'And then there is the business of Armstrong. What's to do? He shall have to come back, don't you think – the children, and all?'
Hervey inclined his head. 'He would not expect to, I think. He would not expect to leave his post just to take up with his children. They're in good hands, after all.'
'But even so . . .'
Hervey thought a little more, and then began nodding his head, slowly. In the normal course of events – in war, India, or wherever – these things were misfortunes to be taken, if not quite in one's stride, then with fortitude, in the place they came. For what other way was there? But not now; not when the nation was at peace, when its army was made up of true volunteers. The Sixth did not treat its dragoons heartlessly; it never had. 'Patrician command and the fellowship of the horse': that was the way of the Sixth, was it not?
He breathed deep. 'I should need to replace him, Colonel. It would not serve with Quilter standing in. He's a sound enough serjeant, but he could not manage a troop.' (He would have been content to have Wainwright do duty, but Wainwright was too junior.)
'Then I'll instruct the adjutant to issue the necessary orders.'
Hervey's mind was already decided, however. 'With respect, Colonel, I should like to take Collins.'
Lord Holderness nodded. 'I have no objection. But why Collins?'
'As a rule, Colonel, I would not try to favour those I knew best, but Collins, I judge, would serve admirably, and since there is every prospect of trouble with the native tribes before our term at the Cape is up, I should want to be certain of my man.'
'That is reasonable.'
Lord Holderness was indeed a commanding officer whose instincts were reasonable as well as admirable. Hervey did not suppose there was a man in the Sixth who could have complaint against him. Did it matter much that in the exhilaration of manoeuvres, two months ago, a cold immersion in the Thames had induced a fit of epilepsy? (He, Hervey, and the regimental serjeantmajor had arranged things with the utmost discretion, so that few others knew of it.) There would always be someone to gather up the reins, so to speak.Was it not more important that the regiment was content, well found – as undoubtedly it was?
He laid down his coffee cup, and rose. 'Thank you, Colonel. And now if you will permit me, I will make haste to London.'
'Of course,' said Lord Holderness, rising also. He smiled a shade broader, and with a touch of wryness. 'How was Brighton?'
Hervey coloured a little. 'It was as ever Brighton is, Colonel.'
'I am glad to hear it!'
Hervey took his leave a fraction happier, even if his smile concealed its own measure of wryness. He spoke with the adjutant of the agreed arrangements and actions, and was then pleasantly surprised to find that Malet had ordered the regimental chariot to wait on his pleasure.
'Better than sending to Derryman's for a chaise, I think.'
'Indeed,' said Hervey, thankfully (better and a good deal cheaper – half a crown for the chariot man, Corporal Denny). 'I'll send word as soon as I have the day, and then you may arrange things for the parade itself.'
'Of course.'
As Hervey made to leave, Malet handed him a small bundle of letters. 'These were brought from the officers' house for you. There's one with the Horse Guards' stamp.'
'Indeed?' Hervey took them, trying not to show excessive interest (a letter from the commander-in-chief's headquarters could be no occasion for disquiet now that the inquiry into the events at Waltham Abbey was scotched).
'And our respects, of course, to Lady— to Mrs Hervey.'
'Thank you, Malet,' he replied, quietly, putting the letters into his pocket and nodding his goodbye.
Outside the orderly room, Private Johnson was waiting for him. 'Ah didn't think tha were back, sir, till next week.'
Hervey was impressed by the speed at which notice of his return travelled the barracks, though Johnson had always had an ear for comings and goings. 'There were matters to be about.'
'Mrs Armstrong, ay.'
'The most wretched business. Are you able to come with me to London?'
Since only guard duty would require leave of absence of any but his own officer, and since as an officer's groom he was excused such duty, Johnson was able to say 'yes' at once, albeit with a certain reluctance. He was unsure, as he had confided many months before, that Hervey's new bride would welcome his continuance. Hervey had assured him in the most decided fashion that there was no cause for even the slightest unease in that respect, but Johnson fancied he understood the way of new wives. Lady Henrietta Hervey – Mrs Hervey, as Johnson had always known her, being perennially unmindful of the correct usages – had welcomed him unreservedly. He would have done anything for her. He thought, still, that if he too had been at Serjeant-Major Armstrong's side that day in the white wastes of America, she might be alive yet, even though once many years ago when he had voiced the same, Hervey, though deeply touched, had told him most unequivocally that he would with certainty have perished by the axe or the arrow. Nevertheless, Lady Henrietta Hervey remained to Johnson's mind the apotheosis of wedded-womanhood. Lady Lankester – Mrs Matthew Hervey as now was – for all that she was the widow of a regimental hero, was not, to his mind, of the same water.
