A Regimental Affair (42 page)

ARTICLE THE FIRST

There shall be a firm and universal Peace between His Britannic Majesty and the United States, and between their respective Countries, Territories, Cities, Towns, and People of every degree without exception of places or persons. All hostilities both by sea and land shall cease as soon as this Treaty shall have been ratified by both parties as hereinafter mentioned . . .

ARTICLE THE NINTH

The United States of America engages to put an end immediately after the Ratification of the present Treaty to
hostilities with all the Tribes or Nations of Indians with whom they may be at war at the time of such Ratification, and forthwith to restore to such Tribes or Nations respectively all the possessions, rights, and privileges which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven previous to such hostilities. Provided always that such Tribes or Nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against the United States of America, their Citizens, and Subjects upon the Ratification of the present Treaty being notified to such Tribes or Nations, and shall so desist accordingly. And His Britannic Majesty engages on his part to put an end immediately after Ratification of the present Treaty to hostilities with all the Tribes or Nations of Indians with whom He may be at war at the time of such Ratification, and forthwith to restore to such Tribes or Nations respectively all the possessions, rights, and privileges, which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven previous to such hostilities. Provided always that such Tribes or Nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against His Britannic Majesty and His Subjects upon the Ratification of the present Treaty being notified to such Tribes or Nations, and shall so desist accordingly . . .

Done in triplicate at Ghent the twenty fourth day of December one thousand eight hundred and fourteen
.

G
AMBIER

H
ENRY
G
OULBURN

W
ILLIAM
A
DAMS

J
OHN
Q
UINCY
A
DAMS

J. A. B
AYARD

H. C
LAY

J
ON
. R
USSELL

A
LBERT
G
ALLATIN

York
Upper Canada
12th January 1818

My dear Father
,

You will have received by now, I trust, the brief note of our safe arrival in Quebec one week past, and I pray that this letter, too, shall find you and Mama and Elizabeth in good health. I can only add that I pray, also, for your peace and tranquillity in respect of the disagreements with the diocese, and I await news of the proceedings of the consistory court with confidence that Justice shall in the end be done
.

Of our own situation I am pleased to send you every good report, and more fully than I was able in my last. The regiment (less one troop to form a depot at Hounslow) left Liverpool on the 28th of November with all its horses, and so well fitted were the transports that we lost naught but half a dozen during the voyage. This was also occasioned by calm seas throughout yet a very favourable wind which
made for a faster crossing than sometimes is made, so that we entered the St. Lawrence River on the 2nd of January, and proceeded under tow by steam barge (which I had never seen before) for as far as the rapids above Montreal. There we were disembarked and two troops under the major proceeded to that city where they are to reinforce the garrison. The remaining three troops were transferred to Lake Ontario, and so to here at the western part
.

I shall not describe the difficulties we had on account of the severe cold (though it is said that the winter this year is much less severe than usual) but the men and horses bore it unexpectedly well, perhaps because the air, though cold, is very dry and there has been little wind. Above all, Henrietta has suffered it without distress or complaint. We had good quarters on the ship which brought us, and the two dozen wives who accompany the regiment are treated with every consideration by the agents. For much of the transfer to Lake Ontario the ladies were taken by sledge and, covered with furs, they had a very pleasant ride of it indeed! At first I thought that Henrietta might remain in Montreal for her confinement, but, there being still two months, and she feeling in hale condition, she has accompanied me here
.

York is the most unlikely capital you ever saw. There are scarce a thousand inhabitants, not counting military. It was burned by the Americans five years ago and there is much bitterness still at it. But it grows almost by the day, even in the depths of winter. What is so very pleasing, though, is that the Lieutenant Governor here (in Upper Canada, I mean) is Sir Peregrine Maitland, who commanded the Guards at Waterloo. He is the finest of men. And his wife is Lady Sarah Lennox, an acquaintance of Henrietta’s, and his aide-de-camp of but two months is Charles Addinsel, whose reacquaintance from Peninsular days I never felt more pleased to make. He was a good friend of d’Arcey Jessope’s, of whom you heard me speak much. So neither Henrietta nor I shall be wanting in engaging company, it seems, no matter how hard a winter it goes
.

As to the military purpose for which we were hastened
here (I feel that I may say this without prejudice to safety) it would appear that the alarm is past, and we may find ourselves altogether more agreeably employed than was supposed . . .

Hervey put down his pen and read over the letter. What his father would make of the vivid ink, he did not know. Perhaps he should have explained that his own had frozen solid on the last leg of the journey, broken the glass of the bottle, and then, when the baggage had been brought inside, thawed into his unexpectedly absorbent pelisse coat. Private Johnson said he could remove the ink without too much trouble, but Hervey doubted it, and thought he would have to reconcile himself to writing off a second coat in ten years. He’d see a pauper’s grave yet, he sighed.

He looked again at the last paragraph. It was not untrue; he need not concern himself there. But it was so far from the whole truth that he worried it was more than he habitually allowed under the general principle of not alarming his family (which had always made his letters from the Peninsula read as if he had been little more than a spectator). Of course there was no present danger of renewed fighting: that much was clear to him in Quebec. This man Bagot, whom Lord Liverpool had sent to settle the question of warships on the Great Lakes was, by all accounts, not a man to misjudge things: it seemed that he had drawn the sting that remained of the late war with a new protocol. Hervey was looking forward to meeting him at dinner at the lieutenant-governor’s that evening.

