Man Of War

‘Indeed? They still spoke of him when I was there. Well, I must go back down the hill for an hour or so. I am pleased to have met you, Captain Fairbrother; and you, Colonel Hervey. Do not trouble yourself too much in the matter of Peto. He will have a pension at least. He shan’t be forgotten.’ He turned to Howard. ‘Well, Lord John, thank you for your intelligence of the War Office. We were favourably met this evening. It’s as well to know Hardinge’s thoughts so soon.’

‘A pleasure, Sir George.’

The First Sea Lord left for evening office (the Russian news was occasioning some dismay).

‘May we sit once more?’ asked Howard, observing the courtesies punctiliously (the United Service was not his club).

‘Of course, of course,’ replied Hervey, absently, thinking still of Greenwich. And then he recalled himself wholly to the coffee room. ‘Wine?’

Fairbrother, sensing that Howard had business with his friend, declined. He wished, he said, to consult with some periodicals in the library, and so took his leave.

Hervey leaned back in his chair, the exertions of the day finally telling. ‘Did I hear you rightly? Sir Henry Hardinge?’

Howard smiled. ‘Palmerston’s resigned over Retford, and the duke has appointed Hardinge in his place.’

Hervey nodded. ‘Then the War Office will be in the greatest state of efficiency – if it was not already.’ Sir Henry Hardinge’s reputation in the Peninsula was matchless.

‘Oh, great efficiency indeed. He went there yesterday morning, by all accounts, and worked without interruption until he rose for dinner not two hours ago. He took all his meals at his desk, and they had to send out for more ink and paper.’

‘Hill and Hardinge: the army is fortunate in the extreme.’

Howard smiled the more. ‘As are you, my friend. He has rescinded the order for the court of inquiry!’

Hervey sat bolt upright. ‘You mean . . . into Waltham Abbey?’

‘I do.’

Hervey sank back into the deep comfort of the leather chair, to savour the sense of total release, to be free of that feeling that others were in command of the future, in a way that he could not influence by any meritorious service. It was sweet indeed. There could be no last-minute objection now to a marriage to which (he was well aware) some believed him impertinent to aspire. At one stroke of the Hardinge pen he had been liberated.

In a month he would have a fine wife, and his daughter a proper mother. These were blessings of a degree he had scarcely been able to imagine these late years. Only the Sixth’s lieutenant-colonelcy eluded him now. But his fortunes were in large measure restored to his own hands: his happiness and professional fulfilment ought now to be but a matter of the correct application of manifold advantages.

XX

PORTRAIT OF A LADY

London, two days later

Hervey stared at the canvas with scarcely less wonder than the first time. The studio pupil had followed his directions admirably, and with great despatch: the blue riding habit had long been lost (it was still, for all he knew, in some press in the snowy wastes of North America) but he had remembered it well enough. The effect, indeed, was of seeing his sweetheart, his wife, as if she stood at Longleat, and he an observer unobserved. He said nothing for some time, until, turning to Sir Thomas Lawrence’s agent, he smiled. ‘I am most content. The likeness is in every detail perfect.’

‘I am greatly pleased, Colonel Hervey,’ replied the agent, and with every appearance of it. ‘Sir Thomas has been vastly busy these many months, and though he desired to complete it himself he would not have been able in the time you specified.’

It was the greatest irony. The painting had lain unfinished, anonymous, for a dozen years, and now he perceived he had need of it within weeks. But if Georgiana was to see her mother thus, he judged it imperative, for a reason he could not, or did not want to, put form to, that she did so before she acquired a stepmother. ‘I understand, Mr Keightley.’

‘The usual procedure is to allow one month in order that the paint should dry thoroughly, and we should be pleased thereafter to have it delivered to whichever address you choose. It should then be varnished, of course, but in a year’s time.’

Hervey nodded. ‘I will let you have a note of the address directly. And in the meantime, if you would let me have an invoice, at the United Service Club . . .’

‘Of course, Colonel.’