It was some time before Hervey thought to open his letters. Private Johnson had a good deal to say, and there was the question of how and where to begin on the 'arrangements'. It was the very devil that the regiment no longer had its own chaplain, and that the rector of the parish in which were the barracks, and the priest of the Hounslow mission, were both absentees. His first notion was to send word to his friend John Keble, who would surely know how to proceed, but time precluded it. He knew no clergyman, of any rank, in London. He certainly knew no Catholic. Yet there must be such counsel. A decade or so ago, before the Great Disturber was despatched to his final, fatal exile on St Helena, there had been priests and religious aplenty in London. True, they spoke in French – they were pensioners, indeed, of King George during their temporary exile – but that would have been no impediment. It was an age past, however: he must needs consult, now, with the English Mission.
How he disliked that word – mission – as if England were some heathen place, like the Americas of the conquistadores, or the Africa to which he would soon return. It was strange: in Portugal and Spain he had had no resentment of the Pope's religion. He had attended its services, at times even frequently. He liked the air of those churches, great and small, the sense of the living, independent of any actual human presence. In an English church, even in the one he loved the most, his father's in Horningsham, the sense was of something past, gone. In the Peninsula the Duke of Wellington had issued the most particular instructions to the army concerning the respect to be accorded the religion of His Majesty's allies. When the Blessèd Sacrament was carried in procession about the streets, an officer was to remove his headdress, and other ranks were to present arms. And it was strange how this order not only avoided offence to the allies, but also increased the esteem in which their religion was held.
Perhaps his memory played him false, though. He himself had called a good deal of it mummery, and worse, as had others of the Sixth. Yet it was not the same loathing – by no means the same – as that which they sometimes had of the Catholic church in England, where too often it had been the begetter of treachery. Or in Ireland, where contempt for the mean condition of the native population, the ignorance and indolence, was at once extended to their religion, which somehow seemed both the cause and the effect.
But then in Rome, whither his sister had taken him to interrupt the melancholy of Henrietta's death, he had found his way to the English seminary, where the rector himself had greeted him with a warmth that was at once welcoming and yet disturbing. On his knees in the Martyrs' Chapel, tears had welled up at the thought of what he had lost – and what his daughter had lost – and he had found something comforting in that place.
Yes, he would seek out the headquarters of the English Mission in
London, and he would do it without hesitation or distaste. He would speak to its chief priest – the bishop, whatever was his style – and ask him how the Sixth might bury the wife of one of its most esteemed soldiers, with all the proper ceremony of her religion. And with all the proper ceremony of the regiment.
'What is that you said, Johnson?'
'Ah said, sir, t'serjeant-major were a good man.'
' "Were a good man"? He is still.'
'Ah know, but wi' Mrs Armstrong gone an' all . . .'
'I don't see . . .'
'Ah reckon it'll go bad wi'im.'
'Of course it will go badly with him. How . . .'How did Johnson think that Henrietta's death had gone with him?
Johnson could usually be relied on for the blithest of outlooks, but in this case it was not so much insensibility as the conviction that Hervey bore misfortune in some other way. 'Ah reckon 'e'll chuck it for them kinder of 'is. 'E were right soft on 'em.'
Hervey would have reminded his groom that he too had once 'chucked it' – had resigned his commission – except that that was not the material point (Johnson's prognosis somehow stirred guilt in him). 'Then we must pray that he does not. See to it that he does not, for his best place is in the regiment; the best place for his children, indeed.'
Johnson had no argument with that. He owned that his own long life to date – half and more of the allotted span – was on account of his wearing regimentals. Corunna, Talavera, Salamanca and many another Peninsula scrape, Waterloo, countless affairs in India: these were nothing compared with the vicissitudes he would have faced in his native county – the silted lungs, the broken back, the roof-falls, the fire-damp . . .
''E'd a'been a right good RSM.'
'Johnson, I don't think I make myself plain. Sar'nt-Major Armstrong's prospects are not diminished. He will return here on long leave of absence, and in due course he will return to his troop – our troop.'
'Bet 'e won't if 'e comes back from t'Cape. Them kinder of 'is—'
'He'll return, I tell you.'
'Who's gooin' to do 'is duty at t'Cape – Quilter?'
'Serjeant Quilter.'
Johnson huffed, not so decidedly as to require a rebuke, but sufficient to register his opinion.
But Hervey had no need to check the delinquency, not when he could pretend he had not heard, and it was not anyway to be Quilter. 'Sar'nt-Major Collins will do duty.'
Johnson sucked in air sharply. 'That'll go bad wi' t'sar'nt-major. Them's rivals an' all.'
'Rivals? Collins—' (he checked himself, crossly) 'Sar'nt-Major Collins is his junior. If you're thinking which of them would replace the regimental sar'nt-major there would be no question but that it would be Armstro— Sar'nt-Major Armstrong.'
'That's not what they says in t'canteen.'
'The canteen!'
'One o' t'clerks from t'ord'ly room—'
'Damn the clerks! Enough of it!'
Johnson made a 'please yourself' face.
Hervey said nothing.
