Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  'May it profit you,' said Stephen, walking off. Through to the Green Park, an expanse lit faintly by the horned moon in which couples could vaguely be seen, and single, waiting figures among the nearer trees. Stephen was not ordinarily a timid man, but the park had seen many murders recently, and tonight he had a greater value for his life than usual: in fact his heart, though admonished and kept down by experience on the one side and prudence (or superstition) on the other, was beating like a boy's. He cut up to Piccadilly and walked down the hill to Clarges Street.

  Number seven was a large house let out in apartments, with a porter common to them all; so when he knocked at the door it opened. 'Is Mrs Villiers at home?' he asked in a harsh, formal tone that betrayed the most eager expectation.

  'Mrs Villiers? No, sir. She don't live here any more,' said the porter in an absolute, decided, rejecting voice; and he made as though to close the door.

  'In that case,' said Stephen, walking quickly in, 'I wish to see the lady of the house.'

  The lady of the house was very willing to see him—she had indeed been hovering behind a curtained glass door in the hall, peering through—but she was by no means so inclined to give him any information. She knew nothing about it: such a thing had never happened in her house before: no such person as a Bow Street officer had ever crossed its threshold. She had always taken the greatest pains to ensure that all the inmates of the house were above suspicion, and she had never countenanced the least irregularity. The whole neighbourhood, the whole congregation of St James's, all the tradesmen, could testify that Mrs Moon had never allowed the least irregularity. In the following discourse, which dealt with the difficulties of maintaining the highest reputation, it seemed that there was some question of unpaid bills: Stephen said that any inadvertence in this respect would be remedied directly, and that he would take it upon himself to look into any unsettled account. He was Mrs Villiers' medical adviser—naming himself—and the medical adviser to several members of her family: he was perfectly authorized to do so.

  'Dr Maturin!' cried Mrs Moon. 'There is a letter for a gentlemen of that name. I will fetch it.' She brought a single sheet, folded, sealed, and addressed in that well-known hand, together with a number of bills from her desk, tied in a roll with a piece of ribbon. Stephen put the letter into his pocket and looked at the accounts: he had never suspected Diana of moderation, had never supposed that she would live within her income nor within any other income, but even so some of the items startled him.

  'Ass's milk,' he said. 'Mrs Villiers is not in a consumption, ma'am; and even if she were, which God forbid, here is more ass's milk than a regiment could drink in a month.'

  'It is not for drinking, sir,' said Mrs Moon. 'Some ladies like it to bathe in, for their complexions: not that I ever saw a lady less in need of ass's milk than Mrs Villiers.'

  'Well, now, ma'am,' said Stephen after a while, writing down the sums and drawing a line under them, 'perhaps you will be so good as to give me a brief account of how Mrs Villiers came to leave so abruptly; for the apartments, I know, were taken until Michaelmas.'

  Mrs Moon's account was neither brief nor particularly coherent, but it appeared that a gentleman, accompanied by several strong-looking attendants, had asked for Mrs Villiers; on being told that she could not receive a gentleman unknown to her, he had walked upstairs, ordering the porter to stay where he was in the name of the law—the attendants produced truncheons with little crowns on them, and no one dared move. She would never have known they were Bow Street runners, but for some of them guarding the back-door and coming into the kitchen: they had told the servants what they were, and they said the gentleman was a messenger from the Secretary of State's office, or something like that—something in the government line. High words were heard upstairs, and presently the gentleman and two of the runners led Mrs Villiers and her French waiting-woman down and into a coach; they were very polite, but firm, and they desired Mrs Villiers not to speak to Mrs Moon or anyone else; and they locked her door behind them. Then the gentleman came back with two clerks, and they took away a quantity of papers.

