Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (11 page)

‘No, no,’ replied Somervile, recovering his composure. ‘Jaswant will be able to divert Emma. I shall go and dress, meanwhile. But to conclude – this part at least – do you know who is General Bourke? He has been sent to the Cape in Somerset’s place, at least for the time being.’

Hervey looked thoughtful. ‘There was a
Colonel
Bourke in the Peninsula, on Wellington’s staff, as I recall. Might it be he?’

‘It might. He is obviously not without influence, and I can imagine Wellington’s interest in this.’ He waved a hand airily. ‘You understand that man will be prime minister one day!’

‘Bourke?
‘

‘No, Wellington!’

Hervey frowned. ‘As well I should be Archbishop of Canterbury!’

Somervile shook his head. ‘Mark my words, Hervey: Liverpool’s a sick man. Who shall replace him? No one will serve with Canning! And Peel would have the Irish in arms in no time. No, it might be for a year or so only, and as – shall we say a
caretaker
– but I would lay good odds on it.’

Hervey rose, smiling at the notion. ‘Well, be that as it may, what is General Bourke’s situation to be on your arrival?’

Somervile shook his head. ‘That will be nothing to trouble over. He shall be commander of the garrison or some such. But he has sent in a scheme of military reorganization which I would question you about.’ He looked at his trousers again, and then at the clock. ‘See you, Emma will come down very presently, and your godson. I had better go. Pull for Jaswant if you want a bath, there’s a good fellow. And he’ll show you your room. I had better …’ He put down his glass and quit the study with muffled apologies.

In the sudden peace of the little sitting room Hervey took a comfortable chair and began contemplating his old friend’s news, but he rose again in a few minutes on the appearance of Emma.

‘Lady Somervile!’

They embraced warmly.

‘It sounds rather droll, don’t you think?’

‘Not at all,’ replied Hervey, smiling warmly still. ‘I am only diverted by the colourful order into which Eyre has been admitted.’

Emma raised her eyebrows. ‘He has been declaiming on the subject of Guelphs and Papalists ever since he was first canvassed.’

‘I can never remember: the Guelphs were the Papal party?’

‘Just so. Not that he has the least objection to the Catholics.’

‘Merely to medieval Italians?’

She smiled as she took the glass of sherry which Hervey had poured for her. ‘You know very well how agitated he can become about these things. He somehow associates the Guelphs with the Tories.’

Hervey inclined his head. ‘I had never thought of Eyre as a Whig, and still less a republican.’

Emma frowned. ‘He is no more Whig than am I; or you. At present he is very contrary. He cannot make up his mind about this king. I think he would favour revolution if the Company could take over in government!’

Hervey was inclined to see more than irony. ‘Things are awry, but not so great as to tempt such thoughts?’

‘Oh, you know Eyre very well. He likes to imagine he could better arrange everything than people in Whitehall.’

‘He is almost certainly in the right there!’

Emma held up a hand. ‘Do not
you
begin! He needs no encouragement; rather the opposite indeed. By the way, shall you come with us to Gloucestershire? The house will appeal to you, I think. It is built in the Moghul fashion. Eyre is excessively keen to see it.’

Hervey looked thoughtful. ‘I’m sorry, I had quite forgotten. And Lady Lankester is to accompany?’

‘She is. We go on Friday, until seven days following. Eyre says we can post in just the one day.’

‘I think it possible to post in a day, though I imagine your bones will be rearranged.’

‘Shall you come?’

‘I should like to very much, but there are one or two matters to attend. I didn’t say, but there’s a fearful bad eruption of something in our horse lines, quite possibly farcy.’

Emma was not dismayed. ‘Can you be of particular service in that? I very much think that a week in the country would set you up capitally, Matthew. You have driven yourself excessively these past months, if I may say so. Eyre has told me of it.’

Hervey inclined his head. ‘I think that it would not quite do for me to be absent with such a thing as farcy taken hold, though I won’t deny a week in the country – or even a few days – would be agreeable. That was my intention in Wiltshire, though the wretched fever came again.’

Emma looked pained. ‘You take the quinine still, I hope?’

‘Not as a rule, no. Not since being in Lisbon.’ He brightened. ‘But hear: what Eyre does not yet know is that I may soon have the proper command of the regiment. You recall my speaking of Daniel Coates, who taught me to ride and shoot and all?’ Emma nodded.

