‘We may take a paddle steamer down the river later this week, if there’s time,’ Hervey had said in answer to his wide-eyed enquiries.
Fairbrother had liked that. And then in Lombard Street, where the mails drew up at the General Post Office, he was wholly taken by the crowded, purposeful activity, both wheeled and pedestrian. Never had he seen its like, not even in Kingston when a slaver filled the wharves with its black cattle. He shook his head slowly. ‘I begin to understand, my friend.’
‘Understand what?’ replied Hervey absently, seeing down what little baggage the mail would carry for them (Private Johnson would bring the bulk of it by stage later in the day).
‘The great enterprise.’
Hervey thought he understood, but elucidation he would leave until another time. He had his own preoccupations for the moment. He wanted above all to know the particulars of the Royal Navy’s engagement in the Ionian, what The Times was calling the Battle of Navarino Bay. The first report – the only one he had seen, and that in South Africa – spoke of a great many ships and a great many casualties. He had not the least idea whether his old friend Sir Laughton Peto’s ship had been engaged, however, for he knew that Peto had first to make passage to Gibraltar to take up his command, and that the journey thither, and thence to Greek waters, was with sail an unpredictable business.
It was his intention therefore, as soon as he and Fairbrother were established in the United Service Club, to go – this very afternoon – to the Horse Guards and ask his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Lord John Howard, assistant quartermaster-general, to give him sight of the official despatches (a month’s worth of mail and Gazettes had been adrift still when he left Cape Town). He might even learn something about the wretched board of inquiry. That was the true imperative for his recall to London. He did not relish it – far from it – but it were better that he grasp the nettle than be stung with it at the hands of some malefactor. There were always those who would see the army as a cruel instrument of repression. He had rather liked Shelley – admired him, even – when they had spent those days together in Rome a decade before (God rest his soul – for Shelley most assuredly possessed one, whatever he himself had professed . . .), but he abhorred the poet’s disliking of the army, and bridled even now at his invention of that word ‘liberticide’ and its appellation to the unlooked-for, and thankless, duty of aid to the civil power.
He had thought there would be no inquiry. That had been his understanding when Lord John Howard had prevailed on him to withdraw his report on the incident at Waltham Abbey. Before the Africa commission, while in temporary command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons, he had found himself embroiled in a savage little affair at the royal gunpowder mills. Home Office spies had discovered a plot in which an armed body of Irishmen working on a nearby navigation were to break into the mills and carry off a quantity of powder. Hervey’s dragoons had foiled the attempt, and with considerable execution, but the business had troubled him, for the actions of the Irishmen – drunk, most of them – had not suggested any serious enterprise. He had smelled fish (a parliamentary bill for Catholic ‘emancipation’ was the cause of much agitation in certain Tory quarters), and he had submitted a report implying as much. However, his friend had persuaded him to withdraw it, for an inquiry would have required Hervey’s presence in London, and the appointment at the Cape therefore would not have been his.
This compromising had further troubled him, and still did. It had not been his habit to temporize, although these days he knew that stiff-back honour rarely profited anyone – or for that matter the cause of honour itself. But in the week before leaving the Cape for what his old friend the lieutenant-governor called convalescent and matrimonial leave, a summons had arrived from the Horse Guards to attend a court of inquiry into the whole affair of Waltham Abbey. Hervey feared not that such an inquiry would heap opprobrium upon him (except, did any soldier emerge from aiding the civil power with an unblemished record?), rather that the affair would detain him in London and bring him unwelcome attention. The first he did not want, for entirely personal and family reasons, and the second he could most definitely do without, for his aspirations to command of the 6th Light Dragoons remained, even if the odds grew longer by the day, and any less-than-entirely favourable findings would do nothing to advance his suit.
