Book 18 - The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  ' "The rector has been travelling for his health these last five years, sir: he is said to be in Madeira now, but he does not answer letters; and the curate cannot speak in his name."

  ' "Well, where's the patron of the living? And where's the lord of the manor? The same person, I suppose. Why is his name not here?"

  'Griffiths went red and muttered something to his lawyer. I stood up and said, "I am the patron of the living, sir, and the lord of the manor. My name is not there because I am very strongly opposed to the inclosure and to the petition."

  'Harry glared about him, scribbled sums on a piece of paper, and then said to Griffiths, "God's my life, sir. You have the effrontery to present this with just the barest majority by value, when you know perfectly well that three quarters or four fifths is the usual figure. And to make things worse, far, far worse, you do so against the will of the lord of the manor, your natural superior. I have never heard of such a thing. I wonder at it, sir. I wonder at it." '

  All this time Killick and Mnason the butler had been standing outside the door. Their mutual hostility had kept them away from it to begin with, but intense curiosity and the useful formula 'We might either of us be sent for' had brought them to a truce and their ears were very close to the wood at this very point, when Mrs Pearce thrust indignantly between them and burst into the room. 'Ma'am,' she cried, holding up a noble fish, 'I could not get the men to hear, I could not send a maid, and I have to know this directly minute. If I am to cook this here for dinner it must go on at once, at once. Which it came a quarter of an hour ago by the chiming clock. Twenty-six pound four ounces, without a lie.'

  They gazed upon it with admiration, a silvery, quivering-fresh, clean-run salmon: and on its side it bore a card For our Captain with love from all at the Aubrey Arms.

  That night, which should have been equally triumphant, was not: misunderstanding, mistiming, and mere weariness played their not uncommon part and for once Jack Aubrey got up in a bad temper of mind. He cut his chin while he was shaving and when he came back into the bedroom he heard Sophie, her head muffled under her shift, uttering a discontented remark whose beginning he had not heard but which, as her head emerged, finished with '. . . that Mrs Oakes.'

  Jack checked his immediate answer, but having tied his neckcloth he said, 'You often say "that Mrs Oakes" in a tone that makes me think you imagine something improper about our having been shipmates. Even if I had been Heliogabalus or Colonel Chartres there could not possibly have been anything improper. She came aboard without my knowledge under the protection of one of my midshipmen: I at once insisted upon their being married—I even gave a piece of that crimson silk I bought you in Java for her to be married in. I may have been something of a rake when I was young, but I give you my sacred word that I have never played the fool at sea and I should never, never at any time look at the wife of one of my officers. So I beg we may hear no more of "that Mrs Oakes".'

  Sophie blushed as crimson as her Java silk, hung her head, and made no reply, the extreme awkwardness being resolved by the breakfast gong beaten in a frenzy by George and Brigid, still in their nightshirts.

  Diana, late for most things, was prompt for this. Having breakfasted by candle-light they made an early start in the half-day, the stars still to be seen due west, with Venus declining. 'Let go,' called Diana from the box, and the coach rolled smoothly away, followed by a chaise carrying Killick and Bonden, who was in no state to travel outside a coach, and leaving such a melancholy group waving on the steps, some indeed in tears.

  The men had drawn lots to decide which should sit next to Diana for the first stage: it had fallen on Dundas, so Stephen and Jack were inside, with the head groom and a boy up behind. Jack remained silent for a while. He and Sophie disagreed fairly often, though perhaps less than most married people, but never had they done so on parting. It was true that this was not much of a parting—leave from the Brest blockade was reasonably frequent and letters passed to and fro—and it was true that Sophie's attitude towards Clarissa Oakes (a guest, after all) had irritated him extremely, all the more so since he had at one time been strongly tempted to lead Clarissa far astray—he was not a man to whom chastity came easy—and had had to impose a most rigorous self-command: but he was sorry he had spoken. Eventually he said, 'Old Harding is of opinion that the salmon had been ordered by Griffiths, and that it came by coach, being left at the Arms—according to village gossip he had ordered dinner for a score—for none of our streams ever yielded a fish like that. But I do hope our people are not coming it too high.'

