A Call to Arms

She narrowed her eyes just a little. ‘I believe you must.’

Hervey stood silent for the moment, seemingly astonished. ‘How can I possibly!’

‘How can you be here?’

‘That is hardly the same. There is a short end to Italy. India would be years. How can I abandon my own daughter?’

‘If you insist on the word “abandon”, brother, then I despair for you — and not much less for Georgiana. I have thought about it a very great deal these past weeks, and I am of the opinion that Georgiana’s best future will not be served by any cloying proximity of yours. I am sorry to speak so brutally, Matthew, but that is my opinion.’

Hervey had been for so many years in awe of his sister’s opinion that he at once checked the instinct to lash out against so hurtful a proposition.

Elizabeth did not want to lose the initiative. ‘There are three options, as I see them. And none requires that you are in attendance. Georgiana may remain at the vicarage, and we can find a governess when the time comes. Or else she can go to Longleat, or even to Chatsworth it seems, for the duchess suggested as much, did she not?’

‘I don’t recall that she—’

‘And the choice depends on what prospects you wish for Georgiana.’

Another option occurred to him, but he dismissed it at once as being the product of an entirely selfish impulse: if Elizabeth would accompany him to India with his daughter, then most of the objects would be accomplished. It was impossible, of course. Elizabeth could not leave their ageing parents, nor could any rightminded man submit his infant daughter to the trials of such a climate as India’s. ‘The only prospect I can rightfully own to is her health and happiness,’ he conceded.

‘We should all say “amen” to that, Matthew, but you must make a choice as to how best that is secured.’

Still Elizabeth remained with her hand to the door, as if she would not let him go without a decision. Hervey had not felt himself so tried in a long time. He knew he ought to have expected that Elizabeth would not let him off lightly. He had never flinched from decisions as a young cornet, nor lieutenant, nor even when first a captain. But his indecision in the affair of Lord Towcester had cost him very dearly. Had he grown indulgent?

‘I believe the air at Naples will do me good,’ he said suddenly, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket. ‘I think I shall take a walk and then call on Shelley. Shall I ask for collops for you?’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘Very well, brother. Perhaps a whiff of sulphur in Naples will be efficacious.’

Hervey looked at her, unsure as to whether she intended any ambiguity. ‘And the collops?’

‘No, Matthew.’ She smiled. ‘I think that would be a little dull. I might as well be in Horningsham. I should like some macaroni and some red wine, and I shall sit with Miss Austen at hand. She is never dull.’

Hervey smiled back. He hoped profoundly he would never outlive his sister, for he could not imagine how he might subsist without her good sense. He kissed her forehead. ‘One day I shall read Miss Austen, since she has held both you and Henrietta in such thrall. But not just yet.’

*

‘I hope you won’t be so soon gone that you mayn’t see my new lodgings. They’re very pretty rooms.’

‘Near the Spanish Steps, you say?’

‘Ay. Not a stone’s throw from the Caffe Greco. I should be content to lodge there far longer than I have taken them.’

It was curious, thought Hervey, how Shelley rarely spoke but in the singular. Gossip in many a conversazione held there to be an uncommon alliance between Shelley, his wife and her stepsister. But Elizabeth had warned her brother that all was not happy with Mary, with whom she had become quite intimate. It was certainly not a matter that he and the poet might discuss. ‘You are intent on travelling north for the summer, I hear?’

Shelley raised his eyebrows a little. ‘It is not settled.’

‘Where might you go?’

‘Pisa, perhaps. Or Leghorn.’

‘But you would leave Rome altogether if you did?’

‘I should not keep the rooms, no.’

‘We might travel home by way of Leghorn.’

‘I wish that you would.’

They sipped Marsala for a while in silence.

‘The duchess is an engaging woman,’ said Hervey at length, almost by way of something to break the silence.

Shelley smiled. ‘Oh, engaging indeed. You did not know she was a Hervey?’

‘There was no reason to. I should be unable even to draw a design of our connection with her line.’

‘You thought her handsome, no doubt, too?’

‘Handsome indeed!’ replied Hervey readily.

‘Perhaps a little old for my taste.’ Shelley smiled again.

Hervey frowned in mock disapproval.

‘My dear friend!’ Shelley’s smile had turned indulgent. ‘I am only too glad to see that your impulses remain that of a man. The duchess has always exercised a powerful attraction.’

‘Well, very evidently it was so with the last duke, but—’

‘Hervey, she was his mistress for years, and of Lord knows how many other dukes. She has so many children salted about Europe that—’

‘Shelley, I really do not think that—’

‘And there was always talk of her association with Georgiana, the late duchess.’

‘Infamous! Shelley, you would do well not to repeat such things.’

But Shelley merely smiled the more. ‘Ah, but see what a woman such as she wrought of your demeanour this evening and last.’

Hervey relented, his smile broadening almost into laughter. ‘There is nothing about him that a good woman would not put right, and more so, even, a bad one!’

‘Vero! Vero! You see, Hervey, what a few months away from that hypocritical land of ours does for the spirits.’

Hervey nodded, but his smile was now one of some caution. ‘In the short run. But how may we know if it endures?’

‘Hervey, you exasperate me with that dogged faith of yours, for that’s what lies at the root of your melancholy. You know, when we walked around St Peter’s together, there was but one inscription that did not excite revulsion in me.’

‘Indeed?’ said Hervey, trying to sound surprised that Shelley had found even one.

‘Indeed. It was the memento mori above the entrance to the sacristy. But not for the reason it was placed there. Rather because it reminded that our prospects of pleasure are limited.’

Hervey looked at him intently. ‘And the rest is silence?’

‘Yes, Hervey. It is.’

Hervey sighed, seeming to weigh his words a good deal. ‘Shelley, I might wish it were so.’

CHAPTER FIVE. QUO VADIS?

Three days later