They sat for some time, the silence broken only by the ticking of the long-case clock in the otherwise empty headquarters room to which they had retreated while the chariot was fetched.
'T'adjutant 'ad a lot o' letters for thee, sir,' tried Johnson, softer, after a while.
Hervey reached into his pocket. 'I have them.' He began sorting through the bundle absently.
There were a dozen and more, some in unfamiliar hands (he would attend to those later). But one, he noted, was from Kat, which pleased him unexpectedly.
'Shall ah be gooin, sir?'
Hervey hesitated. 'No. Stay, if you would.' He opened the letter.
Holland-park, 19th June
My dear Matthew,
(It was written the day after his wedding, and Kat had moderated her salutation, as was only appropriate to his new state. He supposed, too, that it was the correct form for an erstwhile lover to adopt if she were to continue in correspondence.)
I write with news that I am confident you will find most welcome. Today I had occasion to visit with Captain Peto at Greenwich. I found him in the most excellent spirits, despite his most cruel injuries, and I perfectly see why you are so particularly attached to him. He received me with the greatest civility, and when I spoke to him of our acquaintance he was at once all solicitude on your behalf, asking how was the marriage service and expressing his deepest regrets that his situation had not permitted him to attend. I told him that it had been the most perfect occasion and your bride the most perfect picture of contentment, as indeed was the bridegroom. He was, of course, much cheered to hear this, and I was only grateful to have been the envoy of such joyful news. Of his own disappointment he spoke very freely, and of his wish that your sister enjoys the happiness that has lately come to you. In this, I confess, I was truly most moved, for such a sentiment, of the very deepest selflessness, is not commonly to be found, and I resolved at once to tell him of the offer which I had secured of George Cholmondeley. Captain Peto was instantly delighted, for he knows Houghton and admires it, and he declared that he already felt himself bettering for the news. And so it has been arranged that at the end of the month I shall engage a dormeuse for him and convoy with my own chariot to Houghton, where I shall remain for a week or such time as there is need of me, and I tell you this for I know that you shall return to the Cape Colony before long and that you might wish to see the place in which your friend will be so agreeably settled, even perhaps to accompany him thither . . .
Hervey smiled in the knowledge that his old friend Sir Laughton Peto, so grievously wounded at the Battle of Navarino Bay nine months before, was raised in his spirits. It had, indeed, been a most handsome scheme of Kat's. She had, without a word from him save a description of his old friend's situation (an invalid, of what permanence the doctors could not tell, at the naval hospital at Greenwich), sought out a protecting billet at Houghton Hall in Peto's own county of Norfolk – near where he had taken a lease on a house (in which he would have lived with Elizabeth if only she . . .). And Kat had brought the happy news to the wedding, seeking him out at the breakfast to complete his own joy that day: 'And George' (the new, young Marquess of Cholmondeley) 'has most eagerly contracted to attend to all dear Captain Peto's needs until such time as he is able to return to his own house. Such is dear George's patriotic admiration of his service.'
It had indeed greatly increased his joy, and he had thanked her prodigiously. Indeed, he had declared that he was ever in Kat's debt. And most certainly, if there was the least opportunity, he would go to Norfolk to see his old friend settled. He read on.
Perhaps you will communicate with me as soon as may be, so that I might make the arrangements. I shall be at Holland-park, and quite at home to visitors should you find it more convenient to close the matter directly. I write to you c/o Hounslow since of course I have no knowledge of where you shall be until you and your bride depart for the Cape . . .
Hervey sighed, delight and discontent mixed in equal measure. It was, of course, quite impossible that he should go to Holland Park, although it would certainly be most expeditious – and, indeed, a good sight more economical than sending messengers and expresses back and forth. He resolved to write immediately on arriving at Hanover Square, proposing that they tea together at, say, Grillon's, or even that she call on them at Kezia's aunt's (though probably, on reflection, this latter would not be exactly felicitous . . .).
'Good!' he declared, emphatically.
'What is, sir?' asked Johnson, feeling his presence of no great purpose.
'Captain Peto,' replied Hervey, not very helpfully, turning his attention instead to the despatch with the Horse Guards' stamp.
His face fell.
'What's up, sir?'
Hervey handed him the letter.
The Horse Guards
19th June 1828
Major (Actg. Lt-Colnl.) M. P. Hervey
H.M. 6th Light Dragoons
Sir,
I am commanded by the Militar
y Secretary to inform you that the Commander in Chief has been pleased to advance you to the substantive rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, without purchase, and to command of the First Battalion of His Majesty's Eighty-first Regiment of Foot, effective from the First of January next.
I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
Henry Upton,
Colonel.
'That's very nice!'
Hervey made no reply.
'Why's 'e call thee "sir" when 'e's a proper colonel?'
Hervey shook his head. 'It's just the way. Probably to put one in one's place.'
'Ah don't understand . . .'
Hervey turned his head, as if to look from the window.
Hervey 10 - Warrior Page 4