Читать книгу The Surgeon’s Mate - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 9

Chapter Two

In the course of his service in the Royal Navy Stephen Maturin had often reflected upon the diversity among sea-officers: he had sailed with men of great family and with others promoted from the lower deck; with companions who never opened a book and with poetic pursers; with captains who could cap any classical quotation and with some who could scarcely write a coherent dispatch without the help of their clerk; and although most came from the middle rank of society, this species had such a bewildering series of sub-species and local races that only an observer brought up among the intricacies of the English caste-system could find his way among them, confidently assessing their origin and present status. There was also a very great difference in wealth, particularly among the captains, since when merchant ships were thick upon the ground it was possible for an enterprising or a lucky commander to make a fortune in prize-money after a few hours’ eager chase, whereas those who had to live on their pay led a meagre, anxious life, cutting a very poor figure indeed. Nevertheless they were all marked with the stamp of their profession: rich or poor, loutish or polite, they had all been battered by the elements, and many of them by the King’s enemies. Even the most recently promoted lieutenant had served all his youth at sea, while many post-captains as high on the list as Jack Aubrey had been afloat, with few breaks, ever since 1792. They all had a long, long naval war in common, with its endless waiting in the wastes of ocean and its occasional bursts of furious activity.

None of this applied to their wives however, and here the diversity was greater still. Some sailors, perhaps guided by their apprehensive families, married in their own class or sometimes higher; but others, home after the long and dangerous tedium of the Brest or Toulon blockade or a three-year commission in the Indies, East or West, sometimes flung themselves into the strangest arms. And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often away and handy about the house when ashore, it did make for a curious gathering when the spouses were all invited to a ball.

Stephen contemplated them from among the potted plants: in spite of their differences in size and shape, the sailors’ uniform made them a single body; much the same, though with more variation, could be said about the soldiers; but the women had chosen their own clothes, and the results were interesting. He had already recognized a former bar-maid from the Keppel’s Head in Portsmouth, now swathed in pink muslin and adorned with a wedding-ring; and there were some other ladies whose faces were vaguely familiar, perhaps from other inns, or from the stage, or from tobacco shops.

There was a clear distinction between the dresses, between those women who could both choose and afford good ones and those who could not, a distinction almost as clear as that between the jewels the ladies wore: and these ranged from the garnet pendant round the neck of a child who had married a lieutenant with nothing but his pay of a hundred a year to Mrs Leveson-Gower’s rubies, which would have built a thirty-two-gun frigate and provisioned her for six months, and Lady Harriet’s thumping great emeralds. But it was not this that interested Stephen as he stood watching the crowd: he was more concerned with the ladies’ bearing and behaviour, partly as a lesson in female social adaptability in a society so strongly aware of rank, overt or implied, and partly because he had a theory that the more free or even wanton a given past might have been, the more reserved, correct, and even prudish would be the established present.

His observation, interrupted from time to time by a glance at the top of the staircase to see whether Diana would ever finish dressing, did not bear his theory out and the only conclusion he could draw was that those with style retained it whatever their origins, while those who had none were lumpish or affected or both; though even these were already enjoying themselves. The general gaiety, the universal delight at the Shannon’s victory, so filled the entire gathering that nearly all the women were in good looks, and the ordinary worries of dress and consequence and husband’s rank counted far less than usual. In short, that shared happiness and a strong fellow-feeling abolished distinction for the time being, in spite of the sometimes conflicting but always powerful hierarchies of service rank, social origin, wealth, and beauty.

This was not a discovery that warranted any very prolonged seclusion among the plants – an uninteresting set, filicales and bromeliads for the most part – and Stephen moved out into the mainstream, where he almost immediately met Jack, accompanied by an equally tall but far bulkier man in the uniform of the First Foot Guards, a blaze of scarlet and gold. ‘Why, there you are,’ said Jack. ‘I have been looking for you. Do you know my cousin Aldington? Dr Maturin, Colonel Aldington.’

‘How d’ye do, sir,’ said the soldier in the tone he thought suited to the subfusc garments of a naval surgeon. Stephen only bowed. ‘This is going to be a prodigious fine ball,’ said the Colonel to Jack. ‘I can feel it in the air. The last I was at – oh, and I forgot to tell you, Sophie and I stood up together – was at the Winchester assembly, a miserable affair. Not thirty couple, and never a girl worth looking at. I took refuge in the card-room, and lost four pound ten.’

‘Sophie was at the assembly?’ said Jack.

‘Yes, she was there with her sister, looking very well: we danced together twice. I flatter myself we – by God, there’s a damned fine figure of a woman,’ he exclaimed, staring at the head of the staircase. Diana was coming down in a long blue dress and a blaze of diamonds that eclipsed all the other jewels in the large, beautiful, and well-filled room: she always held herself very well, and now as she came slowly down, straight and slim, she looked superb. ‘I should not mind dancing with her,’ he said.

‘I will introduce you, if you like,’ said Jack. ‘She is Sophie’s cousin.’

‘If she is your cousin, she is mine, in a way,’ said the soldier. And then, ‘Damn me if it ain’t Di Villiers. What on earth is she doing here? I knew her in London, years ago. I don’t need an introduction.’

He set off at once, pushing through the crowd like an ox, and Stephen followed in his wake. Jack watched them go: he was extremely hurt by the thought of Sophie dancing at the assembly. At any other time he would have been pleased to hear that she was not moping at home, but now it came on top of his bitter disappointment at having had no letters and of losing Acasta, and although he was not much given to righteous indignation his angry mind thought of her dancing away, never setting pen to paper, when, for all she knew, he was languishing, a prisoner of war in America, wounded, sick, and penniless. She had always been a wretched correspondent, but never until now a heartless one.

