A Regimental Affair

by Mallinson, Allan

  York is the most unlikely capital you ever saw. There are scarce a thousand inhabitants, not counting military. It was burned by the Americans five years ago and there is much bitterness still at it. But it grows almost by the day, even in the depths of winter. What is so very pleasing, though, is that the Lieutenant Governor here (in Upper Canada, I mean) is Sir Peregrine Maitland, who commanded the Guards at Waterloo. He is the finest of men. And his wife is Lady Sarah Lennox, an acquaintance of Henrietta’s, and his aide-de-camp of but two months is Charles Addinsel, whose reacquaintance from Peninsular days I never felt more pleased to make. He was a good friend of d’Arcey Jessope’s, of whom you heard me speak much. So neither Henrietta nor I shall be wanting in engaging company, it seems, no matter how hard a winter it goes.

  As to the military purpose for which we were hastened here (I feel that I may say this without prejudice to safety) it would appear that the alarm is past, and we may find ourselves altogether more agreeably employed than was supposed . . .

  Hervey put down his pen and read over the letter. What his father would make of the vivid ink, he did not know. Perhaps he should have explained that his own had frozen solid on the last leg of the journey, broken the glass of the bottle, and then, when the baggage had been brought inside, thawed into his unexpectedly absorbent pelisse coat. Private Johnson said he could remove the ink without too much trouble, but Hervey doubted it, and thought he would have to reconcile himself to writing off a second coat in ten years. He’d see a pauper’s grave yet, he sighed.

  He looked again at the last paragraph. It was not untrue; he need not concern himself there. But it was so far from the whole truth that he worried it was more than he habitually allowed under the general principle of not alarming his family (which had always made his letters from the Peninsula read as if he had been little more than a spectator). Of course there was no present danger of renewed fighting: that much was clear to him in Quebec. This man Bagot, whom Lord Liverpool had sent to settle the question of warships on the Great Lakes was, by all accounts, not a man to misjudge things: it seemed that he had drawn the sting that remained of the late war with a new protocol. Hervey was looking forward to meeting him at dinner at the lieutenant-governor’s that evening.

  But the evening would not, of course, be unalloyed pleasure, for there would also be the brooding presence of Lord Towcester. What a joy the last two months had been, separated most of the time by a mile or more of ocean in their respective transports. However, any hope that the sea air had improved his lordship’s disposition, in essentials, was dashed in Quebec, where he had stomped about the governor-general’s apartments in petulant rage, his desire for easy glory thwarted by the tidings of peace. There, Hervey had wondered yet again if he should have accepted Sir Abraham’s handsome offer. In truth, he had wondered long about it during the Atlantic passage, but so pleasant was the cruise that the offer had faded greatly in its temptation by the time they reached Canada. But all of Towcester’s baseness had been laid bare again since their landfall, at least to Hervey’s eyes, and he could scarcely hope to avoid any more trials of loyalty. And try as he might to see this country favourably (and there was much in its raw beauty that appealed) Hervey could not detach his feelings from those he supposed Henrietta must have. How, in Heaven’s name, might she be happy in this frontier of nature? He would love her with all the intensity a man could, but was that – in the spirit’s sense – enough to keep the cold from her?

  Oh, how he might look back now on the happy, unhurried intimacy of the crossing, and wish he had secured that state for ever at Manvers Priory. Was his soldiery so essential a part of that happiness? Henrietta had thought it so, yes; but had he himself truly contemplated it – contemplated it thoroughly? He smiled again as the crossing came back to mind: the dinner at Christmas with all the officers, squeezed around the mess table, Henrietta full of laughter. And then the capering with the other ranks that evening. She had seemed to enjoy both so much. That had been his second Christmas at sea, in three – and never one at home since Shrewsbury. Was this really to be his life for ever? Not for ever, of course, for even an officer of his age must know of his natural mortality. But was it to be the pattern for all of the life he so wanted for them both? How difficult he found it. How difficult when you loved someone both as viscerally and cerebrally as he did – and when that love was soon to bear its first fruit.

