Peto nodded, but rather to say that within a couple of years she would need a guard not a governess. She was a pretty thing. Every midshipman and lieutenant would soon be taking soundings. He had observed how his fellow midshipman had made love to Admiral Tryon’s daughter at Portsmouth, and to Griffin’s at Gibraltar, and they not a deal older. Not he, though; the wild Norfolk coast had taught him many things, but not how to present himself with advantage to a female.
Conversation turned to Malta, its history and people. Peto knew the island well, and Lambe had once spent the best part of a year there when his ship had been laid up in repair. Rebecca was eager to hear everything.
A fruit compote followed the roast. It tasted strongly of rum, but Rebecca appeared to enjoy it, with copious cream. When they were finished, Flowerdew brought a Stilton cheese, but before they could begin there was a knock at the door. Flowerdew answered it.
‘Lieutenant of the watch presents ’is compliments, sir. Unlit sail to southward.’
‘I will go if you wish, sir,’ said Lambe, pushing his chair back.
‘Very good, Mr Lambe.’ Peto had no intention of turning out on so sketchy a report (he had no intention of doing anything in such circumstances that he would not have done aboard Nisus: it was not his way to make any false show of address).
When Lambe was gone, Rebecca asked what was the nature of the report. Peto explained that standing orders required the officer of the watch to send word to the captain if there were unidentified sail to windward, and that it was then the captain’s discretion. The report was of an unlit (or, as likely, ill-lit) ship on the weather gage. A three-decker had nothing to fear, but a darkened ship off the Barbary Coast was worth attention.
Rebecca declined the Stilton (Peto wondered if it were on account of the maggots: two or three had, most insolently, wriggled out). ‘Will your wife come to Malta, Captain Peto?’ she asked, with what sounded like hopefulness.
Peto’s hand almost miscarried the decanter of port. ‘I do not have a wife, Miss Rebecca. That is, I do not have a wife yet . . .’ (he cleared his throat) ‘I mean that I shall have a wife . . . I am to be married.’
Rebecca’s face lit up once more. ‘Oh, Captain Peto, that is very delightful!’
Peto struggled to conceal his own absolute pleasure in the subject. It was delightful; it was the most delightful thing ever to have happened to him (for delight was not the appropriate word to describe taking command of a ship). This child – this young woman indeed – had a way with directness that was altogether disarming. He bowed, obliged.
‘May I enquire who is the lady, Captain Peto?’
‘You may indeed!’ he replied, seizing the decanter again, this time with great firmness, and recharging his glass (Flowerdew then discreetly replaced the stopper and removed the remainder of the port, to Peto’s faint discomfiture). ‘She is the sister of a very dear friend of mine; an officer of light dragoons, however, not a naval officer.’
‘But you both wear a blue coat!’ she said brightly.
Peto smiled, and nodded slowly, acknowledging the aptness of the observation. ‘We do indeed, Miss Rebecca Codrington; we do indeed. You are evidently a keen student of uniform.’ He was surprised by how easily he teased. It was all on account of that letter – that astonishing letter: ‘the world turned upside down’, as went the song he had once sung in the midshipmen’s berth.
‘What is her name?’
‘Elizabeth.’
‘I like “Elizabeth”. Is she “Lizzie”, or “Eliza”? Oh, she is not “Bess” is she? Or “Beth”? I am not so partial to those.’
Peto was wholly taken aback; it was not merely by Rebecca’s decided expression but by his own uncertainty as to the answer. ‘I . . . I have only heard her answer to “Elizabeth”.’
‘Please don’t call her “Beth”, or “Bess”, for I should not like it.’
‘Miss Codrington,’ (he wondered if it were the wine speaking, and felt suddenly negligent) ‘you will allow me to please myself in this regard! She will answer very properly to “Lady Peto”.’
Rebecca smiled broadly, draining the contents of her water glass. Peto sighed inwardly: this slip of a girl appeared to be gaining something of the measure of him. And it was deuced unfair, for he had not the slightest experience of her sex – not of the sensibility at least – other than of Miss Hervey; and that, perforce, was of a somewhat restricted nature. But what manner of excuse was that? What experience did this . . . girl have? He almost shook his head in despair – and wished, indeed, that Lambe would return to say the unlit ship was a pirate with hostile intent.
