Post Captain (6 page)

Mrs Williams was sitting with the other parents and chaperons by the double doors into the supper-room, where she could rake the whole line of dancers, and her red face was nodding and smiling - significant smiles, emphatic nods - as she told her cousin Simmons that she had encouraged the whole thing from the beginning. Crossing over in the dance, Diana saw her triumphant face: and the next face she saw, immediately in front of her, was Jack's as he advanced to hand her about 'Such a lovely ball, Aubrey,' she said, with a flashing smile. He was in gold-laced scarlet, a big, commanding figure: his forehead was sweating and his eyes shone with excitement and pleasure. He took her in with benevolent approval, said something meaningless but kind, and whirled her about.

'Come and sit down,' said Stephen, at the end of the second dance. 'You are looking pale.'

'Am I?' she cried, looking intently into a mirror. 'Do I look horrible?'

'You do not. But you must not get over-tired. Come and sit down in a fresher air. Come into the orangery.'

'I have promised to stand up with Admiral James. I will come after supper.'

Deserting the supper-table, three sailors, including Admiral James, pursued Diana into the orangery; but they withdrew when they saw Stephen waiting for her there with her shawl.

'I did not think the doctor had it in him,' said Mowett. 'In the Sophie we always looked on him as a sort of monk.'

'Damn him,' said Pullings. 'I thought 'I was getting on so well.'

'You are not cold?' asked Stephen, tucking the shawl round her shoulders; and as though the physical contact between his hand and her bare flesh established a contact, sending a message that had no need of words, he felt the change of current. But in spite of the intuition he said, 'Diana...'

'Tell me,' she said in a hard voice, cutting right across him, 'is that Admiral James married?'

'He is.'

'I thought so. You can smell the enemy a great way off.'

'Enemy?'

'Of course. Don't be a fool, Maturin. You must know that married men are the worst enemies women can have. Get me something to drink, will you? I am quite faint with all that fug.'

'This is Sillery; this iced punch.'

'Thank you. They offer what they call friendship or some stuff of that kind - the name don't matter - and all they want in return for this great favour is your heart, your life, your future, your - I will not be coarse, but you know very well what I mean. There is no friendship in men: I know what I am talking about, believe me. There is not one round here, from old Admiral Haddock to that young puppy of a curate, who has not tried it: to say nothing of India. Who the devil do they think I am?' she exclaimed, drumming on the arm of her chair. 'The only honest one was Southampton, who sent an old woman from Madras to say he would be happy to take me into keeping; and upon my honour, if I had known what my life in England, in this muddy hole with nothing but beer-swilling rustics, was going to be, I should have been tempted to accept. What do you think my life is like, without a sou and under the thumb of a vulgar, pretentious, ignorant woman who detests me? What do you think it is like, looking into this sort of a future, with my looks going, the only thing I have? Listen, Maturin, I speak openly to you, because I like you; I like you very much, and I believe you have a kindness for me - you are almost the only man I have met in England I can treat as a friend -trust as a friend.'

'You have my friendship, sure,' said Stephen heavily. After a long pause he said with a fair attempt at lightness, 'You are not altogether just. You look as desirable as you can - that dress, particularly the bosom of that dress, would inflame Saint Anthony, as you know very well. It is unjust to provoke a man and then to complain he is a satyr if the provocation succeeds. You are not a miss upon her promotion, moved by unconscious instinctive...'

'Do you tell me I am provocative?' cried Diana.

'Certainly I do. That is exactly what I am saying. But I do not suppose you know how much you make men suffer. In any case, you are arguing from the particular to the general: you have met some men who wish to take advantage of you, and you go too far Not all French waiters have red hair'

'They all have red hair somewhere about them, and it shows sooner or later But I do believe you are an exception, Maturin, and that is why I confide in you I cannot tell you what a comfort it is. I was brought up among intelligent men - they were a loose lot on the Madras side and worse in Bombay, but they were intelligent, and oh how I miss them. And what a relief it is to be able to speak freely, after all this swimming in namby-pamby.'

'Your cousin Sophia is intelligent.'

'Do you really think so? Well, there is a sort of quickness, if you like; but she is a girl-we do not speak the same language. I grant you she is beautiful. She is really beautiful, but she knows nothing - how could she? - and I cannot forgive her her fortune. It is so unjust. Life is so unjust.' Stephen made no reply, but fetched her an ice. 'The only thing a man can offer a woman is marriage,' she went on. 'An equal marriage. I have about four or five years, and if I cannot find a husband by then, I shall... And where can one be found in this howling wilderness? Do I disgust you very much? I mean to put you off, you know.'

