Читать книгу The Call of the Southern Cross - John Sandes - Страница 5

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"See here now me jool," said Biddy Flynn, when Juana awoke from a good sleep several hours later, and found her new friend beside her with a cup of coffee and a handful of biscuits, "ye must be after takin' thim goold earrings out av yer pretty ears, or wan of them murderin' blayguards av Portugee muleteers will be tearin' 'em out an' robbin' ye entirely."

Juana looked at Biddy with a pathetic little smile. She did not understand a word of the Connemara dialect, but she recognised the kindly feeling that inspired the speech. She let Biddy take the big gold rings out of her ears, and Biddy made signs to her that they would be safely kept.

Talking all the time to her, in her sootherin' way Biddy helped the girl to dress herself in her white chemisette, her dark blue bodice laced outside, and her short red skirt reaching to the knees. Thick woollen stockings and stout buckled shoes completed her costume.

Just as the girl finished dressing, a tousled head was poked in through the opening of the tent in which Mrs. Flynn had deposited her charge, and a pair of twinkling brown eyes surveyed the newcomer with interest.

"Och, come in here Anita, ye poor haythen, and help me to talk to this child of the battlefield, for I have only enough of the Spanish to curse the mulemen, and she haven't any English at all, at all." This was Biddy Flynn's ingenuous appeal, and in response to it Anita popped in very willingly, sat down cross-legged on the ground, and lighted her cigarette.

Anita was one of those girls of the country who had elected to follow the drum. She had allowed herself to be snapped up by an enterprising foot-soldier, who discovered her while he was engaged on a private foraging expedition. She was strictly loyal to her man, and was rather a favorite with Mrs. Flynn.

"Ax her is she willing to jine the battalion for be this an' be that 'tis a harrd life, but if she don't come wid us I don't know what I'll do wid her at all, at all."

So Anita, showing a set of perfect teeth in her very friendly smile, engaged Juana in rapid conversation, punctuated with puffs of her cigarette.

"She say she go where you go, Bidi," interpreted Anita; "she verra happy wit' you. But she ask all ze time where is ze senor. I not know 'oo is ze senor."

"Av course ye wudn't, me girl. Shure, 'tis Verner, she's axin' for, the poor lamb. Him that's the gineral's own secretary. 'Twas him that found her down on the battlefield keenin' over her father's corpse, an' he brought her in on a mule an gev her to me to take care of."

Anita's eyes sparkled with renewed interest. She proceeded to question Juana, discharging her interrogations with incredible velocity. Very quickly a red signal was hoisted in Juana's cheeks, showing that Anita, who had a keen eye for a romantic situation, had struck home with her questions.

"She say she make a prayer to ze good God to send somebody to take care of her when her fazzaire die," interrupted Anita, "and ze good God He send immediately Senor Verner. I ask her if she loves Senor Verner. She say she not know what is to love, but she is 'appy with Senor Verner, and her heart beats faster when he speak to her."

"Osh! that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Flynn. "Well, the likes of you an' the likes of me, Anita, is quare company for such an innocent lamb; but if she's got to thravel with the battalion, faix there's only the wan thing for ut."

"Wat you tink Bidi?"

"Senor Verner must marry her, Anita, an' be this an' be that from the luk I saw him give her whin I tuk her away to me tint, I think he'll find it aisy 'an plisint enough to have Juana for a wife, an' 'tis my belafe that a good wife she'll be to him too. So you can tell her that now."

Again Anita poured forth a flood of animated Spanish patois, until Juana, with her neck and cheeks suffused with blushes, half-laughin' and half-crying, pushed her bold-eyed visitor out of the tent.

Biddy Flynn determined to arrange the whole matter. She would leave them alone for a week or so, until she was sure that the silent Verner really loved the girl, and then she would act decisively.

But one morning, just before the army marched out of Vittoria, Verner came to her in his abrupt way and spoilt all her good-natured scheming.

"Mrs. Flynn," he said, "I am going to marry Juana to-day at 12 o'clock. The new battalion chaplain will perform the ceremony in his tent. We shall be very glad if you and Terence will come and see us married."