  'The young fellows took some of his deer last night, and his keepers were out in force. I heard shots.'

  'The Devil you did?' cried Jack, and he would have gone on but that the coach was now in the village street and that many of the over-excited youths were still about. They started cheering, and waving, and the horses began to caper. Fortunately General Harte had thought better of his promise to provide an extra pair, but even so Dundas was tempted to take the reins. The determined expression on Diana's face—most vividly alive—and the language in which she recalled the horses to their duty checked him, however; and presently the team were steadily climbing the hill before Maiden Oscott.

  'I wish they may not be coming it too high,' said Jack. 'Stealing deer may be fun, but it is a very grave matter indeed when you come before a court, above all if you were disguised in any way—and Billy Iles, who ran by the coach just now, had a sort of skirt on and the remains of black round his face—or above all if you were armed. You heard shots . . . That Griffiths is a rancorous sort of cove—weak—you should have seen him quail before Harry Turnbull—and cruel. And there was that damned unlucky omen.' He jerked his head towards the chaise with poor Bonden in it, and sank into an uneasy train of thought while the coach climbed up and up, the horses well into their collars, warming now.

  Near the top he looked back for a last sight of Woolcombe, spread out far, far below, with both broad commons, the villages and the great mere, silver now with the coming day. 'Oh my God,' he cried, for there, over beyond Woolcombe, stacks were ablaze, a great pall of smoke drifting westwards, the bottom lit red. He let down the glass, leant out and called to the groom behind, 'Is that Hordsworth's rickyard, John?'

  'It is on Captain Griffiths' land, sir. The new piece he took in to round the home farm.'

  They were over the crest: nothing could be seen on the far side of the hill. Indeed they were well over and on the flat stretch of road before the much steeper descent to Maiden Oscott and the stream; and both Stephen and Jack heard Diana encourage the horses. There was a dog-cart ahead, drawn by a likely-looking chestnut mare and driven by a young man with a girl beside him.

  'Give him a halloo to pull over, will you, Dundas?' said Diana, and he let out a fine nautical roar.

  The girl nudged the young man, who looked round, flicked the mare with his whip and crouched forward, urging her on.

  Gradually the coach overhauled the dog-cart, Diana tense and concentrated, in complete control of the horses: but there was a left-handed corner ahead and not two hundred yards to go. 'Pull over, sir. Pull over directly,' called Dundas with all the authority of twenty years at sea. His vehemence, coupled with the pleas of the pale-faced girl, induced the young man to rein in, with his off wheel on the grassy verge; the coach swept by, followed by a look of pure hatred.

  'There was a good two foot to spare, so there was,' said Stephen, relaxing.

  'It is very well,' said Jack. 'Very well. But I dread the Oscott bridge. Does Diana know it, Stephen?'

  'Sure, she has been driving about the countryside day and night: it is her liveliest joy. But tell me, where is young Philip?'

  'Oh, he stayed at home to worship Mrs Oakes. Did you not remark his moon-struck gaze? No, of course you were sitting next to him. Still, you might have seen him pick up her napkin and press it to his lips. But this bridge is a most damnably awkward one. You come down a wicked steep hill in the middle of the village, and there right
in front of you there is the bridge, hard on your left, a blind corner at an angle of ninety or even a hundred degrees, before you are aware of it. You have to turn terribly sharp—a damned narrow bridge with a low stone wall on either side and unless you judge it just so you hit the corner and you are in the river twenty feet below—deep water—with the coach on top. Don't you think you might mention it to her?'

  'I do not. She is a very fine whip, you know.'

  'Then perhaps I should,' said Jack.

  Stephen bowed, and after a moment Jack lowered the glass again, leant out, and in a conciliating tone he called, 'Coz, oh coz.'

  The coach slowed perceptibly. 'What now?' replied Diana.

  'It is only that I thought, being a native as it were, that I thought perhaps I should tell you about the very dangerous bridge at Maiden Oscott. But perhaps you know it?'

  'Jack Aubrey,' she said, 'if you do not like the way I drive this coach, take the bloody reins yourself, and be damned to you.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' cried Jack. 'It was only that I thought . . .'

