A Call To Arms (26 page)

The European Power which is now established in India is, properly speaking, supported neither by physical force nor by moral influence. It is a piece of huge, complicated machinery, moved by springs which have been arbitrarily adapted to it. Under the supremacy of the Brahmins the people of India hated their government, while they cherished and respected their rulers; under the supremacy of Europeans they hate and despise their rulers from the bottom of their hearts, while they cherish and respect their government.

Abbé Dubois

A Description of the Character, Manners and Customs of the
People of India, and of their Institutions, Religious and Civil
, 1810

Calcutta, six months later

THE CALCUTTA JOURNAL

Yesterday there were received at Fort William Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ivo Lankester and the officers of His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, who are to augment the Company’s Bengal establishment, and in their honour there was given a
fête-champêtre
by the Governor-General and Lady Hastings. The gardens were brilliantly illuminated with many thousands of coloured lamps; an eminent operator in fireworks had been brought from Lucknow to display his talents; the company appeared in fancy dresses, those that chose it wore masks. Ranges of tents were fixed in different parts of the garden, wherein tables were laid covered with all the dainties the best French cooks could produce, for the accommodation of three hundred persons, besides which every room in the Fort was stored with refreshments of every sort and kind; different bands of martial music were stationed in several parts of the gardens, and also in the house, with appropriate and distinct performers for the dancers. The road approaching the Fort was for the
last mile lighted up with a double row of lamps on each side, making every object as clear as day. In short, nothing could exceed the splendour of the preparations. And this being the first such occasion after the conclusion of the Thirty Days of official mourning for His Late Majesty’s passing, many were the opportunities taken to drink to the long life and health of His Majesty King George the Fourth.

For Hervey, however, nothing could have made the evening more agreeable than the inclusion of two particular names in the Governor-General’s list of guests. He had been able to call on them the afternoon before, but only for a short time, so active were his duties with horses and men alike. A card had awaited him at the regimental agents in the city, delivered promptly with letters from home brought by the overland route through Alexandria. ‘Mrs Eyre Somervile’ was engraved on pearl-white card, struck through by the pen with ‘Emma’ written below, and in the same neat round hand ‘wishes you would call on us at Number 3, Fort William on the earliest occasion.’

Almost the last letter Hervey had written from England had been to Eyre Somervile at Fort George, Madras, with the payment of a considerable premium so that it should go overland too. The card came as no surprise therefore, except in locating its sender in Calcutta, for the marriage of the Collector of Guntoor and Philip Lucie’s sister had long been a presumption in Madras. But it did not diminish Hervey’s delight at the early prospect of seeing them again. To both he owed, at the least, the preservation of his reputation; and very probably his life.

And now, the day after the
fête-champêtre
, he was dining with them both as their sole guest, his duties done until two days following, and thus with an easy repose before him.

‘You are the toast of Council, Hervey,’ said Somervile, refilling his glass and passing the decanter to his wife. ‘Likely as not they’ll vote you half a lakh next week. It is a prodigious achievement.’

‘Five horses only!’ agreed Emma Somervile. ‘The native cavalry lost that many last summer in one day when the Hooghly was in spate.’

Hervey smiled with satisfaction. ‘We were fortunate in having a landing at the Cape. But the saving was in the arrangements
aboard the transport. The captain was uncommonly obliging. There are half a dozen troopers with wounds and sprains, though. My own groom’s mare is still on the sick list.’

‘All the same, Hervey, to bring ashore so many fit horses is truly remarkable,’ said Somervile emphatically.

Emma’s ears had pricked at the mention of Hervey’s groom. ‘Is he the dragoon who was with you before? The one who spoke so strangely?’

‘The same.’

‘A good and faithful servant indeed,’ she replied, smiling. ‘I shall look forward to seeing him again. Do you recall him, Eyre?’

It had been three and a half years since last Hervey had shared a table with Eyre Somervile, and with Emma Lucie as she had then been; but the years had fallen away in as many hours this evening, and the fellowship born of those few but strenuous months in Madras and Chintal was now returned in full and easy measure. Time played its tricks in India, the Rajah of Chintal had once told him, and in the silence that Somervile took to light his cigar, while Emma Somervile cast a sharp eye over the khitmagars clearing away the last of the Company china (these Bengalis were not to be compared to her trusty Madras Telingas), Hervey imagined himself once more in that comfortable dining room at Fort George, the day he had swum ashore through the Coromandel breakers with Jessye. That was, indeed, where he would have wished to be, with all that then lay before him. And he was surprised when it next occurred to him that Henrietta’s death was closer in time to that day than to this; so often he could barely remember what had filled the months since her passing, so that it now seemed only as yesterday. Six months at sea had served to dull a little more of the ache, but such was the ship’s routine, its monotony often as not, that the passage might have been one month or twelve. On good days he could go for hours without even the remembrance of Henrietta. These were usually days when the weather was ill or the horses distressed, and the body was so active that the mind was somehow uncoupled. But there were other days when suddenly, his thoughts vacant, a black cloud of despair would settle over him, and only the knowledge that he must face his dragoons could shift it. And once – but only once – he had leaned long on the rail watching the Atlantic swell, wondering what release the cold
depths brought to those who were cast, one way or another, into the ship’s foamy wake.

