A Call To Arms (13 page)

‘Let’s get a little closer,’ said Hervey.

‘Oh, may we?’ enquired Elizabeth, rather surprised.

‘As close as we like. Come,’ he smiled. ‘It will be the first time I have walked this ground entirely at my own volition. I think I may like the feeling.’

‘Especially since it may be the last time for some years to come,’ she replied, smiling doubtfully at him.

He smiled back. ‘I suppose, yes. If there is no fault with the agents.’

The clock began striking the hour as the reliefs arrived at the walk from the Mall, the same number exactly from the Royal Horse Guards, the ‘Oxford Blues’. Their trumpeter sounded the approach, the Life Guards brought swords to the carry, and the Blues formed up facing them. There followed a curious colloquy between the cornets, rein to rein, which Hervey strained to hear, but without success. He supposed it must be a report of the foregoing twenty-four hours, but after a while he came to think it was probably no more than idle chat, a conceit to hold in thrall the onlookers.

‘Is it the same in the Sixth?’ asked Elizabeth when the ceremony was over and the guards began dismissing to their respective duties.

‘No,’ he smiled. ‘I’m afraid you would be very disappointed on that account. Our guards are mounted
dis
mounted.’

‘What a contradictory locution,’ she teased.

‘Though we are as fine a sight on parade,’ he added quickly. ‘If perhaps not so imposing; these are bigger men on bigger horses for the most part.’

‘Matthew, I am sure I should be equally mystified by what passes in the Sixth as here.’ She took his arm again. ‘Do we proceed?’ she asked, turning away.

Hervey arrested the turn. ‘Through the arch.’

‘
Through
the arch. I should have thought—’

‘No, you may walk right up to the door of the Duke of York’s headquarters itself. Don’t you think that is very
English
? Could you have imagined the same in Paris in late years – for all that talk of
égalité
?’

‘I cannot imagine Paris at all,’ sighed Elizabeth.

‘You would be disappointed after Rome.’

‘I am so pleased to have a brother who is a man of the world,’ she said, putting a hand to his forearm. ‘It makes me feel a little less provincial.’

Hervey was not sure of the precise measure of his sister’s irony. ‘I should never call you provincial. No more than I should call myself a man of the world. I think it more than travel alone which makes the latter. Shelley was more a man of the world, though he had but crossed the English Channel and I two oceans.’

Elizabeth’s expression indicated that she agreed. ‘I do wish I had had a little more time with Mary Shelley. I told you, did I not, that she asked me to winter with them in Italy?’

‘No, you did not. That would be very agreeable, I think.’ He hoped he sounded convincing, but he had a care for her reputation, and the prospect of joining the Shelley household was not something to be viewed lightly. And then there was the question of Georgiana, over which he had daily been growing more troubled. He was relying on Elizabeth’s supervision in great part.

Silently though her brother had borne those troubles, however, Elizabeth had sensed them. ‘I cannot of course do so. There will be so much to detain me in the parish,’ she said dismissively.

But ‘detain’, in its ambiguity, was not a comforting word for Hervey. Elizabeth might well insist that parochial calls and the
poor-relief committee were the principal demands on her liberty, but he knew it would be otherwise. He was about to reply when the dismounted sentry in the arch came to attention, bringing his sword upright from its point of rest on the shoulder. Hervey raised his hat in acknowledgement.

Elizabeth blushed at the salute. ‘Matthew, does that man
know
you?’ she whispered.

Hervey smiled indulgently. ‘No, Elizabeth. He cannot know me. Lord John Howard told me they are instructed to salute those whom they believe are officers, which they guess by some process best known to them only, I imagine. I rather think it a little game they play. Lord John says that their own officers are not averse to strolling through the arch out of uniform with a lady whom they seek to impress.’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘And others would do the same had they the chance, no doubt. But you are not yet an officer: ought you to have returned the salute?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I could not have disappointed the man.’

‘Nor me?’ She gave a wry smile.

He smiled too. ‘Well, I assure you I did not walk this way with that object.’

