Post Captain (7 page)

'It is an inward wen, a tumour we find them, occasionally, in the abdominal cavity Sometimes they contain long black hair, sometimes a set of teeth this has both hair and teeth. It belonged to a Mr Elkins of the City, an eminent cheese-monger. I prize it much.'

'By God,' cried Jack, thrusting it back into the holster and wiping his hand vehemently upon the horse, 'I do wish you would leave people's bellies alone. So you have no pistols at all, I collect?'

'If you wish to be so absolute, no, I have not.'

'You will never make old bones, brother,' said Jack, dismounting and feeling the horse's leg. 'There is an inn, not a bad inn, half a mile off the side-road: what do you say to lying there tonight?'

'Your mind is much disturbed by the thought of these robbers, highwaymen, footpads?'

'I tremble so that I can hardly sit on my horse. It would be stupid to get knocked on the head, to be sure, but I am thinking more of my horse's legs. And then again,' he said, after a pause, 'I have a damned odd feeling: I do not much care to be home tonight. Strange, because I had looked forward to it - lively as a libertyman this morning -and now I do not care for it so much. Sometimes at sea you have that feeling of a lee-shore. Dirty weather, close-reefed top-sails, not a sight of the sun, not an observation for days, no idea of where you are to within a hundred miles or so, and at night you feel the loom of the shore under your lee:

you can see nothing, but you can almost hear the rocks grinding out your bottom.'

Stephen made no reply, but wound his cloak higher against the biting wind.

Mrs Williams never came down to breakfast; and quite apart from this the breakfast-room at Mapes was the most cheerful in the house; it looked south-east, and the gauze curtains waved gently in the sun, letting in the smell of spring. It could not have been a more feminine room -pretty white furniture, a green sprigged carpet, delicate china, little rolls and honey, a quantity of freshly-washed young women drinking tea.

One of these, Sophie Bentinck, was giving an account of a dinner at the White Hart which Mr George Simpson, to whom she was engaged to be married, had attended. 'So then the toasts went round, and when George gave "Sophia" up starts your Captain Aubrey. "Oh," cries he,"I will drink that with three times three. Sophie is a name very dear to my heart." And it could not have been me, you know, for we have never met.' She gazed about her with the benevolence of a good-natured girl who has a ring on her finger and who wishes everybody to be as happy as herself.

'And did he drink it with three times three?' asked Sophia, looking amused, pleased and conscious.

'It was the name of his ship, you know, his first command,' said Diana quickly.

'Of course I know it,' said Sophia with an unusual flush. 'We all know it.'

'The post!' shrieked Frances, rushing out of the room. An expectant pause, a temporary truce. 'Two for my mother, one for Sophie Bentinck with a sweet blue seal of a cupid

- no, it's a goat with wings - and one for Di, franked. I can't make out the frank. Who's it from, Di?'

'Frankie, you must try to behave more like a Christian, sweetheart,' said her eldest sister. 'You must not take notice of people's letters: you must pretend to know nothing about 'em.'

'Mama always opens ours, whenever we get any, which isn't often.'

'I had one from Jemmy Blagrove's sister after the ball,' said Cecilia, 'and she said he said she was to say I danced like a swan. Mama was in a horrid wax - correspondence most improper, and anyhow swans did not dance, because of their webbed feet: they sang. But I knew what he meant. So your Mama allows you to correspond?' she said, turning to Sophie Bentinck.

'Oh, yes. But we are engaged, you know, which is quite different,' said Sophie, looking complacently at her hand.

'Tom Postman does not pretend to know nothing about peoples letters,' said Frances. 'He said he could not make out Di's frank either. But the letters he is taking to Melbury are from London, Ireland and Spain. A double letter from Spain, with a vast sum to be paid!'

The breakfast-room at Melbury was cheerful too, but in a different way. Sombre mahogany, Turkey carpet, ponderous chairs, the smell of coffee, bacon and tobacco and wet men: they had been fishing since dawn and now they were half-way through the breakfast to which they were entitled, a breakfast that reached all over the broad white table-cloth: chafing dishes, coffee-pots, toast-racks, a Westphalian ham, a raised pie as yet untouched, the trout they had caught that morning.

'This was the one from under the bridge,' said Jack.

'Post, sir, if you please,' said his servant, Preserved Killick.

