Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service Read Online Free Page B

there.’
    Colonel Youell looked doubtful. ‘I am not sure that without due notice the commander-in-chief will receive an officer, Colonel Hervey. And a captain at that.’
    Had Youell simply voiced his perfectly reasonable reservation as to the propriety of an unscheduled call, Hervey would have taken no offence, but disregard on account of mere rank vexed him. He had the highest estimation of the Foot Guards, but occasionally their officers could show excessive attachment to form – especially when they had not been shot over. He could not check himself in replying truculently, ‘We shall see.’
    The remark brought a stifled groan from Youell: for his part, he never failed to be astonished by how little officers at regimental duty had regard for the difficulties under which the Horse Guards laboured. ‘Wait here, Colonel Hervey, if you will,’ he replied, with some weariness, gathering up a portfolio and moving to the door of the commander-in-chief’s office.
    Inside, Lord Hill was coming to the end of a memorandum from the chief secretary for Ireland. He looked up, took off his spectacles and said, with an appreciable sigh of relief, ‘The chief secretary is of the opinion that there is no need of reinforcement.’ He rubbed his eyes. He had been bracing himself for days in the expectation of having to find more troops for Ireland. ‘Leveson-Gower’s a most excellent fellow. Few in his place would have expressed themselves content, even knowing how damnably in want of men I am at this time. I would that the duke hastened his Relief bill and have done with the business. Or else vote me supply enough.’
    Colonel Youell considered that it was not his to reply. The Duke of Wellington, for a decade and a half the prime soldier of Europe, and for a year the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was no longer the bulwark of the old order. His bill for ‘the Relief of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects’ – which, not long before, he and his home secretary, Robert Peel, had so steadfastly set their face against – was daily expected on the floor of the House of Commons; as was disorder the length and breadth of the realm.
    ‘And for that matter I would that Peel hastened his Police bill. It’s all very well for the Secretary at War to be disbanding regiments of dragoons, but if Bow Street insists on patrols every day, how’s it to be done. Eh? And dragoons sent all over the country to keep the peace: what the deuce are those Yeomanry fellows about that they can’t scatter a few labourers?’
    ‘Indeed, my lord.’ Lord Hill’s question, Youell understood from experience, was entirely rhetorical. The commander-in-chief knew as well as he that the Yeomanry were all too adept at scattering labourers, as well as hand-loom weavers and even passably peaceful citizens of Manchester deluded enough to want to listen to Orator Hunt. The problem was that the yeoman seemed incapable of giving the flat of the sword rather than the edge. It was ten years since ‘Peterloo’, but they had not been ten years of any marked progress.
    Lord Hill shook his head, and sighed. ‘Very well, Youell; send Leveson-Gower my expressions of appreciation. Is that all?’
    ‘Colonel Hervey is here, my lord.’
    Lord Hill brightened at the sudden prospect of diversion. ‘Splendid. Where’s that despatch from Lord Bingham? I don’t recall reading it.’
    ‘I placed it on your table yesterday, my lord.’
    ‘Ah. Bingham is well, then, do we suppose?’
    ‘He is well, my lord. Quite recovered, it would seem from his despatch. But that we knew already.’
    Lord Hill became agitated. ‘Quite so. I do consider it highhanded of him to return to his estates in Ireland without presenting himself here first, no matter how turbulent the situation of his tenantry. And, indeed, so I understand, finding occasion to attend various drawing rooms before posting to Holyhead, telling all and sundry of his eastern