‘He died a week ago and left me a considerable sum to purchase a lieutenant-colonelcy. And I have applied, and Lord George Irvine, our colonel, is to support me.’

Emma sighed with true satisfaction. ‘I am excessively pleased for you, Matthew. It is exactly as you deserve, and your regiment will be most fortunate to have you.’

Hervey basked for a moment in the warmth of her smile. ‘Thank you. Though perhaps until the eggs are in the pudding…’

‘Of course. But I should say, Eyre will not
entirely
share my joy.’

Hervey frowned. ‘Oh? How so?’

‘Has he spoken of the Cape Colony?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, I should have congratulated you before. It is splendid news. Except that I have no desire to lose your company. I imagine you shall go with him?’

It was not the answer to the question she had in mind, and Hervey’s own question in turn surprised her.‘Of course!’

‘And young Somervile?’

‘Indeed! You would have me leave him here?’

Hervey thought of Georgiana and his own practice. ‘No, Emma, I would not have you leave him for a moment.’

There was no awkward pause, as well there might have been had they not known each other for so long. But even so the appearance now of Jaswant was welcome.

‘Memsahib, dinner is served,’ he said, in rapid Urdu.

‘Mehrbani, Jaswant. We shall dine as soon as Somervile Sahib is dressed.’

Again, the Urdu was so fast that Hervey was only just able to understand. He had neither spoken nor heard it in twelve months, and in truth he had never been nearly as fluent as Emma. ‘You know, I have not sat down with you both since before …’ He thought better of it, and returned instead to the unanswered invitation. ‘You know, I might travel down to Gloucestershire on Saturday. Things should be in hand by then.’

Emma beamed. ‘I am so pleased.’

‘But what is it that prevents Somervile’s unrestricted joy at my own news?’

Emma rose, holding the smile. ‘I think I shall leave him to explain for himself.’

The Somerviles kept both an English and an Indian cook. This evening it was the same Bengali whose sweet and spicy dishes had delighted Hervey many an evening in Calcutta, when at times he had been almost in residence with the Third in Council and his lady at Fort William. In Bloomsbury, as there, the Somerviles followed the Indian practice of beginning with the sweetest dishes, so that they sat down to a table spread with pomegranates, grapes and jujubes, oranges peeled and dusted with ginger, finger-lengths of sugar cane, and slices of mango. When Hervey had attended his first Indian feast, in the princely state of Chintal, he had sat next to the rajah, who had half mocked the English way of proceeding through many dishes to a final sweet course, as though, he had said, ‘you must earn sweetness by progression through much sourness – as in life itself.’ The rajah had said that in India they had no such coyness in their pleasures: ‘We have earned title to indulgence in this incarnation through preparation in earlier ones.’ That evening in Chintal, at his right hand, had sat the rajah’s daughter, the raj kumari, a beauty whose like he had never before seen, or imagined; and later by some power that he thought a kind of madness induced by the very air itself of those strange lands, he had all but defiled his adoration of Henrietta in the raj kumari’s entitlement to indulgence. Only some years later, when he returned to India, a widower, a bittering man, did he see the madness for what it was – and embrace it warmly. But all that must end, he had decided. Soon he would make regular the business of his manly needs.

‘Well, my dear,’ said Emma to her husband, ‘do you not think it becoming that our guest may soon be lieutenant-colonel?’ She had told him the news at once.

‘I do indeed,’ replied Somervile, almost boisterous, as a khitmagar began refilling glasses.

Hervey nodded in acknowledgement. ‘But not forgetting there’s many a slip…’

‘No, of course. But, you know, Hervey, I had thoroughly expected the promotion. Indeed, I had half arranged it.’

Hervey’s face was screwed into a perfect picture of incomprehension. ‘Somervile, I would not put anything beyond your reach, except that in the case of regimental command I rather thought the question lay between the buyer, the colonel and the Horse Guards.’

Somervile took care to check his enthusiasm just enough to swallow several jujubes, and then thought better of his game. He had a notion that at this moment the table, what with Hervey positively glowing at the prospect of command, was not the best place to reveal his hand. He had a better idea: he would tempt him with a display of the very artefacts of the life that Hervey knew best. But that, perforce, was a hand to play after dinner. Meanwhile conviviality would serve – as well as being the most natural of things in the company of his old, and supremely trusted, friend.