The strangest intelligence had come with that summons too: the Duke of Wellington was now prime minister. Following the death of Mr Canning, and the resignation of his successor Lord Goderich, the King had asked the duke to form a government, which he had done, dutifully though not without difficulty. Hervey had learned all this on the Rochester mail from a pair of particularly loquacious attorney clerks. His informants had been unable to tell him, however, who had taken the duke’s reins at the Horse Guards, though they were able to confirm that Lord Palmerston – for all his support of Canning and his contrary stance now to the ‘high Tories’ – remained at the War Office, which news pleased and troubled Hervey in turn since thanks to Lord John Howard he had some acquaintance with the minister. But it was Palmerston who had ordered the court of inquiry.
There was a line of hackney carriages outside the post office. Hervey engaged one, tipped a boy to transfer their baggage, and bid the driver take them to the United Service Club.
Fairbrother at last fell silent as they drove along Poultry and Cheapside, and then by way of St Paul’s, Fleet Street and the Strand to St James’s, wholly transfixed by what he saw, a juxtaposition of grandeur (new and old alternating – conjoined, indeed) with dereliction of a kind he had not seen; yet a lively dereliction, not a waste, the noise and the vigour of it all beyond his former imagining.
‘So much is torn down and built each time I come,’ said Hervey as they passed yet another demolition site, scene of scaffolding and cranes straining to replace with new before the old was even wholly reduced. ‘The new London Bridge was nothing when last I crossed the old one. And downriver they are driving a tunnel from one side to the other.’
Fairbrother shook his head in amazement.
‘I must tell you again, though, the United Service you will not find more than passing comfortable. A new club is being built,’ (Hervey smiled as he realized Fairbrother must picture all London abuild) ‘and the committee has spent very little on the existing premises as a consequence. It is a pity we shan’t be able to try the new ones.’
Fairbrother turned to him but momentarily. ‘My dear fellow, it is excessively good of you to put me up at your club, no matter what its condition. I hope it occasions you no discomfort.’
Hervey frowned. ‘As I have told you before, you mistake matters if you once think otherwise.’
Fairbrother turned his gaze once more to the building work on the Strand. He did not think that he did mistake matters; he rather thought that Hervey did. He admired the lieutenant-colonel – his lieutenant-colonel, indeed – of mounted rifles (and major of light dragoons); in truth he had not met his like. But his previous association with British officers did not predispose him to believe that Hervey was at all typical of his caste. Oh, to be sure, the officers of his former corps, the Royal African Regiment, were not out of the top drawer; half of them could not have passed for gentlemen save for the badges of rank which proclaimed them to be so. But it was not merely they: Lord Charles Somerset, the previous lieutenant-governor at the Cape, had never deigned to receive him, and his son, Colonel Henry Somerset, had never troubled to disguise his contempt – except, of course, of late (saving a fellow’s life put even a Somerset under a powerful obligation to be civil). It was true that the present governor, Hervey’s old friend Sir Eyre (and Lady Somervile), had received him at the Castle with the greatest courtesy; no, with the greatest warmth – but this he was inclined to attribute to the Somerviles’ time in India, where a dark skin (not that his own could be accurately described as dark) was no impediment to society if the native were a gentleman. For the rest, he would reserve his judgement.
‘See here,’ said
Hervey in an effort to be aptly cheery as they passed Charing Cross. ‘This part is called the Bermuda and Caribbee Islands, though I’m not sure why. They say it is all to be pulled down, and a vast piazza made of it in memory of Nelson.’
Fairbrother peered indifferently at the slum-jumble about St Martin’s church. No decent planter in Jamaica (in which category he firmly placed his father) would thus house his slaves (in which category he could not deny had been his mother). But then, he imagined that the inhabitants of these crowding tenements were not so gainfully employed as plantation slaves.
‘They are what you call rookeries?’
‘I don’t know that they are rookeries – I think the term is applied more to the tenements in the old city – but they are noisome, for sure. Over here,’ (Hervey smiled ruefully) ‘not so very far away, is where the King lived when he was regent.’
Fairbrother turned his attention to the other window. In a minute or so the building site that was the old Carlton House came into view.