'From Jackson,' said Jack. 'And the other from the proctor. Forgive me, Stephen. I will just see what they have to say - what excuse.

'My God,' he cried, a moment later. 'It can not be true.'

Stephen looked up sharply. Jack passed him the letter. Mr Jackson, his prize-agent, one of the most respectable men in the profession, had failed. He had bolted, run off to Boulogne with what remained of the firm's cash, and his partner had filed his petition in bankruptcy, with no hope of paying sixpence in the pound.

'What makes it so very bad,' said Jack in a low, troubled voice, 'is that I told him to put all Sophie's prize-money into the funds as it came in. Some ships take years to be finally condemned, if the owners appeal. He did not do it. He gave me sums he said were interest from funds, but it was not true. He took it all as it came in, kept it in his own hands. It is gone, every last farthing.' He stared out of the window for some time, poising the other letter in his hand.

'This one is from the proctor. It will be about the two neutrals that were on appeal,' he said, breaking the seal at last. 'I am almost afraid to open it. Yes: just so. Here is my lee-shore. The verdict is reversed: I am to pay back eleven thousand pounds. I do not possess eleven thousand pence. A lee-shore... how can I claw off? There is only one thing for it: I will give up my claim to be made post and beg for a sloop as a commander. A ship I must have. Stephen, lend me twenty pounds, will you? I have no ready money. I shall go up to the Admiralty today. There is not a moment to lose. Oh, I have promised to ride with Sophia: but I can still do it in the day.'

'Take a post-chaise. You must not arrive fagged out.'

'That is what I shall do - you are quite right, Stephen. Thank you. Killick!'

'Sir?'

'Cut along to the Goat and tell them to have a chaise here at eleven. Pack my valise for a couple of nights: no, a week.'

'Jack,' said Stephen urgently, when the servant had left the room, 'do not speak of this to anyone yet, I beg you.'

'You are looking terribly pale, Captain Aubrey,' said Sophia. 'I do hope you have not had another fall? Come in; please come in and sit down on a chair. Oh dear, I am sure you ought to sit down.'

'No, no, I promise you I have not fallen off my horse this last week,' said Jack, laughing. 'Let us make the most of this burst of sun; we shall get a ducking if we wait. Look at the clouds in the south-west. What a fine habit you are wearing.'

'Do you like it? It is the first time I have put it on. But,' she said, still looking anxiously into his face, which was now an unhealthy red, 'are you sure you would not like a cup of tea? It could be made in a moment.'

'Yes, yes, do step in and have a cup of tea,' cried Mrs Williams from the window, clutching a yellow garment to her throat. 'It will be ready directly, and there is a fire in the small sitting-room. You can drink it together - so cosy. I am sure Sophie is dying for a cup of tea. She would love a cup of tea with you, Captain Aubrey, would you not, Sophie?'

Jack smiled and bowed and kissed her hand, but his iron determination not to stay prevailed, and in time they rode off along the Foxdene road to the edge of the downs.

'Are you quite sure you did not have a fall?' asked Sophie again, not so much from the idea that he had not noticed it and might recall it with application, as from a desire to express her real concern.

'No,' said Jack, looking at that lovely, usually remote face now gazing at him with such tenderness, such a worried and as it were proprietorial tenderness. 'But I did have a knock-down blow just now. A damned unlooked-for blow. Sophie - I may call you Sophie, mayn't I? I always think of you so - when I was in my Sophie, my sloop, I took a couple of neutrals sailing into Marseilles. Their papers said they were from Sicily for Copenhagen, laden with brimstone. But they were in the very act of running into Marseilles: I was within reach of that battery on the height. And the brimstone was meant for France.'

For Sophia brimstone was something to be mixed with treacle and given to children on Fridays: she could still feel the odious lumps between her teeth. This showed in her face, and Jack added, 'They have to have it to make gunpowder. So I sent both these ships into Port Mahon, where they were condemned as lawful prize out of hand, a glaring breach of neutrality; but now at length the owners have appealed, and the court has decided they were not lawful prize at all, that their masters' tale of merely taking shelter from the weather was true. Weather! There was no weather. Scarcely a riffle on the sea, and we stood in under our royals, stuns'ls either side, and the thirty-six-pounders up on the hill making rings in the still water a quarter of a mile wide.'

