"No, sir," replied Fitzroy, laying the papers before "General Dornberg's letter, as your lordship will see, is dated only 9.30a.m."
"Nine-thirty!" An explosion seemed imminent; his Lordship picked up the letters and read them with a cold eye and peevishly pursed lips. Dornberg, at Mons, merely stated that he had found a picket of French Lancers on the Bavay road, and that the troops at Quivrain had been replaced by a handful of National wards and Gendarmes. All the French troops appeared to be marching towards Beaumont and Philippeville.
The Duke gave the despatch to De Lancey without comment, and picked up Chase's and Van Merlen's reports. Van Merlen, writing at an early hour of the morning from Saint Symphorien, stated that the Prussians under General Steinmetz were retiring from Binche to Gosselies, and that if pressed the I Corps would concentrate at Fleurus.
De Lancey looked up with a worried frown from the despatch in his hand. He was finding the post of Quartermaster-General arduous; he had brought young bride with him to Brussels, too, and was beginning to look rather careworn. "Then it comes to this, sir, that we have no intelligence later than nine this morning."
"No. All we know is that there has been an attack on the Prussian outposts and that the French have taken Thuin. I can't move on that information."
His lordship said no more, but both De Lancey and Fitzroy knew what was in his mind. He had always been jealous of his right, for in that direction lay his communication lines. It was his opinion that the French would try to cut him off from the seaports; he was suspicious of the attack on the Prussians: it looked to him like a feint. He would do nothing until he received more certain information.
Between six and seven o'clock he issued his first orders. The Quartermaster-General's staff woke to sudden activity. Twelve messages had to be written and carried to their various destinations. The whole of the English cavalry was to collect at Ninove that night: General Dornberg's brigade of Light Dragoons of the Legion to march on Vilvorde; the reserve artillery to be ready to move at daybreak; General Colville's 4th Infantry Division, except the troops beyond the Scheldt, to march eastward on Grammont; the 10th Brigade, just arrived from America under General Lambert and stationed at Ghent, to move on Brussels; the 2nd and 5th Divisions to be at Ath in readiness to move at a moment's notice; the 1st and 3rd to concentrate at Enghien and Braine-le-Comte. The Brunswick Corps was to concentrate on Brussels; the Nassau contingent upon the Louvain road; and the 2nd and 3rd Dutch-Belgic divisions under Generals Perponcher and d'Aubreme were ordered to concentrate upon Nivelles. His lordship had received no intelligence from Mons, and was still unwilling to do more than to put his Army in a state of readiness to move at a moment's notice. The Quartermaster-General's office became a busy hive, with De Lancey moving about in it with his sheaf of papers, and frowning over his maps as he worked out the details for the movements of the divisions, sending out his messages, and inwardly resolving to be done with the Army when this campaign was over. He was a good officer, but the responsibility of his post oppressed him. Too much depended on his making no mistakes. The Adjutant-General had to deal with the various duties to be distributed, with morning-states of men and horses, and with the discipline of the Army, but the Quartermaster-General's work was more harassing. On his shoulders rested the task of arranging every detail of equipment, of embarkation, of marching, halting, and quartering the troops. It was not easy to move an army; it would be fatally easy to create chaos in concentrating troops that were spread over a large area. De Lancey checked up his orders again, referred to the maps, remembered that such-and-such a bridge would not bear the passage of heavy cavalry, that this or that road had been reported in a bad state. At the back of his busy mind another and deeper anxiety lurked. He would sen Magdalene to Ghent, into safety. He hoped she woul consent to go; he would know no peace of mind if she were left in this unfortified and perilously vulnerable town.
The stir in the Quartermaster-General's office, the departure of deputy-assistants charged with the swift delivery of orders to the divisions of the Army, infected the rest of the staff with a feeling of expectation and suppressed excitement. A few moderate spirits continued to maintain their belief in the attack's being nothing more than an affair of outposts; but the general opinion was that the Anglo-Allied Army would shortly be engaged. Colonel Audley went to his brother's house at seven, to dress for the ball, and on his way through the Park encountered a tall rifleman with a pair of laughing eyes, and a general air of devil-may-care. He thrust out his hand. "Kincaid!"
The rifleman grinned at him. "A staff officer with a worried frown! What's the news?"
"There's damned little of it. Are you going to the ball tonight?"