Colonel Aldington reached Diana. He gave Stephen a surprised, disapproving glance, and then, changing his expression entirely as he turned to her he said, ‘You will not remember me, Mrs Villiers – Aldington, a friend of Edward Pitt’s. I had the honour of taking you in to dinner at Hertford House, and we danced together at Almack’s. May I beseech you to favour me tonight?’ As he spoke he gazed now at her face, now at her diamonds: and then with even more respect than before, at her face again.

‘Désolée, Colonel,’ she said, ‘I am already engaged to Dr Maturin, and then I believe, to the Admiral and the officers of the Shannon.’ He was not a well-bred man: at first he did not seem to understand what she said, and then he did not know how to come off handsomely, so she added, ‘But if you would fetch me an ice, for old times’ sake, I should be most eternally obliged.’

Before the soldier could come back the music had begun. The long line formed, and the Admiral opened the ball with the prettiest bride in Halifax, a sweet little fair-haired creature of seventeen with huge blue eyes so full of delight and health and happiness that people smiled as she came down the middle, skipping high.

‘I would not have danced with that man for the world,’ said Diana while she and Stephen were waiting for their turn. ‘He is a middle-aged puppy, what people used to call a coxcomb, and the worst gossip I know. There: he has found a partner. Miss Smith. I hope she likes ill-natured tattle.’ Stephen glanced round and saw the Colonel taking his place with a tall young woman in red. She was rather thin, but she had a splendid bosom and a fashionable air, and her face, though neither strictly beautiful nor even pretty, was extremely animated – dark hair, fine dark eyes, and a rosy glow of excitement. ‘Her dress is rather outré and she uses altogether too much paint, but she seems to be enjoying herself. Stephen, this is going to be a lovely ball. Do you like my lutestring?’

‘It becomes you very well indeed; and the black band about your thorax is a stroke of genius.’

‘I was sure you would notice that. It came to me at the very last moment; that is why I was so late.’

Their turn came and they went through the formal evolutions required by the dance, Diana with her customary heart-moving grace, Stephen adequately at least; and when they came together again she said, above the ground-swell of countless voices and the singing of the band, ‘Stephen, you dance quite beautifully. How happy I am.’ She was flushed with the exercise and the warmth of the room, perhaps with the glory of her jewels and the excellence of her dress, certainly with the general heady atmosphere, the intoxication of victory: yet he knew her very well and it seemed to him that at no great depth beneath the happiness there was the possibility of an entirely different kind of feeling.

They were moving up the dance again when Stephen noticed Major Beck’s assistant, talking to the Admiral’s aide-de-camp, and to his astonishment he saw that the ugly little man was drunk already. His face was irregularly blotched with red, a red that clashed sadly with his uniform, and he was swaying: his bulging watery eyes rested on Stephen for a moment, and then moved on to dwell on Diana: he licked his lips.

‘Everybody seems wonderfully happy,’ said Diana. ‘Everybody except poor Jack. There he is, standing by that pillar, looking like the Last Judgment.’

But more evolutions were called for at this point, and by the time they and the dance were over, Jack had abandoned his post. They walked off companionably together and sat on a love-seat near the door, where the pleasantly warm, sea-smelling air wafted in upon them.

Jack had moved to a long table spread with bottles and glasses, not much frequented yet. Having drunk a certain amount of champagne he said, ‘That’s very well. But I tell you what, Bullock, just you mix me a glass of bosun’s grog, will you?’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Bullock, ‘a glass of grog it is. What you want, sir, is something with a bite in it: a man can blow himself out like a cow in grass with that poor thin fizzy stuff.’

There was certainly a bite in Bullock’s mixture, and Jack wandered off with fire spreading through his middle parts. He spoke to a few officers through the din, putting on a proper smiling party face as he did so, and came to a halt near the band. It was quieter here, and he clearly distinguished the slightly too sharp A that a fat musician was giving his companions to tune their instruments: it was long since he had had a fiddle under his chin, he reflected, and he was wondering how nimble the fingers of his wounded arm would prove to be when he heard a clear voice behind him say – ‘Who is that very handsome man over there by the window?’ He looked towards the window, but there were only two gangling spotted midshipmen, too big for their uniforms, giggling together; and then, when the voice said ‘No, nearer to the band,’ he realized with a shock that it might be referring to him.

This was instantly confirmed by Lady Harriet’s more discreet but still audible ‘That is Captain Aubrey, my dear, one of our best frigate captains. Should you like me to introduce him?’

‘Oh yes, if you please. He was on board the Shannon, was he not?’

At this point a stream of people passed between them in a persevering struggle to reach the sorbets that had just appeared, and Jack studied the band attentively. He was a handsome man, but no one had ever told him so and he was unaware of the fact; now he was delighted, frankly delighted to hear the news – charmed to learn that anyone could find him good-looking. He was handsome, that is to say, in the eyes of those who did not look for the bloom or the slenderness of youth, who admired a big broad-shouldered man with a high complexion, bright blue eyes and yellow hair, and who did not object to a face that had the mark of a cutlass-slash from one ear right across the cheek-bone and another scar, this one from a splinter, along the line of the jaw to the other ear. It was clear that Miss Smith did not, for when he turned and the introduction was made, she looked at him with an eager admiration that would have satisfied the vainest soul. He was strongly prejudiced in her favour; he returned her look with a particularly attentive, complaisant deference; and in fact he saw a fine lively young woman, brimming with spirits, quite to his taste – he particularly noticed her bosom.

He at once asked her for this dance and the next, and when, half way through the second, she said, ‘Is not this a splendid ball?’ he replied, ‘The best I have ever known,’ with real conviction.

The atmosphere was no longer oppressive; the noise was not the mindless cackle of fools but the reasonable gaiety of a very agreeable set of people celebrating a victory – and such a victory! The full glory of it came to him again with an ever greater force. A remarkably good band, too: their phrasing of the minuet was uncommon pretty. And his partner danced well; he loved a spirited partner who could dance and enjoy it. A splendid ball.

