‘Fitzroy, too,’ he said, in a fretting tone. ‘You would have heard if the Duke had been hit. But March took Slender Billy away. That was after Canning fell. How many of us are left? They dropped off, man after man—I cannot recall—’ He broke off, and drew his hand away, once more covering his eyes with it.
She saw that he was growing agitated, and although she longed to ask for news of her brothers, she remained silent. But after a slight pause, he said abruptly: ‘George was alive just before I was struck. I saw him.’
Her pent-up anxiety found relief in a gaping sigh. She waited for a moment, then whispered: ‘Harry?’
He shook his head. A sob broke from her; she buried her face in the coverlet to stifle the sound, and presently felt his hand come back to hers, feebly clasping her fingers.
She remained on her knees until she saw that he had dropped into an uneasy sleep. As she rose, Worth came into the room. She laid a finger to her lips, and moved silently to meet him.
‘Has he waked?’ Worth asked in a low voice.
‘Yes. He is quite himself, but I think in a good deal of pain.’
‘That was bound to be. Go down to breakfast. Your grandmother is here. I will send if he should rouse and wish for you.’
She nodded, and slipped away. Judith was asleep on her bed, but breakfast had been laid in the parlour, and the Duchess of Avon was sitting behind the coffee cups.
She greeted her granddaughter with a smile and a tender embrace. ‘There, dearest! Such a happy morning for you after all! Sit down, and I will give you some coffee.’
‘Harry is dead,’ Barbara said.
The Duchess’s hand trembled. She set the coffee pot down, and looked at Barbara.
‘Charles told me. George was alive when he left the field.’
The Duchess said nothing. Two large tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away, picked up the coffee pot again, poured a cup out rather unsteadily and gave it to Barbara. After a long pause she said: ‘Such foolish thoughts keep crossing my mind. One remembers little, forgotten things. He would always call me “The Old Lady”, in spite of your grandfather’s disliking it so. Such a bad, merry boy!’ She stretched out her hand to Barbara, and clasped one of hers. ‘Poor child, I wish I could say something to comfort you.’
‘It seems as though every joy that comes to one must have a grief to spoil it.’
‘It is so, but think instead, dearest, that every grief has joy to lighten it. Nothing in this world is quite perfect, nor quite unbearable.’ She patted Barbara’s hand, and said in a voice of determined cheerfulness: ‘When you have eaten your breakfast, I am going to send you round to see your grandfather. A turn in the fresh air will make you feel better.’
‘I could not leave Charles.’
‘Nonsense!’ said her Grace. ‘I am going to sit with your precious Charles, my dear. I know far better than you what to do for a wounded man. I have had a great deal of practice, I assure you.’
So when Colonel Audley opened his eyes again, it was to see a grey-haired lady, with humorous eyes, bending over him. He blinked, and, since she was smiling, weakly smiled back at her.
‘That is much better!’ she said. ‘Now you shall take a little gruel, and be quite yourself again. Worth, be so good as to lift your brother slightly, while I put another pillow beneath his shoulders.’
The Colonel turned his head, as Worth came up on the opposite side of the bed, and held out his hand. ‘Hallo, Julian!’ he said. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I brought you in. There! Is that comfortable?’
‘Bab was here,’ said the Colonel, frowning. She said Boney was beat. I didn’t dream that.’
‘No, certainly you did not. Bab will back directly. Meanwhile, here is her grandmother come to see you.’
‘So that is who you are!’ said the Colonel, looking up at the Duchess. ‘But I don’t quite understand—am I being very stupid?’
‘Not at all. You cannot imagine how I come to be here. Well, I came to see what Bab was about to have jilted you so shockingly, only to find that that was quite forgotten and that you are going to be married after all. So now open your mouth!’
He swallowed the mouthful of gruel put to his lips, but said: ‘Am I going to be married?’
‘Certainly you are. Open again!’
He obeyed meekly. ‘I should like to see Bab,’ he said, when the spoon was once more removed.
‘So you shall, when you have drunk up all your gruel,’ promised the Duchess.
The Colonel thought it over, and then said in a firmer tone: ‘I’ll be shaved first.’
‘My dear fellow, why worry?’ Worth said.
‘By all means let him be shaved,’ said the Duchess, frowning at him. ‘He will feel very much more the thing.’
