Man Of War

Rebecca smiled broadly, draining the contents of her water glass. Peto sighed inwardly: this slip of a girl appeared to be gaining something of the measure of him. And it was deuced unfair, for he had not the slightest experience of her sex – not of the sensibility at least – other than of Miss Hervey; and that, perforce, was of a somewhat restricted nature. But what manner of excuse was that? What experience did this . . . girl have? He almost shook his head in despair – and wished, indeed, that Lambe would return to say the unlit ship was a pirate with hostile intent.

V

THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL

Wiltshire, 23 April 1828

‘D’ye know, Fairbrother, I had quite forgot: what is the day today?’

The chaise, engaged at short notice and therefore prodigious expense, was bowling comfortably along the downs towards the valley of the Wylye, which Hervey always thought of as the home stretch. In half an hour they would be at his father’s vicarage in Horningsham. It had been a most pleasant drive. Breakfasting early, they had left London at seven o’clock, and it was now approaching five of the evening (he would be ready to adjust his watch, for Warminster time was a half-hour or so behind London’s). They had stopped but once, except to change horses, and then for the briefest of meals, and they had talked for every mile of the way.

Hervey had racked his brain but could think of no likely cause for his mother’s alarm. In the end he had concluded that very likely it was another fit of the vapours, occasioned no doubt by some dispute of his father’s with the bishop (he remembered well enough the tumult of ‘popery in Horningsham’ before he went to India). But if his mother wrote to him, she was by her own reckoning in need of him, and he could do no other but come at once, although there was pressing business in London – and perhaps even more in Hertfordshire. The compensation was, of course, that he would see his daughter. It had been almost eleven months – another birthday, which again he had been absent from. She was now ten years old.

Fairbrother glanced inboard briefly at his questioner. ‘It is a Wednesday, but those are legion; it is the twenty-third of April, and therefore St George’s Day, as I have observed from the flags on the churches – which evidently you have not.’ He had enjoyed the day as much as any he could remember. He wondered what made it special in his friend’s mind.

‘It is the regimental day.’

‘Ah. There will be revelries in Hounslow?’

Hervey smiled. ‘I hope so. Tea and rum is taken to the dragoons by the officers and serjeant-majors at reveille, and then before morning stables the senior officer presents a red rose to each man.’

‘Why red?’

‘That is a good question. Nobody knows, really. Quite probably because there were once not enough white ones. And after duties everyone gives their rose to a female of his favouring, on account of the commanding officer’s giving his to an old nun in the convent where we were lodging in Spain . . . or France; I forget which.’

‘I wonder where they will be bestowed in Cape-town,’ said Fairbrother, with a wryish smile.

‘I wonder too.’

Cape Town: it had been but nine months since his landing there, and yet it seemed an age. Fairbrother was today as agreeable a travelling consort as any he could wish for, and yet when first they had met, in the indolent comfort of his ‘retirement quarters’, he had been aloof, resentful, querulous even. Only by degrees, subdued by the charm of what he perceived to be a most peculiar attachment of the dragoons to each other – more especially of those immediately about Hervey – and by the rekindling of an extraordinary talent for the soldier’s art (and indeed exemplary courage), had Fairbrother mellowed and become Hervey’s boon companion.

‘Well, I am glad to be seeing “God’s country” at last.’

Hervey leaned forward to look out of the window as they joined the turnpike at Heytesbury, off the windblown Salisbury Plain at last and into the gentle valley of the Wylye, with its villages strung like pearls between the episcopacies of Sarum and Bath. ‘Did I describe it thus?’ He smiled; he knew he had the habit of doing so. ‘Not long now.’

Fairbrother nodded. ‘You have never spoken much of your sister. Might you tell me a little of her before we meet?’

‘Have I not? I have told you she is to marry my good friend Laughton Peto. Sir Laughton, indeed.’

‘Oh, just so; and you mention her name with regularity, but I am not enlightened ever.’