'Oh, how unjust!' cried Sophie in extreme indignation. 'What wicked men, to tell such lies! You must have risked your life to bring those ships out from under the battery. Of course the brimstone was meant for France. I am sure they will be punished. What can be done? Oh, what can be done?'

'As for the verdict, nothing at all. It is final, I am afraid. But I must go up and see what other measures -what I can wring out of the Admiralty. I must go today, and I may be away for some time. That is why I bore you with my affairs, to make it plain that I do not go away from Sussex of my own free will, nor with a light heart.'

'Oh, you do not bore - you could not bore me -everything to do with the Navy is - but did you say today? Surely you cannot go today. You must lie down and rest.'

'Today it must be, alas.'

'Then you must not ride. You must take a chaise and post up.'

'Yes. That is just what Stephen said. I will do it: I have ordered one from the Goat.'

'What a dear good man he is: he must be such a comfort to you. Such a good friend. But we must turn back at once, this minute. You must have all the rest you can before your journey.'

When they parted she gave him her hand and said, with an insistent pressure, 'I do pray you have the best of fortune, everything you deserve. I suppose there is nothing an ignorant girl in the country can do, but -'

'Why there you are, you two,' cried Mrs Williams.

'Chatting away like a couple of inseparables. Whatever can you be talking about all this time? But hush, I am indiscreet. La! And have you brought her back safe and sound, quite intact?'

Two secretaries, one sure if another failed, wrote as fast as their pens would drive.

'To the Marquis Cornwallis My Lord,

With every disposition to pay the most prompt attention to your Lordship's wishes in favour of Captain Bull, I have greatly to lament that it is not at present in my powers to comply with them.

I have the honour to be, etc.

are you there, Bates

'Yes, my lord.'

'To Mrs Paulett

Madam,

Although I cannot admit the force of your argument in favour of Captain Mainwaring, there is something so amiable and laudable in a sister contending for the promotion of her brother, that no apology was needed for your letter of the twenty-fourth, which I lose no time in acknowledging. -

I am, Madam, etc.

'To Sir Charles Grey, KB.

My dear Sir Charles,

Lieutenant Beresford has been playing a game to get to Ireland, which has lowered him much in my opinion. He is grave and enterprising, but, like the rest of the aristocracy, he thinks he has, from that circumstance, a right to promotion, in prejudice of men of better service and superior merit; which I will never submit to.

Having refused the Prince of Wales, Duke of Clarence, Duke of Kent, and Duke of Cumberland, you will not be surprised that I repeat the impossibility of departing from my principle, which would let in such an inundation upon me as would tend to complete the ruin of the Navy.

Yours very sincerely

'To the Duchess of Kingston, Madam,

Your Grace is largely correct in the character of Captain Hallows of the Frolic; he has zeal and conduct, and were it not for a certain independence and want of willing submission to his superiors that may be cured by the passage of time, as well as certain blemishes of a family nature, I should, exclusive of the interest your Grace has taken in his fortunes, be very glad to do justice to his merit, were I not precluded from doing so by the incredible number of meritorious commanders senior to him, upon half pay, who have prior claims to any of the very few ships that offer.

I beg leave to assure your Grace that I shall be happy in an occasion to mark the respect with which I have the honour to be, Madam,

Your most obedient, humble servant

So much for the letters. Who is upon the list?'

'Captains Saul, Cunningham, Aubrey and Small. Lieutenants Roche, Hampole...'

'I shall have time for the first three.

'Yes, my Lord.'

Jack heard the stentorian laughter as the First Lord and his old shipmate Cunningham parted with a gun-room joke, and he hoped he might find St Vincent in a good mood.

Lord St Vincent, deep in his attempts to reform the dockyards, hamstrung by politics, politicians, and his party's uncertain majority in the House, was not much given to good moods however, and he looked up with an unwelcoming, cold and piercing eye. 'Captain Aubrey, I saw you here last week. I have very little time. General Aubrey has written forty letters to me and other members of the Board and he has been told that it is not in

contemplation to promote you for the action with the Cacafuego.'

'I have come here for another purpose, my Lord. To drop my claim to post rank in the hope of another sloop. My prize-agent has failed; two neutral owners have won their appeal against me; and I must have a ship.'