neatness, even labels.
The brassbound chest was open now and Dr Maturin was fishing in it, hoping to find his best neckcloth, the frilled white neckcloth the size of a moderate studding-sail that he was to put on for Diana's farewell dinner. He fished with a surgical retractor, one of the most efficient instruments known to science, but nothing did he find; and when at last the steel claws grated on the bottom he called out, 'Mrs Broad, Mrs Broad, who has hidden my neckcloth?'
Mrs Broad walked in without ceremony, the neckcloth over her arm, although Stephen was in his shirt. 'Why, oh why did you take it away?' he cried. 'Have you no bowels, Mrs Broad?'
'Mrs Maturin said it was to be new-starched,' said Mrs Broad. 'You would not like to have your frill all limp, I am sure.'
'There is nothing I should like better,' muttered Stephen, folding it about him.
'And Mrs Maturin says you are to put on your nice new pumps,' said Mrs Broad. 'Which I have scratched the soles.'
'I cannot walk to Half Moon Street in new pumps,' said Stephen.
'No, sir,' said Mrs Broad patiently. 'You are to go in a chair, like Mrs M said this morning. The men have been waiting in the tap this ten minutes past.' Her eye wandered to the open chest, as neat as an apple-pie not half an hour ago. 'Oh, Dr Maturin, fie,' she cried. 'Oh fie, Doctor, fie.'
'Oh fie, Stephen,' said Diana, tweaking his cravat straight, 'How can you be so intolerably late? Jagiello has been slavering in the drawing-room this last age, and the others will be here any minute.'
'There was a mad bull in Smithfield,' said Stephen.
'Does one really have to pass through Smithfield to reach Mayfair?' asked Diana.
'One does not, as you know very well. But I suddenly remembered that I was to call at Bart's. And listen my dear, you have never been in time in your life, to my certain knowledge; so I beg you will keep your irony for some more suitable occasion.'
'Why, Stephen, you are as furious as a mad bull yourself, I find,' said Diana, kissing him. 'And to think that I have bought you such a beautiful present. Come upstairs and look at it: Jagiello can receive any early worms.' As she passed the drawing-room she called in, 'Jagiello, pray do the civil for us if anyone should come: we shall not be a minute.' Jagiello was almost domesticated at Half Moon Street, an absurdly beautiful young man, an exceedingly wealthy Lithuanian now attached to the Swedish embassy: he and Stephen and Jack Aubrey had been imprisoned in France together and they had escaped together, which accounted for an otherwise unlikely close friendship.
'There,' she said proudly, pointing to her bed, where there stood a gold-mounted dressing-case that was also a canteen and a backgammon-board: little drawers pulled in and out, ingenious slides and folding legs transformed it into a wash-hand-stand, a writing desk, a lectern; and looking-glasses and candle-holders appeared on either side.
'Acushla,' he said, drawing her close, 'this is regal splendour - this is imperial magnificence. The Physician of the Fleet has nothing finer. I am so grateful, my dear.' And grateful, infinitely touched he was: while Diana put the gleaming object through its paces, explaining how it worked and telling him how she had stood over the workmen, bullying them into finishing it in time - oaths, sweet persuasion, promises until she was hoarse, as hoarse as a God-damned crow, Stephen cheri - he reflected on her generosity, her improvidence (rich though she was, she never had any money to spend, and this was far more than even she could afford), and on her ignorance of naval life, of the damp, cramped cupboard that a surgeon lived in at sea, even the surgeon of a seventy-four, a ship of the line: this precious piece of misguided craftsmanship might do very well for a field-officer, a soldier with a baggage-wagon and a dozen orderlies, but for a sailor it would have to be wrapped in waxed canvas and struck down into the driest part of the hold. Or perhaps it might be allowed in the bread-room . . .
'But the shirts, dear Stephen,' she was saying. 'I am absolutely desolated about the shirts. I could not get the wretched woman to finish them. There are only a dozen here. But 1 will send the others down by coach. They may catch you in time.'
'God's love,' cried Stephen, 'there is no need, no need at all. A dozen shirts! I have never had so many at one time since I was breeched. And in any case I need no more than two for this voyage. Sure, it is almost over before it is begun.'
'I wish you were back already,' said Diana in a low voice. 'I shall miss you so.' And then, glancing out of the window, 'There is Anne Trevor's chariot. You will not mind her coming, Stephen? When she heard that Jagiello was dining here she begged and prayed to be invited, and I had not the heart to say no.'
'Never in life, my dear. I am all for the satisfaction of natural desires, even in Miss Trevor, even in a Judas- haired rack-renting County Kerry absentee landowner with a Scotch Anabaptist vulture by way of an agent, or bailiff. Indeed, we might go so far as to leave them alone for two minutes.'
'It seems a damned odd voyage to me,' said Diana, frowning at the pile of shirts. 'You never told me how it all came about. And it is all so sudden.'
'In the crisis of a war naval orders are apt to be sudden. But I am just as pleased: I have some business to deal with in Barcelona, as you know: I should have travelled to the Mediterranean in any case, Jack or no Jack.' This was true as far as it went; but Stephen had not seen fit to explain the full nature of his business in Barcelona, nor did he now say that he also had a rendezvous with French royalists no great way from Toulon, a rendezvous with some gentlemen who were heartily sick of Buonaparte, a rendezvous that might lead to great things.
'But it was understood that Jack was to have the Blackwater and take her to the North American station as soon as she was ready,' said Diana. 'He ought never to have been shoved into a temporary command in that rotten old Worcester. A man of his seniority, with his fighting record, ought to have been knighted long ago and given a decent ship, perhaps a squadron of his own. Sophie is perfectly furious: so is Admiral Berkeley, and Heneage Dundas, and all his service friends.' Diana was well informed about Captain Aubrey's affairs, he being married to her cousin Sophie and an old friend into the bargain; but she was not quite as well informed as Stephen, who now said, 'You are aware of Jack's predicament, of course?'
'Of course I am, Stephen. Pray do not be an ass.' Of course she was: all Captain Aubrey's acquaintance knew that on coming ashore with his pockets full of French and Spanish gold he had fallen an even easier prey to the landsharks than most sailors, as being of a more trusting, sanguine disposition. He had made a disastrous plunge into the arms of a more than usually rapacious shark and he was now deep in law-suits, with the possibility of ruin at the end of them.
