to her, faded from her mind. Reality was less romantic than her imaginings, but not less dear; and his feeble laugh and expostulation when she fed him with her grandmother's prescribed gruel were more precious to her than the most ardent love-making could have been.

Her dinner was sent up to her on a tray, and Judith and Worth sat down in the dining-parlour alone. They had not many minutes risen from the table when a knock fell on the street door, and an instant later George Alastair walked into the salon.

Judith exclaimed at the sight of him, for his appearance was shocking. His baggage not having reached Nivelles, where his brigade was bivouacked, he had not been able to change his tattered jacket and mud-splashed breeches. An epaulette had been shot off; a bandage was bound round his head; and he limped slightly from a sabre-cut on one leg. He looked pale, and his blood-shot eyes were heavy and red-rimmed from fatigue. He cut short Judith's greetings, saying curtly: "I came to enquire after Audley. Can I see him?"

"He is better, but very weak. But sit down! You look quite worn out, and you are wounded!"

"Oh, this!" He raised his hand to his head. "That will only spoil my beauty. Don't waste your pity on me, ma'am!"

"Have you dined?" Worth asked.

"Yes: at my wife's!" George replied, flinging the word at him. "I have also seen my grandparents, and have nothing left to do before rejoining my regiment except to thank Audley for his kind offices towards my wife."

"I am very sure he does not wish to be thanked. Oh, how relieved your grandparents must be to know you are safe, to have had the comfort of seeing you!"

He replied, with the flash of his sardonic smile: "Yes, extremely gratifying! It is wonderful what a slash across the brow can do for one. You will be happy to hear, ma'am, that my wife will remain in my grandparents' charge until such time as she may follow me to Paris. May I now see Audley?"

She looked doubtful. He saw it, and said rather harshly: "Oblige me in this, if you please! What I have to ask him will not take me long."

"To ask him?" she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am, to ask him! Audley saw my brother die, and I want to know where in that charnel-house to search for his body!"

She put out her hand impulsively. "Ah, poor boy! Of course you shall see him! Worth will take you up at once."

"Thank you," he said with a slight bow, and limped to the door, and opened it for Worth to lead the way out.

Judith was left to her own melancholy reflections, but these were interrupted in a very few minutes by yet another knock on the street door. She paid little heed, expecting merely to have a card brought in to her with kind enquiries after the state of Colonel Audley's health, but to her astonishment the butler very soon opened the door into the salon and announced the Duke of Wellington.

She started up immediately. The Duke came in, dressed in plain clothes, and shook hands, saying: "How do you do? I have come to see poor Audley. How does he go on?"

She was quite overpowered. She had never imagined that in the midst of the work in which he must be immersed he could find time to visit the Colonel. She had even doubted his sparing as much as a thought for his aide-de-camp. She could only say in a moved voice: "How kind this is in you! We think him a little better. He will be so happy to receive a visit from you!"

"Better, is he? That's right! Poor fellow, they tell me he has had to lose his arm."

She nodded, and, recollecting herself a little, began to congratulate him upon his great victory.

He stopped her at once, saying hastily: "Oh, do not congratulate me! I have lost all my dearest friends!"

She said in a subdued voice: "You must feel it, indeed!"

"I am quite heart-broken at the loss I have sustained," he replied, taking a quick turn about the room. "My friends, my poor soldiers - how many of them have I to regret! I have no feeling for the advantages we have acquired." He stopped, and said in a serious tone: "I have never fought such a battle, and I trust I shall never fight such another. War is a terrible evil, Lady Worth."

She could only throw him a speaking glance; her feelings threatened to overcome her; she was glad to see Worth come back into the room at that moment, and to be relieved of the necessity of answering the Duke. She sank down into a chair while Worth shook hands with his lordship. He, too, offered congratulations and comments on the nature of the engagement. The Duke replied in an animated tone: "Never did I see such a pounding-match! Both were what you boxers call gluttons. Napoleon did not manoeuvre at all. He just moved forward in the old style, in columns, and was driven off in the old style. The only difference was that he mixed cavalry with his infantry, and supported both with an enormous quantity of artillery."

