The Hero of Waterloo
Colonel Manton put up his rod and demanded to be set ashore. It had been his first experience of coarse fishing on the river, and it had not proved to his taste. It was not that the perch had been distant or the chub unapproachable. On the contrary, the place having been ground-baited overnight, the sport had been excellent. It was the worms and one other thing which decided him. He had been present at Talavera, at Ciudad Rodrigo, at Badajos, at Vittoria, at Quatre Bras, at Waterloo; he had seen as much carnage as most men, but this bloodless impaling of lob-worms on hooks, and then casting them, so transfixed, to lie writhing on the river bottom for an indefinite period at the end of a ledger-line, offended his sense of fitness. It was not, it seemed to him, playing the game. The worms had no chance, and they could not bite back. He hated to sit there and think of what was going on under the quiet water, and the reflection gained nothing in relish from the fact that, by refusing to soil his own hands with the viscous contortions of the creatures, he must appear, in delegating that operation to the boatman, to torture by deputy, like the most cowardly of Eastern despots. And so when, as presently happened, this same stolid deputy, in “disgorging” an obstinate hook from a barbel’s throat, tore away—— But it is enough to say that the Colonel put down his rod and demanded there and then to be set ashore.
There was no gainsaying him, of course. It was sufficient that he was the guest of a distinguished General living at Datchet; but in addition to this the Colonel’s personal actions invited no criticism. He fished—as he walked, as he rode, as he appeared on all secular occasions—in a dark blue wasp-waisted frock-coat with frogs, in tight nankeen trousers strapped under neat insteps, in a stiff collar and full black stock, in a tall hat with a brim so crescented that its front peak looked like the “nasal” of a Norman helmet. And for the rest he carried himself and his white moustache with the conscious authority of a cock of a hundred fights.
The boatman put him ashore on the riverbank some half-mile below Datchet, towards which village he immediately addressed his steps. The path was lonely and unfrequented, and it gave the Colonel some surprise to observe, as he turned a clump of bushes, a fashionable old beau toddling along it in front of him. In a few moments the latter paused, nonplussed, at a stile, and the Colonel came up with him.
The pedestrian was a man of uncouth bulk but distinguished mien. He wore a black frock-coat of a somewhat military cut, with a rich fur collar. Curly auburn locks, obviously artificial, showed beneath the brim of his glossy hat, and accented somewhat ghastfully the puffy pallor of a face whose texture betrayed its age. His eyes had a glutinous, half-blind appearance; his loose lower lip perpetually trembled. He peered at the new-comer, panting a good deal, as if the sudden apparition had shaken his nerves.
“If I may venture, sir,” said Colonel Manton, and proffered his arm. The other accepted it to mount the stile. It was an ungraceful business, and, once over, he stood, with his hands to his sides, vibrating heavily, like a worn-out engine, to his own respirations. Presently he was sufficiently recovered to speak.
“A damned obstruction—a damned obstruction! Cannot I leave my carriage a moment to walk round by the water but this annoyance must appear in my path?”
“A villainous stile,” said the Colonel. “We will indict it for a trespass.”
He was a reasonable man, and he felt the absurdity of the complaint. But, to his surprise, his sarcasm missed fire.
“Do so, do so,” said the old gentleman, and took his arm again, as it might have been his own walking-stick. They went on together, and in a little the stranger had opened a conversation with all the effrontery in the world.
“My boy, what’s your rank?” said he. “I perceive you are a soldier.”
The officer stared, and drew himself up.
“Colonel Manton, sir, at your service,” he answered distantly.
He was surprised; but the man was old, near seventy by his appearance, and very possibly from his cut a retired veteran like himself. Familiarity from a general, say, would be pardonable, and even kindly. Besides, he did not dislike the implied suggestion of juniority.
“Hey!” said the stranger—“retired?”
“Yes, sir, retired.”
“Brevet rank?”
“Brevet be damned!” said Colonel Manton hotly. “I owe my promotion, sir, if you wish to know, to Waterloo.”
The stranger glanced at him with a curiously sly look, and pinched the arm on which his own fingers rested.
“What!” he said, “were you there?”
“I had the honour, sir,” said the Colonel grandiloquently, “of playing my little part in that Homeric contest.”
“Whose division, hey?”
“Picton’s—Pack’s brigade. You are a little—you will excuse my saying it—particular.”
“Certainly I will, my boy. Wounded—hey?”
A distinct flush suffused the Colonel’s cheek.
“Wounded—yes,” he replied shortly.
The old fellow nudged him confidentially.
“Tell me,” he said—“how?”
“Look here—you must forgive me, you know,” exploded the Colonel; “but I must point out that we are strangers. Still—as a fellow-campaigner—if that is the case—may I ask, sir, if you were at Waterloo?”
The other laughed enjoyingly.
“Was I?” he said. “To be sure I was. You had all good reason for knowing it.”
Colonel Manton’s eyes opened. Here was a momentous implication. Evidently he had to do with some great general of division, though the boast sounded a little extravagant and unmilitary. He ran over in his mind a dozen possible names, but without success. And then the thought occurred to him: “Good reason for knowing it? What the devil! Is it possible he was on the other side?”
