A Call to Arms mh-4 Read online

  ‘You mean with Lord Bath?’

  ‘Ay. It can’t help, that son of ’is running off with yon Harriet Robbins.’

  The elopement of the Marquess of Bath’s son and heir with the daughter of the turnpike-keeper was the talk of west Wiltshire, and it had indeed made for greater strain in Hervey’s own intercourse at Longleat. He was certain that Lord and Lady Bath, despite their solicitude when first he had come home from Canada, must hold him to blame to some degree for Henrietta’s death. ‘She was a deuced pretty girl, Harriet, as I recall. And old Robbins was an honest man. There’s every reason to suppose—’

  ‘There’s none at all, Matthew, as very well you know. I’ve a lot of time for Bath. He’s as good a man as you might want in that house. But he’s proud, too.’

  Hervey could not gainsay it. He had always supposed that his own connection with Longleat had been viewed by the marquess more with resignation than approval, even though Henrietta had been his ward, not blood. ‘You’re right, Dan.’

  ‘You go there every day, I trust?’

  ‘To the nursery, yes, but I don’t always see the family.’

  Coates nodded. ‘Keep with them, Matthew.’

  Hervey knew that he must.

  ‘And our prayers should be with his lordship, for never was there a steadier hand at such a troubled time. Oh yes, the troubles there have been these last months, Matthew! But he is still of a mind to have a proper police in this country, and speaks of it in parliament often. He brought all the magistrates together a week ago. These reformers are playing a merry dance about the country. A lot of what they say is only right and proper — his lordship himself agrees with much of it — but the manner of it is very ill. It leads only to trouble. That Hunt as I knew, when the family was across the plain at Upavon, he’s nothing more now than a rabble-rouser. He conceals it just sufficient to keep from arrest, but his lieutenants do the dirty work. His name draws the crowds now. Did you read of that meeting in London three days ago?’

  Hervey nodded. ‘They won’t recognize any laws passed from now on.’

  ‘Ay. Thousands there were at that meeting by all accounts. Hunt was waving a tricolour, they say. Did you ever hear anything so damnable? Lord Bath has the yeomanry prompt at hand, for that sort of thing travels all too easily, and there’s too much distress in the county.’

  ‘Well, I for one should never want a part in aiding the magistrates again,’ said Hervey, very decidedly. ‘The yeomen are most welcome to it!’

  The dining room of the vicarage in Horningsham was not large, but neither was the party that evening, consisting of, besides the family, the incumbent of Upton Scudamore, his wife and the Reverend Mr Keble. It was, however, an occasion for the best china and glass, as well as Mrs Hervey’s family table linen. She had fretted that there had been no fish to be had in Warminster, save common trout, and that the beef, fresh-slaughtered off the high street the day before, was not as tender as ought to have been. But cook had done her usual best, and there could be no cause now for fearing that her guests would be affronted.

  And the candles were of the best quality, too — not the everyday ones that could whistle and spit at inopportune moments. Not that their light was needed at this hour of a summer evening, but fashion required that they be lit, and if the conversation detained the party more than a couple of hours — which, with Mr Keble and the vicar of Upton Scudamore present, it might — there would certainly be the want of it. Perhaps at this hour, though, the candlelight might have been better employed in illuminating the family portraits, thought Hervey, for these, being of clergymen, were so colourless as to make them disappear. He himself had no need of a candle, of course, for he knew each feature and fold of them. Their presiding presence had been both a comfort and a caution all his life — like his parents indeed, his father especially, who had of late become as venerable-looking as the portraits.

  Canon Hervey had joined the party last, having returned late from the bishop’s palace. He was eager to tell them of it. ‘I should have been very much later without that curricle. It fair flies,’ he explained, with a distinct twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Father bought the former archdeacon’s equipage, Mr Keble,’ explained Elizabeth.

  ‘I wonder the former archdeacon didn’t have a sulky,’ declared Mrs Hervey. ‘For who would wish to drive with such a disagreeable man as he!’

  ‘It is a very elegant carriage, Archdeacon,’ said John Keble. ‘I own to having but a very modest gig in my new parish.’