There was only one cloud in their evening, and that was when Miss Smith, pointing out Diana and Stephen, asked, ‘Who is she, in the blue dress and magnificent diamonds?’

‘She is Diana Villiers, my wife’s cousin.’

‘And who is the little man dancing with her? He seems very particular – they have danced together several times already. And what is his uniform? I do not recognize it.’

‘That is a naval surgeon’s coat, but he must have forgotten the regulation breeches. He is Dr Maturin, and they are engaged to be married.’

‘But surely,’ she cried, ‘surely such a fine woman cannot throw herself away on a mere surgeon?’

In a decided voice, but not unkindly, he said, ‘No woman that I have ever met could throw herself away on Stephen Maturin. We have sailed together for years – we are very close friends – and I value him extremely.’

As he finished they had to dance up to the head of the line, holding hands. She gave his a firm pressure, and when they were in their places she said, ‘I am sure you are right. I am sure there is much more in him than meets the eye. Naval surgeons must be far superior to those on land. It was only that she is so very, very elegant – I cannot tell you how I admire beauty in a woman.’

Jack instantly replied that he too admired beauty in a woman – that he was very happy to have a most perfect example as his partner – by far the most perfect example in the room. Miss Smith neither blushed nor hung her head; she did say ‘Oh fie, Captain Aubrey,’ but when he took her hand again to whirl her round there was no reprobation in her clasp.

By the time he took her in to supper he knew a great deal about her: she had been brought up in Rutland, where her father had a pack of hounds – she adored fox-chasing, but unhappily many of the men who hunted were sad rakes – she had been engaged to be married to one, until it was found that he had an unreasonable number of natural children. She had had several seasons in London, where her aunt lived in Hanover Square; and from what she said Jack learnt, to his surprise, that she must be thirty. She was now keeping house for her brother Henry, who, though a soldier, was so shortsighted that he had been put into the commissariat; he was away now, looking after the army stores at Kingston, an inglorious employment. But even the real fighting soldiers were not much better; they marched and counter-marched and accomplished little; they were not to be compared with the Navy. She had never been so excited in her life as when she saw the Shannon bring in the Chesapeake. She was filled with enthusiasm for the Navy, she cried; and Jack, looking at her flushed and eager face and hearing her tremulous, enraptured tone, quite believed her.

At the supper-table itself she begged him to describe the battle in every detail, and he did so with great good humour: it was a comparatively simple single-ship action, lasting only a quarter of an hour; she followed it with the utmost eagerness and, it seemed to him, with unusual good sense and understanding. ‘How glad you must have been to see their colours come down. How proud of your victory! I am sure my heart would have burst,’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands over her bosom, which yielded to the pressure.

‘I was delighted,’ he said. ‘But it was not my victory, you know. It was Philip Broke’s.’

‘But were you not both in command? You are both captains.’

‘Oh no. I was only a passenger, a person of no consequence.’

‘I am sure you are being too modest. I am sure you rushed aboard, sword in hand.’

‘Well, I did venture on their deck for a while. But the victory was Broke’s and Broke’s alone. Let us drink to his health.’

They drank it in bumpers. Their neighbours joined them: they were redcoats, but full of good will. One of them had obviously wished Captain Broke a happy recovery many times already, so many that a few minutes after this fresh toast his friends led him away, leaving them alone at the table. Miss Smith returned to the Navy. She showed the keenest interest in the service: she knew almost nothing of it, alas, having always lived so far from the sea, but she had adored poor Lord Nelson and she had worn mourning for months after Trafalgar. Did Captain Aubrey share her admiration, and had he ever met the great man? ‘Yes, I do, and I did,’ he said, smiling with great benevolence, for there was no shorter way to Jack’s heart than a love for the service and an adoration of Nelson. ‘I had the honour of dining with him when I was a mere lieutenant: the first time he only said “May I trouble you for the salt?”, though he said it in the kindest way; but the second time he said “Never mind manoeuvres; always go straight at ’em”.’

‘How I honour him,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘ “Never mind manoeuvres; always go straight at ’em”: that is exactly what I feel – that is the only way for anyone with spirit. And how well I understand Lady Hamilton.’ And after a pause in which they both ate cold lobster she said, ‘But how did you come to be a passenger on the Shannon?’

‘That is a long story,’ said Jack.

‘It could not be too long for me,’ said Miss Smith.

‘A trifle of wine?’ suggested Jack, advancing the bottle.

‘No more, I thank you. To tell the truth my head is turning a little already. But perhaps it is the dancing, or the music, or the closeness, or sitting next to a hero: I have never sat next to one before. But when you have quite finished your lobster, perhaps we might take a turn in the fresh air.’

Jack protested that he had done eating; he had only been toying with his lobster; he too found the room insupportably close.

‘Then we can go out by this glass door. I am so glad: I had half promised that odious Colonel Aldington the next dance, and now I shall be able to escape him.’

In the garden she took his arm and said, ‘You were going to tell me how you came to be a passenger on the Shannon. Please start from the very beginning.’

‘The very beginning would take us back to the Leopard – the old Leopard, you know: fifty guns on two decks. They rebuilt her, more or less, and gave me the command, with orders to take her out to Botany Bay and then to proceed to the East Indies. It should have been a straightforward passage, but there was bad luck aboard. Plague broke out when we were in the doldrums; then a Dutch seventy-four ran us down into the high southern latitudes, far south and east of the Cape; and then we contrived to run foul of a mountain of ice in a thick fog and beat off our rudder. We were obliged to bear away, half-sinking, for some islands still farther south and east; and it was nip and tuck whether we should fetch them or no, with all hands pumping day and night. But, however, we did; and not to be long-winded about it, we patched the Leopard up, hung a new rudder, and carried her first to New Holland and then through the Endeavour Strait to rendezvous with Admiral Drury off Java.’

