Post Captain (23 page)

'Ain't you coming, Stephen?' cried Jack, pushing his plate away and staring across the table, perfectly aghast.

'I had not thought of going to sea at present,' said Stephen. 'Lord Keith offered me the flagship as physician, but I begged to be excused. I have many things that call for my attention here; and it is a long while since I was in Ireland -,

'But I had taken it absolutely for granted that we were to sail together, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'And I was so happy to bring you these orders. What shall I... 'He checked himself, and then in a much lower tone he said, 'But of course, I had not the least right to make such an assumption. I do beg your pardon; and I will explain to the Admiralty at once - entirely my fault. A flagship, after all, by God! It is not more than you deserve. I am afraid I have been very presumptuous.'

'No, no, no, my dear,' cried Stephen. 'It is nothing to do with the flagship. I do not give a fig for a flagship. put that clear out of your mind. I should far prefer a sloop or a frigate. No. It is that I had not quite made up my mind to a cruise just now. However, let us leave things as they stand for the moment. Indeed, I should not like to have the name of a take-it-and-drop it, shilly-shallying, missish "son of a bitch" at the Navy Board,' he said with a smile. 'Never be so put about, joy: it was only the abruptness that disturbed me - I am more deliberate in my motions than you sanguine, briny creatures. I am engaged until the end of the week, but then, unless I write, I will join you with my sea-chest on Monday. Come, drink up your wine - admirable stuff for a little small shebeen - and we will have another bottle. And before we put you aboard your chaise, I will tell you what I know about the English law of debt.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

My dear Sir,

This is to tell you that I have reached Portsmouth a day earlier than I had proposed; to solicit the indulgence of not reporting aboard until this evening; and to beg for the pleasure of your company at dinner.

I am, my dear Sir,

Your affectionate humble servant,

Stephen Maturin

He folded the paper, wrote 'Captain Aubrey, RN, HM Sloop Polychrest', sealed it and rang the bell. 'Do you know where the Polychrest lies?' he asked.

'Oh, yes, sir,' replied the man with a knowing smile. 'She's getting her guns in at the Ordnance; and a rare old time of it she had, last tide.'

'Then be so good as to have this note taken to her directly. And these other letters are to be put into the post.'

He turned back to the table, and opening his diary he wrote, 'I sign myself his affectionate humble servant; and affection it is that brings me here, no doubt. Even a frigid, self-sufficing man needs something of this interchange if he is not to die in his unmechanical part: natural philosophy, music, dead men's conversation, is not enough. I like to think, indeed I do think, that JA has as real an affection for me as is consonant with his unreflecting, jovial nature, and I know mine for him - I know how moved I was by his distress; but how long will this affection withstand the attrition of mute daily conflict? His kindness for me will not prevent him from pursuing Diana. And what he does not wish to see, he will not see: I do not imply a conscious hypocrisy, but the quod volunt credere applies with particular force to him. As for her, I am at a loss -this kindness and then the turning away as though from an enemy. It is as though in playing with JA she had become herself entangled. (Yet would she ever part with her ambition? Surely not. And he is even less marriageable than I; less a lawful prize. Can this be a vicious inclination? JA, though no Adonis by my measure, is well-looking, which I am not.) It is as though his ludicrous account of my wealth, passing through Mrs Williams and gathering force by the conviction in that block-head's tone, had turned me from an ally, a friend, even an accomplice, into an opponent. It is as though - oh, a thousand wild possibilities. I am lost, and I am disturbed. Yet I think I may be cured; this is a fever of the blood, and laudanum will cool it, distance will cool it, business and action will do the same. What I dread is the contrary heating effect of jealousy: I had never felt jealousy before this, and although all knowledge of the world, all experience, literature, history, common observation told me of its strength, I had no sense of its true nature at all. Gnosce teipsum - my dreams appal me. This morning, when I was walking beside the coach as it laboured up Ports Down Hill and I came to the top, with all Portsmouth harbour suddenly spread below me, and Gosport, Spithead and perhaps half the Channel fleet glittering there - a powerful squadron moving out past Haslar in line ahead, all studdingsails abroad - I felt a longing for the sea. It has a great cleanliness. There are moments when everything on land seems to me tortuous, dark, and squalid; though to be sure, squalor is not lacking aboard a man-of-war.

