The Surgeon's Mate (6 page)

He set off at once, pushing through the crowd like an ox, and Stephen followed in his wake. Jack watched them go: he was extremely hurt by the thought of Sophie dancing at the assembly. At any other time he would have been pleased to hear that she was not moping at home, but now it came on top of his bitter disappointment at having had no letters and of losing Acasta, and although he was not much given to righteous indignation his angry mind thought of her dancing away, never setting pen to paper, when, for all she knew, he was languishing, a prisoner of war in America, wounded, sick, and penniless. She had always been a wretched correspondent, but never until now a heartless one.

Colonel Aldington reached Diana. He gave Stephen a surprised, disapproving glance, and then, changing his expression entirely as he turned to her he said, 'You will not remember me, Mrs Villiers - Aldington, a friend of Edward Pitt's. I had the honour of taking you in to dinner at Hertford House, and we danced together at Almack's. May I beseech you to favour me tonight?' As he spoke he gazed now at her face, now at her diamonds: and then with even more respect than before, at her face again.

'Desolee, Colonel,' she said, 'I am already engaged to Dr Maturin, and then I believe, to the Admiral and the officers of the Shannon.' He was not a well-bred man: at first he did not seem to understand what she said, and then he did not know how to come off handsomely, so she added, 'But if you would fetch me an ice, for old time's sake, I should be most eternally obliged.'

Before the soldier could come back the music had begun. The long line formed, and the Admiral opened the ball with the prettiest bride in Halifax, a sweet little fair-haired creature of seventeen with huge blue eyes so full of delight and health and happiness that people smiled as she came down the middle, skipping high.

'I would not have danced with that man for the world,' said Diana while she and Stephen were waiting for their turn. 'He is a middle-aged puppy, what people used to call a coxcomb, and the worst gossip I know. There: he has found a partner. Miss Smith. I hope she likes ill-natured tattle.' Stephen glanced round and saw the Colonel taking his place with a tall young woman in red. She was rather thin, but she had a splendid bosom and a fashionable air, and her face, though neither strictly beautiful nor even pretty, was extremely animated - dark hair, fine dark eyes, and a rosy glow of excitement. 'Her dress is rather outre and she uses altogether too much paint, but she seems to be enjoying herself. Stephen, this is going to be a lovely ball. Do you like my lute-string?'

'It becomes you very well indeed; and the black band about your thorax is a stroke of genius.'

'I was sure you would notice that. It came to me at the very last moment; that is why I was so late.'

Their turn came and they went through the formal evolutions required by the dance, Diana with her customary heart-moving grace, Stephen adequately at least; and when they came together again she said, above the ground-swell of countless voices and the singing of the band, 'Stephen, you dance quite beautifully. How happy I am.' She was flushed with the exercise and the warmth of the room, perhaps with the glory of her jewels and the excellence of her dress, certainly with the general heady atmosphere, the intoxication of victory: yet he knew her very well and it seemed to him that at no great depth beneath the happiness there was the possibility of an entirely different kind of feeling.

They were moving up the dance again when Stephen noticed Major Beck's assistant, talking to the Admiral's aide-de-camp, and to his astonishment he saw that the ugly little man was drunk already. His face was irregularly blotched with red, a red that clashed sadly with his uniform, and he was swaying: his bulging watery eyes rested on Stephen for a moment, and then moved on to dwell on Diana: he licked his lips.

'Everybody seems wonderfully happy,' said Diana. 'Everybody except poor Jack. There he is, standing by that pillar, looking like the Last Judgment.'

But more evolutions were called for at this point, and by the time they and the dance were over, Jack had abandoned his post. They walked off companionably together and sat on a love-seat near the door, where the pleasantly warm, sea-smelling air wafted in upon them.

Jack had moved to a long table spread with bottles and glasses, not much frequented yet. Having drunk a certain amount of champagne he said, 'That's very well. But I tell you what, Bullock, just you mix me a glass of bosun's grog, will you?'

'Aye, aye, sir,' said Bullock, 'a glass of grog it is. What you want, sir, is something with a bite in it: a man can blow himself out like a cow in grass with that poor thin fizzy stuff.'

