Taking one thing with another, his present position was unenviable, and the future dark with difficulties. A superhuman task lay before him, as bad as any he had ever tackled, but although he might complain peevishly of lack of support from England, of wretched troops in Belgium, of the impossibility of dealing with King William, of the damned folly of that fellow Lowe, no real doubts of his ability to deal with the situation assailed him.
"I never in my life gave up anything that I once undertook," said his lordship, in one of his rare moments of expansiveness.
Fremantle came into the room with some papers for him to look over. He took them, and remembered that he had been devilish short with Fremantle this morning, for some slight fault. He had not meant to be, but it was unthinkable that he should say so; he could not do it: to admit that he had been in the wrong was totally against his principles. The nearest he could ever bring himself to it was to invite the unfortunate to dinner, or, if that were ineligible (as in Fremantle's case it was, since he would dine with him in the ordinary way), to say something pleasant to him, to show that the whole affair was forgotten.
"I'll tell you what, Fremantle!" he remarked in his incisive way. "We must give a ball. Find out what days are left free. It will have to be towards the end of the month, for it won't do if I clash with anyone else."
"They say that the Catalani is coming to Brussels, sir," suggested Fremantle.
"That's capital: we'll have a concert as well, and engage her to sing at it. But, mind, fix the figure before you settle with the woman; I hear she's as mercenary as the devil." He picked up his pen again, and bent over his table, but added as Fremantle was leaving the room: "You can have my box, if you mean to go to the theatre tonight: I shan't be using it. Take the curricle."
So Colonel Fremantle was able to report in the outer office that his lordship's temper was on the mend. But within half an hour, his lordship, glaring at his quartermaster-general, was snapping out one of his hasty snubs. "Sir Hudson, I have commanded a far larger army in the field than any Prussian general, and I am not to learn from their service how to equip an army!"
One would have thought this would have stopped the damned fellow, but no! in a few moments he was at it again.
"Sir Hudson Lowe will not do for the Duke," wrote Major-General Torrens next day, to London, with diplomatic restraint.
Lord Harrowby, and Major-General Torrens, arriving on April 6th to confer with him, found that there was much that would not do for the Duke, and much that he required from England with the greatest possible despatch. His lordship - it was strange how that title stuck to him - might be uncomfortably blunt in his manner, but the very fact of his knowing so positively what he wanted, showed how sure was his grasp on the situation. And, after all, General Torrens had dealt with him for long enough to know, before ever he reached Brussels, that he was going to hear some very plain truths from him.
But his criticisms were not merely destructive: what he said to the delegates from London left them in no doubt of his energetic competence. The news he brought from Vienna was quite as good as could have been expected. The treaty between Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia had been signed; there had been a little trouble over the question of subsidies; but his lordship was able to report that the Russians and Austrians were mobilising in large numbers; and even that the Emperor of Russia had expressed a wish (though not a very strong one) to have him with him. "But I should prefer to carry a musket!" said his Lordship, with a neigh of sardonic laughter.
For their part, Lord Harrowby and Sir Henry Torrens had brought soothing intelligence from home. All the available cavalry were under orders, and some already marching for embarkation to Ostend; of the infantry, in addition to the corps and detachments already despatched, and now in Belgium, about two thousand effectives were to proceed from a rendezvous in the Downs to Ostend. The Government was willing and indeed anxious, to meet his lordship's requirements in every possible way.
His lordship stated these with disconcerting alacrity. he wanted equipment, and ammunition; he wanted field artillery, and horses; he wanted the militia called out "Nothing can be done with a small and inefficient force," said his lordship uncompromisingly. "The war will linger on, and will end to our disadvantage."
Harrowby began to explain the constitutional difficulties attached to calling out the militia. It was plain that his lordship made very little of these, but he was not one to waste his time in fruitless argument. He had another scheme, already proposed by him in a despatch to Lord Castlereagh. He thought it would be advisable to try to get twelve or fourteen thousand Portuguese troops into the Netherlands. "We can mix them with ours, and do what we please with them," he said. "They become very nearly as good as our own."
