Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (34 page)

‘You will go to Brussels, Colonel?’

Had it been but two troops, the usages of the service would require him to form a squadron under command of the senior of the two captains. Three troops, however, required an officer in overall command, and whereas he might have sent the major, were he at duty, there was no alternative – it might be argued – to taking command in person. ‘I shall. Indeed I shall have to.’

‘You might recall the major a month early from his furlough.’

Hervey smiled. ‘And he might very well not receive the recall!’

‘Or make the senior captain local major.’

‘That would be … unseemly.’

Malet now returned the smile in full measure. ‘You would rather Brussels in June than Hounslow.’

‘Quite so, especially as all I should have to share the barracks with is two troops at most. And perhaps at “more active duty”, as you put it, a solution to the Collins business might ensue.’

Malet looked anxious again.

Hervey held a hand up. ‘I sport, Malet. Have no fear.’

‘Very well, Colonel. Do I take it that one of the other two troops shall be Worsley’s? And the other?’

‘Tyrwhitt’s.’

Malet nodded, but with a frown. ‘I doubt it will be under Tyrwhitt’s command, though. I regret to have to tell you that he’s to be arraigned in Dublin in May.’

This was surprising news, but – Hervey would admit, if only to himself – not unwelcome, for Tyrwhitt’s presence either in Hounslow or Brussels would be something of an embarrassment. ‘Indeed? Is he to return before then? He’s not remanded in arrest?’

‘There was communication only yesterday that the terms of his bail require him to remain in Ireland.’

‘Beyond the Pale?’ He chided himself; he hadn’t meant to make so disparaging a remark.

Malet shook his head despairingly. ‘There was by all accounts a deal of rancour at mess last night. Several knew the lady in question and have a high regard for her.’

It seemed to Hervey that the mess had rancour enough – no mess was ever entirely free of it – and the sooner the officers were put to the mill the better. ‘Well, on
this
case we can bring nothing to bear, so I’m content that Mordaunt shall take D Troop to Brussels.’

‘Very well, Colonel.’

‘Oh, did I say? I gave Wakefield field promotion. Do you think you might calculate when the rank might be made substantive?’

‘You didn’t say, Colonel, but I did hear of it from Mr Rennie.’ He smiled wryly. News of Wakefield’s third stripe had passed from guardhouse to orderly room quicker than had the chaise. ‘For what conspicuous service was this reward?’

‘I shall tell you …’

The rest of orderly room and office was completed with despatch and even some pleasure (for defaulters had been few), so that at one o’clock they were able to mess with the half-dozen or so officers remaining in barracks, an agreeable hour in which Hervey learned a good deal of what had occurred in the world, the bachelor’s world at least, during his Norfolk sojourn – the fiery destruction of the Lyceum theatre; the progress of the bill for Lord Ellenborough’s divorce (though the details of non-cohabitation and Lady Ellenborough’s pregnancy did not go comfortably with him); the London protocols on the sovereignty of Greece, with much sentiment for Lord Byron, which he thought so much nonsense (and said so: ‘The sovereignty proceeded from Codrington’s guns at Navarino, not Byron’s pen’); the speech by Lord Blandford in the House of Commons on the ‘venality of the close and decayed boroughs’, on which even St Alban was moved to keep silence; and then, as if to complete the explosive formula of women, politics and religion, ‘apropos Rennell’ that no less a person than a son of Lord Spencer, a clergyman, had ‘renounced the errors of Protestantism in a Popish chapel in Leicester’, intending to become a minister there – and all the consequence of ‘Emancipation’, which the duke had ‘so imprudently let come to pass’.

Yet all was conducted without heat or acrimony – no recourse to pistols, nor even invective. Was this the true temper of the age, he wondered – unless the lady in question was known to one of them (which was always the possibility, of course – as with Tyrwhitt)? It augured well if it were. In some regiments, such was the in flammatory potential of politics and ‘the sex’ that their colonel made them inadmissible subjects. The Sixth had its blackguards – mercifully few – but he had every right, he believed, to consider the regiment to be the equal of any (except in the extreme of wealth) and the superior of most. The nation was fortunate indeed to have so many younger sons possessing learning and activity, and that so many of them found their way into the army. And yet in reputation, of course, so much depended on appearance – which he knew perfectly was why Malet had been at such pains to press him over his dealing with Kennett. He, however, was more than conscious of the necessity of ‘appearance’, not least his own. Indeed, it was beginning to preoccupy him.

