The Surgeon's Mate (18 page)

'There is no Madame de La Mothe. That is the whole point, Villiers. Adhe'mar is not a marrying man at all. He did make an attempt long ago, but it did not answer, and the poor lady obtained a decree of nullity in Rome: labour lost, alas, since she was led to the guillotine within five minutes of its delivery - virgin martyrs are always depicted carrying a palm, you know. But he is a civilized creature; he lives for music and painting and he is fond of women, as friends, handsome women that know how to dress. I believe you will like him.'

'I am sure I shall, if you do,' said Diana in a doubtful voice.

'His acquaintance would certainly make your life more entertaining; he knows everyone with any sort of taste or style in Paris, and he is still quite rich. And quite apart from that, although he has no official position of any kind, and no political activity whatsoever, men of his tastes form as it were an occult society, almost a freemasonry; they know one another, and they can sometimes find a sympathetic ear where others might seek in vain; it was to this that he owed his life in ninety-four, when most of his family went to the scaffold - that is one of the reasons why his house is so empty. So in the unlikely event of any difficulty, any unpleasantness, his protection might be of value. I tell you this, Villiers, because I know I can rely upon your discretion. It would never do to show the least awareness: although in some ways he is more than usually quick, he believes he is quite undetected. He is very much afraid of scandal, and to beguile the world he professes a passion for the chaste Madame Duroc, the banker's wife. What is it, Villiers? Why do you stop?'

'I beg pardon, Stephen: I just wanted to show you the house where I lived when I was a child.'

'But it is the Hotel d'Arpajon,' said Stephen, looking at it attentively, a grave building on three sides of a courtyard, well back from the road. 'I have always known that you spoke excellent French, but I had no idea that you had learnt it in the Hotel d'Arpajon - the Hotel d'Arpajon, for all love.'

'I suppose it never came up - I suppose you never asked. You never ask, much, Stephen.'

'Question and answer has never seemed to me a liberal form of conversation," said he.

'I will tell you, then, without being asked. We lived here a great while - my father had to leave England, you know, because of his debts - years and years. It seemed to me for ever, though I suppose it was only three in fact: I was eight when we came, and eleven when we left. He loved Paris: so did I. That was my window,' she said, pointing. 'The third from the corner. We had all that wing on the left. But Stephen, what is so odd about my having learnt French at the Hotel d'Arpajon?'

'Only that my cousin Fitzgerald lived there too -Colonel Fitzgerald, Kevin's father, the gentleman we are to see tomorrow. And yet it is not so very strange, after all; your father was a military man; so was my cousin; soldiers tend to flock together, and what more natural than that one should pass his quarters on to another?'

'Did I ever see him, I wonder? Scores of English officers came to visit my father, and they generally wore their regimentals: I knew all the facings.'

'You may well have done so. A tall thin man with one arm and a face more cut about than Jack Aubrey's. A long face: you could mistake him for a horse, except for the missing arm. But he would not have been wearing English regimentals, because he was in the Irish Brigade, in the French King's service - Dillon's regiment.'

'I did see some of them; I remember their uniform. But they all had two arms. What happened to him?'

'He was too old and sick to go off to Coblentz with the others when the brigade was disbanded - the Irish would not fight against the King, as you recall - and he retired into Normandy. He lives there still, breeding horses. You will like him too.' A battery of field-artillery came down the rue de Crenelle. 'I hope those are none of his horses,' said Stephen in her ear, through the thunder of wheels. 'He hates the bloody tyrant as much as I do.' They walked on, and he said, 'You will like him too. For, do you see, I have divided up your days without the least reference to you: a town life at the Hotel de La Mothe - and apart from the friends you already possess, there is always a great deal going on there: Adhemar gives a concert every week - and when you are sick of town, there is the Colonel in his rural cot, with green acres, nymphs and swains. And as for your lying-in, I have consulted Baudelocque: he is certainly the best accoucheur in Europe; we are old friends, and he will wait on you as soon as you are installed - you could not be in better hands. I am sadly ignorant of midwifery, and often worry when there is no cause.'

This was not a welcome subject, and the light, the fine glow died out of Diana's face, which had been alive with the happiness of freedom recovered, the excitement of Paris regained and of new clothes. She said, 'That was a very curious coincidence, the Hotel d'Arpajon, was it not?'

