The Actress in High Life / An Episode in Winter Quarters

by Sue Petigru Bowen

"He is an old man, a general officer, and my father," said Lady Mabel. "After a life of hard service in the worst climates in the world, he may need indulgences not necessary to younger men. Besides, he is obliged to see so much of his officers. If he could choose his companions, he would lead a very different life. When we happen to be alone here," continued Lady Mabel, "he never sits long after dinner, seldom touches a cigar, and it is evidently only his position, and the habits forced upon him in a long military career, which interfere with his quiet tastes and love of domestic life."

L'Isle looked at Lady Mabel to see if she was in earnest. She had only said what she willingly believed on rather slight foundations. In truth, the novelty of having his daughter with him on the few occasions on which they were here left alone together, had proved of quite sufficient interest to enable Lord Strathern to dispense with other society and excitements, and led him to look back and to speak much of his short married life, and far beyond that, the days of his boyhood. L'Isle found himself convicted of contributing, with others, to mar the comfort and spoil the habits of the most abstemious and domestic old gentleman in the king's service. This was plainly a point on which it was not safe to contradict Lady Mabel, if he would keep in her good graces—so he gladly waved the discussion.

Mrs. Shortridge, under the reviving influence of her love of sight-seeing, now asked L'Isle to suggest some excursion for them, on which they might see something new. But she begged that it might be within a reasonable distance, for she had been so thoroughly shaken on the rough paths to and from Evora, that she was not yet up to another long ride.

"Cranfield has just been talking of Fort la Lippe," said L'Isle, "which overlooks us from the North. Let us make up a party to visit it to-morrow. Cranfield can entertain and instruct us by discoursing on this masterpiece of the Count de Lippe, and unveil the mysteries of the engineer's art. In the intervals, we can, from that high point, survey the country around us."

Cranfield eagerly seconded the proposal. Anything that looked like diversion was welcome to the ladies and the idlers about them, and Lady Mabel, somewhat mollified, condescended to approve of it.

Accordingly, the next morning she met, by appointment, Mrs. Shortridge and the three Portuguese ladies at the foot of the long flight of steps that lead up to the cathedral of Elvas. They were accompanied by L'Isle, Cranfield, and half a dozen gentlemen more, including the young surgeon of the —— regiment, who was always imagining that Lady Mabel had a cold, headache, or some other little ailment, that he might have the pleasure of prescribing for it. Irreverently turning their backs on the old church, without one prayer to the saints within, or those depicted on its windows of stained glass, they walked out of town down into the narrow valley lying north of the city, and crossing the brook which runs at the bottom (the Portuguese, making a river of it, have christened it the Seto), on the few stepping-stones which well supply the place of a foot-bridge, they toiled up the opposite hill, the lower part of which is covered with a grove of prickly oaks.

On reaching the gate Captain Cranfield stepped forward to the head of the party, and entered zealously on his duties as cicerone. He led them through the spacious barracks, in which the scanty garrison seemed buried in monastic seclusion; through the huge store-houses and bomb-proof kitchens and bakeries; showed them the vast tank containing water for a full garrison for a year; and what was better, a natural spring, welling out mysteriously within the circuit of the works. From the ramparts of this huge coronet that crowned the head of this eminence, he pointed out the strength of the position, the efficiency of the works, and their importance to the safety of Elvas. From this stronghold, with the works of the city and Fort St. Lucia on the other side of it, lying before them, Cranfield discoursed at length on his art, dealing largely in its technical terms: bastions, and curtains, covered ways, scarps and counter scarps, with ravelins thrown out in front of them, until Mrs. Shortridge, who listened with open-mouthed admiration, got so confused that she imagined that a ravelin was some kind of missile to be hurled at the French. Dona Carlotta and the other Portuguese ladies were not so attentive, not understanding the language of the lecturer, and feeling less interest in the defence of their country than in the attentions of the foreign officers, who were devoting themselves to their special service. But Lady Mabel, who prided herself on being a soldier's daughter, lent a willing ear to Cranfield, asked many questions, and even contrived to understand much that he had to say.

L'Isle now thought that the engineer had held the first place in Lady Mabel's attention long enough; so he broke in upon his eulogy on this inland Gibraltar, the master-piece of "o gran Conde de Lippe."

"The whole thing is certainly grand and complete in itself," said he, looking around; "and is a monument to the engineering talents of the Count de Lippe. But, after all, constructing a great fortress in Portugal is like building a ducal palace on a dairy farm; the thing may be very fine in itself, but is altogether out of place. Half a dozen such strongholds as Elvas, with its forts, would swallow up the Portuguese army, yet be but half garrisoned, and leave not a man to take the field. See the extent of the works between this and St. Lucia, that other sentinel standing guard over Elvas on the south. It would need twelve thousand men to garrison the city and the forts. I never heard that this fortress was of use to any but the French, who got it without fighting; and the possession of it helped them to obtain the convention of Cintra; but for which we would have tumbled Junot and his fellows into the Tagus. The Count de Lippe was wonderfully successful in regenerating the army, and restoring the military character of Portugal in the last century; but his countryman, Schomberg, in the century before, showed how Portugal could be better defended, and we have now in the country one who understands it better than the Duke de Schomberg himself."

There was so much truth in what L'Isle said, that Cranfield was obliged to yield up his impregnable fortress as a very fine thing in itself, but quite out of place.