Book 17 - The Commodore Page 16

  'Bread, cheese, and a pint of beer for each,' said Clarissa. 'My dear Brigid, you are not to play with your food. What will your father think?'

  Brigid had indeed been beating her pudding to make it quake in earnest, but she stopped at once and hung her head. After a while she whispered in Irish, 'Would you like a little piece?'

  'A very little piece, if you please,' said Stephen.

  He contemplated Clarissa as she finished her egg. 'How I value that young woman for not asking questions,' he reflected. 'It is true that she is used to naval ways, and to leaving home, family, kittens, doves, pot-plants at a moment's notice—no tide must ever be missed, God forbid—but I am convinced that she does not need to ask: she understood the essentials when first our eyes met.'

  All this he had known or strongly surmised at some level: the child, on the other hand, left him astonished, completely taken aback, at an enchanted loss. He had hoped and prayed with more than a hundredweight of candles judiciously shared among fifty-three saints for some perceptible progress: but now, and virtually at once, the child was living an outward life.

  She finished her pudding, and showing her bare-scraped plate she asked if she might get down: she did so want to go and look at the chaise close to and touch it. This was in English of a sort, but then in a quiet and as it were confidential Irish she said to Stephen, 'And should you like to be shown the chaise? The chaise and four?'

  'Honey, am I not after coming in it? It is warm with my warmth, like a chair. And we shall all set off in an hour, no more, when I have drunk up my coffee.'

  The child laughed aloud. 'And may the Padeen and I sit on the little small seat high up behind, on the dickey?' she asked. 'Oh such happiness!'

  Clarissa had never accumulated much in the way of personal property. Once she put her head in at the door and asked, 'Is it cold?'

  'Bitter cold in the winter,' said Stephen, 'but never trouble your mind. We shall buy a suitable garment in Corunna, Avila, or Madrid itself. Take something against the wet in the north, however, and half-boots.'

  He had barely had time to deal with the aged groom and the women servants, paying them down six months' board-wages, giving instructions for the care of the livestock and the renewal of the laundry boiler, a bill that Mrs Aubrey would pay, before Padeen reported, 'All stowed aboard and roped, sir; and may the Brideen and I sit on the little, the little, on the little small . . .?'

  'You may,' said Stephen, walking out of the house. He opened the carriage door for Clarissa, called 'Bless you all,' to the servants gathered on the steps, and 'Give way' to the post-boys: the carriage rolled off.

  'Will I explain the position?' asked Stephen.

  'Padeen and I have been betrayed?'

  'Just so.'

  'Yes. There have been enquiries in the village: odd-looking men along the lane and even in the stable-yard.'

  'It all turns on a question of revenge against me. The pardons I had asked for, the quite usual pardons for you and Padeen in a case like this, were not refused, but they were held up, delayed and delayed by ill-will. They will be granted I believe, and quite soon; but until then we are all much better out of the country, out of my enemy's reach. In any case I should like to have Brigid under the care of Dr Llers, who has had more success with children of her kind than any man in Europe. Not, the dear God be thanked beyond measure, that she seems to need the care of any medical man at all. The change is of the nature one usually associated with miracles alone.'

  'It is utterly beyond my comprehension,' said Clarissa. 'Nothing I have ever known has given me such happiness—day after day, like a flower opening. She prattled for quite a while with Padeen and the animals, and now she does so with me and the maids: a little shy of English at first. To begin with she spoke it only to the cats and the sow.'

  Stephen laughed with pleasure, an odd grating sound; and after a while he said, 'She will learn Spanish too, Castellano. I am sorry it will not be Catalan, a much finer, older, purer, more mellifluous language, with far greater writers—think of En Ramón Llull—but as Captain Aubrey often says, "You cannot both have a stitch in time and eat it." I mean to take you—or rather to send you under escort, since I cannot leave the ship—to the Benedictine house in Avila, where an aunt of my father's is Abbess, and where Dr Llers will be at hand. It is the easiest and kindest of disciplines there; the nuns are gentlewomen and several of them and the pensionnaires are English of the old Catholic families, or Irish; they have an excellent choir; and the convent owns three of the finest vineyards in Spain. I intend Padeen to go with you as your servant and as a continual source of springing life for Brideen. You will not be lonely there; and though your life may be rather dull, it will be safe.'

