Hervey 10 - Warrior (13 page)

Georgiana looked at her aunt, and then at her father. 'Papa, Aunt Elizabeth has not told me this. It is true?'

Hervey raised an eyebrow, and smiled very slightly. 'It is.'

'And did you see Major Heinrici?'

'I saw his brigade – General Dornberg's.'

'
Ach, ja! Liebe Willy!
What a man was he!'

Hervey was now warmed to his subject. 'I rather fancy that we in Lord Vyvyan's brigade had an easier time of it on the left flank, for when we moved to the centre towards evening, the sight of Dornberg's brigade, and so many others, filled us with foreboding. I never saw such a thing, so many lying dead about the place, and those still afoot or astride as black as their boots!'

'Black, Papa?'

'From the powder smoke.'

'And you recall the advance of the Imperial Guard, Hervey,' added Heinrici, enthusiastically. 'And how your Guards beat them off, and then the Duke of Wellington raising his hat and beckoning the whole line to advance.
Quelle affaire!
'

Hervey was quite overcome with the memory. And it was as if the scales were falling from his eyes, for what did Elizabeth's indiscretion matter when here sat one of Dornberg's men? He leaned forward, offered his hand, and spoke the words exactly as Prince Blücher had at the inn
La Belle Alliance,
when the duke and the old Prussian marshal met on the field at last, the battle run: '
Mein liebe Kamerad: quelle affaire!
'

Fairbrother arrived next morning. Hervey met him at his club quite by accident, for he had not returned to Hanover Square the evening before, whither his friend's express had been sent, on account of the most convivial dinner with Major Heinrici and Elizabeth (and afterwards, when Elizabeth had retired, prolonged reminiscences with Heinrici himself over Teutonic quantities of port). He was glad to sit down with Fairbrother now, and copious coffee, to relate all that had occurred in his friend's absence in the West Country.

Fairbrother looked well, even for his long journey by mail coach. He had been taking the opportunity to visit with distant family of his natural father, for he had not wished to be any encumbrance to either bridegroom or bride, and he had not felt sufficiently at ease, yet, to take up the several invitations to stay in Wiltshire which his new acquaintance with Hervey's people had brought. The distant family being two elderly female cousins, he had been able to spend his days riding on the moors, or swimming, and the evenings in their not inconsiderable, if antique, library.

Hervey envied him, indeed. That is to say, he envied the contentment that his friend's sojourn (albeit foreshortened) had evidently brought him.

There was no one else in the smoking room, but an observer might have remarked on how alike were the two men (allowing a little for complexion, and rather more for features). There was nothing but a year or so between them. They were of about equal height and frame, so that they could wear each other's clothes if needs be. An observer might not at once be able to judge that their natures were agreeably matched, but he might begin to suspect it before too long. In some of the essentials they were the same, and in those in which they were not, there was a happy complement.

Hervey deferred to no one in matters of soldiery except where rank emphatically demanded it (or, exceptionally, when rank and capability were unquestionably combined). Excepting, that is, in those matters on which only service in the ranks gave true authority, so that he deferred always to the likes of Sar'nt-Major Armstrong and RSM (now Quartermaster) Lincoln. But in Fairbrother he recognized a wholly exceptional ability, a sort of sixth sense for the field which was not merely acquired, there being something, he reckoned, that came with the blood – that part of his friend's blood which came from the dark continent of Africa. For his mother, a house-slave of a Jamaica plantation, was but one generation removed from the savagery of the African tribe – the savagery
and
the wisdom.When the two friends had faced that savagery together, at the frontier of the Eastern Cape, it had been Fairbrother who had known, unfailingly, what to do. And, further, he had been able then to slip from the lofty strategy of the saddle, so to speak, and take to his belly and better the savage at his own craft.