‘Soldiers! They are all the same.’

He thought it would be to no avail to dispute it with her.

At the premises of Messrs Greenwood, Cox and Hammersly, in Craig’s Court behind Scotland Yard, they were received with unusual civility – unusual in that each time Hervey had entered the establishment before, he had found the insouciance of the clerks to be verging on the impudent. But on this occasion he was received by one of the partners, offered hospitality and made to feel a valued customer of the regimental agents rather than a mere bookkeeping item.

‘The papers have been prepared, sir,’ said Mr Cox, a man of a type Hervey did not meet as a rule – a commercial man, fiftyish, of some substance certainly, but perforce deferential. The nearest he could imagine was the regiment’s surgeon, paymaster or veterinarian – not an officer in the usual sense, but sharing an officer’s milieu. They were never entirely at home, being just a degree above the class of artisan in the minds of many. It never
worried Hervey; it always seemed to worry them.

‘And by what date shall the commission be effective, Mr Cox?’

‘Three days hence, Mr Hervey. It is all explained in a memorandum I have had prepared. At signature today you will forthwith be cornet in the 6th Dragoon Guards. Tomorrow that cornetcy will be sold on, and you will advance by purchase to a lieutenancy in the 82nd Foot – it was the most expedient, you will understand, sir.’ (Hervey had to suppress a smile at the agent’s need to apologize for having him gazetted to an infantry regiment, even for a day.) ‘And the day following, the lieutenancy shall be sold and the captaincy in the Sixth purchased.’

‘There is no risk of … misadventure?’

‘Not at all, sir. We hold the respective bids in bond. It is an entirely regular affair.’

Hervey raised an eyebrow and smiled dubiously. ‘It was always my understanding that it was most irregular.’

Mr Cox raised both hands just a little and bowed. ‘In ordinary, it is irregular, sir. As you will know, a year must be spent in each rank before the next may be purchased. But in a case such as yours there are many precedents. It is not something to which an objection would be raised: of that I can assure you, Mr Hervey.’

‘I am gratified, Mr Cox. And when do you say I shall be gazetted?’

‘The
London Gazette
will publish the commissioning and first promotion on Thursday and Friday of this week, and your captaincy on Monday.’

‘It would be amusing to spend Friday with the Eighty-second,’ said Hervey, smiling again. ‘Where are they?’

‘I am very much afraid that I do not know, sir. I
think
they may be in the West Indies.’

‘Ah,’ said Hervey, frowning. ‘Disagreeable as well as impractical.’

‘Quite. And so, Mr Hervey, if I might be so bold as to trouble you for the draft …’

Hervey had been that morning to the St James’s offices of Gresham’s bank, and there made the arrangements to draw on his account the sum of £4,125, being the price which, by ruses best not known, the regiment’s colonel, the Earl of Sussex, had struck with the seller. It was, he knew, an expensive way to purchase an
annuity of £270, but so few were the commissions compared with but five years ago, when the cavalry stood at more than twice the number of regiments, that the price was the seller’s for the asking. They were supposedly regulated – the official price for a captaincy in the cavalry was nine hundred pounds below what he was now paying – but the Horse Guards turned a blind eye to the practice of overbidding. It suited, now that there was a general peace in Europe, to have the army returned to the proprietorship of those with considerable independent means, for on the whole they were less ambitious and less troublesome. Hervey handed an envelope to the agent.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cox, laying it to one side on his desk without, of course, opening it. ‘That completes the formalities, as I imagine you will recall. Is there any other way that we might be of service?’

There was, and Hervey handed him a list of requirements touching his pay and credit arrangements in India, all of which the agent said would be arranged with very little trouble.

‘I am obliged to you then, Mr Cox. And if you will now excuse me, my sister and I have certain other errands to be about. I am staying at the United Service Club until tomorrow only; I shall see tomorrow’s
Gazette
there promptly, but I should deem it a service if you would have my page sent down by express to Wiltshire. I have no doubt that the arrangements are made, but I have come to value exactitude a little more than I formerly did.’ He said it with a smile, but he meant it.

