-your own master, no fagging up and down to Whitehall, no admirals to make you do tiresome things and snatch great lumps of your prize-?money. A perfect idea for a man like you - for a man of spirit. An independent command! A thirty-?two gun frigate!’
‘It is a magnificent offer: I am in a maze.’
‘And in partnership with Canning! I am sure you would get on famously. My cousin Jersey knows him. The Cannings are absurdly rich, and he is very like a native prince; only he is straightforward and brave, which they are not, on the whole.’ Her eager face changed, and looking round Jack saw an elderly man standing by him. ‘My dear,’ said the elderly man, ‘Charlotte sends me to tell you she is thinking of going home presently; we have to drop Charles at the Tower before twelve.’
‘I shall come at once,’ said Diana.
‘No, no, you have plenty of time to finish your ice.’
‘Have I, truly? May I introduce Captain Aubrey, of the Navy, Admiral Haddock’s neighbour? Colonel Colpoys, who is so sweetly kind as to have me to stay.’
Very small talk for a moment, and the colonel went away to see to his horses.
‘When shall I see you again? Will you call at Bruton Street tomorrow morning? I shall be alone. You may take me into the park, and to look at the shops.’
‘Diana,’ said Jack in a low voice, ‘there is a writ out against me. I dare not walk about London.’
‘You dare not? You are afraid of being arrested?’ Jack nodded.
‘Afraid? Upon my word, I never expected to hear that from you. What do you think I introduced you for? It was so you might call.’
‘Besides, I am under orders for the Admiralty tomorrow.’
‘How unfortunate,’ said Diana.
‘May I come on Sunday?’
‘No, sir, you may not. I do not ask men to come to see me so often . . . No, you must certainly consult your safety: of course you must consult your safety. In any case, I shall no longer be in town.’
‘Mr Wells’s carriage; Sir John Bridges’s carriage; Colonel Colpoys’s carriage,’ cried a footman.
‘Major Lennox,’ said Diana, as one of her soldiers went by, ‘please be very kind and find me my cloak, will you? I must say good-?bye to Lady Keith and my aunt,’ she observed to herself, gathering her fan and gloves.
Jack followed the procession of Colonel and Mrs Colpoys, Diana Villiers, the unknown Charles, Lennox and Stephen Maturin, and stood bare-?headed, exposed on that brightly-?lit pavement while the carriages made their slow way down from the mews: no word, however - not so much as a look. At last the women were handed in and stowed away, the carriage moved off, and Jack walked slowly back into the house with Stephen Maturin.
They went up the broad stairs, making their way against the increasing current of guests who had taken their leave; their conversation was fragmentary and unimportant - a few general remarks - but by the time they had reached the top each knew that their harmony was no longer what it had been these last few months.
‘I shall make my farewells,’ said Stephen, ‘and then I believe I shall walk down to the Physical Society. You will stay a little longer with your friends, I imagine? I do beg you to take a coach from the very door itself and to ride all the way home. Here is the common purse. If you are to see the First Lord in the morning, your mind must be in a condition of easy complaisance, in a placid, rested state. There is milk in the little crock - warmed milk will relax the fibres.’
Jack warmed it, added a dash of rum from his case-?bottle, and drank it up; but in spite of his faith in the draught, the fibres remained tense, the placidity of mind a great way off.
Writing a note to tell Stephen that he would be back presently and leaving the candle burning, he walked out on to the Heath. Enough moonlight filtered through the murk to show him his path, pale among the scattered trees; he went fast, and soon he had walked himself into his second wind and a steady rhythm. Into a muck-? sweat, too: the cloak became unbearably hot. Steadily on, with the cloak rolled tight under his arm, up hill, down to some ponds, and up again. He almost trod on a courting couple - hard pressed, to lie in such a dismal plash and at such a time -and turned away right-?handed, leaving the remote glow of London behind him.
This was the first time in his life he had ever refused a direct challenge. He could hear the whining reasonability of his ‘there is a writ out against me’ and he blushed in the darkness - pitiful. But how could she have asked him to do such a thing? How could she ask so much? He thought of her with cold hostility. No friend would have done so. She was no fool, no inexperienced girl: she knew what he was risking.
Contempt was very hard to bear. In his place she would have come, bailiffs or no bailiffs; he was sure of that. The Admiralty had sounded a snivelling excuse.
What if he chanced it and appeared at Bruton Street in the morning? If he were to accept the privateer, the appointment in Whitehall would be meaningless. He had been shabbily treated there, more shabbily than any man he could remember, and there was no likelihood, no possibility that tomorrow’s meeting would put things right. At the best some unacceptable shore-?based post that would salve the First Lord’s conscience, that would allow him to say ‘We offered him employment, but he did not see fit to accept it.’ Conceivably some hulk or storeship; but at all events Lord Melville was not going to make him post and offer him a frigate, the only thing that would do away with the injustice, the only thing that could find him by a sense of proper usage. The recollection of the way he had been treated rose hotter and hotter in his mind: a wretched mean-?spirited disingenuous shuffling, and men without a tenth part of his claim being promoted over his head by the dozen. His recommendations ignored, his midshipmen left on the beach.
With Canning as his First Lord, secretary and Board of Admiralty all in one, how different it would be! A well-? found ship, a full crew of prime seamen, a free hand, and all the oceans of the world before him - the West Indies for quick returns, the cherished cruising-?grounds of the Channel fleet, and if Spain were to come in (which was almost certain), the Mediterranean sea-?lanes he knew so well. But even more, far beyond the common range of cruisers and private ships of war, the Mozambique Channel, the approaches to the Isle of France, the Indian Ocean; and eastwards still, the Spice Islands and the Spanish Philippines. South of the Line, right down to the Cape and beyond, there were still French and Dutch Indiamen coming home. And if he were to stretch away on the monsoon, there was Manila under his lee, and the Spanish treasure ships. Even without flying so high, one moderate prize in those latitudes would clear his debts; a second would set him on his feet again; and it would be strange if he could not make two prizes in an almost virgin sea.