It was a very quiet wedding, for Terence and Biddy were the only visitors. Biddy would have preferred a 'praste,' and she had her own private doubts as to the ability of the nervous little 'Prodestan' to tie the knot securely. But the Rev. Mr. Tinkler, fresh from his country curacy in England, rose to the occasion and read the marriage service with quite an air of authority.

Verner had duly received the colonel's sanction to this marriage, which was also cordially approved of by Brigadier-General Brisbane.

Biddy and Terence both affixed their 'marks' to the marriage lines as witnesses, writing not being a strong point with either of them, and they listened in wonderment while the Reverend Mr. Tinkler addressed a few remarks on the mutual duties of the married state to the bride and bridegroom, quite oblivious of the fact that the bride did not understand a single word that he was saying.

After the ceremony there was an informal drinking of healths in the married women's quarters—between the ammunition bullocks and the transport mules—and Juana settled down very happily and contentedly in that new station of life to which it had pleased the good God and Senor Verner to call her.

There was plenty of hard fighting after Vittoria before the war was over, for Wellington pressed hard on the retreating French army.

General Brisbane, with the first brigade of Picton's division, was in the forefront of the fighting, and the newly married Verner fought side by side with Terence Flynn through the nine days' conflict in the Pyrenees, and afterwards in the battles at the Nivelle and the Nive on French soil, and at Orthez and Toulouse.

Then came the abdication of Napoleon at Fontainebleau, and the close of the war just ten months after the battle of Vittoria.

All through those ten mouths Juana followed the column, happy in the love of her tall, strong husband, who, though silent and reserved with others, found plenty to say to his lovely young wife, to whom he was most passionately devoted.

Biddy Flynn and Juana rode their burros side by side in the wake of the column, along with the other women attached to the brigade, all the way from Vittoria to Toulouse, camping every night with the troops. Verner was always sure of seeing the little white donkey that Juana rode plodding into camp alongside of Biddy's big mouse-coloured burro, and as the two wives sat with their husbands by the camp fire Biddy was accustomed to relate the adventures of the day, and to enlarge upon the hardships which attended the wife of a soldier.

"But shure," she would say, "bad an' all as it is now, it isn't anything to what it was when I was along o' Mick Donovan, God rist his sowl."

"That'll do now, Biddy," said Terence, who was apt to show a bit of temper at times when the virtues of his predecessor were enlarged upon; "lave Mick Donovan rest in his grave."

"An', a good man he was to me, too," continued Biddy, ignoring the interruption. "Well, as I was sayin', 'tis a harrd life for a woman, but cowld an' all an' tired an' all as I am this minnit, shure 'tis Hiven itself to what I wint through in the retrate to Corunna. Juana, me darlint, 'twud ha' made yer heart bleed to see them poor women that dropped an' died in the snow, for they cud not kape up with the arrmy; an' them that didn't die fell into the hands av the Frinch, and ten I don't know wat happened to them at all, at all."

And then Juana would look at Verner with a brave smile, which said as plainly as possible: "I know that my husband will protect me, and I do not fear any danger as long as he is with me." She was able to understand Mrs. Flynn's strange language fairly well now, but better still she understood Mrs. Flynn's warm and generous heart.

Sometimes Biddy would decide to make an early start and march ahead of the column, instead of at the rear of it, in order to have a fire lit and some food ready for Terence and Verner at the next bivouac. Juana would always go with her on the little white donkey. She was getting used to the life now, though at first the horde of women who accompanied the battalion terrified her, and without Biddy's strong arm and ready tongue to help her she would have fared ill with her youth and innocence in that extraordinary throng.

Englishwomen, Irishwomen, and Scotchwomen who were the bona-fide wives of men in the ranks were mixed up with Portuguese and Spanish girls whom the soldiers had picked up on the march, and who speedily acquired all the arts of the skilled campaigner. Their plundering and fighting and disregard of all discipline worried the Provost Marshal more than the misdeeds of the worst offenders in the ranks, and occasionally the Provost Marshal asserted his authority.

As the usual four sat round their camp fire one evening at a bivouac in the Pyrenees, Biddy related the abominable conduct of the Provost Marshal.