V
THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL
Wiltshire, 23 April 1828
‘D’ye know, Fairbrother, I had quite forgot: what is the day today?’
The chaise, engaged at short notice and therefore prodigious expense, was bowling comfortably along the downs towards the valley of the Wylye, which Hervey always thought of as the home stretch. In half an hour they would be at his father’s vicarage in Horningsham. It had been a most pleasant drive. Breakfasting early, they had left London at seven o’clock, and it was now approaching five of the evening (he would be ready to adjust his watch, for Warminster time was a half-hour or so behind London’s). They had stopped but once, except to change horses, and then for the briefest of meals, and they had talked for every mile of the way.
Hervey had racked his brain but could think of no likely cause for his mother’s alarm. In the end he had concluded that very likely it was another fit of the vapours, occasioned no doubt by some dispute of his father’s with the bishop (he remembered well enough the tumult of ‘popery in Horningsham’ before he went to India). But if his mother wrote to him, she was by her own reckoning in need of him, and he could do no other but come at once, although there was pressing business in London – and perhaps even more in Hertfordshire. The compensation was, of course, that he would see his daughter. It had been almost eleven months – another birthday, which again he had been absent from. She was now ten years old.
Fairbrother glanced inboard briefly at his questioner. ‘It is a Wednesday, but those are legion; it is the twenty-third of April, and therefore St George’s Day, as I have observed from the flags on the churches – which evidently you have not.’ He had enjoyed the day as much as any he could remember. He wondered what made it special in his friend’s mind.
‘It is the regimental day.’
‘Ah. There will be revelries in Hounslow?’
Hervey smiled. ‘I hope so. Tea and rum is taken to the dragoons by the officers and serjeant-majors at reveille, and then before morning stables the senior officer presents a red rose to each man.’
‘Why red?’
‘That is a good question. Nobody knows, really. Quite probably because there were once not enough white ones. And after duties everyone gives their rose to a female of his favouring, on account of the commanding officer’s giving his to an old nun in the convent where we were lodging in Spain . . . or France; I forget which.’
‘I wonder where they will be bestowed in Cape-town,’ said Fairbrother, with a wryish smile.
‘I wonder too.’
Cape Town: it had been but nine months since his landing there, and yet it seemed an age. Fairbrother was today as agreeable a travelling consort as any he could wish for, and yet when first they had met, in the indolent comfort of his ‘retirement quarters’, he had been aloof, resentful, querulous even. Only by degrees, subdued by the charm of what he perceived to be a most peculiar attachment of the dragoons to each other – more especially of those immediately about Hervey – and by the rekindling of an extraordinary talent for the soldier’s art (and indeed exemplary courage), had Fairbrother mellowed and become Hervey’s boon companion.
‘Well, I am glad to be seeing “God’s country” at last.’
Hervey leaned forward to look out of the window as they joined the turnpike at Heytesbury, off the windblown Salisbury Plain at last and into the g
entle valley of the Wylye, with its villages strung like pearls between the episcopacies of Sarum and Bath. ‘Did I describe it thus?’ He smiled; he knew he had the habit of doing so. ‘Not long now.’
Fairbrother nodded. ‘You have never spoken much of your sister. Might you tell me a little of her before we meet?’
‘Have I not? I have told you she is to marry my good friend Laughton Peto. Sir Laughton, indeed.’
‘Oh, just so; and you mention her name with regularity, but I am not enlightened ever.’
Hervey frowned at the challenge. ‘As you well know, she is to marry Peto. They met many years ago, I believe when he came to Wiltshire for my wedding, and then later in Rome when Elizabeth and I had gone there for . . . to see Italy’ (he did not feel it expedient still to disclose to Fairbrother the extent of his melancholy after Henrietta’s death, though that was some . . . ten years ago). ‘They became engaged last summer, just before Peto joined his ship.’ He suddenly looked askance. ‘That is, I assume he received Elizabeth’s acceptance before putting to sea. By heavens, what a business is courtship in uniform!’