  Nobody could tell what to make of it, and then on the Thursday Madam Gratipus, the waiting-woman, suddenly came back and packed up their things. She spoke no English, but Mrs Moon thought she could make out something about America. Most unfortunately Mrs Moon was not at home later that afternoon, when Mrs Villiers came in with a gentleman she called Mr Johnson, an American gentleman, by his old-fashioned, twangling way of speaking through his nose, though very well dressed. It seemed that she was uncommonly cheerful, laughed a great deal, gave a turn about her apartments to see that everything was packed, took a dish of tea, tipped the servants handsomely, left this note for Dr Maturin, and so stepped into a coach and four, never to be seen again. Had said nothing of her destination, and the servants did not like to ask, she being such a high lady and apt to fly out at the least impertinence or liberty, though otherwise esteemed by all—a most open-handed lady.

  Stephen thanked her and gave her a draft for the total sum, observing that he never carried so considerable an amount in gold.

  'No, indeed,' said Mrs Moon. 'That would be the height of imprudence. Not three days since, and in this very street, a gentleman was robbed of fourteen pounds and his watch, not long after sunset. Shall William call a chair for you, sir, or a coach? It is as black as pitch outside.'

  'I bet your pardon?' said Stephen, whose mind was far away.

  'Should you not like a coach, sir? It is as black as pitch outside.'

  It was also as black as pitch inside: he knew that the letter in his pocket contained farewells, his dismission, and the ruin of his hopes. 'I believe not,' he said, 'I have only a few steps to go.'

  These steps took him to a coffee-house on the corner of Bolton Street; a very few steps, as he had said. Yet what a quantity of thoughts formed in his mind before he pushed the door, sat down, and called for coffee: thoughts, ideas, recollections forming infinitely faster than the words that could, however inadequately, have expressed them and tracing the history of his long connection with Diana Villiers, a relationship made up of a wide variety of miseries interspersed with rare intervals of shining happiness, but one that he had hoped, until tonight, to bring to a successful end. Yet just as his mind had been too cautious to admit full confidence in his success, so now it was unwilling to see the proof of total failure. He placed the letter on the table and stared at it a while: until it was opened, the letter might still contain a rendezvous; it might still be a letter that fulfilled his hopes.

  Eventually he broke the seal. 'Maturin—I am using you abominably once again, although this time it is not altogether my fault. A most unfortunate thing has happened that I am not at leisure to explain; but it appears that a friend of mine has behaved most indiscreetly. So much so, that I have been molested by a gang of wretches, of thief-takers, who searched all my few belongings and my papers, and questioned me for hours on end. What crime I am supposed to have committed, I cannot tell; but now that I am at liberty, I am determined to return to America at once. Mr Johnson is here, and he has seen to the arrangements. I was too hasty in my resentment, I see; I should never have flown back to England like a simple passionate headstrong girl—these legal matters—and they are going better—call for patience and deliberation. I shall not see you again, Stephen. Forgive me, but it would not answer. Think of me kindly, for your friendship is very dear to me. DV.'

  In a brief flare of rebellion, anger and frustration he thought of his enormous expense of spirit these last few weeks, of the mounting hope that he had indulged and fostered in spite of his judgement and of their frequently violent disagreements; but the flame died, leaving not so much an active sorrow as a black and wordless desolation.

  When he was walking down the street to the coffee-house, his eye, long accustomed to such things, had automatically taken notice of the two men following him. They were still there when he came out, but he was utterly indifferent to their presence. T
hey preserved him, however, from an ugly encounter in the Green Park, where he wandered among the trees in a deep abstraction, his feet slowly guiding him eastwards to his inn, where he sank straight into a sleep as dull and deep as lead.

  He was spared the slow waking and reconstruction of the day before by Abel, the boots, thundering at the door with the news that there was a messenger who would take no denial, an official messenger who must put his letter into the Doctor's hands.

  'Let him come up,' said Stephen.

  It was the briefest note, requesting or rather requiring Stephen's presence at the Admiralty at half past eight o'clock rather than at the appointed time of four. The tone was unusual.

