to be tied up to the lady and her offspring with preternatural skill; that the couple did not agree - never had agreed - that Wray's personal income was by no means adequate to his train of life, above all not to his almost nightly losses at Button's, and that yesterday he had been carried home drunk.
'You are very good,' said Stephen, 'but I am afraid I am engaged on Friday. Yet there are some matters that I should like to talk to you about and that cannot be discussed here. We will go to your house, if you please.'
'Very well,' said Wray, with a forced smile, and they made their way through the press. As they crossed the Green Park he gave Stephen a pretty clear account of the sequence of events in Malta, and Stephen listened attentively, though with not a tithe of the zeal he would have felt a few days before: not a hundredth part. Wray blamed himself exceedingly for the escape of Lesueur, the chief French agent in the island; but at least the organization had been destroyed and no information had been conveyed from Valletta to Paris since then. 'The trouble was that I was horribly out of order,' said Wray. 'I still am. I wish you would prescribe for my poor liquescent belly,' he said with a smile, opening the door of his house. 'Pray walk in.'
'I should prescribe for your mind, my friend, if I prescribed at all,' said Stephen inwardly. 'That is the peccant part. But if I were to give you the tincture of laudanum, the physic that would best suit your case, you would become addicted within the month, a mere opium-eater. Addicted, as I believe you are already to the bottle.'
They went upstairs to Wray's library and there, Stephen having refused wine, cake, sherbet, biscuits, tea, Wray said, not without embarrassment, that he hoped Maturin would not think he was avoiding him or trying to get out of the debt he owed. He freely owned the debt and thankfully acknowledged Maturin's forbearance during this long period; but he was ashamed to say that he must still beg for a little more time. By the end of the month he would be in funds and they would square accounts at last. In the meantime Wray would give him a note of hand. He hoped this delay might not be too inconvenient.
After a slight and disagreeable pause Stephen agreed, and from this point of advantage he said, fixing Wray with his pale eye and defying him to show the least awareness of his condition, 'When last we corresponded, in Gibraltar, you were kind enough to suggest taking a letter to my wife, since you were travelling overland. Pray just when did she receive it?'
'I am very sorry to say I cannot tell,' said Wray, looking down. 'When I reached London I went round to Half- Moon Street at once, but the servant told me his mistress was gone abroad. He added that he had instructions to forward letters, so I put it into his hands.'
'I am obliged to you, sir,' said Stephen, and he took his leave. If he had seen Wray watching him from behind the lace curtain, grinning and jigging on one leg and making the sign of the cuckold's horns with his fingers he would quite certainly have turned and killed him with his court sword, for this was a very cruel blow. It meant that Diana
had not waited for any explanation, however halting and imperfect, but had condemned him unheard; and this showed a much harder, far less affectionate woman than the Diana he had known or had thought he knew - a mythical person, no doubt created by himself. It had of course been evident from her letter, which made no reference to his; but he had not chosen to see the evidence and now that it was absolutely forced upon his sight it made his eyes sting and tingle again. And deprived of his myth he felt extraordinarily lonely.
'Sir! Oh sir!' called the porter as he turned in at Black's after a walk that had taken him right across the park to Kensington and beyond, far into the night, and then down by the river at low tide. 'This was brought by special messenger, and I was not to fail to give it you the moment you came in.'
'Thankee, Charles,' said Stephen. He noticed the black Admiralty seal on the letter, put it in his pocket and walked upstairs. As he hoped he should, he found Sir Joseph in the library, reading Buffon. 'Sad stuff, Maturin, sad stuff,' he said aloud, for once again they were alone in the room. 'There never was a Frenchman sound on bones apart from Cuvier.' He put the book down with a disapproving air and then said 'I was very glad to see you at the levee, and I was very glad Clarence was so civil. Barrow was suitably impressed - he fairly dotes upon that prince, although he knows he is not well-seen at the Admiralty: knows it as well as anyone, and better than most. He seems incapable of realizing that some royals are far more royal than others. An odd contradiction. Still, it does mean that if you call again you will not be treated rudely. Will you call again, do you suppose?'
'Sure I must, unless I am to send the damned box by a common porter. This is probably an invitation.' He held up the letter, opened it and said 'So it is. Mr B infinitely regrets - most lamentable misunderstanding - would be most gratified - presumes to suggest - but any other hour at Dr M's convenience.,
'Yes,' said Sir Joseph, 'it is inevitable that you should go.' A pause. 'By the way, I picked up a little news of your brass box. It was a Cabinet Office affair, of course -FitzMaurice and his friends - and the Navy was only the carrier, with no knowledge of the contents. The 'much larger sum' that you were told about was either a conjecture of Pocock's part or a monstrous Foreign Office indiscretion that should never have been passed on. I dare say most well-informed people have heard of it by now, at least in general terms. Oh Lord, pray send us a few public servants who know what discretion means! Tell me, Maturin, are you looking in at the Royal Society tonight?'
'Not I. I walked a great way after an unpleasant visit; I missed my dinner, and I am entirely destroyed.'
'Certainly you look quite fagged out. Might not supper set you up? Something light, like a boiled fowl with oyster sauce? I should very much like you to meet a colleague from the Horse Guards, an uncommonly intelligent engineer. I have been consulting him and several other friends in an unofficial way, as I told you, and they agree that my mouse is perhaps beginning to assume the form of a rat.'
'Sir Joseph,' said Stephen, 'forgive me, but tonight I should not turn in my chair if it assumed the form of a two-horned rhinoceros. Buonaparte may come over in his flat-bottomed boats and welcome, as far as I am concerned.'
'You had much better eat a boiled fowl with me,' said Blaine. 'A boiled fowl with oyster sauce, and a bottle of sound claret. Maturin, is the name Ovart at all familiar to you?'
'Ovart? I doubt I have ever heard it,' said Stephen, gaping with hunger and fatigue. He said goodnight and walked slowly off to bed.
There was little spring in him the next morning either, although a blackbird from the Green Park had perched on the parapet outside his window, singing away with effortless perfection. At breakfast an aged member told him that it was a fine morning, and that the news was more encouraging; it seemed that there was the possibility of a peace before long.
'So much the better,' said Stephen. 'With the people who run the country at present we cannot carry on the war very much longer.'
'Very true,' said the aged member, shaking his head. Then he asked whether Stephen were going to Newgate for the executions. No, said Stephen, he was going to the Admiralty. Did they hang people there? asked the aged member eagerly, and when he was told that they did not he shook his head again, observing that for his part he
