A Call to Arms

‘I’m surprised a case should have been made for the magistrates, Dan. It would hardly seem the other party received more than he deserved.’

‘Ah,’ replied Coates, suggesting Hervey was right. ‘But it was not that simple, for the other man turned out to be a son of his employer.’

Hervey sighed. ‘The social order in west Wiltshire was thus threatened!’

‘That is what Sir George Styles seems to have imagined.’ Hervey’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean—’

‘Ay. The very same.’

‘As if his brother was not trouble enough; God rest his soul.’ Hugo Styles had courted Henrietta, ineffectually, commanded the Warminster Troop of the yeomanry just as ineffectually, and died at Waterloo very probably in a state of terror. ‘What did you do with him, Dan?’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I adjourned the court, and first thing this morning I went to see Styles senior to ask that the evidence be withdrawn. The shepherd has no position now, he’s lost his so-called wife, and their cottage: what more punishment might there be? But I can’t very well set him free. It would scarcely be exemplary.’

‘I suppose Styles refused?’

‘Would hardly hear me out.’

Hervey sighed again. ‘You’re thinking of inviting him to pay with the drum?’

Coates returned the look grimly. ‘Would you take him, Matthew?’

‘Would you recommend that I should?’

Now Coates sighed. ‘The Lord only knows whether he’d make a soldier, for I don’t. But there’s nothing for him hereabouts now. And I fear for him. He was a good shepherd. I don’t think he’d let you down willingly.’

‘Then if he’ll come I’ll take him.’

‘He’d have to attest before I released him.’

‘Well, you’re the magistrate, Dan: he can attest before you. I can have a dragoon bring him back to Warminster straight afterwards.’

‘Thank you, Matthew. Let us pray he sees sense, then.’

‘I’ll warn my serjeant this afternoon. What is his name?’

‘William Stent. Your father buried his at Imber, as I recall.’

‘Very likely. Well, it’s not a bad connection. By the way, I didn’t say as I have some officers at last. Seton Canning will be my lieutenant again, which I’m right pleased with, I may tell you. And the cornet will be Lord Huntingfield’s younger son. I knew his brother in the Eighteenth in Spain. He ought to have the makings.’

‘I’m glad of that for you, Matthew. You’ll want good officers by the sound of things.’ Coates now paused, seeming to contemplate something else. ‘Matthew, I’m pleased you’re come. I can’t tell you how glad am I to see you back in regimentals. You were not your true self without them.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘We may not have a chance to make proper farewells. I want to give you this.’

Hervey was taken aback by the sudden reminder of his transience on the Plain. He took the leather case and opened it carefully.

‘I sent to London for it. It has hands which luminesce. I scarcely believed it — but they do.’

Hervey examined the watch closely, but in vain. It showed no sign of luminescence. But he saw the maker’s name, George Prior: the same as d’Arcey Jessope had given him five years earlier, and he was at once confident that, come the evening, the hands would somehow be visible. And in that name he saw, too, the extent of Coates’s generosity as well as his thoughtfulness. ‘Dan, this is so very good of you, I—’

‘And this,’ added Coates enthusiastically, reaching into the other pocket. ‘See this, Matthew!’

Hervey looked at the instrument curiously. He had not seen a compass outside of a binnacle, and certainly not one as small.

‘The strangest thing. I was sat at the Devizes bench a month ago, and a man entered it in lieu of payment of his fine. The clerk wouldn’t have it at first, but I gave him sufficient to pay his fine and a good deal more. I reckoned I might have use of it on the downs of a night. But then I thought you would make more of it in the Indies.’

Hervey smiled gratefully. ‘Dan, you are the most solicitous friend a man might have. Why do you not follow to India in a year or so? I ought by then to know the safe ways.’

Coates clapped his hands together and laughed. He had ever had a mind to see the east, but Hervey’s caution on his behalf sounded like the wheel turning full circle. ‘Matthew, a very handsome offer that is. But if I should come, I should not want to see only the safer ways. And, I might say, Captain Hervey, neither should you!’

Hervey laughed, and assented with a nod.

A few moments of contented silence passed, and then Coates spoke quite gravely. ‘And everything is right with you otherwise, Matthew?’

‘ “Right”, “otherwise”, Dan?’

‘Ay. Are all your affairs put in order?’

Hervey balked at the directness. But Daniel Coates had picked him up when first he had fallen from a pony. ‘Dan …’

Coates sat down.

Hervey half sank into the ash dugout, and with a further sigh. ‘Elizabeth will take Georgiana to Longleat just before I leave. They’ll stay there until I’m gone.’

‘I should think that’s very wise of her, Matthew.’

Hervey remained silent for a while, trying to think how best he might explain it. ‘She is not two years, Dan, and yet she has everything about her that is her mother’s.’

Coates nodded. The silence returned. ‘She’s not Henrietta, of course, Matthew.’

‘No, that I understand. When I am able to reason, that is.’

‘Oh, Matthew, never surrender that power to reason.’

Hervey smiled. ‘No, I don’t believe I shall — not willingly, at any rate.’ And then he frowned. ‘I should have liked a little more time, though.’

‘Perhaps it’s better you hadn’t, Matthew. It would go harder with yon infant.’

And with himself, Hervey knew.

Late in the afternoon, at the time that Canon Hervey was saying the evening office, Hervey strolled with Elizabeth through the village. It was warm, perhaps as warm as an evening in India early in the summer. Swifts, swallows and martins were everywhere, jinking and diving, and a continuous stream of rooks headed west towards Longleat park. There were labourers about the fields still but not nearly so many, the work of haymaking done for a week or so; and cottage tables were claiming the menfolk at this hour. ‘How do you persuade a man to leave this for the barrack-room and India?’

Elizabeth looked at him, puzzled. ‘You don’t!’

‘Yet we have to fill the ranks somehow.’

‘Well, there’s little profit in trying to persuade a man with a wage and a sound roof. There’ll be one or two who might like the thrill of it, I dare say. But in truth you had better look elsewhere.’

‘You’re right, of course. We had a fair bag today, but not as good as I’d hoped.’

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. She could never fathom the town. ‘Why don’t you go to the Common?’

Hervey looked at her, pained. ‘We’re recruiting for the cavalry and India, Elizabeth, not a penal battalion for the West Indies!’

Elizabeth smiled. ‘You’re not recruiting very much for anywhere, by your own admission, brother! Didn’t your Duke of Wellington say that his men were the scum of the earth?’

Hervey did not answer at once. ‘Elizabeth, you go to the workhouse, and I admire you much for it. But can you have a true notion of what the Common is?’

‘Why do you suppose otherwise?’

Hervey looked at her quizzically. ‘Father has forbidden your going there, has he not?’

‘Father forbade me to visit there.’

He furrowed his brow again.

‘He did not say I could not go about workhouse business.’