‘Java! That is in the East Indies, is it not? How romantic! Spices and people in palanquins! Elephants too, I dare say. How you have travelled, and what a great deal of the world you have seen! Were the ladies of Java as beautiful as they say?’

‘There were some pretty creatures, to be sure; but none to touch those of Halifax. The Admiral was very pleased about the Dutch seventy-four –’

‘Why, what happened to it?’

‘Oh, we sank her: a lucky shot can do wonders in those seas, with a following wind. I am speaking of the forties, you understand, with a full gale and more right aft. She broached to and sank the moment her foremast carried away. But he was not so happy about the Leopard’s statement of condition: her guns had been obliged to be heaved overboard, and in any case the ice had given her frame such a wrench that she could not carry any weight of metal – no good to man or beast: only fit for a transport. However, that did not concern me. I was already appointed to another ship, a frigate called the Acasta, so he packed me off home in La Flèche. We had a beautiful passage –’

Miss Smith uttered a shrill scream and recoiled into his arms. A toad was walking deliberately across the path, glistening in the light from the windows. ‘Oh, oh,’ she cried, ‘I nearly touched it.’

Jack helped the toad gently on to the grass with his toe, somewhat hampered by her clinging arm. When it was gone she said she could not bear reptiles, nor spiders: they made her feel quite ill. Then she laughed in a way that Jack would have thought unsteady had she been a plain woman, and suggested that they should find a seat in the shrubbery. But as it happened, victory, wine, good food, and perhaps the warmth of the ballroom had suggested the same thing to so many other guests that there was not an empty seat to be found among the clustering laurels; while at the secluded summerhouse they started back only just in time to avoid a very grave indiscretion. They were obliged to be content with a bench near the sundial; and there, as they sat down in the warm night air, filled with the smell of greenness and summer and night-scenting flowers, he glanced up at the guards of the Bear for a notion of the time; and seeing that they were dimmed by wafts of low haze drifting in from the sea he observed, ‘I dare say we shall have a shower, presently.’

But she, taking no notice of his remark, said, ‘You were saying you had a beautiful passage.’

‘So we did, logging at least two hundred miles from noon to noon, day after day of sweet sailing, until we had rounded the Cape and crossed the tropic line. But then a damned – an extremely untoward thing fell out. She took fire, burnt to the water-line, and blew up.’

‘Heavens, Captain Aubrey!’

‘Then the boats separated in the darkness, and seeing they were not provisioned, we had a sad time of it until we were picked up by Java, some way off Brazil. But even then our troubles were not over, because some days later Java fell in with the American Constitution, and as you remember, the Americans beat her into a cocked hat.’

‘Oh, how well I remember: people absolutely wept when they heard the news. But they said it was not fair – that the American was not really a frigate at all, or that they had more guns or something.’

‘No: she was a frigate without any kind of doubt, a heavy frigate; and it was a fair fight, I do assure you. She would have been a tough nut to crack in any case, and in the event she used her guns better than we did: and we were taken.’

‘But the dear gallant Shannon has set that right,’ she said, laying her hand on his knee.

‘So she has,’ said Jack, laughing with pleasure. ‘And now I find it hard to remember how hipped we all were at the time. Well, the Americans were very good to us once it was all over: they sent most of Java’s people home in a cartel and carried those of us who were knocked about back to Boston. Maturin very handsomely volunteered to come with me and his other patients –’

‘You were wounded?’ she cried.

‘Oh, only a musket-ball in the arm,’ he said. ‘But it went bad, as these things will, and I should have lost it but for him. So there we were, do you see, prisoners of war in Boston. Our exchange was delayed for one reason or another, and finding the situation did not suit, Maturin and I took a boat, together with Diana Villiers –’

‘What in Heaven’s name was she doing there?’

‘She had been staying with friends, before the war was declared. And we sailed out to meet Shannon as she stood in to look into the harbour. Broke was kind enough to take us aboard and give us a passage to Halifax, and that is how –’

The rain he had promised, the rain foreseen by the toad, began to fall quite fast, and they ran in. Their entry was not particularly remarked: they were only one couple out of several, and they were preceded by a young lady who attracted far more comment, her white dress being liberally scattered with moss behind and even stained with the green of grass. Even so, they were not quite unnoticed. Colonel Aldington gave them a sullen, resentful look; and when Jack was drinking rum-punch to ward off the damp, Miss Smith having retired for a moment, he said, ‘Look here, Jack, this is all very fine and large, but you took my partner. I saw you steal away just as I came to claim her – I saw you – and I had to stand there like a fool all through that dance and the next. It ain’t right: no, it ain’t right.’

‘None but the brave deserve the fair,’ said Jack: and pleased with the thought he began to sing in his deep, surprisingly tuneful voice:

‘None but the brave

None but the brave

Deserve the fair ha, ha, ha! What do you say to that, Tom?’

‘I don’t know what you mean to imply about the brave,’ said the Colonel, exceedingly cross, ‘but if that is your idea of the fair, well, all I can say is, your idea is not mine. That’s all. I could say more: I could say that after what I heard just now it is no more than I might have expected. I could say something about reputations, and warn you not to burn your fingers, but I shan’t. And I could advise you to put your glass down and drink no more – you have had quite enough – but I shan’t do that, neither. You always was a self-willed –’

Miss Smith’s reappearance checked any retort that might have been forming in Jack’s mind: the music began again, and as he led her into the dance he observed that it was strange how differently wine took different men – some grew glum and fault-finding, some quarrelsome or tearful; for his part he found it did not affect him at all, except perhaps to make him like people rather more, and to make the world seem a more cheerful place. ‘Not that it could be much more cheerful than it is already,’ he added, smiling at the throng, where the greenbacked girl, dancing away totally unconscious of her betrayal, was adding much to the gaiety of nations.

