Kezia looked at him with a degree of suspicion. ‘And where are the Fifty-third?’
Hervey tried hard to make his reply sound as if here were not the rub. ‘Gibraltar. Lord Hill says that it is a coming station.’
There was no immediate reply.
‘The climate is most agreeable.’
Kezia pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders again, which Hervey thought might induce her to think of the benefits of balmier weather – but not for long. ‘I should not wish to quit this country, Matthew. I … I have no desire to live a solitary life. India, though but a short time, was enough to persuade me that contentment is not to be had elsewhere.’
Hervey had more than half-expected this opinion of Gibraltar, but he was nevertheless disconcerted by Kezia’s reasoning. ‘It would hardly be solitary, my love. Gibraltar is a considerable garrison, and my duties would not take me more than a mile or so from you. Indeed, in many respects it is the most confined of postings.’
But as he said the word ‘confined’ he knew he was lost.
Next morning, before he had taken his bath, an express arrived. Kezia had risen before dawn, saying she must speak with the nursery maid (Hervey had woken with her, but she bid him stay abed), and had drawn the bolts of the doors herself to admit the letter. A footman who had come scurrying was put to looking after the expressman while she took the letter upstairs to see if it needed reply.
Hervey was shaving by very moderate candlelight as she came into the dressing room, and it was all he could do to read it without scorching the paper. Fortunately its contents were brief:
The United Service Club, Thursday, 15th
My dear Hervey,
Word has just come from the Horse Guards that there is passage in a frigate for St-Petersburg five days hence, on the twentieth instant, and Lord Hill wishes you to take it. Passeports and letters of introduction I am to take possession of tomorrow, also for Agar. Pray let me know by return what is to be done.
Ever yours,
Edward Fairbrother.
Hervey swallowed hard. This was ill news. ‘Lord Hill wishes …’ A request from a superior officer must be taken as a command. There was no escaping it. Five days hence – five days from yesterday, indeed; there was no opportunity now of seeing his people, above all Georgiana; nor Peto, nor … And his renewed honeymoon (if that it could be called) would now be curtailed, as before. Was it so very important that he take passage in this frigate? Once before, not long after Waterloo, he had been sent with rude despatch from the Horse Guards to take passage east in a frigate. No, he would not dwell on that mission (the train of events which led to the snows of Canada was too hard a memory). This was very different. Oh, indeed, it was different! For Kezia would not follow him, as Henrietta had done. The news would be to her no cause for dismay.
‘What is it, Matthew? Nothing unwelcome, I trust?’
Hervey sighed (an express with good news was a rare thing, to be sure). ‘It is not what I would have wished. I am to leave for Russia on the twentieth.’
‘Oh,’ replied Kezia, rather flatly. ‘That is vexing for you. Why to Russia? I thought you said it was to Bulgaria?’
He shook his head absently (was ‘vexing for you’ merely an unselfish response?). ‘Since I am to join the Tsar’s forces, it follows I suppose that it is most expedient to do so via their own lines of communication.’ He quickened. ‘I must first send word to Fairbrother, and then … I must needs leave you, my love,’ he added, as if an afterthought, consoling himself just a little with the knowledge that he left at least for less chilly climes. ‘Is there pen and ink?’
‘There,’ she said, pointing to the writing table in the bedroom beyond. ‘I will bring coffee.’
But his instructions to Fairbrother – brief, terse almost – were complete before she returned:
My dear Fairbrother,
Pray make all arrangements that you see fit, but in any event have Johnson stand ready, and send word if you will to Hounslow for Cpl Acton to join. And then go to Durham’s off the Strand and order upon my account at the Agent’s, Messrs Greenwood, Cox & Hammersley of Craigs-court, all that is requisite in camp furniture. I shall myself be returned by evening, but it is better that matters be placed in hand at once. And anything else that in yr judgement is seen fit.
Ever Yrs,
Hervey.
Kezia returned with a tray. She poured a cup as the footman withdrew. ‘Milk?’
