When the noise of the cannonading was over, Mrs. O’Dowd issued out of Amelia’s room into the parlour adjoining, where Jos sate with two emptied flasks, and courage entirely gone. Once or twice he had ventured into his sister’s bedroom, looking very much alarmed, and as if he would say something. But the Major’s wife kept her place, and he went away without disburthening himself of his speech. He was ashamed to tell her that he wanted to fly.
But when she made her appearance in the dining-room, where he sate in the twilight in the cheerless company of his empty champagne bottles, he began to open his mind to her.
“Mrs. O’Dowd,” he said, “hadn’t you better get Amelia ready?”
“Are you going to take her out for a walk?” said the Major’s lady; “sure she’s too weak to stir.”
“I — I’ve ordered the carriage,” he said, “and — and post-horses; Isidor is gone for them,” Jos continued.
“What do you want with driving to-night?” answered the lady. “Isn’t she better on her bed? I’ve just got her to lie down.”
“Get her up,” said Jos; “she must get up, I say”: and he stamped his foot energetically. “I say the horses are ordered — yes, the horses are ordered. It’s all over, and — ”
“And what?” asked Mrs. O’Dowd.
“I’m off for Ghent,” Jos answered. “Everybody is going; there’s a place for you! We shall start in half-an-hour.”
The Major’s wife looked at him with infinite scorn. “I don’t move till O’Dowd gives me the route,” said she. “You may go if you like, Mr. Sedley; but, faith, Amelia and I stop here.”
“She SHALL go,” said Jos, with another stamp of his foot. Mrs. O’Dowd put herself with arms akimbo before the bedroom door.
“Is it her mother you’re going to take her to?” she said; “or do you want to go to Mamma yourself, Mr. Sedley? Good marning — a pleasant journey to ye, sir. Bon voyage, as they say, and take my counsel, and shave off them mustachios, or they’ll bring you into mischief.”
“D-n!” yelled out Jos, wild with fear, rage, and mortification; and Isidor came in at this juncture, swearing in his turn. “Pas de chevaux, sacre bleu!” hissed out the furious domestic. All the horses were gone. Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized with panic that day.
But Jos’s fears, great and cruel as they were already, were destined to increase to an almost frantic pitch before the night was over. It has been mentioned how Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle also in the ranks of the army that had gone out to meet the Emperor Napoleon. This lover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian hussar. The troops of his nation signalised themselves in this war for anything but courage, and young Van Cutsum, Pauline’s admirer, was too good a soldier to disobey his Colonel’s orders to run away. Whilst in garrison at Brussels young Regulus (he had been born in the revolutionary times) found his great comfort, and passed almost all his leisure moments, in Pauline’s kitchen; and it was with pockets and holsters crammed full of good things from her larder, that he had take leave of his weeping sweetheart, to proceed upon the campaign a few days before.
As far as his regiment was concerned, this campaign was over now. They had formed a part of the division under the command of his Sovereign apparent, the Prince of Orange, and as respected length of swords and mustachios, and the richness of uniform and equipments, Regulus and his comrades looked to be as gallant a body of men as ever trumpet sounded for.
When Ney dashed upon the advance of the allied troops, carrying one position after the other, until the arrival of the great body of the British army from Brussels changed the aspect of the combat of Quatre Bras, the squadrons among which Regulus rode showed the greatest activity in retreating before the French, and were dislodged from one post and another which they occupied with perfect alacrity on their part. Their movements were only checked by the advance of the British in their rear. Thus forced to halt, the enemy’s cavalry (whose bloodthirsty obstinacy cannot be too severely reprehended) had at length an opportunity of coming to close quarters with the brave Belgians before them; who preferred to encounter the British rather than the French, and at once turning tail rode through the English regiments that were behind them, and scattered in all directions. The regiment in fact did not exist any more. It was nowhere. It had no head-quarters. Regulus found himself galloping many miles from the field of action, entirely alone; and whither should he fly for refuge so naturally as to that kitchen and those faithful arms in which Pauline had so often welcomed him?
At some ten o’clock the clinking of a sabre might have been heard up the stair of the house where the Osbornes occupied a story in the continental fashion. A knock might have been heard at the kitchen door; and poor Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost with terror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar. He looked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora. Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her masters, and discovered her friend. She stifled her scream, then, and leading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bits from the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste. The hussar showed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beer which he devoured — and during the mouthfuls he told his tale of disaster.
His regiment had performed prodigies of courage, and had withstood for a while the onset of the whole French army. But they were overwhelmed at last, as was the whole British army by this time. Ney destroyed each regiment as it came up. The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent the butchery of the English. The Brunswickers were routed and had fled — their Duke was killed. It was a general debacle. He sought to drown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of beer.
Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, heard the conversation and rushed out to inform his master. “It is all over,” he shrieked to Jos. “Milor Duke is a prisoner; the Duke of Brunswick is killed; the British army is in full flight; there is only one man escaped, and he is in the kitchen now — come and hear him.” So Jos tottered into that apartment where Regulus still sate on the kitchen table, and clung fast to his flagon of beer. In the best French which he could muster, and which was in sooth of a very ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hussar to tell his tale. The disasters deepened as Regulus spoke. He was the only man of his regiment not slain on the field. He had seen the Duke of Brunswick fall, the black hussars fly, the Ecossais pounded down by the cannon. “And the -th?” gasped Jos.
“Cut in pieces,” said the hussar — upon which Pauline cried out, “O my mistress, ma bonne petite dame,” went off fairly into hysterics, and filled the house with her screams.
Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not how or where to seek for safety. He rushed from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, and cast an appealing look at Amelia’s door, which Mrs. O’Dowd had closed and locked in his face; but he remembered how scornfully the latter had received him, and after pausing and listening for a brief space at the door, he left it, and resolved to go into the street, for the first time that day. So, seizing a candle, he looked about for his gold-laced cap, and found it lying in its usual place, on a console-table, in the anteroom, placed before a mirror at which Jos used to coquet, always giving his side-locks a twirl, and his cap the proper cock over his eye, before he went forth to make appearance in public. Such is the force of habit, that even in the midst of his terror he began mechanically to twiddle with his hair, and arrange the cock of his hat. Then he looked amazed at the pale face in the glass before him, and especially at his mustachios, which had attained a rich growth in the course of near seven weeks, since they had come into the world. They WILL mistake me for a military man, thought he, remembering Isidor’s warning as to the massacre with which all the defeated British army was threatened; and staggering back to his bedchamber, he began wildly pulling the bell which summoned his valet.