‘Surely, Maturin,’ said Diana, as the night wore on, ‘Jack and Miss Smith are making themselves very conspicuous? Except when they vanish into corners, they are dancing together all the time.’

‘Let us hope they enjoy it,’ said Stephen.

‘No, but really, Stephen, as a friend, should you not tell him what he is at?’

‘I should not.’

‘No: I suppose not. But upon my word, that woman makes me feel quite indignant: seducing poor Aubrey is like taking pennies from a blind man’s hat – see him beaming all over his face and figuring away like a young buck! If it had been that jolly girl with the green back I should not say anything; but with a wrong ’un like Amanda Smith…’

‘A wrong ’un, Villiers?’

‘Yes. I knew her in India when I was a girl. She came out with the fishing-fleet – stayed with her aunt, a woman with just the same long nose and just the same idea of laying on the paint with a trowel. They come from Rutland, a raffish set: slow horses and fast women. She tried too hard there and she has tried too hard here; but the army is pretty cautious when it comes to actually marrying, you know; not at all like the Navy. And now her reputation is – well, not much better than mine. Jack really should take care.’

‘Certainly she seems unusually complaisant. But is she not perhaps a trifle silly, a little given to enthusiasm?’

‘Don’t you believe it. She may be an hysterical, flighty, unbalanced ass, but she has a pretty clear head when it comes to the main chance. He is known to be very well off: all the sailors call him Lucky Jack Aubrey. I tell you what, Stephen, unless the roof falls in, he will end the night in that woman’s arms; and then he may find himself in a pretty pickle. Could not you give him a hint?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘No. Perhaps not. You are not your brother’s keeper, after all; and I dare say it will be no more than a passade.’

‘Tell me, my dear,’ said Stephen, ‘what has happened to ruffle your spirits?’

She paused – three steps to the left, three steps to the right, true to the time – and gave him the direct answer he expected. ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ she said. ‘It was only that I was talking to Lady Harriet and Mrs Wodehouse when Anne Keppel came up. She gave me a broad stare and pretended to admire my diamonds – she did not remember having seen them in London – could never have forgotten such a rivière nor such a pendant – had I come by them in America? What had I been doing all this time? Impertinent woman. And I had noticed a chill before that. Colonel Aldington or some other old woman has been talking, I swear.’

Stephen made some remark about diamonds and jealousy, but she pursued her own line of thought, saying, ‘Oh, on such a night as this even the most virulent prude – though God help us, Anne Keppel has no stones to fling – could not be very unkind. But how I do hope we get a ship soon. Lady Harriet is a dear good woman, but even so, life in a station like this, with scrubs like Aldington and Anne Keppel spreading their ill-natured ragots right left and centre, would be hell after a very little while. Oh, bah,’ she said. ‘Come on, Stephen.’

They danced up the middle; and as he handed her across and received her again he saw that her mood had changed. The dangerous gleam, the raised head of defiance had given way to joy in the dance, to pleasure in the ball and its happy crowd bathed in music and the sense of victory. She was looking as handsome as ever he had seen her, and again he wondered at his own insensibility: and when she cast an eye over the turning dancers and said, with an intensely amused look, ‘I love that girl with the green on her back,’ he wondered even more, for Diana amused – and it was not a usual expression with her – was entrancing. Perhaps his insensibility was no more than a now habitual protection, a way of making the inner void more nearly tolerable: he certainly felt his heart move, as it were involuntarily. Then again, he too was enjoying himself very much more than ever he had expected: the void was still there, certainly, a blank like the white pages of a book after the word Finis, but it was far down, far beneath his consciousness of the moment. The band was deep in a minuet, a Clementi minuet in C major that Jack and he had arranged for violin and ’cello, one that they had often played together; and now that he was in it, in it for the first time as a dancer, the familiar music took on a new dimension; he was part of the music, right in its heart as one of the formally moving figures whose pattern it created – he lived in a new world, entirely in the present. ‘I love that girl with the green on her back,’ she said again over the deep throb of the ’cello, ‘she is having such fun. Oh Stephen, how I wish this night would last for ever.’

In fact it lasted only a very few hours more, only just long enough for Captain Aubrey to fall deeply asleep in Miss Smith’s predictable bed. The east was lightening when she shook him awake, saying in a low urgent tone, ‘You must go. The servants are moving about already. Quick – here is your shirt.’

His head was hardly clear of it before he observed to his consternation that she was in tears. She clung to him, saying, ‘We must never, never do it again.’ Then calming herself she said, ‘Here are your breeches.’

His arm was still awkward and he had some difficulty with his neckcloth. She tied it for him, laughing in a way that surprised him, laughing unsteadily and making not altogether coherent remarks about Lady Hamilton doing the same for Nelson: and again she repeated ‘Never mind manoeuvres: always go straight at ’em, ha, ha, ha!’ His coat was on; his hair was tied up; she whispered, ‘Go by the garden gate: it is only bolted. I will leave it open tonight.’

Stephen saw him creep into the room they shared, and in spite of the creaking of the boards, almost impossible to ignore, he would have let him reach his bed unnoticed if, in an excess of caution, Jack had not flung down the primitive basin in which they had to wash. It rang like a bell, trundling in a wide spiral until it came to rest against the small table at Stephen’s side. This could not credibly be overlooked, and he sat up.

‘I am truly sorry to have woke you,’ said Jack, smiling at him with a fine glowing face. ‘I went for a walk.’

‘You look as though you had found the Fountain of Youth, brother. But it is to be hoped that you took a cloak, or at least a flannel waistcoat: with your wound, and at your time of life, the morning dews can have a very dismal effect. The natural humours of the body, Jack, are not lightly to be disturbed. Show me your arm. Exactly so. Tumor, rubor, dolor: there has been inconsiderate exercise, I find; and you are to put it up in a sling again. Do not you feel it – do not you feel a stiffness in the joint?’

