‘Well, Jack, how beest?’ cried the General, recognizing him. ‘Have you been away?’
‘Yes, sir. I have been in the Pacific.’
‘And now you are back. Capital, capital.’ The General seemed quite pleased. ‘I dare say Sophie was glad to see you,’ he said, pleased with himself again for having remembered her name, so pleased that he asked Jack what he would take.
‘That is very kind of you, sir, but I have just had three cans of champagne over the way, on a pretty nearly empty stomach, and I can distinctly feel it. But perhaps I might have some coffee.’
‘Nonsense,’ cried his father. ‘Don’t you be a goddam milksop. Good wine never did a man any harm. We will stick with the champagne.’
While the first glasses were going down Jack made civil inquiries about his step-mother and her son. ‘A couple of silly bitches, both on ’em, perpetually lamenting,’ replied the General. He poured more wine and then after a pause
he said again, ‘But I dare say Sophie was glad to see you.’
‘I hope she will be,’ said Jack, ‘but I have not been home yet. Capital wine, sir: fruitier than ours. No, I have not been home: the cartel landed me at Dover and I thought it better to come through London first.’
‘I remember that young whoremaster of a lieutenant of yours had the cartel ship at one time. What was his name?’
‘Babbington, sir. Now it is Harry Tennant.’
‘Harbrook’s son? Well, so Harry Tennant has the cartel ship, has he?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack, wishing he had never mentioned the wretched tub; he had forgotten how his father loved to pick upon some little often irrelevant piece of information and worry it to death. ‘May we go and sit in a quiet corner of the south room? I have something very important to tell you about buying stock.’
‘The Devil you have?’ said the General, looking at him keenly. ‘Come along, then, and bring your wine. But you must talk quick. I have some people coming. Where did you get that horrible coat?’ he asked, leading the way. ‘I wish you may not have been robbing a scarecrow.’
In the south room Jack said to himself ‘I had better not talk much.’ He sat at a writing-table and quickly copied out the essence of his letter. ‘There, sir,’ he said, giving the list to his father. ‘I do most earnestly urge you to place every penny you can spare in these,’ and in the clearest terms he could devise he stated the anonymous, entirely confidential nature of his information. He said that he could answer no questions, and emphasized the fact
that he had pledged his word that the knowledge should not go beyond two of his closest friends. His honour was immediately concerned.
The General watched him with shrewd, searching eyes until he had finished, then opened his mouth to speak; but before any word came out a footman hurried in to say that his guests had arrived.
‘Stay there, Jack,’ said the General, putting down his
empty glass. A few minutes later he brought three men into the room. With a sinking heart Jack saw that one of them was his father’s stockbroker and the other two were showily dressed citizens of the kind he saw only too often whenever he went down to his boyhood home: he remembered that when his father wished to impress associates of this kind he would bring them here and show them a duke or two.
‘This is my son,’ cried the General, ‘though you would not expect it from his age: I first married very young, very young indeed. He is a post-captain in the Navy, and he is just home from the seas. Landed at Dover from the cartel but yesterday and he is already advising his old father about investments, ha, ha, ha! James, a magnum of this same wine.’
‘The Captain and I are old friends,’ said the stockbroker, patting Jack’s reluctant shoulder.
‘And I can tell you, General, he understands investment very well.’
‘So you came on the cartel boat, sir,’ said one of the others. ‘Then perhaps you can tell us the latest news from Paris. Lord, suppose Napoleon was really dead! Lord, suppose the war was to come to an end! Only think!’
‘The cartel?’ said the stockbroker, who had missed the first mention of it.
‘Understands investment?’ said the General, and they both looked at jack.
The wine came in: the cork flew off: ‘I always say there’s nothing like sham,’ said one of the General’s guests.
Jack sat there, drinking glass for glass and evading questions, until the bottle was out. On being called upon for his opinion about the progress of the war and its probable duration he uttered a fine series of platitudes: he heard himself doing so at a slight distance, not without satisfaction. But when his father suggested that they should all go to Vauxhall he absolutely declined: filial piety had its
limits – they had been far surpassed – and he possessed a perfect excuse – ‘I am not really dressed for town,’ he said, ‘let alone for Vauxhall in decent company.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said one of the simpler, more drunken, more highly decorated guests. ‘But everybody makes excuses for our gallant tars. Do come. I’ll stand treat. It will be such fun.
Only think!’
‘Thank you for my wine, sir,’ said Jack to his father. ‘Gentlemen, good night.’ He bowed, and with his eye fixed sternly upon the door he steered straight for the open space, upright, rigid, never breathing, and never deviating an inch from his course.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stephen Maturin turned from the Strand down into the liberties of the Savoy. It was a familiar path, so familiar that of their own accord his feet avoided the worst chasms in the paving, the iron grid that before now had given beneath his modest weight, plunging him down a coal-hole, and the filthy gutter; and this was just as well, since his mind was far away: he was, as Jack had observed, intensely anxious about Diana, so anxious and apprehensive that he was going to the Grapes in order to change and be shaved before presenting himself at Half-Moon Street and in order to have news of her, since she would surely have passed by – she and Mrs Broad, the landlady, were great friends, and both paid too much attention to his linen.
His mind was far away, and the shock was therefore all the greater when, having turned the corner to the inn, he looked up and saw nothing but a blackened hole railed off from the street, with rain-water shining in its cellars, a few charred beams showing where the floors had been, and grass and ferns growing in the niches that had once been cupboards.
The dwelling-houses on either hand seemed untouched; so were the shops on the Westminster side of the street, untouched and busy, with people hurrying up and down as though the horrible sight were commonplace. He crossed, to check his bearings and make doubly sure that this was indeed the shell of the Grapes and not some spatial illusion; and as he stood there he felt a gentle pressure on the back of his leg. Turning, he saw a large rough ugly yard-dog bowing and waving his tail; his lips were writhed back in a grin that might express pleasure or extreme rage,
and Stephen instantly recognized the butcher’s mongrel. He was not a promiscuous dog; he belonged firmly to the butcher; but he and Stephen had always passed the time of day.
and there was a steady, long-standing affection between the two.
‘Why, if it ain’t the Doctor,’ said the butcher. ‘I thought it must be you, as soon as I see him bowing and scraping like a French Punch and Judy. You are looking at the poor old Grapes, I do suppose.’
The fire had happened about the time the Surprise left Gibraltar: nobody had been hurt, but the insurance company disputed the claim and Mrs Broad could not rebuild until they paid up; in the meantime she had gone down to her friends in Essex, sadly missed by the whole neighbourhood. ‘Every time I look across the way,’ said the butcher, pointing with his knife, ‘I feel the Liberty has a wound in it.’
A wound, and a strangely unexpected one, thought Stephen, walking north. He had had no idea how much that quiet haven meant to him; there were also some fairly important
collections he had left there, mostly of birds’ skins, many books. . . The immeasurably greater wound, ‘Mrs Maturin does not live here any more,’ delivered at the Half-Moon Street house lacked that sudden staggering quality and for the moment it shocked him less.
He walked steadily towards St James’s Street, saying ‘I shall most deliberately feel nothing until I have some confirmation: there are a thousand possible explanations.’