‘I’m glad you’re returned,’ said Fairbrother, matter of fact, throwing an afternoon log on the fire; ‘I found myself in want of leisure. I never did so much in my life.’

‘Not all on my account, I trust,’ said Hervey.

‘Those were merely the most agreeable, though my time with General Gifford hasn’t been without profit too.’

‘How so?’

‘Let me tell you at dinner, for there’s much to tell – not least that I’ve found you the most excellent charger on account of him, and at no very great expense; well, not greatly more than the figure you gave me.’

Hervey looked at him warily. ‘How much more?’

Fairbrother put on a show of pensiveness. ‘“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a cavalryman, seeking goodly horses: who, when he had found one horse of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”’

Hervey smiled. ‘But the man of the gospel who bought the
pearl
of great price was a merchant, who intended turning a profit. I merely have need of a horse that looks and flies like Whistlejacket, but at a tenth of his price.’

‘That indeed was my remit.’

‘And the answer to my question?’

‘The price has not been settled. I’ll tell you more anon.’

‘Very well. Tell me of Wiltshire, meanwhile.’

He did. They sat for an hour and more as Fairbrother regaled him with the universal happiness he had found in that corner of England, which even Cobbett’s pen described as ‘singularly bright and beautiful’ (though he had spoiled the effect by, to Hervey’s mind, the unwarranted assertion that it was ‘not very easy for the eyes of man to discover labouring people more miserable’). His sister, it seemed, was in the bloom of newly wedded bliss, his father was suffused with delight at a canonry which not only promised comfort but also vindication of his churchmanship and even recognition of his modest scholarship (his monograph on Laudian Decorum being now in its third printing), and even his mother’s perpetual anxieties appeared allayed; the
Rittmeister-baron
was, said Fairbrother, as full of good cheer as any man he’d known; and Georgiana … well, there was a most accomplished young lady who, at twelve, was not in the least inferior in conversation to any of the opposite sex.

To Hervey it was consolation. He did not know yet when he himself might visit. Moreover, he had no idea when he might reunite himself permanently with his daughter, as had been so much the intention when he’d taken a wife. But there were greater evils than this, were there not …?

‘I am so much delighted to hear it all,’ he said peacefully.

Fairbrother caught something in the tone nevertheless. ‘But something’s amiss with you, evidently.’

Hervey did not at first respond. As a rule he would not admit to being in the least discomfited by anything so closely connected as his family, so much so that his friend had once said to him that he wondered why a man kept the company of another if he were not to share any thoughts with him but that might be shared with a casual acquaintance at the table of the United Service (he had once trespassed on forbidden ground, his friend’s determination to marry Kezia; and the penalty had been disagreeable).

‘I fancy it’s the situation of Georgiana,’ he suggested, knowing that it was probably not.

Hervey woke, but without the resentment that Fairbrother was half expecting. ‘Georgiana – no, well … yes. But it’s nothing I can apply myself to at the moment.’

‘Well then?’

Hervey shook his head. ‘You know, I’ve waited on the command of the Sixth for as long as I’ve thought myself equal to it …’

Fairbrother smiled to himself, supposing that moment to be not long after Cornet Hervey had joined his first troop. Yet he couldn’t quite believe that his friend was thus preoccupied. He knew he’d called at Walden. Was he going to speak of it?

‘And I’d thought that the power of command would permit me …’

Hervey fell silent, and Fairbrother sought to give form to his friend’s thoughts – or what his friend would wish to believe were his thoughts (Walden he must leave to his own good time). ‘
Urbem lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit
.’
^fn1

Hervey laughed. ‘How you flatter me! But I would say that Rome was a fine city before, that Augustus only added to it. So in that sense I accept your flattery.’

‘Recall also that Augustus was forty years emperor. You have but a fraction of that.’

‘Indeed.’ But Hervey shook his head, and then cut to the point. ‘Collins will be court-martialled. There’s nothing I can do – nothing I can do in law – to prevent it.’

Fairbrother sighed. ‘You don’t think you’re in want of dispassion in this?’