‘It is a little painful,’ said Jack. ‘But apart from that, I am astonishingly well. I feel as young as I did when I was first made commander, for all your harping on age and flannel waistcoats, Stephen: even younger. A morning walk sets you up amazingly; that is your Fountain of Youth, for sure. I dare say I shall take another tonight.’

‘Did you see many people abroad?’

‘A surprising number, walking about in all directions – several officers I knew.’

‘What you tell me confirms my supposition: Halifax is an early-rising town. I formed this opinion first from the noise in the street and then from the coming of a little puny boy – a marked case of scoliosis, poor child – with this note for you from Mr Gittings.’

‘Who is Mr Gittings?’

‘He is the person in charge of the post.’

Jack ripped open the note, carried it to the window, and read, ‘Most regrettable mistake… Captain A’s mail set specially aside… subordinates misinformed… packets await his pleasure. God bless my soul: God strike me down: I had never … Stephen, I shall step round at once.’

‘Before you leave,’ said Stephen, ‘I will sling your arm anew. And may I suggest that before I do so, you should wash? In the broad daylight people might think you had been in a battle of some kind.’

Jack looked at the glass. In the dimness of Miss Smith’s bedroom neither had seen the ludicrous smear of rouge on his face: painfully ludicrous, now that he looked so grave. He washed vigorously, stood silent with what patience he could command while Stephen slung his arm, and ran out of the inn.

It seemed hardly a moment before he was back pounding up the stairs with two canvas-wrapped packets and a number of later covers. ‘Forgive me, Stephen,’ he said, ‘nearly all of these are from Sophie, and I cannot read them in a public room.’

He was deep in the pile, busily sorting and arranging so as to read them in order, by the time Stephen had dressed to go to the hospital: his look of startled guilt had changed to one of eager, happy anticipation. By the time Stephen returned, the heap had been reduced to an exact sequence and read over twice; the letters lay under a water-carafe, with several sheets of accounts beside them; and Jack’s face showed an odd mixture of deep contentment and worry.

‘Sophie sends you her dear love in all of these,’ he said. ‘And all is well at home, apart from that damned fellow Kimber. George is breeched, and the girls are learning deportment and French. Lord, Stephen, to think of those turnip-headed little creatures learning French!’

‘Had she received any of your letters from Boston?’

‘Yes: two. Admiral Drury’s duplicate dispatches had already told her Leopard was safe, and that good fellow Chads travelled down to Hampshire as soon as the court-martial was over to tell her how Java had picked us up and about Java and Constitution. He was very tactful about my wound: said it was nothing that would put me out of action for long, but it was thought better I should go to America with you and be exchanged from there rather than risk the hot southern passage in a crowded cartel. I am very much obliged to him: she believed it implicitly, and did not worry.’

‘I am sure she did. I am sure she believed it.’

‘Would the gentlemen like their breakfast now?’ asked a chambermaid, bawling through the door.

‘If you please, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘And listen, child, beg them to make the coffee twice as strong, will you now?’

‘I am sure she did,’ he said, as he sipped his thin brew. ‘There is a Latin tag you are no doubt familiar with, to the effect that men are usually seen to believe what they wish to believe. I was reflecting upon that only the other day,’ he went on, staring out of the window at Diana Villiers and Lady Harriet, who were walking along the far pavement, followed by a footman carrying parcels. ‘I was reflecting upon that, and upon its corollary, to wit, that often men do not see what they do not wish to see. In all good faith they do not perceive it. I was reflecting because I had a most striking instance of it in myself. For weeks I had the evidence of a given physical condition in front of my eyes, and yet I did not see it. The physician in me must at least have noticed some of the symptoms; and however fleeting and inconclusive each severally may have been he must have seen that the sum, the convergence, was at least significant: but no, the man would have none of it, and was genuinely amazed when the state of which I speak was forced upon his attention. Gnosce teipsum is very well, but how to come to it? We are fallible creatures, Jack, and adepts at self-deception.’

‘So my old nurse used to tell me,’ said Jack: Stephen could be prosy at times, and Jack’s attention had wandered to the accounts next to Sophie’s letters.

‘You mentioned that damned fellow Kimber,’ said Stephen.

‘Yes. He is still at his capers – keeps pressing her for money – swears that a few more thousand will save our stake and turn a dead loss into a handsome profit – talks of thousands now, as though they were the natural unit – I cannot make head or tail of the accounts he has shown her, though I am pretty good at figures – wants her to sell Delderwood – I do not think that goddam paper I signed just before we came away can have been a power of attorney, you know, or he could do without her consent.’

‘What were the terms of your marriage-settlement?’

‘I have no idea. I just agreed to whatever Sophie’s mother – or rather her man of business – proposed, and signed my name where I was told: J. Booby, Captain, RN.’

Stephen knew Mrs Williams of old; he drew some comfort from the fact that as one of the most grasping women of his acquaintance she would probably have tied up Jack’s property as tight as the most adamantine, Rhadamanthine law, double-twisted, would allow; and he said, ‘My dear, long, long ago, when you first heard of this man’s doings in the far eastern seas, I begged you to turn your mind deliberately from the question until La Flèche should have carried us home. I urged you not to waste your time and your vital energy in vain conjectures and recrimination, but to set the matter to one side until you might usefully consider it with the necessary data at hand – until you could obtain skilled legal advice, and confront the fellow in the company of a man as adept in business as he. That was sound advice, and now, sir, it is sounder still. There are only a few days or weeks to go, and to spend them in a state of impotent fury, so that you arrive in England with your intellects disordered, would be simple indeed. Only a few days: Captain Broke’s dispatch will certainly be sent the moment it is written. The news will be infinitely welcome to Government.’