  The trouble was – and he knew not just in his heart of hearts – there was no appeasing a man like Towcester. The boil, as it were, was forced to come to some ghastly head, where the lance was all that was left. But might a running sore thereby follow? He could not be certain of success with the blade. Yes, the boil would come to a head, and he would surely have to take the lance to it. The last thing he could afford, however, was for that to occur too soon – while Henrietta still carried their child, for he knew full well that her mind was prey enough still to the doubts born of Princess Caroline’s sad confinement. He was no free agent, even in military matters, now that he had taken a wife.

  ‘You are sure this evening will not fatigue you?’

  ‘Not excessively,’ replied Henrietta. ‘Really, this baby is being so very good to me.’

  Truly, it was. There was a colour about her face always, as if she were the girl again. It stirred him as much as had her blushes in those first, novel days of intimacy after their marriage.

  Her eyes seemed just that bit brighter, too, her voice that much richer. Her hair was a silky gloss – the stallion’s coat, where before it might have been the gelding’s. The fact of there being a baby, too, was almost imperceptible beneath her high-bodiced dress, though the swelling beneath the bodice must betoken it to anyone who knew her usual figure.

  Hervey put the fur cloak about her, fastened the front, and then put on his own cloak. ‘Very well, then, let us to the Maitlands.’

  The distance to the lieutenant-governor’s residence was nothing but a few furlongs, but the cold and the snow made even this a trial on foot, so they were taking a carriage heated by a warmingpan. The scene was not unlike Horningsham when, every few years or so, the village was besieged by a hard winter. Or rather by a month of hard winter instead of the three or even four which came every year here. Snow lay deep over gardens and pasture, and high along the sides of houses, except for the trench-like path cleared to door or stable. The houses, as in Horningsham, were too scattered to be of any support to each other: there was no network of clearance, therefore, and the notion of community (outside the walls of the fort itself) seemed smothered by this great white blanket. But community there was, thanks largely to the efforts of the garrison, who tirelessly cleared the snow from the main thoroughfares after each fall, making them passable to sled and wheel alike. But unlike Horningsham, there were oil lamps along the streets, and these were now lighting Hervey’s and Henrietta’s way to the Maitlands as well as might a full moon of a Wiltshire summer. The snow magnified the power of the little lamps, which in their homely flickers made the bitter outdoors seem so much less forbidding, and the two were received in only a very few minutes later at Government House not greatly chilled.

  Henrietta had taken tea that very day with Lady Sarah Maitland, and so their conversation was resumed on the same terms of only a few hours before. Hervey had seen Captain Addinsel for a little while on their first evening, two days ago, but they had yet to have any real opportunity for discourse. First, though, he paid his respects to General Maitland, who chatted agreeably after their introduction. Their exchanges were brief, however, in consequence of the arrival of Lord Towcester, followed at once by the minister from the embassy in Washington – Charles Bagot – and his wife. This gave Addinsel the opportunity to take Hervey aside to meet the other dinner guests, one of whom he found immediately engaging.

  As acting superintendent of the Upper Canada division, Major Barry Lawrence wore the green facings – collar, cuffs and lapels – of the Indian Department of British North America. He was a man of about
Hervey’s build, in his middle thirties, with a skin the colour of new-tanned leather, and when he learned that Hervey was only lately returned from India, he began an interrogation designed to acquaint himself with any similarities in the native methods of organization and fighting. However, Hervey was eventually able to persuade him to volunteer details of the North American Indian, being, he argued, a rather more pertinent subject to time and place. The superintendent was able to say only a little, though, before dinner was announced, leaving Hervey obviously disappointed.

  ‘Come to the department tomorrow, at ten, say, and we can resume,’ said Lawrence as they proceeded to the dining room. ‘I’m pleased you take an interest, for it is the most important business to be settled now that we have an agreement on naval matters.’

