The Letter of Marque (34 page)

'I am glad to hear what you tell me, Villiers dear,' began Stephen, but he was interrupted by the coming of the maidservant, to whom Diana roared as loud as she was able and then, rather hoarse, said 'Ulrika tells me there are only eggs in the house and smoked trout - I was going shopping when we met - and she asks whether the gentleman would like some of the Lapp's dried reindeer.'

Ulrika watched Stephen's face, and seeing its look of pleased acquiescence, walked off chuckling.

'Well, that deals with Gedymin Jagiello,' said Diana. 'Though by the way, when they come we shall have to speak French: her English is even worse. Now let us begin at the beginning: where have you come from?"

'From England, in the Surprise, with Jack Aubrey.'

'Is he in Stockholm?'

'He has run across to Riga, but he will be back in a day or two. He sends his love - their love. He particularly said "Give Cousin Diana our love.'"

'Dear Jack. Lord, we were in such a rage about that monstrous trial, Jagiello and I. He is constantly at the legation and has all the English papers. Did Jack take it very hard?'

'Terribly hard, indeed. During the voyage before last, running down to the Azores, you would hardly have known he was the same man: cold, unsmiling: no human contact with the new officers or men, little even with the old. He put the fear of God into them. I have noticed that in a ship you cannot act a part successfully for long; the people very soon detect any falsity, but they recognize true feelings, and in this case they were quite terrified of him.'

'Yet it was in the Azores that he made all those prizes. Surely that put him in a better humour?'

'Oh, he was relieved for Sophie and the children - things were in a sad way at Ashgrove, I believe - but the prize-money, even though it came in such floods, did not touch the heart of the matter. It was the St Martin's affair which did that.'

'Oh yes, yes! How we cheered! There was Captain Fanshawe at the legation who said it was the completest thing of its kind ever seen this war. Surely he will be reinstated now?'

'I believe he may: the more so as his cousin Norton has given him the seat for Milport, a pocket borough in the west.'

'That makes it a certainty, with divisions so close. I am so glad for them both; I am very fond of Sophie. Stephen, forgive me for a moment: I must see about that reindeer. The Lapp may be difficult with Ulrika. He does not belong to this house, you know - Jagiello just lends him to me, together with the phaeton and the horses, to take his grandmother to church and sometimes to town - but he is quite all right with me.'

Left alone, Stephen reflected. At one time it had occurred to him that Diana might possibly make her balloon ascents by way of amusement; now it seemed far more probable that his first idea, and Blaine's, was right. Her present life might not be grinding poverty, but it was certainly very far from wealth. His mind ran on, trying to compose his extreme hurry and agitation of spirits so that he might work out a persuasive, coherent way of expressing himself. He took the apothecary's bottle from his pocket and he was breaking the sealing-wax on the wrapping when she came back, carrying his parcel. 'Stephen,' she said, 'you left this in the carriage. Pishan brought it to the kitchen.'

'Oh thank you,' he cried, thrusting the bottle back. 'It is the coca-leaves I bought in Stockholm.'

'What are they for?'

'They relieve fatigue, and properly administered they make you feel clever and even witty. I sent you some from South America.'

'Alas, they never came. I should have liked to feel clever, or even witty.'

'I am so sorry. Things miscarry. Tell me, did you ever receive a letter I sent from Gibraltar, just before sailing on the South American voyage? I gave it to Andrew Wray, who was travelling home overland.'

'Surely to God, Maturin, you did not trust that infernal scrub Wray, did you? I saw him once or twice after he came back - said he had seen you in Malta and that you had listened to music together - you seemed to be amusing yourself prodigiously with a diving-bell and the other delights of Valletta. He never spoke of any letter or message. I hope it was nothing confidential.'

'There was nothing in it that a stranger would have understood,' said Stephen standing up, for at this point an old lady opened the door. She was Countess Tessin. Diana made the introductions, speaking French and adding that Stephen was a friend of Gedymin's; she presented him as Monsieur Maturin y Domanova, which was perfectly correct, though disingenuous. She need not have troubled: the old lady was somewhat confused, and on learning that Jagiello was not expected until after dinner she set off again, though pressed to stay.

