Warrior

'Then I'll instruct the adjutant to issue the necessary orders.'

Hervey's mind was already decided, however. 'With respect, Colonel, I should like to take Collins.'

Lord Holderness nodded. 'I have no objection. But why Collins?'

'As a rule, Colonel, I would not try to favour those I knew best, but Collins, I judge, would serve admirably, and since there is every prospect of trouble with the native tribes before our term at the Cape is up, I should want to be certain of my man.'

'That is reasonable.'

Lord Holderness was indeed a commanding officer whose instincts were reasonable as well as admirable. Hervey did not suppose there was a man in the Sixth who could have complaint against him. Did it matter much that in the exhilaration of manoeuvres, two months ago, a cold immersion in the Thames had induced a fit of epilepsy? (He, Hervey, and the regimental serjeantmajor had arranged things with the utmost discretion, so that few others knew of it.) There would always be someone to gather up the reins, so to speak.Was it not more important that the regiment was content, well found – as undoubtedly it was?

He laid down his coffee cup, and rose. 'Thank you, Colonel. And now if you will permit me, I will make haste to London.'

'Of course,' said Lord Holderness, rising also. He smiled a shade broader, and with a touch of wryness. 'How was Brighton?'

Hervey coloured a little. 'It was as ever Brighton is, Colonel.'

'I am glad to hear it!'

Hervey took his leave a fraction happier, even if his smile concealed its own measure of wryness. He spoke with the adjutant of the agreed arrangements and actions, and was then pleasantly surprised to find that Malet had ordered the regimental chariot to wait on his pleasure.

'Better than sending to Derryman's for a chaise, I think.'

'Indeed,' said Hervey, thankfully (better and a good deal cheaper – half a crown for the chariot man, Corporal Denny). 'I'll send word as soon as I have the day, and then you may arrange things for the parade itself.'

'Of course.'

As Hervey made to leave, Malet handed him a small bundle of letters. 'These were brought from the officers' house for you. There's one with the Horse Guards' stamp.'

'Indeed?' Hervey took them, trying not to show excessive interest (a letter from the commander-in-chief's headquarters could be no occasion for disquiet now that the inquiry into the events at Waltham Abbey was scotched).

'And our respects, of course, to Lady— to Mrs Hervey.'

'Thank you, Malet,' he replied, quietly, putting the letters into his pocket and nodding his goodbye.

Outside the orderly room, Private Johnson was waiting for him. 'Ah didn't think tha were back, sir, till next week.'

Hervey was impressed by the speed at which notice of his return travelled the barracks, though Johnson had always had an ear for comings and goings. 'There were matters to be about.'

'Mrs Armstrong, ay.'

'The most wretched business. Are you able to come with me to London?'

Since only guard duty would require leave of absence of any but his own officer, and since as an officer's groom he was excused such duty, Johnson was able to say 'yes' at once, albeit with a certain reluctance. He was unsure, as he had confided many months before, that Hervey's new bride would welcome his continuance. Hervey had assured him in the most decided fashion that there was no cause for even the slightest unease in that respect, but Johnson fancied he understood the way of new wives. Lady Henrietta Hervey – Mrs Hervey, as Johnson had always known her, being perennially unmindful of the correct usages – had welcomed him unreservedly. He would have done anything for her. He thought, still, that if he too had been at Serjeant-Major Armstrong's side that day in the white wastes of America, she might be alive yet, even though once many years ago when he had voiced the same, Hervey, though deeply touched, had told him most unequivocally that he would with certainty have perished by the axe or the arrow. Nevertheless, Lady Henrietta Hervey remained to Johnson's mind the apotheosis of wedded-womanhood. Lady Lankester – Mrs Matthew Hervey as now was – for all that she was the widow of a regimental hero, was not, to his mind, of the same water.

It was some time before Hervey thought to open his letters. Private Johnson had a good deal to say, and there was the question of how and where to begin on the 'arrangements'. It was the very devil that the regiment no longer had its own chaplain, and that the rector of the parish in which were the barracks, and the priest of the Hounslow mission, were both absentees. His first notion was to send word to his friend John Keble, who would surely know how to proceed, but time precluded it. He knew no clergyman, of any rank, in London. He certainly knew no Catholic. Yet there must be such counsel. A decade or so ago, before the Great Disturber was despatched to his final, fatal exile on St Helena, there had been priests and religious aplenty in London. True, they spoke in French – they were pensioners, indeed, of King George during their temporary exile – but that would have been no impediment. It was an age past, however: he must needs consult, now, with the English Mission.

How he disliked that word – mission – as if England were some heathen place, like the Americas of the conquistadores, or the Africa to which he would soon return. It was strange: in Portugal and Spain he had had no resentment of the Pope's religion. He had attended its services, at times even frequently. He liked the air of those churches, great and small, the sense of the living, independent of any actual human presence. In an English church, even in the one he loved the most, his father's in Horningsham, the sense was of something past, gone. In the Peninsula the Duke of Wellington had issued the most particular instructions to the army concerning the respect to be accorded the religion of His Majesty's allies. When the Blessed Sacrament was carried in procession about the streets, an officer was to remove his headdress, and other ranks were to present arms. And it was strange how this order not only avoided offence to the allies, but also increased the esteem in which their religion was held.

Perhaps his memory played him false, though. He himself had called a good deal of it mummery, and worse, as had others of the Sixth. Yet it was not the same loathing – by no means the same – as that which they sometimes had of the Catholic church in England, where too often it had been the begetter of treachery. Or in Ireland, where contempt for the mean condition of the native population, the ignorance and indolence, was at once