On His Majesty's Service

Fairbrother looked at Hervey. ‘Is this news?’

Hervey nodded. ‘I have reached a decision.’ But then he turned back to Johnson. ‘I don’t believe I have ever seen you carve goose before,’ he said, amiably. ‘You do it most deftly.’

‘When I were a bairn, one Christmas,’ (Johnson never needed much encouragement to revisit his origins, real or imagined), ‘I were let out t’union to ’elp at a big ’ouse in Sheffield – it were t’Master Cutler’s – an’ they ’ad a goose for all t’servants, an’ I watched ’em carve it, see. An’ I never forgot. We ’ad goose once or twice in Spain.’

‘I suppose we must have,’ said Hervey, a little ashamed at his vagueness in the matter. ‘Did you have some of the goose at the Master Cutler’s?’

‘I did. An’ it were t’last proper meat I ’ad for a month when I went back t’union next day. But that’s all done wi’ now. It were a long time ago.’ He finished carving and laid down the irons. ‘There y’are, sir. It’s not so dried up after all. And there’s them onions, an’ a bowl o’ gravy, and then jelly ’n’ oranges.’ He nodded to the sideboard.

‘And is there a second goose below stairs?’

Johnson smiled. ‘Corp’l Acton an’ me’s ’avin a puddin.’

‘Then if the pudding is not too much for you, take the legs.’

‘Oh, thank you very much, sir. Corp’l Acton were only just sayin’ ’e’d never ’ad goose afore.’

‘Remove the legs and leave us then, and take your ease. I’ll snuff the candles myself. Reveille the same time as this morning.’

‘Right, sir.’ He beckoned to the houseboy to come away. ‘I’ll send up some coffee a bit later.’

Hervey nodded, and Johnson closed the door.

‘You know, I really do believe he’s indispensable,’ said Hervey, and with no semblance of exaggeration. ‘I asked would he come with me to Gibraltar, and I could not say for certain what I should do if his answer had been “no”.’

Fairbrother was already helping himself at the sideboard. ‘I know what I would have counselled.’

Hervey joined him. ‘Indeed?’

‘That you withdraw your application for Gibraltar.’

Hervey said nothing at first, taking a spoon to the meat and rice, then sitting down and contemplating his friend. ‘What would your reason have been?’

‘Very simply that if Johnson judged that Gibraltar – or, more exactly, command of a battalion of infantry there – were inimical to your wellbeing, then every instinct of mine would tell me that it were so.’

Hervey smiled. ‘“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart”.’

Fairbrother took a large measure of wine to wash down his first taste of goose. ‘I say “Amen” to that. And also that this bird renders fine service too.’

‘It does indeed.’

‘A pity, therefore, that Agar shan’t taste it.’

Hervey hesitated a moment. ‘The exigencies of the service. He would not have had it otherwise.’

Fairbrother sat back. ‘You’re not inclined to see today’s action as beyond the call of duty then … beyond the requirements of neutrality indeed?’

Hervey looked thoughtful. ‘I concede it’s a moot point. But I don’t consider that any harm comes of it.’

Fairbrother held up his hands. ‘Nor am I your keeper.’

‘I did not believe for a moment you acted as one.’

‘Have you written to Princess Lieven?’

‘As a matter of fact I have decided to write this evening.’

Fairbrother raised an eyebrow. ‘May I ask why?’

‘Courtesy, in part.’

‘Mm.’ He leaned back. ‘If you asked my counsel it would be that first you should sleep on the matter. It has been a hot-blooded sort of day.’

‘I can’t sleep on it: a courier leaves for St Petersburg in the morning.’

‘There’ll be others.’

‘I judge it best not to delay.’

Fairbrother kept silence a while. ‘So deuced difficult to tell if a ball’s fused or not, sometimes.’

Hervey perfectly understood his meaning. But there was nothing to say.

Fairbrother let him off the hook by changing the subject, ostensibly. ‘By the by, what would you have decided had I said that I could not accompany you to Gibraltar?’

Hervey sat up. ‘In truth I don’t know, for I had not then made up my mind – as I had with Johnson.’

‘Well, I make my acceptance now conditional,’ said Fairbrother gravely.

‘Oh?’

He smiled. ‘I have found Hazlitt’s account of his time in Rome so intriguing that I am intent on seeing the city as soon as may be, and since you are fully acquainted with it, and Gibraltar is so near, I would claim you as guide.’

Hervey returned the smile. ‘You know, Fairbrother, I do believe I should find that the most agreeable thing – quite the most agreeable thing indeed.’ It was only the strictest self-mastery that would not let him admit his friend as indispensable too.

After dinner, Hervey took candles to his room, resolved to have his letters ready for the Ordnance courier. The first was easily done – a single sheet to Colonel Youell, telling him of his decision to accept the lieutenant- colonelcy of the Fifty-third. As soon as he had sealed it he felt a weight rise from his shoulders; all else now was but a consequence of that decision. He wrote equally briefly to his agents, Messrs Greenwood, Cox and Hammersley of Craig’s Court, instructing them to take the necessary action in the disposal of his regimental majority. He wrote at greater, more respectful length to Lord George Irvine, a most difficult letter expressing his regret in not being able to take command of his regiment. He toyed with the idea of explaining himself more fully (for what of the regiment was there left to command?), but in the end he could not find words of the appropriate substance, and he closed the letter in the confidence that his erstwhile commanding officer would understand his reasons – or that no acceptable reasons could in any case be advanced. Next he wrote to Elizabeth with the briefest summary of his movements to date, an equally brief announcement of his decision, and an enclosure for Georgiana telling her that soon she would be able to join him in Gibraltar, which she would surely like a good deal. He then began a letter to Kezia. He wrote the salutation easily enough, but then his pen froze in his hand. No words would come to him. He even thought to unseal the letter to Elizabeth to copy its lines, but he could not do so, for it scarcely seemed meet, and the recipients were so unalike that the same words could hardly be apt. In the end he decided he would rise early and write with the courier’s posthorn to hasten him.

It was now late; he felt drowsy. But with the mere act of taking a fresh sheet and writing ‘Dear Princess Lieven’ it was as if he had been touched by an electric arc. So great in fact that he stopped momentarily to ponder the cause. None that came to mind was wholesome, however, and he shut them out very determinedly in order to write on. But at the end – seven whole sides in his compact hand – he shuddered with distaste at the thought that he had not been able to manage a single page for his wife. And try as he might, he could not shake off the sense of perfidy. He found it infinitely easier to scruple less about corresponding with the ambassadress of a foreign power, for he would tell the Horse Guards of what he wrote, and Princess Lieven was a woman of experience and discretion in diplomatic affairs, and besides he told her nothing that was detrimental to His Majesty’s interests (or so he very much trusted).

It was, after all, a very tame account – a summary of their itinerary with not a mention of St Petersburg, the briefest explanation of the purpose of the landing at Siseboli, the defence-works about the town, the bearing of the Pavlovsk Grenadiers, his patrol with the Black Sea Cossacks, the action by the strelki of the Azov Regiment, and the admirable arrangements for the sick (such as he had had occasion to observe). He did not write of the deficiencies or derelictions, only that ‘there are some instances where, in my judgement, the practice could be amended to advantage’ – and his intention to join the main army when it was ready to renew the offensive. There was not the remotest possibility of its falling into unfriendly (or even suspicious) hands, but even so, there was nothing, individually or severally, that could be construed as bearing allegiance to any but the King.