When Barbara came in with her grandfather to be met by the news that Colonel Audley was in the valet’s hands, being shaved, she exclaimed: ‘Shaved! Good God, how came you to let him disturb himself for such a foolish thing?’
‘My love, when a man begins to think of shaving you may take it from me that he is on the road to recovery,’ said the Duchess. She took her husband’s hands, and squeezed them. ‘Bab has told you, hasn’t she, Avon? My dear, we must be very proud of our boys, and try not to grieve.’
He put his arm round her, saying: ‘Poor Mary! Depend upon it, we shall soon get news of that scamp George being safe and sound. I have been to Stuart’s and learned from him that the Duke is in the town. Our losses have been enormous, by all accounts, but just think of Bonaparte completely overset! By God, it makes up for all!’
The arrival just then of the surgeon put an end to any further conversation. The Duchess and Worth accompanied him upstairs to the Colonel’s room. He admitted that he had not expected to find his patient in such good shape, but pulled a long face over the leg wound, which, from having been so roughly bound upon the battlefield, and chafed by continued exertion, was in a bad state. He took Worth aside, and warned him that he should prepare the Colonel’s mind for amputation.
Worth said, with such an icy rage in his voice that the surgeon almost recoiled: ‘You’ll save that leg: do you hear me?’
‘Certainly I shall do my utmost,’ replied the surgeon stiffly. ‘Perhaps you would like one of my colleagues to see it?’
‘I should,’ said Worth. ‘I’ll have every doctor this town holds to see it before I’ll permit you or any other of your kidney to hack my brother about any more!’
‘You are unreasonable, my lord!’
‘Unreasonable! Get Hume!’
‘Dr Hume has already so much on his hands—’
‘Get him!’ snapped Worth.
The surgeon bowed, and walked off. The Duchess, who had come out of the Colonel’s room, nodded approvingly, and said: ‘That’s right. Don’t pay any heed to him! We will apply fomentations, and say nothing at all to the poor boy about amputation. I wish you will ask my granddaughter to find some flannel and bring it to me.’
‘I will,’ he said, and went downstairs in search of Barbara.
He met, instead his wife, who informed him that the Comte de Lavisse had that instant entered the house and was with Barbara in the back-parlour.
He looked annoyed, but she said: ‘He came, most kindly, to enquire after Charles. Only fancy, Worth! It was he who had Charles carried off the field! I declare, I could almost have embraced him, much as I dislike him!’
‘I will see him, and thank you. Will you get the flannel for the fomentations?’
‘Yes, immediately,’ she replied.
Downstairs, the Count faced Barbara across the small room, and said, gripping a chairback: ‘I did not think to find you here! I may know what I am to understand, I suppose!’
She said abstractedly: ‘He is better. He has even desired to be shaved.’
‘I am delighted to hear it! You perhaps find me irrelevant?’
‘Oh no! I am so glad you are safe. Only my mind is so taken up just now—’
‘It is seen! By God, I think you are a devil!’
She said rather listlessly: ‘Yes, I know. It does no good to say I’m sorry, or I would.’
He struck the chairback with his open palm. ‘In fact, you made a fool of me!’
She replied with a flash of spirit: ‘Oh, the devil! You at least were fair game!’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Touché! I might have known! I cut an ignoble figure beside your heroic staff officer, do I not? You have doubtless heard that my brigade fled—fled without firing a shot!’
‘I hadn’t heard,’ she replied. ‘I am sorry.’ There did not seem to be anything more to say. She tried to find something, and added: ‘It was not that. I always loved Charles Audley.’
‘Thank you! It needs no more! Convey my felicitations to the Colonel: I wish that that shell had blown him to perdition!’
She was spared having to answer him by Worth’s entering the room at that moment. The Count, picking up his shako, held out his hand. ‘Adieu! It is unlikely that we meet again.’
She shook hands, and went back to the Colonel. Worth attempted to thank the Count for his kind offices the previous day, but was cut short.
‘It is nothing. I was, in fact, ordered by my General to do my possible for the Colonel. I am happy to learn that my poor efforts were not wasted. I am returning immediately to my brigade.’
Worth escorted him to the door, merely remarking: ‘You must allow me, however, to tell you that I cannot but consider myself under a deep obligation to you.’
‘Oh, parbleu! It is quite unnecessary!’ He shook hands, but paused half way down the steps, and looked back. ‘You will tell the Colonel, if you please, that his message was delivered,’ he said, and saluted, and walked quickly away.
