Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey)

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘I fancy it is somehow all of a piece.’

  ‘It doesn’t follow in the least.’

  Fairbrother had been the cynic for so many years that he might himself have supplied the answers, but he relished disputation, especially at a good table. ‘You don’t suppose that Reform would somehow be the progenitor of better things?’

  Hervey looked at his friend with incredulity. ‘Indeed I do not! For all its ills, I believe the country to be soundly governed – soundly enough governed; as soundly as may be. You may scorn the Tories for believing in the divine right of kings, but the Whigs merely believe in the divine right of noblemen. It seems to me the prospects for a man with ability but without means are greater under the Tories than under those who would control matters with their wealth. Both, I grant you, are imperfect, but so is mankind.’

  ‘There speaks a son of the church!’

  ‘I speak as I find.’

  ‘Then you would go through life content with the choice always between two evils rather than trying to rid the world of both?’

  ‘Great heavens, Fairbrother, I’m a soldier, not a … dreamer.’

  ‘Well, let me opine – I may say as a dispassionate observer – that Reform will oppress your Duke of Wellington sorely. I am strange to your affairs, of course, but not so much that I cannot sense the common indignation – for all that we are only come back these few weeks. And because he freed the Catholics he will have to yield to loyal Protestants. Indeed, I have read there are some of his own party who would have Reform on just this cause – to check the advance of these very Catholics.’

  No one was more surprised than he, Hervey, that the duke had become the repealing prime minister – for all the duke’s famed expediency: a good general knows when to retreat, and has the courage to do so. It was a motto he himself had taken to heart, though it was easier said than done – especially without friends at court. ‘Upon my word, you have not been idle these past weeks.’

  Fairbrother inclined his head to acknowledge the compliment. ‘There were plenty in the United Service who would talk if they thought they had an audience. Therefore – let us not shrink from the thought – if the duke opposes the sentiment and there is unrest, as there must be, therein lie opportunities for distinction for the soldier. Did His Grace himself not have to fight a duel last year?’

  Hervey frowned. The duel was indeed an unedifying affair, but ultimately of no account – a slight by the Earl of Winchelsea during the passage of the Catholic Relief Act (though he knew no more about it than he’d read in the newspapers and heard tattled in Pall Mall – if evidently less than his friend). ‘My dear Fairbrother, this is not Paris. Englishmen do not dig up the cobblestones and erect barricades – not at any rate Englishmen of the sort that seek suffrage.’

  But Fairbrother would not be shaken. He had seen the lust for glass and blood – as he put it – that lurked in the breast of the lower orders, in the small affairs that passed for revolt in Jamaica. ‘The mob, Hervey, the mob.’

  It was folly to deny it. The mob: mobile vulgus, the vacillating crowd, that to which proper Tory government – in parliament the knights of the shires; in the shires themselves the gentry – must ever be alert. It could not be ordered by draconian government – certainly not alone (look at what Lord Liverpool’s ‘Six Acts’ had wrought a dozen years before). No, the good ordering of society by those who stood high in it was worth a hundred enforcing yeomen. Compassion – not toleration of idleness, but recognition that ills came also to the deserving poor – was a principle of good government, as well as a right Christian one. But in the end there could be no pandering to the mob.

  Hervey sighed. ‘It will have come to a pretty pass if advancement follows on scattering the mob. It would make us no better than Fouché’s policemen.’

  ‘Then by your own reckoning you are condemned to an eternity at Hounslow!’

  ‘Perhaps it shall do me good. Perhaps it is time to plant cabbages.’

  ‘Pish! Plant cabbages in this frozen earth?’

  ‘I should of course wait for more clement weather. We do speak figuratively, do we not?’

  ‘As you will. But let me lay a wager – that you shall see action ere the year is out.’

  Hervey frowned doubtfully. ‘Where?’

  ‘That would be soothsaying, whereas I was merely prophesying.’

  ‘By “action” I couldn’t count the mob.’