'May I give you my arm, ma'am?' asked Stephen.

'You are very kind, sir, most amiable; but I have Axel waiting for me, and he is so used to my pace.'

'If ever I become old,' said Diana at dinner, 'I do hope I shall manage to keep up with the changing ideas of money.'

'Not many people do so.'

'No. Countess Tessin has not; and the change has frightened her into - well, I do not like to say avarice, because she is really very kind. But she says she has to watch every penny, and she has turned almost all her servants away. She charges me a shocking great rent and she has let out practically the whole park for grazing, so that I have only one poor little paddock. I had so hoped to breed Arabians, but there is no room. Stephen, you are not eating. I have a couple - one an enchanting little mare that I must show you after dinner - but if only I had anything like that fine sweep of short grass at Jack Aubrey's place, up on the down, I should have a score.'

'I am afraid my agitation is affecting her,' thought Stephen. 'This is not her manner at all.' He applied himself to eating with all the appearance of appetite he could manage, and listened to her remarks about English lessons: little scope for her endeavours, since so many Swedes spoke English anyhow - and about this absurd showman who gave her quite large sums for going up in balloons. 'He wants me to wear spangles next time,' she said.

Stephen had rarely been less master of his emotions, less capable of small talk; he felt this increasing upon him and he positively blessed the false movement on Diana's part that sent the decanter crashing to the ground.

'That was the last of the wine,' she said with a smile, 'But at least I can make you a decent cup of coffee. That is one thing I can do in the domestic line.'

The coffee was indeed excellent. They drank it sitting on a terrace to the south of the house, and the Arabian mare came to see them, walking with polite diffident steps until she was sure of her welcome. She stood with her head over Diana's shoulder, looking into her face with great lustrous eyes, and Diana said 'She follows me about like a dog, when she can get indoors, upstairs and down. She is the only horse I have ever known I should dare to get into the car of a balloon with.'

'I doubt I have ever seen such a beautiful and sympathetic creature before,' said Stephen. The mare's beauty heightened Diana's and the pair they made filled him with a troubled joy.

When they had seen the stables, the other Arabian - 'only a gelding', Diana observed - and when they had thoroughly condemned the paddock they walked back to the house. The tension had fallen and they talked easily: Diana's cousins, Sophie's children, the rebuilding of the Grapes, Mrs Broad's prosperity. In the hall Stephen said 'My dear, may I retire? and may I also have a glass? I must take a dose.'

Sitting there he measured out the laudanum, his practised thumb over the bottle's mouth: a dose suited to the occasion. The first sip startled him extremely. 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' he said, 'the troll must use akvavit.' He soon grew used to the different taste, however - a difference that he attributed entirely to the different spirit used in the tincture. When he had finished his glass he took off his breeches and not without pain he disengaged the blue diamond, strapped to his person with court-plaster. He wiped the warm stone, looked at it with renewed admiration, and put it into his waistcoat pocket.

Even as he went down the stairs he felt that his dose was already working, and he walked into the little square room in a reasonably collected state of mind, determined to stake his happiness on the one throw.

Diana looked round with a smile. 'I must get this piano tuned,' she said, playing a little ripple of notes with her right hand as she stood there. 'Do you remember that piece of Hummel's that Sophie used to work at so hard, long, long ago? It came into my head, but there is a false note here' - playing it - 'that throws everything out."

'A Judas of a note,' said Stephen. His hands wandered over the keys, taking pieces from the Hummel, working out variations on them, improvising, and then he played the air of Alma viva's Contessa perdono. He could not trust himself to sing with it; his voice would be ludicrous or false or both; but closing the piano he said 'Diana, I have come to be forgiven.'

'But my dear you are forgiven. You have been this great while. I am very fond of you. There is not a scrap of rancour or resentment or ill-will in my heart, I swear."

'That is not quite what I meant, honey.'

'Oh, as for the rest, Stephen, our marriage was absurd in the first place. I should never make any kind of a wife for you. I love you dearly, but we could only wound one another -completely unsuited - each as independent as a cat.'

