Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (15 page)

Hervey could not resist it: ‘Perhaps she considers that you are all of a piece?’

Youell smiled. ‘Perhaps, indeed. She has been known to refer to such guests as her picket officers.’

‘You are not acquainted with her, then, from Almack’s?’

Youell smiled even broader. ‘My dear Hervey, there are not half a dozen officers in the Guards who have a voucher for Almack’s. I had one a few years ago, but no longer.’

‘How so? I can’t suppose you wore trousers rather than breeches.’

‘Because I am really not excessively fond of dancing!’

‘Ah.’ The explanation was unconvincing, but evidently all that he would receive.

‘And you?’

For an instant Hervey was caught by a memory, for Henrietta had loved Almack’s, and it had been her resolve to take him there. ‘I was once fond of dancing.’

Youell, every inch the officer of Foot Guards, caught the change of voice nevertheless, and made no reply, save to suggest they repair to the supper.

In the dining room there were tables arranged informally around the walls, and in the middle a long, dressed board with a dozen silver dishes and warmers, to which the two proceeded without ceremony. Hervey filled his plate with a veal frigize, and took a seat in a corner with his new friend, though after not many minutes they were joined in turn by three couples, the last of which – and to Hervey’s mind the most attractive – claimed a connection. ‘Our hostess suggested we might present ourselves to advantage, Colonel Hervey. Agar-Ellis,’ (he bowed) ‘and my wife, Lady Georgiana.’

‘Member for somewhere in Wiltshire,’ whispered Youell as the Agar-Ellises made their introductions to the rest of the table. ‘Whig, though descended from Marlborough on his mother’s side. Lady Georgiana’s father is the Earl of Carlisle, who broke with Wellington last year over Reform.’

Hervey nodded admiringly; it was one thing to possess such information, but quite another to render it so privately and concisely. Youell most assuredly knew his job.

The table made room for the new arrivals to sit next to Hervey, the object of their interest.

‘I am at a loss to know what advantage I can be to you, sir,’ he said, as a footman began pouring claret. ‘But I am at your service, if that may be.’

The Honourable George Agar-Ellis smiled warmly and disarmingly. The MP for Ludgershall (on the closer side of the Plain than lived Hervey’s people), was half a dozen years his junior. He possessed – to Hervey’s mind – a most pleasant, even sensitive face. Here was no martial man, but agreeable company nevertheless – of that he had no doubt. And if he were a Whig, then he did not have the air of a radical one.

‘You would do me inestimable service, Colonel, if you would take care of my young brother. He is to accompany you to the Russias.’

Hervey smiled with the realization. ‘Indeed; of course. I met your brother but two days ago. But one half of his name only was given me, which is why I did not make the connection. He was fearful eager to join my party.’

‘I know it. He dined with us last evening.’

‘He would not have known last night that we’re to leave almost at once.’

‘That will be no discomfort to him. Is the assignment especially hazardous, Colonel?’

Hervey stopped to think. It was not something he had considered. All assignments in the presence of the enemy entailed hazard – even if, in this case, he wished the ‘enemy’ (the Turk) no harm. Indeed, there
was
no enemy as such. ‘I think your brother will not be disappointed. He expressed a desire to see action, and he will be gratified; though he will see it at a remove.’

Lady Georgiana inclined her head, her countenance still fixed in the smile of their greeting. ‘Please do not think my husband importunate for the safety of his brother, Colonel Hervey; we are well aware that his profession is a perilous one. It is more that – if I may speak for my husband – we wish young Agar to be tutored wisely in military matters. He has none in the family with the qualification to do so.’

In its evident sweetness, Hervey was inclined to think the entreaty entirely proper, however awkwardly put. ‘I shall do my best, ma’am.’

Colonel Youell’s expression was of suppressed amusement. He decided it was time to come to his colleague’s aid. ‘How stands the House on the Irish bill today?’

Treating the enquiry as more than mere table talk, Agar-Ellis laid down his knife and fork and turned to his questioner. ‘The Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Catholic Subjects?’

Ears pricked up about the table.

To Agar-Ellis’s mind it was a most reasonably worded title, one that seemed calculated to appeal to the Englishman’s sense of justice and patriotism, and which his own enunciation had made full play of. ‘I think that the duke will succeed in the house of Peers; he already has it in the Commons. His standing among his fellows is too great, and they would not in any case risk bringing him down, for which of them could say what would then follow?’

The answer to this latter was, according to the smoking room of the United Service, a Whig government and then wholesale parliamentary reform; and which Tory peer wished to see the constituency in his pocket thus taken away? Hervey had no settled opinion on the matter of Reform. In some measure he was persuaded by his sister’s advocacy (which was indeed radical, including like suffrage for her own sex), but he had not spent half his life in uniform to throw over the ways of this land for any extreme, Jacobin notions. ‘Let us hope, therefore, that their lordships know their duty,’ he said, with just enough of a smile to make known his own loyalties with good grace.

‘If every man does his duty, Colonel Hervey, then the country will have nothing to fear.’

‘I am tempted to propose a toast to duty,’ said Youell equably.

To which all at the table were able to nod in happy agreement (leaving Hervey in no little admiration of his new friend’s facility with felicitous phrases – a talent which he himself regretted he did not possess).

There then followed some more general conversation, while duty to the other guests claimed the attention of the member for Ludgershall and his lady. Hervey found himself watching fascinated, as if he were observing the behaviour of some exotic species of the natural world. Principally was he engaged by the delight that the couple took in each other’s company – a true match of temperament and mind, and an evident intimacy that was by no means common (he supposed). It was not long before he found himself in envy of it, so that he had to force himself to break off from his observation and instead listen attentively to the wife of the Bavarian minister resident, whose husband was not present and who was being escorted by a younger man in a uniform that he could only recognize as vaguely Rhenish. Both of them spoke English, but with a strong accent, so that Hervey wished they would speak German instead.

