Post Captain (46 page)

'Pray what did he prescribe?' asked Lord Melville, who was intensely interested in his own body, and so in bodies in general.

'Soup, my lord. Enormous quantities of soup, and barley-water, and fish. Physic, of course - a green physic. And porter.'

'Porter? Is porter good for the blood? I shall try some today. Dr Maturin is a remarkable man.'

'He is indeed, my lord. Our butcher's bill would have been far, far longer but for his devotion. The men think the world of him: they have subscribed to present him with a gold-headed cane.'

'Good. Good. Very good. Now I have your official letter here, and I see that you mention all your officers with great approval, particularly Pullings, Babbington and Goodridge, the master. By the bye, I hope young Babbington's wound is not too grave? His father voted with us in the last two divisions, out of compliment to the service.'

'His arm was broken by a musket-shot as we boarded, my lord, but he tucked it into his jacket and fought on in a most desperate fashion; and afterwards, as soon as it was dressed, he came on deck again and behaved extremely well.'

'So you are truly satisfied with all your officers? With Mr Parker?'

'More than satisfied with them all, my lord.'

Lord Melville felt the hint of evasion, and said, 'Is he fit to command?' looking straight into Jack's eye.

'Yes, my lord.'

Turmoil of conscience: immediate loyalty and fellow-feeling overcoming good sense, responsibility, love of truth, love of the service, all other considerations.

'I am glad to hear it. Prince William has been pressing us for some time on the, subject of his old shipmate.' He touched his bell, and a clerk came in with an envelope; at the sight of it Jack's heart began to beat wildly, his thin sparse blood to race about his body; yet his face turned extremely pale. 'This is an interesting occasion, Captain Aubrey: you must allow me the pleasure of being the first to congratulate you on your promotion. I have stretched a point, and you are made post with seniority from May 23rd.'

'Thank you, my lord, thank you very much indeed,' cried Jack, flushing scarlet now. 'It gives me - it gives me very great pleasure to receive it from your hands -even greater pleasure from the handsome way in which it is given. I am very deeply obliged to you, my lord.'

'Weel, weel, there we are,' said Lord Melville, quite touched. 'Sit down, sit down, Captain Aubrey. You are looking far from well. What are your plans? I dare say your health requires you to take some months of sick-leave?'

'Oh no, my lord! Oh, very far from it. It was only a passing weakness - quite gone now - and Dr Maturin assures me that my particular constitution calls for sea air, nothing but sea air, as far from land as possible.'

'Well, you cannot have the Fanciulla, of course, since she will not be rated a post-ship - what the gods give with one hand they take away with the other. And seeing that you cannot have her, then in compliment to you, it seems but just that she should be given to your first lieutenant.'

'Thank you, my lord,' said Jack, with a face so dashed and glum that the other looked at him with surprise.

'However,' he said, 'I think we may hold out some hope of a frigate. The Blackwater: she is on the stocks, and all being well she may be launched in six months. That will give you time to recover your strength, to see your friends, and to watch over her fitting-out from the very beginning.'

'My lord,' cried Jack, 'I do not know how to thank you for your goodness to me, and indeed I am ashamed to ask for more, having had so much. But to be quite frank with you, my affairs were thrown into such a state of confusion by the breaking of my prize-agent, that something is quite necessary to me. A temporary command, or anything.'

'You were with that villain Jackson?' asked Lord Melville, looking at him from under his bushy eyebrows. 'So was poor Robert. He lost better than two thousand pound, a ca'hoopit sum. Weel, weel. So you would accept an acting-command, however short?'

'Most willingly, my lord. However short or however inconvenient. With both hands.'

'There may be some slight fleeting remote possibility - I do not commit myself, mind. The Ethalion's commander is sick. There is Captain Hamond's Lively, and Lord Carlow's Immortalite; they both wish to attend parliament, I know. There are other service members too, but I have not the details in my head. I will desire Mr Bainton to look into it when he has a moment. There is no certainty in these matters, you understand. Where are you staying, since you will not be rejoining the Fanciulla?'

'At the Grapes, in the Savoy, my lord.'

'In the Savoy?' said Lord Melville, writing it down. 'Och aye. Just so. Now have we any more official business?'

