Says the Admiral, “That’s very bad news;” says the captain, “My heart will break;”
The lieutenant cries, “What shall I do? For I know not what course for to take.”
Says the doctor, “I’m a gentleman too, I’m a gentleman of the first rank;
I will go to some country fair, and there I’ll set up mountebank.”
Ha, ha, that’s for you, Stephen - ha, ha, ha -Says the midshipman, “I have no trade; I have got my trade for to choose, I will go to St James’s Park gate, and there I’ll set black of shoes; And there I will set all day, at everybody’s call, And everyone that comes by, ‘Do you want my nice shining balls?’”‘
Mr Quarles looked in at the door, recognized the tune and drew in a sharp breath; but Jack was a guest, a superior officer - a master and commander, no less, with an epaulette on his shoulder - and he was broad as well as tall. Mr Quarles let his breath out in a sigh and closed the door.
‘I should have sung softer,’ said Jack, and drawing his chair closer to the table he went on in a low voice, ‘No, those are the chaps I am sorry for. I’m sorry for myself too, naturally - no great likelihood of a ship, and of course no enemy to cruise against if I do get one. But it’s nothing in comparison of them. We’ve had luck with prize-? money, and if only it were not for this infernal delay over making me post I should be perfectly happy to have a six months’ run ashore. Hunting. Hearing some decent music. The opera - we might even go to Vienna! Eh? What do you say, Stephen? Though I must confess this slowness irks my heart and soul. However, it’s nothing in comparison of them, and I make no doubt it will be settled directly.’ He picked up The Times and ran through the London Gazette, in case he should have missed his own name in the first three readings. ‘Toss me the one on the locker, will you?’ he said, throwing it down. ‘The Sussex Courier.’
‘This is more like it, Stephen,’ he said, five minutes later. ‘Mr Savile ’s hounds will meet at ten o’clock on Wednesday, the sixth of November 1802, at Champflower Cross. I had such a run with them when I was a boy: my father’s regiment was in camp at Rainsford. A seven-?mile point - prodigious fine country if you have a horse that can really go. Or listen to this: a neat gentleman’s residence, standing upon gravel, is to be let by the year, at moderate terms. Stabling for ten, it says.’
‘Are there any rooms?’
‘Why, of course there are. It couldn’t be called a neat gentleman’s residence, without there were rooms. What a fellow you are, Stephen. Ten bedrooms. By God, there’s a lot to be said for a house, not too far from the sea, in that sort of country.’
‘Had you not thought of going to Woolhampton - of going to your father’s house?’
‘Yes . . . yes. I mean to give him a visit, of course. But there’s my new mother-?in-?law, you know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think it would exactly answer.’ He paused, trying to remember the name of the person, the classical person, who had had such a trying time with his father’s second wife; for General Aubrey had recently married his dairy-?maid, a fine black-?eyed young woman with a moist palm whom Jack knew very well. Actaeon, Ajax, Aristides? He felt that their cases were much alike and that by naming him he would give a subtle hint of the position: but the name would not come, and after a while he reverted to the advertisements. ‘There’s a great deal to be said for somewhere in the neighbourhood of Rainsford - three or four packs within reach, London only a day’s ride away, and neat gentlemen’s residences by the dozen, all standing upon gravel. You’ll go snacks with me, Stephen? We’ll take Bonden, Killick, Lewis and perhaps one or two other old Sophies, and ask some of the youngsters to come and stay. We’ll lay in beer and skittles - it will be Fiddler’s Green!’
‘I should like it of all things,’ said Stephen. ‘Whatever the advertisements may say, it is a chalk soil, and there are some very curious plants and beetles on the downs. I am with child to see a dew-?pond.’
Polcary Down and the cold sky over it; a searching air from the north breathing over the water-?meadows, up across the plough, up and up to this great sweep of open turf, the down, with the covert called Rumbold’s Gorse sprawling on the lower edge of it. A score of red-?coated figures dotted round the Gorse, and far away below them on the middle slope a ploughman standing at the end of his furrow, motionless behind his team of Sussex oxen, gazing up as Mr Savile’s hounds worked their way through the furze and the brown remnants of the bracken. Slow work; uncertain, patchy scent; and the foxhunters had plenty of time to drink from their flasks, blow on their hands, and look out over the landscape below them -the river winding through its patchwork of fields, the towers or steeples of Hither, Middle, Nether and Savile Champflower, the six or seven big houses scattered along the valley, the whale-?backed downs one behind the other, and far away the lead-?coloured sea.
It was a small field, and almost everyone there knew everyone else: half a dozen farmers, some private gentlemen from the Champflowers and the outlying parishes, two militia officers from the dwindling camp at Rainsford, Mr Burton, who had come out in spite of his streaming cold in the hope of catching a glimpse of Mrs St John, and Dr
Vining, with his hat pinned to his wig and both tied under his chin with a handkerchief. He had been led astray early in his rounds - he could not resist the sound of the horn - and his conscience had been troubling him ever since the scent had faded and died. From time to time he looked over the miles of frigid air between the covert and Mapes Court, where Mrs Williams was waiting for him. ‘There is nothing wrong with her,’ he observed. ‘My physic will do no good; but in Christian decency I should call. And indeed I shall, unless they find again before I can tell a hundred.’ He put his finger upon his pulse and began to count. At ninety he paused, looking about for some reprieve, and on the far side of the covert he saw a figure he did not know. ‘That is the medical man they have been telling me about, no doubt,’ he said. ‘It would be the civil thing to go over and say a word to him. A rum-? looking cove. Dear me, a very rum-?looking cove.’
The rum-?looking cove was sprawling upon a mule, an unusual sight in an English hunting-?field; and quite apart from the mule there was a strange air about him
his slate-?coloured small-?clothes, his pale face, his pale eyes and even paler close-?cropped skull (his hat and wig were tied to his saddle), and the way he bit into a hunk of bread rubbed with garlic. He was calling out in a loud tone to his companion, in whom Dr Vining recognized the new tenant of Melbury Lodge. ‘I tell you what it is, Jack,’ he was saying, ‘I tell you what it is. .
‘You sir - you on the mule,’ cried old Mr Savile’s furious voice. ‘Will you let the God-?damned dogs get on with their work? Hey? Hey? Is this a God-?damned coffee-?house? I appeal to you, is this an infernal debating society?’
Captain Aubrey pursed his lips demurely and pushed his horse over the twenty yards that separated them. ‘Tell me later, Stephen,’ he said in a low voice, leading his friend round the covert out of the master’s sight. ‘Tell me later, when they have found their fox.’
The demure look did not sit naturally upon Jack Aubrey’s face, which in this weather was as red as his coat, and as soon as they were round the corner, under the lee of a wind-?blown thorn, his usual expectant cheerfulness returned, and he looked eagerly up into the furze, where an occasional heave and rustle showed the pack in