'I am not sure how far JA practised upon Mrs Williams's avid credulity: pretty far, to judge by her obsequious reception of me. It has had this curious result, that JA's stock has risen with her in almost the same proportion as mine. She would have no objection to him if his estate were clear. Nor, I swear, would Sophie. Yet I do believe that that good child is so firm in the principles she has been taught, that she would wither away an old maid, rather than disobey her mother - marry without her consent. No Gretna Green. She is a dear good child; and she is one of those rare creatures in whom principle does not do away with humour. This is no time for roaring mirth, to be sure, but I remember very well to have noted, again and again at Mapes, that she is quietly and privately jolly. A great rarity in women (Diana included, apart from an appreciation of wit and now and then a flash of it), who are often as solemn as owls, though given to noisy laughter. How deeply sorry, how more than sorry I should be if she were to take the habit of unhappiness: it is coming on her fast. The structure of her face is changing.' He stood looking out of the window. It was a clear, frosty morning, and the blackguardly town looked as well as it could. Officers passed in and out of the Port Admiral's house, over against the inn; the pavements were full of uniforms, blue coats and red, church-going officers' wives in pretty mantuas, with here and there a fur pelisse; scrubbed children with Sunday faces.

'A gentleman to see you, sir,' said the waiter. 'A lieutenant.'

'A lieutenant?' said Stephen; and after a pause, 'Desire him to walk up.'

A thundering on the stairs, as though someone had released a bull; the door burst inwards, trembling, and Pullings appeared, lighting up the room with his happiness and his new blue coat. 'I'm made, sir,' he cried, seizing Stephen's hand. 'Made at last! My commission came down with the mail. Oh, wish me joy!'

'Why, so I do,' said Stephen, wincing in that iron grip, 'if more joy you can contain - if more felicity will not make your cup overflow. Have you been drinking, Lieutenant Pullings? Pray sit in a chair like a rational being, and do not spring about the room.'

'Oh say it again, sir,' said the lieutenant, sitting and gazing at Stephen with pure love beaming from his face. 'Not a drop.'

'Then it is with present happiness you are drunk. Well. Long, long may it last.'

'Ha, ha, ha! That is exactly what Parker said. "Long may it last," says he; but envious, like, you know - the grey old toad. Howsomever, I dare say even I might grow a trifle sour, or rancid, like, five and thirty years without a ship of my own, and this cruel fitting-out. And he is a good, righteous man, I am sure; though he was proper pixy-led before the captain came.'

'Lieutenant, will you drink a glass of wine, a glass of sherry-wine?'

'You've said it again, sir,' cried Pullings, with another burst of effulgence. ('You would swear that light actually emanated from that face,' observed Stephen privately.) 'I take it very kind. Just a drop, if you please. I am not going to get drunk until tomorrow night - my feast. Would it be proper for me to propose a sentiment? Then here's to Captain Aubrey - my dear love to him, and may he have all his heart desires. Bottoms up. Without him I should never have got my step. Which reminds me of my errand, sir. Captain Aubrey's compliments to Dr Maturin, congratulates him upon his safe arrival, and will be very happy to dine with him at the George this day at three o'clock; has not yet shipped paper, pens, or ink, and begs to be excused the informality of his reply.'

'It would give me great pleasure if you would keep us company.'

'Thankee, sir, thankee. But in just half an hour I am taking the long-boat out off of the Wight. The Lord Mornington Indiaman passed Start Point on Thursday, and I hope to press half a dozen prime seamen out of her about dawn.'

'Will the cruising frigates and the Plymouth tenders have left you anything to take?'

'Love you, sir, I made two voyages in her. There are hidey-holes under her half-deck you would never dream of, without you helped to stow men into 'em. I'll have half a dozen men out of her, or you may say, "black's the white of your eye, Tom Pullings." Lieutenant Tom Pullings,' he added, secretly.

'We are short-handed, so?'

'Why it's pretty bad, of course. We are thirty-two men short of our complement, but 'tis not so short as poor. The receiving-ship sent us eighteen Lord Mayor's men and twenty-odd from the Huntingdonshire and Rutland quotas, chaps taken off the parish and out of the gaols -never seen the sea in their life. It's seamen we're short of. Still, we do have a few prime hands, and two old Sophies among 'em - old Allen, fo'c'sleman, and John Lakey, maintop. Do you remember him? You sewed him up very near, the first time you ever sailed with us and we had a brush with an Algerine. He swears you saved his - his privates, sir, and is most uncommon grateful would feel proper old fashioned without 'em, he says Oh, Captain Aubrey will lick 'em into shape, I'm certain sure. And there's Mr Parker seems pretty taut; and Babbington and me will have the hide off of any bastard as don't attend to his. duty - the Captain need not fear for that.'

'What of the other officers?'

'Why, sir, I have not rightly had time to come to know 'em, not with all this day-of-judgment hell and shindy of fitting-out - purser in the Victualling Yard, gunner at the Ordnance, master in the hold, or where the hold would be if there was a hold, which there ain't.'

'She is constructed on new principles, I find?'

'Well, sir, I hope she's constructed to swim, that's all. I would not say it to any but a shipmate, sir, but I never seen anything like her, Pearl River, Hugh or Guinea coast. You can't tell whether she's coming or going. Not but what she's a gallows deal more handsome than the common run,' he added, as though taking himself up for disloyalty. 'Mr Parker seen to that - gold-leaf, bright-work galore, special patent blacking for the bends and yards, blocks stropped with red leather. Was you ever at a fitting-out, sir?'

