Book 12 - The Letter of Marque

by Patrick O'Brian

  Lucy pursed her lips and said 'Here is your letter, sir,' putting it down on the table.

  Stephen said, 'You need not mention it to Mrs Broad, Lucy.'

  Lucy said, 'I never was a tell-tale yet; but oh Padeen, and your hands all covered with the dust up there, for shame.'

  Stephen took the letter, and his look of nervous guilt vanished as he recognized Jack Aubrey's hand. 'Padeen,' he said, 'wash your hands, will you now, and leap down to the bar and ask them to let me have a jug of lemon barley-water.' He pulled his elbow chair to the window and broke the familiar seal:

  Ashgrove Cottage

  My dear Stephen,

  Give me joy! In his very great goodness my Cousin Edward has offered me the seat for the borough of Milport, which he owns: we went and passed a day or so among the burgesses, an affable set of men who were kind enough to say that because of St Martin's and the Azores affair they would have voted for me in any case, even if Cousin Edward had not advised them to do so.

  While we were there a messenger came posting down from the Ministry with proposals for my cousin; but, said he, they could not be attempted to be entertained, since he was already committed to me: the messenger looked blank, and posted off again.

  So I went home, after another day at Cousin Edward's place—he particularly wished me to see his roses at their height and I absolutely could not do less—and I was telling Sophie the news, with all that I hoped might follow from it, for perhaps the twentieth time, when Heneage Dundas walked in.

  I knew Eurydice was come back, but I had not had time to go down to Pompey to welcome him home, and when I sent to ask him to dinner they said he had gone up to town, so we were not astonished to see him; we supposed he was returning to his ship and had turned off the road at the Jericho to look in upon us.

  But we were surprised when, after having spoken very handsomely indeed about the Diane and having begged me to describe the cutting-out in the greatest detail, he grew rather strange, shy and reserved, and after a while said he was come not only as a friend but also as an emissary. The Ministry (said he) had heard that I was to be member for Milport; his brother rejoiced at the news because this additional influence in my favour would allow him to urge his colleagues even more strongly that I should be reinstated by mere motion—that is to say, without having to sue out any pardon. But in order to do so with full effect Melville would have to be able to assure them of my attitude in the House. It was not required that I should engage to support the Ministry through thick and thin, but Melville hoped he could say that at least I should not violently and systematically oppose it—that I should not be a vehement or enthusiastic member. I looked at Sophie, who knew perfectly well what I meant; she nodded, and I said to Heneage that it was excessively unlikely I should ever address the House on anything but a naval question, for I had seen too many sea-officers brought by the lee, meddling with politics; that in general I should be happy to vote for almost any measure proposed by Ld Melville, whom I esteemed so highly and whose father I owed such a debt of gratitude to. While as for enthusiasm or ranting, even my worst enemies could not accuse me of either. Heneage agreed and said nothing could possibly make him happier than carrying back such a message; that Melville had told him that in the event of a favourable answer the papers would be put in hand directly, and that although they would take some months to pass through all the proper channels, while the official announcement would not be made until it could coincide with some victory in the Peninsula or even better at sea, he undertook that my name and present command should be placed on a special list, and that I should not suffer in seniority.

  Lord, Stephen, we are so happy! Sophie goes singing about the house. She says she would give anything for you to share our joy, so here I am scribbling this in the greatest haste, hoping it may catch you before you set out for Leith. But if it don't, then I shall have the delight of telling you when we meet in Sweden. There is only one change in our arrangements I wish to suggest, and that is that since we shall already be in the Baltic I should run across to Riga for cordage, spars and especially poldavy for our voyage: the finest poldavy I ever saw in my life came from Riga. God bless you, Stephen. Sophie bids me send her dear love.

  Yours ever

  Jno Aubrey

  'What now?' cried Stephen, quickly sliding the letter under a book.

  'If you please, sir,' said Mrs Broad, whose mild face was perfectly unconscious of the wardrobe, 'Sir Joseph is below, and asks if you are at leisure.'