Upon the following day, a third visitor from London appeared in the person of the Duke's brother, the Marquis Wellesley. The Marquis was fifty-five years old, and nine years senior to the Duke. There was not much resemblance between the brothers, but strong ties of affection had survived the strain put on them by the younger man's rise to heights beyond the elder's reach. It had been Richard, not Arthur, who was to have been the great man of the family; it was Richard who had set Arthur's feet on the ladder of his career, and had fostered his early progress from rung to rung. But Arthur, his feet once firmly planted, had climbed the ladder so fast that Richard had been left far behind him. It was only twenty-eight years since Richard had written to remind the Duke of Rutland of a younger brother of his, whom his Grace had been so kind as to take into his consideration for a commission in the Army. "He is here, at this moment, and perfectly idle," Richard had written. "It is a matter of indifference to me what commission he gets, providing he gets it soon." Richard, with his brilliant mind and scholarship, had been a coming man in those days, Arthur a youth of no more than ordinary promise. Seventeen years later, a Major-General, he had been made a Knight Companion of the Bath, and after that the honours had fallen so thick upon him that it had been difficult to keep count of them. He had been created in swift succession Viscount Wellington of Talavera, Earl of Wellington, then Marquis, and lastly duke; he was a Spanish Grandee of the First Class, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, Duke of Victoria, a Knight of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece, of the Order of Maria Theresa, of the Russian Order of Saint George, of the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle, of the Swedish Order of the Sword. An Emperor had lately clapped him on the shoulder, saying: "C'est pour vows encore sauver le monde!" and yet he remained, reflected Richard, with a faint, whimsical smile, the same unaffected creature he had ever been. Nor had he outgrown his boyhood's admiration of Richard. "A wonderful man," he called him, and honestly believed it.
The Marquis was a wonderfully handsome man, at all events, with large, far-sighted eyes under heavily-marked dark brows, an aquiline nose, with delicate, up-cut nostrils, a fine, rather thin-lipped mouth, and a lacquered skin of alabaster. He had beautiful manners too, a natural stateliness tempered by charm, and an instinct for ceremonial. No sudden cracks of loud laughter broke from him; he had never been known to utter hasty, harshly-worded snubs; and his stateliness never became mere stiffness. The Duke, on the other hand, could be absurdly stiff, and painfully rude, while his ungraciousness towards those whom he disliked was proverbial. He had no taste for pomp, very little for creature comforts, and although he had been christened Beau Douro in the Peninsula on account of a certain neatness and propriety of dress, he set no store by personal adornment. He was outspoken to a fault; his mind ran between straight and clearly defined lines; and he knew nothing of dissimulation. Ask him a question, and you might be sure of receiving an honest answer - though perhaps not the one you had hoped to hear, for his lordship, unconcerned with considerations of personal popularity, was rigorously concerned with the truth, and with what he saw to be his clear duty. Tact, such as his brother possessed, he did not employ; and when the members of His Majesty's Government acted, in his judgment, foolishly, he told them so with very little more ceremony than he wo
uld have used with one of his own officers.
He met his elder brother with frank delight, gave his hand a quick shake, and said briskly: "Glad to see you, Wellesley! How d'ye do?"
"How do you do?" returned the Marquis, holding his hand a moment longer.
"We are in a damned bad case," replied the Duke bluntly.
The Marquis did not make the mistake of taking this to mean that his brother envisaged defeat at Bonaparte's hands; he knew that it was merely the prelude to one of Arthur's trenchant and comprehensive complaints of the Government's supine behaviour. Already, and though he had not been in his presence above a minute, he was aware of Arthur's driving will. Arthur's terrible energy made him feel suddenly old. Presently, seated with Harrowby and Torrens at a table covered with papers, and listening to the Duke's voice, he found that, well as he knew him, he could still be surprised by Arthur's amazing capacity for detail. For Arthur had rolled up his maps and was being extremely definite on the subject of the ideal size and nature of camp kettles.