'Not I.'

'It's a right old Bedlam,' said Pullings, shaking his head and laughing. 'Dockyard mateys underfoot, stores all over the deck, new drafts milling about like lost souls, nobody knowing who anyone is or where to go - a right old Bedlam, and the Port Admiral sending down every five minutes to know why you're not ready for sea - is everybody observing the Sabbath aboard the Polychrest, ha, ha, ha!' In the gaiety of his heart Tom Pullings sang

'We'll give you a bit of our mind, old hound:

Port Admiral, you be damned.

'I haven't had my clothes off since we commissioned her,' he observed. 'Captain Aubrey turns up at crack of dawn - posted all the way - reads himself in to me and Parker and the Marines and half a dozen loobies which was all we had then, and up goes his pennant. And before his last words are rightly out - fail not as you will answer the contrary at your peril - "Mr Pullings, that topsail-sheet block needs a dog-bitch thimble, if you please," in his own voice exactly. But Lord, you should have heard him carrying on at the riggers when he found they had been giving us twice-laid stuff; they had to call the Master-Attendant to soothe his horrid passion. Then "Lose not a minute," says he, driving us all though fit to drop, merry as a grig and laughing when half the people run to the stern thinking it is the bows, and t'other way about. Why, sir, he'll be glad of his dinner, I'm sure: he's not had above a bit of bread and cold beef in his hand since I been aboard, And now I must take my leave. He would give his eye-teeth for a boat-load of thorough-paced seamen.'

Stephen returned to his window, watched the lithe young form of Thomas Pullings weave through the traffic, cross to the far side and hurry away with that easy, loose-limbed rolling gait of his kind towards the Point and his long night's wait in an open boat far out in the Channel. 'Devotion is a fine thing, a moving thing to see,' he reflected. 'But who is going to pay for that amiable young man's zeal? What blows, oaths, moral violence, brutalities?'

The scene had changed: church-going was over, and the respectable part of the town had vanished behind doors, into an odour of mutton; now groups of sailors straggled up and down, walking wide, like countrymen in London, and among them small greasy tradesmen, routs, hucksters, and the thick local girls and women called brutes. A confused bellowing, something between merriment and a riot turning ugly, and the Impregnable's liberty-men, in shore-going rig and a prize divided in their pockets, came staggering by with a troop of whores, a fiddler walking backwards in front of them and small boys skirmishing on every side, like sheepdogs. Some of the whores were old, some had torn dresses with yellow flesh beneath, all had dyed and frizzled hair, and all looked pinched with cold.

The warmth and happiness of young Pullings' joy receded. 'All ports I have seen are much the same,' he reflected. 'All the places where sailors congregate: I do not believe that this reflects their nature, however, but rather the nature of the land.' He sank into a train of thought -man's nature how defined? Where the constant factors of identity? What allows the statement 'I am I' from which he was aroused by the sight of Jack, walking along with the fine easy freedom of Sunday - no bowed head, no anxious looks over his shoulder. There were many other people in the street, but two, some fifty yards behind Jack and keeping pace with him, caught Stephen's eye:

burly fellows, of no obvious trade or calling, and there was something odd about them, some intentness, some want of casual staring about, that made him look harder, withdrawing from the window and fixing them until they came abreast of the George.

'Jack,' he said, 'there are two men following you. Come over here and look out discreetly. There they are, standing on the Port Admiral's steps.'

'Yes,' said Jack. 'I know the one with the broken nose. He tried to come aboard the other day - no go, however; I smoked him at once. I dare say he is putting the other on to my line, the pragmatical bastard. Oh, be damned to them,' he said, hurrying to the fire. 'Stephen, what do you say to a drink? I spent the whole morning in the foretop, starved with cold.'

'A little brandy will answer the case, I think; a glass of right Nantes. Indeed, you look quite destroyed. Drink this up, and we will go straight to the dining-room. I have ordered a halibut with anchovy sauce, mutton, and a venison pasty - simple island fare.'

The worn lines eased out of Jack Aubrey's face, a rosy glow replaced the unhealthy grey; he seemed to fill his uniform again. 'How much better a man feels when he is mixed with halibut and leg of mutton and roebuck,' he said, toying with a piece of Stilton cheese. 'You are a much better host than I am, Stephen,' he observed. 'All the things I stood most in need of but hardly name. I remember a wretched dinner I invited you to in Mahon, the first we ever ate together, and they got it all wrong, being ignorant of Spanish, my sort of Spanish.'

'It was a very good meal, a very welcome meal,' said Stephen. 'I remember it perfectly. Shall we take our tea upstairs? I wish to hear about the Polychrest.' The big room was an almost unbroken spread of blue, with here and there a Royal Marine, and conversation was little more private than signals on the open sea.