  'Certainly I am at leisure. Pray beg him to walk up.'

  'Heavens, Maturin, how glad I am to find you,' said Blaine. 'I was so afraid you might have set off already.'

  'The mail does not leave until half-past six.'

  'The mail? I had imagined you would take a chaise.'

  'At fourteenpence a mile?' said Stephen, with a knowing, worldly look. 'No, sir.'

  'Well,' said Sir Joseph, smiling, 'I can save you not only the monstrous expense of the mail, but also the dismal jerking and trundling crammed night and day into an airless box with a parcel of strangers, more or less clean as the case may be, the hurried meals, the incessant don't forget the coachman, sir, and even the cruel bore of running down from Edinburgh to Leith and then going aboard the packet at even greater cost to both purse and spirit, they being quite fagged out by then.'

  'How do you propose to do this beautiful thing, my valued friend?'

  'By putting you aboard the Netley cutter early tomorrow morning. She is carrying messages and messengers to a number of ships at the Nore; and among them, Maturin, among them, as I learnt by telegraph only an hour or so ago, is the Leopard, bound for Gefle.'

  'Not the horrible old Leopard that took us to New Holland, drowning, wrecking and starving us on the way?' cried Stephen.

  'The same: but she is now shorn of most of her guns and she sails under the colours of the Transport Board. Indeed, her present humble task is to fetch marine stores from Gefle, taking the place of another transport seized by a couple of Americans in the Skager Rack. I heard of it only this afternoon, when the commissioner's report came in, stating that with diligence the Leopard could be made ready for sea tomorrow. I happened to be in the way, and as soon as I heard she was to sail for Gefle I said I shall tell Maturin at once; they can drop him off at Stockholm without the loss of a minute and it will save him all this wearisome toiling and moiling, bad company and worse food, as well as a mint of money. I hurried out, searched for you at Black's, searched for you in the British Museum, searched for you in Somerset House, and ran you to earth here, where I should have begun in the first place. I would have spared me a world of heat and passion, thrusting my way through slow-moving hordes of bumpkins. London is filled with bumpkins at this time of the year; they stare about them like oxen.'

  'It was benevolent in you to grow so hot, Sir Joseph, and I am infinitely obliged to you for your care. Will you take a glass of lemon barley-water, or do you prefer a draught of moist and corny ale?'

  'The ale, if you please; and it cannot be too moist for me. I must have lost a stone in my striving course. But it was worth it. Dear me, Maturin, how happy I was to find you! It would really have put me out of temper for a month to have lost my message.' He drank half his ale, gasped, and went on, 'Besides, it would have prevented me from inviting you to hear a very charming Figaro with me tonight. The young person that sings Cherubino has an androgynous perfection in breeches; and such a voice!' He went on to speak of the rest of the cast, particularly a glorious Contessa; yet Stephen, watching him, perceived that he was cherishing the secret of some other piece of news, and presently it came out. 'But although listening to the music and telling you about your passage in the Leopard was a great point,' said Blaine, 'sending you off with an easy mind was a greater one by far.'

  Blaine was an unmarried man with no near family; and though he had a very wide acquaintance he had almost no close friends; while his profession was one in which the kindlier virtues had little play. But this was
one of the rare occasions on which friendship and indeed the interest of the service came together, and he gazed affectionately at Stephen for quite a time before saying, 'Jack Aubrey is to be returned for Milport, ha, ha, ha!' He stood up, clapped Stephen on the shoulder and walked about the room. 'For Milport! Ain't you amazed? I was, I can tell you. His father's constituency! Such a degree, such a pitch of magnanimity in the owner of a borough I have never seen nor heard of—above all that borough. A remote connexion, I believe? Have you met Mr Norton, Maturin?'

  'I just saw him at Jack Aubrey's wedding, a tall, thin gentleman.'

  'It makes all the difference,' said Blaine, carrying straight on. 'It comes exactly at the right time. I had of course thought of a pocket-borough to give just that weight needed to bring the balance right down on his side. They tend to be costly, boroughs, but in the circumstances I should have suggested it, if only there had been an uncommitted seat on the market, which there is not—never for a moment did it occur to me that the only vacancy should be as it were poured into his lap.'

