Man Of War

When they arrived, he conducted them to Peto’s quarters. There was a rank smell to the place this morning – stale urine, faeces, and something Fairbrother fancied was suppuration. Perhaps it was because the presence of the gentler sex made him more sensible of such things, though had he but known that the Warminster workhouse could smell ranker still, he would not have troubled on Elizabeth’s behalf.

Hervey hesitated as they neared Peto’s room, second thoughts crowding in on him. Should he not permit his sister to enter first (they were officially engaged, after all) or should it be he, as older friend? Or perhaps they should enter together? Was it truly why he hesitated? He looked at Elizabeth, hoping for the answer, as so often. She took a deep breath, slipped her arm round his, and led him through the door, leaving Fairbrother sentinel outside.

Peto’s eyes remained closed. He sat upright, strapped in a high-back chair, his left arm free but in a splint, a scar across his forehead, and another to his neck, his legs bound, and his right sleeve empty.

Hervey’s eyes at once filled with tears.

Elizabeth took three silent steps to his side, and bent to kiss his forehead. Peto woke, with a look that spoke of both happiness and dismay. ‘Miss Hervey—’ he sighed, as if wearied beyond measure. He saw Hervey, and his look became a kind of relief: ‘My dear friend.’

Hervey, fighting hard to keep his own anguish in check, took hold of his old friend’s hand. ‘I had no idea—’

Peto seemed to brace himself, though restrained by the fastenings. ‘We sank five, and saved the flagship, likely as not. The deucedest ill luck, this . . .’

Elizabeth, managing for the most part to conceal her own distress, looked at him anxiously nevertheless. ‘We received no letters; we had no word, or of course we would have come.’

Peto shook his head, as if to bid her not to distress herself on that account. ‘I wrote a good many, but getting them away was—’ He began coughing, motioning to the water glass on a side table. Hervey tried to put it to his mouth, but Peto shook his head and took it for himself by the splinted arm. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, giving back the empty glass; ‘a chill caught on the passage home.’

Elizabeth looked more anxious still: the coughing was not wholly unlike the rattling hacks she heard of a winter night in the Warminster union. ‘Shall I ask a doctor to come? Is there a powder I may get for you?’

Peto tried to smile, though the effort looked painful. ‘No, Miss Hervey, there is no need of either. Only a chill . . .’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘The letters: getting them away from a man-of-war is ever a business.’

‘But no word in the fleet returns of your . . . your situation,’ said Hervey, looking deeply troubled. ‘I read Codrington’s despatch.’

Peto closed his eyes again, as if fighting something unseen (he would not ask his friend to send for more of the morphium). ‘My dear Hervey, you of all men should know that a general’s first despatch can be but an incomplete account – a notice of victory, and the bare bones of a narrative.’

‘Yes, but I hazard – and from what you have said I am certain – that your ship was in the thick of it.’

‘She was, and many a good man we lost, too. But . . . See you, I may as well tell: when I was hit and taken below,’ (he began coughing again) ‘I gave a most positive order to my lieutenant that he was not to report my injury to the flag . . . which I am pleased to say he obeyed without question for a full day and a half, until I lapsed into . . . sleep, and was not in any degree able to exercise command.’

‘But why, in God’s name, did you do that?’ Before him was a man barely capable of speaking, months after the event: how had he imagined he might command a ship? What spirit was this that animated his friend?

Peto raised his hand, with no little effort, to say ‘enough’.

They drew up chairs.

The conversation was no less halting for its being seated, however, and after a quarter of an hour Peto appeared to tire quite markedly. He asked if Hervey would leave him for the moment so that he could speak with Elizabeth.

When her brother was gone, and the door was closed, Elizabeth made to begin, but Peto stayed her. ‘I must speak first,’ he insisted, and with patent effort, ‘. . . if you will permit me, Miss Hervey.’

She smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘It was never my wish that you should learn of things in this way, but you now see what is my condition, and,’ (he swallowed, as if to suppress his own reluctance to say it) ‘I am resolved upon releasing you from your acceptance of marriage,’ (Elizabeth tried to speak, but again he stayed her) ‘for you see – and must know when I tell you – that I am unable to be that which you had every right to expect.’