Hervey 09 - Man Of War (14 page)

‘
Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
’

‘Indeed, Captain Fairbrother! You like Wordsworth?’

‘I do – very much so, Miss Hervey. He was a little contrary, though, was he not? A vile, unholy bird did he not call the cuckoo elsewhere?’

‘I believe he did,’ said Elizabeth, smiling, a little wry. ‘But I believe a poet, at least, might be allowed some contrariness of opinion – as any man.’

Fairbrother smiled to himself.

‘Where
does
the cuckoo go in winter? Or do they merely stay silent? Oh, I had not thought: are there cuckoos in Jamaica?’

Fairbrother returned her smile, which had now its usual sweetness. ‘Oh, indeed yes, Miss Hervey. And very gay-painted they are – unlike, I imagine, your English birds!’

‘I confess I have never seen one, in winter or in summer. And I may say, Captain Fairbrother, that never have I heard its call with such pleasure.’

She said it so decidedly, not a trace wistful.

Fairbrother fancied he understood, for both Elizabeth’s face and manner were ever open and expressive. Many summers must have come and gone, and many a village wedding, yet his friend’s sister had remained in her unwed state, every summer the same, but a year older – riper, as the Prayer Book so felicitously put it – until now, when there was the happy prospect before her of matrimony. And undoubtedly to a man she loved, and rather passionately it seemed. Perhaps there was even the prospect of children, for Elizabeth Hervey was surely not beyond the age of childbearing?

‘Georgiana, you would do well to keep your heels lowered,’ said Hervey, somewhat peremptorily.

His daughter, delighting in the sole attention (as she thought) of her father, was only too content to oblige him without demur; and in any case, she was accustomed to a certain abruptness in his manner, for she knew that there was little time for pleasantries when speaking to his soldiers in the face of the King’s enemies.

‘It won’t do, you know, Georgiana: you will have to begin riding side-saddle. Your aunt really should have insisted on it before now.’

‘It is not Aunt Elizabeth’s fault,’ replied Georgiana pluckily. ‘For I would not have it.’

Hervey was not inclined to let a child’s insistence excuse the dereliction. ‘That is as may be, but it does not alter things. You cannot go about astride now that you are’ (he had to think for a moment) ‘ten.’ Nor, indeed, when she was about to leave the county for rather more polished society. That, however, he would not mention – for the time being.

‘But I don’t
want
to ride side-saddle,’ she insisted, shaking her head.

Hervey had not begun the walk with the question of Georgiana’s seat uppermost in his mind (or, indeed, in his mind at all). He had not been bent on some quarrel with her on account of the propriety of riding astride. Rather had he found himself continuing vexed by Elizabeth’s defiant manner – as if she wilfully misunderstood his good intentions, and likewise failed to see the injury all this would do to the family; and not least to Peto, who even now might be making his way hither in the happy expectation of marriage – or at any rate doing further battle in the Mediterranean in the comfortable knowledge that Elizabeth waited for him decently at home. She had even had the audacity to ask if he – Peto’s good friend at that – would go with her to meet this Heinrici! It was scarcely to be borne. It was as if their whole life to this day, the notion of duty on which they had been brought up in that Wiltshire parsonage, reinforced by the Scripture they had each of them heard in equal measure, counted for nothing. That a man (or a woman) might throw over what he knew to be the right course to secure that which was the more pleasant to him! And was not the pleasure a delusion too? How might any man (or woman) take pleasure with the awful prospect of being haunted by a failing in duty? It would come to gnaw at the vitals, would it not? Then there would be no more pleasure, only infinite pain to endure – much greater pain than a man might fancy he must bear on rejecting the course of pleasure in the first place.

He cursed himself. All this vexation was intruding on his time with his daughter – little enough as that always was. ‘I—’

‘I know why you are angry with Aunt Elizabeth.’ (Hervey tried to protest but Georgiana would not be stayed.) ‘It is because she wants to marry Major Heinrici and not Captain Peto!’

Hervey’s mouth fell open. How did Georgiana know of it?

‘I like Captain Peto, but I like Major Heinrici better. He is very jolly, and he has three daughters who are all very pretty and nice.’

Hervey checked himself. His first instinct was to chide Georgiana for speaking of that which she – a child – could not understand, for
daring
to presume to interfere in business that was so patently not hers. Except that there was nothing childlike in her evident powers of observation and discernment. And in truth he could scarcely deny that the business was as much hers as his, for although he essayed to act (at his mother’s bidding) as paterfamilias, it was Georgiana whose daily living was to be affected until such time as he, her father, set up his own household. And when would that be, she might well ask.

He forced himself (the effort truly was not great) to smile, and he patted her thigh. ‘I am sure Major Heinrici is an agreeable man, Georgiana, and that he has very agreeable daughters, but . . . I think you will understand that your Aunt Elizabeth has given an undertaking – a promise, indeed – to marry Captain Peto, and that it is quite impossible now that she should . . . default on that promise.’ The pony was quickening its pace in the distraction that was the discussion of duty, and Hervey found himself having to stride out not wholly comfortably. ‘Do try to keep your pony in hand,’ he added, as pleasantly as he could. ‘Else I shall be forced to conclude you should not be off the lead rein!’

Georgiana brought the little gelding back to collection without remark, intent as she was on the more important matter. ‘But if you promise something and then you learn later that for some reason it cannot be as you had supposed, it is surely not right to continue as if nothing had happened?’

