Book 6 - The Fortune Of War Read online

  'What is the best course to follow?' asked Stephen.

  'Well, now,' said Evans, considering, 'most of your officers put up at O'Reilly's hotel on parole; the men are kept in the barracks, of course. But that would not do in the present case; and I cannot conscientiously recommend the new hospital. The plaster is scarcely dry on its walls, and I would not see even a simple pneumonia, affecting no more than the apex of the right lung, subjected to those unwholesome damps. On the other hand, my brother-in-law, Otis P. Choate, who is also a medical man, has a small private establishment that he calls the Asclepia, in a dry, healthy location near Beacon Hill.'

  'What could be more eligible? Would you—would you know the nature of his terms, at all?'

  'They are very moderate: they are obliged to be very moderate, for I must tell you frankly, sir, that my brother-in-law is a man with strong notions of his own, and his Asclepia is not a paying proposition. Otis P. Choate is a good sound physician, but he riles his fellow-citizens: for one thing, he is opposed to alcohol, slavery, tobacco, and war—all wars, including Indian wars. And I must warn you, sir, that most of the attendants he employs are Irishwomen, Papists I regret to say; and although for my part I have not noticed the drunkenness and profligacy associated with that unhappy pack of barefoot savages, and although the majority of them speak English of a sort, and at least seem clean, the circumstance has of course made the Asclepia unpopular in Boston. So it is filled, as far as it is filled at all, with lunatics whose friends do not choose to keep them at home, rather than with the medical and surgical cases for whom it was designed. It is commonly called Choate's mad-house, and people affect to say that with such nurses and such a physician, no one can tell the odds between the patients and their attendants. I put this fairly before you, Dr Maturin, because I am aware that some people might object to such an establishment.'

  'I honour your candour, sir,' said Stephen, 'but—'

  'Never mind Maturin,' said Jack, suddenly speaking in a deep hoarse voice out of some partially lucid interval. 'He is an Irish Papist himself, ha, ha, ha! Drunk as a lord every morning by nine o'clock, and never a shoe to his name.'

  'Is that so, sir?' whispered Mr Evans, looking more wretched and distressed than Stephen would have thought possible: for in general the Constitution's surgeon, a man of somewhat formal, even ceremonious manners, presented a calm and impassive face to the world, an expression of grave, benign dignity. 'I had no idea—I was not aware—your sobriety, your—but apologies can only make the blunder worse. I beg you will forgive me, sir, and believe that no personal reflection was intended.'

  Stephen shook him by the hand and said that he was sure of it; but Mr Evans found it difficult to recover his composure, and eventually Stephen said, 'Dr Choate's Asclepia sounds almost ideal.'

  'Yes,' said Mr Evans. 'Yes, yes. I will go and speak to the Commodore at once, and ask for his permission for the removal; he, of course, is responsible for your custody, for the production of your bodies on demand. I have no authority in the matter.'

  A short pause, in which Stephen took a blanket from an empty cot and wrapped it round his shoulders against the damp and penetrating cold, and Evans returned. 'All is well,' he said, 'I found the Commodore very busy, surrounded with officials and people from the Yard, as well as half Boston's leading citizens; he merely called out "Do as you think fit", caught up this,'—showing a small packet—'and desired me to deliver it to you.'

  Stephen read the hastily-written note wrapped about the banknotes: 'Commodore Bainbridge presents his compliments to Captain Aubrey, begs he will accept the enclosed to bear his charges ashore for the time being, hopes to have the pleasure of seeing him fully recovered very soon, and asks his pardon for not waiting on him at present: he flatters himself that Captain Aubrey, from long experience, will understand the many preoccupations that attend the docking of the ship.' 'This is exceedingly handsome in the Commodore,' he said. 'A most gentlemanlike, elegant gesture: I accept it for my friend, with the utmost pleasure.'

  'We are all subject to the fortune of war,' said Mr Evans, visibly embarrassed as he produced a smaller packet. 'You will not, I am sure, condemn me to being behindhand with my shipmates. Come, sir, I do not need to tell you, that there is a generosity in acceptation: and it is, alas, no more than twenty pounds.'