  ‘Nor I – though that will come likewise soon. I mean against the French.’

  ‘The French? How so? They’ve had their dice with adventure.’

  ‘Or the Austrians, or the Prussians. Or for that matter, the Russians.’

  Hervey’s frown turned to a look of wry assurance. ‘Then I should be taking your money as a common thief. There is not the least chance of war; Vienna put paid to that, did it not? Do we not have the Concert of Europe? Have they not abolished war?’

  ‘I shall not rise to the bait. You do not believe that. Castlereagh’s “Balance of power” will be a Moloch: it will continually require a blood sacrifice.’

  Hervey had never been of a mind that in this world the lion would be caused to lie down with the lamb, though he did believe that a stout fold could be made, and that a good pack of dogs could see off the ravening beasts. It made for interesting discourse before the turbot was finished, and then with renewed vigour as the entrees were brought, and afterwards a pudding too rich for either of them to do justice to.

  And when Landlord Ellis and his parlour-maids had cleared all away and brought them port, of which they drank only a very little, and that of the lightest sort, they talked some more of the ‘condition of England’, and then of the regiment – or Hervey’s regiment, as Fairbrother, with propriety, insisted – until the clocks about the inn variously began striking the final hour, and Hervey rose and made his excuses to his friend, for, he explained, there were letters yet to write, and he was unsure what time they would return from Maidenhead tomorrow. And Fairbrother was more than content to retire – with one of the decanters, for, he explained, it would warm him in his bed as he read a page or two of The Examiner (it had become of late his favourite reading on, as its proprietors proclaimed, ‘politics, domestic economy, and theatricals’) – knowing that Hervey must be about his business early and bright in the morrow, while he himself could rise at his leisure.

  ‘I bid you, then, “good night” – Colonel.’

  Hervey waved him adieu, chaffed him on the merits of rising before noon, and watched the door close.

  And he was content with it thus, for he could not ask more of his friend, especially in this bleakest of midwinters, than to sup with him and hear his thoughts with sympathy and discretion – and, in due course, no doubt, with wise counsel. As for the letters that would keep him now from his own bed the while … Well, those to home must rightly take precedence – or rather, to Wiltshire (the reply to Princess Lieven’s, which Malet had presented, would wait): to the Venerable the Archdeacon of Salisbury (or Sarum, as his father preferred, ever mindful of the time before the Reformation); and of course to Elizabeth, a sister more devoted than any man had right to call his own; and to Miss Hervey – Georgiana, who was rising twelve (and who might thus expect something more than a childlike line or two), a daughter who had scarce spent one month true with her father, and who now bore a resemblance to her late mother that would only become more painful with the years.

  In the event they did not detain him too long, being mere expressions of hope that he would see them ere too much time had passed – just as soon as duty permitted (a formula he knew was worn thin, but the only coat, so to speak, that he knew how to wear). And then he retired to his bed – a bed warmed by the pan coals and the hot-water stone, but empty.

  And with the darkness, the exhilaration of command suddenly extinguished, like the candle, there came again the wretched solitude. In the year following the death of Henrietta, he now recognized, he had been merely confused, hopelessly thrown. And
then when somehow he had found himself able to take up the reins once more – back in uniform, a man under authority – the true import of her loss had sapped at him more insidiously. On his passage to India, night after night he had lain sleepless in his berth – thinking about her not being there; and then thinking about his not sleeping for thinking about her. And there had seemed no way out of thinking. The futility of it all could oppress him still. Yet that had been then, and this was now; but, oh, what a further falling off was there. His solitude was made infinitely worse by self-knowledge, that he had taken a wife who was no wife, that it was his own fault, for he had done so ‘unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly’, as the Prayer Book warned against; and before that had taken another man’s wife … the ‘manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed’. He had put Kat from his mind a year ago – almost two years ago. But she kept returning. No matter what, she kept returning. He did not rightly understand why. She had never possessed him body and soul, as Henrietta had done (at least, he did not think she had). There might be days, weeks, even perhaps whole months, when she did not return; but then, at no especial time – nothing demanding a bosom for solace – her face would come before him. It came before him now. And he wished her here beside him. Not ‘to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites’ – though that, he knew, would entail – but for the ‘mutual society, help, and comfort’ expressed in embrace, as the Prayer Book promised. But it could never be. He had taken another man’s wife, but he could not compound the adultery by doing so while himself now bound by the vows of matrimony. He was thus condemned to the empty bed, to the darkness without embrace. There would be temptations, occasions, opportunities, and his feet were no less of clay than those of better men than he. But he would fight the temptations, for he knew too well the sickening of the soul that followed: ‘Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body’ – Corinthians (how wise, now, that admonishing man of Tarsus seemed). But Paul was a saint, and he himself a mere man: might there not be some sinless comfort – some Shunammite to keep him warm, as the ageing David: ‘So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel … and brought her to the king. And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not.’