And, too, such were Fairbrother's cultivated mind and manners that his company would have been sought by gentlemen of the best of families. Only a certain weariness with life (although not so much as when they had first met a year or so ago) stood between him and Hervey, which the latter chose largely to ignore rather than understand. Fairbrother was not a willing soldier in the way that Hervey was; he had not thought himself a soldier from an early age. His father had purchased a commission for him in the Jamaica Militia, and thence in the Royal Africans (a corps which more resembled the penitentiary than the regular army), and then on the best of recommendations Hervey had sought him out from his indolent half pay at the Cape to accompany him to the frontier as interpreter. Their first meeting had been unpropitious. Indeed, Hervey had very near walked from it in contempt of the man. But now this handsome, half-caste, gentlemanlike, disinclined soldier was rapidly becoming his paramount friend.
La vie militaire
: it was the deucedest, strangest thing!

When his friend was done with his uncharacteristically enthusiastic account of the countryside and seashores of Devon, Hervey told him of the offer of command, and of the Russian mission, and why they must return early to the Cape. He told him that Kezia and Georgiana would not be able to accompany him (hiding his disappointment, he thought, adequately). He said that it grieved him to leave poor Peto, and how he had wished to see him settled first at Houghton, but he trusted that Lord Cholmondeley, with Kat's continuing interest, would see his old friend right. He did not speak of Kat herself. He told him of Caithlin Armstrong, and observed his friend's real and considerable dismay. Lastly, he told him of Lord Holderness's relapse, although the epileptic seizure was not so debilitating as had been the one at Windsor, when he had nearly drowned as a consequence. He said that Lady Holderness had expressed her alarm that her husband had suffered another bout so soon (they did not normally recur within six months); and he confessed he had told the adjutant that the colonel had a cold and would not appear at orderly room for a day or so. That had been in the middle of the preceding week, he explained, and Lord Holderness was now restored and at office. He himself was therefore free to make the arrangements for their return to Cape Town.

'Is there anything I might do on your behalf ?' asked Fairbrother.

Hervey thought for a moment. 'There is, but not today. Tomorrow will do perfectly well. I should like you to go to the War Office and inform them that I am soon to return to the Cape, and enquire if in consequence there is any commission they wish of me. Explain that I must attend at Hounslow; hence my not coming in person.'

'Very well. You will give me a letter of introduction or some such?'

'I will, though John Howard might best conduct you there. And I beg you will forgive me if I ask that you dine here alone – just this evening – for Kezia and I are obliged to her aunt.'

Fairbrother raised a hand. 'Think nothing of it. I would not dream of intruding on the honeymoon. You have not said, by the way: how was your Brighton?'

Lady Marjoribanks lifted her head high when she addressed her new nephew by marriage. 'It is most unfortunate, Colonel Hervey, that you will not be able to hear your wife sing. You are quite certain, are you, that you must leave for Africa so early?'

And the tone was distinctly more accusatory than sympathetic. Hervey had to resist the desire to re-phrase the observation so that the misfortune was Kezia's in not being able to accompany her husband in his duties. 'I fear I must return next week, yes, Lady Marjoribanks.'

A footman poured more wine, which gave him just enough cause to avoid the gaze of his hostess. Hervey was by no means entirely discomfited by Kezia's aunt, but on the subject of his return to the Cape there had already been a sufficiency of objection. He was in any case reconciled, however reluctantly, to returning unaccompanied.

Lady Marjoribanks watched as another footman served her fish, a pause which Hervey hoped would be followed by a change in the direction of the conversation. 'Your wife's voice stands comparison with that of any professional singer, you know, Colonel Hervey. It is truly inopportune, this early return. The presence of the husband at this first concert in London is most desirable. Indeed to my mind it is unthinkable that it should be otherwise.'

Hervey would not have conceived it otherwise had there not been the imperative of Somervile's mission. He began to resent this – to his mind – inversion of the usual order of things. It was simple enough, was it not? He was a soldier, a soldier was under discipline, and he had received orders. Or, if not exactly orders, then a request; and a request from a senior officer was always to be considered an order (even though Somervile was not a senior officer). 'It is a deprivation that we shall all have to bear, Lady Marjoribanks, and it will be the easier in knowing that it is on His Majesty's business that I am bent.'

