Читать книгу The Surgeon’s Mate - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8
ОглавлениеChapter One
The long harbour of Halifax in Nova Scotia on a long, long summer’s day, and two frigates gliding in on the tide of flood under their topsails alone: the first, since she had belonged to the United States Navy until a few days before, wore the Stars and Stripes under a white ensign; the second showed no more than her own shabby colours, for she was HMS Shannon, the winner in that short and bloody action with the Chesapeake.
The Shannon’s crew already had some notion of the welcome they should receive, because news of the victory had spread and dories, yachts, privateers’ boats and small craft of all kinds had met them beyond the distant harbour’s mouth, sailing along with them, waving their hats and bawling out ‘Bravo – huzzay – well done, Shannon – huzzay, huzzay!’ The Shannons took no great notice of the civilians, apart from a distant acknowledgement, a discreet wave from the watch below; but the small craft took great notice of them, and although the casual observer saw little to exclaim at in the Shannon herself, with most of her rigging new set up, a fresh suit of sails bent to her yards, and her paintwork at least as trim as it was when she set out from this same port some weeks ago, the more knowing eye of the privateersmen saw the deep wounds in her bowsprit and her masts, the mizzen fished with capstan-bars, the shot still lodged in her side and the plugs where they had gone through: yet even the most unobservant could not miss the gaping void in the Chesapeake’s stern and larboard quarter, where the Shannon’s full starboard broadside had raked her again and again, sending some five hundredweight of iron hurtling clean through her length at every blast. They did not of course see the blood of that savage conflict, the blood that had poured thick from the scuppers, for the Shannons had cleaned both ships and they had priddied the decks as far as they could; but even so, from the state of the masts and the yards and of the Chesapeake’s hull, any man who had seen action could imagine the slaughter-house look of the ships when the battle ended.
The Shannons, then, knew how they would be received, and the watch below had already contrived to slip into their best shore-going rig of glazed broad-brimmed hats with Shannon embroidered on the ribbon, bright blue jackets with brass buttons, loose white trousers with ribbons in the seams, and very small shining black pumps; but even so they were astonished by the prodigious volume of sound that met them as they neared the wharves – by the overlapping waves of cheers and then by the even louder, even more highly-valued, exactly-ordered cheering as they passed the men-of-war that lay in the harbour, each one with her yards and rigging manned all over, roaring in unison ‘Shannon, huzzay, huzzay, huzzay!’ so as to make the air and the sea under it tremble while the frigate slipped along on the height of the tide to pick up her familiar moorings. The whole of Halifax had turned out to greet them and their victory, the first victory in a war that had started so disastrously for the Royal Navy, with three proud frigates taken one after another by the Americans in single-ship actions, to say nothing of the smaller vessels: obviously the sailors were the most ecstatic – and their bitter pain at all these defeats could be measured by the hoarse enormity of their present joy – but the thousands and thousands of redcoats and civilians were delighted too, and young Mr Wallis, in command of the Shannon, could scarcely be heard when he gave the order to clew up.
Yet although the Shannons were pleased and astonished, they remained for the most part grave, gravely pleased: their deeply-respected captain lay between life and death in his cabin; they had buried their first lieutenant and twenty-two of their shipmates; and the sickbay, overflowing into the berth-deck, held fifty-nine wounded, many of them very near their end and some of them the most popular men in the ship.
When the port-admiral came up the side, therefore, he saw a sparse crew, togged to the nines but with a restraint upon them, and a thinly-peopled quarterdeck – few officers to greet him. ‘Well done, by God,’ he cried above the wail of bosun’s calls piping him aboard, ‘well done, the Shannon.’ And then, ‘Where is Captain Broke?’
‘Below, sir,’ said Mr Wallis. ‘Wounded, I regret to say. Very badly wounded in the head. He is barely conscious.’
‘Oh, I am sorry for that. Damme, I am sorry for that. Is he very bad? The head, you say? Are his intellects in trim – does he know about his famous victory?’
‘Yes, sir, he does. I believe that is what keeps him going.’
‘What does the surgeon say? Can he be seen?’
‘They would not let me in this morning, sir, but I will send below and ask how he does.’
‘Aye, do,’ said the Admiral. A pause. ‘Where is Mr Watt?’ – referring to the first lieutenant, once a midshipman of his.
‘Dead, sir,’ said Wallis.
‘Dead,’ said the Admiral, looking down. ‘I am most heartily sorry for it – a fine seamanlike officer. Did you suffer a great deal, Mr Falkiner?’
‘We lost twenty-three killed and fifty-nine wounded, sir, a quarter of our people: but Chesapeake had above sixty killed and ninety wounded. Her captain died aboard us on Wednesday. May I say, sir,’ he added in a low voice, ‘that my name is Wallis? Mr Falkiner is in command of the prize.’
‘Just so, just so,’ said the Admiral. ‘A bloody business, Mr Wallis, a cruel business: but worth it. Yes, by God, it was worth it.’ His eye ran along the clean, orderly, though scarred deck, the boats, two of them already repaired, up to the rigging, and lingered for a moment on the fished mizzen. ‘So you and Falkiner and what hands you had left brought them both in between you. You have done very well indeed, Mr Wallis, you and your shipmates. Now just give me a brief, informal account of the action: you shall put it in writing presently, if Captain Broke don’t recover in time for the dispatch; but for the moment I should like to hear it from your own mouth.’
‘Well, sir,’ began Wallis, and then paused. He could fight extremely well, but he was no orator; the Admiral’s rank oppressed him, so did the presence of an audience that included the only surviving American officer fit to stand – though even he was wounded. He brought out a lame, disjointed tale, but the Admiral listened to it with a glowing, visible delight, for with what he had heard before it fell into perfect shape, even more perfect than the rumours that had already reached him. What Wallis said confirmed all that he had heard: Broke, finding the Chesapeake alone in Boston harbour, had sent his consorts away, challenging her captain to come out and try the issue in the open sea. The Chesapeake had indeed come out in the most handsome, gallant manner: they had fought their battle fair and square, evenly matched, broadside to broadside, with no manoeuvring; and having swept the Chesapeake’s quarterdeck clear, killing or wounding almost all her officers in the first few moments, the Shannon had raked her, boarded her, and carried her. ‘And it was just fifteen minutes, sir, from the first gun to the last.’
‘Fifteen minutes, by God! That I did not know,’ said the Admiral; and after a few more questions he clapped his hands behind his back and paced up and down, silently digesting his satisfaction.
His eye caught a tall figure in a post-captain’s uniform standing by the Marine officers and he cried, ‘Aubrey! Why, it must be Aubrey, upon my life!’ He stepped forward with his hand outstretched: Captain Aubrey whipped his hat under his left arm, edged his right hand from its sling, and gave the Admiral’s as hearty a shake as he could. ‘I was sure I could not mistake that yellow hair,’ said the Admiral, ‘though it must be years … a wounded arm? I knew you was in Boston, but how come you here?’