  But kindly sleep came instead, knitting up the ravelled sleeve as always in the end it did – and for which he would give thanks, as habitually he did, though knowing that sleep was but a passing balm.

  fn1 ‘Look behind thee, and remember thou art but a man’ – the words of the crouching slave in the chariot, that in the triumphant procession the honoured general might not forget his limits and mortality.

  III

  PRINCIPLES OF MILITARY MOVEMENTS

  Next morning

  Shaved, dressed, booted and spurred, breakfasted on ham, buttered eggs, toasted bread and coffee exemplary in its heat, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey put on his forage cap, fastened the chain of the cloak which Lance-Corporal Johnson had been holding to the hearty blaze in the Berkeley Arms’s great fireplace, pulled on his gloves, took up his sword-scabbard, nodded to the adjutant, and stepped out into the frozen courtyard.

  ‘Hep!’

  The Sixth’s peculiar executive word of command – every regiment’s was in some degree different – brought the half-dozen dragoons to attention in the saddle (among them Serjeant Acton, lately corporal, Hervey’s coverman in the Levant). The regimental serjeant-major, dismounted, took one step forward, halting with an emphatic crunching of snow, and saluted. ‘Good morning, Colonel.’

  Hervey returned the compliments. ‘Good morning, Mr Rennie. We might be in Galicia, think you not?’

  The RSM may have been an extract – brought in from another regiment (the 4th Dragoon Guards, Lord Holderness’s old corps) – but he had seen service as an orderly with Moore in the Peninsula, one of the few left in either mess (and fewer still in the canteen) who had charged against the French in that bitter cold, retrograde march to Corunna.

  But Rennie was ever a man of formality: ‘Yes, Colonel; the ground is frozen very hard.’

  An Armstrong or a Collins would have found some cheery retort from his stock of regimental banter – as indeed would have Lincoln in his pomp. But it was early days, perhaps – a new commanding officer. Hervey contented himself with a respectful ‘Indeed, Sar’nt-Major’, and took the reins of his temporary charger from the orderly dragoon. Perhaps Rennie’s formality was anyway for the best, recalling that at the end of the march to Corunna the lieutenant-colonel had blown his brains out.

  It could be a perilous business, mounting, at the best of times – perilous to the pride, at least – even with stirrup leathers long. On snow running to ice, with an untried horse, the odds on involuntarily dismounting (as the saying went) were reduced further. Nevertheless, Hervey waved away the mounting block – a barrel got from the Berkeley’s cellarman – not trusting its capacity to remain upright, shortened the offside rein so that the charger, if it had a mind to, could only swing its quarters towards him, placed his left foot in the stirrup and sprang into the saddle with the speed of a seasoned tumbler.

  ‘Very well, Mr Malet.’