'Mm.' Lady Marjoribanks raised her head again, sounding unconvinced.

Hervey was wondering, too, if Kezia herself might not make some intervention on his behalf. He had after all withdrawn his objection to her remaining in England, and that was surely no little thing. He had likewise put in abeyance (in his mind at least) command of the Eighty-first: if a wife had objection to so great a thing as command of a particular regiment (or, more expressly, a particular station), then a man must take very careful account of it. And she knew, did she not, that he did so? He was at something of a loss, therefore, to know why she did not speak up for him now.

He looked at her.

'Shall you bring Georgiana here tomorrow?' was all that Kezia asked.

He was glad nevertheless of the change of subject. 'I shall have to go to Hounslow tomorrow. The day after, perhaps.'

'Where does she stay?' asked Lady Marjoribanks.

'At Grillon's hotel, in Albemarle-street.'

'Ah, Grillon's,' she replied, somewhat enigmatically, so that Hervey was tempted to ask if there was something he ought to know of it.

But instead he would be blithe. 'My family stayed there for the wedding. It appears a very agreeable place. It is convenient, also, for my sister.'

'Mm.'

The dinner continued in much the same fashion for a full hour. Lady Marjoribanks asked a good many questions but gave little by reply to any which Hervey was able to put to her in return. Kezia said next to nothing other than in direct response to an enquiry from her aunt. The proceedings were, indeed, so laboured that Hervey believed he had sufficient of the language to translate them simultaneously into Hindoostani or even Portuguese. Just after nine they rose, and Lady Marjoribanks announced that she would retire.

Hervey and Kezia took their coffee on the garden terrace. The evening was warm, the light only now beginning to fail.

'You said little at dinner, my love. Is all well?'

Kezia smiled thinly. 'All is perfectly well, yes, thank you. I am sorry if I was dull.'

Hervey frowned. 'I did not mean to imply . . . I merely remarked that you seemed a little . . . Perhaps you are tired. This heat . . .'

Kezia put down her coffee cup. 'I am a little tired, yes. And this weather brings on my headaches so. I think, if you will permit me, I shall retire, too.'

Hervey put down his own cup. A confusion of dismay and anger welled up within. He had to fight hard to suppress it, for the wine was freeing the reins. A contrary image of Kat then danced into his mind. He did not summon it, nor even wish it; he pushed hard against it, in fact, for together with the wine it only served to aggravate his frustration.

Kezia turned. For all the distance in her manner, she was as striking in the perfection of her form and features as that day at Sezincote when he had first understood how much he desired her. She threw him a parting smile; but it spoke of sadness.

Hervey's confusion was now the greater, to the point of despair, almost; but some instinct to protect overtook him, so that his frustration gave way instead to gentleness. 'I am happy to retire early,' he said, quietly. 'For I must be at Hounslow by ten.'

Kezia smiled thinly again. 'You must do as you will, my dear. But please try not to wake me when you come up.'

She kissed his cheek before he could find her lips, and left him to the tray of brandy and water.

Hounslow did not, in the event, detain him long, for Lord Holderness was returned to muster, and there had been no regimental defaulters in the brief hiatus of command. Hervey made his farewells before midday, certain that taking lunch in the officers' house would protract his stay overlong, there being old friends at duty. But he did not intend returning directly to London. He had resolved to call on Sister Maria, and although he did not know anything about conventual routine, he supposed that the early afternoon, as with any household, was the appropriate time to visit without appointment.

He therefore made his way to Hammersmith, enquiring of several passers-by where was the convent, until a drayman was able to give him authoritative directions. To his surprise, he found that he had passed it each time he had come and gone from Hounslow, but so high was the wall that there was no clue to what lay beyond.