'I should ask nothing but your company. I have made a great deal of prize-money; I have inherited more. I say this only because it means you could have room for your Arabians - you could have half the Curragh of Kildare - you could have a great stretch of English downland."

'Stephen, you know what I said to Jagiello: I will not put myself in any man's power. But if ever I were to live with a man as his wife, it would be with you: there is no one else at all. I beg you to take that for my answer.'

'I will not be importunate, my dear,' said Stephen. He stood at the window, looking out on to the lime-tree's perfect green. After some moments he turned with a somewhat artificial smile and said, 'Will I tell you an extraordinarily vivid dream I had this morning, Villiers? It had to do with a balloon.'

'A fire-balloon or an air-balloon?'

'I think it must have been an air-balloon: I should have remembered the fire. In any event, there I was in its car and I was above the clouds, a vast stratum of white clouds, rolling and immensely domed in themselves, but all in a united plane below me. And above there was the unbelievably pure and very dark blue sky.'

'Oh yes, yes!' cried Diana.

'All this I had from a man who had been up, for myself I have never left the ground at all. But what I had not derived from his account was the extraordinary intensification of living, the palpable depth of the universal silence, and the very great awareness of the light and colour of this other world - an otherness that was made all the stronger because through an occasional gap in the clouds our ordinary world could be seen, with silver rivers very, very far below and the roads distinct. Yet in time that changed to rock and ice, even farther below; and in my keen delight there was mingled an undefined sense of a dread as huge as the sky itself; it was not merely a fear of being destroyed, but worse; perhaps that of being wholly and entirely lost, body and soul.'

'How did it end?'

'It did not end at all. There was Jack roaring out that the boat was alongside.'

'Jagiello used to tell me dismal stories of people being carried higher and higher and farther and farther - swept quite away - perished with cold - starved - never seen again. But I only go up in an air-balloon, one with a valve so that you can let the stuff out and come down; and we have an anchor on a long rope. I always have Gustav with me; he is thoroughly experienced and very strong, and we never go far.'

'Dear Villiers, I am not trying to frighten you or put you off, God forbid. This was my dream, not a lecture or a parable. I found it deeply impressive, particularly the enhanced sense of colour - the balloon itself was a noble red - and I told it to you partly for that reason, though the Dear knows my account was most pitifully bald, never touching the essence at all, and partly to set a space between what we were talking about before and what I am going to say next. A space by way of symbolizing the total independence of the two conversations. Do you remember d'Anglars, in Paris, La Mothe's friend?'

'Yes,' she said, her somewhat remote, defiant expression changing to one of enquiry.

'He promised that you should have your great diamond back, the Blue Peter: that eventually he would send it after us. He kept his word, and a messenger brought it just after Jack's trial. Here it is."

He had never seen her lose her composure to such a degree. As he passed the stone naked in the blaze of the sun her face showed doubt, amazement, delight and even a kind of fear before dissolving entirely as she burst into tears.

Stephen returned to the window and stood there until he heard her blow her nose and sniff. She sat there with the diamond cupped in her hands; he observed that her pupils were dilated, so much so that her blue eyes looked black. 'I never thought I should see it again,' she said in a tremulous voice. 'And I loved it so; oh I loved it sinfully. I still love it sinfully,' she said, turning it this way and that in the shaft of sunlight. 'I cannot tell you how grateful I am. And I was so odiously unkind to you, Stephen. Forgive me.' A voice outside called 'Diana!' She said 'Oh God, there are the Jagiellos' and looked quickly round; but there was no escape and a moment later the door was pushed open. It was the little Arabian mare that walked in, however, followed some moments later by the Jagiellos.

Although Stephen was standing with his back to the strong light Jagiello recognized him at once; for a moment his first look of astonished delight changed to one of extreme reserve, but then his potential adversary came forward, took him affectionately by the hand, thanked him for his kindness to Diana and congratulated him on his coming marriage and his promotion ; for Jagiello's beautiful mauve coat now had a colonel's marks of rank, and he wore golden spurs.