‘Quite.’
‘My father has been vicar of his parish for many years, and lately Archdeacon of Sarum, and Elizabeth has done good works in the parish – or I should say parishes, for my father has had the additional cure of several when they had no clerk. And she has always been active with the workhouse in the town. You know, it was she who found Serjeant Wainwright.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. He comes from an indigent family hereabouts. Though I say “family”, he doesn’t know his father; Elizabeth knew of their situation and urged me to enlist him.’
‘In that alone she has done you the greatest service.’
Hervey sighed. ‘That, and a hundred other things.’ He turned to look at his friend direct. ‘I could not measure my gratitude to her. Such sound sense and compassion.’
‘I look forward to making her acquaintance.’
‘You must not alarm her, Fairbrother, or any of the family.’
His friend looked bemused. ‘I have left my animal skins at the United Service Club, Hervey.’
‘Don’t be an ass. I meant you are not to alarm them with stories of the Cape.’
‘As you wish. Though it was not my intention.’
‘No, but Georgiana might wheedle it out of you, or it might come out casually at dinner on account of some unintended line.’
‘I understand, though do you not think they might have some inkling of events from the newspapers?’
‘That is possible. But by and large I keep these things to myself.’
Fairbrother said nothing. He was a guest, even though he accompanied his friend on the orders of the lieutenant-governor – ‘captain-nursemaid’, Hervey had ribbed – and since he was not on intimate terms with the manners of the English gentry, he was content to take counsel and observe. But how stiff it all sounded compared with the way things were in his own country!
The joy of the last mile to Horningsham was to him undiminished by such thoughts, however. The prospect of Archdeacon Hervey’s church, when it came, was especially pleasing, and then the parsonage was all charm (Hervey had told him that it was but a modest house and establishment – ‘my father did not have benefit of Queen Anne’s Bounty’), a hotch-pot of building covered in ivy and moss and vines. They had been hourly expected, for Hervey had increased his expenses by sending an express, and as soon as the chaise’s wheels growled into the drive, the household came outside to greet them.
Fairbrother was wholly intrigued by the ceremony. Whenever he had returned to his father’s house the greeting had been with him alone, and at his mother’s cabin it had been all exuberance, with no precedence but that gained by the agility of any number of aunts, uncles and cousins. He descended from the chaise and watched as his friend greeted his father with an easy smile, but with a bow rather than a handshake (or kisses, as he himself would have in Jamaica). The Venerable Thomas Hervey did indeed look as his title, a kindly old gentleman, an Englishman of proper sentiment and loyalties, and just as his friend had described him. Mrs Hervey, on the other hand, of whom her son had spoken little, looked less at ease, a woman, he imagined, of indifferent sensibilities and limited comprehension. He did not think she would care much for his intrusion on the household. Hervey greeted her with kisses and a sort of indulging frown, as much as to say ‘I am here, and I am sure all will be well’.
His sister now came forward, with a look that he, Fairbrother, could not quite recognize. It seemed to carry at once both deference and superiority, defiance even – but certainly the strongest affection. There was no doubting their kinship: the shape of the face, the eyes, the . . . assumption of authority. It was really most striking. They embraced, and Hervey stood back and smiled in a way that said how prodigiously proud he was of her. And then, last in line, standing with perfect composure, was the child of whom Fairbrother had heard his friend speak so much, yet without once imparting any appreciable knowledge. She advanced, curtsied – which he surmised was the culmination of a morning’s practice – and then burst into excited greeting, throwing her arms wide and hugging her father about his waist before he was able to bend, or to lift her up to embrace. She was her father’s daughter – the likeness was clear – yet so unlike her aunt as to remind Fairbrother that there had been a mother too.
When he had untangled Georgiana’s arms for the moment, Hervey turned. ‘Father, may I present Captain Fairbrother.’
Fairbrother, his hat already in his hand, bowed formally. ‘Good evening, sir.’