  Stephen acknowledged Evans's kindness, accepted his loan, and said all that was proper with real gratitude, for not only did the action please him extremely, but he did not in fact possess a single coin of any kind, great or small, and he had been wondering how the terms of Choate's mad-house could be met, however moderate they might prove to be.

  'You said twenty pounds, Mr Evans,' he remarked, after they had been talking for some time about the apex of Jack's right lung, enemata, and the care of the mentally deranged. 'Is it usual, in your country, to use the old names for money?'

  'We often speak of pennies and shillings,' said Evans. 'Sometimes of pounds, but far more rarely. I caught the habit from my father when I was a boy. He was a Tory, a Loyalist, and even when he came back from Canada and learnt to live with the Republic, he never would give up his pounds and guineas.'

  'Were there many Loyalists in Boston?'

  'No, not a great many; nothing to compare with New York, for example. But still we had our sheep, black or white according to your point of view: perhaps a thousand out of some fifteen thousand, which is what I reckon the town held at that time.'

  'A desperate state of affairs it must be, when a man finds himself torn between conflicting loyalties . . . Tell me, did you ever hear of a Mr Herapath?'

  'George Herapath? Oh yes indeed. He was a friend of my father's, a fellow-Tory; they were in exile together, in Canada. He is quite a prominent citizen. He always was, being a considerable ship-owner and trading with China more successfully than most; and now that the Federalists and the old Tories have come together he is more important still.'

  'I am a child in American politics, Mr Evans,' said Stephen, 'and cannot readily see how the Federalists and Tories can have come together, since, as you so kindly explained to me, the Federalists maintain the sovereignty of the Union, of the State as opposed to the states.'

  'What brings them together is a common dislike for Mr Madison's war. I am betraying no secrets when I say that this war in unpopular in New England: everybody knows it. And although there are no doubt higher motives, money speaks in Boston, whether you call it dollars and cents or pounds, shillings and pence; and the merchants are being ruined—their foreign trade is strangled, sir, strangled. But the Republicans—'

  What the Republicans were about Stephen never learnt, for the Constitution's starboard timbers uttered a long, concerted groan as she eased up against the wharf.

  'We are alongside, gentlemen,' said the first lieutenant, looking into the sickbay. 'I have laid on a sleigh for Captain Aubrey: we aim to shift him in half an hour. And Dr Choate sends to say that all will be ready, sir.'

  'Strangled, sir,' said Mr Evans, when they were alone again. 'George Herapath, for example, has three fine barques tied up here, and two more at Salem: his China trade is at a stand.'

  'Mr Herapath has a son.'

  'Young Michael? Yes. A sad disappointment to him, I am afraid, and to all his friends. He was bright enough as a boy—he was at our Latin school with my nephew Quincy—and he studied hard. Then he learnt Chinese, and it was thought he would be a great help to his father in business; but no, he went off to Europe and became a rake. And what some people think much worse, a spendthrift. I am told he is come back from his travels, bringing a drabble-tail with him, a wench from Baltimore, a Romanist—not,' he cried, 'that I mean the least connection, my dear sir. I only mean to emphasize Mr Herapath's misfortune, he being a staunch Episcopalian.'

  'Poor gentleman,' said Stephen. 'I met Michael Herapath in his travels; indeed, he acted as my assistant for a while. I valued him much, and hope I may see him again.'

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Mr Evans. 'I seem fated to mov
e from one blunder to another today. I shall hold my tongue for what remains of it.'

  'Where would conversation be, if we were not allowed to exchange our minds freely and to abuse our neighbours from time to time?' said Stephen.

  'Very well: it is very well. But I shall go and borrow a buffalo-robe for Captain Aubrey's journey, and say no more. The sleigh will be here at any moment now.'