  'Is there an answer, sir?' asked the messenger.

  'There is,' said Stephen, and he wrote it with an equally cold formality: 'Dr Maturin presents his compliments to Admiral Sievewright, and will wait upon him at half past eight this morning.'

  At a quarter to nine the Admiral was still waiting for Dr Maturin and indeed at nine o'clock itself, for Stephen, hurrying across the parade, had met the former chief of naval intelligence, Sir Joseph Blaine, a keen entomologist and a sure friend, who had just come from an early meeting at the Cabinet Office. They had a hasty word, for Stephen was already late, contracted to meet later in the day and so parted, Stephen to keep his appointment, and Sir Joseph to walk in St James's Park.

  'Hey, hey, Dr Maturin,' cried the Admiral, as he came into the room, 'what the Devil is all this? The Home Office people have picked up a couple of trollops that spend their time gathering information, and they have found your name in their papers.'

  'I do not understand you, sir,' said Stephen, looking coldly at the Admiral. This was the first time he had seen him without the actual head of the department, Mr Warren.

  'Well now,' said the sailor, 'I shall not beat about the bush. There are these two women, a Mrs Wogan and a Mrs Villiers: the Secretary of State's office has had its eye on them for some time, particularly on Wogan—connections with some dubious characters among the royalist Frenchmen over here and with American agents. At last they decided to act, and upon my word it was high time: in Wogan's house they found some very surprising papers indeed, many of them sent under cover to Villiers and passed on by her; and in Villiers' lodgings they found a number of letters, including these.' He opened a folder, and Stephen saw his own handwriting. 'Well, there you are,' said the Admiral, having waited in vain for Stephen to speak. 'I have laid all my cards on the table, fair and square. The Home Office insist upon an explanation. What am I to tell them?'

  'One card is missing,' said Stephen. 'How does it come about that the Home Office should apply to you for information? Am I to understand that my character, that the nature of my activities has been divulged to a third party without my knowledge? Against my express understanding with this department? Against all the laws of sound intelligence?' Stephen's intelligence work was of prime importance to him: he hated the entire Napoleonic tyranny with a most passionate loathing, and he knew, quite objectively, that he had been able to give it some of the shrewdest blows it had ever received in this line of combat. He also knew the strange diversity of the various British intelligence services and the shocking, amateurish permeability of some of them—an insecurity that might only too easily put an end to his usefulness and his life. What he did not know, however, for his mind was dull that morning, was that the Admiral was lying: Mrs Wogan had possessed herself, among other things, of some naval papers through a junior civil lord of the Admiralty; the Home Office had therefore sent the evidence to the Admiral, and the Admiral it was who required the explanation. His bluff, frank approach had imposed upon the diminished Maturin, who felt a red glow of anger burning up his apathy—rage at the apparent betrayal of his identity. 'Upon my soul,' said Stephen in a stronger voice, 'it is I who must do the insisting. I desire you to tell me directly how it happens that the Secretary of State's people come to take notice of my name to you.'

  The Admiral was puzzled to come off handsomely, and in the hope of drowning the question he adopted a more mollifying tone and said, 'First let me tell you of the steps that have been taken. All the leaks have been plugged, you may be sure of that. We interrogated the women separately, and Warren soon extracted enough to hang Wogan out of hand. But she has some very respectable, or at least some very influential protectors—she is a remarkably fine woman—and in view of that, and the undesirability of a trial, and her voluntary production of some useful names, we struck a bargain: she pleads guilty to a charge that will mean her being sent over the water, no more. We could have brought any number of capital charges, including attempted murder, since she shot the wig off the messenger's head, but we decided to play it quiet. As for Villiers, the other one, we have decided not to proceed: her explanation that she regarded the passing-on of the letters as a mere friendly act—that she looked upon 'em as an intrigue on the part of Wogan with a married man—was hard to break down; and then her having become an American citizen raised grave legal difficulties. Government wants no further complications with the Americans at this stage of the war: our pressing of men out of their ships is bad enough, without our pressing their women too. And in fact she may have been innocent. Looking at her, it seemed to me that her plea of helping in an amour was very likely, very much in character. She stood up for herself amazingly, an even finer woman than Wogan, straight as an arrow, glaring at us like a wild cat, flushed with anger, blackguarding the Home Office man like a trooper—lovely bosom trembling, ha, ha! I came in for a couple of broad-sides—wish there had been more—amorous intrigues, ha, ha, ha!'