‘I escaped, sir,’ said Jack Aubrey. ‘Well done,’ cried the Admiral again. ‘So you were aboard for this noble victory! That was worth an arm or two, by God. Give you joy with all my heart. Lord, how I wish I had been with you. But I am most damnably grieved for poor dear Watt, and for Broke. I must have a word with him, if the surgeon … Is your arm bad?’ – nodding towards the sling.
‘It was only a musket-ball in the Java action, sir. But here are the doctors, sir, if you wish to speak to them.’
‘Mr Fox, how d’ye do?’ said the Admiral, turning to the Shannon’s surgeon, who had just come up the main hatch-way with a companion, both of them in their working clothes. ‘And how is your patient? Is he fit to receive a visit, a short visit?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr Fox with a doubtful shaking of his head, ‘we dread any excitement or mental exertion at this stage. Do you not agree, colleague?’
His colleague, a small sallow man in a blood-stained black coat, dirty linen and an ill-fitting wig, said, ‘Of course, of course,’ in a somewhat impatient tone. ‘No visits can possibly be allowed until the draught has had its effect,’ and he was moving away without another word when Captain Aubrey took him by the elbow and said in a private voice, ‘Hold hard, Stephen: this is the Admiral, you know.’
Stephen looked at Aubrey with his strange pale eyes, redrimmed now after days and nights of almost incessant exertion, and said, ‘Listen now, Jack, will you? I have an amputation on my hands, and I would not pause to chat with the Archangel Gabriel himself. I have only stepped up to fetch my small retractor from the cabin. And tell that man not to talk so loud.’ With this he walked off, leaving nervous smiles behind him, anxious looks directed at the Admiral: but the great man did not seem at all put out. He gazed about the ship and over the water at the Chesapeake and his deep delight showed clear beneath his immediate concern for the Shannon’s captain and her missing officers and men. He asked Wallis for the muster-roll of the prisoners of war, and while it was being fetched he stood by an improvised hood over the cabin skylight with Jack Aubrey and said, ‘I know I have seen that face before; but I cannot put a name to it.’
‘He is Dr –’ began Captain Aubrey.
‘Stay. Stay. I have it. Saturnin – that’s the man. Admiral Bowes and I were calling at the palace to enquire after the Duke, and he came out and told us how he did. Saturnin: I knew I should get it.’
‘The very same man, sir. Stephen Maturin was called in to doctor Prince William, and I believe he saved him when all else had failed. A prodigious physician, sir, and my particular friend: we have sailed together since the year two. But I am afraid he is not quite used to the ways of the service yet, and he sometimes gives offence without intending it.’
‘Why, he is no great respecter of persons, to be sure; but I am not at all offended. I don’t take myself for God the Father, you know, Aubrey, although I have my flag; and anyhow, it would take a great deal to put me out of humour on such a day – Lord, Aubrey, such a victory! Besides, he must be a great man in the physical line, to be called in to the Duke. How I wish he may save poor Broke. Your servant, ma’am,’ he cried, gazing with respectful admiration at an extraordinarily elegant young woman who suddenly appeared from the temporary hood, carrying a basin and followed by a weary, blood-spattered surgeon’s assistant. She was pale, but in these surroundings her pallor suited her: it gave her a quite remarkable distinction.
‘Diana,’ said Captain Aubrey, ‘allow me to name Admiral Colpoys: my cousin Mrs Villiers. Mrs Villiers was in Boston, sir, and she escaped with Maturin and me.’
‘Your most humble, devoted, ma’am,’ said the Admiral, bowing. ‘How I envy you, having been in such a brilliant action.’
Diana put down her basin, curtsied, and replied, ‘Oh, sir, I was kept below stairs all the time. But how I wish,’ she said with a fine flash of her eye, ‘how I wish I had been a man, to board with the rest of them.’
‘I am sure you would have struck them dead, ma’am,’ said the Admiral. ‘But now you are here, you must take up your quarters with us. Lady Harriet will be delighted. Here is my barge, at your pleasure, if you choose to go ashore this minute.’
‘You are very good, Admiral,’ said Diana, ‘and I should be most happy to wait on Lady Harriet, but what I am about will keep me some hours yet.’
‘I honour you for it, ma’am,’ said the Admiral, for a glance at the basin showed the nature of her occupation. ‘But the moment you are ready, you must come up to the house. Aubrey, the moment Mrs Villiers is ready, you are to bring her up to the house.’ His beaming smile faded as a high quavering shriek, almost inhuman in its agony, came up from the sickbay, piercing the noise of cheering like a knife: but he had seen a great deal of action – he knew the price there was to pay – and with little less good humour he added, ‘That is an order, Aubrey, d’ye hear me?’ Then, turning to the young lieutenant he said, ‘Now Mr Wallis, let us go to our business.’
The hours had passed: Captain Broke had been carried to the Commissioner’s house and his wounded shipmates to the hospital, where those who were not out of their minds with pain lay peacefully enough by the wounded Chesapeakes, sometimes exchanging quids of tobacco and smuggled rum; the American prisoners of war had been taken out of their ship, the few surviving officers paroled and the men sent to the barracks; and the most wretchedly miserable of all, the British deserters captured in the Chesapeake, had been taken to prison, with no likelihood of leaving it except for a journey to the gallows. At present the cruellest face of war was no longer to be seen: joy and lively anticipation began to overcome thoughtfulness and grief in the frigate as neighbouring captains sent over parties of volunteers, men enough to provide a harbour-watch so that the Shannons might have a run ashore; and the newcomers’ gaiety, combining with the continuing shouts and yells from the wharves, made the younger liberty-men laugh aloud as they stood, treading on one another’s toes on the gangway, while their companions, moving carefully not to get tar on their gleaming ducks, hoisted out the boats.
‘Cousin Diana,’ said Jack Aubrey, ‘should you like to go ashore? I will hail Tenedos for her captain’s gig.’