'If I might be permitted an observation, my lord. The Polychrest's people behaved exceedingly well; they could not have done better. But if they were left together in a body, there might be unpleasant consequences. It seems to me they would be far better drafted in small parties to ships of the line.'

'Is this a general impression, Captain Aubrey, or can you bring forward any names, however tentatively?'

'A general impression, my lord.'

'It shall be attended to. So much for business. If you are not bespoke, it would give Lady Melville and me great pleasure if you would dine with us on Sunday. Robert will be there, and Heneage.'

'Thank you, my lord; I shall be very happy indeed to wait upon Lady Melville.'

'Then let me wish you joy once more, and bid you a very good day.'

Joy. As he walked heavily, solemnly down the stairs, it mounted in him, a great calm flood-tide of joy. His momentary disappointment about the Fanciulla (he had counted on her - such a quick, stiff, sweet-handling, weatherly pet) entirely vanished by the third step - forgotten, overwhelmed - and by the landing he had realized his happiness almost to the full. He had been made post. He was a post-captain; and he would die an admiral at last.

He gazed with quiet benevolence at the hall-porter in his red waistcoat, smiling and bobbing at the foot of the stairs.

'Give you joy, sir,' said Tom. 'But oh dear me, sir, you're improperly dressed.'

'Thankee, Tom,' said Jack, rising a little way out of his beatitude. 'Eh?' He cast a quick glance down his front.

'No, no, sir,' said Tom, guiding him into the shelter of the hooded leather porter's chair and unfastening the epaulette on his left shoulder to transfer it to his right. 'There. You had your swab shipped like a mere commander. There: that's better. Why, bless you, I did that for Lord Viscount Nelson, when he come down them stairs, made post.'

'Did you indeed, Tom?' said Jack, intensely pleased. The thing was materially impossible, but it delighted him and he emitted a stream of gold - a moderate stream, but enough to make Tom very affable, affectionate, and brisk in hailing the chaise and bringing it into the court.

He woke slowly, in a state of wholly relaxed comfort, blinking with ease; he had gone to bed at nine, as soon as he had swallowed his bolus and his tankard of porter, and be had slept the clock round, a sleep full of diffused happiness and a longing to impart it - a longing too oppressed by languor to have any effect. Some exquisite dreams: the Magdalene in Queenie's picture saying, 'Why do not you tune your fiddle to orange-tawny, yellow, green and this blue, instead of those old common notes?' It was so obvious: he and Stephen set to their tuning, the 'cello brown and full crimson, and they dashed away in colour alone - such colour! But he could not seize it again; it was fading into no more than words; it no longer made evident, luminous good sense. His bandaged head, mulling about dreams, how they sometimes made sense and how sometimes they did not, suddenly shot from the pillow, all the pink happiness wiped off it. His coat, which had slipped from the back of the chair, looked exactly like the coat of yesterday. But there, exactly squared and trimmed on the chimney-piece, stood that material sail-cloth envelope, that valuable envelope or wrapper. He sprang out of bed, fetched it, returned, poised it on his chest above the sheets, and went to sleep again.

Killick was moving about the room, making an unnecessary noise, kicking things not altogether by accident, cursing steadily. He was in a vile temper: he could be smelt from the pillow. Jack had given him a guinea to drink to his swab, and he had done so conscientiously, down to the last penny, being brought home on a shutter. 'Now sir,' he said, coughing artificially. 'Time for this ere bolus.' Jack slept on. 'It's no good coming it the Abraham, sir. I seen you twitch. Down it must go. Post-captain or no post-captain,' he added, possibly to himself, 'you'll post it down, my lord, or I'll know the reason why. And your nice porter, too.'

About twelve Jack got up, stared at the back of his head with his shaving-mirror and the looking-glass - it seemed to be healing well, but as Stephen had shaved the whole crown, leaving the long hair at the back, he had an oddly criminal look of alopecia or the common mange - dressed in civilian clothes, and walked out to see the light of day, for none ever reached the Grapes, at any time of the year. Before leaving he asked at the bar for an exact description of the Savoy, the boundaries of the sanctuary; he was particularly interested in these old survivals, he said.

