‘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?’