  'That is scarcely a correct expression, Blaine.?

  'No, to be sure. But how beautifully it suits the occasion. Melville has sent his brother Heneage down, and I am sure he will handle the matter far better than Soames. They are old friends, and apart from anything else this is to be one of your discreet mere motion affairs with no explicit conditions of any sort; though I dare say Heneage Dundas, speaking as one sailor to another, may persuade him not to be too hard on Melville and his colleagues.'

  'How I rejoice at what you tell me, Blaine,' said Stephen. 'I have no doubt that Heneage Dundas is the perfect negotiator. From what I know of Jack Aubrey's mind he cannot fail to be successful. Yet you might still think it worth pointing out to your political friends that the only absolutely certain way of making sure that a sailor does not address the House at interminable length either on naval abuses or on some subject of which he is deeply ignorant, is to send him on a very long voyage. There is the South American situation to be looked into, sure; but then there are also the complex rivalries between the Malay sultans, which worry the East India Company so; there is all that poor dear Captain Cook and the less satisfactory Vancouver had to leave undone; and think of the untouched entomology of the Celebes! Let us drink a bottle of champagne.'

  The champagne and its charming stir of spirits had long, long since faded by the time the Leopard was creeping past the Swin in the graveyard watch on Friday: every minute she fired a windward gun into the fog; her drum beat continually on the forecastle, though the wet took away most of its resonance; and the man in the chains cast his lead without a pause, his hoarse voice chanting 'By the mark seven: by the mark seven: by the deep six: and a half six,' sometimes rising in urgency to 'By the mark five, and a half five' as the leeward bank came closer. The ship was barely making two knots in the murk, but the soundings changed fast; and all around, in directions and at distances hard to estimate, came answering gun-shots, cries and drums from the merchantmen or warships making their way to or from the London river, while dim lights appeared and then vanished in deeper fog when they were even closer.

  It was an unpleasant time to be navigating busy shoal water, and the captain, his pilot and the more responsible men were still on deck, as they had been, with rare intervals, ever since Stephen came aboard in the last hour of clear weather. The Leopard had been hurried to sea, under-manned and ill-prepared; her decks were all ahoo and his reception did no one any credit, though to be sure he could hardly have chosen a worse moment, with the ship winning her anchor. Yet his heart had sunk long before this, long before the testy 'Go below, sir, go below. Get his goddam chest out of the way.' From half a mile he had not recognized the ship, and had supposed the cutter's midshipman was making game of him; but then, piecing together curves, masses and proportions, all lodged somewhere in the uncatalogued library of his mind, he had seen that this old transport was indeed the Leopard. She had hogged, which gave her a droop-eared look of extreme shabbiness; and she had been given a thirty-two gun frigate's masts to lighten her burden, which had deformed her entire outline, rendering it mean; and her paintwork was a disgrace.

  That was sad enough, and coming aboard was sad enough, but it was not until he went below to the absurdly familiar wardroom—familiar even in the trick of its door catching on the sill and the tilting scuttle of the quarter-gallery with its worn brass lock—that he realized what kind, affectionate, even loving memories he had preserved and how he resented the old ship's degradation. Dirt and carelessness everywhere; everywhere a change for the worse. Of course she could not be judged by her standards as a man-of-war, when a taut captain and a zealous first lieutenant had three hundred and forty men to keep her just so; yet even by the very much less ambitious notions of the common coasting trade she was a dirty ship. A dirty ship and an unhappy one.

  Long before he went up the side, helped by the cheerful cutter's midshipman, Stephen had had a premonition of disaster; and although the happiness or unhappiness of the ship was wholly irrelevant to his sense of personal catastrophe, the feeling was strengthened by his first sight of the Leopard's captain and pilot wrangling, while three of the officers steadily lashed the men heaving at the capstan-bars, swearing as loud as ever they could bawl.