  'I ask no more,' said Clarissa.

  The chaise was on the smooth road now, not far from the turning to Ashgrove Cottage, and Brigid's voice could be heard exclaiming at the huge enormous great haycocks, bigger than she had ever seen in her life.

  'Shall we have time to call on Mrs Aubrey to take leave?' asked Clarissa. 'It would surely be most improper to vanish with never a word. It would also look like a low-minded resentment.'

  'We shall not,' said Stephen. 'Even as things are, the tide will be half out. There is not a moment to be lost.' He reflected, and presently he repeated the word resentment in a questioning tone.

  'Yes,' said Clarissa. 'It was all most unfortunate. She has very kindly come to see Brigid and me from time to time, and a little while ago she sent a note saying she had a letter from Captain Aubrey in London with some news about my pension as an officer's widow and might she call. Since a friend of Diana's had given us a present of venison and since it was full moon and she all alone I asked her to dinner, together with Dr Hamish and Mr Hinksey, our parson. We laid things out with some degree of splendour—even that dreadful Killick could hardly have done better than Padeen—and I put on my very best dress. It was that glorious crimson Java silk which Captain Aubrey gave me to be married in.'

  Stephen nodded. He remembered the incident perfectly: the cutting of a bolt of cloth that Jack Aubrey had bought from a Chinese merchant in Batavia with the help of the Governor's wife.

  'Yes. But Mrs Aubrey walked in wearing exactly the same stuff. Cut a little more full, and gathered here; but exactly the same magnificent red. We stared at one another like a couple of ninnies, and before either of us could say anything the men arrived, first Hinksey and then the Doctor. But I knew with absolute certainty, as though it had been printed on her forehead, that she thought Aubrey had given me the cloth for services rendered and that she had come off with the fag-end of his mistress's leavings. The food was pretty good, as I remember; the wine was of your choosing—we drank an ancient Chambertin with the venison—and from time to time she remembered her manners and added something to the general talk. But it was no good. The dinner, one of the few I have ever given, was a complete failure. Brigid was brought in when Mrs Aubrey and I went to the drawing-room, so there was no possibility of explanation even if I had felt inclined to make any, which by then I most certainly did not. Fortunately the men did not sit long over their wine, so the evening soon came to its miserable end. That is what I mean by resentment.'

  Stephen nodded. 'There is nothing to say: only that I very deeply regret the unhappiness, all of it unnecessary. We are descending towards the sea.'

  'The sea, the sea!' cried Brigid, leaping about in an ecstasy as they went down the shore to the waiting boat. 'Oh what a wonderful sea!' This was her first sight of it, and she was luckier than most. The tide was half out and from the harbour mouth a small swell sent in a series of waves that broke in white fan after fan on the pure hard sand: the water itself was a living blue-green, perfectly clear. Very high overhead rode a sky of no determinate colour crowded with towering cumulus; on either hand the bay curved out in tawny cliffs, while from behind Shelmerston the remote and setting sun sent a warm, diffused, calm, even and comfortable light. She broke away, seizing three strands of sea-tangle and
a piece of green fresh-curling weed, thrust them into her bosom and ran back. 'How do you do, sir?' she said to Bonden, offering her hand, and the boat's crew welcomed her with infinite benevolence. 'Let the Doctor's little maid sit up in the bows,' said Mould, and they passed her from hand to hand until she was perched on his folded jersey, calling out with delight as the boat shoved off.

  'Mrs Oakes, ma'am, you are very welcome aboard,' said Reade, helping her up the side. 'And you too, my dear. Doctor, sir, you have caught your tide as pretty as could be. I had scarcely started looking at my watch. Ma'am, how I hope you have an appetite. Our friends in the town have brought us the noblest soles that ever yet were seen.' He showed them below, begging them to mind their heads, and returned to the deck.

  The usual sounds followed their usual sequence—the cable coming aboard, the anchor being catted and fished, the boat run up to the davits; then even a moderately practised ear could make out the sound of halliards in their blocks and the deck leaned over under their feet: the ship was filled with a universal living sound, a vibration.