  Stephen was pleased with the Asclepia; it was dry, clean, and comfortable, and the kind gentle Irish voices made him feel that the pervading warmth must come from turf-fires—he could almost have sworn he caught that exquisite home-like scent. He was pleased with Dr Choate, as a physician, pleased with the design of the establishment and its many private rooms, its domestic air. Dr Choate's care and treatment of his many half-wits and lunatics was as far removed as possible from the chains, whipping, bread-and-water, barred-cell usage that Stephen had so often seen, and so often deplored; yet it might be that he carried the open-door principle a little too far. More than once Stephen had seen a potentially dangerous case wandering about the lower corridors, muttering, or standing rigid, motionless in a corner. But for Dr Choate's ordering of his sick-rooms Stephen had nothing but praise; these were in the central block, and Jack's was a fine light airy place with a view over the little town to the navy yard and the harbour. This central block, whether it was on purpose or by chance, seemed to be arranged in an ascending order of cheerfulness: the rooms on either side of Jack's were occupied by the few surgical or medical cases in a fair way to mending, and not far from them were those patients in the mildly exalted or elevated phase of the folie circulaire: they met in a common sitting-room where they played cards, sometimes for several hundred thousand million dollars, or played music, often surprisingly well; Dr Choate himself joined them with his oboe whenever he could, observing that he looked upon it as his most valuable therapeutic instrument. There were of course the usual heart-breaking melancholias: people who had committed the unpardonable sin, had done the everlasting wrong; others whose families were poisoning their food or who were going about to do them evil by means of Indian smoke; a woman whose husband had 'put her to a dog' and who sobbed and sobbed, never sleeping and never to be consoled. There were the senile dementias, and mad paralysed syphilitics and the nasty idiots, the despair of the world: but they were on the lower floors and in the wings.

  Jack saw none of this. He was in the cheerful part, and this was appropriate, for superficially he was himself a cheerful patient; his arm, though still painful in some places and numb in others, was almost certainly saved; he had recovered from his pneumonia; and he had learnt of the Americans' reverses in their attack upon Canada. The army had done well, and to some extent that was a compensation for the Navy's failure. He was still weak, but he ate voraciously: clam chowder, Boston beans, cod, anything that came his way.

  'My dear,' he wrote to Sophie, 'you know I have always wanted to imitate Nelson (except in the marital line) as much as ever I can, and here I am, dashing away with my left hand, and writing much the same kind of scrawl as he did. But in a month or so Dr Choate tells me I may try the right. Stephen says he is a very clever fellow . . .'

  Clever, yes: and most unusually kind. Stephen admired his learning, his skill in diagnosis, and his wonderful handling of his lunatics; Choate could often bring comfort to those who seemed so deeply sunk in their own private hell as to be beyond all communication, and although he had some dangerous patients he had never been attacked. Choate's ideas on war, slavery, and the exploitation of the Indians were eminently sound; his way of spending his considerable private means on others was wholly admirable; and sometimes, when Stephen was talking to Choate he would consider that earnest face with its unusually large, dark, kindly eyes and wonder whether he was not looking at a saint: at other times a spirit of contradiction would rise, and although he could not really defend poverty, war, or injustice he would feel inclined to find excuses for slavery. He would feel that there was too much indignation mingled with the benevolence, even though the indignation was undeniably righteous; that Dr Choate indulged in goodness as some indulged in evil; and that he was so enamoured of his role that he would make any sacrifice to sustain it. Choate had no humour, or he would never have linked drink and tobacco to issues so very much more important—Stephen liked his glass of wine and his cigar—and he was certainly guilty of deliberate meekness on occasion. Perhaps there was some silliness there: might it be that silliness and love of one's fellow men were inseparable? These were unworthy thoughts, he admitted: he also admitted that he would rely implicitly upon Choate's diagnosis rather than his own; and Choate was more hopeful than he about Jack's arm.