  The horses resumed their fine round pace: Jack sank back. 'Perhaps I have vexed her,' he said, 'though I spoke both meek and civil.'

  'Perhaps you have,' said Stephen.

  The downward slope grew steeper, and even steeper. The first houses appeared and very soon they were in the street itself, Dundas hallooing to clear dogs, cats, asses and children out of the way and the horses going rather faster than Diana would have allowed at another time. She had the tension of the reins just so: her hands were in close touch with the horses' mouths and her keen gaze was fixed on the left-hand leading corner of the wall that crossed the bridge, a wall scarred by innumerable vehicles in the last four hundred years. With a last glance down at the hub of her near forewheel, she changed the pressure on the reins, clucked to the leaders and swung the coach square on to the narrow bridge, avoiding the stone by half an inch and trotting superbly across to the other side.

  Where the Maiden Oscott road, having risen again and fallen again, joined the Exeter turnpike she pulled up at a famous coaching-inn by a delightful stream, and while the others held the horses' heads she climbed nimbly down. Jack gave her a hand from the lower step and said, 'I do ask your pardon, Diana.'

  'Never mind it, Jack,' she said with a brilliant smile—she was in excellent looks, with the fine fresh air and the excitement—'I have been frightened too, aboard your ships. Now be a good fellow and call for a room, coffee, toast, and perhaps bacon and eggs, if they have nothing better—Lord, I could do with a decent second breakfast. But for the moment I must retire.'

  Jack had given orders for the horses to be watered and walked up and down before their moderate bite, and he was rejoining his friends in front of the inn when he heard his name called. It was William Dolby, followed by Harry Lovage, both old friends (Lovage was called Old Lechery), crossing the road from the stream, both carrying fishing-rods, and both looking thoroughly happy—indeed it was a delightful morning, a delightful scene—the water flowing in its smooth green banks, the scent of a late aftermath drifting across, and the air full of swallows.

  'Look what we have caught,' cried Dolby, opening his bag. 'Such trouts you might dream of, the glorious day!'

  'My best was still larger,' said Lovage. 'You must breakfast with us. The two fishes ain't in it, nor the five loaves. Dick'—this to a waiter—'lay for us all in the Dolphin parlour, will you?'

  They moved slowly across the forecourt, admiring the fish, talking of claret and mallard and the mayfly hatch, and Lovage said, 'There will be plenty for supper; and if there ain't we shall make up on the evening rise. Fish suppers make a man skip like a flea, ha, ha, ha. We have Nelly Clapham with us, and her young sister Sue, such a cheerful, jolly . . .' He stopped abruptly, looking appalled, for there in the porch, pausing to join them, was Diana: very clearly not a lady of pleasure.

  They broke off to receive her—introductions—and Stephen said, 'My dear, these gentlemen have invited us to breakfast with them on some of the noblest trouts that ever yet were seen. But it may well be that you are tired after your drive, and would as soon sit quietly with a little thin gruel and perhaps a very small cup of chocolate. I cannot recommend cream or sugar.'

  'Never in life. I should be very happy to breakfast on these gentlemen's catch, in the company of their friends, whom I met on the stairs. They seemed good-natured young ladies—and they were singing, oh so sweetly.'

  It was a successful breakfast. The young ladies, finding that Diana gave herself neither airs nor graces, soon got over their shyness; the trout were excellent; the conversation free and cheerful; and at the end Nelly, having run upstairs for a small guitar, gave them a song, cheered to the echo by many people in other parts of the inn, and by a beaming, barely recognizable Killick at the window, while Dolby begged Diana and her party to stay to dinner—there would be a famous hare soup, and blackcock from Somerset.

  'Thank you, sir,' she replied. 'I would with all my heart, but I have promised to deliver these gentlemen to Torbay, and deliver them I shall, in spite of a certain timidity on the part of some of the crew.'

  Chapter Four

  This she did quite early the next morning, they having spent the night at a coaching-inn some way inland, for the fishing-villages on the coast itself were somewhat barbarous, and she brought them over the northern hills at the turn of the forenoon tide.