There was certainly a bite in Bullock's mixture, and Jack wandered off with fire spreading through his middle parts. He spoke to a few officers through the din, putting on a proper smiling party face as he did so, and came to a halt near the band. It was quieter here, and he clearly distinguished the slightly too sharp A that a fat musician was giving his companions to tune their instruments: it was long since he had had a fiddle under his chin, he reflected, and he was wondering how nimble the fingers of his wounded arm would prove to be when he heard a clear voice behind him say - 'Who is that very handsome man over there by the window?' He looked towards the window, but there were only two gangling spotted midshipmen, too big for their uniforms, giggling together; and then, when the voice said 'No, nearer to the band,' he realized with a shock that it might be referring to him.

This was instantly confirmed by Lady Harriet's more discreet but still audible 'That is Captain Aubrey, my dear, one of our best frigate captains. Should you like me to introduce him?'

'Oh yes, if you please. He was on board the Shannon, was he not?'

At this point a stream of people passed between them in a persevering struggle to reach the sorbets that had just appeared, and Jack studied the band attentively. He was a handsome man, but no one had ever told him so and he was unaware of the fact; now he was delighted, frankly delighted to hear the news - charmed to learn that anyone could find him good-looking. He was handsome, that is to say, in the eyes of those who did not look for the bloom or the slenderness of youth, who admired a big broad-shouldered man with a high complexion, bright blue eyes and yellow hair, and who did not object to a face that had the mark of a cutlass-slash from one ear right across the cheek-bone and another scar, this one from a splinter, along the line of the jaw to the other ear. It was clear that Miss Smith did not, for when he turned and the introduction was made, she looked at him with an eager admiration that would have satisfied the vainest soul. He was strongly prejudiced in her favour; he returned her look with a particularly attentive, complaisant deference; and in fact he saw a fine lively young woman, brimming with spirits, quite to his taste - he particularly noticed her bosom.

He at once asked her for this dance and the next, and when, half way through the second, she said 'Is not this a splendid ball?' he replied, 'The best I have ever known,' with real conviction.

The atmosphere was no longer oppressive; the noise was not the mindless cackle of fools but the reasonable gaiety of a very agreeable set of people celebrating a victory - and such a victory! The full glory of it came to him again with an ever greater force. A remarkably good band, too: their phrasing of the minuet was uncommon pretty. And his partner danced well; he loved a spirited partner who could dance and enjoy it. A splendid ball.

There was only one cloud in their evening, and that was when Miss Smith, pointing out Diana and Stephen, asked, 'Who is she, in the blue dress and magnificent diamonds?'

'She is Diana Villiers, my wife's cousin.'

'And who is the little man dancing with her? He seems very particular - they have danced together several times already. And what is his uniform? I do not recognize it.'

'That is a naval surgeon's coat, but he must have forgotten the regulation breeches. He is Dr Maturin, and they are engaged to be married.'

'But surely,' she cried, 'surely such a fine woman cannot throw herself away on a mere surgeon?'

In a decided voice, but not unkindly, he said, 'No woman that I have ever met could throw herself away on Stephen Maturin. We have sailed together for years - we are very close friends - and I value him extremely.'

As he finished they had to dance up to the head of the line, holding hands. She gave his a firm pressure, and when they were in their places she said, 'I am sure you are right. I am sure there is much more in him than meets the eye. Naval surgeons must be far superior to those on land. It was only that she is so very, very elegant - I cannot tell you how I admire beauty in a woman.'

Jack instantly replied that he too admired beauty in a woman - that he was very happy to have a most perfect example as his partner - by far the most perfect example in the room. Miss Smith neither blushed nor hung her head; she did say 'Oh fie, Captain Aubrey,' but when he took her hand again to whirl her round there was no reprobation in her clasp.