  They were fourteen at dinner, but the table was not large, and there was an intimacy to proceedings despite the formality of the seating arrangements. As a privy councillor, Mr Charles Bagot, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United States of America, came before an earl in precedence, and so was seated on Sir Peregrine Maitland’s right, with Lady Mary Bagot on his left. Across the table from her husband sat Lady Sarah Maitland, with Lord Towcester on her right. Henrietta was to the minister’s right, and Hervey almost opposite. For the first courses Hervey chatted with Charles Addinsel, who sat adjacent at the end of the table, and then to the widow of a commanding officer of the New Brunswick Fencibles, who had remained in York when her late husband’s regiment had returned east. From time to time he stole a glance at Henrietta. Once, she caught his look and held it several seconds, reddening about the neck in the way she did when they embraced. Her eyes promised him they would embrace again that evening, for Henrietta’s ardour was in no degree diminished by her condition. Indeed, if anything it seemed intensified. And he himself was no less invigorated by it, for all the little blooms of fecundity – the swellings and ripeness – roused every instinct to be one with her.

  By the time the sweet dishes were served, the conversation had become enlarged; or rather, the talk at the centre of the table was being listened to attentively by the guests at the ends. Lady Sarah Maitland leaned forward, turning towards Hervey, and smiling very prettily said she understood that he, too, had been at the Battle of Waterloo. ‘And I wonder, did you see anything of my husband’s guardsmen?’

  The table fell silent. Lady Sarah was the same age as Henrietta, and some fifteen years or so her husband’s junior. Her enquiry was of a childlike innocence and pride, and not one which even modesty might resist. ‘I did indeed, ma’am,’ was the best Hervey could manage, however.

  Sir Peregrine, who had hitherto borne a somewhat distant, patrician look, now softened, even seeming to smile at the remembrance.

  ‘Did you observe when the duke bid them stand up?’ asked Lady Sarah.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. We were not so very far on their left at that moment.’

  ‘Then tell me how it appeared, for I have heard several accounts,’ she pressed.

  ‘Well, ma’am, it was towards the end of the day, as you will recall, and Bonaparte had become desperate and sent his imperial guards at our centre. They marched towards where there was a gap in our line of infantry, with only a brigade of light cavalry seeming to stand between them and Brussels. And just as it seemed they would be able to take the ridge and drive on to that city, up stood a whole brigade of guardsmen which I swear I had not even seen until that moment, so perfectly still had they remained in the corn.’

  ‘It was an unusual drill movement,’ Sir Peregrine acknowledged.

  ‘And then they swept the French back down the hill?’ prompted Lady Sarah.

  ‘Indeed, ma’am. It was the end. The Duke of Wellington gave the order for the whole line to advance.’

  Lady Sarah smiled adoringly at her husband.

  ‘There was some very apt musketry from others at that moment, we should not forget,’ said Sir Peregrine. ‘The Sixth had a good gallop at the French hill, too, as I remember, Hervey.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Who was commanding at that stage? Lord George Irvine was with the Prince of Orange, was he not?’

  ‘Yes he was, sir. I am afraid our major was killed and all our captains accounted for. The command had devolved upon me in the closing minutes.’

  Henrietta now bore the same look of admiration as the general’s wife. But she had also seen the look on Lord Towcester’s face: distaste – an intense envy, indeed.

  ‘And Captain Hervey must have performed those duties very well,’ said Lady Mary Bagot to Sir Peregrine, though in a voice to be heard by the table as a whole, ‘because he was afterwards made aide-de-camp to my uncle.’

  This further revelation made Hervey redden. He had no idea of Lady Mary Bagot’s kinship with the duke. Henrietta glanced at Lord Towcester again. His envy was so intense as to appear quite alarming to her.

  ‘I confess to feeling humbled by the presence of two Waterloo men,’ declared Lady Mary’s husband.