'Yes, I am aware of your motions, Villiers. You do not disgust me at all - you speak as a friend. You hunt; and your chase has a beast in view.'

'Well done, Maturin.'

'You insist upon an equal marriage?'

'At the very least. I shall despise a woman so poor-spirited, so wanting in courage, as to make a mésalliance. There was a smart little whippersnapper of an attorney in Dover that had the infernal confidence to make me an offer. I have never been so mortified in my life. I had rather go to the stake, or look after the Teapot for the rest of my days.'

'Define your beast.'

'I am not difficult. He must have some money, of course - love in a cottage be damned. He must have some sense; he must not be actually deformed, nor too ancient. Admiral Haddock, for example, is beyond my limit, I do not insist upon it, but I should like him to be able to sit a horse and not fall off too often; and I should like him to be able to hold his wine. You do not get drunk, Maturin; that is one of the things I like about you. Captain Aubrey and half the other men here will have to be carried to bed.'

'No, I love wine, but I do not find it often affects my judgment: not often. I drank a good deal this evening, however. As far as Jack Aubrey is concerned, do you not think you may be a little late in the field? I have the impression that tonight may be decisive.'

'Has he told you anything? Has he confided in you?'

'You do not speak as you have just spoken to a tattle-tale of a man, I believe. As far as your knowledge of me goes, it is accurate.'

'In any case, you are wrong. I know Sophie. He may make a declaration, but she will need a longer time than this. She need never fear being left on the shelf - it never occurs to her at all, I dare say - and she is afraid of marriage. How she cried when I told her men had hair on their chests! And she hates being managed - that is not the word I want. What is it, Maturin?'

'Manipulated.'

'Exactly. She is a dutiful girl - a great sense of duty: I think it rather stupid, but there it is - but still she finds the way her mother has been arranging and pushing and managing and angling in all this perfectly odious. You two must have had hogsheads of that grocer's claret forced down your throats. Perfectly odious: and she is obstinate- strong, if you like - under that bread-and-butter way of hers. It will take a great deal to move her; much more than the excitement of a ball.'

'She is not attached?'

'Attached to Aubrey? I do not know; I do not suppose she knows herself. She likes him; she is flattered by his attentions; and to be sure he is a husband any woman would be glad to have - well-off, good-looking, distinguished in his profession and with a future before him, unexceptionable family, cheerful, good-natured. But she is entirely unsuited to him - I am persuaded she is, with her secretive, closed, stubborn nature. He needs someone much more awake, much more alive: they would never be happy.'

'She may have a passionate side, a side you know nothing about, or do not choose to see.'

'Stuff, Maturin. In any case, he needs a different woman and she needs a different man: in a way you might be much more suited to her, if you could stand her ignorance.'

'So Jack Aubrey might answer?'

'Yes, I like him well enough. I should prefer a man more - what shall I say? More grown up, less of a boy

- less of a huge boy.'

'He is highly considered in his profession, as you said yourself, just now.'

'That is neither here nor there. A man may be brilliant in his calling and a mere child outside it. I remember a mathematician - they say he was one of the best in the world - who came out to India, to do something about Venus; and when his telescope was taken away from him, he was unfit for civilized life. A blundering schoolboy! He clung to my hand all through one tedious, tedious evening, sweating and stammering. No: give me the politicoes -they know how to live; and they are all reading men, more or less. I wish Aubrey were something of a reading man. More like you - I mean what I say. You are very good company: I like being with you. But he is a handsome fellow. Look,' she said, turning to the window, 'there he is, figuring away. He dances quite well, does he not? It is a pity he wants decision.'

'You would not say that if you saw him taking his ship into action.'

'I mean in his relations with women. He is sentimental. But still, he would do. Shall I tell you something that will really shock you, although you are a medical man? I was married, you know - I am not a girl - and intrigues were as common in India as they are in Paris. There are times when I am tempted to play the fool, terribly tempted. I dare say I should, too, if I lived in London and not in this dreary hole.'

'Tell me, have you reason to suppose that Jack is to your way of thinking?'

'About our suitability? Yes. There are signs that mean a lot to a woman. I wonder he ever looked seriously at Sophie. He is not interested, I suppose? Her fortune would not mean a great deal to him? Have you known him long? But I suppose all you naval people have known one another, or of one another, for ever.'