  'It is moving we are!' cried Brigid. She escaped from the cabin and ran up on deck. 'I must not behave like an old foolish mother-hen,' thought Stephen, but he followed her nevertheless, and sitting abaft the tiller he watched her risk life and limb, very gently restrained in her wilder excesses by Padeen and the seamen, kind and endlessly patient: at one point he saw her ascend to the fore crosstrees, clinging to the rough and scaley neck of old Mould.

  She was the ideal traveller, indefatigable, delighted with everything; and though the Ringle met a fine west-south-west swell when she was clear of the land, a swell that cut up somewhat on meeting the tide, she felt not the slightest qualm, nor, apparently, fear of any kind. She did not mind getting wet, either, which was just as well, since the Ringle was sailing due south-west with the breeze two points free and the choppy seas were coming aboard in packets over the starboard bow, soaking her at regular intervals as she clung to the foremost shrouds, each packet, green or white, being signalled by a delighted shriek.

  Eventually, with darkness gathering, she was brought aft and below, dried, put down in front of a bowl of lobscouse (the Ringle's only dish, apart from skillygalee or burgoo) and desired to 'tuck in, mate, tuck in like a good 'un.' After two spoons she fell fast asleep, her head on the table, one hand still clutching a gnawed ship's biscuit, so fast asleep that she was obliged to be carried off, perfectly limp, sponged more or less, and lashed into a small hammock.

  'Well, sir,' said Reade at supper, 'we could not have asked for a more prosperous breeze. This craft fairly loves the wind afore the beam and we have been making ten knots ever since we passed the Start with no more than what you see—no dimity, no gaff topsails even. I did suggest cracking on, ma'am, to show you just what she could do, but they would have none of it. There was no actual downright mutiny, just disapproving looks and shaking heads, and I was told it was felt the barky should sail sweet, this being the little maid's first trip: though I must say I do not think she would turn a hair if we were scudding under bare poles, in danger of being pooped every other minute. Now ma'am, a trifle of this apple tart? The carpenter's wife sent it down, one for his mess and one for ours, which I take very kind.'

  'The merest trifle, if you please. I love a good apple tart, and this one looks superb; but I am so sleepy that I am liable to disgrace myself and fall over sideways. It is no doubt the effect of the sea air.'

  No doubt at all. The sea air did the same for all three passengers, who did not stir until the sun was well up, when they appeared, heavy-eyed, pale, and stupid, no one any better than the rest.

  'Good morning, sir,' cried Reade, offensively bright. 'What a brilliant day! We had a wonderful run in the night, and close in by Ushant we spoke the Briseis: old Beaumont—you remember old Beaumont in the Worcester, sir?—was the officer of the watch, and he said some of the offshore squadron had exchanged signals with the Commodore on Thursday, standing south-west under an easy sail. But sir, I dare say you would like your breakfast. What will the little girl take?'

  'What indeed? Mrs Oakes,' he called, 'pray what are children fed on?'

  'Milk,' said Clarissa.

  The Ringle's people looked tolerably blank; and discipline aboard a private tender under a midshipman not being as rigid as it might have been in a ship of the line, they freely exchanged their views. 'If only I had thought,' said Slade, 'I should have brought a pailful along; and a pot of cream.'

  'Cheese is particularly good for young female bones,' said the yeoman of the sheets. 'My cousin Sturgis would have lent us his goat.'

  In the end it was decided. that if ship's biscuit and small beer were rejected—and Mrs Oakes rejected both out of hand—then skillygalee was their only resource. Brigid therefore faced a bowl of very thin oatmeal gruel, sweetened with sugar and tempered with butter. She thought it the finest dish she had ever eaten, a more-than-birthday indulgence: she ate it up with naked greed and begged for more, and when at last she was told that she might get down skipped about the deck singing 'Skilly-galee, skillygaloo, skillygalee ooh hoo hoo hoo' with a persistence that only very good-natured men could have borne, as the Ringles did, until dinner changed the course of her mind. This being Thursday, she and all hands were allowed a pound of salt pork and half a pint of dried peas: a gallon of beer would also have made part of her ration, but she was advised not to insist upon it.