They left the agent’s and took a chaise to Piccadilly, to the premises of Mr Gieve, the tailor who held the sealed patterns for the uniform of the 6th Light Dragoons. Hervey’s pleasure in the anticipation of this was easily evident to Elizabeth, who had insisted on accompanying her brother on business he had scarcely imagined would interest her in the slightest – despite what was commonly held to be a female’s inescapable captivation by regimentals.

They were greeted warmly by Mr Rippingale, the same genial cutter who had refurbished his military wardrobe at the end of the war, five years past, and attended him since when there were changes to be made. ‘How very gratifying it is to see you again, sir,’ he said, bowing. ‘We received your letter only a few days ago,
but we have made a beginning. Is this your good lady, sir? We read of your nuptials in
The Times
with considerable pleasure.’

Hervey faltered only momentarily. ‘No, Mr Rippingale, the lady is my sister.’ He turned to Elizabeth: ‘My dear, this is Mr Rippingale, who can cut and stitch an overall-stripe straighter than any I have observed.’

Mr Rippingale beamed at the recognition. ‘Good morning, madam. I am flattered by Captain Hervey’s approval, though I must say my work is made easier by the captain’s having an exceedingly good leg for a stripe.’

‘I have observed so, Mr Rippingale,’ replied Elizabeth, returning the smile.

‘Well, then, Captain Hervey – I may call you that, may I not, sir?’

‘I do not see why not, Mr Rippingale. From Monday I shall anyway be gazetted as such.’

‘Yes, indeed, sir. And may I say how glad I am that you are returning to the colours, so to speak.’ As he did so, he pulled aside the curtain of an open-front wardrobe, revealing a rack of uniforms part-made. ‘Your measurements we have had for many years in our order book, sir.’ He turned again to Elizabeth. ‘They have not changed greatly with the passing of the years, madam.’

That it was genuine enough praise was without doubt, and Elizabeth saw in her brother’s face the look of a man who might have received some approving remark from a superior officer. She had perhaps learned more about the soldier in him in a single morning than in all the years before: what simple precepts animated him at root – simple, yet not unexacting.

Hervey first tried the jacket: a good fit, as Mr Rippingale had predicted, as too was the pelisse. ‘Not as dashing as the hussar’s, Elizabeth, I’m afraid,’ he said, frowning a touch as the pelisse was hung on his shoulder to check the fall.

‘May I ask what it is for?’

‘Well, I imagine it served originally as a surtout, but I’ve never had my sleeves through one. If it is cold we wear a cloak.’

‘Then it serves no purpose?’

Mr Rippingale maintained a detached air during the exchange, although with the suggestion of a smile. Useless embellishments were not unwelcome in his trade.

‘It serves the purpose of smartness, I suppose,’ replied Hervey, a little put out by Elizabeth’s utilitarian questioning.

She nodded. ‘And the braided belt, too?’

‘Oh,’ he said, puzzled, as Mr Rippingale took the crossbelt from its brushed cotton wrapping. ‘That is not the Sixth pattern.’

‘Ah,’ replied Mr Rippingale. ‘There has been a change in the regulations. There is no longer a red stripe.’

‘Indeed?’ said Hervey approvingly.

Elizabeth looked curious. ‘Why should that be, do you suppose, Matthew?’

Her brother smiled. ‘The stripe was a bone of contention in the mess when first I joined. Some commanding officer come from another regiment had said he wanted his officers distinguished in some way, so that he might recognize them instantly. And so the stripe was added. Before that the uniform had no red whatsoever, and of that the officers were inordinately proud.’

‘And so your new lieutenant-colonel has obliged the former tradition.’

‘It would seem so. And I am disposed already to like him for it, although it must have stung in the pocket rather.’

‘And I understand, sir, if I may,’ added Mr Rippingale diffidently, ‘that the red cloak has also been replaced by a blue one.’