A Regimental Affair

‘You have my hearty congratulations, at any rate, sir. St Oswald has gone to find flowers to send to Government House.’

Hervey smiled again. ‘I salute his gallantry — and even more his optimism, Canning, for where in heaven’s name does he expect to find flowers here?’

‘I asked him the same, but. I had intended coming to see you last night, you know.’

‘That was very good of you, but there was really no need—’

‘No, Hervey, not about your good news, but rather about our misfortune.’

‘I don’t follow.’

Seton Canning took a deep breath. ‘Look here, sir: how long are we to suffer that man?’

Hervey quickened, but then gave him the benefit. ‘Which man?’

‘Towcester, of course! He’ll be the death of—’

‘Mr Canning!’ Hervey’s tone managed reprimand, surprise and disappointment in one go.

‘It’s no good, Hervey. We can’t pretend we didn’t see what we saw. The man bolted!’

‘That is not true, Canning!’

‘Oh, Hervey! Have it that way if you will, but if you hadn’t barred his way he would have fled!’

Hervey had known this might come. The last twelve hours had merely been an unexpected suspense. But it made it no easier. ‘Sit down, Harry.’

Seton Canning took off his gloves and laid them in his lap with his forage cap. ‘Please don’t speak of the necessity of loyalty, Hervey. I know full well what you might say on that account. I’m your lieutenant. Like it or not the men look to me when… when they feel unease with…’

‘With their captain?’

‘No… not that. Surely you know what I mean?’

Hervey did. He might say, though, that that was the true price of a lieutenancy, not the cash sum which the agents demanded. But he had learned enough these past three years to know that that would sound like cant. ‘You will have to trust me, Harry. I can say no more.’

‘Of course I trust you, Hervey! The whole troop would follow you over those damned falls if you led them!’

It was only yesterday that Hervey had had the same sentiments for Joseph Edmonds and Edward Lankester. They, of course, would have known how to act. Major Edmonds would have taken the affair head-on. There would have been blood on the stable floor, so to speak, but the matter would have been resolved. Captain Lankester would have found an altogether different way — subtle, indirect — and would have succeeded with patrician ease. It was not by fear that Hervey shied from Edmonds’s direct approach, or from distaste that he eschewed Lankester’s indirect methods. It was just that he lacked the certainty for the first, and the craft for the second. And there was no other way. Yet his troop evidently expected him to find one. ‘If I have the troop’s trust, why did you feel it necessary to speak thus, Harry?’

Seton Canning picked at imagined idle ends on his cap. ‘Perhaps I didn’t trust myself.’

Hervey sighed. Why did his lieutenant imagine himself alone in this? ‘We all have our doubts, Canning. All we can do in the end is hope for the grace to do our duty.’

A week passed, a week of guards, drills and fatigues — of nothing more, indeed, than a week at Hounslow would likely bring, except that a great number of the fatigues were as a consequence of the bitter chill, worse now than when they had arrived. They shovelled snow, cut firewood and drew ice, as well as the hundred and one stable and cookhouse fatigues that detained so many of them, no matter where the station. It was hard labour. But it was no more than a homesteader thereabouts would be obliged to do. The Canadas were spoken of as a land of opportunity, but in the depths of winter it was first a question of survival. Yet on the whole the dragoons liked it. They fed well, the wet canteen of an evening was lively — the trappers passing through regaled them with extraordinary tales, as well as dispensing princely hospitality — and the parade hours were not long. In one sense, too, Hervey could not have imagined himself happier, except for the nagging question of his superior and the incident in the forest.

