Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (9 page)

Hervey was glad of the halt. Or rather he was until Elizabeth took up the line again when the two were gone.

‘Matthew, why cannot you take Georgiana to Lisbon? I would come too.’

‘No,’ he said at once. ‘It would be unsupportable. I could not discharge my duty properly if I thought my own family to be at risk.’

Elizabeth frowned. ‘Matthew, Georgiana is of an age to admire. She reveres the memory of Henrietta – as it is right and proper she does – and she would revere you too. Indeed, she
does,
albeit to an unreasonable degree. How could it be otherwise? And then when Private Johnson and the others tell her of your exploits, doubtless all embellished for the hearing, she cannot help but reverence you. Without a mother it goes very hard with her in coming to a right understanding in all these things. I am not her mother, Matthew. I cannot bend her to the right things.’

Hervey, standing with his head half inclined towards the French doors and the garden beyond, found himself under unusual duress. He had evidently hoped in vain that the drive from Hounslow would draw the sting of the sailing orders. And yet he was adamant. ‘It would not do. I cannot take the one or both of you.’

Elizabeth now looked vexed. She it had been who had prayed for his return to the Sixth when it seemed that despair would consume him, but never had she imagined so long an estrangement from his family – seven years, and all of them so very distantly spent. ‘Matthew, why did you contrive to go to Portugal, and so soon after returning home? It seems very ill to me, and would the more so to Georgiana were she to know.’

Hervey felt the sting especially hard in connection with Georgiana. ‘I am a soldier, Elizabeth!’

Elizabeth reddened. ‘There are whole barracks full of soldiers, Matthew – in every town almost. Are they too angling the while to have themselves sent abroad? Serjeant-Major Armstrong told me all about India. You did not even say that Georgiana was almost orphaned by a Burman bullet!’

Hervey’s brow furrowed. ‘He told you
that
?’

‘And why should he not? He could not suppose that you hadn’t! We owe your life to the Wainwright boy from Warminster Common, it seems. That much you will thank me for, I imagine, since, as I recall, it was I who insisted you go there for your recruits.’

‘Elizabeth
—’

‘And he told me all about the siege of Bhurtpore, and how you had captured the jheels in advance of the whole army so that the moats could not be filled. And how you had gone into the breaches with the storming party when there was no need. He told me all, Matthew.’

Hervey imagined he had not told
quite
all. Armstrong would not have spoken of his own part – not the tunnel. ‘I think that—’

And he also said you had scarce received any recognition in all this. So what is it you seek, then – the bubble reputation? Oh, don’t mistake me, Matthew; we are all excessively proud of you. But have a little compassion on your daughter!’

She did not need to add ‘and me’ – if, indeed, she felt it. Hervey had been conscious these seven years and more that he trespassed on his sister’s loyalty. And in truth, although he was certain that his cause was just – that he could not discharge his duty in Portugal adequately if his family were at risk – it was also true that he wished simply and plainly to be unencumbered. It was an ignoble wish, he knew full well.

He sighed inwardly. ‘Elizabeth, you may be right – undoubtedly
are
right – but what is now done I cannot undo with honour, if at all. When I am at Lisbon, if it appears at all prudent to do so, I will send for you both.’

Elizabeth too sighed, but audibly, and the suggestion of satisfaction creased her mouth. ‘Thank you, brother. Though not for myself. And not just for Georgiana.’

He understood. He might wish simply and plainly to be ‘unencumbered’, but if he neglected his paternal duties indefinitely he would come to despise himself. He could not follow a path regulated by the trumpet if he did not somehow provide more for Georgiana than was solely material.

PART TWO
REMEMBERING WITH ADVANTAGES

PROCLAMATION

People of Portugal

The time is arrived to rescue your country, and restore the government of your lawful Prince . . .

The English soldiers, who land upon your shore, do so with every sentiment of friendship, faith, and honour.

The glorious struggle in which you are now engaged is for all that is dear to man – the protection of your wives and children; the restoration of your lawful Prince; the independence, nay, the very existence of your kingdom; and for the preservation of your holy religion . . .

