itself,’ he muttered through the cloth. ‘I will just pin this end and step over for a word with our colleague.’
He came back, and nodded gravely. ‘Dead?’ said Etherege, and looked hesitantly at Stephen, wondering whether to congratulate him: the look of utter dejection kept him silent. While Bonden drew the charge from the second pistol and ranged them both in their cases, Etherege walked Over to Burke: they exchanged a few words, saluted formally, and parted.
People were already moving about the Maidan; the eastern sky showed red; Jack said, ‘We must get him aboard at once. Bonden, hail the carriage.’
The tigers had gone, and servants were openly carrying things away.
‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Jack, springing up. Diana curtseyed. ‘I have brought you a letter from Stephen Maturin.’
‘Oh how is he?’ she cried.
‘Very low: a great deal of fever, the ball is badly lodged; and in this climate, a wound - but you know all about wounds in this climate.’
Hcr eyes filled with tears. She had expected hardness, but not this cold anger. He was taller than she had remembered him, altogether bigger and more formidable. His face had changed, the boy quite gone, vanished beyond recall: a hard, commanding eye: the only thing she recognised, apart from his uniform, was his yellow hair, tied in a queue. And even his uniform had changed: he was a post-?captain now.
‘You will excuse me, Aubrey,’ she said, and opened the note. Three straggling uneven lines. ‘Diana: you must come back to Europe. The Lushington sails on the fourteenth. Allow me to deal with any material difficulties: rely upon me at all times. I say at all times. Stephen.’
She read it slowly, and again, peering through the mist of tears. Jack stood, his back turned, looking out of the window with his hands behind his back.
Beneath the anger and the distaste for being there, his mind was filled with questions, doubts, a hurry of feelings that he could not easily identify. Righteousness, except where faulty seamanship was concerned, or an offence against Naval discipline, was unfamiliar to him. Was he a contemptible scrub, to harbour this enmity against a woman he had pursued? The severity that filled him from head to toe - was it an odious hypocrisy, fit to damn him in a decent mind? He had gone near to wrecking his career in his pursuit of her: she had preferred Canning. Was this holier-?than-?thou indignation mere pitiful resentment? No, it was not: she had hurt Stephen terribly; and Canning, that fine man, was dead. She was no good, no good at all. Yet that meeting under the trees could have taken place over the most virtuous of women, the world being what it was. Virtue: he turned it over, vaguely watching a horseman winding through the trees. He had attacked her ‘virtue’ as hard as ever he could; so where did he stand? The common cant it is different for men was no comfort. The horseman came in sight again, and his horse into full view: perhaps the most beautiful animal he had ever seen, a chesnut mare, perfectly proportioned, light, powerful. She shied at a snake on the drive and reared, a lovely movement, and her rider sat easy, kindly patting her neck. Virtue: the one he esteemed above all was courage; and surely it included all the rest? He looked at her ghostlike image in the window-?pane: she possessed it - never a doubt of that. She was standing there perfectly straight, so slim and frail he could break her with one hand: a tenderness and admiration he had thought quite dead moved in him.
‘Mr Johnstone,’ said a servant.
‘I am not at home.’
The horseman rode away.
‘Aubrey, will you give me a passage home in your ship?’
‘No ma’am. The regulations do not admit of it; in any case she is unfit for a lady, and I have another month and more of refitting.’
‘Stephen has asked me to marry him. I could act as a nurse.’
‘I regret extremely my orders will not allow it. But the Lushington sails within the week; and if I can be of any assistance, I should be most happy.’
‘I always knew you were a weak man, Aubrey,’ she said, with a look of contempt. ‘But I did not know you were a scrub. You are much the same as every man I have ever known, except for Maturin - false, weak, and a coward in the end.’
He made his bow and walked out of the room with an appearance of composure. In the drive he passed a cook pushing a hand-?cart loaded with brass pots and saucepans. ‘Am I indeed a scrub?’ he asked, and the question tormented him all the way to Howrah, where the frigate lay. The moment he saw her tall mainmast high above the mass of shipping he walked even faster, ran up the gangway, passed through the waiting officers and shipwrights, and went below Killick,’ he said, find out if Mr M’Alister is busy with the Doctor if he is not, I wish to see him.
Stephen was in the great cabin, the airiest, lightest place in the ship: there seemed to be a good deal of activity in there M’Alister came out, with a drawing in his hand, followed by the bosun, the carpenter, and several of their mates He looked anxious and upset ‘How is he?’ asked Jack.
The fever is far too high, sir,’ said M’Alister, ‘but I hope it will come down when we have extracted the ball.
We are almost ready now. But it is very badly placed.’
‘Should he not be taken to the hospital? Their surgeons could give you a hand We can have a litter ready in a moment.’
‘I did suggest it, of course, as soon as we found the bullet right under the pericardium - flattened and deflected, you understand But he has no opinion of the military surgeons, nor of the hospital. They sent to offer their assistance not half an hour since, and I confess I should welcome it - the pericardium, hoot, toot - but he insists on performing the operation himself, and I dare not cross him. You will excuse me now, sir: the armourer is waiting to make this extractor he has designed.’
‘May I see him?’
‘Yes. But pray do not disturb him, or agitate his mind.’