'You may go as far as Falconer's Rents, and then cut through to Essex Street and go along as far as the fourth house from the corner, then right back to the City side of Cecil Street; but don't ever you cross it, nor don't ever you pass the posts in Sweating-house Lane, your honour, or all is up. You pee, up,' said the Grapes, who heard this piece about interesting old survivals a hundred times a year.

He walked up and down the streets of the Duchy, stepped into a coffee-house, and idly picked up the paper. His own Gazette letter leapt straight out of the open page at him, with its absurdly familiar phrasing, and his signature, quite transmogrified by print. On the same page there was a piece about the action: it said that our gallant tars were never happier than when they were fighting against odds of twelve and an eighth to one, which was news to Jack. How had the man arrived at that figure? Presumably by adding up all the guns and mortars in the batteries and all the vessels afloat in the bay and dividing by the Polychrest. But apart from this odd notion of happiness, the man obviously had sense, and he obviously knew something about the Navy: Captain Aubrey, said he, was known as an officer who was very careful of his men's lives - 'That's right,' said Jack - and he asked how it came about that the Polychrest, with all her notorious defects, was sent on a mission for which she was so entirely unsuited, when there were other vessels - naming them - lying idle in the Downs. A casualty-list of a third of the ship's company called for explanation: the Sophie, under the same commander, had taken the Cacafuego with a loss of no more than three men killed.

'Parse that, you old - ,' said Jack inwardly, to Admiral Harte.

Wandering out, he came to the back of the chapel:

an organ was playing inside, a sweet, light-footed organ hunting a fugue through its charming complexities. He circled the railings to come to the door, but he had scarcely found it, opened it and settled himself in a pew before the whole elaborate structure collapsed in a dying wheeze and a thick boy crept from a hole under the loft and clashed down the aisle, whistling. It was a strong disappointment, the sudden breaking of a delightful tension, like being dismasted under full sail.

'What a disappointment, sir,' he said to the organist, who had emerged into the dim light. 'I had so hoped you would bring it to a close.'

'Alas, I have no wind,' said the organist, an elderly parson. 'That chuff lad has blown his hour, and no power on earth will keep him in. But I am glad you liked the organ

- it is a Father Smith. A musician, sir?'

'Oh, the merest dilettante, sir; but I should be happy to blow for you, if you choose to go on. It would be a sad shame to leave Handel up in the air, for want of wind.'

'Should you, indeed? You are very good, sir. Let me show you the handle - you understand these things, I am sure. I must hurry to the loft, or these young people will be here. I have a marriage very soon.'

So Jack pumped and the music wound away and away, the separate strands following one another in baroque flights and twirls until at last they came together and ran to the final magnificence, astonishing the young couple who had come silently in, and who were sitting furtive, embarrassed, nervous and intensely clean in the shadows, with their landlady and a midwife; for they had not paid for music - only the simplest ceremony. They were absurdly young, pretty creatures, with little more than a gasp between them; and they had anticipated the rites by a hairsbreadth under full term. But the parson joined them very gravely, telling them that the purpose of their union was the getting of children, and that it was better to marry than to burn.

When it was over they came to life again, regained their colour, smiled, seemed very pleased with being married, amazed at themselves. Jack kissed the pink bride, shook the other child by the hand, wishing him all possible good fortune, and walked out into the air, smiling with pleasure. 'How happy they will be, poor young things - mutual support - no loneliness - no God-damned solitude - tell happiness and sorrows quite openly - sweet child, not the least trace of the shrew - trusting, confident - marriage a very capital thing, quite different from - by God, I am on the wrong side of Cecil Street.'

He turned to cross back, and as he turned he collided with a sharp youth who had darted after him through the traffic with a paper in his hand. 'Captain Aubrey, sir?' asked the youth. Escape to the other side was impossible. He shot a glance behind him - surely they could not hope to make the arrest with just this younker? 'They told me at the Grapes I should find you walking about the Duchy, your honour.' There was no menace in his voice, only a modest satisfaction. 'I should have hollered out, but for manners.'

'Who are you?' asked Jack, still poised to deal with him. 'Tom's nevvy, your honour, if you please, the duty-porter. Which I was to give you this,' - handing the letter.