attentive. Gay-Lussac begged him to carry some curious pyrites to Sir Humphry Davy; another chemist gave him a phial whose exact nature escaped him; and presently his elegant pockets were bulging with presents for members of the Royal Society.
There were also many foreign savants present, and Stephen was gratified to see Benckendorff and Pobst and Cerutti; most were eminent in the physical sciences, but there were some mathematicians, historians and philologists too, and among them he perceived the long black beard of Schlendrian, that profound scholar, the foremost German authority on Romance languages. Schlendrian was standing somewhat apart, holding a glass of the Institut's lemonade, looking thoughtful and most uncharacteristically sad.
Their eyes met; they bowed; Stephen detached himself from a somewhat sterile conversation on chlorine, and they exchanged cordial greetings. But after the animation of the first compliments, congratulations and enquiries, Schlendrian's sadness returned; there was a silent pause in which he looked doubtfully at Stephen, and then he said, 'You have not heard the news, I presume?'
'Of the battle that is said to have been fought?'
'No. Of Ponsich.'
'What has happened to Ponsich?'
'I hardly like to tell you, on the day of your triumph.'
'Do not torment me, Schlendrian. You know how I love him.'
'So did I,' said Schlendrian, and there were tears in his eyes. 'He is dead.'
Stephen moved him away to an empty space by the door. 'How do you know? When did it happen?' he asked in a low voice.
'Graaf wrote to me from Leyden. It seems that Ponsich was in Sweden, or in the Baltic at all events, and that the ship he was travelling in met with a disaster. Many bodies were washed ashore in Pomerania, and he was recognized by a former student. Oh Maturin, what a loss for Catalan letters!'
'Listen, my dear,' said Stephen to Diana, drawing her from the concert-room in the Hotel de La Mothe, 'I am about to take my leave. I am dropping with sleep I find, and tomorrow I must travel to Calais. I have made my excuses to Adhemar.'
'Already, Stephen?' she cried, her gaiety dropping at once. 'You are going back already? I thought you would stay at least till the end of the month.'
'No. I have done what, I came to do, and I must be away. But before I go there are a few things I have to say.' She looked at him with concern; his face had a hard, contained expression, a strange contrast with the cheerfulness of the room they had just left. 'Listen,' he said again, 'I shall have news of you through my friends, and I may be over from time to time for meetings of this kind. And medically you are in the best possible hands; you must pay great attention to Baudelocque, my dear, and follow his instructions to the letter - a pregnancy can be a delicate affair. But should you have any uneasiness at all -it is in the last degree unlikely: your papers are perfectly in order and legally you belong to a friendly state - but if you should have any uneasiness either in Paris or Normandy, here is the direction of a sure friend of mine. Commit it to memory, Villiers, do you hear me now? Commit it to memory and burn the paper. And listen: should you ever be questioned about me you are to say that we are old acquaintances, no more; that I advise you as a medical man; and that there is nothing between us whatsoever, nothing between us at all.' He saw the flash of anger, the cruelly wounded pride on her face, took her hand, and said, 'You are to lie, my dear. You are to tell a black lie.'
Her eyes grew gentle again. 'I will say it, Stephen,' she said, with her best attempt at a smile, 'but I shall find it hard to be very convincing.'
He looked at her, standing there straight, her head held high, and his heart moved in him as it had not moved this great while: he said 'God bless, my dear. I am away.'
'God bless you too,' she replied, kissing him. 'Give my love to Jack and to Sophie; and pray, Stephen, pray take care of yourself.'
CHAPTER SIX
For some time, for what seemed to him a very long time, Jack Aubrey had been fetching the post for Ashgrove Cottage himself. He dreaded discovery, and quite apart from the regular, the all too regular packets, a surprising stream of letters came from Halifax by the kind offices of returning men-of-war, transports, and merchant ships; and these letters, always speaking of an imminent return, kept him in a continual state of apprehension.
He was not, he never had been, a model of continence; but his affairs had always been of a warm and cheerful nature, with no vows or protestations; somewhat earthy affairs perhaps, of no real consequence; affairs with ladies of a like mind - no hint of seduction, still less of any high romantic frenzy. They were uncomplicated passing encounters, almost as evanescent as dreams and with as little tangible result; but this was entirely different.
The necessary subterfuge and concealment were extremely distasteful to him and the possible, the probable advent of a noisy, enthusiastic, hysterical Miss Smith was stark nightmare; but what grieved him most was the change in his relationship with Sophie. He could not talk to her with his usual complete openness; the deceit and the small ignoble lies set him apart; and he felt extremely lonely, sometimes quite desolate. In any case, he was no good at lying; he did it clumsily, and the doing filled him with anger.
More than once he thought of Stephen Maturin: he understood enough of his friend's occult activities to know that he must often lead a peculiarly solitary, cut-off life, perpetually watching himself, wholly free and candid with no one. He felt for him now: but, he reflected, Stephen's was at least an honourable secrecy, a long-drawn-out permissible ruse de guerre that could not damage him in his own opinion.
He was reading Miss Smith's latest effusions - three had arrived together - in one of the empty brick buildings by his abortive lead-mine deep in the deserted, desecrated wood when a shadow fell across the doorway. Darting the letter into his pocket, he whipped round with a very stern and forbidding expression on his face, an expression that instantly dissolved into one of lively pleasure. 'Why, there you are, Stephen,' he cried. 'I was thinking of you not five minutes past. How do you do? How come you here? We had not looked for you this fortnight and more.'
'Sophie told me I should find you here,' said Stephen. 'I called in on my way to London, and I have been sitting with her. She is worried about your health; and you are an ugly colour, sure. Will you show me your arm, now?'
'She knew I was here?' said Jack, his pleasure vanishing.