The idea seemed too preposterous for belief; the stranger was so obviously British. Who, in wonder’s name, could he be, then? Hill, Macdonnell, Saltoun, Uxbridge, Vandeleur, Somersett, Hackett—all divisional or brigadier-generals? He could not identify him, of his knowledge, with any one of these. The Iron Duke himself? He had never been brought into very close personal contact with the great man, but naturally he was familiar with his features. Could it be possible that time had so fused and blunted those that their characteristic contour had degenerated into this scarce distinguishable pulp? Prosperity, he knew, could play strange tricks with countenances, yet a volte-face so revolutionary seemed incredible. And yet who else but the Duke had been on that day as indispensable as implied? But it was conceivable that some might have so regarded themselves—that certain heads might have been turned by their share in the success of so stupendous a victory.
Colonel Manton had been living abroad on his half-pay for some years, and, until the occasion of this visit during the summer of 1830, had dwelt for long a stranger to his native land. He could but suppose that he had in a measure lost the clue, through subsequent developments, to old events. It remained clear only that he was in the presence of one who had, or believed himself to have, contributed signally to the success of the epoch-making battle. And that must be enough for him. He spoke thenceforth as a subordinate to his commanding officer.
“I beg your indulgence, sir,” he said. “I have been absent from my country for a considerable time, and features once familiar elude me. You asked about my wound. It is a ridiculous matter, and I recall it without enthusiasm. The fact is that, when d’Erlon’s guns were pounding us before the advance, a ball smashed the head of a sergeant standing near me, and one of the fellow’s cursed double-teeth was driven into my neck. It was not enough to cripple my fighting power, but I would have given a dozen of my own to boast a more honourable scar.”
The stranger chuckled.
“Scars are not the only guarantee of valour,” he said.
The Colonel ventured: “You brought away some of your own, sir?”
“No,” said the old fellow. “No; Wellington and I got off scot-free.”
The Colonel dared again: “Were you, may I ask, on his personal staff?”
“Well, yes,” said the stranger, chuckling still more, “I suppose you might call it that.”
Suppose? Colonel Manton gaped. It was positively a matter of history that not one of that staff had escaped death or mutilation. The other may have noticed his perplexity, for he turned on him with an air of sudden annoyance.
“You haven’t the assurance to question my word, I hope, sir?” he demanded.
“Certainly not,” answered the Colonel.
“I could give you convincing proof,” said the stranger. “Did the Commander-in-Chief—now did he or did he not—visit General Blücher at Wavre the night before the battle to make sure of his co-operation?”
“It is a disputed point, sir,” said the Colonel. “I believe that even his Grace has been known to contradict himself in the matter, saying at one time that he would never have fought without Blücher’s explicit promise to back him up, at another flatly contradicting the report that he saw the Prussian general on the night before the battle.”
“And he did not, my boy,” sniggered the old fellow triumphantly, “for his interview with him was after midnight, and therefore on the day of the battle. I ought to know, for I sent him off there myself.”
He cackled into such a spasm of laughter that the convulsion caught his wind.
“O, my chest!” he wheezed and gasped, “my miserable chest! I’m the most wretched creature on earth. But it’s nothing, nothing—the youngest fellows are subject to it.” He coughed and wiped his eyes with a heavily scented handkerchief. “Yes,” he said presently, “yes, Wellington was a sound workaday general, a fine soldier, an inspired commissary, but, of genius—h’m! We need only suggest, Manty my boy, that he was well advised. The man at his elbow, hey? You need not mention it, you know, but the real hero of Waterloo—hey, d’ye see? Keep it to yourself; there were reasons against its being divulged—you understand? What, my boy!”
The Colonel stared before him as if hypnotised; he stumbled in his walk. Was it possible to mistake the implication—that the laurels ought by rights to have adorned the brow of this stranger beside him? He felt like one whose faith had suddenly exploded of its own intensity, leaving his breast a blackened shell. Could there actually have been another, of whom he had never heard, at the Duke’s right hand on that tremendous day, the presiding but unconfessed genius of it? He had heard speak of the Corsican’s little red familiar. Was his great rival, were possibly all commanding intellects, so supernaturally provided?
He was really a simple man, with a mind ruled to certain prescriptive lines of conduct. He glanced askance at his companion, who was smiling and murmuring to himself. Who in Heaven’s name could he be? and why had he selected him for his astounding confidences? For all his own fearless rectitude, an uncanny feeling began to possess him. He was glad, in turning a corner, to see the end of the path, and the head of a waiting coachman showing above the hedge. And the next moment they had emerged on to the village green.
A barouche stood there, with a bare-headed gentleman standing at its door. The liveries of the servants were scarlet, and a mounted man in a scarlet embroidered coat waited a little apart. The gentleman came forward.
“Will your Majesty be pleased to ascend?” he asked.
The King dropped the Colonel’s arm, and appeared on the instant to forget all about him.
“Yes, Watty; yes, certainly, my boy,” he said. “Is that the fiery chariot?”