  Hervey was as ever pleased that John Keble found the opportunity to stay a night in Horningsham. Keble had become a friend, albeit for the most part in adversity. If he did not yet freely confide in Mr Keble, he had nevertheless a sense that if ever there came the time to do so, he would find an uncommon understanding of the human condition — far in excess of what might be imagined of a donnish young man in his first parish.

  ‘I never knew that our roads and carriages were so much better than any on the continent until our visit to Rome,’ said Elizabeth, hoping to draw her mother further from the subject of the former Archdeacon of Sarum. ‘We scarcely ever seemed to go at even a moderate trot.’

  ‘By all your brother has told me, Miss Hervey,’ replied Keble, looking particularly earnest, ‘the continent is inferior in many respects of human endeavour. And for that I believe we must be thankful for having seen nothing of an invading army these many years past.’

  ‘Just so, Keble,’ agreed Canon Hervey, laying down his glass. ‘It is a terrible thing to have to bury one’s silver every other year.’ There was an empty place at table. Mrs Hervey explained that the new incumbent of Upton Scudamore was to have joined them, but he had sent word only this last hour that he had a chill which had gone to his head and did not wish to share it with the family.

  ‘You would have liked Harrison, Keble,’ opined Canon Hervey. ‘He is lately chaplain at Christ’s College in Cambridge, and a strong member of the “intellectual party” there. I am very pleased to have him in the archdeaconry, I may tell you.’

  Hervey smiled at his father. ‘So now there is high ground, to be of mutual support, on both roads between Salisbury and Wells.’

  The table enjoyed the joke. ‘Just so, Matthew. Just so,’ agreed his father.

  ‘And you can signal to each other with incense smoke.’

  ‘You see, Mr Keble?’ said Elizabeth, feigning despair. ‘My brother cannot speak but in military metaphors.’

  Keble replied with equal gravity. ‘Of course, Miss Hervey. Your brother is a soldier to his fingertips. How else must he be expected to speak?’

  ‘Matthew,’ she replied, with a note of challenge, ‘is not signalling with smoke dangerous? Can it not be seen by an enemy, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded at once. ‘But if the enemy already know you are there, then nothing will be revealed so long as you employ a code.’

  Mrs Hervey looked alarmed. ‘No message can be concealed with incense. We have had quite enough trouble with the diocesan to last a lifetime. I beg you would not mention incense ever again. It is an abomination unto me!’

  The late charges of ‘Romish practice’ against his father being evidently of present memory to his mother, Hervey felt obliged to deflect the conversation. ‘How does your work on Archbishop Laud stand, father? Is it near ready for the publisher?’

  Canon Hervey sighed. ‘Not in its complete form, I fear, for there is still too much to be done with it. But I am preparing a monography on Laudian decorum for the British Critic.’

  Hervey had deflected the conversation insufficiently, however, and Mrs Hervey needed further reassurance that her husband’s scholarship would not lead to a recurrence of activity in the consistory court.

  John Keble was able to allay her worst fears. ‘I heard a sermon at Oriel only last month on like matters. There is little appetite, I think, for troubling over what is said or written if it is in the manner of scholarship.’

  ‘Oh, I am very pleased to
hear it, Mr Keble,’ declared Mrs Hervey earnestly. ‘And now, if you please, let us have no more talk of these things. Matthew, tell us some more of Italy. What of its art?’

  ‘And its music, if you will,’ added Keble, equally anxious to avoid further disputation on the Church of England and its tangled rubrics. ‘Did you see the opera?’

  Elizabeth giggled. ‘Mr Keble, you must know that Matthew has no music in him save the drum and the bugle!’

  ‘That is unfair and inaccurate. We do not have drums in the cavalry.’

  ‘Not even kettledrums?’ challenged Elizabeth.

  ‘Oh, well, yes. But not drums as I supposed you meant them.’

  ‘And I thought the bugle was what the infantry played?’ added Mrs Hervey.

  ‘No, the cavalry too, for mounted calls. It is pitched an octave higher than the trumpet, so the call carries further.’

  ‘We did go to the opera, Mr Keble,’ Elizabeth assured him. ‘In Rome. And Matthew sniggered the while!’