‘How was your funeral? A fitting one for so eminently decent a fellow?’

Hervey found his glass being filled for a third time. He glanced at Emma, who gave no sign of noticing. ‘Fitting … yes, very. The Wiltshire Yeomanry turned out smartly, Lord Bath was there of course, and General Tarleton came too.’

‘Tarleton? ‘Pon my word: a singular honour to an old trumpeter.’

‘Just so. It was most affecting.’

‘General Tarleton of the American war?’ asked Emma.

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘No, except from his portrait. There is a print of it somewhere in the house. A very handsome one. You’ve seen it?’

‘I have seen the image, yes,’ said Hervey.

She smiled, indulgently. ‘You yourself will be commissioning a portrait soon, no doubt. Somervile is.’

Hervey looked suitably impressed. ‘Is this true, Somervile? Of course it must be if Emma says so.’

‘Since I have a son and heir I feel it incumbent upon me.’

‘
You
have good reason too, Matthew,’ added Emma, detecting that her guest possibly considered the undertaking premature.

Hervey smiled but ignored the suggestion. ‘Who shall paint you?’ he asked, in a tone implying he was more sympathetic than Emma had supposed.

Somervile took a long, cogitative drink of his hock. ‘Lawrence, I thought, though he’s probably past his best; or Beechey, perhaps.’

Hervey’s eyebrows revealed considerable surprise. ‘I had not imagined … Forgive me. I supposed the likes of Lawrence and Beechey would have years of commissions awaiting them.’

‘Mm,’ said Somervile, nodding, and draining his glass. ‘That’s what Emma says too. Well, there’ll be a pupil, perhaps. There is not exactly an excess of time.’

‘You mean before you leave for the Cape?’

‘Quite.’

A khitmagar had begun clearing the sweet dishes, and another brought one of Hervey’s favourites, which first he had tasted at the rajah’s feast –
Mandaliya,
the entrails of young lambs, filled with marrow and spices known only to Emma’s Bengali, and roasted over charcoal. The rajah, a man of startling sensibility and vocabulary, had spoken of
Mandaliya
as ‘the very apotheosis of taste’. Hervey smiled at the recollection of it, such perfect erudition, such gentlemanlike manner. He had so much liked the rajah – his courage, humanity, integrity, each of a rare degree. He wished he had travelled to Chintal again during the long years of that second time in India…

He braced himself. ‘Lady Lankester – she will drive to Gloucestershire with you?’

It was quite a turn of conversation, but Emma was content enough to leave the question of portraits – for the time being, at least. ‘She takes her own carriage, but yes, she will drive with us. Might you accompany us?’

Hervey did not know how to respond. Here was an unexpected, but not unlooked for, opportunity to present himself, and yet there was the business of the lieutenant-colonelcy to press, as well as the outbreak in the horse lines. ‘I had thought Saturday … but I rather think I might, if duties permit.’

Emma looked at him quizzically, though he did not see it, and then the conversation passed at Somervile’s prompting to the week’s obituaries, of which Hervey was still ignorant. And then, as it always did, to India.

Hervey began wondering if he would see India again, or yet if he even wanted to. They had been long years in Bengal, but wholly restorative. He regretted he had never gone back to Chintal to see the rajah, and indeed some of the other friends he had made there. But he had feared the raj kumari (if she were not to be quite the death of him) would somehow torment him to destruction. It had all been so long ago – ten years. And, of course, in Calcutta there had been Vaneeta. She had had but a small measure of the blood of Isabella Delgado’s countrymen, but mixed with that of Bengal, Vaneeta’s company had frequently been sublime…

He woke.
Sublime:
as indeed were the confections which now followed the
Mandaliya,
more sublime even than the
Madhuparka,
the honeyed milk which accompanied them. They drank the best hock and burgundy too, exactly as in Calcutta. Hervey sighed inwardly. Yes, he would like to see India again, where all tastes were intense and there was no ‘coyness in pleasure’. Where, indeed, he might eat lotus and forget all ‘obligation’.

When Jaswant appeared with coffee at the end of the feast, Somervile laid down his napkin and pushed back his chair. ‘Come, Hervey, we shall take our coffee in my library. I would have you see the campaign furniture I have assembled!’