‘It must have been the cruellest blow,’ observed Colonel Warren, the head of army intelligence.
‘It was, indeed,’ said Stephen.
‘Had Dutourd any reason to suppose that you were in fact a British agent?’ asked another member.
‘He had not. But I was obliged to speak French when I was treating his wounded men after they had been captured; presently he almost certainly remembered meeting me in Paris; and intuition, coupled with very strong personal dislike and a desire to do harm no doubt did the rest – it was an accusation that would have passed unnoticed, disregarded in any other climate, but once the anti-independentists had seized upon it, public opinion changed entirely.’
After a silence the representative of the Treasury said ‘It is my duty to observe that very barge sums of money in various fonns were placed at Dr Maturin’s disposal, and to ask him whether it was possible to preserve any part, such as the easily transportable drafts and bonds that had not yet been exchanged.’
‘It is not without a certain complacency that I can tell the gentleman,’ said Stephen,
‘that the gold, which was to have been parcelled out among the various regiments on Wednesday had Hurtado not cried off on Tuesday, remains, apart from a few hundred pounds’ worth of douceurs, in the hands of our agent in Lima; while the paper obligations, bonds and the like are now aboard the little vessel that brought me up to the Pool, in a case under the immediate eye of her captain.’ Certain members of the Committee were unable to conceal a book of intense satisfaction, and Stephen perceived that some other costly scheme would now once more be possible. He added, ‘As for the gold, our agent in Peru is of opinion – and I entirely agree with him, for what my view is worth – that it would be far more usefully employed in the kingdom of Chile, where Don Bernado O’Higgins had such a following. Finally I may observe that our agent has shipping interests, and can undertake to remove the cumbrous metal.’
‘Speaking of cumbrous metal,’ said Blaine, as they walked down Whitehall together,
‘you could do me such a kindness, if you mean to return to Shebmerston in the tender; and with this brisk wind settled in the north-east she would carry you there quicker and in much more comfort than a coach. No changing, either.’
‘Please to name the service in question.’
‘It is the carrying of a statue I have promised a friend in Weymouth; an impossible object for a waggon, but a mere trifle for a ship.’
Stephen, extremely unwilling not to post straight down to Barham and Diana, stopped a passing hackney-coach, and with his hand on the door-handle he asked ‘What would it weigh, at all? This is only a very little small thin sharp-bodied vessel.’
‘In the nature of three ton, I suppose; a little small thin porphyry Jove.’
‘Listen, my dear: may I say by all means – very happy – unless Captain Pullings says it must necessarily plunge through the schooner’s bottom? I am on my way to see Mrs Broad in the Liberties of the Savoy – you remember Mrs Broad of the Grapes?’
‘Certainly: my best compliments to her, if you please.’
‘And from the Grapes it is no distance at all to the Pool.’
‘Until this evening, then,’ called Blaine, withdrawing hastily to the wall as a coach and four came cantering up, spraying filth wide on either hand.
Mrs Broad and Stephen were old friends. He kept a room up one pair of stairs the year round, even when he was in another hemisphere; he had a cupboard for his skeletons and presses for all manner of things that he might need – instruments, specimens, books, the unfinished manuscript of a work in lithotomy, a large number of old letters and used envelopes with notes on the back – when he was in London, and shc was thoroughly used to his ways as well as Padeen’s, who acted as his servant on shore, wearing breeches with silver buckles, of which he was inordinately, sinfully proud. She had known the Doctor for so long and in such difficult circumstances that nothing surprised her very much: it had been bears in the coal-hole and laundry before now, and badgers rescued from a baiting in the farther outhouse, as well as some very odd dissections indeed; and the suggestion of two little girls did not worry her particularly, however black and Popish they might be. She wept to hear how and why they had been taken from their native island; but having wiped her eyes she comforted Stephen’s apprehensions by saying ‘Lord bless you, Doctor, they will be happy enough here. We have every colour in the Liberties, black, grey, brown and yellow, everything except perhaps bright blue; and they can run about in the churchyard or watch the traffic in the Strand. But oh dear me, sir, what will you think of me? I have never asked after Mrs Maturin. How does your good lady do, sir? And Miss Brigid, bless her?’
‘I have not seen them yet, Mrs Broad. I had to come straight up from the chops of the Channel in the tender, while Captain Aubrey went ashore. But I may go down in the tender tomorrow: the wind sits perfectly; or I may take a chaise.’
‘Well, at least you will have supper here, and sleep in your room. Lucy and I have been airing it ever since Padeen came and made us understand you was not far off. “Clo’
clo’ clo’,” he said, the way he had, poor fellow; and seeing me look stupid, Lucy cried “He means the Doctor is near at hand”, and we all laughed. Oh dear me, how we laughed. And we put warm, lavendered sheets on the bed.’
‘Sup I cannot, Mrs Broad, for I am pledged to Sir Joseph Blaine, who sends you his compliments: but sleep I will, most happily. It would be best to give me the front-door key, for I may be late. But now I must run down to the Pool.’
He walked into Black’s, and there was Blaine, standing in front of the hall fire with his coat-tails over his elbows and his bottom exposed to the blaze. ‘Captain Pullings says she can very well manage three tons,’ said Stephen, ‘but since he must sail on the turn of the tide he wonders very much how you will get your image aboard in time.’
‘Oh, what capital news! There will be no difficulty whatsoever, since it is already at Somerset House, and we have an ordnance barge that will bring it alongside in a trice. In a trice. Stephen, ain’t you clemmed? This north-easter makes me so hungry that I should be pettish if it were anyone but you.,
‘I am of your way of thinking entirely. Let us go up at once.’
They ate eagerly, almost in silence for some time, like old table-companions.
‘Come, that is better,’ said Sir Joseph, putting some of his fowl’s bones on a side-plate. ‘Now I am more nearly human; though by no means satisfied yet. I shall certainly eat a Welsh rabbit, and probably a good many petits fours with my coffee. How did you find Mrs Broad?’
‘Blooming, I thank you; and she sends her duty. She is a very good creature, you know.’
‘I am sure of it.’
‘We brought back two little girls, Sarah and Emily, from a Melanesian island where all the people but for them had been destroyed by the smallpox caught from a passing whaler. They could not be left there to die slowly – they were already very much reduced –
so I took them on board. Perhaps it would have been kinder to knock them on the head directly.’
‘It is said that one must beware of pity,’ observed Sir Joseph.
‘At the time it seemed to me that there was no choice; but since then it has puzzled me extremely to know what to do with them. I should like them to be brought up understanding how a house is run, but not as servants; to have reasonable dowries -,
‘Dowries. For my infinite good luck your fortune is intact,’ said Blaine with a laugh, since at the very beginning of this prodigious voyage an exasperated Stephen had sent him a letter with a power of attorney, begging him to transfer his wealth from the huge, slow, impersonal, negligent but solvent London house that looked after it to a small country bank that ceased payment a few months later, the depositors getting fourpence in the pound – a letter that in his agitation he had failed to sign with anything but his Christian name. This omission rendered the power of attorney invalid, but it accounted firstly for Blaine’s and Maturin’s most unusual custom of calling one another Stephen and Joseph, and secondly for Stephen’s still being a man of uncommon substance. ‘And as I remember it was nearly all in gold,’ Blaine continued.