  The adjutant, who had managed to mount with no less agility but without the attention of the assembled party, gave the nod to the point-men, and the cavalcade set off. As they left the yard they were joined by Fairbrother, to Hervey’s considerable surprise, atop one of the Berkeley’s best hirelings. His green cloak, with its black lambswool collar, and the hat he had taken from a Cossack in exchange for a bottle of his father’s rum, gave him a most alien look, needing only a couple of chickens hanging from the saddle and a lance on his shoulder to complete the impression of a freebooter from the Steppes. Hervey merely remarked that he was glad to see him.

  Only as they were clear of the little crowd of onlookers gathered at the front of the Berkeley did he venture any conversation with the swaddled supernumerary. ‘It is excessively obliging of you to accompany us. I fear you will see nothing to divert you, however.’

  Fairbrother made some muffled reply indicating resolution rather than contentment, so that Hervey was altogether mystified as to why his friend should wish to leave the comfort of the Berkeley Arms for a perfectly humdrum visit to a troop in billets, especially having protested unceasingly at the cold since their arrival back in England – though he himself had to admit it: it was damnably chill (and there were upwards of thirty dragoons bedded down with ague brought on by the icy air). The evening before, Fairbrother had merely said that he thought he ought to – somewhat unconvincingly, for Hervey had not heard ‘ought’ from his friend in all the time they had been acquainted – and later that he probably wouldn’t. And then the quite decided ‘I shall remain here.’

  But lying thoughtful in the early hours, Fairbrother had in fact resolved to be useful. Useful in the sense that Sir Thomas Graham had been to Sir John Moore (he trusted that he did not flatter himself too highly), and that – yes, like Boswell to Dr Johnson – he might also in due season be able to give account of his friend’s tenure as lieutenant-colonel of this regiment of light dragoons, whose company he had so come to enjoy. For besides the conviction that it would be a tenure of distinction, and therefore worthy of memorializing, he believed he owed to his friend the discovery of purpose in his life. Before their meeting three years ago at the Cape that life had been a worthless affair, an indolent existence, determined in part by a sort of indifferent resentment that, like Shakespeare’s tawny Moor, whatever his merits he would first be misliked for his complexion. He was an able soldier – his service with the Jamaica Militia and then the Royal Africans had been enough to assure him of that – but it was not until Hervey had rousted him from his torpor among the palms (though a torpor in which, undeniably, he read constantly and extensively), and put his instincts to use on the frontier in the uniform of the Mounted Rifles, that he had abandoned resentf
ulness as a pretext for inactivity. No, he could not reasonably suppose that comparison with Boswell and Dr Johnson was truly apt; but he would proceed nevertheless on the assumption that it might become so. If only it weren’t so deucedly cold …

  ‘Plough Monday come and gone these two weeks and not a clod yet turned,’ said Hervey, apparently still intent on generalism.

  ‘Is that an affront to religion or to good husbandry?’ asked Fairbrother, keen to test his own wit in such temperatures, but also genuinely uncertain of his friend’s meaning.

  Hervey looked at him a little warily. ‘You’ll recall our conversation last evening – a poor harvest, winter early and hard? The price of corn?’

  Fairbrother had been expecting something suitably theological on the blessing of the plough, and he lapsed into silence, disappointed.

  Hervey left him to his thoughts for a while; then, thinking there might be something amiss, asked, ‘Is all well with you?’

  He sat up straight in the saddle. ‘But of course. I was merely contemplating.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘I was contemplating the situation of the yeomanry, what were its prospects and all.’

  ‘I had rather you become a regular.’

  ‘I am a regular.’

  ‘Of a colonial corps. And you are on half pay.’

  ‘And there I choose to stay, despite your most flattering entreaties. I was interested merely in the situation of the yeomanry, and how it comes about that a regular troop of cavalry must be abroad in the country at the first sign of trouble.’

  Hervey nodded. ‘Mr Malet!’

  He did not have to turn his head or raise his voice much above the usual, for the snow deadened the horses’ footfall. Only creaking leather and the occasional jingle of bit and spur broke the silence. They were marching ‘at ease’, not ‘easy’, and no speaking therefore permitted in the ranks.