correspondence and accounts unsettled for seven years, or even ten. I throw this out quite unofficially, of course.’
On his way down to the water’s edge Stephen asked the Governor’s coxswain to lead him to a toy-shop. ‘I wish to buy dolls suitable for three little Chinese girls,’ he said; for it had been arranged that he and Jack should stay at the Residence, and as Li Po was urgent to sail for his cargo of ore on the next tide, this was probably the last time he would see them.
‘Dolls, sir?’ said the coxswain in a wondering voice; and he considered for some time before going on, ‘I don’t know any hut a Dutch shop, and what a Chinese girl would make of a
Dutch doll I cannot tell. You will know best, sir, in view of the parties concerned. In view of the parties concerned,’ he repeated, with some satisfaction.
He led Stephen to a shop by a canal, a shop with two bow windows on either side of an open door in which there sat a fat Batavian sloven.
‘The gentleman wants to buy a doll,’ said the coxswain. ‘Doll,’ he said much louder, jerking his arm and head in a wooden manner.
The sloven looked at them with pale narrowed suspicious eyes, but at length recognizing the Governor’s livery she heaved herself up and let them into the shop. The choice was limited to half a dozen figures showing the clothes fashionable in Paris several years ago.
She turned up their skirts and petticoats to show their frilly and above all removable drawers: ‘Real lace, yis, yis,’ she said. Having gazed at them for some minutes Stephen, in despair, picked the three less offensive images
The sloven wrote the price on a card, large and plain, and gave it to the coxswain, repeating ‘Real lace, yis, yis.’
She says half a joe apiece, sir, said the coxswain, deeply shocked, for half a joe was close on two pounds.
Stephen laid down the money and with a leering smile the sloven added three complimentary chamber-pots to the parcel.
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said the coxswain. ‘I never seen a Chinese girl with anything like this. Nor yet a little Moor.’
As the Governor’s barge pulled out to the junk Stephen reflected on his new poverty, but superficially; he did not enquire into the nature of his feelings or rather of the feeling that was taking shape at some depth. For the present he was scarcely aware of anything but a general sense of loss and a certain dismay. Often in battle he had had men brought to him, shockingly hurt but hardly conscious of it, particularly if the wound could not be seen.
‘I shall dismiss it for a week or so,’ he said. He had done this with various misfortunes, losses and infidelities in the past, and although dreams sometimes undid him by night and although there were other disadvantages it still seemed to him the best way of dealing with a situation where distress and emotion were likely to get out of hand. Relative importance often proved less than he had supposed in the first confusion of mind.
Aboard the junk he called Mai-mai, Lou-meng and Pen T’sao and gave them his presents.
They thanked him politely, bowed again and again, and cherished the carefully folded wrapping paper; but it was clear from their wondering look at the figures and their shocked, even indignant recognition of the garnished chamber-pots that Stephen had not given the pleasure he had hoped for: though with a certain lack of confidence, it is true.
He had better luck in the den he shared with Jack Aubrey. Making his way through the labyrinthine bowels of the big junk and along its broad short decks he saw that Mrs Raffles’ invitation had been received. Elegant broadcloth coats, calculated to resist an arctic gale, were hanging, brushed and trim, in shady places, and their owners, wearing white breeches, stood close to them, keeping as cool and dust-free as possible.
‘There you are, Stephen,’ cried Jack, an involuntary smile ruining the severity of his tone,
‘and much credit have you spread on the service, no doubt: I wonder the dogs did not set upon you. Ahmed and Killick took your clothes in hand the
moment the invitation came, and there they are laid out on the chest. I will pass the word for the ship’s barber.’
‘Before he comes,’ said Stephen, ‘let me tell you two things or three. The first is that Raffles has a ship for you, a Dutch twenty-gun ship that was wholly immersed for some months on purpose and that has now been raised.’
‘Oh, oh!’ cried Jack, his face lighting with joy – that is to say glowed bright red, his teeth gleaming in the redness and his eyes a brighter blue – and he shook Stephen’s hand with paralysing force.
‘The second is that when we met Wan Da he told me, as you know, that the Gornélie would be sailing soon. What I did not tell you was that she would be following much the same course that we should have taken in the Diane and must take in this dredged-up Dutchman, by the more or less obligatory Salibabu Passage, that she was extremely short of powder, and that as it is a state monopoly’ I asked him to persuade the Vizier to allow her none.’ The plum-coloured happiness disappeared from Jack’s face: he looked down.
‘At that time,’ went on
Stephen, ‘I had our possible merchantman in mind, and I did not choose to have her captured or blown out of the water if I could avoid it. In any case, the Cornélie probably has some powder, salved or purchased from the Chinese merchants; and of course I cannot tell how successful Wan Da may have been.’ He thought it better not to say anything about the ship’s books at present; there was something of a pause, and in that pause began the drumming of the monsoon rain, louder and louder.
‘Well,’ said Jack, something of the first glow returning. ‘I cannot tell you how delighted I am about the Governor’s ship’
– raising his voice – ‘Killick. Killick, there. Pass the word for the barber.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Governor, ‘I cannot tell you how delighted we are, Mrs Raffles and I, to see you at this table. We would indeed wish there were more of you, and that you were all whole; though to be sure’ – bowing to his bandaged guests and smiling particularly at
Reade, who blushed and looked at his plate – ‘there are many glorious precedents . . .’ It was
a well-turned, sincere speech of welcome, delivered with that felicity which had often carried the day in committees; but it did not quite hit the naval tone, and Raffles’ hearers, ordinarily fed much earlier in the day, were hungry, clammily hot and thirsty in spite of the rain that had pierced their boat-cloaks, and any speech would have been too long for them; they displayed no sullenness but no very eager attention either, and when Reade turned pale the Governor came to an abrupt close, skipping five paragraphs and drinking to their happy return in ice-cold claret-cup, considered more healthy in this climate for invalids and the young.
Dish after dish, and cheerfulness returned, helped by Mrs Raffles’ natural kindness, natural gifts as a hostess, and by the cool breeze that followed the rain; it was wonderful to see how much the invalids and the young contrived to eat and how pleasantly they were persuaded to take an informal leave as soon as any lassitude appeared.
It was a diminished company that reached the port; a still smaller one that joined Mrs Raffles and the two other ladies for coffee and tea; and only Jack, Stephen and Fielding survived to walk into the library with the Governor. Jack had already made his acknowledgments, his most heartfelt acknowledgments, for Raffles’ kindness in offering him the Dutch ship, the Gelijkheid, and now the Governor gave him a portfolio of her plans, sheer draught, deck draught, profile and everything else capable of exact measurement and representation, and over these the sailors pored with close professional attention while Ahmed brought the surviving botanical specimens from the voyage. Before opening the packet Stephen gave Raffles a succinct account of Kumai, that other Eden, its orang-utangs, its tarsiers, its tree-shrews. ‘If I could foresee a fortnight’s peace, I should go there tomorrow,’ said Raffles. ‘A visit of courtesy to the Sultan, confirming the alliance, would be a perfect excuse; and the sloop Plover, due from Colombo at the end of the month, would give me pomp enough. But you can have no idea of how uneasy rests a head with even a hemi-demi-semi crown upon it. Java and its dependencies have a vast population of rajas and sultans and great feudatories,
and they are all given to parricide, fratricide and coups d’etat; and then there is the enmity between the Javanese, Madurese, ordinary Malays of course, Kalangs, Baduwis, Amboynese,