Hervey 09 - Man Of War (42 page)

Fairbrother looked troubled. ‘Hervey, I don’t think—’

‘No, Fairbrother: I am utterly determined on it!’

XIX
RAIN ON SAIL

Next day

Hervey engaged a chaise for Greenwich, which proved a longer and more trying journey than he had imagined. Scarcely a word was spoken between brother and sister in the two hours that it took to drive there. Even Fairbrother fell quiet after his attempts at generating conversation failed, so that he resolved instead to be their good supporter, though as a silent buttress.

Hervey looked severe but composed. Fairbrother perfectly understood: he knew that his friend had scarcely slept for thinking of the consequences both of Peto’s wounds and of the reunion. Elizabeth, on the other hand, looked as gentle a woman as ever she was, but most ill at ease. Fairbrother wondered that her certainty in her new-found love (he hoped very much to be able to meet Heinrici soon) did not arm her more for the ordeal that was to come. But he had not been privy to the meeting of brother and sister the morning before, and certainly not in the evening, when Hervey had taken her the news. He could only imagine what effect his friend’s commanding assurance had on a sister who deferred to him as, in most respects, paterfamilias.

When they arrived, he conducted them to Peto’s quarters. There was a rank smell to the place this morning – stale urine, faeces, and something Fairbrother fancied was suppuration. Perhaps it was because the presence of the gentler sex made him more sensible of such things, though had he but known that the Warminster workhouse could smell ranker still, he would not have troubled on Elizabeth’s behalf.

Hervey hesitated as they neared Peto’s room, second thoughts crowding in on him. Should he not permit his sister to enter first (they were officially engaged, after all) or should it be he, as older friend? Or perhaps they should enter together? Was it truly why he hesitated? He looked at Elizabeth, hoping for the answer, as so often. She took a deep breath, slipped her arm round his, and led him through the door, leaving Fairbrother sentinel outside.

Peto’s eyes remained closed. He sat upright, strapped in a high-back chair, his left arm free but in a splint, a scar across his forehead, and another to his neck, his legs bound, and his right sleeve empty.

Hervey’s eyes at once filled with tears.

Elizabeth took three silent steps to his side, and bent to kiss his forehead. Peto woke, with a look that spoke of both happiness and dismay. ‘Miss Hervey—’ he sighed, as if wearied beyond measure. He saw Hervey, and his look became a kind of relief: ‘My dear friend.’

Hervey, fighting hard to keep his own anguish in check, took hold of his old friend’s hand. ‘I had no idea—’

Peto seemed to brace himself, though restrained by the fastenings. ‘We sank five, and saved the flagship, likely as not. The deucedest ill luck, this . . .’

Elizabeth, managing for the most part to conceal her own distress, looked at him anxiously nevertheless. ‘We received no letters; we had no word, or of course we would have come.’

Peto shook his head, as if to bid her not to distress herself on that account. ‘I wrote a good many, but getting them away was—’ He began coughing, motioning to the water glass on a side table. Hervey tried to put it to his mouth, but Peto shook his head and took it for himself by the splinted arm. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, giving back the empty glass; ‘a chill caught on the passage home.’

Elizabeth looked more anxious still: the coughing was not wholly unlike the rattling hacks she heard of a winter night in the Warminster union. ‘Shall I ask a doctor to come? Is there a powder I may get for you?’

Peto tried to smile, though the effort looked painful. ‘No, Miss Hervey, there is no need of either. Only a chill . . .’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘The letters: getting them away from a man-of-war is ever a business.’

‘But no word in the fleet returns of your . . . your
situation
,’ said Hervey, looking deeply troubled. ‘I read Codrington’s despatch.’

Peto closed his eyes again, as if fighting something unseen (he would not ask his friend to send for more of the morphium). ‘My dear Hervey, you of all men should know that a general’s first despatch can be but an incomplete account – a notice of victory, and the bare bones of a narrative.’

‘Yes, but I hazard – and from what you have said I am certain – that your ship was in the thick of it.’

‘She was, and many a good man we lost, too. But . . . See you, I may as well tell: when I was hit and taken below,’ (he began coughing again) ‘I gave a most positive order to my lieutenant that he was not to report my injury to the flag . . . which I am pleased to say he obeyed without question for a full day and a half, until I lapsed into . . . sleep, and was not in any degree able to exercise command.’

‘But why, in God’s name, did you do that?’ Before him was a man barely capable of speaking, months after the event: how had he imagined he might command a ship? What spirit was this that animated his friend?

Peto raised his hand, with no little effort, to say ‘enough’.

They drew up chairs.

The conversation was no less halting for its being seated, however, and after a quarter of an hour Peto appeared to tire quite markedly. He asked if Hervey would leave him for the moment so that he could speak with Elizabeth.

When her brother was gone, and the door was closed, Elizabeth made to begin, but Peto stayed her. ‘I must speak first,’ he insisted, and with patent effort, ‘. . . if you will permit me, Miss Hervey.’

She smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘It was never my wish that you should learn of things in this way, but you now see what is my condition, and,’ (he swallowed, as if to suppress his own reluctance to say it) ‘I am resolved upon releasing you from your acceptance of marriage,’ (Elizabeth tried to speak, but again he stayed her) ‘for you see – and must know when I tell you – that I am unable to be that which you had every right to expect.’

Elizabeth was silent, stunned by both the nobility of the concession and by the gentlemanlike manner of its delivery. There were no tears, though she felt the profoundest sadness. Her countenance was transformed instead by the evident goodness of the man with whom she had once thought she would be contentedly married. And then, after what seemed an age of contemplation, she lowered her eyes, gathering some sort of strength or resolve, and, taking his hand, began her reply.