  Jack's letter crept on: 'I shall send this by Bulwer, of Belvidera, who was caught when one of her prizes was retaken and who is to be exchanged directly—he goes aboard the cartel that I can see from my window this evening. My exchange still seems to be hanging fire, though I cannot tell why; but I dare say it will come as soon as I am fit to travel, which will be in a week or two, at the prodigious rate I am gaining weight and strength. Bulwer has very kindly been coming to sit with me, and so have several other officers, and they have told me the most encouraging news about our successes in Canada: I expect him shortly, and must bring this sad scribble to a close. But before I seal it up, I must tell you of another visitor I had today: he often looks in, in the most friendly, free and easy way, and so do many of the other patients, to ask me how I do. Indeed, this is a very free and easy place, not to say haphazard, quite unlike Haslar or any hospital I have ever seen; visitors wander in and out as they please, and they are almost never announced. The one I am talking about is a fine stout rosy gentleman, the Emperor of Mexico in fact, but here he only uses the title of Duke of Montezuma, and today he let me into a great secret, known to very few: the whole world has gone mad, it seems, but they are too far gone to know it—a kind of sudden epidemic, caused by drinking tea. It began with our poor King and then burst out with the American election, when President Madison was chosen; now it covers the whole world, said he, laughing extremely and skipping. "Even you, sir, even Captain Aubrey, ha, ha, ha!" But he comforted me with a grant of fourteen thousand acres on the Delaware, and the fishing-rights on both banks of the Gulf of Mexico, so we shall not go short of victuals in our old age. He and many of the others, do you see, are somewhat astray in their wits; yet I have noticed a curious thing, which is that the sort I see, the patients that Dr Choate lets wander about and gather in the parlour, are not nearly so much astray as they seem. Much of it is play. They are persuaded that I am one of them, that I only pretend to be a post-captain RN for fun, and so we humour one another, each playing at being madder than the next. And there are certain unspoken rules—'

  'Come in,' he cried.

  The door opened and three men appeared. The first, a man in sad-coloured clothes with a large number of dull metal buttons, seemed to be all trunk, so very short were his legs, and those legs almost hidden by his long coat. His large fat glabrous face was pale and shining; his watery eye had the glare that was now so familiar to Jack: he wore his grey hair long. The other two were less striking: meagre fellows in black, but equally insane. He hoped they would not be tedious, or lewd.

  'Good afternoon, sir,' said the first. 'I am Jahleel Brenton, of the Navy Department.'

  Jack knew Jahleel Brenton quite well, a distinguished post-captain in the Royal Navy, an unusually religious man, a friend of Saumarez and other blue-light admirals—had been made a baronet quite recently—born in America, hence the curious Christian name. He said, 'Good afternoon to you, gentlemen. I am John Aubrey, grandson to the Pope of Rome.'

  After a slight pause Mr Brenton said, 'I was not aware that Romanists were allowed in your service, sir.'

  'Never you believe it, sir. Why, half the Board of Admiralty is made up of Jesuits, though it don't do to let it be generally known. Pray take a seat. How is your brother Ned?'

  'I have no brother Ned, sir,' said Mr Brenton cross
ly. 'We are come here to ask you some questions about the Leopard.'

  'Ask on, old boy,' said Jack, laughing at his approaching wit. 'All I know is, she can't change her spots, ha, ha, ha! 'Tis in the Bible,' he added, 'and you can't say fairer than that.' A pause. 'What about the tiger? Should not we be happier with the tiger? I could tell you any number of tales about the tiger.'

  One of Jack's madder neighbours thrust his head in through the partly-open door, and cried, 'Peep bo.' Then, seeing that the Captain had company, he withdrew it. The smaller dark man whispered to Mr Brenton 'Zeke Bates the butcher' in a tone that quivered with horror. But after a moment, unable to resist, Mr Bates slid his portly form through the crack, and with his finger to his lips glided up to Jack's bedside, taking long undulating steps. There he produced a butcher's knife, wrapped in a handkerchief, showed Jack how it would shave the hairs from his forearm, laid his finger to his nose, gave Jack a knowing, private wink, and glided silently off again.

  The middle-sized dark man looked about, but finding no spittoon he stepped to the window and squirted a stream of tobacco-juice into the garden. 'You, sir,' cried Jack, who disliked the habit extremely, 'put that damned quid out of your mouth. Toss it out of the window, d'ye hear me? Close the window, sit down, and tell us what you know about the tiger.'

  The man tiptoed to his chair. Mr Brenton wiped his glistening face and said, 'It is not the Tiger that is in question, Captain Aubrey, but the Leopard. Is there a key to that door?' he cried, his eye on the gently moving handle.

  'You surely do not think I am going to allow myself to be locked in with you?' said Jack, a cunning leer. 'No. There ain't.'

  'Mr Winslow,' said Brenton, 'go put your chair against the door and sit on it. Now, sir, it is alleged that on or about twenty-fifth March last year, when in command of HBM ship Leopard, you fired upon the American brig Alice B. Sawyer. What have you to say to that?'