‘Thank you, Jack,’ said she, ‘but I had rather wait for Stephen. He will not be long.’ She was sitting on a small green brass-studded trunk, the only thing she had brought with her in their hurried flight from Boston, and she was gazing out at Halifax over a shattered nine-pounder gun. Jack stood by her and gazed too, one foot on the carriage; but he gazed with no more than the shallowest surface of his attention, while the rest of his mind floated free. His whole being was suffused with deep happiness, for although this victory was none of his, he was a sea-officer through and through, wholly identified with the Royal Navy from his childhood, and the successive defeats of the last year had weighed upon him so that he had been hardly able to bear it. Now the burden was gone: the two ships had met in equal fight; the Royal Navy had won; the universe was restored to its true foundations; the stars had resumed their natural march; and as soon as he reached England there was every likelihood that he should have a command, the Acasta of forty guns, that would help to make their march more natural still. Then again, as soon as he was ashore he would run to the post for his letters: he had not heard from Sophie, his wife and Diana’s first cousin, all the time he had been a prisoner of war in Boston, and he longed to hear from her, longed to hear how the children did, longed to hear of his horses, the garden, the house … yet beneath all this there was a point, and more than a point, of anxiety. Although he was an unusually rich commander, an officer who had made more prize-money than most captains of his seniority – more indeed than many admirals – he had left his affairs in a highly complicated state, and their unravelling depended upon the honesty of a man whom neither Sophie nor his friend Maturin trusted at all. This man, a Mr Kimber, had promised Jack that the disused lead-mines on his land could be made to produce not only more lead but also a surprising amount of silver by a process known to Mr Kimber alone, thereby yielding a very handsome return indeed upon the initial outlay; yet the last letters that Captain Aubrey had ever received from his wife, far away in the East Indies, before he was captured by the Americans on his return voyage to England, had spoken not of yield, not of profit, but of obscure unauthorized doings on the part of Kimber, of very heavy new investments in roads, mining-equipment, a steam-engine, deep-sunk shafts … He longed to have this clarified; and he was tolerably confident that it would be clarified, for whereas Sophie and Stephen Maturin understood nothing of business, Jack had based his opinion upon solid facts and figures, not mere intuition: in any case, he had a far greater knowledge of the world than either of them. But more than that he longed to hear of his children, his twin daughters and his little son: George would be talking by now, and the want of news had been one of the hardest things to bear during his captivity; for not a single letter had come through. And most of all he wanted to see Sophie’s hand and to hear her voice at one remove: her last letters, dated before the American war, had reached him in Java and he had read them until they cracked at the folds, had read them again and again until they, with almost all his other possessions, had been lost at sea. Since then, no word. From a hundred and ten degrees of east longitude to sixty degrees west, almost half the world, and never a word. It was the sailor’s lot, he knew, with the packets and all other forms of transport so uncertain, but even so he had felt ill-used at times.
Ill-used by fate in general rather than by Sophie. Their marriage, firmly rooted in very deep affection and mutual respect, was far better than most; and although one of its aspects was not altogether satisfactory for a man of Jack Aubrey’s strong animal spirits, and although it might be said that Sophie was somewhat possessive, somewhat given to jealousy, she was nevertheless an integral part of his being. She was no more faultless than he was himself, and indeed there were moments when he found his own faults easier to excuse than hers; but all this was quite forgotten as his inner eye contemplated the parcel of letters that he would find waiting for him over the smooth water there in Halifax.
‘Tell me, Jack,’ said Diana, ‘did Sophie have a hard time of it, with her last baby?’
‘Hey?’ cried Jack, brought back from a great way off. ‘A hard time of it with George? I hope not, by – I hope not, indeed. She did not mention it at all. I was in Mauritius at the time. But I believe it can be very bad.’
‘So they tell me,’ said Diana: and after a pause, ‘Here is Stephen.’
A few minutes later the boat was alongside, and they made their farewells to the Shannon rather than her people, for they would all meet again on shore in the course of the festivities that would follow the victory – the Admiral had already spoken of a ball. Diana refused Wallis’s offer of a bosun’s chair and ran down after Stephen as lithe and nimble as a boy, while the boat’s crew stared woodenly out into the offing, lest they should see her legs; but she did call out to beg that those on deck might take great care of her trunk. ‘It is my all, you know, my little all,’ she said, smiling up into Mr Wallis’s enchanted face.
They made a curious group there in the stern-sheets as the boat pulled for the shore, a group bound together by strong, intricate relationships; for not only had the two men competed for her liking in the past so that it had very nearly broken their friendship, but Diana had been the great love of Stephen’s life, his prime illusion. She had thrown him over in India in favour of an American, a very wealthy man called Johnson, whose company she found increasingly unpleasant on their arrival in the States and, after the declaration of war, quite intolerable. It was when Maturin reached Boston as a prisoner of war that they came together again and that he found that although he still admired her spirit and beauty, it was as though his heart were numb. What changes in her or in himself had brought this about he could not tell for sure; but he did know that unless his heart could feel again the mainspring of his life was gone. However, they had escaped together, reaching the Shannon in a boat; and they were engaged to be married, an engagement that Stephen felt to be her due, if only as a means of recovering her nationality, and one that to his astonishment she seemed to welcome, although up until this time he had thought her the most intuitively perceptive woman of his acquaintance. Indeed, but for the battle they would already have been man and wife by the law of England if not by that of the Catholic church (for Maturin was a Papist), since Philip Broke had been about to exercise his powers as a captain and marry them at sea, and Diana would have been a British subject once more, instead of a paper American.
Yet in spite of these currents of feeling beneath the surface they talked very cheerfully and calmly all the way to the landing-place and up to the Admiral’s house, where they parted like old friends, Jack to report to the Commissioner and then to see about his post and their lodgings, and Stephen to an unnamed destination with a sailcloth parcel under his arm, his only baggage, while Diana remained with the short-legged, good-natured Lady Harriet Colpoys.
Stephen did not name his destination, but if they had reflected neither of his companions would have had much difficulty in guessing it. In the course of their long service together it had necessarily come to Captain Aubrey’s knowledge that although Dr Maturin was certainly an eminent medical man who chose to sail as a ship’s surgeon for the opportunities of making discoveries in natural philosophy (his chief passion, second only to the overthrow of Buonaparte), he was also one of the Admiralty’s most prized intelligence agents; while immediately before their escape Diana had seen him remove the papers that his parcel contained from the rooms that she and Mr Johnson occupied in Boston, explaining his action by the statement that they would interest an intelligence officer he happened to know in Halifax. Stephen was perfectly aware of this, but the long-established habit, the second nature of extreme discretion to which he owed his continuing existence made him non-committal in all circumstances; it also caused him to take a roundabout way to the office of his correspondent, looking in shop windows and taking full advantage of those that showed the street behind him. It was an automatic precaution, but here it was an unusually necessary one, for as he knew better than any man in Halifax there were several American agents in the town; and Johnson’s fury at being robbed of both his mistress and his papers would urge him to make extraordinary efforts in the way of revenge.
However, he reached the office unfollowed, with an easy mind, and sent in his name. Major Beck, the Marine in charge of intelligence on the North American station, received him at once. They had not met before and Beck looked at him with lively curiosity: Dr Maturin had a great reputation in the department as one of the few wholly voluntary agents who were also wholly effective, wholly professional; and although Maturin’s mixed Irish-Catalan parentage meant that he was primarily an expert on Catalan affairs, Beck knew that the Doctor had recently accomplished the feat of decimating the ranks of the French service by means of false, compromising information conveyed to Paris in all good faith by the Americans. Seeing that this concerned his own field, Beck was officially acquainted with it; but he had also heard vaguer, less official accounts of other equally remarkable coups in Spain and France, and he found that he was most illogically disappointed by the meagre, shabby, undistinguished man who sat on the other side of the desk, slowly undoing a sailcloth parcel. Against all reason Beck had expected a more heroic figure: certainly not one who wore blue spectacles against the sun.
