‘If Peto can get himself to his feet, or even whole and into a wheelchair, I might find him something. Scarcely a week goes by without the same request from Codrington – and not least his daughter!’
Hervey looked puzzled.
‘Ah, you would not know of course. Codrington’s daughter, his younger daughter, girl of fourteen, she was aboard the Rupert. Did sterling service with the surgeon. She nursed Peto back to Malta. Then wrote the most astonishing letter to Clarence! Told him everything he’d done in the fighting.’
Hervey felt like saying ‘we are ever grateful for the intervention of female supporters’, but thought the better of it. He nodded instead.
The First Sea Lord smiled ruefully. ‘And not just to Clarence. She wrote to the French ambassador, and the Russian too. Did you see all the ribbons at Greenwich? Most fetching. He’ll have something from the King, too, without a doubt.’
‘I saw the ribbons, yes, but Peto made no mention of Miss Codrington.’
The First Sea Lord shook his head. ‘I doubt he recalls much of those weeks. And certainly no one would have told him of her intervention on his behalf.’ He rose. ‘But Codrington himself has the very devil of it still, the affair being picked over as if it were a game of cricket! And by men who’d quake at the first discharge of a musket.’
Hervey and Howard rose to acknowledge the First Sea Lord’s leaving, but Fairbrother had by now come in. He bowed, and Hervey made the introductions.
‘I am most particularly honoured to make your acquaintance, Sir George.’
The First Sea Lord smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed, sir? Upon what account? You do not, I trust, hold against me the burning of Washington still?’
Fairbrother returned the smile. ‘No, indeed not, Sir George. I am not an American. But I have long admired your action there in recruiting a corps of marines.’
The First Sea Lord’s face became rather tired. ‘Oh, the marines.’ He shook his head, and turned to Hervey and Howard. ‘From the emigrant slaves. That was Cochrane’s idea. Another of his outlandish schemes!’
‘Outlandish, Sir George? How so?’ asked Fairbrother, looking disappointed.
‘Oh, mistake me not: they were fine men we took in service. Excellent men, for the most part. But the Americans exacted a heavy penalty from their relatives, poor devils. And those they took prisoner they shot out of hand. You’re not by any chance a descendant of one of these, Mr Fairbrother? No, of course you cannot be; are you related in some way?’
Fairbrother shook his head. ‘No, Sir George. My father was – is – a planter in Jamaica.’
The First Sea Lord had served on the West India station; he understood at once.
Hervey thought he must declare his friend’s naval credentials. ‘Fairbrother’s father’s godfather was Admiral Holmes, Sir George.’
‘Indeed? They still spoke of him when I was there. Well, I must go back down the hill for an hour or so. I am pleased to have met you, Captain Fairbrother; and you, Colonel Hervey. Do not trouble yourself too much in the matter of Peto. He will have a pension at least. He shan’t be forgotten.’ He turned to Howard. ‘Well, Lord John, thank you for your intelligence of the War Office. We were favourably met this evening. It’s as well to know Hardinge’s thoughts so soon.’
‘A pleasure, Sir George.’
The First Sea Lord left for evening office (the Russian news was occasioning some dismay).
‘May we sit once more?’ asked Howard, observing the courtesies punctiliously (the United Service was not his club).
‘Of course, of course,’ replied Hervey, absently, thinking still of Greenwich. And then he recalled himself wholly to the coffee room. ‘Wine?’
Fairbrother, sensing that Howard had business with his friend, declined. He wished, he said, to consult with some periodicals in the library, and so took his leave.
Hervey leaned back in his chair, the exertions of the day finally telling. ‘Did I hear you rightly? Sir Henry Hardinge?’
Howard smiled. ‘Palmerston’s resigned over Retford, and the duke has appointed Hardinge in his place.’
Hervey nodded. ‘Then the War Office will be in the greatest state of efficiency – if it was not already.’ Sir Henry Hardinge’s reputation in the Peninsula was matchless.
‘Oh, great efficiency indeed. He went there yesterday morning, by all accounts, and worked without interruption until he rose for dinner not two hours ago. He took all his meals at his desk, and they had to send out for more ink and paper.’
‘Hill and Hardinge: the army is fortunate in the extreme.’
Howard smiled the more. ‘As are you, my friend. He has rescinded the order for the court of inquiry!’
Hervey sat bolt upright. ‘You mean . . . into Waltham Abbey?’
‘I do.’
Hervey sank back into the deep comfort of the leather chair, to savour the sense of total release, to be free of that feeling that others were in command of the future, in a way that he could not influence by any meritorious service. It was sweet indeed. There could be no last-minute objection now to a marriage to which (he was well aware) some believed him impertinent to aspire. At one stroke of the Hardinge pen he had been liberated.
In a month he would have a fine wife, and his daughter a proper mother. These were blessings of a degree he had scarcely been able to imagine these late years. Only the Sixth’s lieutenant-colonelcy eluded him now. But his fortunes were in large measure restored to his own hands: his happiness and professional fulfilment ought now to be but a matter of the correct application of manifold advantages.
XX
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
London, two days later
Hervey stared at the canvas with scarcely less wonder than the first time. The studio pupil had followed his directions admirably, and with great despatch: the blue riding habit had long been lost (it was still, for all he knew, in some press in the snowy wastes of North America) but he had remembered it well enough. The effect, indeed, was of seeing his sweetheart, his wife, as if she stood at Longleat, and he an observer unobserved. He said nothing for some time, until, turning to Sir Thomas Lawrence’s agent, he smiled. ‘I am most content. The likeness is in every detail perfect.’
‘I am greatly pleased, Colonel Hervey,’ replied the agent, and with every appearance of it. ‘Sir Thomas has been vastly busy these many months, and though he desired to complete it himself he would not have been able in the time you specified.’
It was the greatest irony. The painting had lain unfinished, anonymous, for a dozen years, and now he perceived he had need of it within weeks. But if Georgiana was to see her mother thus, he judged it imperative, for a reason he could not, or did not want to, put form to, that she did so before she acquired a stepmother. ‘I understand, Mr Keightley.’
‘The usual procedure is to allow one month in order that the paint should dry thoroughly, and we should be pleased thereafter to have it delivered to whichever address you choose. It should then be varnished, of course, but in a year’s time.’
Hervey nodded. ‘I will let you have a note of the address directly. And in the meantime, if you would let me have an invoice, at the United Service Club . . .’
‘Of course, Colonel.’
The address to which the portrait (and in due course, the copy) was to be despatched was indeed something that had occupied him a good deal. As he took his leave of Russell Square, he began once more to cast his mind over the options. In his heart, however, he knew there was none that recommended itself above the others, save perhaps Longleat; but then that would be to consign the image to a place with which yearly his connection diminished. The parsonage at Horningsham did not have walls for such a portrait; and his new wife could not be expected to welcome to their home the presence, even in likeness, of his former wife as well as daughter. In fact, he was already beginning to think his conduct somehow improper: was it not an act of infidelity to be engaged with Henrietta’s memory in this way? He could not convince himself that he did it for Georgiana alone; and Kezia might not therefore herself be convinced.