‘And there is the new United Service Club. Or will be. Not long now by the look of things; the glaziers have made a beginning.’
The hackney swung into Regent Street, and Fairbrother could only marvel at the change that a mere hundred yards brought: from dereliction to royal palace, and now to a street as graceful as any he expected to see. The carriage turned right into Charles Street and pulled up in front of four Corinthian columns, which marked the entrance of the United Service Club.
A red-waistcoated porter whom Hervey did not recognize advanced at once to the kerbside. Hervey paid the driver, nodded to the club servant, who began taking the baggage from the hackney’s boot, and then he and his friend made their long-looked-for entry to ‘the Duke’s Own’.
‘Good morning, Thomas,’ he said quietly at the lodge.
The hall porter looked up. ‘Why, Colonel Hervey, sir! It is good to see you. We are expecting you, of course, sir.’
Hervey was relieved, though he did not show it. The United Service’s servants, loyal and delightful as they were, had no more reputation for efficiency than any other club’s staff. And although he had sent an express immediately on disembarking, the day before, he could not then be certain that rooms would be available. ‘And my guest, Captain Fairbrother.’
The hall porter glanced at Fairbrother, and perfectly maintained his smile of welcome. ‘Of course, sir. There are two excellent rooms on the west side.’
‘Capital, Thomas. Are there letters for me?’
‘I will look, sir.’
Hervey nodded. ‘We shall take coffee the while.’
‘Very good, sir. Mr Peter is on duty.’
Hervey gave Fairbrother a look of ‘I told you it would be thus’ as they made their way to the United Service’s principal public room.
In the coffee room they met Major-General Sir Francis Evans, who had been the general officer commanding the Northern District when the Sixth had been sent to the Midlands to suppress the Luddite violence (where Hervey had distinguished himself in the most trying of circumstances). That had been a decade and more ago, and the intervening years had made him even more crabbed in his aspect.
Hervey bowed. ‘Good morning, Sir Francis.’
The old general narrowed his eyes. ‘Hervey?’
‘Yes, General.’
‘Hah! By God, sir, I must say your exploits are vastly entertaining.’
Hervey’s brow furrowed. ‘General?’
‘Can’t open The Times these days without reading your name – castles in Spain, powder-mills in Hertfordshire, wilds of Africa . . .’ (Hervey shifted a shade awkwardly.) ‘How are you, my boy?’
Hervey smiled. ‘I am excessively well, General. May I present my good friend Captain Fairbrother of the Cape Mounted Rifles . . .’
The general turned to Fairbrother and scowled. ‘You’re the officer who rescued Somerset’s nephew, are you not? You and Hervey here.’
Fairbrother returned the well-meaning scowl with a smile, and bowed. ‘Just so, Sir Francis.’
‘Desperate affair, by all accounts,’ said the general, turning back to Hervey. ‘And young Somerset appears to have fought quite a battle with these Zulu. I imagine you had a good view of things?’
Hervey was at first puzzled by the question, for it suggested that he and Fairbrother had had a somewhat peripheral involvement, until he realized what might be the game. The Times’s report, if it had been based on the official despatches, which were in essence Colonel Henry Somerset’s own (and on what else could it be based?), and undoubtedly further coloured by letters to Somerset’s father and uncle, men of no little influence, would for certain exalt the name of Somerset. Well, so things went. ‘We did indeed, General.’
‘A man to watch, eh, Hervey?’
Sir Francis Evans was a shrewd old bird. There was just something in his tone . . .
‘I do watch him, sir.’
The general nodded, knowingly. ‘Sit you down, gentlemen.’
Hervey glanced at Fairbrother and raised his eyebrows a fraction to signal that their quiet half-hour’s coffee was not to be had. But Hervey knew too that the general would oblige them with all the club crack, of which he was more in want than peace and quiet at this time, no matter how rattling their morning had been.