Hervey shook his head (milk was a fashion he could not fathom). ‘Thank you, no,’ he said, dripping sealing wax less than artfully onto the fold of the letter.
‘At what hour will you leave?’
He stood up, the return-express at last sealed. ‘I … I think as soon as may be. I must write to Wiltshire, though perhaps that is better done from London.’ He hesitated, and then asked uncertainly, ‘Shall you come with me?’
Kezia said she could not: there were all manner of things to detain her at Walden. And in truth Hervey could not resent it, for he had come – if not unannounced – with little notice. Walden was a considerable estate, and her people were away … But, then, was there not a steward, and a housekeeper? He, Hervey, would be much occupied in the next few days, it was true, but if she were to come to London they would have time together … But he would not press the matter; not now, at least.
‘It is doubly a pity, your early leaving, for you shall not hear me play for Herr Mendelssohn, nor meet him.’
Hervey checked himself; she meant it kindly, no doubt. ‘I must bear the deprivation,’ he replied, trying hard to avoid any note of indifference, resentment – or any other of the sentiments welling up within.
Kezia noticed no dissent, however. ‘I shall ring for breakfast and have them get your horses ready. And the express-return,’ she added, tugging at the bell-pull.
‘I had hoped to see Allegra. Does she speak yet?’
Kezia looked at him plainly astonished. ‘She is rising three years, Matthew.’
‘Ah …’ But he was no wiser, not knowing whether her astonishment proceeded from his imagining Kezia’s daughter to be either precocious or retarded. He realized with considerable discomfort that he could not calibrate the child’s progress with his knowledge of Georgiana’s, for in truth he had scarcely observed the latter.
And that gave him no satisfaction either in the present state of affairs. It had been his profound wish that Georgiana might have a mother, that she need no longer rely on her aunt to take that place. In fact it had been this consideration perhaps as great as any that had determined him on his course to marry again. And yet Georgiana was with Elizabeth still.
Kezia took the letter from his hand. ‘I will go and make the arrangements. Come down as soon as you will.’
He was still fretting over the cost of the express (perhaps because it distracted him from worse thoughts) many miles after Walden. Why had he thought to send instructions to Fairbrother post-haste, which could only reach him mere hours before he himself was come? Had he thought he would tarry at Walden, even for an hour or so? Kezia had given him no encouragement. He had taken his bath quickly, dressed sharp and had come down before it was full light, but Kezia had absented herself soon after he began his breakfast – there were matters to be arranged, she told him – and when she returned it was with every appearance of wishing to help him in his declared haste to be away. He had a momentary doubt once again: it was his own expectations that were unreasonable; he had arrived, presented unpalatable news of a foreign posting, retired to bed as if it were an everyday occurrence, and next morning was summoned by the trumpet to quit with all despatch for a distant place whence he might very well not return; how agreeable was this to a wife of any sensibility? And yet, had this not been implicit in their vows – and in the knowledge of marrying (not for the first time) into a cavalry regiment of the line? Could she not have embraced him, even?
The semi-silent running in the snow – hoofs dull-thudding, and only the sound of the axles turning instead of iron tyres o
n metalled road – somehow gave space to his thoughts, so that one thing led perilously to another, his grievance mounting, until at last and inevitably came the comparisons with the past. For once, when he was just married, he had had the offer of a comfortable billet – command of a regiment of yeomanry. An exceptionally good billet, indeed, with a fine house and even the advowson of a well-tithed parish. If he had accepted it he would now have been lieutenant-colonel these dozen years – and perhaps much greater rank, for it was not unknown for officers of the lieutenancies (the lord-lieutenants of the counties conferred the commissions in the militia and the yeomanry) to be taken back by the King. His father and mother might have had a comfortable rectory roof over their heads, rather than the hand-to-mouth parish at Horningsham; his sister might have had the pleasure of greater society than that into which she had entered in Wiltshire (though he knew he ought to forget all reservations about her intended bridegroom); Armstrong might now have been quartermaster. Caithlin Armstrong might still have been his wife. And – he could not stop himself – Henrietta would be with him now (and Georgiana with them both).
