‘This will dispel your ignorance,’ said Stephen, taking the box from an inner pocket and putting it down on the desk.
‘What a curious seal,’ said Barrow in the tense silence.
‘It is my watch-key,’ said Stephen. ‘The seal was broken in the first place – the box fell and burst open -and I sealed it again to keep it shut. As you see,’ he said, breaking the wax,
‘the lid springs up for a nothing.’
Barrow had an inquisitive nature and he looked eagerly at the papers on top; but then his countenance changed; he looked first startled and then indignant. He pushed the box from him as though it were something dangerous. He began to say something in an angry, disclaiming tone, coughed and changed it to the words ‘It is enormous.’
‘It is what we heard about,’ said Wray. He flicked through the rest of the sheaf, saying ‘Do not be uneasy. I will deal with this. Ledward and I will see to it all.’
‘The sooner it is out of our hands the better,’ said Barrow. ‘What a responsibility, what a responsibility! Pray let it be locked up at once.’ After a while he recovered himself enough to say to Stephen, ‘It must have weighed upon you in the most dreadful manner. And I suppose
you could not share your anxiety? I suppose no one saw these – these papers but you?’
‘Never a Christian soul,’ said Stephen. ‘Are such secrets to be shared?’
Wray came back, and there was a silence, broken by occasional exclamations, until Barrow said uneasily ‘Even now, I believe we should really have no official knowledge of
the matter. So perhaps we may now move on to the second part of our intended conversation. The fact is, sir, it has been suggested that you might be induced.
Mr Wray, pray tell Dr Maturin of the suggestion that was made.’
‘Our agent in Lorient, Madame de La Feuillade, whom you know,’ said Wray, ‘has been arrested; and since she not only sends information from there but also forwards her sister’s from Brest, her absence is most unfortunate. She has not been taken up for helping us, however, but for evading her taxes. She is being detained at Nantes, and Hérold, who brought the news, states that the examining magistrate can certainly be persuaded to dismiss the case if the proper means are used. In view of Madame de La Feuillade’s position the affair obviously calls for exceptional tact and ability and a fair amount of money. It was hoped that Dr Maturin might provide the one, while the department provided the other. There are’ a certain number of vessels that carry brandy and wine from Nantes to England under licence from the admiral commanding the Channel Fleet: we use four of them regularly and they are thoroughly reliable; so the passage to and fro could easily be arranged at any time that may prove convenient.’
‘I see, I see,’ said Stephen, looking at them with a considering eye. But what in fact did he see, and what did he merely imagine? And how remarkable it was, to feel the old eagerness coming to life in his heart, although only that morning he had regarded the whole service with frigid indifference. ‘I see that the matter calls for some consideration, and since I go down to the country tomorrow I shall have peace and leisure for reflecting upon
it. From what I know of Madame de La Feuillade, her imprisonment on such a charge will not be very arduous nor her interrogation very severe.’
CHAPTER SIX
The Portsmouth night coach was an almost entirely naval concern, apart from the horses and one of the inside passengers, an elderly lady; the coachman had been in Lord Rodney’s household, the guard was a former Marine, and all the passengers belonged to the present Navy in one way or another.
When the stars were beginning to fade in the east, the machine ran past some dim houses and a church on the right-hand side of the road and the elderly lady said, ‘It will be Petersfield in a few minutes: how I hope I have forgot nothing.’ She counted her parcels over again and then said to Stephen, ‘So I am not to buy, sir? That is your firm opinion?’
‘Madam,’ replied Stephen, ‘I repeat that I know nothing of the Stock Exchange: I could not readily distinguish between a bull and a bear. I only say that if your friends’ advice is
based upon their persuasion that peace is to be concluded within the next few days, then you should perhaps reflect that they may be mistaken.’
‘And yet they are very knowing, well-informed gentlemen: and then you too, sir, you may be mistaken, may you not?’
‘To be sure, ma’am. I am as fallible as my neighbour
– perhaps even more so, indeed.’
The guard blew a fine blast, imitated by most of the younger outside passengers, for whom an English spring night on the top of a coach was nothing in comparison with a night on the billows off Brest.
‘Then that is settled,’ said the lady. ‘I shall certainly not buy. How glad I am that I asked your opinion. Thank you, sir.’
The coach wheeled into the yard of the Crown to change horses, and when the passengers who had been stretching their legs during the operation came aboard again Stephen said to the coachman ‘You will never forget to set me down at Buriton, I am sure; and if you could do so at the little small ale-house rather than the cross-roads it would save me the weary walk. Here is a three-shilling piece.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ said the coachman. ‘The ale-house it is.’
‘I am convinced you were right, sir, in advising the gentlewoman not to buy,’ said one of the insides, an accountant at the Dockyard, when Petersfield was behind them. ‘It does not appear to me that there is any real likelihood of peace at present.’
‘I should think not,’ said a tall awkward midshipman, who had spent much of the night kicking the other passengers, not from vice or wantonness but because every time he went to sleep his long legs gave convulsive jerks, entirely of their own accord. ‘I should think not. I passed for lieutenant only last week, and a peace now would be monstrous unjust. It would mean . . .’ At this point he became aware that he was prating to his elders, a practice discouraged in the service; he fell silent, and pretended to be absorbed in the first red streaks of sunrise far ahead.
‘Two years ago, yes,’ said the accountant, taking no notice of him, ‘but not now, with the continental allies crumbling like dust and so much of our time and treasure taken up with this miserable, unnecessary, unnatural war with America. No, sir, I believe the rumours the gentlewoman’s friends had heard were merely flim-flam put about by evil-disposed men that wish to profit by the rise.’ He went on to explain just why he thought Napoleon would never desire a negotiated peace at this juncture, and he was still speaking when the coach slowed to a halt and the guard cried ‘All for the Jericho ale-house, gentlemen, if you please. Good fare for man and beast. Prime
brandy, right old Nantz straight from the smuggler, and capital water straight from the well
– never mixed except by accident, ha, ha, ha!’
A few minutes later Stephen was standing there with his baggage by the side of the road while the dim coach disappeared in a dust-cloud of its own making and a long trail of early-morning rooks passed overhead. Presently the door of the ale-house opened and an amiable slut appeared, her hair done up in little rags, very like a Hottentot’s, and her garment held close at the neck with one hand. ‘Good morning, now, Mrs Comfort,’ said Stephen. ‘In time pray let the boy put these things behind the bar till I send for them. I mean to walk to Ashgrove over the fields.’
‘You will find the Captain there, with some saucy foremast jacks and that wicked old Killick. But won’t you step in, sir, and take a little something? It’s a long, long way, after a night in the coach.’
Stephen knew that the Jericho could run to nothing more than tea or small beer, both equally repugnant to him in the morning; he thanked her, and said he believed he should wait until he had walked up an appetite; and when asked whether it would be that wicked old Killick who came in the cart for his portmanteau he said he would make a point of asking the Captain to send him.
For the first mile his road was a lane between high banks and hedges, with woods on the left hand and fields on the right – well-sprung wheat and hay – and the banks were starred all along with primroses, while the hedges had scores of very small cheerful talkative early birds, particularly goldfinches in their most brilliant plumage; and in the hay a corncrake was already calling. Then when the flat land began to rise and fall this lane branched out into two paths, the one carrying on over a broad pasture – a single piece of fifty or even sixty acres with some colts in it