Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service by Allan Mallinson Page A

through a sort of patrician graciousness? Had he truly been admitted an equal, would the greeting have been so courtly? At least at the Cape, where the late governor had repeatedly cut him, he could believe himself a man; whereas here he might be no more than an object of exotic interest, of amusement even, tolerated because he was the friend of another and rather senior officer, and because there was scarcely any ill consequence in it. He liked the Sixth – not least for what he had seen of their capability in the field – and he liked London and Hounslow and Horningsham and everything he saw (almost) of England. But what if Hervey were to take command, especially of a reduced Sixth; what then would be his welcome – a too-frequent visitor, a hanger-on, a resented confidant of the colonel? In embracing the offer, did he not merely succumb to the worst of his self-indulgent side (of which he was all too aware, whatever appearances suggested otherwise)? Wasn’t it, albeit in a pretty minor way, a folie de grandeur ? Ought he to have quit the sphere, even if temporarily, in which he had been raised and in which he had found a comfortable niche at the Cape – not truly in trade, connected just enough with the product of his father’s plantation to give his enterprise respectability (he was concerned with selling, crucially, not buying)? Mislike me not for my complexion, the shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun – ha! Here it seemed they all liked him for his complexion. But it could not last. And, indeed – should it ever come to this – what would some English Portia say to his advances? He had once been crushed (he knew he bore the marks still) by such a one in Spanish Town.
    Sighing, he took up the Times again. His life had been that of the outsider, from the earliest days of his consciousness. Would it not be better that he sought a place where he did not mind that status, rather than here where he wished most fervently to be wholly a part of things?

V
    THE VOLUNTEER

    Later
    Luncheon was a quiet affair; there were but nine at mess. Even Myles Vanneck, captain of the one troop still in barracks, was out, hunting stag at Windsor. To Hervey it was another foretaste of the hollow life of a depot troop, as the regiment en cadre would become – and the more disagreeable for its being manifestly unwarranted. Why the Sixth? After the war with France it had made sense that so many of the regiments hurriedly raised to fight Bonaparte should be equally hurriedly disbanded, but then had followed corps which had served for sixty years and more – the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st Light Dragoons, regiments not much younger than his own, but which by some quirk of seniority (itself a somewhat precarious attribution) found themselves laying up their guidons. And now even seniority appeared to be no guarantee of preservation.
    But were there not grounds for hope? It was one thing to disband a regiment, as those had been, and another to reduce it in strength, with the implicit prospect of raising in strength at a later (he hoped not much later) date. Did he not dismay himself without cause therefore? He just wished he could be certain of it, for once a regiment were reduced to a ‘representative’ troop, it would be easier to remove it subsequently from the Army List: it would raise no great tumult in parliament to dismiss, say, a hundred or so half-forgotten dragoons. Indeed it appeared to be a process not unlike the hunting of Vanneck’s runnable stag – harboured, tufted, set at bay, despatched. It looked, at this moment, very much as if the Sixth were being harboured. If they were, could they outrun the tufters before fresh hounds were brought up? He began wondering if Bulgaria were not the very last place he should be; for with Lord George Irvine in Canada, and Lord Hol’ness in the north (and anyway soon to receive his promotion), who would see that the stag was allowed a free run?
    In one respect, however, he was