As the frozen miles passed, he wondered how the warmth of those years had turned to such unremitting cold. He felt suddenly so sick that he reached for the window strap.
VII
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
That evening
Hervey reached the United Service Club just after six. It was no distance from Walden – not thirty miles – but for most of the way the roads were deep with snow, and he and the postboy had to change a wheel when the chaise skidded hard against the bank on Watling Street out of St Albans (though the exercise had helped restore his spirits).
Fairbrother was writing yet another letter with great speed and fluency in the empty library. ‘A cold and arduous coming of it, it would seem you had,’ he said, looking up from the desk to see a coat which bore the signs. ‘I trust you had an agreeable morning before your forced march?’
Hervey was not inclined to rise to the fly. ‘I left just after first light. We had to change a wheel, and it was the devil’s job to get the pin out. I was minded to take one of the post horses instead, but the boy would never have managed on his own.’
‘Noblesse oblige.’
‘You may say so; though had there been a saddle I might have disobliged.’
The welcome at Walden had evidently not been rapturous, Fairbrother concluded, just as he had predicted, if to himself. There was no denying it; he did not like Kezia. He did not like her strange indifference towards his friend. He did not like her hauteur. He did not much like her fortepiano playing (though what did he know about it?). But he did concede that she was a strikingly good-looking woman, though he, unlike Shakespeare’s African prince, was not in thrall to fairest creatures northward born – Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles. For that was the point exactly: she was a creature of cold climes.
‘I spent the midday buying camp furniture. It will be delivered to Craig’s Court by the close of business tomorrow. I went thence to Leicester Street to take delivery of the pair of travelling pistols duly modified, and, too, a single Deringer pistol which Forsyth’s had found – though at a premium. I have sent expresses this way and that, obtained gold coin, had Johnson hasten the boot-makers to effect the repairs to our hessians, collected our passeports and the letters of diplomatic authority – all in fact that is requisite to proceed on His Majesty’s service. Your friend Colonel Youell showed me every consideration. Really, we might set out tomorrow evening,’ he declared, with some satisfaction.
‘I am all gratitude,’ Hervey assured him. ‘I’m only sorry to have occasioned you so much effort, while I was … at my ease in Hertfordshire.’
Fairbrother smiled wistfully. ‘It was by no means all effort. After I had sent the express last evening, and made what dispositions I thought apt, I supped in Covent Garden.’
‘Indeed?’ replied Hervey, almost absently, as he perused Durham’s invoice for the furniture. ‘You were not at too much of a loss for company?’
‘Not at all. I met with the flower seller. We had a most agreeable time.’
Hervey eyed his friend cautiously. ‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed. And you have to call on an under secretary at the Foreign Office.’
‘Why?’
‘Youell said he looked after the Secret Vote.’
‘And you will tell me you have no idea what is the Secret Vote, I imagine.’
‘Just so.’
Hervey cleared his throat. ‘Well, doubtless I shall discover it. I … I thank you again for everything so expeditiously arranged. I have myself been writing letters. I must have the porter send them on for me.’
‘And I sent an express to Wiltshire. It was the only point on which I was uncertain how to act, but it seemed to me you would wish your people to know at once, in case they were able to come to London. I hope I did right.’ Fairbrother seemed not anxious but genuinely uncertain.
‘Ah, well … that is very good indeed of you. Yes, indeed it is. They will not be able to come up, I feel sure, but they will be glad I have shown sufficient forethought.’
‘Your sister might, might she not?’
‘Oh … yes; she might. That would be … most welcome.’ It occurred to him only then that she might even be in London at this time, at Major Heinrici’s townhouse. He thought he ought to call. ‘I’m only sorry that we shan’t be able to travel down there before we leave.’
Fairbrother raised his hands in a gesture of ‘no matter’.
