Company Of Spears

‘You do not know her. Lady Lankester, my late commanding officer’s widow.’

‘Great heavens!’ boomed Peto, turning a dozen heads in their direction. ‘A widow!’

Hervey winced. ‘My dear fellow, your discretion if you will! I have not yet proposed!’

‘Bah! A widow? She’ll not turn you down!’

‘She is of independent means.’

‘Of course she is. I’d never take you for a fool!’

Now Hervey frowned. ‘She has a child too, not yet one year.’

‘And evidently therefore of proper maternal sentiment.’

‘Just so.’

Peto looked long at his old friend. ‘Tell me, Hervey: you love this woman?’

‘Peto!’

‘Come, man: mayn’t we speak of these things?’

‘I … do not yet … that is to say I … have not yet had opportunity to form so deep an attachment.’

‘You have met the woman?’

‘Of course I’ve met her! We met in Calcutta after Sir Ivo Lankester was killed at Bhurtpore.’

‘And how many times since?’

Hervey shifted awkwardly in his chair. ‘Just the once. But—’

‘Well, if it’s a mother for Georgiana you’re looking for…’

‘Don’t be absurd, Peto; it’s not only that. She’s a fine woman, a handsome woman – very handsome, indeed.’

‘More handsome than Lady Katherine Greville?’

Hervey glanced anxiously at the ears still inclined in their direction. ‘What is Katherine Greville to do with it?’

‘You ask me?’

‘You know very well the circumstances.’

‘Indeed I do, as does, I suspect, half this dinner room, though they might not put face to the name.’

Hervey shifted even more awkwardly. ‘I do wish you would lower your voice.’

‘Well, I consider it a double occasion for celebration! You will be lieutenant-colonel, and with a rich and beautiful widow at your side. I envy you; I truly envy you.’

This latter was said in a tone of some fervour. And Hervey – for all that both occasions for congratulations were yet but aspiration – felt the true extent of his old friend’s melancholy.

* * *

Hervey had instructed the coachman to return to the United Service Club at eleven o’clock so that he could be back in Hounslow by one. Several times during the evening he had wondered if instead he might go to Holland Park; his letter to Kat of the day before said he would call as soon as he was able, uncertain as he was when that might be on account of being summoned to the aid of the civil power. There were matters about which he must speak with her. One matter, rather. It was insupportable that he should press his suit with Kezia Lankester while continuing to call at Holland Park. He must make a clean breast of things, and at once; certainly before travelling to Gloucestershire. That was what he could do this evening at Holland Park.

Except that it was late. Kat kept late hours, it was true. The trouble was … the affair of Waltham Abbey, the uncertainty of getting the regiment, the offer of command at the Cape, the manly dinner: there would inevitably be but one purpose in calling at Holland

Park…

He climbed into the chaise, not speaking. ‘Hounslow, Major Hervey?’ asked the coachman, holding open the door.

Hervey sighed. ‘Hounslow, Peter; quick as you can.’

X

THE SERPENT’S COILS

Gloucestershire, three days later

Sezincote was the strangest house that Hervey had ever seen. It resembled the Pavilion at Brighton, with its Moghul turrets and tracery, its dome and peacock-tail arches, and yet it was very evidently a gentleman’s house rather than a place of entertainment. The grounds called to mind the abundant gardens of the governor-general’s residence in Calcutta, with all manner of plants patently not native to the country. On the balustrades of an ornamental bridge over a stream that watered the ‘paradise garden’ were little statues of Brahmin bulls – Nandi, ‘the happy one’ – and at a remove from the house itself stood Sir Charles Cockerell’s bedroom, an octagon fashioned like a rajah’s tent, tall poles supporting a canopy, and arch-windows, and a chattri – a minaret – in the centre. All was of local stone, but dyed yellow in the fashion of the native houses of Rajasthan. Yet within was as classical as any of the fashionable houses of not-so-distant Bath – ‘Greek revival’, as Somervile tersely dismissed it. Twenty years before Hervey had first set foot on the Madras beach (Somervile told him) Colonel John Cockerell, the present owner’s brother, had returned from Bengal and bought the house from the Earl of Guildford to be near his friend Warren Hastings. On his death the house had passed to his youngest brother, who had been with him in Bengal, first as an official of the Company, later as a founder of the most successful of the Calcutta agency houses established to handle the affairs of Englishmen in India. Now Charles Cockerell was Sir Charles, denizen of Messrs Paxton, Cockerell and Trail of Austin Friars in the City – and member of parliament for Evesham.