Book 2 - Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  and don't they wish they may have it? Gibraltar, I mean.' He went on from one tune to another in an abstracted strumming while Stephen slowly screwed the flute together; and eventually from this strumming there emerged the adagio of the Hummel sonata.

  'Is it modesty that makes him play like this?' wondered Stephen, worrying at a crossed thread. 'I could swear he knows what music is—prizes high music beyond almost anything. But here he is, playing this as sweetly as milk, like an anecdote: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And the inversion will be worse . . . It is worse—a sentimental indulgence. He takes pains; he is full of good-will and industry; and yet he cannot make even his fiddle utter anything but platitudes, except by mistake. On the piano it is worse, the notes being true. You would say it was a girl playing, a sixteen-stone girl. His face is not set in an expression of sentimentality, however, but of suffering. He is suffering extremely, I am afraid. This playing is very like Sophia's. Is he aware of it? Is he consciously imitating her? I do not know: their styles are much the same in any case—their absence of style. Perhaps it is diffidence, a feeling that they may not go beyond certain modest limits. They are much alike. And since Jack, knowing what real music is, can play like a simpleton, may not Sophia, playing like a ninny-hammer . . .? Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it is a case of the man filled with true poetic feeling who can only come out with ye flowery meads again—the channels blocked. Dear me, he is sadly moved. How I hope those tears will not fall. He is the best of creatures—I love him dearly—but he is an Englishman, no more—emotional, lachrymose. Jack, Jack!' he called out. 'You have mistook the second variation.'

  'What? What?' cried passionately. 'Why do you break in upon me, Stephen?'

  'Listen. This is how it goes,' said Stephen, leaning over him and playing.

  'No it ain't,' cried Jack. 'I had it right.' He took a turn up and down the room, filling it with his massive form, far larger now with emotion. He looked strangely at Stephen, but after another turn or two he smiled and said, 'Come, let's improvise, as we used to do off Crete. What tune shall we start with?'

  'Do you know St Patrick's Day?'

  'How does it go?' Stephen played. 'Oh, that? Of course I know it: we call it Bacon and Greens.'

  'I must decline to improve on Bacon and Greens. Let us start with Hosier's Ghost, and see where we get to.'

  The music wove in and out, one ballad and its variations leading to another, the piano handing it to the flute and back again; and sometimes they sang as well, the forecastle songs they had heard so often at sea.

  Come all you brave seamen that ploughs on the main

  Give ear to my story I'm true to maintain,

  Concerning the Litchfield that was cast away

  On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day.

  'The light is failing,' observed Stephen, taking his lips from the flute.

  'On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day,' sang Jack again. 'Oh, such a dying fall. So it is but the rain has let up, thank God,' he said, bending to the window. 'The wind has veered into the east—a little north to east. We shall have a dry walk.'

  'Where are we going?'

  'To Queenie's rout, of course. To Lady Keith's.' Stephen looked doubtfully at his sleeve. 'Your coat will do very well by candlelight,' said Jack. 'And even better when the middle button is sewn on. Just ship it off, will you, and hand along that hussif? I will make all fast while you put on a neckcloth and a pair of stockings—silk stockings, mind. Queenie gave me this hussif when I first went to sea,' he observed, whipping the thread round the shank of the button and biting it off close to the stuff. 'Now let us set your wig to rights—a trifle of flour from the bread-bag as a bow to fashion—now let me brush your coat—splendid—fit for a levee, upon my word and honour.'

  'Why are you putting on that blackguardly cloak?'

  'By God,' cried Jack, laying his hand on Stephen's bosom. 'I never told you. One of the Miss Lambs wrote to her family—her letter is in the paper—I am mentioned by name—and that fornicating brute of an attorney will have his men out after me. I shall muffle myself up and slouch my hat, and perhaps we may stand ourselves a coach once we get well into the town.'

  'Do you have to go? Is it worth running the risk of a sponging-house and the King's Bench for an evening's diversion?'

  'Yes. Lord Melville will be there; and I must see Queenie. Even if I did not love her so, I have to keep all my naval interest in play—there will be the admiral and half a dozen other great men. Come. I can explain as we walk. The rout-cake there is famous, too—'

  'I hear the squeaking of a pipistrelle! Hark! Stand still. There, there again! So late in the year; it is a prodigy.'