Smoke billowed ceilingwards from where sat the erstwhile Collector of Guntoor, now fourth in Council of the Bengal Presidency. He had put on weight. A stone, Hervey thought, perhaps more. And he had less hair than before. But with these gains and losses had come an evident increase in contentment. There was none of the disputatiousness of that first dinner, where he had seemed at pains to challenge hosts and guest alike – Emma especially – on each and every matter. Hervey thought it the contentment of the man whose standing in the world was growing, and his fortune likewise. Above all it was the contentment of the married man: that, he could recognize assuredly.

Emma, for her part, had not changed to any appreciable extent. She had ever been content, or at least at ease with herself and her faith. Her hair was perhaps a shade lighter, but she did go about without a hat. The colour of her skin was little different from many a native girl from these parts.

‘Hervey, I shall leave you a quarter of an hour,’ said Somervile looking at his watch. ‘I am lieutenant-governor of the Fort this evening and have to certify that the gate is closed and barred.’ Hervey was much diverted by the notion of Somervile’s doing picket duty, and liked the idea of some exercise following their ample beef dinner. ‘I’ll come with you if you like.’

‘No, no. It’s a turgid affair. The khansamah will bring more port. Sit fast.’

Since Emma looked set to take more port, Hervey gave way.

When her husband was gone, Emma suggested they walk in the garden. ‘It is nothing by day, I’m afraid – a poor affair of pots – but by night it is very pleasing. The stench of the city is not so bad, for one thing.’

Everyone in the Sixth, from colonel to private, had been complaining about the Calcutta stench, and colourful had been the comparisons. Private Johnson had thought it ‘worse than Fargate of a Saturday night’, which Hervey learned was a place of singular olfactory torment. But the Somerviles’ garden was a delight to the senses at this hour. There were thuribles about the place, from which a constant stream of incense smoke sweetened the air. The day’s heat, becoming oppressive even now in mid-May, had given
way to a gentle balminess, and in the sky were familiar stars again, which for a full three months in the middle of the voyage they had not seen.

‘There is an owl, too,’ said Emma, taking his arm. ‘A Scops owl, Eyre says. Eyre is very knowledgeable about birds. But I have only seen it once by day. He has little tufts above his eyes. He looks very arch.’

Hervey was charmed. At this moment they might be in Wiltshire. ‘Does it make any noise?’

‘Oh yes. But not like the owls at home, for he seems to have but one note only, and very soft. And he just repeats it at intervals. It sounds as if he is speaking direct with one.’

‘Then I hope we shall hear him. I suspect we have scared him away.’

‘Oh no,’ said Emma, shaking her head. ‘He is very assured. If he were here he’d be watching us yet. He prefers the middle branches of that cedar there.’

Hervey peered unsuccessfully into the semi-darkness, for the lantern lights about the place lit only the ground.

Emma pressed a hand to his arm. ‘Matthew, this is the first occasion I have had to say anything to you but on paper concerning Henrietta.’

He had known it must come. He tried not to stiffen. ‘You spoke very generously in your letter.’

‘Of you both, I hope you will think.’

The owl called.

‘There!’ said Emma. ‘Nothing shrill, as an English owl.’

Hervey silently thanked the bird for his intervention. ‘ “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.” I remember in Madras how the night noises seemed so muted after the day’s tumult.’

Emma smiled. ‘Tumult indeed. And yet nothing to those days in Chintal.’

The owl called again … ‘Oo … ooh’ – the same note, just as soft.

They said nothing, listening instead for a third.

‘Oo … ooh,’ it came after a while, and just as before.

Hervey sighed, perhaps inaudibly. ‘You know, I lay sleepless in my berth on the ship night after night, without her. I just lay there
thinking about her not being there. And then I would think about my not sleeping for thinking about her. There seemed no way out of thinking. And it’s the same still. No matter which way I try to go it’s the same. At first it was like fear, as I felt before battle. And then just an awful ache, and I had no will to do anything. Nothing seemed worth it. I must force myself even now to believe that anything is worth it. And things do seem worth it for a while. And I begin to be as before. And then the futility of it all comes back on me.’

Emma had never heard him speak from the heart. Indeed, she could not recall hearing him talk of any interior matter save religion – and that in the sense of theology rather than faith. But it did not discomfit her, and although she had no direct experience of the condition he described, she had a sense of the despair at his core. And she saw at once the danger in the belief that nothing mattered. Yet she was almost as heartened as she was troubled: it was now a full two years since Henrietta’s death, and the practice in India was for such rapid re-marriage – months, sometimes only weeks afterwards – that she had begun to doubt whether a man could be truly constant in life. Hervey’s constancy was so admirably apparent. ‘Matthew, you have not spoken of God in this.’