'Oh, I am no seaman, at all. I first met him in Minorca, in the year one, in the spring of the year one. I had taken a patient there, for the Mediterranean climate - he died- and I met Jack at a concert. We took a liking to one another, and he asked me to sail with him as his surgeon. I agreed, being quite penniless at the time, and we have been together ever since. I know him well enough to say that as for being interested, concerned for a woman's fortune, there never was a man more unworldly than Jack Aubrey. Maybe I will tell you a thing about him.'

'Go on, Stephen.'

'Some time ago he had an unhappy affair with another officer's wife. She had the dash, the style and the courage he loves, but she was a hard, false woman, and she wounded him very deeply. So virginal modesty, rectitude, principle, you know? have a greater charm for him than they might otherwise have had.'

'Ah? Yes, I see. I see now. And you have a béguin for her too? It is no use, I warn you. She would never do a thing without her mother's consent, and that is nothing to do with her mother's being in control of her fortune: it is all duty. And you would never bring my aunt Williams round in a thousand years. Still, you may feel on Sophie's side.'

'I have the greatest liking and admiration for her.'

'But no tendre?'

'Not as you would define it. But I am averse to giving pain, Villiers, which you are not.'

She stood up, as straight as a wand. 'We must go in. I have to dance this next bout with Captain Aubrey,' she said, kissing him. 'I am truly sorry if I hurt you, Maturin.'

CHAPTER THREE

For many years Stephen Maturin had kept a diary in a crabbed and characteristically secret shorthand of his own. It was scattered with anatomical drawings, descriptions of plants, birds, moving creatures, and if it had been deciphered the scientific part would have been found to be in Latin; but the personal observations were all in Catalan, the language he had spoken most of his youth. The most recent entries were in that tongue.

'February 15... then when she suddenly kissed me, the strength left my knees, quite ludicrously, and I could scarcely follow her into the ball-room with any countenance. I had sworn to allow no such thing again, no strong dolorous emotion ever again: my whole conduct of late proves how I lie. I have done everything in my power to get my heart under the harrow.

'February 21. I reflect upon Jack Aubrey. How helpless a man is, against direct attack by a woman. As soon as she leaves the schoolroom a girl learns to fend off, ward off wild love; it becomes second nature; it offends no code; it is commended not only by the world but even by those very men who are thus repulsed. How different for a man! He has no such accumulated depth of armour; and the more delicate, the more gallant, the more "honourable" he is the less he is able to withstand even a remote advance. He must not wound: and in this case there is little inclination to wound.

'When a face you have never seen without pleasure, that has never looked at you without a spontaneous smile, remains cold, unmoving, even inimical, at your approach, you are strangely cast down: you see another being and you are another being yourself. Yet life with Mrs W can be no party of pleasure; and magnanimity calls for understanding. For the moment it calls in vain. There are depths of barbarity, possibilities I did not suspect. Plain common sense calls for a disengagement.

'JA is uneasy, discontented with himself, discontented with Sophia's reluctance - coyness is no word to use for that dear sweet pure affectionate young woman's hesitation. Speaks of wincing fillies and their nonsense: he has never been able to bear frustration. This in part is what Diana Villiers means by his immaturity. If he did but know it the evident mutual liking between him and DV is in fact good for his suit. Sophia is perhaps the most respectable girl I have known, but she is after all a woman. JA is not percipient in these matters. Yet on the other hand he is beginning to look at me with some doubt. This is the first time there has been any reserve in our friendship; it is painful to me and I believe to him. I cannot bring myself to look upon him with anything but affection; but when I think of the possibilities, the physical possibilities I say, why then -'DV insists upon my inviting her to Melbury to play billiards: she plays well, of course - can give either of us twenty in a hundred. Her insistence is accompanied by an ignoble bullying and an ignoble pretty pretty cajolery, to which I yield, both of us knowing exactly what we are about. This talk of friendship deceives neither of us; and yet it does exist, even on her side, I believe. My position would be the most humiliating in the world but for the fact that she is not so clever as she thinks: her theory is excellent, but she has not the control of her pride or her other passions to carry it into effect. She is cynical, but not nearly cynical enough, whatever she may say. If she were, I should not be obsessed. Quo me rapis? Quo indeed. My whole conduct, meekness, mansuetude, voluntary abasement, astonishes me.

'Quaere: is the passionate intensity of my feeling for Catalan independence the cause of my virile resurrection or its effect? There is a direct relationship, I am sure. Bartolomeu's report should reach England in three days if the wind holds.'