Stephen’s reflexions were equally unflattering. He observed that Beck was an obscurely misshapen fellow with watery goggling eyes, spare sandy hair, no chin, a prominent Adam’s apple, and, in spite of an intelligent forehead, the settled look of a man who fitted nowhere. ‘Are we all, always, so distorted?’ he wondered, thinking of some of his other colleagues.
They talked for a while about the victory, Beck speaking with an enthusiasm that brought colour to his unhealthy thin-skinned yellow face and Stephen steadily disclaiming any particular knowledge of the action: he had been below from the first gun to the last: he knew nothing of the evolutions, nor was he able to speak to the number of British deserters serving in the American ship or of the means employed to seduce them. Beck seemed disappointed.
‘I received your warning about the Frenchmen in Boston,’ said Stephen, struggling with a knot, ‘and I thank you for it. I was able to meet them with a mind prepared.’
‘I trust there was no unpleasantness, sir? Durand is said to be a most unscrupulous, determined officer.’
‘Pontet-Canet was worse: a busy, troublesome fellow that gave me real uneasiness for a while. But, however, I clapped a stopper over his capers.’ Dr Maturin was proud of his nautical expressions: sometimes he got them right, but right or wrong he always brought them out with a slight emphasis of satisfaction, much as others might utter a particularly apt Greek or Latin quotation. ‘And brought him up with a round stern,’ he added. ‘Would you have a knife, at all? This string is really not worth the saving.’
‘How did you do that, sir?’ asked Beck, passing a pair of scissors.
‘I cut his throat,’ said Maturin, shearing through the string. Major Beck was used to bloodshed in open and in clandestine war, but his visitor’s everyday, unemphatic tone struck a chill to his heart, the more so as Maturin happened to take off his spectacles at this moment, glancing at Beck with his expressionless pale eyes, the only remarkable thing about him.
‘Now, sir,’ said Stephen, the documents unwrapped at last, ‘you are no doubt acquainted with Mr Harry Johnson’s role in American intelligence?’
‘Oh yes, indeed.’ Beck could not be unaware of his chief opponent’s activities in Canada: from the first days of his appointment he had been struggling against Johnson’s well-organized, well-supplied network of agents.
‘Very well. These are papers that I took from his desk and strong-box in Boston. The Frenchmen were consulting them when I put an end to their machinations.’ He laid them one by one on the Major’s desk: a list of American agents in Canada and the West Indies, with comments; ciphers to be used on various occasions; letters to the Secretary of State containing a detailed account of the past and present relationships between the French and American intelligence services; remarks on his French colleagues’ characters, abilities, and intentions; projects for future operations; a full appreciation of the British position on the Great Lakes…
By the time the last document took its place on the desk Dr Maturin had reached and surpassed the heroic stature expected of him. Major Beck gazed over the heap of papers with deep respect, with something not far removed from awe. ‘It is the completest thing,’ he said, ‘the completest thing that ever I heard tell of. A clean sweep, by God! This first list alone will keep a firing-squad busy for weeks. I must digest the whole mass. These will be my bedside companions for many a night.’
‘Not these documents themselves, sir, if you will allow me. Sir Joseph and his cryptographers must have them –’ the Major bowed at Sir Joseph’s name, ‘ – and I propose carrying the greater part to London by the first ship that offers. Copies, by all means, although that raises certain problems too, as you know very well. However, before we discuss the copying or indeed anything else, I have an observation to make: an observation and a request. Have you heard of Mrs Villiers?’
‘Diana Villiers, Johnson’s mistress, a renegade English-woman?’
‘No, sir,’ said Stephen, with a cold, unwinking look. ‘No, sir. Mrs Villiers was not Johnson’s mistress: she merely accepted his protection in a foreign land. Nor is she in any conceivable way a renegade. Not only did they disagree most bitterly when he attempted to enlist her in the war against her own country, but it was owing to her that I came into possession of these documents. I should be sorry to hear her name used lightly.’
‘Yet, sir,’ said Beck after a moment’s hesitation, ‘and I speak under correction, without intending the least disrespect to the lady, it appears that she took out papers of naturalization in the States.’
‘That was a thoughtless act, one that she regarded as a trifling formality without the least real effect upon her natural allegiance. It was very strongly represented to her, that the process would facilitate Mr Johnson’s divorce.’ Stephen observed a certain knowingness or fellow-feeling or even connivance in the Major’s eye; he frowned, and went on in a colder tone, ‘But since she is technically an enemy alien, sir, I wish to observe – I wish to state it as my considered opinion, that the usual certificate should be made out in her favour, as to one of our people; although at the same time I may point out that she has little or no notion of my connexion with the department. I have brought her with me, and apart from all other considerations it would not be fitting that she should be molested, or made uneasy in any way.’
‘Directly, sir,’ said Major Beck, ringing a bell. ‘I am glad you told me,’ he said. ‘Archbold would certainly have laid her by the heels before nightfall. We have had any number of females – however, the lady in question belongs to quite another category.’ His assistant came in, a man quite as ugly as Major Beck, with rather more of that indefinable appearance of hidden deformity, but with much less of his apparent intelligence. ‘Mr Archbold,’ said the Major, ‘an X certificate in the name of Mrs Villiers, if you please.’ The paper came, Beck completed it with an official wafer and his signature and passed it over, saying, ‘But you will allow me to observe, sir, that this is valid only for my own region. If the lady were to return to England, there might be very considerable difficulties.’
Stephen could have retorted that he intended to do away with these difficulties by marrying Diana and making her a British subject again; but he preferred keeping his own counsel. In any case, he was very, very tired, both from the extraordinary exertions at the time of his escape and from his almost continual surgical activity aboard both ships ever since the battle. He made no reply, therefore, and after a short silence Beck said, ‘I believe, sir, you mentioned a request?’
‘I did. It is that you will authorize the paymaster to accept a draft on my London banking-house. I have an immediate and pressing need for money.’
‘Oh, as for money, Dr Maturin,’ cried Major Beck, ‘I beg you will not trouble with the paymaster and his seven and a half per cent and all the paper-work. I have funds here at my disposal that can deal with any difficulty of that kind at once. They are intended to procure information, and for a single one of these documents, I should be fully justified in…’
‘You are very good, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘but I must tell you that from the very beginning of my connexion with the department I have never accepted a Brummagem ha’penny for anything that I was able to do, or to produce. No. A note to the paymaster will answer perfectly, if you will be so kind. And perhaps you would let me have a couple of discreet able-bodied men: the frontier is no great way off, and until you have dealt with the agents named in Mr Johnson’s list, I should not choose to wander about Halifax alone.’