The unexpected requirement to explain himself was irksome, but Hervey was pleased nevertheless – proud even – of this evidence of his daughter’s intelligence and sensibility. It boded well, for he had never, he hoped, been of the belief, as were many, that a woman ought to have no opinion on any matter of substance. Quite the opposite indeed. And besides, the females of his acquaintance had hardly been of a reticent persuasion either. He smiled again, perhaps a shade indulgently, but certainly warmly. ‘You know, my dear Georgiana, these things – I trust you will not misunderstand me – will be so much the better addressed when you are older. But for the moment I believe I can say that there are many roads to marriage, and that after starting on one it is not necessarily the wiser to depart from it when the ways become heavy, for all roads have their difficulties. It was on the best road in the country that my good friend Major Strickland was killed, a road well made and fast – admitting of too
much
speed indeed.’ He suddenly wondered if the morbid metaphor were entirely apt.

‘I do not believe I agree with you, Papa, but I understand what it is that you say, and Aunt Elizabeth has always impressed on me that that is as it must be.’

Hervey could not have faulted his sister’s regulation. He nodded.

‘Aunt Elizabeth always says we must be especially attentive to what you say because we may not see things as do you, who moves in society.’

Hervey stifled an embarrassed cough. He reckoned he probably owed more to Elizabeth’s sound sense, learned as it may have been very parochially, than to that of
elevated
society. ‘Yes, well, that is very proper of your aunt.’

‘Will you come with us to Major Heinrici’s, then, this afternoon, Papa? The youngest Miss Heinrici has her birthday today – she is seven – and there is to be a party.’

In that instant, Hervey almost said that he would, not for his sister’s sake (although he would have to admit to the merest softening in his attitude on account of Georgiana’s advocacy), but because seeing his daughter’s delight at the prospect was truly engaging. To do so, however, would be an implicit disloyalty to his friend Peto; and his scruple – and his stomach – would not permit it. Elizabeth had lost her way. These things happened while travelling. It was not always easy to tell that a road led nowhere. Even the best of guides could take the wrong turning in a storm. But he, Elizabeth’s brother, could see things very well. He knew which was the right road, and what steps she must take to regain it. He would help her. That was his brotherly duty, unwelcome as first it might be.

VI
THE COMMON ROUND

HMS Prince Rupert, the first morning at sea

The unlit sail gave Peto a night of broken sleep.

A quarter of an hour after first sighting, the ship had turned east to steer the same course as
Rupert
, some half a mile off the starboard beam. Lieutenant Lambe reported this while Peto and Rebecca Codrington were still at table. Peto had listened with care but with no great concern. Sailing as they both now were before the wind, the other ship no longer had the advantage. He asked where was
Archer
: Lambe said she was eight or nine cables, a mile perhaps, ahead and to larboard still. It was where Peto would have expected her to be – pity, since intercepting an unknown ship was precisely the thing a sloop did well. He had a mind to order a warning shot across the unlit’s bows, which would have the merit too of signalling to
Archer
to attend on new orders, but that would mean the sloop heaving to while
Rupert
came up within hailing distance. They could signal with lights, but Peto knew it was a hit and miss affair for all but the simplest of codes. If he were really troubled by having an unlit sail on his starboard beam he would clear for action, yet the likelihood of there being a Turkish man-of-war this far west was surely very slim; and he was not going to turn out the entire crew merely to demonstrate that he had the will to do so.

He therefore told Lambe to have the watch keep a sharp eye, to fire a warning gun if cloud covered the moon and the lookouts lost sight of her, and to report to him hourly. Then at first light the midshipman on the forecastle recognized her as a Genoan pinnace, and Lambe signalled
Archer
to intercept her and enquire why she sailed unlit – which by four bells of the morning watch she was able to do.
Archer
reported that the Genoan’s captain claimed she had been shadowed by pirates since leaving Ceuta, and, darkened, had sought to shake them off while taking ‘sanctuary’ close on a man-of-war. Peto had no reason to doubt him, and wished the Genoan well by return, especially since her captain sent across a fair-sized parmijan and half a dozen flasks of Tuscan red.

Pirates
: the very devil, the whole of the Barbary coast and beyond – Peto had given many of them a watery grave and had hanged almost as many more when he had been commodore of the frigate squadron; when, indeed, he had gone into their very nests with the Americans (fine fellows, Americans; he was glad he had never used powder against them in the late war). They would be plying in and out of Algiers no doubt, exactly as before. When the Turks were sent back to Constantinople he expected Codrington would turn his attention to them. Not that that would be a job for a three-decker; they might stand in at Malta for a week or so until their lordships recalled
Rupert
to home waters – back to being a guardship, with a skeleton crew and long days ashore. Or even back into the Ordinary, dismasted and ungunned. But why worry himself about that now?
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
.

There would be evil today right enough: it was not possible to inspect a King’s ship, no matter how diligent its lieutenant, without finding something amiss. All he could hope for when he made his first rounds was that the faults could be righted by sweat rather than blood, and from within the ship’s own resources. His old friend the commissioner at Gibraltar had told him he believed
Rupert
to be well found, but he would only know for certain when he had seen for himself.

At eight o’clock Peto came on to the quarterdeck. For three hours the idlers and larboard watch had been holystoning the decks and swilling the dirty sand into the waterways and scuppers. The swabbers had flogged the decks until they were dry, and the trusted hands had brightened the brasswork about the rails and bitts. And when the sanding, holystoning, swabbing and polishing was done, other hands had flemished down the ropes and stowed the washdeck gear, so that by seven o’clock the work had been practically finished. When Lieutenant Lambe came back on deck after his morning shave he had professed himself pleased with things – as well he might, for this was but the day’s routine (every day barring Sunday), although the boatswain’s mates had known full well that a keener eye would be cast on their charges on this morning. At half past he had sent the mates below to pipe ‘All hands. Up hammocks’, and the entire crew – sleepers as well as watch – had scurried with their lashed-up bedding to the upper-deck nettings, where the quartermasters and midshipmen supervised the stowing, after which Lambe had been able to dismiss them to breakfast.