‘No, I was looking forward to it keenly.’ Hervey smiled at the thought. ‘I’d promised you we could shoot bustard.’
‘There’ll be another time. When we’re returned.’
Hervey inclined his head, doubtfully. ‘There may not be. Bustard are very few on the Plain these days.’
‘Then we must trust there’ll be a brace that survive until your homecoming.’ Fairbrother suddenly remembered: ‘Oh, and there’s this,’ he said, holding up a sheet of writing paper with finger and thumb to reveal the embossed coronet at the head. ‘You are summoned this evening by Princess Lieven.’
‘Princess Lieven?’
‘The Russian ambassadress.’
‘I know who is Princess Lieven,’ said Hervey, and rather more sharply than he wished he had. ‘What business have I with her – or she with me?’
‘I rather fancy it must be something to do with your going to the Russian war,’ replied Fairbrother, sufficiently drolly as to exact a penalty for his friend’s brusqueness.
‘At what hour am I expected?’
‘Nine. Johnson is laying out your court dress.’
‘I suppose I’d better go. She’s by all accounts an arch-intriguer. I fancy she’ll have some scheme she would have me embroiled in. But if she can give me an introduction to a decent horse-coper in Petersburg I shall count the evening worthwhile.’
Fairbrother smiled knowingly. ‘Her reputation is formidable, is it not? “An ambassadress is an honest woman sent to lie abroad for her country”?’ (Princess Lieven had kept an influential drawing room when the Congress of Vienna had removed to Verona in later years – and, it was said, an even more influential bedroom.)
Hervey frowned, taking the letter from him at last. ‘You are very clever. But I sometimes think that before we met you did nothing other than acquire gossip.’
‘That is precisely what I did!’
‘Well, I fancy that that said of Princess Lieven is no more than what is invariably peddled of a woman with a mind of her own.’
‘That is very liberal-minded of you.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘It exasperates me that a woman must be so particular to guard her reputation – no benefit of the doubt, none of the … latitude that a man is permitted.’
‘My dear fellow, what has come over you?’
Hervey sighed and sat down in a leather tub beside the writing table. ‘Nothing has come over me. I had wanted a little time to … pay a call this ev
ening. That is all.’
‘May I make the call in your stead? I had intended supping in Covent Garden, but I am at your disposal.’
Hervey smiled indulgently, extending a hand to the bell-pull next to his chair (the club’s system of springs and wires made for more agreeably effortless communication with the servants’ hall than in the former premises). ‘No, you have done enough. In any case, at this hour it’s perhaps better to be calling on the garden than the convent. I had intended speaking with the nun I told you of, at Hammersmith.’ In the chaise down he had conceived the notion that the convent might be the source of advice he knew he needed; on the last occasion, the counsel had been incomplete, interrupted by the call to the Cape.
‘That, I own, I should find beyond my powers.’
‘You mistake the matter. You would find it easy to speak with Sister Maria.’
Fairbrother leaned back in his chair. Though they had spent the greater part of their time in each other’s company these past eighteen months, there were yet matters marked ‘out of bounds’. It puzzled him, troubled him in fact, for it was alien to the freer and easier world that had been his youth. ‘I have not said it before, Hervey, but you intrigue me by your partiality for popery. You’ll forgive the word.’
Hervey was certain he would forgive his friend anything. Nevertheless he looked askance at the proposition. ‘I have no partiality for popery, as you call it, only that I have found its adherents to be uncommonly attractive. Not, I mean, the superstitious creatures I observed in Spain, although their religion did them no great harm, I suppose. Nor even, for that matter, the wretched people in Ireland. I confess, however … yes, there is something reassuring in the skirts of a nun, or indeed of a priest.’
‘A party at Princess Lieven’s or a tryst in a cold convent: can there truly be any choice? I doubt there’s an officer in the Sixth, or the rest of the cavalry, for that matter, who’d deem it worth a moment’s consideration.’
Hervey frowned again, sensing his own absurdity.
Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service Page 9