  Hervey looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, it was a very singular business. And I was not the first to laugh.’

  ‘How so?’ asked his father.

  Hervey looked at his sister and raised his eyebrows as if censuring her for what would be revealed. ‘It was an opera by an Italian called Rossini: he is very famous there. And he himself directed it from the piano. He came into the orchestra wearing the strangest coat the colour of cream, and it caused great hilarity. Then after the overture — which was, I must say, very lively — a tenor came on stage with a guitar to serenade his love, and all the strings broke at the first chord. The audience hooted with laughter, and very many of them clericals.’

  ‘I might have done the same,’ said Canon Hervey.

  ‘And I, too, Archdeacon,’ added Mr Keble supportively. Elizabeth frowned at them both.

  Her brother, emboldened, warmed to his story. ‘Soon afterwards the same happened to someone with a mandolin, and then there came someone else who fell straightway onto his nose and there was blood all over his robe. The hooting and catcalls were so bad that Signor Rossini fled the orchestra and the whole thing was abandoned. We had our money back and went to a firework display instead.’

  ‘Which Matthew liked because it looked as though the castle there was under siege. I tell you, Papa, he has no appreciation of anything but the sound of the trumpet and the thunder of the captains!’

  ‘And the shouting?’ added John Keble.

  ‘Oh, I should imagine especially the shouting, Mr Keble!’

  After dinner Hervey and Keble walked together in the garden. There was a full moon, and it was warm. ‘Not unlike an evening in India, I should suppose,’ said Keble, looking up at the sky. ‘And the stars will be the same in those latitudes, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you are right. Though I shall be further north this time, in Hindoostan.’

  ‘And Georgiana: she will remain here, with your sister?’

  Hervey did not reply at once. There were so many things he might say to qualify the simple ‘yes’. ‘I confess it will be harder than I ever supposed. She is no longer a mere babe in arms.’

  ‘She will have a Christian upbringing. That is more than most, I fear.’

  ‘I’ve settled all Henrietta’s property in trust to her. I was intending to ask if you might consent to be a trustee.’

  ‘I am honoured.’

  ‘It would mean your going to the attorney’s in Warminster tomorrow.’

  ‘I see no objection in that.’

  ‘You are very good. And to my father too. He prizes your counsel highly, you know.’

  ‘Hervey, your father has nigh on forty years’ cure of souls, and I scarcely a tenth of that. My counsel, as you put it, can in his respect only ever be from a standpoint of theory.’

  ‘Well, without experience, theory is the only resort.’

  ‘That seems a good military precept. Will you write to me from India? Does the regiment take a chaplain there? I fear I do not know who is to be this new bishop in Calcutta.’

  ‘I shall indeed write. I don’t know whether we take a chaplain, nor even whether it is a good or a bad thing; their quality is little admired. We have spoken of this before, you and I.’

  John Keble stopped and turned full towards him. ‘You must be steadfast in your daily prayers, my good friend. Now of all times. I do not ask if you are.’

  Hervey sighed to himself. It was just as well that Keble did not.

  CHAPTER NINE. THE RECRUITING PARTY

  Hounslow, a month later

  ‘Well, Sar’nt-Major — we have a troop orderly room and an acquittance roll, and scarcely more than a quarter-guard’s-worth of names to enter on it.’

  Troop Serjeant-Major Armstrong huffed. ‘Them bringers have been about as useful as a sewn-up arse! I’ve a mind to go down there meself.’

  ‘Twenty-two in all. Not bad-looking men on the whole. And six that can read and write. At least the bringers’ve not been sweeping the gutters.’

  ‘We might have to do that yet, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘If we leave for India under strength it’ll be a year before the depot troop can send us the rest. I reckon we’d be broken up inside that time.’

  ‘I well know it, Sar’nt-Major. And I’m not sure I want every man that elects to stay from the regiment that’s leaving. Half a dozen, maybe, but more would be a veritable combination.’

  ‘They do say a married man in India’s a better soldier. But I’d take some convincing.’

  Hervey allowed himself a smile. ‘I’d not trade you for a singleton, Sar’nt-Major.’