CHAPTER FOUR
WINTERING SOUTH

Holland Park 30th September 1826

Dearest Caroline,

You ask me why I am resolved to go to Lisbon, and chide me for not telling you before that I do. Yet I have only very lately come to a decision, and you were the first to know of it. And you ask what it is that induces me to go so far from my husband, yet knowing that he is nothing to me save the means of keeping me as our father intended, and that neither has he been so these past ten years and more. Nor even, if truth be told – and this you know already – from many years before then. From the beginning, indeed. You ask me about my ‘beau’, and I tell you I have never had such contentment and satisfaction, for he is everything that Sir Peregrine is not. His name is Matthew Hervey, but lest you at once fly into
fretfulness and anxiety for me, his people are from Wiltshire and are not connected with the Bristols except at so remote a distance that there could be no peril of the blood of that infamous family being out, I am glad to tell you. His father is a clergyman, of some rank, but not high, and of little means. He became a cornet in the cavalry when he was still very young and served under General Moore and the Duke of Wellington, and he was at Waterloo. They say he is fearful brave, and of that I have no doubt for there is something in his air that is fine and true, and which has not been greatly diminished in his years of late in India, whence he is only lately returned, and where, says the Duke of Wellington and the officers who know him, he distinguished himself at that great siege whose name I do not now recall but which dazzled the whole of India. And yet there is something of the ingénu still in his manner and understanding, which has, I believe, exposed him to tribulation in the past. The Duke’s own secretary, a man whose confidence I have had these many years, has told me that he might rise to high rank if he were a little less unbending, by which I suppose he means if he were to embrace party. While he was there, in India I mean, we exchanged letters frequently, so that I feel I know him as if a friend of many years. I should have said that he was married some years ago, and that there is a child (a daughter), but that his wife died in America in the meanest circumstances on account, I believe, of the ill-doing of his colonel, though he has spoken of it but little. This was some years ago, and the child never knew her mother and is now nine years old, and so engaging a thing that I declare I should have been happy had she been mine. I should perhaps have said before that her mother was Henrietta Lindsay, ward of Lord Bath’s, whom we must therefore have met on occasion, though I cannot be certain. But Matthew Hervey, being without means, having placed in trust the small fortune which his wife
brought with her, is forced to adventure where he can in order to advance, being too proud to accept any loan of money by which to buy advancement. He is now a captain, though he has a major’s brevet, and his regiment is quartered in Hounslow, which does not please him in this regard. And he is sent by the Horse Guards to Portugal because there is to be war there between the two brothers who pretend to the throne, and Spain intrigues against the one of them, and France too is not without interest, so that he goes there with prospects much to his advantage I believe. He is but one or two years my junior, and as fine a looking man as you would meet, not at all brought down by his years in the Indies, as are many, but quite the contrary, as if the place had invigorated him, for he is, I frankly confess, the best lover I have ever known, at once
le plus fort
and yet the most considerative, though it was but the cruellest short time for him to prove himself so, for he sailed for Portugal last week, and – I spare not your blushes, as you do not mine – the French lady visited me so early and unyieldingly that our last days together were very cruel torment. So you must not ask me, my dearest Caroline, why I fly south like the wintering birds, for it is all now laid before you. And I swear I would leave Sir Peregrine for ever to his Sark and his fishing were Captain Hervey to ask me – ay, even to quit Holland-park and give up the entire contents of its mews! So believe me, my dearest sister, when I assure you of my greatest happiness, in which consideration alone I am now resolved to act. Do not tell Louisa or our father, for they will surely not approve, yet their interference would not deflect me – I mean that you must not tell them of the reason I go to Lisbon, save to escape the mists and miasmas of this place, for Sir Peregrine knows I go, and on to Madeira he supposes. I leave by steam-ship two days hence, so do not trouble to reply at once, for it will likely not catch me. I shall put up first at Lawrence’s hotel at Sintra,
I think, for it is there that Lord Byron spoke of so well when all else in the country he found wanting. Believe me, in all this I am more certain than of anything before, and beg you would be pleased for me in my new happiness.

I am your ever affectionate sister,

Katherine.

CHAPTER FIVE
ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

The Tagus, 2 October

His Majesty’s Ship
Acis,
having had so much of her canvas blown out in the Bay of Biscay that she was all but under bare poles fore and aft, saluted and dropped anchor. Hervey’s relief was great, though not as great as Colonel Norris’s, the officer in charge of the special military mission to Lisbon. The colonel’s sea legs had early given way and he had spent the four days of the passage from Portsmouth alternately prone and supine in the cabin knocked up for him in the captain’s quarters. Hervey and the three others, when they were not holding on for dear life to the ratlines on the quarterdeck, had slept fitfully in their stygian cabins in the gunroom aft on the lower deck. Hervey had met them for the first time on going aboard – two majors of the Royal Engineers and one of Rifles. And within the limitations of the gunroom and the quarterdeck in seas in which many a ship would have foundered, they had formed a hearty fellowship and a common respect.