Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (35 page)

‘Matthew.’

He turned.

Kat was not dressed for the theatre, evidently, or a levee; he supposed therefore she could give him her time – a double relief.

And the sight of her was exactly as it had always been. Even without jewels and ornaments she lit up the room as surely as she had at Windsor. She kissed him and then sat, indicating the chair adjacent.

‘I’m sorry I sent you no word. I returned from Norfolk only yesterday.’

‘Then I’m honoured, for you must have come at once – before, even, you had discharged all your duties … But no, you would never have been able to forgo duty.’

She said it so sweetly and with such a pleasant smile that he could not find her teasing (no matter that it was with an edge) in the least discomfiting.

‘How is Captain Peto? You saw him, I suppose?’

‘I did, and found him quite remarkably well – thanks, I may say, to your good offices.’

Kat shook her head ever so slightly. ‘It was nothing. George Cholmondeley was at once amenable – what was it, now, eighteen months ago? I saw him only lately, and he said that Captain Peto was greatly restored and in excellent spirits. He has a most devoted nurse, I understand.’

Hervey supposed she knew of matters precisely – she had a way with these things – but didn’t wish to explore it. The waters were too deep. ‘Admirable, admirable.’

‘Shall you have a little supper with me?’

‘I … had not … I thank you, yes.’

She pulled the bell, and the footman came. ‘Colonel Hervey will take supper this evening, George. There is no one else, is there?’

‘No, m’lady.’

‘Very well.’

‘M’lady.’

‘You have no establishment to return to at Hounslow then,’ she asked – suggested – when George was gone.

‘I … well, that is … for the moment, at least, we put up at the Berkeley Arms at Cranford. We – that is – Fairbrother and I. He did me great service, you know, in Bulgaria last year – and before that, of course, at the Cape.’

‘And you are to take a house soon? The Hol’nesses’ perhaps?’

‘I … I think not, for the moment … There is much to be about. The Low Countries …’

He supposed she knew the situation at Hounslow as precisely as she did that at Houghton, for she was a patroness of Almack’s:
All on the magic list depends / Fame, fortune, fashion, lovers, friends
. And their business was everybody’s.

‘But lonely, it must be,’ (she said solicitously) ‘the exercise of command, without one to share its trials and tribulations – and, of course, its delights.’

‘You speak as one with experience.’ He regretted saying it. It was unkind, for it was true. But it was as near as he intended acknowledging her enquiry.

‘But I entered upon my contract knowingly, my eyes wide open, Matthew, and Sir Peregrine likewise.’

He said nothing.

‘You, however, entered upon yours honourably. I do not say that I did otherwise, for mine was not “taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly”, as the Church cautions, and most definitely not to satisfy “carnal lusts and appetites”; but it was not, I freely admit, for the causes for which matrimony was supposedly ordained, except perhaps in the extreme of the meaning of “help and comfort in prosperity”.’

Her recall of the Prayer Book was quite exact. Indeed, he found her quite reverent for once – almost earnest.

‘But you, Matthew – you wished, did you not, in all sincerity, to embrace those causes?’

‘Kat, I …’

‘And, as I understand it, those causes are now denied you.’

But how did she understand it? By whose word? Was it, in any case, true that the causes were denied him? And how had he exerted himself in those causes? And were not these early days, still?

What nonsense! He deluded himself; had he not walked from Walden Park knowing he would never return?

‘Matthew, I make no judgements, I merely speak as I find. And I find you … if not unhappy, then less happy than you have a right to be. And in being less than rightfully happy, others about you must be less so.’

This, however, was a proposition he could find no warrant for in his own experience. He was sure of it. He had always been able to leave behind whatever melancholy beset him as soon as the trumpet sounded.

And yet he owed her more than simply pretending now, as they spoke, that indeed he heard the trumpet. They had for too long been one flesh.

‘Kat, I …’

She smiled compassionately as his words petered out. ‘There is so much to speak of, Matthew.’ She laid a hand on his reassuringly. ‘And there is time this evening.’

In Rules, which had now become quite his favourite place to entertain his growing circle of Garden acquaintances, Fairbrother was dining too, and with not one but two pairs of fine eyes. And so charmingly and wittily attentive he was to them that neither lady could have noticed how from time to time he glanced about the room, and to one, empty, table in particular – a table which of late had become the property, so to speak, of a considerable swell; a table commanding the room – the
street
, for to gaze within by any window would be to see this
table d’honneur
beyond any other. Indeed each Saturday since his friend had left for Norfolk, and several other evenings also, Fairbrother had observed at that table the noisy consumption of champagne and the exaltation of its provider. He was, indeed, a little disappointed that it remained so quiet this night, but was consoled by the thought that it was kept for the arrival of the generous pockets. Meanwhile he’d bought champagne himself, for he’d come a little late, and his ladies were already seated. He arrived, however, with nosegays of spring violets, explaining that he had gone to the flower market and been detained speaking with two of the porters – ‘excellent fellows’ whom he had met on several occasions – and that he trusted the posies would explain his discourtesy, and the wine make up for it. And they replied that they’d made nothing of it, for the
maître d’hôtel
had told them that he had come in earlier to reserve especially this table before going in search of flowers. So their dinner was as agreeable as on previous evenings, with Fairbrother now all attention – so agreeable indeed that they did not notice the arrival of the swell at the
table d’honneur
an hour or so later.