  'Does it mean good luck?' asked Jack, cocking his ear for the sound. 'A capital omen, I dare say. But shall we go on now? Gather just a little headway, perhaps?'

  They reached Upper Brook Street at the height of the flood—flambeaux, links, a tide of carriages waiting to set down at number three and a counter-current trying to reach number eight, where Mrs Darner was receiving her friends, a dense crowd on the pavements to see the guests and pass remarks upon their clothes, officious unnecessary barefoot boys opening doors or springing up behind, darting and hooting among the horses in a spirit of fun, wonderfully tedious to the anxious or despondent. Jack had meant to fly straight from the coach up the steps, but slow groups of fools, either coming on foot or abandoning their carriages at the corner of Grosvenor Square, clustered like summer bees in the entrance and blocked the way.

  He sat there on the edge of his seat, watching for a gap. Arrest for debt was very common—he had always been aware of it—had had several friends carried off to sponging-houses, from which they wrote the most piteous appeals—but it had never happened to him personally and his knowledge of the process and of the law was vague. Sundays were safe, he was sure, and perhaps the King's birthday; he knew that peers could not be seized, that some places such as the Savoy and Whitefriars were sanctuaries, and he hoped that Lord Keith's house might therefore share these qualities: his longing eyes were fixed upon the open door, the lights within.

  'Come on, governor,' cried the driver.

  'Mind the step, your honour,' said a boy, holding the door.

  'Come on, slow-arse,' shouted the coachman behind. 'You ain't going to plant a tree, are you?'

  There was no help for it. Jack stepped out on to the pavement and stood by Stephen in the scarcely-moving throng, hitching his cloak even higher round his face.

  'It's the Emperor of Morocco,' said a light brightly-painted whore.

  'It's the Polish giant from Astley's.'

  'Show us your face, sweetheart.'

  'Hold your head up, cock.'

  Some thought he was a foreigner, French dog of a Turk, others Old Moore, or Mother Shipton in disguise. He shuffled wretchedly towards the lighted doors, and when a hand clapped down on his shoulder he turned with a ferocity that pleased the crowd more than anything they had seen hitherto, except for Miss Rankin treading on her petticoat and coming down full length. 'Aubrey! Jack Aubrey!' cried Dundas, his old shipmate Heneage Dundas. 'I recognized your back at once—should have recognized you anywhere. How do you do? You have a touch of fever, I dare say? Dr Maturin, how do you do? Are you going in here? So am I, ha, ha, ha. How do you get along?' Dundas had recently been made post into the Franchise, 36; he loved the world in general, and his cheerful, affectionate flow of talk carried them across the pavement, up the steps and into the hall.

  The gathering had a strong naval flavour, but Lady Keith was also a political hostess and the friend of a great many interesting people: Jack left Stephen in conversation with a gentleman who had discovered the adamantine boron and moved through the great drawing-room, through the less crowded gallery and to a little domed room with a buffet in it: Constantia wine, little pies, rout-cakes, more Constantia. Here Lady Keith found him; she was leading a big man in a sky-blue coat with silver buttons and she said, 'Jack, dear, may I introduce Mr Canning? Captain Aubrey, o
f the Navy.'

  Jack liked the hook of this man at once, and during the first meaningless civilities this feeling grew: Canning was a broad-shouldered fellow, and although he was not quite so tall as Jack, his way of holding his small round head up and tilted back, with his chin in the air, made him look bigger, more commanding. He wore his own hair—what there was left of it: short tight curls round a shining calvity, though he was in his thirties, no more—and he looked like one of the fatter, more jovial Roman emperors; a humorous, good-natured face, but one that conveyed an impression of great latent strength. 'An ugly customer to have against you,' thought Jack, earnestly recommending 'one of these voluptuous little pies' and a glass of Constantia.

  Mr Canning was a Bristol merchant. The news quite astonished Jack. He had never met a merchant before, out of the way of business. A few bankers and money-men, yes; and a poor thin bloodless set of creatures they seemed—a lower order; but it was impossible to feel superior to Mr Canning. 'I am so particularly happy to be introduced to you, Captain Aubrey,' he said, quickly eating two more little pies, 'because I have known you by reputation for years and because I was reading about you in the paper only yesterday. I wrote you a letter to express my sense of your action with the Cacafuego back in '01, and I very nearly posted it: indeed I should have done so, with the least excuse of a nodding acquaintance or a common friend. But it would have been too great a liberty in a complete stranger, alas; and after all, what does my praise amount to? The mere noise of uninformed admiration.'