An extraordinary fellow, dear Arthur: really, a most bewildering fellow!
Chapter Six
The information imparted to Colonel Audley by Fremantle turned out to be correct, and not, as Audley had more than half suspected, a mild attempt to hoax him. He was to accompany the Duke to Ghent, but not, providentially, until June 8th. He was free therefore to present himself at Lady Vidal's party on the 7th.
The fact of his being engaged to dine at the Duke's table made it unnecessary for him to tell his sister-in-law where he meant to spend the rest of the evening. The Worths were bound for the Opera, where Judith hoped he might perhaps be able to join them.
Lady Barbara, wise in the ways of suitors, expected to see him among the first arrivals, and was piqued when he did not appear until late in the evening. He found her in a maddening mood, flirting with one civilian and two soldiers. She had nothing but a careless wave of the hand for him, and the Colonel, who had no intention of forming one of a court, paused only to exchange a word of greeting with her before passing on to pay his respects to Lady Frances Webster.
That inveterate hero worshipper had found a new object for her affections, a very different personage from Lord Byron, less dangerous but quite as glorious.
At the fete at the Hotel de Ville her eyes had dwelled soulfully upon the Duke of Wellington, and the Duke had lost very little time in becoming acquainted with her. When the Lady Frances discovered from Colonel Audley that there was no likelihood of his Grace's putting in an appearance that evening, she sighed, and seemed to lose interest in the world.
So that's Hookey's latest, is it? thought the Colonel. Too angelic for my taste!
Caro Lamb recognised him, and summoned him to her side. He went at once, and was soon engaged in a light, swift give and take of badinage with her. His manners were too good to allow of his attention wandering, his gaze did not stray from the changeful little face before him; nor, when Caro presently flitted from him to another, did he do more than glance in Barbara's direction. She was lying back in her chair, laughing up into Lavisse's face, bent a little over her. There was a suggestion of possessiveness in Lavisse's pose, and his left hand was resting on Barbara's bare shoulder. Repressing a strong inclination to seize the slim Belgian by the collar and the seat of his elegant kneebreeches and throw him out, the Colonel turned away, and found himself confronting a sandy-haired nsign, who smiled and offered him a glass of wine. "You're Colonel Audley, aren't you, sir?" he said. "Bab said you were coming. I'm Harry Alastair."
"How do you do?" said the Colonel, accepting the glass of wine. "I believe I once met your brother George."
"Oh, did you? George is a Bad Man," said Harry cheerfully. "I heard today that the Life Guards are under marching orders, so he'll be here pretty soon, I expect. But I say, what's the news, sir? We are going to war, aren't we?"
Colonel Audley did not think there was much doubt of that.
"Well, I'm very glad to hear you say so," remarked his youthful interlocutor with simple pleasure. "Only, people talk such stuff that one doesn't know what to believe. I thought you would probably know." He added in a burst of confidence: "It's a great thing for me: I've never been in action, you know."
Colonel Audley expressed a gratifying surprise. "I had thought you must have been with Graham," he said.
"No," confessed Lord Harry. "As a matter of fact, I was still at Oxford then. Well, to tell you the truth, I only joined in December."
"How do you like it?" asked the Colonel. "You're with General Maitland, aren't you?"
"Yes. Oh, it's famous sport! I like it above anything!" said Lord Harry. "And if only we have the luck to come to grips with Boney himself - all our fellows are mad for the chance of a brush with him, I can tell you! Hallo, what's Bab at now? She's as wild as fire tonight! When George arrives they'll set the whole town in a bustle between them, I daresay."
A hot rivalry appeared to have sprung up between the men surrounding Barbara for possession of the flower she had been wearing tucked into her corsage. It was in her hand now, and as the Colonel glanced towards her she sprang lightly upon a stool, and held it high above her head.
"No quarrelling, gentlemen!" she called out. "He who can reach it may take it. Oh, Jack, my poor darling, you will never do it!"