"From what my brother has said, I collect that the French cavalry was very numerous?"

"By God, it was! I had the infantry for some time in squares, and we had the French cavalry walking about us as if they had been our own. I never saw the British infantry behave so well!"

"It has been a glorious action, sir."

"Yes, but the glory has been dearly bought. Indeed, the losses I have sustained have quite broken me down. But I must not stay: I have very little time at my disposal, as you may imagine. I came only to see Audley."

"I will take you to him at once, sir. Nothing, I am persuaded, will do him as much good as a visit from you."

"Oh, pooh! nonsense!" the Duke said, going with him to the door. "I shall be in a bad way without him, and the others whom I have lost, I can tell you!"

He followed Worth upstairs to Colonel Audley's room, only to be brought up short on the threshold by the sight of Lord George, standing by the bed. A frosty glare was bent on him; a snap was imminent; but Audley, startled by the sight of his Chief, still kept his wits about him, and said quickly: "Lord George Alastair, my lord, who has been sent in to have his wounds attended to, and has been kind enough to visit me on his way back to the brigade."

"Oh!" said his lordship. "Avon's grandson, are you? I'm glad to see you're alive, but get back to your brigade, sir! There's too much of this going on leave!"

Thankful to have escaped with only this mild reproof, George effaced himself. The Duke stepped up to the bed, and clasped Colonel Audley's hand. "Well! We have given the French a handsome dressing!" he said heartily. "But I'm sorry to see you like this, my poor fellow! Never mind! Fitzroy's had the misfortune to lost his right arm, you know. I've just seen him: he's perfectly free from fever, and as well as anybody could be under such circumstances."

"His right arm!" the Colonel said. "Oh, poor Fitzroy!"

"There, don't distress yourself! Why, what do you think! He's already learning to write with his left hand, and will be back with me again before I've had time to turn round."

Audley struggled up on his elbow. "Sir, what of Gordon?"

A shadow crossed the Duke's face. He said in a broken voice: "Ah, poor Gordon! He lived long enough to be informed by myself of the glorious success of our actions. They carried him to my Headquarters at Waterloo, you know. Hume called me at three this morning to go to him, but he was dead before I got there."

The Colonel gave a groan and sank back upon his pillows. "A little restaurant in Paris!" he whispered. "0 God!"

Barbara moved forward, and slid her hand into his. His fingers gripped it feebly; he lay silent, while the Duke, turning to Worth, asked in his blunt fashion: "Who has him in charge? Has Hume been here?"

"Not yet," Worth replied. "I am extremely anxious to get him, but there seems to be no possibility of securing his services."

"Nonsense! I'll send him round at once," said his lordship. "Can't afford to lose any more of my family." He bent over Colonel Audley again, and laid his hand on his right shoulder. "Well, Audley, I must go. You'll be glad to know that we're moving on immediately. Old Blucher took up the pursuit last night, and you may be sure we shan't discontinue our operations till we get to Paris. As for Boney, in my opinion, it n'a que se pendre. But I shall be in a bad way without you fellows: take care that you lose no time in rejoining me!"

"I shall report for duty the instant I can stand on my feet, sir. Who takes the despatch to England?"

"Percy, with three Eagles as well. Goodbye, my boy: now, don't forget! I rely on your following me as soon as you may."

He pressed the Colonel's shoulder, and went away, with a nod to Barbara and a brief handshake for Worth.

He was as good as his word in sending Dr Hume to see the Colonel. The eminent doctor presented himself before an hour had passed, briskly expressing his regret at being kept by a press of work from coming sooner.

His arrival coincided with that of the surgeon who had taken charge of the Colonel's case, and Judith was hard put to it to decide which of the two men she disliked most. Mr Jones's air of depression might exasperate her, but nothing, to her mind, could have been more out of place than Hume's cheerfulness. His voice was loud, and hearty; as he followed her up the stairs he talked all the way of trivialities; and when he entered the Colonel's room it was in a noisy fashion and with a rallying speech on his lips.

The Duke's visit had considerably tired Audley, but he roused himself when Hume came to the bed, and managed to smile.