Hervey was not so proud that he ruled out talking of it with someone. The problem was, who? Lawrence had his own loyalties. Charles Addinsel was in Quebec with General Maitland, and anyway, as aide-de-camp his loyalties must be to his principal. The DAAG, he scarcely knew. He had even thought about Bagot, who was to return in a day or so from Sackett’s Harbour, where he had been inspecting the New Orleans. Hervey had very much taken to him. Bagot was not more than ten years his senior, and his wife, as the duke’s niece, would already have predisposed her husband to believe that his complaint would not be frivolous. Yet what should Bagot be expected to know of military particulars? As far as Hervey was aware, the man had never so much as worn a militia coat. And, besides the practical, how honourable was it to take the affairs of the regiment to one so wholly unconnected with it (less so even than Lawrence)? No, Mr Bagot would not do. Which left only those who shared the Roman six. The adjutant? It was unthinkable. Seton Canning? Unsupportable. Strickland was days away, as was the major. There was the chaplain, of course, the Reverend Mr Esmond Shepherd, MA Oxon., who had been unable to obtain a living for himself, and had taken his bishop’s advice instead to answer the call for military chaplains. He was a faithful man, he said morning and evening prayer conscientiously, he preached unmemorably but aptly at divine worship on a Sunday, he visited the sick, dined unobtrusively with the officers, and was treated kindly by the ranks but otherwise generally ignored. Hervey had some regard for him. Even now the chaplain was preparing for the ministration of baptism that afternoon to their infant. And yet Mr Shepherd could offer him no more advice, surely, than that he must do his duty according to his conscience. Doing one’s duty was never as difficult as some supposed it to be. The difficulty lay always in determining what that duty was.

The one man whose advice would be a tempered affair of good sense and sound military judgement was Armstrong. And yet Hervey could not bring himself to ask it for two reasons. Armstrong’s standing in the regiment was high, yet the merest whiff of perfidy — even if by association only — would have the lieutenant colonel exact a terrible price from him. Secondly (and it was the mark of a shrewdness which would have been wanting even a year ago), if Hervey were indeed to take command of the regiment at some early stage, he did not wish to have an Armstrong who had somehow been involved with that process. It was an antique suspicion; the same, indeed, that had dogged the Praetorians. But he was sure his classicals served him well in this regard.

He had told Henrietta, of course. She had laughed, and said that at least he would be able to make the decisions for himself if the commanding officer insisted on taking to the rear. He had remonstrated with her, but she had not been in a mood for the woes of the Sixth. Why, indeed, should she be? Even though she had formerly insisted that he tell her all, she had her child at her breast, had she not?

And now there was baptism to be done in another half an hour, and Henrietta was in some distress, for she had become so big about the bust that her coat would not fasten well. Ruth was working some small miracle with pins and thread, while the nurse — seconded from the Maitlands — stood ready with the sleeping infant. Mr Shepherd had made the concession that the ministration need not be of a Sunday, on account of the availability of the godparents or those by proxy, but he had made no concession to the weather, and therefore the place, which was why they were now preparing for another sally into the bitter cold.

Once at the church, though, they were glad of the weather, for they might have been at Horningsham, so peaceful was it. The incumbent, Dr Strachan, who had lately distinguished himself during the occupation of the town by the enemy’s forces, conducted the service in the warm and gentle tones of Aberdeen. This was much to Hervey’s and Henrietta’s satisfaction, for the drier and remoter tones of Oxford, had Mr Shepherd officiated throughout rather than merely delivering a short homily, would only have made things seem more chill.

The godparents or their proxies stood eager for their duty. Henrietta had known her duty in this regard, and was well pleased with the choice. John Keble had been her husband’s choice of godfather for many months. He had been canvassed early, and had responded in the way that perhaps only he, of all their acquaintances, might. It was true that Henrietta would not have chosen him herself, but in the case of there being a son, the second godfather was to have been William Devonshire (and in the case of a daughter it could not matter a great deal anyway). Her husband was content — that was the important thing — and Seton Canning was standing impeccable proxy for Mr Keble. As for the godmothers, Henrietta’s first intent had been bitterly thwarted by Princess Charlotte’s death (indeed, her thought to call her daughter the same now seemed less appealing). The second godmother had long been arranged: Lady Camilla Cavendish, who would serve as well as William Devonshire would to a son. Lady Mary Bagot stood proxy. And in place of Princess Charlotte, Henrietta had