He picked up his walking stick, swearing to be rid of it within three months on land, limped slowly across the deck, placing his peg-leg carefully on the wet planking. The limb was a simple piece of timber, official Army pattern, not unlike a table leg with a leather pad at the bottom and webbing straps pinned to the top; it was not very comfortable. Murphy at his shoulder, he grabbed at the ropes of the gangplank, thirty feet long with a drop of six, steep enough to be hard work, made his way slowly down, almost all of his weight on his arms and shoulders. He had a barrel chest now, the muscles of a much larger man working for him, but he was sweating by the time he sat down in the coach.
“Easier than it was in Madeira, Murphy. Slow progress, but I will walk freely again, and before too many months are past!”
“You will, sir, but maybe you should not be running just yet.”
James nodded, gave the driver the address of the family lawyer, Michael’s offices.
“Mr James, sir! I did not expect to see you in England again these many years... Oh dear! I am so sorry, sir!” Michael fussed with a chair, covering his own embarrassment, trying to find the appropriate words and deciding there were none. If he could say nothing sensible then it was better to say nothing at all. “You have arrived before the mail, as is normally the case, of course, coming from the Indies. You are aware of...”
James nodded as Michael’s voice tailed off.
“I was told in Bombay of my mother’s death, Mr Michael, a year ago now, I believe. How is my father?”
“Hard hit at first, as you will imagine, Mr James, but behaving very well in public, as one would expect of such a man as he. He is a great man, you know, sir, to others, not just to his children! He is to remarry next week, the family having decided it were best for him, I believe, your sister being wed and the house having no mistress.”
It seemed rather hurried to James, but on reflection he was inclined to agree that his father could not live a single life, no man of affairs could. The Hall must have a hostess, he must have a woman to organise his life and meet his social commitments, he must not become reclusive and eccentric as so many widowers seemed to. Mother would have approved, he thought, she had always demanded the course of duty.
“Where is he to wed, Mr Michael? I am glad I can be present for that, at least. I so much regret having missed Mama’s obsequies.”
Thinking, slowly, he realised he was not too unhappy that his mother would never know of his lost leg, she would have been so upset. He wondered if she might be aware anyway, the chaplain at school had seemed to say something like that, when he had bothered to listen to him, that was.
They arranged for James to travel to Dorset later in the week, post-chaise and easy stages. It was essential to visit a tailor first to fit him out for civilian life.
“Scott, sir?”
“Where else for a soldier, Mr Michael?” He tried to smile, to make the rider lightly, “besides, he will have experience of my particular needs.”
Two hours and James was being fussed over in the Clarendon and an Express was on its way to Dorchester and Michael was in a cab for Mount Street.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Mr Robert, knowing that you are to travel to Dorset tomorrow and must have a hundred things to do today, but your brother Mr James disembarked this morning, off a fast wine ship from Madeira. He will need to spend a few days in Town, at his tailors first of all, so I have put him up at the Clarendon, sir, rather than be alone here in a closed house. He has lost a leg, sir, will soldier no more.”
Robert swore, his first thought that his father did not need this worry so close to his marriage.
“I must go to him, Mr Michael, he must not be left on his own, must know that we are so glad to see him alive – a leg in India could so easily have meant death... What will he do now, poor lad?”
Michael shook his head, he did not know, but he was able to say that he had not been required to find a set of rooms in London, the young gentleman did not at the moment plan to live in Town.
“What can he do? He could go up to Oxford, he is of an age, but I cannot imagine he would have any use for their offerings. There is no place for him in Roberts or the bank, for lack of the appropriate talents, between the ears, that is... the same must apply at the shipyards. He could take a farm, perhaps, but the life would be hard for a cripple. He must have occupation, but I cannot imagine what.”
“A leader of men, sir? Perhaps on a plantation, in America, even in Ireland?”
“No! The lash every day and the musket and noose in the background? Not for us, sir, not for our family. My father will have some ideas, I am sure.”
Robert ran up to Miriam’s rooms, threaded his way through every maidservant in the house as they packed and repacked nursery and dressing room with faint cries of distress and horror at each crisis as it arose.
“Shall I accompany you, Robert? I can make the time and I have yet to meet your brother.”
Courtesy demanded that she should be presented to James at the earliest possible moment, inconvenience be damned.
“You must, my dear. How soon can you be ready?”
Honesty demanded three hours at least, tact made her ask for twenty minutes, her dresser casting her eyes heavenwards behind her.
“What am I to say to him, Miriam? He was a fine soldier – athletic, handsome and unthinking, high-couraged, all that one could demand. Now what is there for him?”
“He is too old to read for a profession, I believe, Robert, and from all you have said I gather unsuited in other ways for the Law or the Church.”
“Wholly, and he will not come into the Roberts foundries or shipyards for the same reasons. He is a younger son and he has a right to an income, but probably no more than five or six hundreds a year, barely sufficient to live on as a single man. His mother’s portion would normally have come down to the younger children, but, of course, in the Masters’ circumstances...”
They fell silent as the carriage rolled slowly through the crowded streets, drays, delivery vans, cabs and private conveyances of all sizes intermingled with pedestrians, horsemen and stray dogs, all determined to take the straightest line to their destination and never a policeman in existence to demand obedience to any regulation.
“It would have been quicker to walk, Robert!”
“Not in skirts that brush the ground, ma’am!”
She grimaced – the pervading odour of overworked and often bean-fed horses lending strength to his argument.
“Not a farm, he would never be able to walk his fields in wet weather. Not an estate manager for much the same reason. He is too young to take the Family place on the Bench and, what is it, the Poor Law Board?”
“He lacks the experience for either, as well.”
“So, Robert, he needs an occupation, for idleness would do him no good at all. Lacking skills, without any great education or understanding of affairs and unable to work very hard in physical terms – what can he do?”
The solution struck both at once.
“The family has several seats, my dear...”
“He must become a politician!”
/////////
Book Five in the, ‘A Poor Man at the Gate Series’, Privilege Preserved is available on Kindle and all leading online ebook stores: Amazon - Kindle Link: http://getbook.at/Privilege-3
Books by the same author
The Duty and Destiny Series: Published in 2014, these superbly-crafted novel length sea stories are set in the period of the French Revolutionary War (1793 – 1802). The series follows the naval career and love-life of Frederick Harris, the second son of a middling Hampshire landowner, a brave but somewhat reluctant mariner. Amazon - Kindle links to the whole series:
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The Pain Of Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 4) Page 29