Man Of War

She did not add ‘Matthew forgets that’, but there was no need. And Fairbrother began to perceive the extent of her solitude – only daughter of a poor country living, unwed, no longer on calling terms at Longleat. It was all too clear why she had been content – happy, even – to accept an offer of marriage from one as sure as Captain Sir Laughton Peto; and then so decided when that most extraordinary, unexpected, unlooked-for, disconcerting thing – true love – should befall her. At this very moment he wished to put a protecting, brotherly arm around her – as her own brother ought – and to assure her of his strenuous support. ‘Miss Hervey, in this I would hope to be your good friend as well as your brother’s too. I am gratified – forgive me – to see you are so solicitous of his well-being. May I ask you a question?’

‘You may ask whatever you please, Captain Fairbrother, but I beg you would not try to divert me from the course I have chosen, for it would be both fruitless and disagreeable.’

‘Miss Hervey, I would not dream of it. I wished only to ask of your brother’s intended. I will be frank: he has not spoken of her in any terms but the most matter-of-fact – where they are to live and such like. Do you know the lady?’

Elizabeth again quickened her pace, as much as to say she was on safer ground and could proceed without circumspection. ‘I have met Lady Lankester the once but could form no opinion of her. If Matthew has concluded that she will make him a good wife then I can have nothing more to do with it.’

Fairbrother noted the return of acerbity. He wondered if Elizabeth were making the point that in denying her brother the right to interfere in her own choice of partner in the marriage stakes, she must likewise forfeit that right. But he was inclined to proceed with a certain blitheness, if only to bring the matter to an amicable close. ‘Well, I may judge for myself, for I believe we shall go to Hertfordshire soon.’

Elizabeth stopped suddenly, her ears pricked. The call of the cuckoo came again, clearly and not so very distant. ‘The cuckoo, Captain Fairbrother.’ She smiled, happily – the first he had seen her smile thus. ‘I walk these lanes every day, and it is the first cuckoo I have heard this spring.’

‘Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! ’

‘Indeed, Captain Fairbrother! You like Wordsworth?’

‘I do – very much so, Miss Hervey. He was a little contrary, though, was he not? A vile, unholy bird did he not call the cuckoo elsewhere?’

‘I believe he did,’ said Elizabeth, smiling, a little wry. ‘But I believe a poet, at least, might be allowed some contrariness of opinion – as any man.’

Fairbrother smiled to himself.

‘Where does the cuckoo go in winter? Or do they merely stay silent? Oh, I had not thought: are there cuckoos in Jamaica?’

Fairbrother returned her smile, which had now its usual sweetness. ‘Oh, indeed yes, Miss Hervey. And very gay-painted they are – unlike, I imagine, your English birds!’

‘I confess I have never seen one, in winter or in summer. And I may say, Captain Fairbrother, that never have I heard its call with such pleasure.’

She said it so decidedly, not a trace wistful.

Fairbrother fancied he understood, for both Elizabeth’s face and manner were ever open and expressive. Many summers must have come and gone, and many a village wedding, yet his friend’s sister had remained in her unwed state, every summer the same, but a year older – riper, as the Prayer Book so felicitously put it – until now, when there was the happy prospect before her of matrimony. And undoubtedly to a man she loved, and rather passionately it seemed. Perhaps there was even the prospect of children, for Elizabeth Hervey was surely not beyond the age of childbearing?

‘Georgiana, you would do well to keep your heels lowered,’ said Hervey, somewhat peremptorily.

His daughter, delighting in the sole attention (as she thought) of her father, was only too content to oblige him without demur; and in any case, she was accustomed to a certain abruptness in his manner, for she knew that there was little time for pleasantries when speaking to his soldiers in the face of the King’s enemies.

‘It won’t do, you know, Georgiana: you will have to begin riding side-saddle. Your aunt really should have insisted on it before now.’

‘It is not Aunt Elizabeth’s fault,’ replied Georgiana pluckily. ‘For I would not have it.’

