'I thought you would be pleased, sir,' said Pullings. 'We always knew, Mrs P. and 1, how you wanted a boy. Girls are very well, in course, but they are not quite the same; you could not wish them about all the time. And then you never know what they will be at. But a boy!--Our nipper, sir, if ever I get a settled command of my own, shall come to sea the minute he is out of coats, and properly breeched.'
'I trust Mrs Pullings and young John are quite well?' said Jack; but before he could learn much of them, Stephen walked in, followed by the sack of mail. 'Stephen,' said Jack, 'Sophie is brought to bed of a boy.'
'Aye? I dare say,' said Stephen. 'Poor thing. But it must be a great relief to your mind.'
'Why,' said Jack, with a blush, 'I never had wind of it, you know.' Calculation had already established the fact that the distant nameless wonder was conceived the night of his leaving, and this made him bashful, even confused.
'Well, I give you joy of your son,' said Stephen. 'And I hope with all my heart that dear Sophie does well? At least,' he observed, as he watched Jack busy with the mail-sack, 'this will make a baronetcy more welcome: will give it more point.'
'Lord, what am I at?' cried Jack. 'Orders come first.' He dropped the sack, broke the seal of the Admiral's letter, found the expected words directing and requiring him to proceed with all possible dispatch to the flag at or off Rodriguez immediately upon receipt of these orders. He laughed, and said, 'If there is any baronetcy in the wind, it don't come this way. I am superseded.'
He went on deck, gave one order for the signal that should set the squadron on its new course, away from Mauritius, and another to splice the mainbrace. To Seymour's astonished expression he replied, in a voice as offhand as he could make it, that he had just learnt of the birth of a son. He received the congratulations of the quarterdeck and many a kind look from the seamen nearby, invited Colonel Keating to take a glass in the cabin, and so returned. The bottle was soon out, the letters distributed; and Jack, giving Keating his packet, said, 'I hope, Colonel, that your news may be as pleasant as mine, to offset the rest; because you were too good a prophet by half, and I fear there may be a general waiting for you at Rodriguez, just as there is an admiral waiting for me.' With these words he retired with his letters to the quarter-gallery, his own private place of ease, leaving the soldier transfixed, pale and even trembling, with indignation.
A little before dinner he came out and found Stephen alone in the great cabin. Pullings had now, for the first time, learnt of the squadron's destination; and realizing that a little tactful delay on his part would have allowed the Commodore to carry out his plans and to reap honour and glory, had withdrawn to the taffrail, where he stood by the ensign-staff, cursing his untimely zeal. 'I wish you too may have had very good news, Stephen?' said Jack, nodding at the pile of open letters at Stephen's side.
'Tolerably so in parts, I thank you; but nothing that causes me a joy comparable with yours. You are still in a glow, brother, a roseate glow. Pray tell me of Sophie's condition.'
'She says she has never felt better in her life--swears it passed off as easy as a letter in the post finds the little chap a great comfort, and excellent company. Now I know you are about as partial to children as old Herod, Stephen, but--'
'No, no. I am not doggedly, mechanically set against them, though I freely admit I find most babies superfluous, and unnecessary. I
'Without there were babies, we should have no next generation.'
'So much the better, when you consider the state to which we have reduced the world they must live in, the bloody-minded wolfish stock from which they spring, and the wicked, inhuman society that will form them. Yet I do admit of exceptions: the replication of such a creature as Sophie, and even I may say of yourself, can be seen as a good. But I am afraid I interrupt you.'
'I was only going to say, that you might like to hear Sophie's description of him. It appears that he is a most unusual, exceptional child.' Stephen listened with a decent show of complaisance: the smell of roasting meat drifted aft, and that of fried onions; he heard the drum beat 'Heart of Oak' for the gunroom's dinner; his stomach called out for his own; and still the tale ran on.
'You cannot conceive, Stephen, how it extends a man's future, having a son,' said Jack. 'Now it is worth while planting a walnut-tree! Why, I may even lay down a whole plantation of oaks.'
'The girls would have gathered your walnuts. The girls would have sported under the oaks; and their grandchildren would have felled them.'
'No, no. It is not the same thing at all. Now, thank God, they have portions; and so eventually they will marry some greasy fellow called Snooks--you must admit, Stephen, that it is not the same thing at all.'
Just before five bells Jack was cut short by the arrival of Pullings, still sadly reduced, and of the Colonel, still trembling with rage; and at five bells itself Killick announced, 'Wittles is up,' with a courtly jerk of his thumb, and they moved into the dining-cabin.
Pullings ate his mutton silently, with little appetite; Colonel Keating, though allowed by convention to speak freely at the Commodore's table, remained almost equally mute, not wishing to spoil a happy occasion by giving vent to the words he longed to utter; Stephen was lost in reflection, though from time to time he did respond to pauses in Jack's cheerful flow. When the long meal was over, when the King, Mrs Aubrey and young Stupor Mundi had been drunk in bumpers of luke-warm port, and when the guests had moved into the open air to dissipate the fumes of their wine, he said to Jack, 'I scarcely know which I most admire, the strength of your philoprogenitive instinct, or your magnanimity in the face of this disappointment. Not many years ago you would have clapped your telescope to your blind eye; you would have evaded these orders; and you would have taken the Mauritius before Mr Bertie knew what you were at.'
'Well, I am disappointed,' said Jack, 'I must confess; and when first I smoked the Admiral's intentions I had a month's mind to steer due west for a while. But it would not do, you know. Orders is orders, bar one case in a million; and this is not one of those cases. The Mauritius must fall in the next week or so, whoever is in command, or whoever takes the glory.'
'Keating does not take it so philosophically.'
'Keating has not just heard he has a son. Ha, ha, ha: there's for you, Stephen.'
'Keating already has five, and a sad expense they are to him, as well as a grave disappointment. The news of a sixth boy would not have mollified his indignation, unless indeed it had been a daughter, the one thing he longs for. Strange, strange: it is a passion to which I cannot find the least echo, when I peer into my bosom.'
Colonel Keating's indignation was shared throughout the Boadicea and her companions. It was universally held that the Commodore had been done out of his rights, cheated of his due, and wiped in the eye if not stabbed in the
