Warrior

dragoon of the King's German Legion. That admirable corps of men from the electorate of Hanover, the late King's German realm, had made their way to England when Bonaparte overran the Rhineland. He began to feel himself ashamed.

'If only you might come too, Papa!'

That did it. He cleared his throat, intending, civilly, to take his leave.

But Georgiana had not quite finished. 'You have never said, Major Heinrici: did you see Papa that day?' And then she turned to her father. 'And you, Papa: did you see Major Heinrici?'

Heinrici smiled. 'I saw him, yes, but I did not know it was he, not until your aunt told me of what he did. You see, my dear, your father's regiment came into the middle of the field, where my own corps was, towards the end of the battle, and they lost a good many of their officers, so that when it came the time to charge, your father was in command of them – and he but a cornet! I remember their charge most well, and seeing the officer who led them.'

Georgiana looked at her aunt, and then at her father. 'Papa, Aunt Elizabeth has not told me this. It is true?'

Hervey raised an eyebrow, and smiled very slightly. 'It is.'

'And did you see Major Heinrici?'

'I saw his brigade – General Dornberg's.'

'Ach, ja! Liebe Willy! What a man was he!'

Hervey was now warmed to his subject. 'I rather fancy that we in Lord Vyvyan's brigade had an easier time of it on the left flank, for when we moved to the centre towards evening, the sight of Dornberg's brigade, and so many others, filled us with foreboding. I never saw such a thing, so many lying dead about the place, and those still afoot or astride as black as their boots!'

'Black, Papa?'

'From the powder smoke.'

'And you recall the advance of the Imperial Guard, Hervey,' added Heinrici, enthusiastically. 'And how your Guards beat them off, and then the Duke of Wellington raising his hat and beckoning the whole line to advance. Quelle affaire!'

Hervey was quite overcome with the memory. And it was as if the scales were falling from his eyes, for what did Elizabeth's indiscretion matter when here sat one of Dornberg's men? He leaned forward, offered his hand, and spoke the words exactly as Prince Blucher had at the inn La Belle Alliance, when the duke and the old Prussian marshal met on the field at last, the battle run: 'Mein liebe Kamerad: quelle affaire!'

Fairbrother arrived next morning. Hervey met him at his club quite by accident, for he had not returned to Hanover Square the evening before, whither his friend's express had been sent, on account of the most convivial dinner with Major Heinrici and Elizabeth (and afterwards, when Elizabeth had retired, prolonged reminiscences with Heinrici himself over Teutonic quantities of port). He was glad to sit down with Fairbrother now, and copious coffee, to relate all that had occurred in his friend's absence in the West Country.

Fairbrother looked well, even for his long journey by mail coach. He had been taking the opportunity to visit with distant family of his natural father, for he had not wished to be any encumbrance to either bridegroom or bride, and he had not felt sufficiently at ease, yet, to take up the several invitations to stay in Wiltshire which his new acquaintance with Hervey's people had brought. The distant family being two elderly female cousins, he had been able to spend his days riding on the moors, or swimming, and the evenings in their not inconsiderable, if antique, library.

Hervey envied him, indeed. That is to say, he envied the contentment that his friend's sojourn (albeit foreshortened) had evidently brought him.

There was no one else in the smoking room, but an observer might have remarked on how alike were the two men (allowing a little for complexion, and rather more for features). There was nothing but a year or so between them. They were of about equal height and frame, so that they could wear each other's clothes if needs be. An observer might not at once be able to judge that their natures were agreeably matched, but he might begin to suspect it before too long. In some of the essentials they were the same, and in those in which they were not, there was a happy complement.

Hervey deferred to no one in matters of soldiery except where rank emphatically demanded it (or, exceptionally, when rank and capability were unquestionably combined). Excepting, that is, in those matters on which only service in the ranks gave true authority, so that he deferred always to the likes of Sar'nt-Major Armstrong and RSM (now Quartermaster) Lincoln. But in Fairbrother he recognized a wholly exceptional ability, a sort of sixth sense for the field which was not merely acquired, there being something, he reckoned, that came with the blood – that part of his friend's blood which came from the dark continent of Africa. For his mother, a house- slave of a Jamaica plantation, was but one generation removed from the savagery of the African tribe – the savagery and the wisdom.When the two friends had faced that savagery together, at the frontier of the Eastern Cape, it had been Fairbrother who had known, unfailingly, what to do. And, further, he had been able then to slip from the lofty strategy of the saddle, so to speak, and take to his belly and better the savage at his own craft.

And, too, such were Fairbrother's cultivated mind and manners that his company would have been sought by gentlemen of the best of families. Only a certain weariness with life (although not so much as when they had first met a year or so ago) stood between him and Hervey, which the latter chose largely to ignore rather than understand. Fairbrother was not a willing soldier in the way that Hervey was; he had not thought himself a soldier from an early age. His father had purchased a commission for him in the Jamaica Militia, and thence in the Royal Africans (a corps which more resembled the penitentiary than the regular army), and then on the best of recommendations Hervey had sought him out from his indolent half pay at the Cape to accompany him to the frontier as interpreter. Their first meeting had been unpropitious. Indeed, Hervey had very near walked from it in contempt of the man. But now this handsome, half-caste, gentlemanlike, disinclined soldier was rapidly becoming his paramount friend. La vie militaire: it was the deucedest, strangest thing!

When his friend was done with his uncharacteristically enthusiastic account of the countryside and seashores of Devon, Hervey told him of the offer of command, and of the Russian mission, and why they must return early to the Cape. He told him that Kezia and Georgiana would not be able to accompany him (hiding his disappointment, he thought, adequately). He said that it grieved him to leave poor Peto, and how he had wished to see him settled first at Houghton, but he trusted that Lord Cholmondeley, with Kat's continuing interest, would see his old friend right. He did not speak of Kat herself. He told him of Caithlin Armstrong, and observed his friend's real and considerable