A Regimental Affair

‘Just so, sir.’ Hervey saw no cause to waste the colonel’s time in this respect. ‘I have not the means to raise a fraction of that price.’

‘Yes, I know as much. If you were to find yourself somehow in possession of that sum, would you be desirous of the command?’

There was not the slightest hesitation. ‘Of course, sir!’

‘Then let us trust that you shall find it. Or — and it would not be fitting that we speak of particulars — that the means shall otherwise be found. I hope I make my meaning clear?’

Hervey nodded.

‘Make no mistake, Captain Hervey: I am determined that you shall have the regiment ere next year is out. Which means, as you very well know, that you must receive your recommendation for promotion to lieutenant colonel at the end of one year’s service as brevet major. D’you think you might manage that?’

It was the fulfilment of any officer’s ambition, and the means by which he could now with assurance present himself to Henrietta and her guardian as a man with prospects. Hervey felt taller by several inches even as they spoke. ‘I shall do so to the very best of my ability, Colonel.’ And then he seemed to have doubts — or, rather, he thought he ought to have doubts. ‘Your lordship does not, then, consider that I have not the years?’

‘Great heavens, no!’ said the earl, frowning and shaking his head. ‘As I recall, Wellington had the Thirty-third in Holland when he was not five and twenty. Didn’t do him — or them — much harm.’

The comparison astounded him — as perhaps it was meant to, for the Earl of Sussex wanted no dissent.

‘Now, I may tell you, at present in the regiment there is a captain’s vacancy — two, indeed — and I have instructed the agents that one is to be yours. Your brevet remains extra-regimental of course; you shall be Captain Hervey with your troop. Only remember this: the brevet is the means by which you shall have accelerated advance to lieutenant colonel. Your commanding officer is the means by which you will have the recommendation — and, thereby, the promotion. I trust I make myself clear again, Hervey. One year; one year! You can manage that, can’t you?’

‘Oh yes, sir!’ said Hervey emphatically. ‘I believe I may assure you that you need have no fears on that account!’

‘Then come and share my table,’ said Lord Sussex, rising and beckoning Hervey with boyish delight. ‘I don’t think I could wish for more agreeable company.’

CHAPTER THREE. RETURNS

Horningsham, ten days later

‘I blame Mr Keble,’ declared Hervey’s mother roundly. ‘Never would your father have carried on so if he had not filled his head with such notions.’

Elizabeth Hervey glanced across the breakfast table at her brother, with a look that requested sympathy for having to listen again to the Vicar of Horningsham’s wife on the subject.

‘And now we shall all be dispossessed of the living, for your father will not be persuaded to moderate his habits. And who, then, shall give him any other? For there isn’t a patron who would be disposed to a parson who had been so recalcitrant. No, no: we shall be forced to throw ourselves on the charity of your Aunt Spencer, though heaven knows they could ill afford to have us in the deanery, for Hereford will be thick as thieves with Sarum. Mark my words!’

Hervey tried to avoid his mother’s eye by gazing through the window on the pretence of distraction by two combative jays. He had used the same stratagem many times before in that small but comfortable dining room. Since the death of his elder brother he had shifted one place to the left at table, so that he sat directly adjacent to his father now — a little further from his mother, and offset from Elizabeth, whose place had not moved in the reordering of things — but otherwise it seemed to him that nothing had changed since his earliest recollection of that room; except that his mother now wore a lace cap and was a little fuller, and his sister no longer had her ringlets. More was the pity, Hervey considered, for Elizabeth’s ringlets had given her a pertness which nicely offset a sometimes over-earnest disposition.

‘Do not be too downcast, Mama. We might always carry the gospel abroad, to Matthew’s India, perhaps!’

Elizabeth’s attempt at levity, misconstrued perhaps, did not find favour with her mother, who scowled back disapprovingly.

Her brother now sallied to her rescue, though with equally unhappy results. ‘Mama, the bishop cannot dispossess Father from the living. Not without recourse to law, surely? And Lord Bath would never have that.’

Elizabeth, regretfully, explained their mother’s gesture of hopelessness. ‘Lord Bath’s is not the advowson. Horningsham is a diocesan peculiar.’

Since his return, some days ago, the subject had been put to one side in the general rejoicing. Only now, the day of his father’s summons to the palace at Salisbury, was an open discussion entered on.

‘What exactly are the bishop’s objections, Mama?’ asked Hervey. ‘He surely cannot mind a little variation? We are hardly a parish that many take note of.’

‘Oh, it is not the bishop himself who does this,’ said Mrs Hervey, waving her knife dismissively. ‘It is his archdeacon. We have all had excess of his zeal these past twelve months since his institution.’

Hervey could not have known of the new appointment. Nor, indeed, would it have been of any moment to him were it not for the mischief it was making now. ‘Very well, then, Mama. What are the archdeacon’s objections?’

‘That the choir is put in surplices.’

‘Is that all?’ Hervey was bemused. ‘The choir has been surpliced since I myself was in it.’

‘And your father has taken to preaching in his, instead of a Genevan gown.’

Hervey was even more astonished at the insignificance of the offence.

‘There is a little more to it than that, is there not, Mama?’ suggested Elizabeth carefully.

‘Oh, I do not suppose they will let him off lightly. There’ll be other objections, I’ll be bound.’

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows the merest touch, but her brother was already alerted to the point. ‘What might these other objections be?’ he asked.

Elizabeth glanced at her mother to see if she wished to take up the question herself, but Mrs Hervey evidently did not. ‘He has taken to celebrating the Lord’s Supper during the week.’

‘But that is scarcely offensive to the bishop, is it? Father is anyway obliged by rubric to say morning and evening prayer. To what can there be objection in adding the Communion?’

‘The Prayer Book forbids the celebration of Communion privately,’ said his mother, with another heavy sigh.

‘But on this all may not be lost,’ said Elizabeth, with a breeziness intended to lift her mother’s rapidly flagging spirits. ‘For we might yet find sufficient parishioners to attend.’

‘At least until the fire has died down,’ suggested Hervey.

‘Quite.’ Elizabeth frowned. ‘If only he would not be so… Romish, as the archdeacon calls it, when he celebrates.’

‘Romish? How so?’ Hervey was finally alerted to the true seriousness of his father’s situation.

Elizabeth looked anxiously at her mother, who purposefully turned her gaze to the window. ‘He places candles on the communion table and stands eastwards. With his back to the congregation, that is.’

‘Though there isn’t one,’ smiled Hervey. But he knew it was a practice — as well as the candles — that would bring strife. ‘Is any of this of a Sunday, too?’

‘No, only the surplice for his sermon.’

‘That much is as well,’ opined Mrs Hervey. ‘Though if he speaks any more with Mr Keble, heaven knows