He laid the letter to one side. It would be as difficult to begin a reply to his sister's as to his father's, if for wholly different reasons. He picked up the third, from John Keble. He imagined it written with that same prospect before the writer against which he had inveighed the evening before at the Somerviles. It was a letter composed in a Gloucestershire curate's house, an untroubled place where dreams could be dreamed, a letter full of rebuttals of this divine and that, with a lengthy description of the work he was jointly embarked on with Hervey's father - a charge to the clergy of the archdeaconry of Sarum. There was the startling revelation that Keble had been asked if he would go to the West Indies, as archdeacon of Barbados no less; and the wholly unsurprising addendum that he had declined. The letter concluded with an evidently pained enquiry into whether or not Hervey had yet had occasion to discourse with Bishop Heber, it being more than a year since that prelate had been enthroned. It was, indeed, so worthy a letter that Hervey felt it required a peculiar state of grace before any response could be attempted. He laid it down and picked up the fourth.
He already knew its contents. Yet even as he began rereading a third or fourth time, it had its effect. The hand was the freest of the four, the sentiment likewise. What it was to have a female of the likes of Lady Katherine Greville bestowing her time on him. How diverting seemed the gossip that had formerly repulsed him so. How fondly, now, he remembered their brief company, and her uninhibited pleasure in it - and how lame his own response had been. But it had been different then
- too close to events, his mind encumbered by all sorts of notions and doubts. Things were not the same now. India, for all her heat, had moistened that dried-up interior of his. First she had given him back his very being as a soldier. It did not matter that in reality the affair of the headwaters of the Karnaphuli had been unhonoured by Calcutta, or that the campaign he had so recently left in a dhoolie was the re-creation of that muddle in the Low Countries a quarter of a century before. India was a stage on which the soldier could expound his art, learn stratagems and devices unheard of at home, and above all might have that most prized thing - the true exercise of command. Yes, Hervey was angry with Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell and the campaign in Ava; but it and the other diversions of this singular country made him feel as alive as ever he could remember.
He took a sheet of paper from the drawer and picked up his pen. Perhaps as little as a year ago he would have begun his replies in the strict order of filial duty, then sibling love, then respectfulness for the cloth, and then . . . But this morning he began, 'Dear Lady Katherine’. An hour or so later, having written rather more than usual to this wife of an absentee husband, and likewise having returned her teasing and toying in fuller measure, he put on cantonment dress - the looser-fitting cotton jacket that the Sixth had adopted soon after arriving, with light cotton overalls and forage cap - and walked to the regimental headquarters to report himself back at duty.
Major Joynson heard him through the open door of his office and came at once into the adjutant's room to add his salutation. 'And a word with you as soon as you are done here’ he added, in a manner that Hervey could not quite determine as encouraging or otherwise.
He wanted to appear neither apprehensive nor indifferent, and so after ten minutes with the adjutant, in which he was apprised of the comings and goings of his troop, and its defaulters, Hervey signed the orders book and then repaired to the major's office.
Since the death of his wife, an invalid to laudanum, and the military demise of Lord Towcester, Eustace Joynson had grown steadily in stature and affection in the regiment. His reputation for painstaking administration had always been high, but the demands made on him by his late wife had sapped his vigour, and Towcester's martinet command had all but eviscerated him. Now, the sick headaches that had removed him from duty with monotonous regularity had all but gone, and he enjoyed many a mess night where before he had found them a sore trial. However, he did not feel himself entirely a match for the decision before him now. And there were none, perhaps, who would blame him, for the decision was one of the utmost importance to every man in the Sixth.
'Hervey, close the door and take a seat. Have you had coffee? Would you like a little Madeira? No? Perhaps a shade early. I never do, not before eleven. Have you heard that Mr Lincoln's to marry?'
Hervey sat in a tub-chair that creaked with the slightest move of a muscle. 'I have. Joyous news.'
'You think so? Possibly, I suppose . . . yes.'
'Is there some objection to the lady?'
‘Oh no. No, indeed not. She is a very respectable woman; very highly regarded by the light infantry's colonel. Lincoln's calling on him this very morning.'
'Then why do you sound uncertain?'
'Because Marsh is to send in his papers. Says he wants to spend his declining days in Ipswich rather than be quartermaster here.'
'Singular!'
Joynson smiled. 'A man who prefers Ipswich to Calcutta might rightly be said to have begun his decline already. I could not say that even the worst of the stink here would drive me to such a decision.'
Hervey nodded, returning the smile, a sort of mock grimace. 'Ipswich. Indeed no.'
'But you will imagine that there must be a replacement quartermaster.'
'And a replacement for the replacement.'
'Exactly so. I am excessively pleased that Lincoln shall join us at last in the mess. Indeed, it is long overdue. But the pleasure is dulled by the thought of having to determine his own succession.'
The word was well chosen. Lincoln's had been a long reign by any standard. Hervey wondered what the RSM himself thought of relinquishing the crown. 'It should be Deedes, by rights. Is there any serious objection? It has always been seniority tempered by rejection.'
Joynson took off his glasses and polished them with a silk cloth. 'I've been disappointed with Deedes these past twelve months. There's a want of vigour. I dare say that he'll make no mistakes, but if we're to have him for any time then I fear he'll begin to drop the bit. Rose thinks so too.'
Hervey raised an eyebrow. 'Deuced tricky superseding Deedes. He'll fall right away and become a malcontent, no doubt. And the rest of his mess will be ill at ease if they perceive no very good reason for it. Who is next in seniority? Harrison?'
'Telfer.'
'Oh dear.'
'Precisely. Who would you want?'
'Hairsine.'
'Exactly.'
Hervey frowned. 'They've all been too long in the rank, even Hairsine. In that respect the war brought them on too quickly. I can remember Hairsine the night we had word of the surrender, at Toulouse. He was orderly serjeant-major. It was ten years ago.'
'Deedes's time will be up in a couple of years in the normal course of things. And Harrison's not much later. I suppose we could take a chance on him, and Hairsine could bide his time a while longer.'
'There'll be more talk of dead men's boots. But it wouldn't do any more harm, I suppose. What would Sir Ivo want to do?'
'Strange to say, we never spoke of it. Marsh looked the last man to give up so cosy a billet as quartermaster.'