Archdeacon Hervey held out his hand, and a warmth suffused his face, so that Fairbrother was certain of his welcome.
‘And my mother,’ (Mrs Hervey curtsied) ‘my sister,’ (Elizabeth both curtsied and smiled with complete naturalness) ‘and . . . Miss Georgiana Hervey, my daughter.’
Georgiana’s forehead and the inclination of her head betrayed curiosity: Fairbrother’s complexion was by no means as dark as some of the sable servants in Bath, or even as some of the Horningsham farm hands at the end of a fierce summer; but neither were his features those of the county. Fairbrother observed, however, that it was curiosity not alarm, nor any measure of distaste. And he could never find himself able to condemn a child of barely ten years, especially one who was able to greet her father formally and then throw off that formality without leave.
She curtsied. ‘Good afternoon, Captain Fairbrother.’ Then she turned to her father again. ‘Where is Private Johnson, Papa?’
‘In London. There are things there for which I had need of him.’
She looked disappointed.
When the chaise, its driver and horses had been attended to – in which the entire assemblage appeared to play a part – they went inside to tea. And then Elizabeth and the housemaid showed them to their rooms (though Hervey’s had been the same since his brother had died), where hot water was brought, and word that they would dine at eight o’clock. The family was all politeness, Fairbrother concluded.
‘I will come for you in an hour,’ said Hervey, when he had satisfied himself that his friend had every requisite, before descending discreetly to enquire of Elizabeth what was the ‘untoward event’ which so disturbed the peace of the parsonage at Horningsham.
To his surprise, however, he found his mother at the bottom of the stairs. She took him into the little sitting room reserved for her. He rarely entered it, and found himself staring at its contents – china figures, samplers, a vast box of sewing, and but one book, whose title he could not make out from where he stood.
‘I am glad you are come, Matthew, and hope it is of no inconvenience, but I am at my wits’ end, and your father is of no use in it whatsoever.’ Mrs Hervey shook her head, sat down and looked at him as if some response were already required.
Hervey, in the circumstances not wanting to smile, yet feeling it necessary to make light of the inconvenience, managed something he reckoned appropriate. ‘I had not an
y fixed arrangements, Mama.’
Mrs Hervey nodded, satisfied. ‘By the way, your friend – a very gentlemanlike man.’
‘Indeed he is. And a brave officer too.’
‘It is very distasteful that he should be exposed to all this. As exposed he must be.’
Hervey’s brow furrowed. ‘Exposed to what, exactly, Mama? What is the cause of my hastening here?’
Mrs Hervey looked distressed again. ‘I cannot know how to begin, for it is too shameful . . .’
Hervey decided there was no course but to sit in silence until she could bear it no longer: any attempt to coax it from her seemed likely only to occasion more procrastinating.
She began dabbing at her eyes (though he saw no actual tears), and sighing with such rapidity that he thought he must reach for the smelling salts. ‘Oh, I have had such palpitations as no person should have to endure!’
‘Mama!’
His exasperation – which Mrs Hervey took to be a very proper alarm – did the trick. She took a deep and expressive breath. ‘Elizabeth says she will not marry Captain Peto.’
‘What? But she has said so. She wrote and accepted his proposal.’
‘I mean that she has changed her mind. She no longer wishes to marry him.’
Hervey was all but dumbstruck. How could it be so? ‘But she has accepted his proposal.’
‘Matthew, I know she has accepted, but now she intends . . . renouncing her acceptance. That is why I wrote to you. I have tried everything with her but she will not have a word of it.’ She produced a second handkerchief, and pitiable sobs.
Hervey’s brow was more thoroughly furrowed than ever his mother had seen it – had she but the capacity to notice. ‘What reason does she give? What reason can she give?’
Mrs Hervey looked out of the window. It was still daylight enough to see the distant elms, and the rooks settling to the nest – in just the manner, it had seemed to her, that at last both her offspring were about to settle. ‘She says’ (sob) ‘she does not love him.’ She began shaking her head again, as if asserting that there was no future to be had for Elizabeth or, indeed, for herself.
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