From time to time the rumors of great events reached us. We heard that Soult, having succeeded in re-organizing his beaten army, was, in conjunction with Ney’s corps, returning from the north; that the marshals were consolidating their forces in the neighborhood of Talavera; and that King Joseph himself, at the head of a large army, had marched for Madrid.
Menacing as such an aspect of affairs was, it had little disturbed the major’s equanimity; and when our advanced posts reported daily the intelligence that the French were in retreat, he cared little with what object of concentrating they retired, provided the interval between us grew gradually wider. His speculations upon the future were singularly prophetic. “You’ll see, Charley, what will happen; old Cuesta will pursue them, and get thrashed. The English will come up, and perhaps get thrashed too; but we, God bless us! are only a small force, partially organized and ill to depend on,—we’ll go up the mountains till all is over!” Thus did the major’s discretion not only extend to the avoidance of danger, but he actually disqualified himself from even making its acquaintance.
Meanwhile our operations consisted in making easy marches to Almarez, halting wherever the commissariat reported a well-stocked cellar or well-furnished hen-roost, taking the primrose path in life, and being, in words of the major, “contented and grateful, even amidst great perils!”
CHAPTER LVI.
THE DEPARTURE.
On the morning of the 10th July a despatch reached us announcing that Sir Arthur Wellesley had taken up his headquarters at Placentia for the purpose of communicating with Cuesta, then at Casa del Puerto; and ordering me immediately to repair to the Spanish headquarters and await Sir Arthur’s arrival, to make my report upon the effective state of our corps. As for me, I was heartily tired of the inaction of my present life, and much as I relished the eccentricities of my friend the major, longed ardently for a different sphere of action.
Not so Monsoon; the prospect of active employment and the thoughts of being left once more alone, for his Portuguese staff afforded him little society, depressed him greatly; and as the hour of my departure drew near, he appeared lower in spirits than I had ever seen him.
“I shall be very lonely without you, Charley,” said he, with a sigh, as we sat the last evening together beside our cheerful wood fire. “I have little intercourse with the dons; for my Portuguese is none of the best, and only comes when the evening is far advanced; and besides, the villains, I fear, may remember the sherry affair. Two of my present staff were with me then.”
“Is that the story Power so often alluded to, Major; the King of Spain’s—”