Preceded by one discreet man, six foot tall, followed by another, and accompanied by a third, Stephen walked to the paymaster’s office, transacted his business, came out with a comfortable bulge in his pocket, and stood for a while in thought. Then, followed by his companion, he took a few irresolute steps down the street before stopping at a corner. ‘I am at a stand,’ he said.
‘Sir?’ said his guardian.
‘I am at a stand. I do not know where I lodge.’
The street was almost empty, since all those who could get away were down at the harbour, staring at the Shannon and the Chesapeake: in this virtual desert the two other men did their best to be inconspicuous, loitering in negligent attitudes, quite detached; but they soon caught their colleague’s nod, and joined him on the corner. ‘The gentleman is at a stand,’ he said. ‘He does not know where he is staying.’
They all looked at Stephen. ‘Has he forgot the name of his hotel?’ suggested one.
‘Have you forgot the name of your hotel, sir?’ asked the first man, bending down to speak in Stephen’s ear. Stephen ran his hand along his bristly jaw, deep in thought, trying to overcome his weariness of mind.
‘He is probably staying at Bailey’s,’ said another. ‘That is where most of the physical gentlemen put up.’
‘Is it Bailey’s, sir?’ asked the first, bending again.
‘White’s? Brown’s? The Goat and Compasses?’ said the others, addressing not Dr Maturin but their companion.
‘I have it,’ cried Stephen. ‘I have the solution. Pray conduct me to the place where the officers receive their letters.’
‘We must hurry, then,’ said the first man. ‘We must even run, sir. They will be closed, else.’ And some minutes, some few hundred yards later he said, panting, ‘There. I was afraid of it. The blinds are drawn.’
The blinds were drawn, but the door was on the jar; and even if it had been tightly shut Captain Aubrey’s strong sea-going voice would still have spread far out into the street. ‘What the devil do you mean with your “after hours”, you idle young hound?’ he was asking. ‘As God’s my life…’
When Stephen opened the door the sound increased, and he perceived that Jack had the young man by the frill of his shirt, that he was shaking him to and fro and calling him ‘an infernal b –’.
The shirt frill came adrift and Jack turned to Stephen. ‘He says it is after hours,’ he cried.
‘It is not only that, sir,’ said the clerk to Stephen, as to a saviour, ‘but Mr Gittings has the keys. There ain’t nothing in the waiting rack and I can’t open the strong-box without I have the keys, it stands to reason.’ He wiped his tears on his sleeve and added, ‘And there’s nothing in it for Captain Aubrey neither, I could pledge my sacred word: though always willing to oblige any gentleman that treats us civil.’
Stephen contemplated the strong-box. It was an old-fashioned affair with a common tumbler lock and it would probably not resist his solicitations more than a few minutes; but this was neither the time nor the place to display his talents. He said, ‘I am happy to find you, Captain Aubrey. The name of our inn, or hotel, has escaped my mind, and I am mortally fatigued. I would give all I possess to go to bed.’
‘You certainly look uncommonly fagged,’ said Jack, dropping the shirt frill. ‘Quite done up. We are at the Goat, and I will take you there directly. Harkee, sir,’ to the clerk, in a last burst of disappointed fury, ‘I shall be here first thing tomorrow, d’ye hear me, there?’
In the street Stephen thanked his escort, sending him back with his best compliments to Major Beck, and he and Jack walked on alone.
‘A miserable goddam afternoon,’ said Jack. ‘Disappointments at every turn – a heroes’ welcome, truly. The town is crammed with soldiers, and I could only get one room between us at the Goat.’
‘That is bad,’ said Stephen, who had often shared a cabin with Captain Aubrey, perhaps the most resounding snorer in the service.
‘Then when I went up the hill to report, the Commissioner was not in the way. There were a good many men waiting for him: we gossiped for a while and I learnt a damned unpleasant thing or two. Harte is back on the Board of Admiralty, and that fellow Wray is made acting second secretary.’
‘Mother of God,’ said Stephen to himself, and well he might: Jack, as a lively bachelor in Minorca, had cuckolded Mr Harte repeatedly, and cuckolds were likely to use their horns even long after their receipt; while Jack had also publicly, justly, accused Mr Wray, a person even then high in Government employ, of cheating at cards. It was an accusation that Wray had not seen fit to resent in the usual manner at the time, but it was not likely that he would stomach it for ever.
‘I waited as long as I could, but then when I reached the office at a brisk run – and I can tell you, Stephen, that brisk running, at my age, ain’t what it used to be – all I found was another disappointment. A miserable goddam afternoon.’
‘Ooh-hoo, husband,’ said a pretty whore in the twilight. ‘Come with me and I will give you a kiss.’
Jack smiled, shook his head, and walked on. ‘Did you notice she called me husband?’ he said after a few paces. ‘They often do. I suppose marriage is the natural state, so that makes it seem less – less wrong.’
The word marriage reminded Stephen that he had meant to take Beck’s certificate, that necessary document, to a priest and arrange for his wedding with Diana; but he could at present scarcely drag himself along – all the weariness of the last few days was rising in him like an overwhelming fog, now that the interminable crisis was past. All that survived was the spirit of contradiction. He said, ‘Not at all. On the contrary, as one of your great men of the past age observed, it is so far from natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.’
‘Hark,’ said Jack, pausing in his stride. Down by the harbour a band had begun Heart of Oak, and a great concourse of people were either chanting the words or cheering. Smoke and the rosy glow of torches could be seen above the roofs, and suddenly the flames themselves came into sight, crossing the far end of their street – an unofficial procession of seamen and civilians, leaping and capering as they passed the narrow gap, and on every hand more people were hurrying down to join it, among them the pretty whore.
Good humour came flooding back into Aubrey’s face. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘That’s more like a heroes’ welcome. Lord, Stephen, I am so happy, these little vexations apart. And tomorrow, when I have Sophie’s letters, I shall be happier still. Listen. There is another band striking up.’
‘All I ask,’ said Stephen, ‘is that they should welcome their heroes at a decent distance from the Goat – that they should not strike up within a furlong of the inn. Though the Dear knows, I believe I should sleep through ten bands playing in the corridor.’
They may well have played there, or at least outside his window, for the Shannons celebrated their victory as wholeheartedly as they had won it, and Halifax rocked with the sound of their merriment until dawn and beyond; but Dr Maturin lay like a log until a sunbeam, darting through his bed-curtains, teased him into wakefulness at last. His body was beautifully limp, perfectly comfortable; his mind was rested, calm, relaxed; he would have moved out of the beam and lain there browsing among his thoughts, perhaps dropping off again, if he had not heard a somewhat artificial cough, the cough of one who does not wish to wake his companion but rather to advertise his presence if waking has already taken place.