'Prodigious,' said Stephen. 'And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences: as for example that at the very moment we attempt to cross the road this particular coach and six should come by; yet though extremely unlikely, it is a fact. And the glabrous face within belongs to Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord.' Stephen took off his hat: the glabrous face returned his bow. 'It is a most improbable coincidence that as we enter La Mothe's courtyard, and it is just here, on the right - take care of the excrement, Yilliers - some merchant should walk into his counting-house in Stockholm, or that Jack Aubrey should mount his horse to pursue the fox. Though now I come to think of it, Jack would scarcely pursue the innocent fox at this time of the year: yet the principle remains. You may object that the overwhelming majority of these coincidences are undetected, which is eminently true; but they are there for all that, and as I raise this knocker, some man in China breathes his last.'

Jack was not in fact pursuing the fox, but he was mounting a horse, the powerful grey mare belonging to his father that was to carry him to Blandford and the post-chaise for home. General Aubrey appeared briefly, flanked by two swag-bellied men with red faces; others stared vacantly from the billiard-room. 'Not gone yet, Jack?' he said. 'You must cut along. Good-bye to 'ee, and don't jag the mare's mouth.' The General had never had much opinion of his son's horsemanship. 'Come on, Jones, come on, Brown,' he cried eagerly to his companions. 'We must get to work.' Then remembering himself he half turned and called over his shoulder, 'Give my love to - give my love to your wife and the young 'uns.' Mrs Aubrey, Jack's step-mother, did not appear at all: when the General married her out of the dairy the sprightly young woman had vowed that now she was a lady she would never rise before noon; and this oath at least she had kept most religiously.

Jack rode off without looking back. He was profoundly sad: it was not his father's health, for the old gentleman had recovered as quickly as he had fallen sick, his vigour unimpaired, but rather the odd, cunning, foxy look that had come over his face; and his companions. They were City men or politicians or both combined; he did not know exactly what they were at, although obviously money was their one concern, their talk being all of consols, omnium, and India stock; but even if he had not had his recent experience of money-men he would still have distrusted them. Woolcombe House had never been famous for propriety, particularly since the death of the first Mrs Aubrey, Jack's mother; the General's acquaintance including many fast-living, hard-drinking, high-playing men and the more careful village mothers did not send their daughters into service there; but Jack had never known the like of Jones and Brown admitted to the place. It was not only that their Radical politics were odious to him, but they were also flashy, loud-voiced, pushing fellows; they had no notion of the country; their confident, familiar approach was unlike anything he had experienced at home. Of the politicians some appeared to love humanity, but they were harsh and unfeeling to their horses, brutal to their dogs, rude to the servants; and there was much more in the way of voice and clothes that he felt but could not name. Certainly the General had profited from his association with them; it was years since he had borrowed any money from Jack, and he had recently set about altering Woolcombe on an ambitious scale. It was perhaps that which saddened Jack most. The house in which he was born had no doubt been a raw and staring edifice when it was first built, two hundred years ago -highly-ornamented red brick with a great number of gables and bays and high corkscrew chimneys - but no Aubrey since James's time had sprung up with Palladian tastes or indeed with any tastes at all in the architectural line, and the place had mellowed wonderfully. Now it was beginning to stare again, with false turrets and incongruous sash-windows, as though the vulgarity of his new associates had infected the General's mind. Inside it was even worse; the panelling, old, dark, and inconvenient to be sure, but known for ever, had been torn out and wallpaper and gilt mirrors had taken its place. Jack's own room had already vanished, and only the unused library, with its solemn rows of unopened books and its noble carved plaster ceiling, had escaped; he had spent some hours there, looking, among other things, at a first folio Shakespeare, borrowed by an earlier Jack Aubrey in 1623, never read and never returned: but even the library was doomed. The intention seemed to be to make the house false - ancient outside and gimcrack modern within: at the top of the hill, where he had always taken a last look back (for Woolcombe lay in a dank hollow, facing north), he directed his gaze steadily down on the other side, to Woolhampton.