  'You are impertinent, sir. You forget yourself. I insist upon your answering my question, instead of indulging yourself in this blackguardly manner.'

  In the pleasures of his warm and luscious imagination the Admiral had indeed forgotten himself, but these words brought him violently back to the present. He turned pale, and half rising from his seat he cried, 'Let me remind you, Dr Maturin, that there is such a thing as discipline in this service.'

  'And let me remind you, sir,' said Stephen, 'that there is such a thing as respect for one's word. And furthermore, I have to observe that your manner of speaking of this lady would be gross in a libidinous pot-boy. In your mouth it is offensive to the highest degree. Bread and blood, sir, I have pulled a man's nose for less. Good day to you, sir: you know where to find me.' He walked out of the room, collided with a clerk who was in the act of opening the door, and thrust past him into the corridor.

  'Send for a file of Marines,' roared the Admiral, now scarlet in the face.

  'Yes, sir,' said the clerk. 'Here is Sir Joseph, to know whether Dr Maturin is still within. The Marines directly, sir.'

  Leaving by the little green confidential door that gave on to the park, Stephen felt his anger die away as weariness came down on him like a pall, extinguishing the fire and with it all concern. Yet he had not walked eastwards a quarter of a mile before he became aware that his knees and hands were trembling, and that his nerves jangled intolerably, as though they had been flayed: he walked faster, towards the Grapes and the square bottle on his mantelshelf.

  Mrs Broad, taking the sun at her door, saw him at the far end of the street; she read his face when he was still quite a long way off, and as he turned in she called out in her fat, cheerful voice, 'You are just in time for a late breakfast, sir. Now pray go in and sit in the parlour; there is a pure fire, drawing sweet. Your letters are upon the table; Lucy will fetch you the paper; and the coffee will be up this directly minute You could do with your breakfast today, sir, I am sure, going out so early on an empty stomach, and the streets so damp.'

  He made some objection: but no, he might not go upstairs—his room was being turned out—there were pails and brooms that he might trip on in the dark—so there he sat staring at the fire, until the scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the room, and he turned his chair to the table.

  His post consisted of The Syphilitic Preceptor, with the auth
or's compliments, and the Philosophical Transactions. After two strong cups that quelled the trembling, he automatically ate what Lucy set before him, the whole of his attention being set upon a paper by Humphry Davy on the electricity of the torpedo-fish. 'How I honour that man,' he murmured, taking up another chop. And there was that quacksalver Mellowes again, with his pernicious theory that consumption was caused by an excess of oxygen. He read the specious nonsense through, to confound the arguments one by one. 'Have I not already ate a chop?' he asked, seeing the chafing-dish renewed.

  'It was only a little one, sir,' said Lucy, laying another upon his plate. 'Mrs Broad says there is nothing like a chop for strengthening the blood. But it must be ate up while it's hot.' She spoke kindly but firmly, as to one who was not quite exactly: Mrs Broad and she knew that he had eaten nothing on his journey, that he had taken neither supper nor breakfast, and that he had lain in his damp shirt.

  Deep in toast and marmalade, he demolished Mellowes root and branch; and noticing the indignation with which his hand had underlined the whole claptrap peroration, he observed, 'I am not dead.'

  'Sir Joseph Blaine to see you, sir, if you are at leisure,' said Mrs Broad, pleased that Dr Maturin should have such a respectable friend.