‘Ladies, would you permit me to leave you for a moment, so that I may have words of business with one who is lately come?’

How could they refuse him? Especially when he had beckoned the waiter to bring them more champagne.

He left them to the popping of the cork, and slipped outside unobserved, the curtains by the door as good as the tabs and legs that masked the wings on the stage that his charming companions had not long quit that evening.

‘Ronald?’

A man of broad shoulders and few teeth emerged from the pool of darkness that was the entrance to Bull-inn Court. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘And Billy?’

Ronald indicated that Billy was in the shadows behind him.

Fairbrother beckoned them to follow.

They crossed the street and stopped short of one of the windows a little way along (Rules was as well-lit outside as in). Fairbrother took a look and then bid his accomplice do the same.

‘See, the table I pointed to you earlier – the man with the yellow neckcloth?’

‘I see ’im, sir.’

‘Sure of it?’

‘Never surer, sir. Never forget a face.’

They withdrew along the street, back into the shadows.

‘Very well. Use what threats and devices you will, but no bones broken, no bruises to see.’

‘Don’t you worry, sir.’

‘Then here’s the sovereign, and the other to follow when your powers of persuasion have proved effective.’

‘Aye, sir. You can depend on it.’

‘I bid you good night then, Ronald. I’ll leave with my guests presently. You, I’m afraid, will have a rather longer wait.’

‘Don’t you be worrying about us, sir. We waits all night anyway, us porters. That’s the Garden.’

Fairbrother shook Ronald’s hand, and Billy’s, and made back for the door of Rules, content now in his stratagem. ‘Condemned battalion’ his Royal Africans may have been, but their ways weren’t always inferior. Less law, maybe; but more justice – unquestionably.

Next morning, having bathed and changed clothes, Hervey called on Lord George Irvine after church. He had not thought to do so at first, but a most agreeable development of the evening before made it no longer necessary to call on General Gifford.

It had been a most uncertain plan in any case, but the only one he could conceive of that avoided felony. He had no scruple regarding such a felony, only a concern not to implicate others – not least because it would compromise his own integrity in command. ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ – it was all, indeed, that he need have said, and Collins’s – his – problems would have been at an end. Except that, actions having consequences for ill as well as for good, who knew what would happen after the riddance? And so he had resolved on action by his own hand, intending to call on General Gifford and explain the situation, asking his advice – it was not unheard of for an officer to ask counsel of a senior; and in the course of their conversation, though he had no very clear idea how, he might suggest that Lieutenant Kennett be appointed to his staff, with the free promotion that such an appointment would carry. On condition, of course – as Gifford himself would have to make plain – that all proceedings with respect to Collins were dropped; for it would not do for an aide-de-camp at the Horse Guards to be embroiled in an affair that might excite the public interest (such a reason was surely plausible?). He had hoped that he would not at any point have to allude to the circumstances in which his friend Fairbrother had discovered the wounded general, but had been perfectly prepared to do so.

But all this was now unnecessary. He would be spared – the general too – the indelicacy of such an interview. Kat had insisted she would arrange matters. He had not thought at first to speak of it, but she herself had raised the ‘terrible affair of Bobby Gifford’ (she knew him well – of course). And Hervey had told her of the connection with Fairbrother, and then as the evening wore on the story of Kennett and Collins, and so much more (how good it was to be able to speak freely), and somehow the plan had been revealed, and Kat had said, ‘But Matthew, Bobby is such a dear man. Were I to tell him all this he would at once do as I ask. You must permit me. I can call tomorrow. It will be the easiest thing. Believe me.’

And all he’d been able to say, for such was the hour and his relief that here was Collins’s deliverance – and his own (for who knew how Gifford might react to his implied threats) – was that she was the very finest of women, her goodness to him knew no bounds, and he was ever in her debt.

fn1
‘He found a city of bricks and left a city of marble.’

For the Netherlands have been for many years, as one may say, the very cockpit of Christendom, the school of arms and rendezvous of all adventurous spirits and cadets …

James Howell, clerk in the diplomatic service
,
Instructions for Foreign Travel (
1642
)

1. The union shall be intimate and complete, so that the two countries shall form but one State, to be governed by the Fundamental Law already established in Holland, which by mutual consent shall be modified according to the circumstances.

2. There shall be no change in those Articles of the Fundamental Law which secure to all religious cults equal protection and privileges, and guarantee the admissibility of all citizens, whatever be their religious creed, to public offices and dignities.

3. The Belgian provinces shall be in a fitting manner represented in the States-General, whose sittings in time of peace shall be held by turns in a Dutch and a Belgian town.

4. All the inhabitants of the Netherlands thus having equal constitutional rights, they shall have equal claim to all commercial and other rights, of which their circumstances allow, without any hindrance or obstruction being imposed on any to the profit of others.

5. Immediately after the union the provinces and towns of Belgium shall be admitted to the commerce and navigation of the colonies of Holland upon the same footing as the Dutch provinces and towns.

6. The debts contracted on the one side by the Dutch, and on the other side by the Belgian provinces, shall be charged to the public chest of the Netherlands.

7. The expenses required for the building and maintenance of the frontier fortresses of the new State shall be borne by the public chest as serving the security and independence of the whole nation.

8. The cost of the making and upkeep of the dykes shall be at the charge of the districts more directly interested, except in the case of an extraordinary disaster.

The Eight Articles of London,
also known as the London Protocol of 21 June 1814,
homologated by the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna
on 9 June 1815