The Reverse of the Medal. Patrick O’Brian
Читать онлайн книгу.
at once.’
‘Certainly, dear colleague,’ said Waters, fairly glowing with relief. ‘At once. How grateful I am for your opinion!’
‘I never much care for opening a belly,’ observed Stephen, looking at the belly in question with an objective, considering eye, rather like a butcher deciding upon his cut. ‘And of course in such a position I should require intelligent assistance. Are your mates competent?’
‘They are reckless drunken empirical sots, the pair of them, the merest illiterate sawbones. I should be most reluctant to have either of them lay a hand on me.’
Stephen considered for a while: it was difficult enough in all conscience to love one’s fellow men by land, let alone cooped up in the same ship with no possibility of escape from daily contact, or even to remain on civil terms; and clearly Waters had not accomplished this necessary naval feat. He said, ‘I have no mate myself. The gunner, running mad, murdered him off the coast of Chile. But our chaplain, Mr Martin, has a considerable knowledge of physic and surgery; he is an eminent naturalist and we have dissected a great many bodies together, both warm-blooded and cold; but as far as I can recall he has not seen the opening of a living human abdomen and I am sure it would give him pleasure. If you wish, I will ask him to attend. In any case I must return to the ship for my violoncello.’
Stephen mounted the Irresistible’s various ladders, losing his way once or twice but emerging at last into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. He stood blinking for a while, and then, putting on his blue spectacles, he saw that the larboard side of the ship was crowded with bumboats and returning liberty-men. The flag-lieutenant was leaning over the rail, chewing a piece of sugar-cane and bargaining for a basket of limes, a basket of guavas, and an enormous pine-apple; when these had been hoisted aboard Stephen said to him, ‘William Richardson, joy, will you tell me where the Captain is, now?’
‘Why, Doctor, he went back to the ship just after five bells.’
‘Five bells,’ repeated Stephen. ‘Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctuality again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?’
‘Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,’ said Richardson. ‘I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey. There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand – there he is,’ he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands. Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting – before he could decide between ‘Ho, shipfellows’ and ‘Avast, messmates’ – the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. ‘Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?’
‘The same, sir,’ said Stephen, returning his salute. ‘The same, at your service.’ He spoke a little at random, for the bare-headed young man standing there in the full sun before him was the spit, the counterpart, the image of Jack Aubrey with some twenty years and several stone taken off, done in shining ebony. It made no odds that the young man’s hair was a tight cap of black curls rather than Jack’s long yellow locks, nor that his nose had no Roman bridge; his whole essence, his person, his carriage was the same, and even the particular tilt of his head as he now leant towards Stephen with a modest, deferential look. ‘Pray sir, let us put on our hats, for all love, against the power of the sun,’ said Stephen. ‘I understand you have business with Captain Aubrey?’
‘I have, sir, and they are after telling me you would know might I see him at all. I hear no boats are allowed by his ship, but it is the way I have a letter for him from Mrs Aubrey.’
‘Is that right?’ said Stephen. ‘Then come with me till I bring you where he is. Mr Richardson, you will not object to another passenger? We might take turns with plying the oars, the weight being greater.’
The pull across was comparatively silent: Richardson was busy with his sculls; the black man had the gift, so rare in the young, of being quiet without awkwardness; and Stephen was much taken up with this transposition of his most intimate friend; however, he did say, ‘I trust, sir, that you left Mrs Aubrey quite well?’
‘As well, sir, as ever her friends could desire,’ said the young man, with that sudden flashing smile possible only to those with brilliant white teeth and a jet-black face.
‘I wish you may be right, my young friend,’ said Stephen inwardly. He knew Sophie very well; he loved her very dearly; but he knew that she was quick and perceptive and somewhat more subject to jealousy and its attendant miseries than was quite consistent with happiness. And without being a prude she was also perfectly virtuous, naturally virtuous, without the least self-constraint.
The young man was not unexpected in the Surprise; the rumour of his presence had spread to every member of the ship’s company except her Captain and he came aboard into an atmosphere of kindly, decently-veiled but intense curiosity.
‘Will you wait here now while I see is the Captain at leisure?’ said Stephen. ‘Mr Rowan will no doubt show you the various ropes for a moment.’
‘Jack,’ he said, walking into the cabin. ‘Listen, now. I have strange news: there was a fine truthful young black man aboard the Admiral inquiring for you, told me he had a message from Sophie, so I have brought him along.’
‘From Sophie?’ cried Jack.
Stephen nodded and said in a low voice, ‘Brother, forgive me, but you may be surprised by the messenger. Do not be disconcerted. Will I bring him in?’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘Good afternoon to you, sir,’ said the young man in a deep, somewhat tremulous voice as he held out a letter. ‘When I was in England Mrs Aubrey desired me to give you this, or to leave it in good hands were I gone before your ship came by.’
‘I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir,’ said Jack, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘Pray sit down. Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of madeira and the Sunday cake. I am truly sorry not to be able to entertain you better, sir – I am engaged to the Admiral this evening – but perhaps you could dine with me tomorrow?’
Killick had of course been listening behind the door and he was prepared for this: he and his black mate Tom Burgess came in at once, making a reasonably courtly train, as like a land-going butler and footman as they could manage; but Tom’s desire to get a really good view of the visitor, who sat facing away from him, was so violent that they fell foul of one another just as the wine was pouring. When the ‘God-damned lubbers’ had withdrawn, crestfallen, and they were alone again Jack looked keenly at the young man’s face – it was strangely familiar: surely he must have seen him before. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, breaking the seal, ‘I will just glance into this to see whether there is anything urgent.’ There was not. This was the third copy of a letter sent to the ports where the Surprise might touch on her homeward voyage: it spoke of the progress of Jack’s plantations, the slow indeterminate stagnation of the legal proceedings, and the chickenpox, then at its height; and at the bottom of the page a hurried postscript said that Sophie would entrust this to Mr Illegible, who was bound for the West Indies and who had been so kind as to call on her.
He looked up, and again this uneasy sense of familiarity struck him; but he said, ‘It was exceedingly kind of you to bring me this letter. I hope you left everyone at Ashgrove Cottage quite well?’
‘Mrs