A Regimental Affair

Coates was content enough to let them both return to simpler matters. ‘Where do we begin, Matthew?’

‘At the beginning,’ laughed Hervey, with a look of mock despair. ‘When must I put the stallion to her, and when shall she then foal?’

‘By the end of May.’

‘Very well. Why?’

‘Because when you put the stallion to a mare depends on when you want her to foal. A big cold-blood — one of the Suffolks that ploughs the glebe, say — will carry a full year, or even longer. Ponies and smaller types can be as short as forty weeks. I reckon Jessye’d be in the middle somewhere: say, eleven months — calendar months, I mean. You don’t want her dropping her foal before the beginning of April. The grass’ll be too poor for best milk, and I like to see foals ’ave the sun on their backs for the first six months.’

‘Then May it shall be. When I find the stallion will you tell me what’s what?’

‘I will. But if you go for the marquess’s improver then his stud groom’ll tell you all you need. Jessye looks in good fettle. You’ll keep feeding her barley, won’t you? There isn’t enough goodness even in this pasture just yet.’

‘Indeed I shall. She’ll be as round as a barrel soon.’

‘Ay, well, not too round. I don’t hold with that notion. My ewes always carry better through the winter if I get them up to the rougher grazing by the end of July.’

Hervey nodded.

‘Come over to Drove Farm soon. You can help with the late lambs. And you can tell me some more about what you got up to in India — and this brevet. And I shall call you “Major”!’

Hervey smiled. How congenial was the pleasure Daniel Coates took in his young friend’s triumphs. ‘I’d like that very much. Just as soon as Henrietta is come and I am back from Hounslow. It should only be a day or so, but I must pay my compliments to the colonel.’

‘Of course you must. What a thought it must be to be seeing a regiment you’ll soon command. Colonel Hervey! What a fair prospect!’

‘There are one or two bridges to cross first, Dan,’ said Hervey, with a cautionary frown. ‘And I am not to use even the majority while at duty with the regiment.’

‘Ay. Well, I’ll say not a word to anybody. You may be sure of it.’ Coates began to dig out his pipe. Hervey still saw the man who had first helped him astride the woolpack, before even the old donkey was considered a safe enough ride. His old friend bore the signs of his years — that was a fact — but not in the mind, for sure.

At length the old dragoon spat, and rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Did I tell you I saw Bonaparte?’ he asked, matter of fact.

Hervey was astonished. ‘Bonaparte?’

‘Ay. The Emperor himself.’

‘How in heaven’s name…’

‘In Torbay. Just after you was gone to Paris. He was aboard the Bellerophon. Now there’s a ship, Matthew. They held ’im there a week or so while they decided what best to do with ’im. When I heard, I posted down there at once. Prospect of a lifetime!’

‘Indeed. I never saw him. Not ever.’

‘There were boat trips out to see ’im by the score. He used to come on deck.’

‘Well, he’ll not trouble us again in this world,’ said Hervey resolutely.

‘No,’ said Coates, nodding. ‘We should be able to count on a few years’ peace at least.’ And then he smiled again. ‘Where do you think Colonel Hervey shall draw his sabre then?’

Goodness, how becoming that title sounded! Hervey positively glowed. ‘Well, nowhere this side of the world. That’s for sure.’

Coates nodded. ‘India, d’ye mean? I wish I’d seen India. Just pray it’s not Ireland you’re sent to.’

Hervey simply raised an eyebrow. Ireland had all but undone him two years before, and he had no wish to see the country again — not even for the hunting and the good friends he had made there.

‘No,’ said Coates. ‘It’s no job for a soldier, is Ireland. No good for him ever comes of it, that sort of work. But we shall have the same troubles here soon, the way things are going. Half the country’s been in riot or distress this past year. I’ve never known things so bowstring-taut.’

Hervey disclosed his experience of the Cashman hanging.

‘The Spa Fields business?’ Coates nodded knowingly. ‘That Orator Hunt as whips up the crowds farms over the plain at Upavon. I’ve known ’im years. At first he was just a nuisance. Now he’s a danger true enough.’

But it was too fine a morning to be speaking of such things. Then Hervey suddenly remembered. ‘Dan, I can’t think how I’ve not told you before. I have a repeating carbine to show you.’

Coates whistled. ‘Now that is something! You’re sure it repeats, though? It doesn’t just carry more charges? I’ve seen some cutcha affairs in my time — as your Indians would say.’

‘Believe me, Dan: this is a repeater right enough. I watched it put seven balls into a target in quick succession. And then put in another seven myself!’

‘Then this I really do want to see. Will you bring it over soon?’

‘Just as soon as I’m back from Hounslow — a week at most. Now come and see my mother. She is sorely in need of cheer this morning.’

It was a quarter after noon the next day when Hervey got word that Henrietta had arrived at Longleat. The hour presented a problem, since he supposed the family would be at their table: he could scarcely intrude without an invitation. But Daniel Coates’s admonition stung him still, and he was soon hurrying to the stable for his father’s cob. Between the two of them, Abel Towle and he had Jessye’s dam under saddle quicker than a dragoon at ‘alarm’, and Hervey was kicking on even as his father’s man was trying to pull the straw from her tail.

But slow, ever so slow, was the old mare. Hervey hadn’t the heart to demand a trot when she refused his asking, even though the road was downhill for most of the way — and the last mile nothing but. From the gatehouse, on grass grazed short and springy by Lord Bath’s blackfaces, she did manage a stumbling jog, though still, he rued, no more than a doubling pace for even a battalion company (a light company would have shown him their heels for certain).

At last he was at the steps of the great house. One o’clock: he had walked it quicker many a time, and still arrived with not a bead of sweat. But this time his agitation was not from exertion. Here was the strange tightness in his vitals again — the analogue of peril, a gauge which showed that destruction was at hand unless he took immediate action. But what was he to do? What control over events might he seize? Henrietta’s was surely the initiative, not his. Nothing he said now, no matter how ardent or profound, would change her heart if it were against him, for fickle she had never been.

He had in his pocket the necklace that the Rajah of Chintal had pressed upon him; a favourite, the rajah had explained, of his late wife. It seemed so much a bauble now when he thought of how he had… abandoned Henrietta (could there be any other word?), first in London, then in France. And yet, surely, if she were so vexed with him — so vexed that their engagement was already broken for her part — she would have sent word that she would not receive him. He rallied a little, but then relapsed as quickly at the thought that she might merely wish to vent her anger on him.

He pulled the bell loop. Soon he would know the worst. Longleat park had been at the centre of his thoughts, one way or another, since first he was conscious of them. He heard the sheep on the hill and the rooks in the hanger: would he be allowed to hear them ever again?

The door opened. It was not a footman but the housekeeper who bid him enter, with a friendly ‘Good afternoon, Captain Hervey, sir.’

The smile encouraged him, and he smiled in return. ‘Mrs Cousens, I am very glad to be returned. Is Lady Henrietta at home?’

‘She is,’ came another voice, from the great staircase.

For all the times Matthew Hervey had been in want of words, never had he greater want than now. He could find nothing to utter but ‘Oh’. It sounded first like surprise — dismay, even.

But Henrietta was smiling — a warm, generous, open smile, for she had taken his ‘Oh’ to be rapture. Though she stood above him on the stairs she still contrived that doe-like look which had greeted him on his first return from France, the dark pools that were her eyes half raised to him, half turned from him. And there was a blush to her cheeks that no rouge had made.