‘What did you think of Polly?’
‘Oh, a dear girl – full of fun, and so kind to your old
– aunt, I believe? And how she rattled away in French! I said several things myself, which she understood straight away, and relayed to the old lady, repeating my signals, as it were.’
‘She is a dear child,’ said her cousin. ‘And believe me,’ he said very seriously, ‘that girl can cook. Her coq au yin -! Her sole normande -! And she has a deep comprehension of the English pudding. That strawberries jam was hers. A wonderful housekeeper. She has a modest little fortune, too,’ he added, looking abstractedly at a tartan working into the port.
‘Ah, dear Lord,’ cried Jack, with a vehemence that made Christy-Pallière look round with alarm. ‘Dear Lord, for the moment I had almost forgot. Shall I tell you why I was in Bath?’
‘Do, I beg.’
‘It is between ourselves?’ Christy-Pallière nodded. ‘By God, I am so wretched about it: it was only that splendid dinner of yours that put it out of my mind these last two hours.
Otherwise it has been with me ever since I left England. There was a girl, do you see, that I had met in Sussex – neighbours – and when I had a bad time in the Admiralty court with my neutrals, her mother took her down there, no longer approving of the connection.
There was very nearly an understanding between us before then, but somehow I never quite clinched it. Christ, what a fool I was! So I saw her in Bath, but could never come to close quarters: I believe she did not quite like some little attentions I had paid her cousin.’
‘Innocent attentions?’
‘Well, yes, really; though I dare say they might have been misinterpreted. An astonishingly lovely girl, or rather woman – had been married once, husband knocked on the head in India – with a splendid dash and courage. And then, while I was eating my heart out between the Admiralty and the money-lenders in the City, I learnt that some fellow had made her an offer of marriage – it was spoken of everywhere as a settled thing. I cannot tell you how it hurt me. And this other girl, the one who stayed in Sussex, was so kind and sympathetic, and so very beautiful too, that I – well, you understand me. But, however, as soon as I thought things were going along capitally with her, and that we were very close friends, she pulled me up as though I had run into a boom, and asked me who the devil I thought I was? I had lost all my money by then, as you know; so upon my word, I could scarcely tell what to answer, particularly as I had begun to make out that maybe she was attached to my best friend, and perhaps
the other way too, you follow me. I was not quite sure, but it looked damnably like it, above all when they parted. But I was so infernally hooked – could not sleep, could not eat – and sometimes she was charming to me again. So I committed myself pretty far, partly out of pique, do you see? Oh, God damn it all, if only – And then on top of it all there comes a letter from the first girl -,
‘A letter to you?’ cried Christy-Pallière. ‘But this was not an intrigue, as I understand you?’
‘As innocent as the day. Not so much as – well, hardly so much as a kiss. It was a surprising thing, was it not? But it was in England, you know, not in France, and things are rather different there: even so, it was astonishing. But such a sweet, modest letter, just to say that the whole thing about the marriage was so much God-damned stuff. It reached me the very day I left the country.’
‘Why, then everything is perfect, surely? It is, in a serious young woman, an avowal – what more could you ask?’
‘Why,’ said Jack, with so wretched a look that Christy-Pallière, who had hitherto thought him a muff to mind having two young women at once, felt a wound in his heart. He patted Jack’s arm to comfort him. ‘Why, there is this other one, don’t you see?’ said Jack. ‘In honour, I am pretty well committed to her, although it is not the same sort of feeling at all.
To say nothing of my friend.’
Stephen and Dr Ramis were closeted in a book-lined study. The great herbal that had been one of the subjects of their correspondence for the past year and more lay open on the table, with a high-detailed map of the new Spanish defences of Port Mahon folded into it. Dr Ramis had just come back from Minorca, his native island, and he had brought several documents for Stephen, for he was his most important contact with the Catalan autonomists. These papers, read and committed to memory, were now crushed black ashes in the fireplace, and the two men had moved on to the subject of humanity at large – man’s general unfitness for life as it is lived.
‘This is particularly the case with sailors,’ said Stephen. ‘I have watched them attentively, and find that they are more unsuited for life as it is ordinarily understood than men of any other calling whatsoever. I propose the following reason for this: the sailor, at sea (his proper element), lives in the present. There is nothing he can do about the past at all; and, having regard to the uncertainty of the omnipotent ocean and the weather, very little about the future. This, I may say in passing, accounts for the common tar’s improvidence. The officers spend their lives fighting against this attitude on the part of the men – persuading them to tighten ropes, to belay and so on, against a vast series of contingencies; but the officers, being as sea-borne as the rest, do their task with a half conviction: from this arises uneasiness of mind, and hence the vagaries of those in authority. Sailors will provide against a storm tomorrow, or even in a fortnight’s time; but for them the remoter possibilities are academic, unreal. They live in the present, I say; and basing itself upon this my mind offers a partially-formed conjecture – I should value your reflections upon it.’
‘My lights are yours, for what they may be worth,’ said Dr Ramis, leaning back and watching him with a dry, sharp, intelligent black eye. ‘Though as you know, I am an enemy to speculation.’
‘Let us take the whole range of disorders that have their origin in the mind, the disordered or the merely idle mind
– false pregnancies, many hysterias, palpitations, dyspepsias, eczematous affections, some forms of impotence and many more that will occur to you at once. Now as far as my limited experience goes, these we do not find aboard ship. You agree, my dear colleague?’
Dr Ramis pursed his lips, and said, ‘With reservations,
I believe I may venture to say that I am tempted to do so. I do not commit myself, however.’
‘Now let us turn our honest tar ashore, where he is compelled to live not in the present but in the future, with reference to futurity – all joys, benefits, prosperities to be hoped for, looked forward to, the subject of anxious thought directed towards next month, next year, nay, the next generation; no slops provided by the purser, no food perpetually served out at stated intervals. And what do we find?’
‘Pox, drunkenness, a bestial dissolution of all moral principle, gross over-eating: the liver ruined in ten days’ time.’
‘Certainly, certainly; but more than that, we find, not indeed false pregnancies, but everything short of them. Anxiety, hypochondria, displacency, melancholia, costive, delicate stomachs – the ills of the city merchant increased tenfold. I have a particularly interesting subject who was in the most robust health at sea – Hygeia’s darling – in spite of every kind of excess and of the most untoward circumstances: a short while on land, with household cares, matrimonial fancies – always in the future, observe
– and we have a loss of eleven pounds’ weight; a retention of the urine; black, compact, meagre stools; an obstinate eczema.’
‘And for you all this is the effect of solid earth beneath the subject’s feet? No more?’
Stephen held up his hands. ‘It is the foetus of a thought; but I cherish it.’
‘You speak of loss of weight. But I find that you yourself are thin. Nay, cadaverous, if I may speak as one physician to another. You have a very ill breath; your hair, already meagre two years ago, is now extremely sparse; you belch frequently; your eyes are hollow and dim. This is not merely your ill-considered use of tobacco – a noxious substance that should be prohibited by government – and of laudanum. I should very much like to see your excrement.’