A Close Run Thing Read Free

battlefield!’
    The contempt was unequivocal, and Hervey might have anticipated its consequences had he not been so entirely exasperated by the lieutenant’s seemingly wilful ignorance of the affair with the enemy battery.
    ‘You are a damned impudent officer as well as a disobedient one; you will hand me your sword this instant!’
    Hervey’s jaw fell. ‘In the middle of a battle? Have you taken leave of your senses?’
    The contrast between the red jackets of the ADC and staff dragoons and the blue of Hervey’s regiment seemed to be intensifying the confrontation. Serjeant Armstrong spat and let out a string of oaths, but so thick was his Tyneside accent that Lieutenant Regan was not sure what he had heard. The staff dragoons recognized the tone well enough, though, and drew their sabres. Hervey shot an angry look at Armstrong, but it was another voice that was to quell what had by now become little short of a brawl, a voice infinitely more measured than Hervey was capable of at that moment.
    ‘Go to your post, Serjeant Armstrong,’ it commanded , in mellow tones of Suffolk. And then, with admirably contrived understatement: ‘Mr Hervey, sir, is there some difficulty?’
    Hervey’s composure began returning. The voice had often steadied him – steadied many of them – and more so now for its being unexpected.
    ‘Serjeant Strange, I am in arrest. General Slade appears to think we abandoned our post. Have you come with orders?’
    ‘No, sir,’ replied the troop serjeant, in a manner so matter-of-fact they could have been at a review, ‘only with a report of guns moving in the direction of your picket.’
    ‘Well, they do not move any longer,’ said Hervey with a sharp edge. ‘Look, Serjeant Strange, you had better take command. I will tell you briefly of the circumstances and then you must send someone to report to Major Edmonds.’
    Serjeant Strange listened impassively as Hervey gave a hasty account of the disabling of the battery.
    ‘I trust Mr Regan here will have that wound attended to properly and with all dispatch, sir?’ was all that Strange said in reply, turning to the ADC.
    Of course he would, said the lieutenant testily. ‘I do not need to be reminded of
my
business, thank you, Serjeant!’
    Serjeant Strange saluted, reined about and trotted over to the patrol, leaving Hervey feeling not a little awkward at his own intemperance compared with this non-commissioned officer’s bearing.
    Matthew Hervey was not invariably quick-tempered. Twenty-three years old, six years with the cavalry, most of it on active service, he still retained a surprising belief in humanity. But the proverbial wrath of the patient man could from time to time overwhelm his cautious instincts, a risky proclivity for an officer who valued his prospects: anyone who thought that survival in this war depended merely on fighting the enemy was naïve in the extreme. Jealousy, snobbery, intrigue and patronage were the preoccupations of men of ambition in the Marquess of Wellington’s army; and Hervey and others like him, decent officers with little but their ability to recommend them, were increasingly resentful of Wellington’s indifference to it all. Indeed, many believed he actively connived at it. But they remained wholly powerless to effect any change whatever; and, besides, they each had a stake in the system, however small, so long as their commissions were obtained by purchase and held their value.
    Lieutenant Regan’s dislike of Hervey, inasmuch as it could be rationally analysed, stemmed from just these preoccupations. Intensely jealous of the distinction which his campaign service might bring – though few would suppose that he envied the service itself – he regarded Hervey’s lack of means with open distaste. Six years’ service and still a cornet.
He
, Regan, had purchased
his
lieutenancy even before his regiment had seen him at a field day! And if he had known Hervey to be distantly related to the earls of