‘And did he drink it with three times three?’ asked Sophia, looking amused, pleased and conscious.
‘It was the name of his ship, you know, his first command,’ said Diana quickly.
‘Of course I know it,’ said Sophia with an unusual flush. ‘We all know it.’
‘The post!’ shrieked Frances, rushing out of the room. An expectant pause, a temporary truce. ‘Two for my mother, one for Sophie Bentinck with a sweet blue seal of a cupid
– no, it’s a goat with wings – and one for Di, franked. I can’t make out the frank. Who’s it from, Di?’
‘Frankie, you must try to behave more like a Christian, sweetheart,’ said her eldest sister.
‘You must not take notice of people’s letters: you must pretend to know nothing about ’em.’
‘Mama always opens ours, whenever we get any, which isn’t often.’
‘I had one from Jemmy Blagrove’s sister after the ball,’ said Cecilia, ‘and she said he said she was to say I danced like a swan. Mama was in a horrid wax – correspondence most improper, and anyhow swans did not dance, because of their webbed feet: they sang. But I knew what he meant. So your Mama allows you to correspond?’ she said, turning to Sophie Bentinck.
‘Oh, yes. But we are engaged, you know, which is quite different,’ said Sophie, looking complacently at her hand.
‘Tom Postman does not pretend to know nothing about peoples letters,’ said Frances. ‘He said he could not make out Di’s frank either. But the letters he is taking to Melbury are from London, Ireland and Spain. A double letter from Spain, with a vast sum to be paid!’
The breakfast-room at Melbury was cheerful too, but in a different way. Sombre mahogany, Turkey carpet, ponderous chairs, the smell of coffee, bacon and tobacco and wet men: they had been fishing since dawn and now they were half-way through the breakfast to which they were entitled, a breakfast that reached all over the broad white table-cloth: chafing dishes, coffee-pots, toast-racks, a Westphalian ham, a raised pie as yet untouched, the trout they had caught that morning.
‘This was the one from under the bridge,’ said Jack.
‘Post, sir, if you please,’ said his servant, Preserved Killick.
‘From Jackson,’ said Jack. ‘And the other from the proctor. Forgive me, Stephen. I will just see what they have to say – what excuse.
‘My God,’ he cried, a moment later. ‘It can not be true.’
Stephen looked up sharply. Jack passed him the letter. Mr Jackson, his prize-agent, one of the most respectable men in the profession, had failed. He had bolted, run off to Boulogne with what remained of the firm’s cash, and his partner had filed his petition in bankruptcy, with no hope of paying sixpence in the pound.
‘What makes it so very bad,’ said Jack in a low, troubled voice, ‘is that I told him to put all Sophie’s prize-money into the funds as it came in. Some ships take years to be finally condemned, if the owners appeal. He did not do it. He gave me sums he said were interest from funds, but it was not true. He took it all as it came in, kept it in his own hands.
It is gone, every last farthing.’ He stared out of the window for some time, poising the other letter in his hand.
‘This one is from the proctor. It will be about the two neutrals that were on appeal,’ he said, breaking the seal at last. ‘I am almost afraid to open it. Yes: just so. Here is my lee-shore.
The verdict is reversed: I am to pay back eleven thousand pounds. I do not possess eleven thousand pence. A lee-shore. . . how can I claw off? There is only one thing for it: I will give up my claim to be made post
and beg for a sloop as a commander. A ship I must have. Stephen, lend me twenty pounds, will you? I have no ready money. I shall go up to the Admiralty today. There is not a moment to lose. Oh, I have promised to ride with Sophia:
but I can still do it in the day.’
‘Take a post-chaise. You must not arrive fagged out.’
‘That is what I shall do – you are quite right, Stephen. Thank you. Killick!’
‘Sir?’
‘Cut along to the Goat and tell them to have a chaise here at eleven. Pack my valise for a couple of nights: no, a week.’
‘Jack,’ said Stephen urgently, when the servant had left the room, ‘do not speak of this to anyone yet, I beg you.’
‘You are looking terribly pale, Captain Aubrey,’ said Sophia. ‘I do hope you have not had another fall? Come in; please come in and sit down on a chair. Oh dear, I am sure you ought to sit down.’
‘No, no, I promise you I have not fallen off my horse this last week,’ said Jack, laughing.
‘Let us make the most of this burst of sun; we shall get a ducking if we wait. Look at the clouds in the south-west. What a fine habit you are wearing.’
‘Do you like it? It is the first time I have put it on. But,’ she said, still looking anxiously into his face, which was now an unhealthy red, ‘are you sure you would not like a cup of tea? It could be made in a moment.’
‘Yes, yes, do step in and have a cup of tea,’ cried Mrs Williams from the window, clutching a yellow garment to her throat. ‘It will be ready directly, and there is a fire in the small sitting-room. You can drink it together – so cosy. I am sure Sophie is dying for a cup of tea.
She would love a cup of tea with you, Captain Aubrey, would you not, Sophie?’
Jack smiled and bowed and kissed her hand, but his
iron determination not to stay prevailed, and in time they rode off along the Foxdene road to the edge of the downs.
‘Are you quite sure you did not have a fall?’ asked Sophie again, not so much from the idea that he had not noticed it and might recall it with application, as from a desire to express her real concern.
‘No,’ said Jack, looking at that lovely, usually remote face now gazing at him with such tenderness, such a worried and as it were proprietorial tenderness. ‘But I did have a knock-down blow just now. A damned unlooked-for blow. Sophie – I may call you Sophie, mayn’t I? I always think of you so – when I was in my Sophie, my sloop, I took a couple of neutrals sailing into Marseilles. Their papers said they were from Sicily for Copenhagen, laden with brimstone. But they were in the very act of running into Marseilles: I was within reach of that battery on the height. And the brimstone was meant for France.’
For Sophia brimstone was something to be mixed with treacle and given to children on Fridays: she could still feel the odious lumps between her teeth. This showed in her face, and Jack added, ‘They have to have it to make gunpowder. So I sent both these ships into Port Mahon, where they were condemned as lawful prize out of hand, a glaring breach of neutrality; but now at length the owners have appealed, and the court has decided they were not lawful prize at all, that their masters’ tale of merely taking shelter from the weather was true. Weather! There was no weather. Scarcely a riffle on the sea, and we stood in under our royals, stuns’ls either side, and the thirty-six-pounders up on the hill making rings in the still water a quarter of a mile wide.’
‘Oh, how unjust!’ cried Sophie in extreme indignation. ‘What wicked men, to tell such lies!
You must have risked your life to bring those ships out from under the battery. Of course the brimstone was meant for France. I am sure
they will be punished. What can be done? Oh, what can be done?’
‘As for the verdict, nothing at all. It is final, I am afraid. But I must go up and see what other measures -what I can wring out of the Admiralty. I must go today, and I may be away for some time. That is why I bore you with my affairs, to make it plain that I do not go away from Sussex of my own free will, nor with a light heart.’
‘Oh, you do not bore – you could not bore me -everything to do with the Navy is – but did you say today? Surely you cannot go today. You must lie down and rest.’
‘Today it must be, alas.’
‘Then you must not ride. You must take a chaise and post up.’
‘Yes. That is just what Stephen said. I will do it: