Jack plunged into the coach with his hat pulled over his nose and sat huddled low in the corner, peering furtively through the muddy glasses – a curiously deformed, conspicuous figure that excited comment whenever the horse moved at less than a trot. ‘An ill-looking parcel of bastards,’ he reflected, seeing a bailiff in every full-grown man. ‘But my God, what a life. Doing this every day, cooped up with a ledger – what a life.’ The cheerless faces went by, hurrying to their dismal work, an endless wet, anxious, cold, grey-yellow stream of people, jostling, pushing past one another like an ugly dream, with here and there a pretty shop-girl or servant to make it more heart-rendingly pathetic.
A convoy of hay-wains came down the Hampstead Road, led by countrymen with long whips. The whips, the drivers’ smocks, the horses’ tails and manes were trimmed with ribbons, and the men’s broad faces shone red, effulgent through the gloom. From Jack’s remote and ineffectual schooldays sprang a tag: 0 fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas. ‘Come, that is pretty good. How I wish Stephen had been by, to hear it.
However, I
shall flash it out at him presently.’ There would be plenty of opportunity, since they were to travel down the same road that evening to Queenie’s rout, and with any luck they would see some agricolas among that pitiable throng.
‘Will you tell me about your interview, now?’ said Stephen, pushing his report aside and looking into Jack’s face with as much attention as the aged porter.
‘It was not so bad. Now I have had time to turn it over in my mind, it was not so bad at all. I think they may promote me or give me a ship: one or the other. If they make me post, there is always the possibility of a post-ship in time, and of acting commands; and if they give me a sloop, why, there I am.’
‘What are acting commands?’
‘When a post-captain is sick, or wants to go ashore for a while – it often happens when they are peers or members of parliament – another post-captain on half-pay is appointed to his ship for the time being. Shall I tell you about it from the beginning?’
‘If you please.’
‘It started charmingly. The First Lord said he was happy to see me. No First Lord had ever been happy to see me before, or at least he had always managed to contain it – is there any coffee left in that pot, Stephen?’
‘There is not. But you may have some beer presently; it is nearly two o’clock.’
‘Well, it began charmingly, but then it took the ugliest vile turn imaginable; he made a sad mouth and said it was a pity I had come so late – he would have liked to do something for me. Then he made my heart die within me by prating about the Fencibles and the Impress Service and I knew that somehow I must head him off before he made a direct offer.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, it would never do to refuse. If you turn down a ship because she don’t suit – because she’s on the West Indies station, say, and you don’t care for the yellow Jack –
it is a black mark against you: you may never be employed again. They don’t like you to pick and choose. The good of the service must come first, they say: and they are perfectly in the right of it. Then again, I could not tell him I hated both the Fencibles and the press and that in any event I could accept neither without being laid by the heels.’
‘So you evaded the proposal?’
‘Yes. Dropping my claim to be made post, I told him anything that would float would do for me. I did not drop it in so many words, but he took the point at once, and after some
humming and hawing he spoke of some remote possibility next week. And he would consider the matter of promotion. I am not to think him in any way committed, but am to call again next week. From a man like Lord Melville I regard that as pretty strong.’
‘So do I, my dear,’ said Stephen, with as much conviction as he could put into his voice – a good deal of conviction, for he had had dealings with the gentleman in question, who had been in command of the secret funds these many years past. ‘So do I. Let us eat, drink and be merry. There are sausages in the scrutoire; there is beer in the green jug. I shall regale myself on toasted cheese.’
The French privateers had taken away his Bréguet watch, as well as most of his clothes, instruments and books, but his stomach was as exact as any timepiece, and as they sat themselves at the little table by the fire, so the church clock told the hour. The crew of the swift-sailing Bellone had also taken away the money he had brought from Spain – that had been their first, most anxious care – and since landing at Plymouth he and Jack had been living on the proceeds of one small bill, laboriously negotiated by General Aubrey while their horses waited, and on the hopes of discounting another, drawn on a Barcelona merchant named Mendoza, little known on the London ‘change.
At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the I heath with green shutters and a honeysuckle over the
door – idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack’s opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic’d bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.
Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. ‘My plate and saucer will serve again,’ said Stephen. ‘I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,’ he cried, ‘that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?’ he called through the open door.
‘No, no,’ cried Jack, who had seen him do so. ‘There is no room – it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?’
‘We might have some music,’ said Stephen. ‘Your friend’s piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?’
‘Swabbing out the galley. Give me five minutes, and I am your man.’
‘It sounds more like Noah’s flood. This peevish attention to cleanliness, Jack, this busy preoccupation with dirt,’ said Stephen, shaking his head at the fire, ‘has something of the Brahminical superstition about it. It is not very far removed from nastiness, Jack – from cacothymia.’
‘I am concerned to hear it,’ said Jack. ‘Pray, is it catching?’ he added, with a private but sweet-natured leer. ‘Now, sir,’ – appearing in the doorway with the apron rolled under his
arm – ‘where is your flute? What shall we play?’ He sat at the little square piano and ran his fingers up and down, singing,
‘Those Spanish dogs would gladly own Both Gibraltar and Port Mahon and don’t they wish they may have it? Gibraltar, I mean.’ He went on from one tune to another in an abstracted strumming while Stephen slowly screwed the flute together; and eventually from this strumming there emerged the adagio of the Hummel sonata.
‘Is it modesty that makes him play like this?’ wondered Stephen, worrying at a crossed thread. ‘I could swear he knows what music is – prizes high music beyond almost anything.
But here he is, playing this as sweetly as milk, like an anecdote: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
And the inversion will be worse. . . It is worse – a sentimental indulgence. He takes pains; he is full of good-will and industry; and yet he cannot make even his fiddle utter anything but platitudes, except by mistake. On the piano it is worse, the notes being true. You would say it was a girl playing, a sixteen-stone girl His face is not set in an expression of sentimentality, however, but of suffering He is suffering extremely, I am afraid. This playing is very like Sophia’s. Is he aware of it? Is he consciously imitating her? I do not know: their styles are much the same in any case
– their absence of style. Perhaps it is diffidence, a feeling that they may not go beyond certain modest limits. They are much alike. And since Jack, knowing what real music is, can play like a simpleton, may not Sophia, playing like a ninny-hammer. . . ? Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it