an accomplished guide.
‘So this is where sits the Duke of York?’ she said, remembering the mixed fortunes it had spelled for her brother in the past five years.
‘It is,’ replied Hervey, taking out his hunter. ‘And not many minutes before we shall see the changing of the horse guards.’
They had walked from their respective lodgings in Charles Street, he at the new premises of the United Service Club, Elizabeth at a comfortable hotel for ladies, and she had thrilled at the elegance and pulsation combined that was St James’s. After crossing through the park to the parade, they now waited to see the daily spectacle of colour and military discipline. A company of foot guards (to Elizabeth’s disappointment her brother confessed that he could not tell from which regiment) were drilling in the middle of the parade ground, their band, thirty-strong and more, using the echo from the buildings on three sides to swell their music so that it rose above every competing sound from the busy thoroughfares nearby. The march they played was Irish, thought Hervey, for he had heard it many a time in Irish bivouacs in the Peninsula, but he could not put a name to it. Five minutes before the hour by the Horse Guards’ clock, the old guard — a cornet, a corporal of horse carrying the cased standard, a trumpeter and seven private men of His Majesty’s Life Guards, three remaining sentinel at the Whitehall entrance — filed through the arch below and formed up in line, in close order, to await their reliefs. The horses were impatient for a good trot on the way home, having been confined to the little yard of the headquarters for a full twenty-four hours. They fidgeted and bobbed their heads until their riders managed one by one to collect them.
‘Let’s get a little closer,’ said Hervey.
‘Oh, may we?’ enquired Elizabeth, rather surprised.
‘As close as we like. Come,’ he smiled. ‘It will be the first time I have walked this ground entirely at my own volition. I think I may like the feeling.’
‘Especially since it may be the last time for some years to come,’ she replied, smiling doubtfully at him.
He smiled back. ‘I suppose, yes. If there is no fault with the agents.’
The clock began striking the hour as the reliefs arrived at the walk from the Mall, the same number exactly from the Royal Horse Guards, the ‘Oxford Blues’. Their trumpeter sounded the approach, the Life Guards brought swords to the carry, and the Blues formed up facing them. There followed a curious colloquy between the cornets, rein to rein, which Hervey strained to hear, but without success. He supposed it must be a report of the foregoing twenty-four hours, but after a while he came to think it was probably no more than idle chat, a conceit to hold in thrall the onlookers.
‘Is it the same in the Sixth?’ asked Elizabeth when the ceremony was over and the guards began dismissing to their respective duties.
‘No,’ he smiled. ‘I’m afraid you would be very disappointed on that account. Our guards are mounted
‘What a contradictory locution,’ she teased.
‘Though we are as fine a sight on parade,’ he added quickly. ‘If perhaps not so imposing; these are bigger men on bigger horses for the most part.’
‘Matthew, I am sure I should be equally mystified by what passes in the Sixth as here.’ She took his arm again. ‘Do we proceed?’ she asked, turning away.
Hervey arrested the turn. ‘Through the arch.’
‘
‘No, you may walk right up to the door of the Duke of York’s headquarters itself. Don’t you think that is very
‘I cannot imagine Paris at all,’ sighed Elizabeth.
‘You would be disappointed after Rome.’
‘I am so pleased to have a brother who is a man of the world,’ she said, putting a hand to his forearm. ‘It makes me feel a little less provincial.’
Hervey was not sure of the precise measure of his sister’s irony. ‘I should never call you provincial. No more than I should call myself a man of the world. I think it more than travel alone which makes the latter. Shelley was more a man of the world, though he had but crossed the English Channel and I two oceans.’
Elizabeth’s expression indicated that she agreed. ‘I do wish I had had a little more time with Mary Shelley. I told you, did I not, that she asked me to winter with them in Italy?’
‘No, you did not. That would be very agreeable, I think.’ He hoped he sounded convincing, but he had a care for her reputation, and the prospect of joining the Shelley household was not something to be viewed lightly. And then there was the question of Georgiana, over which he had daily been growing more troubled. He was relying on Elizabeth’s supervision in great part.
Silently though her brother had borne those troubles, however, Elizabeth had sensed them. ‘I cannot of course do so. There will be so much to detain me in the parish,’ she said dismissively.
But ‘detain’, in its ambiguity, was not a comforting word for Hervey. Elizabeth might well insist that parochial calls and the poor-relief committee were the principal demands on her liberty, but he knew it would be otherwise. He was about to reply when the dismounted sentry in the arch came to attention, bringing his sword upright from its point of rest on the shoulder. Hervey raised his hat in acknowledgement.
Elizabeth blushed at the salute. ‘Matthew, does that man
Hervey smiled indulgently. ‘No, Elizabeth. He cannot know me. Lord John Howard told me they are instructed to salute those whom they believe are officers, which they guess by some process best known to them only, I imagine. I rather think it a little game they play. Lord John says that their own officers are not averse to strolling through the arch out of uniform with a lady whom they seek to impress.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘And others would do the same had they the chance, no doubt. But you are not yet an officer: ought you to have returned the salute?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I could not have disappointed the man.’
‘Nor me?’ She gave a wry smile.
He smiled too. ‘Well, I assure you I did not walk this way with that object.’
‘Soldiers! They are all the same.’
He thought it would be to no avail to dispute it with her.
At the premises of Messrs Greenwood, Cox and Hammersly, in Craig’s Court behind Scotland Yard, they were received with unusual civility — unusual in that each time Hervey had entered the establishment before, he had found the insouciance of the clerks to be verging on the impudent. But on this occasion he was received by one of the partners, offered hospitality and made to feel a valued customer of the regimental agents rather than a mere bookkeeping item.
‘The papers have been prepared, sir,’ said Mr Cox, a man of a type Hervey did not meet as a rule — a commercial man, fiftyish, of some substance certainly, but perforce deferential. The nearest he could imagine was the regiment’s surgeon, paymaster or veterinarian — not an officer in the usual sense, but sharing an officer’s milieu. They were never entirely at home, being just a degree above the class of artisan in the minds of many. It never worried Hervey; it always seemed to worry them.
‘And by what date shall the commission be effective, Mr Cox?’
‘Three days hence, Mr Hervey. It is all explained in a memorandum I have had prepared. At signature today you will forthwith be cornet in the 6th Dragoon Guards. Tomorrow that cornetcy will be sold on, and you will advance by purchase to a lieutenancy in the 82nd Foot — it was the most expedient, you will understand, sir.’ (Hervey had to suppress a smile at the agent’s need to apologize for having him gazetted to an infantry regiment, even for a day.) ‘And the day following, the lieutenancy shall be sold and the captaincy in the Sixth purchased.’
‘There is no risk of … misadventure?’
‘Not at all, sir. We hold the respective bids in bond. It is an entirely regular affair.’
Hervey raised an eyebrow and smiled dubiously. ‘It was always my understanding that it was most irregular.’
Mr Cox raised both hands just a little and bowed. ‘In ordinary, it is irregular, sir. As you will know, a year must be spent in each rank before the next may be purchased. But in a case such as yours there are many