  The breeze freshened in the afternoon: they took a reef in the foresail and the main, and the Ringle was filled with that happy sense of making a good passage: ten knots, ten and two fathoms, eleven knots, sir, if you please, watch after watch; and Brigid spent all her time in the bows, watching the schooner rise on the now much longer swell, race down, and split the next crest at great speed, flinging the spray to leeward in the most exhilarating fashion, always the same, always new. Once a line of porpoises crossed their hawse, rising and plunging like a single long black serpent; and once Stephen showed her a petrel, a little fluttering black bird that pittered on the white traces of broken waves; but otherwise the day was made up of strong diffused light, racing clouds with blue between, a vast grey sea, the continuous rush of wind and water, and a freshness that pervaded everything.

  'You was born with sea-legs, my dear,' said Slade, as she came careering aft for supper.

  'I shall never go ashore,' she replied.

  Padeen slipped easily back into his place as a seaman, an ordinary seaman, for he did not possess the countless particular skills required to be rated able—skills he had, and many of them, but they were all to do with the land, he being profoundly a peasant, a peasant by breeding and inclination. Yet he was seaman enough to be perfectly at home aboard, and in the morning watch on Thursday Stephen found him fishing for mackerel in the Ringle's bows.

  It was still long before dawn: moderately thick weather with occasional showers, thunder out to sea: a long even swell: the wind quite strong in the west-north-west. The schooner had been making long, long boards, beating steadily into it, and now she was on the starboard tack, close in with the land, with the ironbound northern coast of Spain hitherto unseen. Well ahead on the larboard bow the Vares light, high on a cape that ran far out to sea, showed fiery orange when it was not obscured by the squalls; and it was said that this light attracted the fish so often to be found within this bay. Whether this was so or not, the middle watch had caught a fine basketful, and that was why the clipper had lingered a little longer on this tack, drawing somewhat closer to the shore. She was under reefed fore and main sails, with the jib half in, easily stemming the tide, which ran fast round the cape, but making no great way with regard to the land.

  'You have not gone to bed, I find,' he said.

  'Nor have I, indeed,' said Padeen. 'At the end of the watch I began thinking about the man that betrayed us, the informer, the Judas; and what with the fury and the dread of being sent back to Botany Bay there was no sleep in me at all.'

  'The back of my hand to the infor
mer,' said Stephen. 'Hell is filled with them seventeen deep. They are . . .' He was cut short by a triple flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous thunderclap over the cliff to leeward. 'There,' he went on, 'there is the coast of Spain itself.' Still more lightning showed it clear. 'And once you have set foot in that country, no man can take you up and send you back to that infamous place. In any event I am confident that within the year I shall get you your pardon, and then you can go wherever you please. But, Padeen, for the present I wish you to go with Brigid and Mrs Oakes to Avila, in Spain, to look after them. They are to live there in a convent where many other ladies stay with the nuns. And listen, now, Padeen, if you look after them faithfully for a year and a day, you shall have a small farm I own in Munster, near Sidheán na Gháire in the County Clare, with seventeen acres—seventeen Irish acres—of moderate land: it has a house with a slate roof, and at present there are three cows and an ass, pigs of course, and two hives of bees; and it has the right to cut seventeen loads of turf on the bog. Are you content, Padeen?'

  'I am content, your honour, your discretion,' said Padeen in a trembling voice. 'I should look after the Brideen for a thousand years and a day for nothing at all; but oh how I should love some land itself. My grandfather once owned nearly three acres, and rented two more . . .'

  They talked about the land, the pleasures of farming, the delight of seeing things grow, of reaping and threshing; or rather Padeen talked, such a clear torrent of words as Stephen had not heard from him before; and the day broke, broke quite suddenly, the clouds tearing away in the first gleam of dawn.

  'All hands, all hands!' roared Bonden right aft, and he and others ran beating on the hatches. 'All hands, all hands on deck!' Padeen, easily amazed, tripped Stephen with his rod and his basket of fishes and before they had recovered Reade was on deck in his nightshirt, giving orders. Half a mile astern, in the bay closed by Cape Vares, lay a three-masted lugger, long, low and black. She was heavily armed and heavily manned; she was already increasing sail.