‘Yes, by God!’ cried Jack, his face lightening as the recollection of victory blazed up afresh. ‘And happy the man who carries it. Stephen, I shall follow your advice: I shall be an old Stoic: I shall preserve an equal mind, and I shall not worry about Kimber. Besides,’ he added in a low tone, the light in his eye diminishing, ‘I may have enough worries here in Halifax.’

A truer word he never spoke; for although the sling that Stephen insisted upon, and the wound, the low diet, and the physic, excused him from nightly attendance on Miss Smith, her claims upon his company by day, if not upon his person, were painfully insistent. She seemed to take a perverse delight in compromising herself and in advertising their liaison; she would come openly to the inn when he took refuge on his sickbed, and read to him; and when he sought air and exercise, unable to bear any more of Childe Harold in an emphatic, enthusiastic tone, she walked, hanging on his arm, in the more public parts of Halifax, or drove him, inexpertly, round and round the town in her brother’s dogcart. He saw that other men, especially his cousin Aldington, did not envy him; and he was obliged to admit that the company of a flighty, histrionic, unsteady, headstrong, extremely active and ill-judging young woman was not particularly enviable – that Miss Smith had an opinion of her value warranted neither by her charms nor her understanding – and that there were times when he wished Lord Nelson had never, never met Lady Hamilton.

At no time did he wish it more ardently than the day he took her to visit the Shannon, when she spoke of the pair with such eagerness and glee that it seemed to him that not even the dullest could fail to take her meaning. None of the Shannon’s officers was dull, and he saw a look of intelligence pass between Wallis and Etough. In spite of her protests, her piercing cry that she longed to see where the hero had lain, he took her straight back to the shore. On shipboard some of his natural authority returned; by land he was pitiably weak. For although he was not unacquainted with women, and although he was very far from indifferent to them, so much of his life had been passed at sea that he was comparatively defenceless: he could not bring himself to be deliberately harsh or unkind. In spite of the reputation he had earned in the Mediterranean during his younger days, he was not at heart a rake; he had never worked out any form of strategy for this kind of encounter and he was surprised, concerned and surprised, when it appeared that strategy was called for.

They met quite often at the dinners he was obliged to attend, and she made him wretched and conspicuous with her mistimed solicitude; so much so that he actually cried off from the Commissioner’s ball, although this was a grave breach of naval etiquette. There was also the growing likelihood of Major Smith’s return; and although few men had more physical courage than Jack Aubrey, he did not relish the idea of an explanation with the soldier at all, not on his present moral footing.

Day after day went by: the Diligence packet came in from England, with a fresh batch of letters and some warm stockings. And day after day she lay at single anchor next to HMS Nova Scotia, and still poor Captain Broke’s dispatch remained unwritten.

‘He wanders sadly after a few minutes of painful concentration,’ said Stephen. ‘The wound in his head, the depressed fracture of the skull, is even worse than we had feared, and it would be very wrong, very cruel, to urge him to give a considered statement of his victory for a great while yet.’

‘I wonder they don’t ask young Wallis to write it,’ said Jack.

‘They have done so, but he begs to be excused: he does not wish to lessen his captain’s glory, nor to encroach upon it, in the least degree.’

‘Very right, very honourable in him, I am sure,’ said Jack in a discontented tone. ‘But there is such a thing as being too scrupulous by half. However, I dare say the senior officer and the Commissioner will fadge up something between them, if Broke don’t recover in the next day or so. They must be on fire to send the news home: I know I am. I am with child to be aboard the packet – see her there in the fairway, swinging to the tide, and the wind as fair as you could wish. I wonder they hang about so long.’

‘Why the packet, for all love? She is only to carry the duplicate and the mails: Wallis or Falkiner is to go in the Nova Scotia sloop with the original, and in the nature of things the dispatch must arrive before its echo.’

‘You would think so, would you not? But the packet is a flyer, and the sloop is not. What is more, Diligence is not one of your established Falmouth packets; she is a hired packet, and she goes to Portsmouth, right on our doorstep, and I lay you three to one she gets there first, although I dare say Capel will give the sloop a tide or so, if only for the look of the thing.’

‘A lady to see you, sir,’ said a servant.

‘Oh my God,’ muttered Jack, and he hurried into the bedroom. Now that the outlying people had all seen the Chesapeake the inn was not so full: they had a sitting-room, and it was into this sitting-room that Diana was shown.

‘You look blooming, my dear,’ said Stephen.

‘I am glad of that,’ she replied: and as their eyes met he knew what was in her mind. He had observed this silent transference often, but never so often as with Diana: it came irregularly – there was no commanding it – but when it did come, it was wholly conclusive. It worked in both directions and once it had happened there was not the least possibility of a lie, which could be embarrassing to him both as a physician and as an intelligence agent: he thought it was helped if not positively caused by the interaction of the two gazes and for this reason he sometimes wore blue- or green-tinted spectacles. However, Diana’s first words were that they were to sail almost immediately. ‘Lady Harriet told me, as a great secret, that Captain Capel and the Commissioner between them have written Captain Broke’s dispatches, and they are to go off at once, one set in the Nova Scotia and the duplicate in the packet. But since everyone will know as soon as the orders are sent out, I thought no harm in telling you.’

Her second piece of news was that Miss Smith had overturned her dogcart, taking an awkward corner too fast. ‘I came by soon after,’ she said, ‘and there it was, lying in a heap, with a man sitting on the horse’s head. How I despise a woman who cannot take a tumble without flying into hysterics.’

‘Was there much damage, so?’

‘No. A wheel came off and she tore her petticoat, that is all. I walked her home – tell me, Stephen, who is this Dido?’

‘As I recall, she was Queen of Carthage: she granted Aeneas the last favours, and she was much concerned when he left her – when he slung his hook, as we say.’

‘Oh. Well, that is a change from Lady Hamilton, at all events. She was in the secret too, and she kept on saying “I shall be a second Dido”. How Jack came to be so simple, I cannot tell. Really, upon my honour, a girl like Amanda Smith! I could have told him how it would end.’