  ‘And in truth, sir, I wouldn’t ever want to be one — not even to be shaved in bed of a morning like them char-wallahs do.’

  ‘I thought char-wallahs brought them tea, don’t they?’

  ‘Probably that an’ all.’

  ‘A punkah-wallah cools them with a fan, as I remember …’

  ‘Well, if we don’t get active, sir, they’ll be fanning empty beds. I’d like to send Collins into London today. He’s a good eye.’

  ‘That I grant you, but London’s yielded up precious few to the regimental parties.’

  ‘We won’t get the best there, that’s for sure. But I don’t see as we’ve time to be traipsing round the county looking for likely men. And sure as hell we don’t want to take any as is paying with the drum.’

  ‘Well, at any rate, not any that have a large payment to make. The odd fellow who’s fallen foul of the bench of a Saturday night oughtn’t to be too much of a problem.’

  Hervey knew that his serjeant-major was not wholly convinced of the corrective qualities of soldiering. Despite his rough and ready ways, his quick temper and his fondness for a drink, Armstrong held strongly to the notion that character would out as soon as the guns began to play. In the infantry this did not matter so much, for the bad characters were held in line by the NCOs close by them, and all the line had to do was wheel and form and deliver volley-fire on command. In the cavalry it was not so easy. A dragoon was much more upon his honour as regards his horse, doing outpost duty and going to it with the sword. A rough could be redeemed by military discipline, but a bad hat — never. And the trick was always to know which was the one and not the other.

  Hervey observed closely as his serjeant-major took up the acquittance roll again and began examining the names. Armstrong’s new uniform fitted handsomely, showing off the barrel chest and powerful arms that had made him so formidable a fighter in a mêlée. The regiment would not have been the same without him. And how good did that fourth chevron look — at last.

  ‘Do you want to see those as came in yesterday, sir?’

  Hervey did, so they walked to the pump in the yard outside E Troop’s empty stables, where dragoons were throwing buckets of water over half a dozen brought men. It would have been the same in the depths of winter, and the dragoons went at it with a will, since they had no wish to share the lice and other vermin which recruits brought with them.

  ‘Why a
y,’ exclaimed Armstrong suddenly. ‘Corporal Mossop, fetch that red-’eaded man over here.’

  Mossop half dragged the man in front of the serjeant-major; trying to march him over would have taken all day. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Turn ’im about, Corporal!’

  Corporal Mossop knew the order would be pointless. He jerked him round to face rear.

  Armstrong pulled the man’s long red hair roughly to one side. ‘I thought as much!’ he snarled.

  Hervey, too, saw the ‘BC’ brand on his shoulder.

  ‘Why can’t them bringers look properly? About turn!’ he barked.

  The man spun right-about like a top, ending up with his hands at attention by his side and his eyes set distant, exactly as if on parade.

  ‘And what might your former service be, my bonny lad?’

  The man’s voice faltered. ‘Six years, sir. Thirty-fourth Foot.’

  ‘And why did the Thirty-fourth discharge you?’

  ‘Rather not say, sir.’

  ‘ “Rather not say.” I bet you wouldn’t.’ He turned to Hervey. ‘Sir?’

  Hervey knew his serjeant-major wanted him to say ‘Throw him out of the gates’, for that was what the army intended when it branded a man ‘bad character’. But he recoiled more from the notion of branding than from the letters themselves. ‘Can we not see how he goes to his work while we try to find out why he was discharged?’

  Armstrong suppressed a sigh. ‘I wouldn’t want him messing with the others to begin with, sir.’

  ‘He can sleep in the guardroom, can he not?’

  ‘He can, sir. Corporal Mossop, double this man away. I want an eye on him at all times.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Not a good beginning,’ said Hervey. ‘How did you know to look for a brand? There were no lash marks.’

  ‘Just an instinct, that’s all, but I only thought there might be a “D”.’

  ‘Trying it on for the bounty?’

  ‘Ay. There was a man ’anged not six months back for it. Deserted and then ’listed again eighteen times before he was discovered.’

  ‘Well, five pounds and four shillings is an attractive bounty. But I wonder that someone on the take doesn’t go to the infantry for the other guinea.’