"Well, now, and what is all this?" Hume said, taking his pulse. "I thought I had seen the end of you when I packed you off from Mont St Jean yesterday."

"I am more difficult to kill than you suspected, you see," murmured the Colonel.

"Kill! No such thing! I did a capital piece of work on you, and here you are demanding more of my valuable time! We'll take a look at that leg of yours."

The bandages and the fomentations were removed. The surgeon said something in a low tone, and was answered by a sharp: "Rubbish! Why do you give up a man with such a pulse, and such a good constitution? He is doing famously! You have been fomenting the leg; excellent! couldn't do better! Now then, Audley, I'll see what I can do to make you easier."

He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, while Judith ran to fetch the hot water he demanded. While he worked upon the Colonel's wincing body, he chatted, perhaps with the object of taking his victim's mind off his sufferings, and the Colonel answered him in painful gasps. His matter-of-fact description of the battlefield, literally covered with dead and wounded, shocked Judith inexpressibly, and made her exclaim at the plight of the French soldiers left there until the Allied wounded should have been got in. He replied cheerfully that it was all in their favour to be in the fresh air: provided they were soon moved into the hospitals they would be found to have escaped the fever which had attacked those who were got immediately under cover.

"Do you know how the Prince of Orange is?" asked the Colonel.

"Do I know! Why, I've just been with him! You need not worry your head over him: he's going on capitally. Baron Constant came rushing in this morning while I was with him, shouting out: 'Boney's beat! Boney's beat!' and you never saw anyone more obliged to take Lord Uxbridge's leg off, I daresay? He is as gallant a man as ever I met! What do you think of his telling us he considered his leg a small price to pay for having been in such an action?" He stretched out his hand for some clean lint, and began to bind the Colonel's leg up again. In a graver tone he said: "Our losses have been shocking. The Duke is quite cast down, and no wonder! He would have me bring him a list of such of our casualties as came within my knowledge last night. I did so, but found him laid down in all his dirt upon the couch, fast asleep, and so set my list down beside him and went away. He had had poor Gordon put into his bed, you know. Ah, that has been a sad business! There was nothing one could do except to wait for death to put a period to his sufferings. The end came at three o'clock. I went to call the Duke, but it was over before he could get there. I never saw him so much affected. People call him unfeeling, but I can tell you this: when I went to him after he had read the list of casualties there were two white furrows down his cheeks where his tears had washed away the dust. He said to me in a voice tremulous with emotion: 'Well! thank God I don't know what it is to lose a battle, but certainly nothing can be more painful than to win one with the loss of so many of one's friends.'

Judith saw that Colonel Audley was too much distressed by the thought of Gordon's death to respond, and said civilly: "Nothing, I am sure, could become the Duke more than the way in which he spoke to us of his victory. I have not been used to think him a man of much sensibility, and was quite confounded.

"Sensibility! Ay, I daresay not, but General Alava was telling me it was downright pathetic to watch him, as he sat down to his supper last night, looking up every time the door opened, in the expectation of seeing one of his staff walk in." He straightened his back, saying with a reversion to his hearty tone: "There! I have done tormenting you at last! You will be on your feet again as soon as Lord Fitzroy, I promise you."

He turned to give some directions to the other surgeon; recommended the application of leeches, if there should be a recurrence of fever; and took himself off, leaving the Colonel very much exhausted and the ladies quite indignant.

His visit was presently found, however, to have been of benefit to Audley. He seemed easier, and assisted by a dose of laudanum, passed as quiet a night as could have been expected.

When Barbara came into his room in the morning, she found him being propped up with pillows to partake of a breakfast of toasted bread and weak tea.

He held out his hand to her. The old gaiety was missing from his smile, but he spoke cheerfully. "Good morning, Bab. You see that I have rebelled against your gruel! Now you shall watch how deedily I can contrive with my one hand."

She bent over him, and to hide her almost overmastering desire to burst into tears, said with assumed raillery: "Ah, you hope to impress me, but I warn you, you won't succeed! You have already had a great deal of practice in the use of one hand!"