He pushed the curtains aside and met Jack’s eye, his surprisingly sombre eye. Jack was standing by the window, looking unnaturally tall, even taller than usual, and Stephen observed that this was because he had taken off his sling and the arm hanging down by his side changed his proportions. He smiled on seeing Stephen, wished him a good morning, or rather afternoon, and said, ‘I have some letters for you.’
Stephen considered for a moment. At least some part of Jack’s sad appearance arose from the fact that he was wearing a broad black band of crape on his arm; but there was more to it than that. ‘What’s o’clock?’ he asked.
‘Just turned of noon, and I must be away,’ said Jack, giving him a small bundle of letters.
‘You have been up a great while, I make no doubt,’ said Stephen. He looked at the covers without much interest.
‘Yes. I was at that God-damned office the moment they opened their doors. Their chief was away, but even so I made them rummage the place from top to bottom – such disorder you would not credit – but never a word for me.’
‘Several packets have been taken by the Americans, or lost at sea, brother.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Jack. ‘But even so … however, whining will do no good. Then I reported to the Commissioner. He was very civil, very welcoming, and he gave me good news of Broke – had been sitting up for an hour, talking quite rationally, and may be able to write his own dispatch. And he asked me to dinner after the funeral: but I noticed he felt uneasy, and after a good deal of backing and filling out it came. I am not to have Acasta, but am to go home. I was away too long, and she has been given to Robert Kerr.’
The Acasta was a particularly fine forty-gun frigate, one of the few that could be considered a match for the heavy Americans, and Stephen knew how Jack had looked forward to commanding her in these waters. He looked for some words that might soften the blow, but finding none he said, ‘I am grieved for you, Jack. But listen, if you feel the least pain or throbbing in that arm, you are to put it up – you are to put it in your bosom.’ He stretched, gaped, took off his nightcap, and said, ‘You spoke of a funeral?’
‘Yes, of course. You are not awake, Stephen. We bury poor Lawrence of the Chesapeake.’
‘Should I come too? I can be ready in a moment. I should be very willing to show the respect I feel, if it is usual.’
‘No, the custom is only men of the same rank, apart from those detailed to attend and his own officers. Stephen, I must go. Tell me, did you get any money? I shall not have time between the funeral and the dinner, and I should like to do the proper thing as soon as possible.’
‘It is in my coat-pocket, hanging behind the spence.’
Jack plucked out the roll of bank-notes, peeled off what he needed, called out ‘Thankee, Stephen,’ buckled on his sword and ran down the stairs.
All the post-captains in Halifax were gathering on the gun-wharf: he knew most of them, but he only had time to greet one or two before the clock struck; exact to the minute the coffin came ashore with its escort of Marines, and the cortège formed behind it, the few American officers who could walk, the soldiers, the captains two by two, the generals and the Admiral.
They marched to the sound of a muffled drum, and the cheerful streets fell silent as they came. Jack had taken part in many processions of this kind, some of them very poignant indeed – shipmates, close friends, a cousin, his own officers or midshipmen – but he had never regretted an enemy commander as he regretted Lawrence, a man quite after his own heart, who had brought his ship into action and had fought her in the handsomest manner. The steady beat, the marching steps in time, caused his bitter disappointments of this morning to fade from his mind; and the exactly-ordered ceremony, the chaplain’s ritual words, and the rattle of earth on the coffin, made him very grave indeed. The firing party’s volley, the last military honours, jerked him from his thoughts, but not from his gravity. Although death was so much part of his calling, he could not get rid of the image of Captain Lawrence standing there on his quarterdeck just before the first devastating broadsides; and he found the reviving cheerfulness among his companions particularly jarring. It was not that their respect for the dead man was feigned, nor that their formal bearing until the time the gathering broke up was hypocritical, but their respect was for an unknown, though certainly brave and able commander – respect for the abstract enemy, for officerlike conduct.
‘You knew him, I believe?’ said his neighbour, Hyde Parker of the Tenedos.
‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘He came to see me in Boston. He had captured one of my officers when he took the Peacock, and he was very kind to him. He commanded their Hornet, you know: a fine, gallant fellow. As gallant as you could wish.’
‘Ay,’ said Hyde Parker, ‘that’s the devil of it. But you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you know; you can’t have a victory that counts without a butcher’s bill. And this is a noble victory, by God! I doubt I have ever been so happy as when I saw Shannon bringing in her prize; certainly I have never cheered so loud or long in all my days. I am as hoarse as a corn-crake still.’
The general happiness that filled the naval base was even more evident at the Commissioner’s splendid dinner; it flowed into Jack once again as he sat there after the cloth was drawn, going over every move in that memorable action, showing his enraptured fellow-sailors each sail set, each piece of rigging carried away, each movement of the two frigates, with the help of a pair of models brought up from the dockyard.
It was equally apparent at the port-admiral’s, with a gay and sprightly Colpoys who sang as he went up the stairs, and a cheerful, talkative mistress of the house, intensely pleased with life in spite of the anxieties of the great ball she was to give at such short notice. The universal lightness of heart had infected Diana too – few women loved a ball more than she – and she greeted Stephen most affectionately, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘I am so glad you are come,’ she said. ‘Now I can give you your card instead of sending it. I have been helping Lady Harriet write them since breakfast time. Half the Navy List, and countless soldiers.’
‘My card?’ said Stephen, holding it at a distance, with a suspicious look.
‘Your card for the ball, my dear. The ball, you know: a vast great party where people dance. You can dance, Stephen, can you not?’
‘After my own fashion. The last time I danced was at Melbury Lodge, during the peace. You were good enough to stand up with me, and we walked through a minuet without disgrace. I hope you will be so kind again.’
‘Alas, Stephen, I cannot come. I have nothing to wear. But I shall watch from the gallery; you shall bring me an ice from time to time, and we can abuse the dancers.’
‘Did you bring nothing in your little trunk?’
‘Oh, there was no time to choose, and I did not have my wits about me. Apart from jewels, I just threw in some shifts and stockings – whatever came to hand. And anyhow, I could not have told that I should be invited to a ball.’
‘There are mantua-makers in Halifax, Villiers.’
‘Halifax mantua-makers,’ said Diana, laughing heartily – the first time he had heard her laugh since they met in America; it moved his heart strangely. ‘No. In this desert there would be only one hope. Lady Harriet has a very clever Frenchwoman who smuggles things from Paris: she brought a whole mass this morning, and among them there was a blue lutestring we both admired. Lady Harriet could not wear it, of course; it has sleeves to here and precious little back or front and as she said herself, she would look like a monument. She chose a wicked merde d’oie muslin, but at least it covers her entirely, and they are letting it out for her at this minute. I should have bought the blue, but Madame Chose asks the earth, and I must make the five cents I brought with me last and last. Do you know, my dear, I positively darned a pair of stockings last night. If this were London or Paris or even Philadelphia I should sell a couple of pearls: the rope is unstrung. But there is nothing but pinchbeck and filigree in this desert. The one thing I really do understand is jewels, and it would be desperate nonsense to sell any of them in Halifax. The Nawab’s pearls in Halifax! Can you conceive such a thing?’