"Me an' Juana, an' about forty of the gurls were ridin' ahead av the column this mornin'," she said, "an the thrack was so narrer, an' curly that the dunkeys blocked the pass intirely. I looked behind me, an' there was the battalion comin' up the pass wid the band playin'. 'Millia murther!' sez I. 'Shure, we can't get on, the way the women hev got the thrack jammed,' sez I, 'an' the battalion will be blocked behind us, an' the whole of the arrmy wid Wellington and the Shtaff will be blocked, too,' sez I. So I called out to the gurls in front to push on, or we'd be kilt intirely, when I seen the Provost Marshal an' his gyard beyant."

"Shure, what wud he be doin', annyway?" inquired Terence.

"He calls out," said Biddy, "'You women were ordhered to kape in the rare, and I'll tache you to obey ordhers in the future.' An' wid that he gives a wurrud of command to his min; an' what does the blaygards do but stip out an' shoot threee of them poor dunkeys dead. Judy Callaghan an' Mary Murphy, an' Anita, the Spanish gurl, were ridin' dunkeys, an' the three of them pitched into the road wid all their pots and pans on top of thim. An', och, murther! Ye niver heard such cussin' of the Provost Marshal, the durty spy of the camp. Bad cess to him. But the road was cleared, and the three gurls came along wid us on fut loaded up wid their baggage an' cryin' and cursin' like their hearts was bruk. Me and Juana helped to carry their bits of things, didn't we, Juana?"

Juana nodded and looked at Biddy admiringly. Her protectress was extraordinarily efficient. No contingency found her unprepared or resourceless. Moreover, Juana had picked up a kind of English from Biddy, and she spoke her remarkable diction with surprising fluency.

"And see also my Henry," she said to her husband; "the good Bidi, she is strong like a boule-dogue. She say to me, 'Juana, take care of dat Portugee spalpino, Gomez. I no like one look in his eye.' So by an' bye dat spalpino was dronk, oh, very mooch dronk. 'E come by me. 'E try to put his arm round me, an' I cry at once, 'Bidi!' At once comes Bidi running wit a bucket av water, very hot, an' she throw it over ze durty spalpino, Gomez, an och, begorrah, he runs off like ze devil was behind 'im."

Terence roared with laughter at Juana's serious and dramatic recital of her peril and of the rescue effected by his adored Bidi, but Verner's brow grew black. The 'spalpino' Gomez would certainly have a bad time if he ever happened to cross the path of Private Verner.

When a battle was expected, Flynn and Verner would take leave of their wives with serious faces. To Biddy these leave-takings were nothing. She was inured to them, but poor Juana used to get terribly upset. She cried her eyes out every day in the Pyrenees, and afterwards at the Nivelle and the Nive. Then it was that Biddy Flynn showed that she had a true, womanly heart under the rough coat that she had picked up on a fire-swept ridge outside Vittoria, and invariably wore when on the march.

"There now, alannah," she would say, taking the little Spanish bride in her capable arms, "don't be cryin', asthore, for faix the bullet isn't mowlded that ud harrum that great long, lanky Verner, an' shure enough ye'll see him this night in the bivouac. An' haven't you the great news to tell him intirely."

Then Juana would smile, though her face was very white. She found it hard work marching behind the army those days. She needed all the care and kindness Biddy Flynn could give her.

On April 18, 1814, when the Peninsular Army was at Toulouse, the news of Napoleon's abdication arrived, and hostilities ceased.

On the same evening Juana's baby was born in a tent in the lines of the battalion. The regimental surgeon and Biddy Flynn both declared that they had never seen a finer child.

A proud and loving husband was Henry Verner, as he held Juana's hand while the roar of the field guns that saluted the end of the war reverberated through the camp, and Juana, with the child beside her, looked up into her husband's bronzed and furrowed face with an expression of ineffable love.

"It's all right, darling," said Verner. "The brigadier himself has promised to stand godfather to the boy. Little Tom Verner will make a fine soldier some day."

"Arrah, how could he help it?" interjected Biddy, who was arranging the blankets of the narrow camp bed on which Juana lay, "an' him a-followin' the army befure he was born."