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.
