‘Besides, it is too early for supper: you would only get the broken meats from dinner, faintly warmed. Come, James will bring you a sandwich, I dare say, and a can of beer.’
For some time they read silently, avidly; and with an extraordinary degree of self-command they started at about
the equinoctial gales of last autumn which cut them off from anything like regular communication, so that only isolated, almost meaningless victories or defeats, almost all by land, came through the cloud of unknowing. But presently Jack, forging ahead in the concentrated sea-water of the Naval Chronicle rather than the turgid pages of The Times, which paid far too much attention to campaigns in Silesia and such places, as well as home politics, cried out, ‘So they have given Boney Elba, the island of Elba: ain’t you amazed? And he is gone aboard Undaunted, 38, young Tom Ussher’s ship. Do you know him at all? He is an Irishman.’
‘Sure, I know several Usshers: there were two or three at Trinity. They swarm in the eastern parts; and they have a family habit of being Archbishops of Armagh – Protestant archbishops, of course.’
‘So I suppose they are important people?’
‘At the Castle they are, without a doubt.’
‘The Castle?’
‘Dublin Castle, where the Lord-Lieutenant lives, when he is not elsewhere.’
‘Tom never spoke of grand connections, but that would account for it. He was made post in the year eight, before he was thirty. Not that I mean to say anything whatsoever against him – we were shipmates once or twice, and although he was a gentle, quiet young fellow aboard – not one of your Hectors at all: no bawling out or quarrelling – he was the very devil in cutting-out expeditions, extraordinarily gallant and dashing. But there are other extraordinarily gallant young men – young men who have no interest – who are not made post before they are thirty. Indeed, who are not even made commanders, but die as mere lieutenants – even as elderly master’s mates. Promotion in the Navy is a very rum go.
Think of Admiral Pye.’ He sighed, and with scarcely a pause went on, ‘Do you think we could have supper now?’
‘Just let me finish Talleyrand’s infamous speech, and I am with you,’ said Stephen.
The club was rather full – not only was this the beginning of the London season, but all those members who were
sea-officers and free to move had hurried up to besiege the Admiralty and all their influential friends in the hope of one of the few commands available or at least of an
appointment of some kind. They saw Sir Joseph Blame, supping with a friend in his usual place: he rose to greet them, hoped they should see one another again on Thursday, and returned to his guest. They sat at the large round members’ table, where Heneage Dundas had been waving his napkin since first they appeared.
‘It is long since I had the pleasure of seeing you,’ said Stephen’s neighbour on the left.
‘Are you in town for some time?’
‘At the Academy of Ancient Music, so it was,’ replied Stephen. ‘No: for a few days only, I think.’
‘Still, you will be here tomorrow and I trust disengaged? They are singing a great deal of Tallis.’
There indeed he was, with Jack, and they took a deep pleasure in the music, deriving a sense of inward peace that certainly did Jack Aubrey a great deal of good, wound up as he was by the complicated miseries of relinquishing his command at the worst possible moment, paying off, passing his accounts, doing what very little he could do for those at least morally dependent on him – two of his younger midshipmen were the sons of officers who had been killed as lieutenants, leaving their widows fifty pounds a year by way of pension, while others were almost as helpless: and then there were elderly seamen, not eligible for Greenwich, who had no one else to look to.
The next day and most of the day after they did nothing whatsoever but take their ease in the library, talk to their many acquaintances in the bar or the front morning-room, walk along Bond Street to try fiddles and bows at Hill’s, or play, not very seriously, at billiards.
Stephen delighted in the smooth progress of the balls, their exact lines and the satisfying angles that resulted from their contact – that is to say, when they made contact, which was rarely the case when he impelled them from any distance, he being far more a theoretical player than Jack, who frequently made breaks of twelve or more, taking the liveliest pleasure in the winning hazard. When he had brought off this stroke three times in succession he put down his cue and said, with infinite satisfaction, ‘There: a man cannot ask much better. I shall rest my laurels on that. Come, Stephen, we must shift our clothes and hurry along.’
They hurried along to the tavern where many Fellows of the Royal Society gathered to dine before the formal proceedings at Somerset House, in what was generally called the Royal Philosophers’ Club. Here they arrived with naval promptness shortly before the president, Sir Joseph Banks, who greeted them very kindly, gave them joy of the victory, and hoped that Dr Maturin would now at last have time for some serious botanizing, perhaps in Kamschatka, a very promising region, almost unknown – ‘But I was forgetting,’
he said. ‘You are married now. So am I, you know: a very comfortable and blessed state,’
and moved on to speak to other Fellows, now hurrying into the long low room by the score.
Before they sat down they both saw many friends: the Hydrographer to the Admiralty gave Jack a significant look, but said no more than ‘I do hope you will soon give us another paper on nutation,’ while the Surveyor to the Navy, Robert Seppings, the famous architect
who had strengthened the Bellona with diagonal bracing and trussing, pushed through the press to ask Captain Aubrey how the ship had stood up to the huge seas and southwesterly gales off Brest. ‘Admirably, sir, admirably, I thank you,’ said Jack. ‘Rarely more than six inches in the well, and as stiff as a man could wish.’ ‘I am delighted to hear it,’
cried the Surveyor, and he went on to speak of his son Thomas, who was incorporating the same principles in the smaller ships and vessels that he was intending to build or repair in his new yard at Poole. ‘…full of hope, just married, eager to work double tides, and now this peace.. .’ After a few more words on the same subject they were parted by the call to take their seats.
The Philosophers were not a particularly ascetic body of
men: few of them had ever allowed philosophy to spoil their appetites – their president weighed over fifteen stone – and they now set about their dinner with the earnestness it deserved.
‘I do wish I could persuade you to drink some of this porter,’ said Jack, holding up his tankard. ‘It goes admirably well with roast beef.’
‘If you will forgive me,’ said Stephen, ‘I believe I shall wait for the wine.’
He did not have to wait long. When the beef, admirably carved and gratefully eaten with horseradish, mustard, turnips, potatoes and cabbage, had all disappeared, the cloth was drawn and the wine appeared together with warden pie, treacle tart and every kind of cheese known in the three kingdoms. Stephen seized upon a variety as they trundled by, Stilton, Cheddar and Double Gloucester, a decanter of claret (probably a Latour, he thought) and some crusty bread: he drank to all those who called out ‘A glass of wine with you, sir,’ bowing to him, but he raised his glass only to Sir Joseph and once again to a new member, a mathematical duke from Scotland. He came away therefore perfectly steady on his feet, which was more than could be said for all the Fellows and their guests, particularly Jack Aubrey, who had kept steadily to port, never leaving a single acquaintance out of his toasts. However, it was quite a walk from the Mitre to Somerset House: virtually all the Fellows were reasonably philosophic by the time they got there, and the hard benches, and the arid nature of the paper read to them, dealing with the history of the integral calculus and a new approach to certain aspects of it, sobered them entirely.
Jack and Stephen walked back to St James’s, passing by the Grapes: it was late, and both the bar and snug were full, so they went up to Stephen’s room to make the arrangements for the Chileans’ dinner tomorrow – fish, preferably John Dory from the nearby Billingsgate – and while they were about it the little girls burst in, wearing their night-gowns, to ask the Doctor how he did. They stopped dead on seeing the Captain too, and Stephen had to lead them in by hand