  Jack made the noises of acknowledgment. 'Too kind—an excellent crew—the Spaniard was unlucky in his dispositions.'

  'And yet not so wholly uninformed, neither,' went on Canning. 'I fitted out some privateers in the last war, and I took a cruise in one as far as Goree and in another to Bermuda, so I have at least some notion of the sea. No conceivable comparison, of course; but some slight notion of what such an action means.'

  'Was you ever in the Service, sir?' asked Jack.

  'I? Why, no. I am a Jew,' said Canning, with a look of deep amusement.

  'Oh,' said Jack. 'Ah?' He turned, going through the motions of blowing his nose, saw Lord Melville looking at him from the doorway, bowed and called out 'Good evening.'

  'And this war I have fitted out seven, with the eighth on the stocks. Now, sir, this brings me to the Bellone, of Bordeaux. She snapped up two of my merchantmen the moment war broke out again, and she took the Nereid, my heaviest privateer—eighteen twelve-pounders—the cruise before she took you and your Indiaman. She is a splendid sailer, sir, is she not?'

  'Prodigious, sir, prodigious. Close-hauled, with light airs, she ran away from the Blanche as easy as kiss my hand: and spilling her wind by way of a ruse, she still made six knots for Blanche's four, though close-hauled is Blanche's best point of sailing. Very well handled, too: her captain was a former King's officer.'

  'Yes. Dumanoir—Dumanoir de Plessy. I have her draught,' said Canning, leaning over the buffet, fairly ablaze with overflowing life and enthusiasm, 'and I am building my eighth on her lines exactly.'

  'Are you, by God!' cried Jack. Frigate-sized privateers were not uncommon in France, but they were unknown this side of the Channel.

  'But with twenty-four-pounder carronades in place of her long guns, and eighteen-pounder chasers. Do you think she will bear 'em?'

  'I should have to look at her draught,' said Jack, considering deeply. 'I believe she would, and to spare: but I should have to look at her draught.'

  'But that is a detail,' said Canning, waving his hand. 'The real crux is the command. Everything depends on her commander, of course; and here I should value your advice and guidance beyond anything. I should do a great deal to come by the services of a bold, enterprising captain—a thorough-going seaman, of course. A letter-of-marque is not a King's ship, I admit; but I try to run mine in a way no King's officer would dislike—taut discipline, regularity, cleanliness. But no black lists, no hazing, and very little cat. You are no great believer in the cat, sir, I believe?'

  'Not I,' said Jack. 'I find it don't answer the purpose, with fighting-men.'

  'Fighting-men: just so. That is another thing I can offer—prime fighting-men, prime seamen. They are mostly smugglers' crews, west-countrymen, born to the sea and up to anything: I have more volunteers than I can find room for; I can pick and choose; and those I choose will follow the right man anywhere, put up with all reasonable discipline and behave like lambs. A right privateer's man is no blackguard when he is led by the right captain. I believe I am right there, sir?'

  'I dare say you are, sir,' said Jack slowly.

  'And to get the right commander I offer a post-captain's pay and allowances for a seventy-four and I guarantee a thousand a year in prize-money. Not one of my captains has made less, and this new ship will certainly do very much better; she will be more than twice the burden of the others and she will have between two and three hundred men aboard. For when you consider, sir, that a private ship of war spends no time blockading, running messages or carrying troops, but only destroying the enemy's commerce, and when you consider that this frigate can cruise for six months at a time, why, the potentialities are enormous . . . enormous.' Jack nodded: they were, indeed. 'But where can I find my commander?' asked Canning.

  'Where did you find your others?'

  'They were local men. Excellent, in their way, but they govern smallish crews, relatives, acquaintances, men they have sailed with. This is another problem entirely; it calls for a bigger man, a man on another scale. Might I beg for your advice, Captain Aubrey? Can you think of any man, any former shipmate of yours, perhaps, or . . .? I should give him a free hand, and I should back him to the hilt.'