By the time he took her in to supper he knew a great deal about her: she had been brought up in Rutland, where her father had a pack of hounds - she adored fox-chasing, but unhappily many of the men who hunted were sad rakes -she had been engaged to be married to one, until it was found that he had an unreasonable number of natural children. She had had several seasons in London, where her aunt lived in Hanover Square; and from what she said Jack learnt, to his surprise, that she must be thirty. She was now keeping house for her brother Henry, who, though a soldier, was so short-sighted that he had been put into the commissariat; he was away now, looking after the army stores at Kingston, an inglorious employment. But even the real fighting soldiers were not much better; they marched and counter-marched and accomplished little; they were not to be compared with the Navy. She had never been so excited in her life as when she saw the Shannon bring in the Chesapeake. She was filled with enthusiasm for the Navy, she cried; and Jack, looking at her flushed and eager face and hearing her tremulous, enraptured tone, quite believed her.

At the supper-table itself she begged him to describe the battle in every detail, and he did so with great good humour: it was a comparatively simple single-ship action, lasting only a quarter of an hour; she followed it with the utmost eagerness and, it seemed to him, with unusual good sense and understanding. 'How glad you must have been to see their colours come down. How proud of your victory!

I am sure my heart would have burst,' she exclaimed, clasping her hands over her bosom, which yielded to the pressure.

'I was delighted,' he said. 'But it was not my victory, you know. It was Philip Broke's.'

'But were you not both in command? You are both captains.'

'Oh no. I was only a passenger, a person of no consequence.'

'I am sure you are being too modest. I ant sure you rushed aboard, sword in hand.'

'Well, I did venture on their deck for a while. But the victory was Broke's and Broke's alone. Let us drink to his health.'

They drank it in bumpers. Their neighbours joined them: they were redcoats, but full of good will. One of them had obviously wished Captain Broke a happy recovery many times already, so many that a few minutes after this fresh toast his friends led him away, leaving them alone at the table. Miss Smith returned to the Navy. She showed the keenest interest in the service: she knew almost nothing of it, alas, having always lived so far from the sea, but she had adored poor Lord Nelson and she had worn mourning for months after Trafalgar. Did Captain Aubrey share her admiration, and had he ever met the great man? 'Yes, I do, and I did,' he said, smiling with great benevolence, for there was no shorter way to Jack's heart than a love for the service and an adoration of Nelson. 'I had the honour of dining with him when I was a mere lieutenant: the first time he only said "May I trouble you for the salt?", though he said it in the kindest way; but the second time he said "Never mind manoeuvres; always go straight at "em".'

'How I honour him,' she cried enthusiastically.' "Never mind manoeuvres; always go straight at "em": that is exactly what I feel - that is the only way for anyone with spirit. And how well I understand Lady Hamilton.' And after a pause in which they both ate cold lobster she said, 'But how did you come to be a passenger on the Shannon?'

'That is a long story,' said Jack.

'It could not be too long for me,' said Miss Smith.

'A trifle of wine?' suggested Jack, advancing the bottle.

'No more, I thank you. To tell the truth my head is turning a little already. But perhaps it is the dancing, or the music, or the closeness, or sitting next to a hero: I have never sat next to one before. But when you have quite finished your lobster, perhaps we might take a turn in the fresh air.'

Jack protested that he had done eating; he had only been toying with his lobster; he too found the room insupportably close.

'Then we can go out by this glass door. I am so glad: I had half promised that odious Colonel Aldington the next dance, and now I shall be able to escape him.'

In the garden she took his arm and said, 'You were going to tell me how you came to be a passenger on the Shannon. Please start from the very beginning.'

'The very beginning would take us back to the Leopard - the old Leopard, you know: fifty guns on two decks. They rebuilt her, more or less, and gave me the command, with orders to take her out to Botany Bay and then to proceed to the East Indies. It should have been a straightforward passage, but there was bad luck aboard. Plague broke out when we were in the doldrums; then a Dutch seventy-four ran us down into the high southern latitudes, far south and east of the Cape; and then we contrived to run foul of a mountain of ice in a thick fog and beat off our rudder. We were obliged to bear away, half-sinking, for some islands still farther south and east; and it was nip and tuck whether we should fetch them or no, with all hands pumping day and night. But, however, we did; and not to be long-winded about it, we patched the Leopard up, hung a new rudder, and carried her first to New Holland and then through the Endeavour Strait to rendezvous with Admiral Drury off Java.'