‘Call it what you will. I’ve known Collins since the Peninsula. And in Canada …’

Fairbrother knew about Canada (Johnson had told him), when the Shawanese had left Armstrong for dead, and Henrietta as good as, and Collins had tracked them for days, beaten them at their own game, on their own ground, and put a noose round the neck of every one of them. And Henrietta’s year’s mind fell at this time. It must go hard with his friend yet.

‘Of course,’ he said, simply.

Silence.

‘I’ll engage the best counsel,’ declared Hervey suddenly. ‘Money shall be no object. Malet’s already been to see the Judge Advocate General.’

Fairbrother shook his head. ‘Then there will be much law but no guarantee of justice. I do say we would have disposed of these things better in the King’s Africans.’

Hervey was still elsewhere. ‘What?’

‘No matter – a peccant notion.’

‘What is?’

‘It’s of no account. I spoke without thinking.’

‘It’s a habit of yours, which I find most congenial.’

‘Then it shall ever be so. But now that I do come to think of it, I have only lately remembered that it is Saturday and I have an engagement in Covent Garden.’

‘What? It has been Saturday since first you rose this morning. How now do you remember an engagement? We’re to talk of matters at dinner, I’d thought. I’ve not told you yet of Norfolk.’

‘No, but Johnson has. By the bye, he says the word in barracks is that a man who rides with you comes back on his shield or else with another stripe.’

Hervey frowned. Barracks banter – a most perilous thing to acquire a taste for (tasty as it might be). Poor Agar, brave Acton, and now Wakefield – was that how the doyens of the canteen saw it? But his friend had evidently made convivial arrangements … ‘Well, let me not keep you from your theatre. I hear, by the way, the Lyceum’s burned down.’

‘I was never much fond of opera, there being none to hear in my salad days. But a good song …’

‘Sung by a fair singer …’

‘Fair or dark.’

Hervey smiled. ‘See, I’ll come with you – as far as the United Service, for there are things I can do. We can take horses from the livery here. A canter’s a cure for every evil. How is General Gifford, indeed – other than of a mind to sell a horse?’

‘Quite well,’ replied Fairbrother, guardedly. ‘He’s removed to his house. Why?’

‘I … I thought I might visit with him … tomorrow … To thank him.’

It was a little before six, an awkward hour to call, but not impossible. He ought perhaps to have gone to the United Service first, changed into fresh clothes and taken a hackney to Holland Park, but paying an unexpected call at this time was in any case most unlikely to find anyone at home, and then all he would have done was waste time and expense.

He sprang clear of the saddle, endeavouring to keep his coat clean (the gelding had sweated), took up the reins and pulled on the doorbell.

‘Colonel Hervey, sir,’ said the footman in evident – and delighted – surprise.

‘Good evening, George. Is her ladyship at home?’

The elder and longest-serving of Kat’s footmen bowed. ‘I will see, Colonel. I shall send a groom at once for your horse.’

A stable lad came running, and then the footman returned. ‘Her ladyship asks if you will wait in her sitting room, Colonel.’

He sighed with relief. ‘Thank you; I shall.’

It had been many months since he’d waited in Kat’s sitting room – a year, at least, or was it two? (He didn’t want to calculate; it was unseemly.) A fire burned, there were many candles; it was all pleasingly unaltered (and so much warmer, in every sense, than Walden). He stood before the chimneypiece and tried to compose himself appropriately. They had been lovers, and there was issue from that love, which Kat had contrived, evidently with success, to pass off otherwise – heir to Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine Greville, lieutenant-governor of Alderney and Sark, a man so high on the gradation list as to be by rights pensionable, but whom the authorities, for reasons best known to them, found convenient to keep on the full-pay. Hervey was not proud of his falseness – indeed he was not – but Sir Peregrine was evidently content with his situation (in his ignorance, that is). He appeared to like London not very much, while liking a good deal the fishing for which his appointment provided ample time; and he found that neither his duties as commandant of what had once been the foremost garrison ’gainst the French, nor those as member in the Tory interest for the ‘close and decayed’ parliamentary borough of St Felix (consisting of three houses and seven voters, most of the borough having long fallen into the sea), brought him thence more than two or three times a year. In these circumstances, and the difference in their age, it had to be unsurprising that Kat had found the society of men such as Hervey both agreeable and ready; and for his part, inasmuch as he dare think about it, Hervey absolved himself with the notion that he took nothing from the lieutenant-general, for the lieutenant-general availeth himself not.