Hervey was not inclined to let a child’s insistence excuse the dereliction. ‘That is as may be, but it does not alter things. You cannot go about astride now that you are’ (he had to think for a moment) ‘ten.’ Nor, indeed, when she was about to leave the county for rather more polished society. That, however, he would not mention – for the time being.

‘But I don’t want to ride side-saddle,’ she insisted, shaking her head.

Hervey had not begun the walk with the question of Georgiana’s seat uppermost in his mind (or, indeed, in his mind at all). He had not been bent on some quarrel with her on account of the propriety of riding astride. Rather had he found himself continuing vexed by Elizabeth’s defiant manner – as if she wilfully misunderstood his good intentions, and likewise failed to see the injury all this would do to the family; and not least to Peto, who even now might be making his way hither in the happy expectation of marriage – or at any rate doing further battle in the Mediterranean in the comfortable knowledge that Elizabeth waited for him decently at home. She had even had the audacity to ask if he – Peto’s good friend at that – would go with her to meet this Heinrici! It was scarcely to be borne. It was as if their whole life to this day, the notion of duty on which they had been brought up in that Wiltshire parsonage, reinforced by the Scripture they had each of them heard in equal measure, counted for nothing. That a man (or a woman) might throw over what he knew to be the right course to secure that which was the more pleasant to him! And was not the pleasure a delusion too? How might any man (or woman) take pleasure with the awful prospect of being haunted by a failing in duty? It would come to gnaw at the vitals, would it not? Then there would be no more pleasure, only infinite pain to endure – much greater pain than a man might fancy he must bear on rejecting the course of pleasure in the first place.

He cursed himself. All this vexation was intruding on his time with his daughter – little enough as that always was. ‘I—’

‘I know why you are angry with Aunt Elizabeth.’ (Hervey tried to protest but Georgiana would not be stayed.) ‘It is because she wants to marry Major Heinrici and not Captain Peto!’

Hervey’s mouth fell open. How did Georgiana know of it?

‘I like Captain Peto, but I like Major Heinrici better. He is very jolly, and he has three daughters who are all very pretty and nice.’

Hervey checked himself. His first instinct was to chide Georgiana for speaking of that which she – a child – could not understand, for daring to presume to interfere in business that was so patently not hers. Except that there was nothing childlike in her evident powers of observation and discernment. And in truth he could scarcely deny that the business was as much hers as his, for although he essayed to act (at his mother’s bidding) as paterfamilias, it was Georgiana whose daily living was to be affected until such time as he, her father, set up his own household. And when would that be, she might well ask.

He forced himself (the effort truly was not great) to smile, and he patted her thigh. ‘I am sure Major Heinrici is an agreeable man, Georgiana, and that he has very agreeable daughters, but . . . I think you will understand that your Aunt Elizabeth has given an undertaking – a promise, indeed – to marry Captain Peto, and that it is quite impossible now that she should . . . default on that promise.’ The pony was quickening its pace in the distraction that was the discussion of duty, and Hervey found himself having to stride out not wholly comfortably. ‘Do try to keep your pony in hand,’ he added, as pleasantly as he could. ‘Else I shall be forced to conclude you should not be off the lead rein!’

Georgiana brought the little gelding back to collection without remark, intent as she was on the more important matter. ‘But if you promise something and then you learn later that for some reason it cannot be as you had supposed, it is surely not right to continue as if nothing had happened?’

The unexpected requirement to explain himself was irksome, but Hervey was pleased nevertheless – proud even – of this evidence of his daughter’s intelligence and sensibility. It boded well, for he had never, he hoped, been of the belief, as were many, that a woman ought to have no opinion on any matter of substance. Quite the opposite indeed. And besides, the females of his acquaintance had hardly been of a reticent persuasion either. He smiled again, perhaps a shade indulgently, but certainly warmly. ‘You know, my dear Georgiana, these things – I trust you will not misunderstand me – will be so much the better addressed when you are older. But for the moment I believe I can say that there are many roads to marriage, and that after starting on one it is not necessarily the wiser to