In any other woman her words would have been a flat demand, and a tolerably coarse one at that; with Diana this was not the case. She had, and as long as Stephen had known her she always had had, a perfectly direct way of talking to him, with no reserve, nothing devious about it, as though they were people of the same kind or even in a way confederates; and she was genuinely surprised when he said, ‘We are in funds. I drew upon London, and you must certainly have your lutestring gown. Let us send for it at once.’
It came; it was approved; and Madame Chose retired with her swingeing price. Diana held the dress in front of her, peering intently into the looking-glass over the fire. She was not in looks, but the frank delight in a new dress, almost entirely unaffected by years of an unusually wealthy life, gave her a fine animation. Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned. ‘The top is sadly uninspired,’ she said, nodding at the mirror. ‘It was meant to be set off with something: pearls, I dare say. I shall wear my diamonds.’
Stephen looked down. The diamonds, a rivière of diamonds with an astonishing pale-blue pendant stone in the middle, had been given to Diana by Johnson in their early days: by some mental process of her own she had entirely dissociated them from their source; Stephen had not. His pain was not the piercing thrust of jealousy but rather a certain grief at hearing her say something crass. He had always taken it for granted that whatever Diana might actually do, her tact was infallible and that she could not, without intending it, say anything that would give offence. Perhaps he had been mistaken: or perhaps this long stay in America, living only among the loose, expensive set of Johnson’s friends, together with her distress, had coarsened her for the time, just as it had given her a hint of a colonial accent and a taste for bourbon and tobacco … a refuge in coarseness, as it were. But then again, he reflected, Johnson had certainly taken the diamonds back, and Diana, recovering them and escaping with them at great risk, might well feel that she had thereby established an independent title to the jewels, much as one pirate overcoming another pirate would appropriate his goods with a tranquil mind, whatever their provenance. He looked up, and said, ‘Might they not look a little excessive in what is, after all, a provincial gathering?’
‘Not at all, Maturin,’ said she. ‘There are several women of fashion here, apart from the rest. Many of the soldiers’ wives have followed them – I saw at least half a dozen names I knew when I was addressing the cards – and there are some among the sailors: Mrs Wodehouse, for example, and Charlotte Leveson-Gower, and Lady Harriet herself. She may be no Aphrodite, but she has emeralds as big as soup-plates and she is determined to wear ’em all, together with everything else her bosom can contain; which is not inconsiderable.’
The first stab past, Stephen did not care one way or another: in any case, Diana no doubt understood these things better than he did; she had kept very good or at least very fashionable company in London and India. He felt in his pocket and brought out some papers: the first was not the one he was looking for, but he smiled when he saw it and instead of putting it back he said, ‘This came for me this morning, and whimsically enough I had been dreaming of Paris not half an hour before.’ He passed the letter over.
‘They ask you to address the Institut de France – Lord, Stephen, I had no idea you were such a great man. They want you to tell them about the extinct avifauna of Rodriguez. What is an avifauna?’
‘Birds.’
‘What a pity you cannot go. You would have enjoyed it so. I suppose they took you for a neutral, or an American.’
‘Yet perhaps I shall go too. As you see, the date is well ahead, and if we can take a reasonably expeditious vessel, I believe I shall go. This is their second invitation, and the last time I regretted not being there extremely. It is perhaps the most flattering honour I have received, and I should meet some of the most interesting men in Europe. The Cuviers are sure to be there, and I have some remarks on the antarctic cetaceans that will amaze Frédéric.’
‘But how can you possibly go? How can you possibly go to Paris in the middle of a war?’
‘Oh, as for that, with the proper consent and safe-conducts, there is no difficulty. Natural philosophy does not regard this war, or any other, with very close attention, and interchange is quite usual. Humphry Davy went and addressed them on his chloride of nitrogen, for example; and he was much caressed. But that is not what I meant to talk about.’ He took up the second cover and laid it on the table before her, saying with some embarrassment, ‘This is for pins.’
‘Pins, Stephen?’ cried she, astonished.
‘I have always understood that women required a reasonable sum for pins.’
‘Stephen,’ – laughing with pleasure – ‘you are blushing. Upon my word and honour, you are absolutely blushing: I never thought to see you blush. No. It is infinitely kind of you, but you have been far too kind already. I have a hundred and twenty-five dollars, plenty for pins. Keep it, Stephen dear, and I promise I will tell you when I am quite penniless.’
‘Well,’ said Stephen, taking up his third paper. ‘Now here is a certificate for you, stating that although you are an enemy alien you may be admitted to Canadian soil and that you may remain upon it while of good behaviour.’
‘Oh, I shall behave quite beautifully,’ she said, laughing again. ‘But what nonsense it is, Stephen: I am on Canadian soil already. I have always thought papers and legal formalities great nonsense, but I have never seen such a simple one as this. During His Majesty’s pleasure,’ she read, ‘and his poor dear old Majesty has not the least notion I am here. Oh, what stuff !’
‘No, but his servants have. I tell you in all sad sober earnest, Villiers, this is an important document. Without it you would have been taken away, Admiral or no Admiral. It is known that in law you are an American citizen, and as such you would ordinarily be placed under restraint: perhaps sent back again.’
‘Who cares for the law and quibbles of that kind? Anyone can tell that I am perfectly English and always have been and always shall be. But tell me, how did you get it?’
‘Sure, I went to the proper quarters, to the officer that deals with things of this kind.’
‘It was so kind of you to think of it,’ she said: then she cried, ‘Oh, Stephen, I had quite forgot,’ – and he could have sworn the thought passed from his head to hers – ‘were they pleased with the papers you brought from Boston? I remember you told me they were for an army intelligence officer here. How I hope they were useful to him.’
‘Alas, it appears that they were more in the political than the military line. They are not without a certain value, I am told, but it seems that I could have chosen much better. I should not make much of an intelligence-agent, I am afraid.’
‘No,’ said Diana, laughing. ‘I cannot imagine anyone less suited for it. Not that you are not intelligent, dear Maturin,’ she added with a kind look. ‘In your way you are one of the most intelligent men I know, but you would be far happier among your birds. To think of you as a spy – oh, Lord!’ Amusement turned her a fine rosy pink. He had rarely seen Diana so gay.
‘Will you give me the certificate, now?’ he said. ‘I must show it to the priest. He cannot marry us without it. Would Friday suit you, Friday morning, quite early in the day? You would not wish much ceremony, as I suppose; but Jack can give you away, and then you will be a British subject once more.’