'Stephen, Stephen, Stephen!' Jack's voice came along the corridor, growing louder and ending in a roar as he thrust his head into the room. 'Oh, there you are. I was afraid you had gone off to your stoats again. The carrier has brought you an ape.'

'What sort of an ape?' asked Stephen.

'A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. It had a can of ale at every pot-house on the road, and it is reeling drunk. It has been offering itself to Babbington.'

'Then it is Dr Lloyd's lewd mangabey. He believes it to be suffering from the furor uterinus, and we are to open it together when I return.'

Jack looked at his watch. 'What do you say to a hand of cards before we go?'

'With all my heart.'

Piquet was their game. The cards flew fast, shuffled, cut, and dealt again: they had played together so long that each knew the other's style through and through. Jack's was a cunning alternation of risking everything for the triumphant point of eight, and of a steady, orthodox defence, fighting for every last trick. Stephen's was based upon Hoyle, Laplace, the theory of probabilities, and his knowledge of Jack's character.

'A point of five,' said Jack.

'Not good.'

'A quart.'

'To what?'

'The knave.'

'Not good.'

'Three queens.'

'Not good.'

They played. 'The rest are mine,' said Stephen, as the singleton king fell to his ace. 'Ten for cards, and capot. We must stop. Five guineas, if you please; you shall have your revenge in London.'

'If I had not thrown away my hearts,' said Jack, 'I should have had you on toast. What amazing cards you have held these last few weeks, Stephen.'

'Skill enters into this game.'

'It is luck, all luck! You have the most amazing luck with cards. I should be sorry, was you in love with anyone.'

The pause lasted no more than a second before the door opened and the horses were reported alongside, but its effect hung about them for miles as they trotted through the cold drizzle along the London road.

However, the rain stopped while they were eating their dinner at the Bleeding Heart, their half-way point, a cheerful sun came out, and they saw the first swallow of the year, a blue curve skimming over the horse-pond at Edenbridge. Long before they walked into Thacker's, the naval coffeehouse, they were far back in their old easy ways, talking without the least constraint about the sea, the service, the possibility of migrant birds navigating by the stars at night, of an Italian violin that Jack was tempted to buy, and of the renewal of teeth in elephants.

'Aubrey, so it is!' cried Captain Fowler, rising from his shadowy box in the far end of the room. 'We were just talking about you. Andrews was here until five minutes ago, telling us about your ball in the country - in Sussex. He said it was the finest thing - girls by the dozen, fine women, such a ball! He told us all about it. Pray,' he said, looking arch, 'are we to congratulate you?'

'Not - not exactly, sir, thank you very much however. Perhaps a little later, if all goes well.'

'Clap on, clap on! Else you will regret it when you are old - damnably mouldy a hundred years hence. Am not I right, Doctor? How do you do? Am I not right? If only he will clap on, we may see him a grandfather yet. My grandson has six teeth! Six teeth in his head already!'

'I shall not spend long with Jackson, I just want a little ready money - you have stripped me with your infernal run of luck - and the latest news from the prize-court,' said Jack, referring to his prize-agent and man of business. 'And then I shall go to Bond Street. It is a prodigious sum to pay for a fiddle, and I do not think I could square it with my conscience. I am not really a good enough player. But I should just like to handle it again, and tuck it under my chin.'

'A good fiddle would bring you into bloom, and you earned an Amati by every minute you spent on the deck of the Cacafuego. Certainly you must have your fiddle. Any innocent pleasure is a real good: there are not so many of them.'

'Must I? I have a great respect for your judgment, Stephen. If you are not long at the Admiralty, perhaps you would step round and give me your opinion of its tone.'

Stephen walked into the Admiralty, gave his name to the porter, and was shown straight past the notorious waiting-room, where an anxious, disconsolate and often shabby crowd of shipless officers were waiting for an interview, an almost certainly hopeless interview.

He was received by an elderly man in a black coat -received with marked consideration and begged to take a seat. Sir Joseph would be with them as soon as the Board rose; they had been sitting an hour longer than had been expected; and in the mean time Black Coat would be happy to deal with certain main heads. They had received Bartolomeu's report.

'Before we begin, sir,' said Stephen, 'may I suggest that I should use another entrance or that our meetings should take place in another house? There was a fellow lounging

about by the hazard on the other side of Whitehall whom I have seen in the company of Spaniards from the embassy.

