Company Of Spears

Fairbrother smiled. ‘Oh, you must permit me a little sentiment, if it is of the good sort. It is merely that I marvel at your way with these men, almost as if they were fellow officers indeed.’

Hervey knew what Fairbrother meant. He had himself observed the stiffness, the necessary distance between officers and men in the ranks of red, but he was intrigued to know more of this impartial observer’s opinion, for such things were ever flattering. ‘The regiment has always been under very strict regulation, but never by the lash.’

‘Of course, in my former corps the men were enlisted for ignoble reasons – to escape the hulks, or the gallows even. We were little more than a penal battalion. They were men from, as I believe, the more disagreeable parts of England.’

Hervey now smiled, and clapped a hand to Fairbrother’s shoulder. ‘Do not imagine that because mine is a regiment of cavalry we invariably recruit a nobler sort! Johnson is from one of the meanest cities, a workhouse pauper, a refugee from the coal pits; and Wainwright I myself found in the filthiest of hovels that would disgrace, I imagine, a plantation in Jamaica.’

‘Then your regiment has made of them a very great deal, Colonel Hervey. That, or Nature would claim them as her gentlemen.’

Hervey smiled the more. ‘Come now, that is a little high-blown; though I concede they are men of special worth. Wainwright has enough courage for a whole troop.’

Fairbrother shook his head to re-emphasize the point: ‘I do not think I have admired anything so much as what passes between you and them. It is as if rank has become of no need. I once heard it said that in an English regiment, the superior officer, if he is a gentleman, will never think of it, and the subordinate, if he is a gentleman, will never forget it. I am sorry to say that I did not observe as much in my former corps. And now it seems to me that it is possible to omit the word “officer” from that dictum.’

Hervey squeezed Fairbrother’s shoulder again. ‘You are a very delightful observer, if perhaps susceptible to sentiment. But I cannot laugh at that. I am glad you think the Sixth thus; I am proud, indeed. And I must say that I have greatly enjoyed these past days. You are – I will say it – exceedingly agreeable company. I would not have better conversation in my mess than I have shared with you at table.’

‘You mean you have been agreeably surprised by the conversation of one who wears the shadowed livery?’

Hervey withdrew his hand, and frowned very pointedly. ‘Fairbrother, I will speak plainly, for I have known you now long enough. If you persist in this resentfulness you will drive away any friendship and embitter yourself terribly. Give it up!’

Fairbrother turned his head from him for a moment, and then back, as if to make a firm break with what had gone before. ‘Hervey, I do most sincerely beg pardon.’

Hervey thought Algoa Bay one of the most beautiful sights he had beheld. On his passages to and from India he had not seen the bay before, his ship standing well out to catch the south-west monsoon, east of Madagascar, or the reverse on the passage home. The shore was white, whiter than anything he recalled of Madras – which in other respects he was minded of – and beyond it was a green that invited rather than threatened (the forests of the Coromandel coast had threatened): a green that promised life, and good life, shared, rather than the fortress-forest whose repellent and repelling occupants persuaded all but the most inquisitive to keep well clear. Hervey felt a powerful desire to be in that inviting green, as others had before him: first the Dutch, and then more and more English, by which of course he must include Irish, for here was land whose title an Irish peasant might own instead of paying the rack-rents to the absent landlord. And surely, in all this country (they had sailed eight hundred miles from Cape Colony), there was enough green for everyone?