‘That would have been a great satisfaction to you, Villiers.’

Before she could reply Jack walked in. ‘How d’ye do, cousin?’ he said. ‘I heard your voice, and I thought I would just give you good day before going out. You are looking very well – peaches and cream ain’t in it.’

‘Thank you, Jack. I was just telling Stephen that Miss Smith has been overset in her dogcart; and that we are to sail directly, either in the Nova Scotia or in the packet.’

‘Are we, by God?’ cried Jack: and then, ‘I hope she was not hurt? No arms or legs broken, or anything like that?’

‘No. She was quit for the fright and a torn petticoat. But since we are to go so soon, now is the time to make your farewells and pack your belongings.’

‘Oh, as for that, I have nothing but what I stand up in. I shall step round and ask for orders for the packet and then pull across and make sure of decent berths for us.’ He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should ask whether they would like a cabin between them: they had wished Captain Broke to marry them aboard the Shannon, and although the battle and Broke’s wound had put an end to that, Jack had understood that the ceremony would take place in Halifax. But as neither had ever uttered a single word since, he felt a delicacy about raising the matter now: he said nothing.

A silence fell when he had gone: at last Diana said, ‘What is that?’ pointing at the remains of their late breakfast.

‘It is technically known as coffee,’ said Stephen. ‘Should you wish for a cup? I cannot recommend it, unless you particularly like ground acorns and roast barley, infused in tide-water.’ After another silence he went on, ‘We spoke of our marriage some time ago. My dear, since the ship is to sail so very soon, should we not walk round to the presbytery now? It is still before twelve: I am well with Father Costello, and he would pronounce the conjugo without any difficulty.’

She changed colour at this, stood up and walked nervously about the room. Passing by the table where his cigars were laid out she picked one up. He lit it for her, and out of the cloud of smoke she said, ‘Stephen, I love you dearly and if ever I were to ask any man’s charity it would be yours. But my dear I know very well that you do not want to marry me in the least; I have known it ever since I recovered my wits after that appalling time in Boston. I should have known it at once, the minute I saw you again, if I had not been so utterly destroyed, and terrified of that man. No: do not lie, Maturin. It is infinitely kind in you, but it is no use. No use at all. And in any case,’ she said, looking at him defiantly while a great flush mounted in her cheeks, ‘I would not marry any man when I was in child by another. No, by God, not to save my life. There. Give me a drink, Stephen: these confessions are perfectly exhausting.’

‘There is nothing here but rum,’ said Stephen, looking round for a clean glass, ‘and that is the very last thing for you. I had meant to mention it to you some weeks ago: no spirits. Strait-lacing too is to be avoided, and tobacco.’

‘You knew?’ she cried.

He nodded, and said, ‘You exaggerate the importance of this, my dear, you do indeed. But it is not unnatural that you should; for you are to consider, that not only is your present physical condition well known to warp the judgement – and here I speak as a physician, Villiers – but that the recent turmoil of spirits, the escape, the rescue, the battle with the Chesapeake, must necessarily carry the process much farther, and cause your mind to make grave mistakes. You are mistaken, for example, in your estimate of my feelings. I may not appear as the trembling suppliant of former days, of my almost-youth; but that is the effect of age, no more. An outward display of emotion is indecent when one’s hair is grey; but upon my honour, my essential attachment is unchanged.’

She laid her hand upon his sleeve without a word and gave him such a sad, disillusioned smile that he faltered, took a turn to the window and back, put on his blue spectacles, and lit a cigar for himself before going on, ‘But even if you were right, which I deny entirely, there is the question of expediency – there is the question of your civil status. A marriage, even a nominal marriage, at once restores your nationality: perhaps even more important, it gives your child a name. Reflect, my dear, upon the condition of a bastard. His state is in itself an insult. He is born with heavy disadvantages under all the codes of law I know; he is penalized from birth. He is debarred from many callings; if he is admitted to society at all, he is admitted only on sufferance; he meets the reproach at every turn all through his life – any tenth transmitter of a foolish face, any lawfully begotten blockhead can throw it in his teeth, and he has no reply. I believe you are aware that I am myself a bastard: I speak with full knowledge when I say that it is a cruel, cruel thing to entail upon a child.’

‘I am sure it is, Stephen,’ she said, deeply moved. She pressed his hand, and they sat for a while without speaking. Then she said in a low voice, ‘But that is why I have come to you, the only friend I can rely on. You understand these things; you are a physician. Stephen, I could not bear to have that man’s child. It would be a monster. I know that in India women used to take a root called holi…’

‘There, my dear, there is a certain proof that your judgement is astray: otherwise you would never have thought of such a course, nor would you ever have said such a thing to me. My whole function is to preserve life, not to take it away. The oath I have sworn, and all my convictions –’

‘Stephen,’ she said, ‘I beg of you not to fail me.’ She sat, twisting her fingers together, and in a low, pleading voice she murmured, ‘Stephen, Stephen…’

‘Diana,’ he said, ‘you must marry me.’

She shook her head. Each knew that the other was immovable, and they sat in a miserable silence until the door burst open and a very young officer, pink and white, extremely cheerful, cried, ‘There you are, ma’am; there you are, sir. I have found you both at the same time. I can deliver both my messages at once.’ And then, very rapidly, as by rote, and in an official tone he said, ‘Admiral Colpoys presents his best compliments and respects to Mrs Villiers; has the honour to acquaint her that the packet sails directly, and begs her to repair aboard at her earliest possible convenience.’ He drew breath and went on, ‘The Commander-in-chief informs Dr Maturin that Diligence sails on the next tide but one, and directs him to proceed to the man-of-war’s hard with the utmost dispatch. There she lies, sir,’ he went on in a natural voice, pointing out of the window, ‘the brig just beyond Chesapeake. She has the blue peter flying.’