‘My dear Captain Peto, I scarce know how to form any response, for you are in such . . . discomfort, and I in perfect health. I thank you for so noble a thing, and it is for that nobility as much as anything that I believe I must tell you in absolute truth that your release is welcome to me. Not because of your injuries, for they would have been nothing to me were it not for the discovery of my own true heart, which I confess is engaged with another, by a means I could scarcely have thought possible and in a manner I had never imagined could be. Forgive me, my dear Captain Peto, if this is painful to you, but I could never be dishonest with a man such as you, and wish fervently to remain your friend . . . come what may.’

Peto sighed deeply. His own regard for Elizabeth Hervey was now complete. He did not suppose that any man, let alone woman, might be so truthful – not merely in the candour of her confession, when there was no need, and when it was at some discomfort to herself, but in first acknowledging, and then following, her own heart. He knew nothing of women, but this much he did know: there could be no contentment in dutiful attachment alone, not when there was someone else who truly engaged the heart of one party or the other. He sat regarding her, with loving admiration, for a full, silent minute. And then he smiled. ‘I think, then, my dear Elizabeth, that we may summon your brother to hear the happy news – the
truly
happy news.’

Hervey received the news with utter incomprehension; neither could he account for the sudden lightness of his old friend’s mien, nor his sister’s composure. All he could do was reply to Peto’s several diversions as if they had been entirely sincere. They took tea, for all the world as if they were at a country drawing room, except (as Hervey perceived, in all its terrible consequence) that Peto could barely lift the cup to his mouth – was incapable of being the man he once was. Would there be
any
restoration? What was he, Hervey, to do?

In a half-hour more, he and Elizabeth began taking their leave. ‘Well, my dear old friend,’ he attempted, breezily, gathering up his hat and cane, ‘I will bid you goodbye for the time being. And be assured that I will return just as soon as my duties permit.’ He took Peto’s hand and shook it firmly.

‘And I, too, Captain Peto,’ said Elizabeth, to her brother’s further incomprehension. ‘Whatever there is I might do, I trust you will ask it.’ She bent and kissed him on the cheek.

‘I only ask for time,’ said Peto, stoutly. ‘And a good carpenter to knock me up some contraption whereby I can propel myself to useful purpose!’

Hervey smiled, for his friend’s fortitude. He knew full well what must be the dismay of a post-captain deprived of his command thus – and of the woman who was to have been his companion in wedded life. ‘I am sure there are many good carpenters in the fleet. Until our next encounter, then.’ He bowed, and they left Peto’s handsome but land-bound cabin to its doughty tenant.

When the door had closed, and the footsteps receded, Peto reached painfully into the pocket of his coat, and took out the little oilskin package. It was no longer rightfully his; yet he had not been able to give it up, return it to Elizabeth, as honour truly required. Could he summon the strength to do so – if not the next time, then sometime in the future, before the . . . marriage with this other man made it something improper? His head sank to his chest, he let go the moorings that had held fast his countenance while she had been there, and salty tears trickled down his cheeks like the first drizzles of rain on sail.

The chaise returned with but two occupants. Hervey had asked Fairbrother to take Elizabeth back to Berkeley Square, while he stayed behind to satisfy himself with the arrangements for his old friend. Elizabeth had objected very firmly, claiming both a right and a proficiency to be of help, and the unseemliest of quarrels looked like breaking out in the very corridors of the naval hospital, until Fairbrother stepped decisively between them and took his friend into the disciplined sanctity of the magnificent Stuart chapel. Then he had spoken with Elizabeth, and a peace had prevailed in which she agreed to return to Berkeley Square on condition that her brother did not attempt to visit with Peto again that evening.

Fairbrother sat beside her (at Elizabeth’s insistence, for the occasional seat facing rear was not a comfortable one). He remained silent, however, allowing her to recollect herself. What thoughts he imagined there must be: the relief of speaking face-to-face at last with the man to whom she was formally betrothed; the compassion which any of her sex and upbringing must have for a man whose body was sacrificed in the service of his country; above all, though, the freedom now to follow her heart. How he envied her! How he wished he could tell her of the object of
his
longing. But it would not do: his friend’s sister, whom he admired more each day, did not merit the burden of another’s sorrows.

‘Mr Fairbrother,’ said Elizabeth at length, still gazing out of the window at the crowded Thames. ‘You must not judge my brother harshly, if that is your inclination. Forgive me, but I could not but notice your manner this morning and at the hospital. He means nothing but well. It is only that he sees his course, and others’, in terms of duty. He was ever thus, even as a boy, though he was not then so . . . unbending. I believe that came later, on account of the death of his wife. I believe he is convinced there can be no contentment on this earth for him; hence his embrace of duty – duty as he perceives it. And I believe he has extended that conviction to me, without in truth thinking on it deeply, only that by some strange device we are conjoined in the natural affections of the mind. I care for him very much, but I am entirely resolved now upon my own happiness. I love Major Heinrici in a way I had never before understood, and I wish Matthew, who has known what I now know, would simply yield to that.’

Fairbrother had to clear his throat, such was his surprise (if not quite embarrassment) at being admitted to such sentiment. ‘Miss Hervey . . . your expression . . . I have never heard its like.’

She turned to him, and smiled. ‘Have you not, Mr Fairbrother? I had understood you to have moved in far more elevated and cultured society than mine!’

‘Evidently not, madam.’

Elizabeth smiled the more, and turned back to the Thames. ‘You know,’ she resumed, ‘I am quite certain that if my brother were to shake hands with Major Heinrici they could be friends within a very short time.’

Fairbrother almost laughed. ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment, Miss Hervey. I am certain your brother is incapable of disliking any who answers to the description of good soldier, and I am disposed to thinking, from my study in the matter, that any officer of the King’s German Legion would serve in that description!’