I may be mistaken; it may be mere chance; but -

'Sir Joseph hurried in. 'Dr Maturin, I do apologize for keeping you. Nothing but the Board would have prevented me from... How do you do, sir? It is most exceedingly good of you to come up at such short notice. We have received Bartolomeu's report, and we urgently wish to consult you upon several points that arise. May we go through it, head by head? His lordship particularly desired me to let him have the results of our conversation by tonight.'

The British government was well aware that Catalonia, the Spanish province or rather collection of provinces that contained most of the wealth and the industry of the kingdom, was animated by a desire to regain its independence; the government knew that the peace might not last -Bonaparte was building ships as fast as he could - and that a divided Spain would greatly weaken any coalition he might bring into an eventual war. The various groups of Catalan autonomists who had approached the government had made this plain, though it was obvious before: this was not the first time England had been concerned with Catalonia nor with dividing her potential enemies. The Admiralty, of course, was interested in the Catalan ports, shipyards, docks, naval supplies and industries; Barcelona itself would be of incalculable value, and there were many other harbours, including Port Mahon in Minorca, the British possession, so strangely given up by the politicians when they negotiated the recent peace-treaty. The Admiralty, following the English tradition of independent intelligence agencies with little or no communication between them, had their own people dealing with this question. But few of them could speak the language, few knew much about the history of the nation, and none could evaluate the claims of the different bodies that put themselves forward as the true representatives of the country's resistance. There were some Barcelona merchants, and a few from Valencia; but they were limited men, and the long war had kept them out of touch with their friends; Dr Maturin was the Admiralty's most esteemed adviser. He was known to have had revolutionary contacts in his younger days, but his integrity, his complete disinterestedness were never called into question. The Admiralty also had a touching respect for scientific eminence, and no less a person than the Physician of the Fleet vouched for Stephen Maturin's. 'Dr Maturin's Tar-Water Reconsidered and his remarks on suprapubic cystotomy should be in every naval surgeon's chest: such acuity of practical observation...' Whitehall had a higher opinion of him than Champflower:

Whitehall knew that he was a physician, no mere surgeon; that he was a man of some estate in Lérida; and that his Irish father had been connected with the first families of that kingdom. Black Coat and his colleagues also knew that in his character as a physician, a learned man of standing perfectly at home in both Catalan and Spanish, he could move about the country as freely as any native - an incomparable agent, sure, discreet, deeply covered: a man of their own kind. And from their point of view his remaining tinge of Catholicism was but one advantage more. They would have wrung and squeezed their secret funds to retain him, and he would take nothing: the most delicate sounding produced no hint of an echo, no gleam in his purse's eye.

He left the Admiralty by a side door, walked through the park and up across Piccadilly to Bond Street, where he found Jack still undecided. 'I tell you what it is, Stephen,' he said. 'I do not know that I really like its tone. Listen-'

'If the day were a little warmer, air,' said the shopman, 'it would bring out its fruitiness. You should have heard Mr Galignani playing it when we still had the fire going, last week.'

'Well, I don't know,' said Jack. 'I think I shall leave it for today. Just put up these strings in a paper for me, will you, together with the rosin. Keep the fiddle, and I will let you know one way or the other by the end of the week. Stephen,' he said, taking his friend's arm and guiding him across the busy street, 'I must have been playing that fiddle a good hour and more, and I still don't know my own mind. Jackson was not in the way, nor his partner, so I came straight here. It was odd, damned vexing and odd, for we had appointed to meet. But he was not at home: just this fool of a clerk, who said he was out of town - they expected him, but could not tell when. I shall pay my respects to Old Jarvie, just to keep myself in mind, and then we can go home. I shall not wait for Jackson.'

They rode back, and where they had left the rain there they found it again, rain, and a fierce wind from the east. Jack's horse lost a shoe, and they wasted the best part of the afternoon finding a smith, a surly, awkward brute who sent his nails in too deep. It was dark when they reached Ashdown Forest; by this time Jack's horse was lame, and they still had a long ride before them.

'Let me look to your pistols,' said Jack, as the trees came closer to the road. 'You have no notion of hammering your flints.'

'They are very well,' said Stephen, unwilling to open his holsters (a teratoma in one, a bottled Arabian dormouse in the other). 'Do you apprehend any danger?'

'This is an ugly stretch of road, with all these disbanded soldiers turned loose. They made an attempt upon the mail not far from Aker's Cross. Come, let me have your pistols. I thought as much: what is this?'

'A teratoma,' said Stephen sulkily.

'What is a teratoma?' asked Jack, holding the object in his hand. 'A kind of grenado?'