All the gaiety was gone from her face, completely gone, leaving it pale: an ill-looking, somewhat earthy pallor. She started up, walked to and fro, and then stood by the long window looking out into the garden, twisting the paper as she stood.
‘But now I have the certificate, what is the hurry?’ she said. ‘What does it matter, all these formalities? Do not think I don’t want to marry you … it is only that … Stephen, make me one of your little paper cigars, will you?’
He took out a cigar, cut it in two, and made two small rolls in a fine leaf from his pocket-book, one for her and one for himself. He held up an ember for her to light it, but she said, ‘No. I cannot smoke here. Lady Harriet might come in. I do not want her to think – to know – that she is harbouring a dissolute dram-drinking tobacco-smoking creature. Light yours and come into the garden: I will smoke it there. You know, Stephen,’ she said, opening the french window, ‘ever since you told me about bourbon and complexion, I have not drunk a drop of anything but wine, and precious little of that; but by God I could do with a drink now.’
In the secluded shrubbery they paced side by side, and a thin cloud of smoke followed them. She said, ‘With all this hurry – the business of the ball – gossiping with Lady Harriet – worrying about what to wear – I was quite out of myself. I forgot where I was. Maturin, do not be disappointed when I say I should like to wait.’ A pause. ‘You are the only man I have known who never asks questions, who is never impertinent even when he has the right to be.’ She was looking at the ground, her head drooping; and although he had known her many years, in many states of temper and mind, he had never seen her in such distress or confusion. She was standing with the sun full on her and his penetrating, objective eye examined her downcast face; but before he had time to say ‘Not at all’ or ‘As you please, entirely’ a footman came stumping into sight at the end of the gravel walk and called out in a strong voice, ‘The Honourable Mrs Wodehouse and Miss Smith to see you, ma’am.’
Diana threw Stephen a quick, apologetic glance and ran into the house. She might be in a strange hurry of spirits, but she moved with the perfect, unconscious grace that had always touched him, and he felt a wave of tenderness, allied to his former passionate love; perhaps its ghost.
The footman was still standing there, his wooden leg firmly planted in the gravel, waiting for Stephen: that is to say, a person dressed as a footman in the Admiral’s hideous orange and purple livery was waiting there; but his independent attitude, his long pigtail, his pleasant battered old face made his true nature and origin obvious at a cable’s length.
‘I hope I see you well, sir?’ he said, touching a crooked forefinger to his eyebrow.
‘Very well, I thank you,’ said Stephen, looking at him attentively. The last time he had seen that face it had been bloodless, glistening with sweat, tight-clenched not to cry out beneath his knife, as the Surprise limped westwards to Fort William, cruelly mauled by a French seventy-four. ‘But you were not an amputation,’ he said.
‘No, sir: Bullock, forecastle-man, starboard watch, in the old Surprise.’
‘Of course,’ said Stephen, shaking him by the hand. ‘What I mean is, I saved that leg. I did not cut it off.’
‘Nor you did, sir,’ said Bullock, ‘but when I was in Benbow off the Cays, I copped it something cruel with a bar-shot; and our surgeon not being Dr Maturin, off it came, without so much as by your leave.’
‘I am sure it was necessary,’ said Stephen.
The remark, the support of his colleague, at least was necessary: but it seemed to carry no conviction at all, perhaps because the surgeon of the Benbow was nearly always drunk, and when sober, notoriously unskilful. The footman looked affectionately at Dr Maturin and said, ‘And I hope Captain Aubrey is well, sir? I heard he come ashore off of Shannon as pleased as the Pope and twice as tall.’
‘Prime, Bullock, prime. I shall be seeing him at the hospital directly.’
‘My duty and very best respects, sir, if you please. John Bullock, forecastle-man, in the old Surprise.’
As prisoners of war in Boston, Aubrey and Maturin had been very kindly treated by their captors; they were penniless, they had no cold-weather clothes, and the officers of the USN Constitution had seen to all their needs. Neither intended to be behindhand in an action of this sort, and as he expected, Stephen found Jack with a wounded American lieutenant.
‘Do you remember a man called Bullock, in the Surprise?’ he said, as they walked away.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Jack. ‘Forecastle-man, and a very good hand.’
‘He sends his old captain his best respects.’
‘Why, that’s kind,’ said Jack. ‘John Bullock: he laid a gun as true as you could wish – dead on the mark, though rather slow. He was captain of the starboard bow-chaser. But I tell you what, Stephen: old captain is dead on the mark too. What with funerals and the blue devils and natural decrepitude, I feel like Methusalem’s grandad.’
‘You eat too much, brother, you drink too much, and you allow yourself to brood. A brisk ten-mile walk in the damp but interesting forests of the New World, outpacing the blue devils, will set you up – will renew your animal spirits. Ponce de Leon was of the opinion that the Fountain of Youth was to be found in these parts. And you are to consider, that a packet may arrive from England at any minute.’
‘I dare say you are right about the Fountain of Youth, Stephen, but you are out as far as the packet is concerned. None sails before the thirteenth, and with these everlasting westerlies, we cannot hear for a great while yet. And anyhow, I could not take a walk today, even if there were a dozen Fountains of Youth and a tap-room too at the end of it. I have a damned unpleasant job at the prison, trying to identify the English deserters taken in the Chesapeake: they nearly all of them ran from our men-of-war. But before that I am going to see their master’s mate, the one that was not knocked on the head. Shall you come?’
‘No, sir. The combatant officers are your natural province, the non-combatant mine. My particular concern today is their surgeon, an unusually learned man.’
The unusually learned man was sitting with a mug of spruce-beer in the empty operating-room, looking careworn, sad and weary, but resolute. He accepted Stephen’s offering gracefully, and they talked about some of their cases for a while, taking alternate sips at the mug. When the spruce-beer – ‘a dubious anti-scorbutic, sir, but a grateful beverage on such a day, and no doubt mildly carminative’ – was done, Stephen said, ‘I believe you told me, sir, that before you took to the sea, your practice lay chiefly among the ladies of Charleston?’
‘Yes, sir. I was a man-midwife; or, if you prefer it, an accoucheur.’
‘Just so. Your experience in these matters is therefore very much greater than mine, and I should be grateful for your lights. Apart from the obvious classical symptoms, what do you find to be the earliest signs of pregnancy?’
The surgeon pursed his lips and considered. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘there is nothing wholly reliable, of course. But I believe the general facies rarely deceives me – the thickening of the skin; the pasty complexion in the very first stages, rapidly clearing; the cerous appearance of the eyelid and orbicular folds; the pallor of the caruncula lachrymalia; while the old wives’ method of inspecting the nails and hair is not to be despised. And where the physician is familiar with his patient’s ordinary behaviour, he can often form an opinion from variations in it, particularly in the case of younger women: abrupt, apparently causeless changes from gloom and anxiety to a high flow of spirits, even to exultation, will tell him much.’
‘Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I am much indebted to you for these remarks.’
