A Call to Arms mh-4

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘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 pleasur
e 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.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Hervey, smiling wide. ‘It was ever a nuisance for covert work. And all because someone had bought so much red cloth years back.’

  ‘I think I prefer red,’ said Elizabeth, examining a scarlet coatee hanging nearby. ‘I thought the Life Guards looked much nicer than the others this morning.’

  Hervey looked pained. ‘You sound like one of Miss Austen’s heroines.’

  Elizabeth pulled a face. How her brother was enjoying this! It tokened well.

  They were another half an hour at Mr Gieve’s. With each minute Hervey parted with yet more of his modest savings. True, there was a margin to his account before he would need to mortgage his pay, and he had not yet received the past year’s rents of the Chintal jagirs; but he was still most conscious of the need for economy. And half of him believed that to be a very good thing in a soldier (for it would keep him lean, so to speak), while the other half craved the means to be an independent-minded officer. If only he had not so precipitately disposed of all his former uniform.

  When they left, Hervey asked if they should look for dining rooms. As Elizabeth said she was not hungry, he took her instead to see Mr Bullock’s ‘Museum of Natural Curiosities’ a little way along Piccadilly. He thought to show her the elephant which stood as the centrepiece in the Egyptian hall, so that he might better give her an account of his struggle to save the Rajah of Chintal’s hunting elephant when that great beast had become stuck fast in the quicksands of the Sukri river. But Bullock’s was more than usually crowded, the main exhibit being no less than Bonaparte’s carriage — the very same that had carried the Great Disturber from the field of Waterloo when all was lost. Hervey paid over his two shillings for them both, dismayed that the price had exactly doubled since his last visit three years before, and made straight for the centre of attention. But oh! — the scene before them. Over the carriage and into it were clambering all manner of sightseers, each anxious to be able to crow some proximity to the tyrant, like a child taunting a caged beast at a menagerie. Hervey was as revolted by it as he would have been by the child’s prodding stick. ‘I own freely to never having had a moment’s admiration for the man, but this disrespect is gross unseemly.’

  Elizabeth was more philosophical. ‘You must not take against them. We were all so afeard of the bogeyman of Europe, and for so long, that it is but relief.’

  Hervey relented with a raising of his eyebrows. ‘I hate to see any soldier dishonoured by those who would never have the courage to face him in life.’

  Elizabeth put a hand to his arm. ‘You are not wrong, brother dear. But you must allow for differences of temperament, as indeed you seemed more willing to do of late.’

  Hervey was minded to dispute his sister’s thought in this. Instead he simply took her arm, and they walked about the exhibits for a while in welcome solitude, the carriage having drawn most of the sightseers.

  ‘Matthew,’ said Elizabeth suddenly, starting at the python coiled round a palm tree, yet trying not to be dismayed, ‘I saw a poster proclaiming the Waterloo rooms in Pall Mall. Is that far from here? Would you like to see them?’

  Hervey had seen the poster too. ‘They’re but five minutes’ walk, though I have no very strong desire to see them. I’ll warrant they’re full of gruesome pieces scavenged from the field, taken from dead and dying alike, or else fanciful pictures and accounts. I confess I have no stomach for it. I should rather go and see this new bridge they call Waterloo. It is very handsome, I hear tell — a full half-mile of granite.’

  Elizabeth was disappointed. ‘It would be nice to have some notion of the battle; that is all. It is difficult to conceive of your part in it with so scant a knowledge as I possess.’

  But her brother seemed not to hear. He had been studying a mounted knight in full armour for some minutes. Elizabeth wondered what it was that engrossed him so. When he emerged from his thoughts it was as if he had been turning over some profound question. ‘Elizabeth, would you come with me to Hounslow? Tomorrow, on our way to Wiltshire, I mean. It
would be a courtesy to call on the lieutenant-colonel rather than merely to write.’

  Elizabeth thought she knew her brother’s mind better now than she had ever done. She was certain of what the trouble was: there were ghosts to lay in that place, and although her brother would face them alone if need be, a sister might be a powerful support. But would it be any kindness? Would it not be better to plead some reason why she could not go with him, thus making him face the ghosts alone? There would certainly be others in time, for it seemed to her that he had condemned himself to a perpetual haunting.

  But it was not in Elizabeth’s nature to abandon her brother. On their journey from Rome he had spoken a good deal about the change in the Sixth of which the Earl of Sussex had written. And yesterday, when they had called on him at his set in Albany, the colonel had repeated his opinion that there was much work to be done. This had fired Hervey, it was true, but Elizabeth sensed also a certain anxiety. Its root she could not tell for sure, and this uncertainty, combined with simple sibling loyalty, determined her response. ‘Shall your commanding officer not think it a trifle strange that you should bring me?’ she asked, thinking the question fair no matter what the other considerations.

  Hervey was quick to reassure her. ‘If he reveals it then I shall know I have made a grave error in returning.’

  It was so stark an opinion that it fair took Elizabeth aback. She had not supposed that the question was so contingent on the character of one man, and she said so.

  Hervey now sensed her surprise, and was dismayed that she had not seemed to grasp the essentials of what had gone before these past two years. ‘The commanding officer is everything to a regiment’s soundness and fortune.’ He meant to say it kindly: he was sure he had meant it kindly, but he knew it must have sounded otherwise. He felt a terrible rush of despair in Elizabeth’s incomprehension. Henrietta would have understood.

  Next day was St Swithun’s, and to general relief it was not raining. Indeed, it was as fresh and bright a morning as any they could remember of late in Italy. Matthew Hervey had advanced overnight from cornet of the 6th Dragoon Guards — the Carabineers, as some knew them — to lieutenant of the 82nd Foot, the Prince of Wales’s Volunteers. He had not worn any uniform of the Carabineers, nor would he of the Eighty-second. He did not think of himself as an officer of either regiment. This was a paper transaction only, the means by which he was proprietorially reinstated with a captaincy in his former regiment. It was a curious system by any measure. Indeed, he was not himself fully aware of its intricacies. He had tried, with varying degrees of success, to explain it to others as he did now to Elizabeth, but why there should be such a system he did not rightly know. Although it had served the country well these past twenty years, on the whole it had not been without its scandals and shortcomings. Had not the Duke of York himself fallen foul of it a little while ago — an unedifying affair of dubious trading in commissions? But of one thing Hervey was sure: it was a most expeditious way of restoring him to the Sixth. And as the travelling chariot he had engaged for the journey to Wiltshire drew up to the gates of the cavalry barracks at Hounslow, his only care was whether he might sufficiently conceal his pleasure at being … home.