  The present blockade of Brest was being carried out by a much smaller squadron than that commanded by Cornwallis in the heroic days of 1803, yet even so Torbay was filled with shipping—sloops, cutters, liberty-boats and victuallers inshore and several larger men-of-war, ships of the line and frigates in the offing, the whole diversified by ships on passage and the scores of red-sailed Brixham trawlers coming round Berry Head, close-hauled on the freshening north-east breeze, for the south-wester had died in the course of the night.

  Diana reined in on the brow of the hill, and as they sat there, gazing down through the cool clear air, smiling as they did so, an elderly two-decker lying beyond the Thatcher rock hoisted the Blue Peter and fired a gun, galvanizing the three of her boats that were ashore.

  'That must be the old Mars,' said Dundas. 'Woolton has her now.'

  'What a glorious moment to get under way: breeze and tide just as they might have been prayed for,' said Jack. 'Harry Woolton is a fine brisk fellow, and if he can pick his boats off the Berry he will be in with Ushant by breakfast tomorrow. Oh Lord, how I hope I may catch one of her people. Dear Diana, Cousin Diana, pray be a good creature for once and run us down into the village—don't spare the horses and never mind our necks, so I get alongside that yawl before they shove off.'

  'Do, my dear, if you please,' said Stephen. 'It is our certain duty to be aboard without the loss of a minute.'

  But the road down wound intolerably, and even the most skilful, most intrepid whip could not clear a passage through the dense, sullen regiment of dull-red bullocks that flowed slowly but steadily from a small side-lane, stopping and staring, deaf to cries, entreaties and threats. By the time the sweating, exasperated horses had brought the coach to the strand at last all Mars's boats were skimming over the main towards the headland, there to intercept their ship in her course; and no amount of hailing, however passionate, would bring them back. Nor was there any report of another ship going for Ushant before Thursday, if that.

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Stephen, taking off his hat to a grave elderly man in black who had a solen shell in one hand and who was watching an immature gannet with close attention, unconscious of the loud and often ribald conversation of the liberty-men and their shipmates. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am a stranger in this place, and should be extremely grateful for the direction of a respectable inn that would shelter my wife and horses while my friends and I, sea-officers, seek for some vessel outward-bound.'

  The grave gentleman did not at once apprehend the question, but when it had been repeated he said, 'Why, sir, I am sorry to
say that as far as I know there is no such place in this village, if village it may be called. At the Feathers, to be sure, she would not be insulted with the company of—of trollops; yet the Feathers has no stable-yard, no coach-house, being little more than an eating-house, or tavern: a genteel tavern, however, capable of providing a lady with a pot of chocolate. But,' he went on after a slight hesitation, 'have I not the pleasure of speaking to Dr Maturin?'

  'Indeed, sir, that is my name,' said Stephen, not quite pleased at being recognized so easily; and through his mind darted the reflection 'Intelligence-agents should have turnip faces, indistinguishable one from another; their height should be the common height; their complexion sallow; their conversation prosy, commonplace, unmemorable.'

  'I had the happiness of hearing your discourse on Ornithorhynchus paradoxus at the Royal Society—such eloquence, such pregnant reflections! I was taken by my cousin Courteney.'

  Stephen bowed. He was acquainted with Hardwicke Courteney, who though only a mathematician when he was elected had come to a reasonably intimate acquaintance with bats, with west-European bats.

  'My name is Hope, sir,' said the other, loud enough to be heard over the strong voices of Jack and Dundas asking a young officer in a gig some two hundred yards offshore 'whether Acasta were going to sail tomorrow or not till Bloody Thursday?' 'And' (more gently, with a distinct shade of embarrassment), 'perhaps I may propose a solution my cousin Courteney has a large decayed house not a furlong from here. It has no furniture—indeed it is almost entirely empty apart from the bats in the upper chambers—but it has noble stabling and a most spacious yard. May I suggest that while Mrs Maturin sits in the decent comfort of the Feathers, the coach and horses should take their ease in Cousin Courteney's inclosure? I have a rustic youth who looks after me while I count and register the bats—I camp in any odd corner—and he will certainly find hay, water, oats, whatever is necessary.'