  'I should have to consider of it,' said Jack.

  'Pray do, pray do,' said Canning. No less than a dozen people came up to the buffet at once, and private conversation was at an end. Canning gave Jack his card, pencilling an address upon it, and said in a low tone, 'I shall be here all the week. A word from you, at any time, and I shall be most grateful for a meeting.'

  They parted—indeed they were driven apart—and Jack backed until he was brought up by the window. The offer had been as direct as it could be in decency, to a serving officer: he liked Canning, had rarely taken to any man with such immediate sympathy at first sight. He must be most uncommon rich to fit out a six or seven hundred ton letter-of-marque: a huge investment for a private man. Yet Jack's reflection was one of wonder alone, not of doubt—there was not the least question of Canning's honesty in his mind.

  'Come, Jack, come, come,' said Lady Keith, tugging his arm. 'Where are your manners? You are behaving like a bear.'

  'Dear Queenie,' said he, with a great slow smile, 'forgive me. I am bemused. Your friend Canning wants to make my fortune. He is your friend?'

  'Yes. His father taught me Hebrew—good evening, Miss Sibyl—such a very wealthy young man, so enterprising. He has a vast admiration for you.'

  'That shows a proper candour. Does he speak Hebrew, Queenie?'

  'Oh, just enough for his bar mitzvah, you know. He is about as much of a scholar as you are, Jack. He has many friends in the Prince of Wales's set, but don't let that put you off—he is not a flash cove. Come into the gallery.'

  'Bar mitzvah,' said Jack, in a grave voice, following her into the crowded gallery; and there, momentarily framed by four men in black coats, he saw the familiar red face of Mrs Williams. She was sitting by the fireplace, looking hot and overdressed, and Cecilia sat next to her: for a moment he could not place them in this context; they belonged to another world and time, another reality. There was no empty place beside them, no vacant chair. As Lady Keith led him up to them she murmured something about Sophia; but her discretion swallowed up her meaning.

  'Have you come back to England, Captain Aubrey?' said Mrs Williams, as he made his leg. 'Well, well, upon my word.'

  'Where are your other girls?' asked Lady Keith, glancing about.

  'I was obliged to leave them a
t home, your ladyship. Frankie has such a feverish cold, and Sophie has stayed to take care of her.'

  'She did not know you would be here,' whispered Cecilia.

  'Jack,' said Lady Keith, 'I believe Lord Melville is throwing out a signal. He wants to speak with you.'

  'The First Lord?' cried Mrs Williams, half rising in her seat and craning. 'Where? Where? Which is he?'

  'The gentleman with the star,' said Lady Keith.

  'Just a word, Aubrey,' said Lord Melville, 'and then I must be off. Can you come to see me tomorrow instead of next week? It does not throw you out? Good night to you, then—I am obliged to you, Lady Keith,' he called, kissing his hand and waving it, 'your must humble, devoted . . .'

  Jack's face and eyes, as he turned back to the ladies, had a fine glow, a hint of the rising sun. By the law of social metaphysics some of the great man's star had rubbed off on him, as well as a little of young Canning's easy opulence. He felt that he was in command of the situation, of any situation, in spite of the wolves outside the door: his calmness surprised him. What were his feelings beneath this strong bubbling cheerfulness? He could not make it out. So much had happened these last few days—his old cloak still smelt of powder—and indeed was still happening, that he could not make them out. Sometimes you receive a knock in action: it may be your death-wound or just a scratch, a graze—you cannot tell at once. He gave up the attempt and turned his full attention to Mrs Williams, inwardly remarking that the Mrs Williams of Sussex and even of Bath was a different animal from the Mrs Williams in a great London drawing-room; she looked provincial and dowdy; and so, it must be admitted, did Cecilia, with her fussy ornaments and frizzled hair—though indeed she was a good-natured child. Mrs Williams was obscurely aware of this; she looked stupid, uncertain, and almost respectful, though he felt that resentment might not be far away. Having observed how affable Lord Melville was, very much the gentleman, she told Jack that they had read about his escape in the paper: she hoped his return meant that everything was well with him: but how came he to be in India? She had understood he had withdrawn to the Continent in consequence of some . . . to the Continent.