Hervey cleared his throat. He wondered how much his own report on the incident at Waltham Abbey – which was meant to be the most confidential of documents – had to do with the general’s invitation. ‘Thank you, Sir Francis.’
The hall porter interrupted. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen. Sir Francis, there is a messenger from the Horse Guards for you. Colonel Hervey, sir, these are the letters for you.’
The general rose, complaining. ‘By God, sir, I wait half the day and then the deuced word comes at the least convenient moment. I had more peace when I was in harness. See you, Hervey: when this is done I would speak on the Africa business more – and Waltham Abbey. Lord Hill is displeased with the notion of an inquiry, to say the least.’
‘Lord Hill? How so?’
‘You don’t know? Hill is the new commander-in-chief.’
Hervey was vastly pleased to hear it. Everyone had a high opinion of Lord Hill. ‘I look forward to speaking with you about Waltham Abbey, General.’ (Sir Francis might no longer be serving, but he undoubtedly had the ear of the commander-in-chief.) He bid his old supporter good day.
‘Will you allow me a few minutes?’ he said to Fairbrother as he sat down again, holding up his post.
‘By all means, as long as there is coffee . . . and this most excellent publication.’ Fairbrother in his turn held up a copy of the Edinburgh Review which he had remarked lying by itself on a side table.
Peter brought them each a cup of the strongest bean, and Hervey turned his attention to the little package of letters. The regimental agents, in Craig’s Court, forwarded routine correspondence and that of affairs, but a fortnight before leaving the Cape, Hervey had sent word of his imminent return to a number of addresses, asking that any reply should be made to his club. There were half a dozen letters, three in hands he recognized, and a small package. He read the three in unfamiliar hands – they contained nothing disquieting nor pressing – and then turned to the others.
The first he opened was from Kat – Lady Katherine Greville – who wrote that she would be in Warwickshire until the middle of April (the present month) and that she looked forward to receiving him at Holland Park as soon as she returned. Hervey had fully expected such an invitation, which he would not be able to accept (the circumstances of their former acquaintance, and his betrothal to Kezia Lankester, made it improvident to say the least), but he had felt obliged to write since for Kat to learn that he was in England without his having told her would only occasion . . . difficulty.
The letter from the Reverend John Keble expressed delight at the news of his betrothal, and hearty agreement to preach at the wedding, as he had done on the first instance of his friend’s marriage. In truth Hervey was not greatly
troubled by the question of a sermon, nor, indeed, about the wedding arrangements in general, for the situation was vastly different from that first; but it had somehow seemed meet that it should be Keble, and, as he well recalled, the curate of Coln St Aldwin’s possessed the gift of brevity in these things. Keble’s letter also referred to his book of devotional poetry recently published, a copy of which he was sending under separate cover – which Hervey saw was the package. This he opened, more out of curiosity than zeal for poetry. The title page proclaimed The Christian Year. It did not urgently command his attention, though he was touched by the sentiment expressed in such a gift, the continuing kindness of this fine scholar-churchman towards him, especially since they had hardly been intimates. ‘See you, Fairbrother,’ he said, breaking his companion’s intense study of the Edinburgh Review: ‘a book of poetry by the man who’s to preach at my wedding. I fancy it will be good, but more to your taste than mine at the present.’
Fairbrother took it with a somewhat wry look.
Last, Hervey opened Kezia’s letter. It was written from Hertfordshire, her father’s house, on the fifteenth, and it began, as had those he had received at the Cape, ‘My dear Colonel Hervey’. The salutation was beginning to vex him rather. He knew well enough that it was entirely correct, but Henrietta had always been so . . . unrestrained in her correspondence (Kat too, though that was different). But, as he frequently reminded himself, the circumstances of his engagement to Lady Lankester were by no means the same as those of his marriage to Henrietta – nor even, truly, similar. They had been so much younger (it was all of thirteen years ago); except, by his reckoning, Kezia Lankester could not be more than a year or so older than had been Henrietta then . . .
Hervey 09 - Man Of War Page 3