  Supper was no very cheerful ceremony either. The drizzling fog, the slight and shifting wind, the dangerous currents and shoals and the risk of collision would have made it an anxious meal even in the old Leopard; now it was barbarous as well. The wardroom was divided into two hostile groups, the master's friends and the purser's; and as far as Stephen could see they were equally determined to show their lack of respect for the captain, a tall, thin, elderly, weak, ill-tempered clerk-like man who looked in from time to time. There were also some other passengers for Sweden, marine-store merchants; and each of these three groups kept up its own whispered conversation. The passengers—and Stephen belonged more among them than elsewhere, since the Leopard's surgeon was dead drunk in his cabin—were of no interest whatsoever to the sailors. They were mere landsmen, often a nuisance, often sick, always in the way, come today and gone tomorrow; but they did serve as a means of communication between the hostile camps. Words ostensibly addressed to a hemp-buyer from Austin Friars bounced off him to reach the far end of the table; and in this way Stephen learnt that still another collier had hailed to say that Americans had been sighted off the Overfalls, heading south; so the Old Man was going inside the Ower and the Haddock bank.

  Shortly after this all hands were called to fend off a Dutch buss that had fallen aboard the Leopard's quarter in spite of all the yelling and gunfire. Stephen followed the merchants on to the wet, dark, slippery deck, found that he could neither see anything nor do anything, and so retired, the cries of 'Butter-boxes, bugger off growing fainter as he went down to his cabin and closed the door.

  Since then he had lain on his back with his hands behind his head in what had been Babbington's cot during the Leopard's voyage to the Spice Islands by way of the Antarctic—had lain swinging with the easy motion of the ship. In the course of what now amounted to many years he had imperceptibly become so much of a seaman that he found this posture and this living heave the most comfortable attitude and motion known to man, the best for either sleep or reflection, in spite of the sound of the ship's working, the shouts and footsteps, overhead, and on this occasion the thump of the signal-gun.

  For the first part of the night, while he was waiting for his draught to have its effect, he deliberately composed his mind to help sleep come. There was a a vast expanse in which his thoughts could take their pleasure: Jack Aubrey's affairs could hardly be more prosperous, and short of a very hideous mischance (Stephen unhooked his hand to cross himself) it was scarcely possible that he should not be fully, publicly reinstated within the next few months. He would most probably be given a command after the South American voyage: and perhaps it would be another independent commission—his genius lay that way. Conceivably they might explore
the high northern latitudes together: extremely interesting, no doubt; though they could scarcely hope for the fantastic wealth of the south again. Stephen's mind returned to Desolation Island, where this very ship had taken him—physically these very same timbers, battered and uncared-for though they were now—Desolation, with its sea-elephants and countless penguins, petrels of every kind and the glorious albatrosses that would let him pick them up, warm and if not companionable then at least in no way hostile. Whale-birds, blue-eyed shags! The crab-seals, the leopard-seals, the otaries!

  His mind, perhaps a little too conscientious in its pursuit of happiness, turned back to his evening with Blaine. He dwelt for a while on their excellent meal, their bottle of Latour so smooth and round and long, and reviewed Sir Joseph's confidential words as they finished their wine: 'Retirement to the country, to gardening and etymology, did not answer—attempted once: never again—night-thoughts in an unoccupied mind at his age, with his experience, and with his trade behind him, were too disagreeable—pervading sense of guilt, though each separate case could be satisfactorily answered—present activity and the busy persecution of the enemy was the only answer.' And from this he moved to the opera, where they had heard a truly brilliant performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, brilliant from the first notes of the overture to what Stephen always looked upon as the true end, before the hurlyburly of jovial peasants—the part where from a dead silence the dumbfounded Conte sings Contessa perdono, perdono, perdono with such an infinite subtlety of intonation. He repeated it inwardly several times, together with the Contessa's exquisite reply and the crowd's words to the effect that now they would all live happily ever after—Ah tutti contenti saremo cosí—but never quite to his satisfaction.