But the evening would not, of course, be unalloyed pleasure, for there would also be the brooding presence of Lord Towcester. What a joy the last two months had been, separated most of the time by a mile or more of ocean in their respective transports. However, any hope that the sea air had improved his lordship’s disposition, in essentials, was dashed in Quebec, where he had stomped about the governor-general’s apartments in petulant rage, his desire for easy glory thwarted by the tidings of peace. There, Hervey had wondered yet again if he should have accepted Sir Abraham’s handsome offer. In truth, he had wondered long about it during the Atlantic passage, but so pleasant was the cruise that the offer had faded greatly in its temptation by the time they reached Canada. But all of Towcester’s baseness had been laid bare
again since their landfall, at least to Hervey’s eyes, and he could scarcely hope to avoid any more trials of loyalty. And try as he might to see this country favourably (and there was much in its raw beauty that appealed) Hervey could not detach his feelings from those he supposed Henrietta must have. How, in Heaven’s name, might she be happy in this frontier of nature? He would love her with all the intensity a man could, but was that – in the spirit’s sense – enough to keep the cold from her?

Oh, how he might look back now on the happy, unhurried intimacy of the crossing, and wish he had secured that state for ever at Manvers Priory. Was his soldiery so essential a part of that happiness? Henrietta had thought it so, yes; but had he himself truly contemplated it – contemplated it
thoroughly
? He smiled again as the crossing came back to mind: the dinner at Christmas with all the officers, squeezed around the mess table, Henrietta full of laughter. And then the capering with the other ranks that evening. She had seemed to enjoy both so much. That had been his second Christmas at sea, in three – and never one at home since Shrewsbury. Was this really to be his life for ever? Not for ever, of course, for even an officer of his age must know of his natural mortality. But was it to be the pattern for all of the life he so wanted for them both? How difficult he found it. How difficult when you loved someone both as viscerally and cerebrally as he did – and when that love was soon to bear its first fruit.

The trouble was – and he knew not just in his heart of hearts – there was no appeasing a man like Towcester. The boil, as it were, was forced to come to some ghastly head, where the lance was all that was left. But might a running sore thereby follow? He could not be certain of success with the blade. Yes, the boil would come to a head, and he would surely have to take the lance to it. The last thing he could afford, however, was for that to occur too soon – while Henrietta still carried their child, for he knew full well that her mind was prey enough still to the doubts born of Princess Caroline’s sad confinement. He was no free agent, even in military matters, now that he had taken a wife.

‘You are sure this evening will not fatigue you?’

‘Not excessively,’ replied Henrietta. ‘Really, this baby is being so very good to me.’

Truly, it was. There was a colour about her face always, as if she were the girl again. It stirred him as much as had her blushes in those first, novel days of intimacy after their marriage.

Her eyes seemed just that bit brighter, too, her voice that much richer. Her hair was a silky gloss – the stallion’s coat, where before it might have been the gelding’s. The fact of there being a baby, too, was almost imperceptible beneath her high-bodiced dress, though the swelling beneath the bodice must betoken it to anyone who knew her usual figure.

Hervey put the fur cloak about her, fastened the front, and then put on his own cloak. ‘Very well, then, let us to the Maitlands.’

The distance to the lieutenant-governor’s residence was nothing but a few furlongs, but the cold and the snow made even this a trial on foot, so they were taking a carriage heated by a warmingpan. The scene was not unlike Horningsham when, every few years or so, the village was besieged by a hard winter. Or rather by a month of hard winter instead of the three or even four which came every year here. Snow lay deep over gardens and pasture, and high along the sides of houses, except for the trench-like path cleared to door or stable. The houses, as in Horningsham, were too scattered to be of any support to each other: there was no network of clearance, therefore, and the notion of community (outside the walls of the fort itself) seemed smothered by this great white blanket. But community there was, thanks largely to the efforts of the garrison, who tirelessly cleared the snow from the main thoroughfares after each fall, making them passable to sled and wheel alike. But unlike Horningsham, there were oil lamps along the streets, and these were now lighting Hervey’s and Henrietta’s way to the Maitlands as well as might a full moon of a Wiltshire summer. The snow magnified the power of the little lamps, which in their homely flickers made the bitter outdoors seem so much less forbidding, and the two were received in only a very few minutes later at Government House not greatly chilled.

Henrietta had taken tea that very day with Lady Sarah Maitland, and so their conversation was resumed on the same terms of only a few hours before. Hervey had seen Captain Addinsel for a little while on their first evening, two days ago, but they had yet to have any real opportunity for discourse. First, though, he paid his respects to General Maitland, who chatted
agreeably after their introduction. Their exchanges were brief, however, in consequence of the arrival of Lord Towcester, followed at once by the minister from the embassy in Washington – Charles Bagot – and his wife. This gave Addinsel the opportunity to take Hervey aside to meet the other dinner guests, one of whom he found immediately engaging.