Half a dozen arms reached up; the Lady Barbara, from the advantage of her stool, laughed down in the faces upturned to her. Colonel Audley, taller than any of that striving court, set down his wine glass and walked up behind her, and nipped the flower from her hand.
She turned quickly; a wave of colour rushed into her cheeks. "Oh! You! Infamous! I did not bargain for a man of your inches!" she said.
"A cheat! Fudged, by Jove!" cried Captain Chambers. "Give it up, Audley, you dog!"
"Not a bit of it," responded the Colonel, fitting it in his buttonhole. "He who could reach it might take it. I abode most strictly by the rules." He held out his hands to Barbara. "Come down from your perch! You invited me here tonight and have not vouchsafed me one word."
She laid her hands in his, but drew them away as soon as she stood on the floor again. "Oh, you must be content with having won your prize!" she said carelessly. "I warn you, it came from a hothouse and will soon fade. Dear Jack, I'm devilish thirsty!"
The young man addressed offered his arm; she was borne away by him into an adjoining salon. With a shade of malice in his voice the Comte de Lavisse said: "Helas! You are set down, mon Colonel!"
"I am indeed," replied Audley, and went off to flirt with one of the Misses Arden.
He was presently singled out by his host, who wanted his opinion of the military situation. Lord Vidal was suffering from what his irreverent younger brother described as a fit of the sullens, but he was pleasant enough to Audley. His wife, her hard sense bent on promoting a match between an improvident sister-inlaw and a wealthy (though foreign) nobleman, seized the opportunity to inform the Colonel that her family expected hourly to receive the tidings of Bab's engagement to the Comte de Lavisse. The desired effect of this confidence was a little spoiled by her husband's saying hastily: "Pooh! nonsense! I don't more than half like it."
Augusta said with a tinkle of laughter: "I doubt of Bab's considering that, my dear Vidal, once her affections have been engaged."
The Marquis reddened, but said: "The old man wouldn't countenance it. I wish you will not talk such rubbish! Come now, Audley! In my place, would you remove to England?"
"On my honour, no!" said the Colonel. He correctly guessed "the old man" to be the Duke of Avon, a gentleman of reputedly fiery temper, who was the Lady Barbara's grandfather, and lost very little time in finding Lord Harry Alastair again.
There was no more friendly youth to be found than Lord Harry. He was perfectly ready to tell the Colonel anything the Colonel wanted to know, and it needed only a casual question to set his tongue gaily wagging.
"Devil of a tartar, my grandfather," said Lord Harry. "Used to be a dead shot - daresay he still is, but h
e don't go about picking quarrels with people these days, of course. Killed his man in three duels before he met my grandmother. Those must have been good times to have lived in! But I believe he settled down more or less when he married. George is the living spit of what he used to be, if you can trust the portraits. Bab and Vidal take after my great-grandmother. She was red-haired, too, and French into the bargain. And her husband - my great-grandfather, that is - was the devil of a fellow!" He tossed off a glass of wine, and added, not without pride: "We're a shocking bad set, you know. All ride to the devil one way or another. As for Bab, she's as bad as any of us."
The Lady Barbara seemed, that evening, to be determined to prove the truth of this assertion. No folly was too extravagant for her to throw herself into; her flirtations shocked the respectable; the language she used gave offence to the pure-tongued; and when she crowned an evening of indiscretions by organising a table of hazard, and becoming, as she herself announced, badly dipped at it, it was felt that she had left nothing undone to set the town by the ears.
She was too busy at her hazard table to notice Colonel Audley's departure, nor did he attempt to interrupt her play to take his leave. But seven o'clock next morning found him cantering down the Allee Verte to meet a solitary horse-woman mounted on a grey hunter.
She saw him approaching, and reined in. When he reached her she was seated motionless in the saddle, awaiting him. He raised two fingers to his cocked hat. "Good morning! Are you in a quarrelsome humour today?" he asked.
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