A Close Run Thing Read Online Free

the picket. He might as easily have resumed his place in front of his squadron, and with every propriety, for Edmonds had all but formally dismissed him; but Lankester had seen the storm cones hoisting and experience suggested that a weather eye would be prudent.
    ‘Captain Lankester, do you suppose that damned stupid fellow has the remotest idea what he is about?’
    ‘You refer to General Slade, sir?’
    ‘Indeed I do, sir, though I cannot claim any novelty in that description, as you very well know. It was Lord Uxbridge’s, and never has his opinion of Slade been more fully justified than during these several past months. What deuced ill-fortune has placed us in his brigade? And now it seems that his own staff are every bit as stupid as he!’
    ‘I think he has never recovered from the affair at Maguilla.’
    ‘I do not think that Wellington himself has recovered from Maguilla. The whole Maguilla business was absurd. A few of the Royals’ squadrons become over-excited, press on too far for their own good and get a fraction cut up, and Wellington says that all his cavalry are fit for is drilling on Wimbledon Common! What a confounded insult! What a—’ Yet another spasm contorted his face, and a string of expletives followed. ‘And now Slade tries to curb all vigour in his subordinates, and hangs the arse at any price rather than risk another of Wellington’s scoldings. The man’s fit only for a depot squadron!’
    ‘It has certainly made him cautious,’ Lankester agreed, with a greater disposition towards discretion.
    ‘Uxbridge at least would have been able to advocate a little more equanimity,’ continued Edmonds. And then, casting aside all reserve, he opined that if the Earl of Uxbridge had remained the cavalry commander for this second expedition to the Peninsula, instead of Sir Stapleton Cotton, Wellington might by now have been prevailed upon to have Slade dismissed. He could but wonder, he declared with a sigh, at the complicated web of patronage that made Wellington drive his army so hard and yet at the same time ignore such monstrous inaptitude.
    But he knew at least that it was a web, a web as unfathomable as that which was the Fates’. The strands might be barely discernible but they could hold a man like him fast; and, for all the twenty-five years which separated them, he and now Hervey were caught like worthless carrion while others who knew its secrets were able to traverse the delicate threads and go wherever they pleased. He had accepted it with remarkable forbearance during most of his service, but he had of late become of the mind that when skilfulness amounted to a disadvantage because of a superior’s resentment, then the web was no longer merely recondite – it was corrupt. Why it had taken him so long to reach this conclusion, when he pondered on it, puzzled him, for a full five years earlier he had had a taste of Slade’s ineptness. There, at Sahagun, he had deftly manoeuvred his own squadron while Black Jack, in action for the first time, had fiddle-faddled at the head of his brigade and almost let the French slip – and all this in front of Uxbridge too (who had never troubled to conceal his poor opinion of his subordinate). Edmonds’s mere proximity ever afterwards could excite Slade’s resentment, and that his subsequent advance to major had been by field promotion rather than by purchase (a manner of advancement that Slade had more than once in his hearing derided as fit only for officers from the ranks) had done nothing to assuage the general’s envy and detestation. Jealousy and snobbery, patronage and intrigue – the web.
    ‘By heaven,’ Edmonds sighed, ‘the French are nothing to fear compared with that blackguard.’
    ‘It has always occurred to me as singular that adultery should be grounds for dismissal during times of war.’
    Lankester’s proposition did not immediately reveal its sense to Edmonds, who was all but lost in contemplation of his brigade