Yet even here there was unhappiness. Riding down into the village he passed the dame's school he had attended as a very little boy, a school where he had first learnt to love, if little else: for at that time the dame had a niece to help her, a fresh girl quite pretty, though freckled as a thrush, and the infant Jack had lost his heart to her -followed her about like a puppy, brought her stolen fruit. And now here she was, her aunt's successor, surrounded by her pupils at the door, a simpering spinster, though freckled still; silly, withered on the branch, but resolutely juvenile, with ill-dyed hair and a skimpy frock. She asked after the General, and said that Captain Aubrey was a naughty boy not to have come and drunk tea with her -she vowed he was a monster, la - but she would forgive him this time - she would forgive our jolly tars anything. It grieved his heart, and he turned his horse right-handed down an unfrequented lane at the side of Bulwer's rick-yard and so over fields and along bridle-paths for the rest of the way to Blandford, pure country, where he would see nothing but the unchanging crops, hares and partridges in the mown hayfields, the woods he had known as a boy. He was not an introspective man by any means, and his life had not left him much time for a great deal of self-examination; but long sad thoughts about age, death and decay, change, decrepitude, deterioration pursued him even into the chaise and followed him along the highroad. 'I must be growing old myself,' he reflected, settling his long legs diagonally in the carriage. 'It must be so, because I felt positively young with that girl in Halifax; and it is the exception that proves the rule.' He had not thought of her for a great while and for the moment he could not recall her name; but he did remember their reciprocal ardours, five times repeated, and although intellectually he disapproved his conduct - a damn fool thing to do, and probably immoral, with an unmarried woman - he went to sleep with a self-complacent smirk on his face that he would have found odious in any other man.

The smirk, even the remotest recollection of the smirk or of its occasion, had long since faded by the time he reached Ashgrove Cottage. A good many letters were waiting for him, and in duty bound he opened those from the Admiralty first. 'They mean well, I dare say, and they put it very civil,' he said to Sophie across the table, 'but it don't amount to much in fact. In view of my wound -which don't amount to much either, I may say: not now - should I like Orion for the time being?'

'What is she?'

'An old seventy-four: receiving-ship in Plymouth. Stationary, of course. I could sleep ashore and take my ease; and naturally it would mean full pay.'

'What could be more perfect?' murmured Sophie; but her husband, deep in his thoughts, went on, 'I do not like to refuse employment in wartime - I never have done so -and I certainly should not now, was it an active command: I should leap at a heavy frigate on the North American station, for example. But this time I believe I shall beg to decline, with many, many thanks for their lordships' kind consideration and a strong proviso that I shall be perfectly well as soon as any fighting ship comes up: though it is almost certain to be a liner, you know. The Orion would not do: I should be perpetually to and fro between Plymouth and London, seeing Skinner about this legal business. No. Let us clear that out of the way, and then look about for a decent command: they can hardly refuse me one.' He paused, considered, and went on, 'I do not like to whine, Sophie, but I think they might have been a little more handsome: after all, it is not every day a man sinks a ship like the Waakzaamheid with a decrepit fourth rate. You will say it was only a chance shot, and the wicked sea did the rest, but even so - '

'I will say nothing of the sort,' cried Sophie. 'They should certainly have made you a baronet, if not a peer, and have given you the naval medal right away, like dear Sir Michael Seymour. But perhaps they will: they are always very slow.'

'Why, as for that, sweetheart, you know what I think of titles - a weight round a man's neck, as often as not, particularly hereditary ones. You have to be twice as tall as everybody else, and unless you are a Nelson or a Hood or a St Vincent or even a Keith you can't be twice as tall, not four and twenty hours a day, but only when your luck is in and everything is just so. However, I did think there was just a possibility they might give me the Marines: there was a vacancy.'

'Marines, Captain Aubrey?'

'It would have been Colonel Aubrey if they had. Have I never told you about the Marines, sweetheart? It is a plum they give you when you have done well. They cannot promote you - there is no such thing as promotion out of turn once you are a post-captain, and even the King could not make you an admiral over the heads of the captains above you on the list - if he did, half his senior officers would resign. So since they cannot promote you, and since you cannot eat a baronetcy or the naval medal, they make you a colonel of the Royal Marines instead, and you draw a colonel's pay, without doing anything for it.'