Man Of War

‘I shall look forward to it, Captain Peto. And now may I ask a particular favour?’

He smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed you may, and I shall be pleased to grant it if it is in my power.’

‘I should like to go below and see how are the women. I should have so liked to go before, but your orders were most explicit, and the sentry always looked very fierce.’

He found himself colouring slightly at the tease. ‘I am very glad to hear that my marines are capable of confining a vice admiral’s daughter; it gives me great confidence they will do their duty against the Turk.’

Rebecca smiled, acknowledging the teasing on both sides. ‘So I may go below, Captain?’

Peto sighed. ‘Miss Rebecca, some of the women are . . . how may I say it? Of not good character. I believe I owe it to your father, and your mother—’

‘Some I know are of easy virtue, Captain Peto, but they will likely have suffered the same as the virtuous.’

He reddened very decidedly, and cleared his throat noisily. ‘In that case, Miss Codrington – and you are of course right – I shall be content for you to visit the orlop . . . briefly. I shall have a lieutenant accompany you.’ He looked at his watch, though he did not need to know the time. ‘And if you will excuse me now, I must consult my charts.’ He touched his hat. ‘Until dinner, then, Miss Codrington.’

After a quarter of an hour in his cabin with charts and the sailing-master, Peto settled into his Madeira chair and felt in the left pocket for the papers placed there by his clerk. There were not many, and the briefest perusal told him that they could wait. Such procrastination was not his usual practice: he had ever been raised on the imperative of dealing promptly with any matter placed before him – certainly to do the work of the day in the day – but the work of the previous three days had been essentially on the quarterdeck; and, in any case, his clerk had scarcely been able to make an entry in the ledgers, so violent had the ship’s motion been. He had, too, a letter of his own to write, and if he delayed it at all he risked missing an opportunity, for they might at any moment, now that the storm was blown out, see a man-of-war or a merchantman working west for Malta.

He went to his writing table. He knew how he would begin; he had thought it over exhaustively in the long hours on the quarterdeck. He took a sheet of paper, unstopped the inkpot, picked up a pen and wrote My Dearest Elizabeth. Then he put down the pen and stared at the page. He smiled: he had done it! ‘My Dear Miss Hervey’ had been the earlier form (how could it have been other?). But now he knew different; now he was certain he could – must – write exactly as he felt. He picked up the pen again and wrote a flowing narrative of the storm, of how Rupert answered compared with Nisus and Liffey (Liffey, he informed her sadly, was being broken up even as he wrote), of how well pleased he was with his officers and warrant officers, what a spirited girl was the young Miss Rebecca Codrington, and how he was to beat upwind to find a ship to take her off, thence to sail into the Ionian to rendezvous with her father . . .

He wrote as if they were the oldest and easiest of friends. He had never written its like before. But then, as he was about to sign it, he had sudden misgivings. Did he make his true sentiments clear? He took up again where he thought he had finished:

My dearest Elizabeth, I am unused to expressing such thoughts, which fact I am joyously pleased to admit to you, and lest you should be in any doubt as to my feelings I enclose with this a page from a book of verse which I have long had in my sailing library, which I have long admired though yet been uncertain of its truth, until now when I do read it with, so to speak, the scales fallen from my eyes, though in its alluding to sword, horse and shield it is perhaps more properly the domain of your most excellent and gallant brother! For my part, it would read instead of oak and sail and gun, though these be neither so poetic nor chivalric. I would write of blustering wind or swallowing wave, and these words you will surely recognize from the poet’s other work of parting – of going beyond the seas, indeed, which would be the more appropriate were it not to speak so much of the Eternal . . .

He went to the quarter gallery to fetch his razor, took the book of verse from the trough next to his cot, and cut the page very neatly from his treasured Lucasta:

TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.Yet this inconstancy is such

As thou too shalt adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

He fastened it to the other sheets with blue tape, which he cut from his sea coat, and signed the letter Your Devoted Sposino.

Then he called for Flowerdew to chill thoroughly a case of champagne.

XIV

INFLUENCE

London, 7 May 1828

It was a warm afternoon when they returned to the United Service Club, where all the windows were thrown open and the noise of the streets intruded. Nevertheless, Hervey was able to hear well enough the discontented voices of a post-prandial knot of members at the further end of the smoking room. He and Fairbrother fell silent as they cocked their ears to the agitated conversation . . .

‘The Duke of Wellington will have nothing of it, I tell you!’

‘The duke will have no choice in the matter, for he’s sold out to those damned Canningites!’

‘He’ll never have truck with Emancipation: votes for Catholics? – Ireland’d be ungovernable!’

‘Ireland’ll be ungovernable without Emancipation!’

‘No need to worry about the Irish, sir! Peel and that constabulary of his have got them by the hip – stouthearted fellows!’

‘He’ll have a constabulary here, too; you mark my words!’

‘A police in London? Nonsense, sir!’

‘Well I for one would cheer him in it: a police would get our men off the streets at least.’