Die Bayerin
’s conversation was anyway inconsequential, and Hervey was relieved when they rose again for the board, though chiding himself that Youell would probably have been able to make more of it. He accompanied her particularly attentively therefore.

‘
Kasha russkaya pod nazvaniem Gur’evskaya!
’

She said it with such delight, her expression transformed, that for the moment he wondered that he had been so dull. And she pronounced the Russian with what sounded a true accent, and he would have asked her of it were she not intent on explaining that it was a dish that had become her favourite at the Lievens’. ‘Count Dimitri Gur’ev, one of Tsar Alexander’s ministers, confected it to celebrate the victory over Napoleon Bonaparte.’

He noted the strictly neutral style with which she chose to refer to the Great Disturber (Bavaria had been a late-come member of the Coalition), but again he chose simply to listen as she listed the ingredients and the laborious process by which it was made, though to her frustration she could not for the moment recall the English for
mannaya krupa
.

‘In German?’ he suggested, helpfully.

She looked at him a little surprised. ‘
Grieß
.’

He smiled. ‘Semolina.’

‘Semolina,’ she repeated warily. ‘
Wo haben Sie Deutsch gelernt, Herr Oberst?
’

He told her of his Alsatian governess. And there was more inconsequential chat, in German, as they returned to the table.

But Agar-Ellis soon reclaimed him (Lady Georgiana diverted
die Bayerin
). ‘Bavaria is a country I should wish to see,’ he began, in a manner that suggested a higher purpose than to walk in the Pfälzerwald. ‘I think their king admirable, a considerable patron of the arts, and of pronounced liberal disposition.’

‘I confess I know nothing of the country,’ replied Hervey a little flatly. He was minded to say that his sister was on the verge of marrying into Hanover, and that he might at some time have opportunity to see the south of the German
Bund
, but his inclination, even with one he found as agreeable as Agar-Ellis, was yet to keep silence.

‘Not, perhaps, productive of great art, though certainly believing in the common worth of it. Did you know the Wittelsbachs opened their collection to the people a dozen years before the Louvre? We have several studies by Altdorfer in our own collection, but nothing more.’

Hervey perceived there was something missing in his understanding. ‘You speak of your own collection?’

Agar-Ellis smiled modestly. ‘I was speaking of the new
national
collection.’

‘I confess I am in ignorance of it.’

‘It is very modest by comparison with those abroad, but then we began with but a modest sum of money.’

Fairbrother had spoken to him of a collection he had visited in Pall Mall, which he said was a public gallery, but in truth he had taken little notice, preoccupied as he had been.

‘Perhaps you will let me show you the collection, Colonel Hervey – when you are returned from the East?’

It was no hollow invitation – Hervey saw full well – and in truth at that moment he would rather have delayed his sailing to be able to take it up. There was something so effortlessly attractive in this man – in both of them. ‘Thank you. I shall look forward to it.’

‘It is a pity you are to leave so soon. Might you be able to dine with us before you go?’

Hervey bowed appreciatively. ‘That is very civil, but I fear that every hour between now and the twentieth is already filled with more than I can hope to acquit.’

‘Then we must suspend the pleasure. You are not married, I presume, Colonel? Only my brother did not speak of it. Forgive me.’

‘As a matter of fact, I am married, but only lately.’ He was perhaps a little surprised that Cornet Agar had not told him of the greater connection – that he was married to the widow of a Lankester. But equally he was glad that the warmth of his brother’s manner could not be thought consequent on it.

‘Then I am discomfited, Colonel. The invitations are extended to your lady, of course.’

‘Thank you. She would be delighted, though I fancy she will have seen the collection, for she has a very lively acquaintance with the arts.’

‘Well then, Colonel, we may look forward with pleasure to receiving you both on your return. And I must say that I am considerably reassured that our brother will be under your protection in the East.’

‘Under his protection’ was not as Hervey would have put it, although he would see it as his duty to preserve Cornet Agar from unnecessary peril – as any man under his command; but he understood perfectly what lay behind the sentiment. ‘I am glad you think so.’

The conversation now became general again until the minister resident’s wife, who had assumed seniority, at last led them to the drawing room. Here, Hervey talked with two or three prettyish wives of the Almack’s stamp, and then at some length with a French
vicomtesse
lately returned from Algiers, yet who had nothing to say of the place, only that it might become so much more agreeable when more of her fellow-countrymen settled there, so that, after a polite ten minutes, he felt able to excuse himself to find his hostess and make his exit.

But it was the Princess who found him, and, it seemed, very deliberately. ‘Colonel Hervey, I regret that we have not had opportunity to converse before now,’ she began, staying him by a touch to the shoulder with her fan. ‘
Per cortesia
, I would speak with you about my people.’

Before he could make any sort of reply she was guiding him to one side with the very lightest of touches, the consummate hostess. He noted too (or so it seemed to him) that others within earshot moved away a little, accommodatingly, as she did so.

For one so slender, if not lacking in height, her presence was commanding; indeed, Hervey found the presence fascinating, not least for knowing that such others as the Tsar and Count Metternich had done so too. She stood closer to him than he would himself have presumed to, if by the smallest measure (perhaps, indeed, by no measure at all), and her eyes, no longer engaged in surveillance of the whole company, fixed him in a sure and steady gaze. He took his guard, though hoping he made no show of it.