  Hervey was amazed that a minister with plenipotentiary powers should express himself humbled in any way by a soldier, but he thought his sentiment genuine nevertheless.

  Sir Peregrine was equally self-deprecating. ‘Oh, now, for my part at least, I would own that it was sheer circumstance, and infinitely to be preferred to the fighting that Pakenham’s army had in the Mississippi at the time.’

  ‘Well, let us pray there is no recrudescence, on either front,’ conceded Bagot.

  Lady Sarah Maitland made to rise, her chair eased by a footman. ‘Not too long, my dear,’ she said, fixing her husband with a smile that none might resist. ‘There can surely be little to detain you now that there is so universal a peace.’

  The men stood as she led the ladies to the drawing room.

  When they were gone, the junior guests closed to the middle of the table, and the port was passed. Lord Towcester lit a cigar. ‘And what is your opinion of recrudescence here, Bagot? Do the Americans covet His Majesty’s provinces still?’

  The tone was the merest shade lofty, but enough to register with the minister plenipotentiary. ‘Well, Lord Towcester, “covet” would imply to me that the United States laid claim to Canada and would not be at rest until that claim is granted,’ began Bagot. ‘I do not see it thus, though if it were possible to seize the provinces with impunity I should not doubt that the temptation would be too great.’ He lit a cigar too, blowing smoke confidently towards the ceiling. ‘But the time is past. They failed to take advantage of our distraction by Bonaparte, and they know they have not the strength to take on our fleet and army now. I have just finished negotiating the neutrality of the Great Lakes, indeed. They have given up any right of a naval presence on them, save a few vessels to protect their legitimate interests, in return for the same. Yet we could reinforce the Lakes at any time from the Atlantic, with sufficient determination. And the St Lawrence – a first-rate – is laid up in ordinary. Recommissioned, she would still outgun anything the Americans could put on Lake Ontario for at least a year.’

  ‘I heard they had something to meet her with in the New Orleans?’ said Lord Towcester.

  Bagot took another leisurely draw on his cigar. ‘A hundred and ten guns to seventy-four? Not, I think, good odds. And in any case, the New Orleans is still on the stocks.’

  Lord Towcester frowned. ‘And so you believe that the border may now be left unguarded?’

  ‘I did not say that, Lord Towcester,’ replied Bagot, frowning equally. ‘I believe, though, that it permits a strategy over a long term of disengaging from a forward defence of the frontiers. The United States has, anyway, other priorities. It is the south and west which more naturally engages the people seeking new land. And in doing so they run into the native Indians and the Spanish. That will absorb the energies of government these next twenty years.’

  Sir Peregrine Maitland refilled his glass and passed the port to the superintendent of the Indian Department. ‘How say you, Lawrence?’

&
nbsp; Barry Lawrence took the decanter and poured himself a glass, raising his eyebrows as if to say he was touching on something unfathomable. ‘Well, Sir Peregrine, I believe the Americans are about to begin a struggle that will take a generation and more to end.’

  Lord Towcester looked incredulous. ‘Do you mean to say that an assortment of savages will trouble an army which inflicted so much pain on our own?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do, your lordship.’

  Lord Towcester huffed.

  ‘And I very much fear that we in Canada may not escape the consequences. Have you heard of the affair at Niagara?’

  Sir Peregrine was apparently none too keen to have it related. ‘Let us adjourn, gentlemen. These are weighty matters for an evening such as this, and Major Lawrence shall anyway have every opportunity these winter months to tell you of his concerns.’

  By now Hervey had formed a very agreeable opinion indeed of the superintendent, who was quite evidently a forthright man with a passion for his subject. Indeed, Lawrence put him in mind of the Collector of Guntoor, and he wondered at the ability of the nation to produce men of aptness such as they, able so to immerse themselves in a society alien in every way, with danger and reward in wholly unequal proportions. ‘Shall you tell me of this affair tomorrow when we meet?’ he whispered as they left the room.

  The superintendent looked at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you have a strong stomach?’