Worth had hardly shut the door when another knock fell upon it. He opened it again to find Creevey on the top step, beaming all over his shrewd countenance, and evidently bubbling with news.
He declined coming in: he had called only to see how Colonel Audley did, and would not intrude upon the family at such a time. ‘I have just seen the Duke!’ he announced. ‘I have been to his Headquarters, hearing that he had come in from Waterloo, and found him in the act of writing his despatch. He saw me from his window, and beckoned me up straightway. You may imagine how I put out my hand and congratulated him upon his victory! He said to me in his blunt way: “It has been a damned serious business. Blücher and I have lost thirty thousand men.” And then, without the least appearance of joy or triumph, he repeated: “It has been a damned nice thing—the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” He told me Blücher got so damnably licked on Friday that he could not find him Saturday morning, and had to fall back to keep up his communications with him. Upon my word, I never saw him so grave, not so much moved! He kept on walking about the room, praising the courage of our troops, in particular those Guards who kept Hougoumont against the repeated attacks of the French. “You may depend upon it,” he said, “that no troops but the British could have held Hougoumont, and only the best of them at that!” Then he said—not with any vanity, you know, but very seriously: “By God! I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.’’’
‘I can readily believe that,’ Worth replied. ‘Does he anticipate that there will be any more fighting?’
‘No, that is the best of all! He says that every French Corps but one was engaged in the battle, and the whole Army gone off in such a perfect rout and confusion he thinks it quite impossible for them to give battle again before the Allies reach Paris.’
‘Excellent news! I am much obliged to you for bringing it to me.’
‘I knew you would be glad to hear of it! You’ll give my compliments to the ladies, and to poor Audley: I must be off, to catch the mail.’
He bustled away, and Worth went upstairs to convey the tidings to his brother, whom he found lying quietly, with his hand in Barbara’s. He told him what had passed, and had the satisfaction of seeing the Colonel’s eyes regain a little of their sparkle. Lavisse’s parting message evoked only a languid: ‘Poor devil! What a piece of work to make of nothing!’ Worth, seeing that he was tired, went away, leaving him to the comfort of Barbara’s presence.
The Duchess remained in the house all day, and the Duke, after trying in vain to obtain intelligence of George’s fate, and calling at the Fishers’ lodging to see Lucy (whom he declared to be a poor little dab of a thing, not worth looking at), took up his quarters in Lady Worth’s salon. He was permitted to visit Audley for a few minutes before dinner, and took his hand in a strong hold, saying with a softened expression in his rather hard eyes: ‘Well, my boy, so you mean to have that vixen of mine, do you? You’re deserving of a better fate, but if you’re determined you may take her with my blessing.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the Colonel.
‘And mind you keep her this time!’ said his Grace. ‘I won’t have her back on my hands again!’
His wife and granddaughter, judging that a very little of his bracing personality was enough for the Colonel in his present condition, then sent him away, and he went off to announce to Judith that, whatever he might think of George’s choice, he was very well satisfied with Barbara’s.
He bore his wife off to the Hôtel de Belle Vue for dinner, promising, however, to permit of her returning to Worth’s house later in the evening, to see how the Colonel went on. The fomentations had afforded some relief; there was no recurrence of the fever which had alarmed the ladies earlier in the day; and although the pulse was unsteady, the Duchess was able to inform her granddaughter before leaving the house that she had every expectation of the Colonel’s speedy recovery.
He was too weak to wish to indulge in much conversation, but he seemed to like to have Barbara near him. He lay mostly with closed eyes under a frowning brow, but if she moved from her chair it was seen that he was not asleep, for his eyes would open and follow her about the room. She soon found that her absence from his side made him restless, and so placed her chair close to the bed, and sat there, ready in an instant to bathe his brow with vinegar and water, to change the fomentations, or just to smile at him and take his hand.
It was not such a reunion as she had imagined. Her thoughts were confused. Harry’s death lay at the back of them, like a bruise on her spirit. She had been prepared to hear that Charles had been killed, but she had never thought that he might come back to her so shattered that he could not take her in his arms, so weak that the smile, even, was an effort. There was much she had wanted to say to him, but it had not been said, and perhaps never would be. No drama attached to their reconciliation: it was quiet, tempered by sorrow.
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 hand; 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!’
An Infamous Army Page 44