The Yellow Admiral Read online

  Jack Aubrey had certain rules, somewhat tainted with superstition, and one of these obliged him to take the nearest letter. Sophie knew no such laws and she instantly reached over for a cover addressed in a well-known hand and bearing an Ulster post-mark: it was from her sister Frances, a young, pretty and more or less penniless widow who had turned her big house into a girls' school, where, with the help of their former governess she was educating the Aubrey twins, Charlotte and Fanny, among a score or so of others. She enclosed two fairly creditable letters from them, written on hot-pressed pink paper. Sophie, a deeply affectionate soul, read them twice, and with such pleasure that a tear dimmed her eye. She then put them in her lap and picked another from the array, a singularly wretched choice that brought tears of quite another kind: or almost brought them, for by now she had had a good deal of practice at mastering the actual flow.

  Each put down a letter. Each looked at the other. 'What news, my dear?' asked Jack. Her back was to the light and he did not see how distressed she was. 'Good news from Frankie and the girls,' she said, and he heard the tremble, 'but Cluttons say that with the times so bad and the cost of removing all the inscriptions so high, they are afraid they cannot offer more than the melting-pot price for the Jamaica service.' Jack nodded, but said nothing. 'What was yours?' she went on, for they dealt with these things on an equal footing, with no concealment on either side, almost no concessions.

  'It was from Lawrence,' he said. 'Leave to appeal has been refused.'

  She digested this. It was the wreck of all their cherished, accumulated hopes as far as that particular case was concerned. 'We shall have to sell Ashgrove,' she said after a pause. 'The creditors will not wait.'

  Jack cast her a loving glance. What she said was true; the only evident solution, since Woolcombe was entailed; yet it was scarcely one that he could have proposed. Ashgrove was her own, and could neither be sold nor mortgaged by him, very much her own, and even legally so, by settlement - a rambling house they had planned together, piece by piece, but of course carried out almost entirely by her, with Jack being so long at sea. Although quite by itself in its own woods it was a wonderfully convenient house for a naval officer, within sight of Portsmouth, and at present it was let to an admiral who had done very well out of prize-money and who had thrown out many a hint about buying it.

  'May I see the girls' letters?' he asked. And when he had read them he said, 'I am afraid you miss them cruelly, but it is really much better that they should be with Frankie. There is nothing worse for children than a house with lawsuits hanging over it - threats they do not really understand- universe crumbling - parents nearly always sad or cross - perpetually anxious.' He spoke from intimate knowledge, since it was his father's litigious propensities even more than his other faults of character that had made Jack's mother's short life so unhappy and that had at times so oppressed his naturally cheerful boyhood that even now this house cast a gloom upon his spirits - he was never cordially happy there except in the parts behind, the stable courts, the walled garden and the far garden with its grotto. 'But I think George is still too young to feel it. And in any case we do not quarrel.'

  'No, my dear,' she said, looking at him kindly. 'But he is lonely, poor lamb. Shall we look through the rest? Perhaps we are both missing heirs.'

  No sudden fortune, but Jack's face lit with much the same light as he turned the last letter of his undistinguished pile. 'Why, this is Stephen,' he exclaimed, breaking the seal. 'By God, they will be here today! Stephen, Diana, Clarissa Oakes, Brigid, Padeen, the whole shooting-match. What joy! Listen, sweetheart. "My dear Jack, may I indeed inflict myself, all my women, and a numerous band of followers upon you indefinitely? Diana (who sends her love) says it is a monstrous imposition, above all with no notice; but I reassure her, saying it was an understood thing between us - we had met at Black's - you had stressed the empty immensities of your palatial home. And I would not wound you for the world, as I must by taking hired lodgings until a suitable house can be found..."

  'My dear, what's amiss? Ain't you delighted?'

  'Oh, indeed I am. I love Stephen. I am fond of my cousin I am as delighted as a woman can be, who has nothing ready for a single guest, let alone a regiment, including that Mrs Oakes - nothing whatsoever - you were to have yesterday's beefsteak pudding again for dinner, and there is nothing else in the house. We shall have to put them in the east wing - there is room enough there, God knows - but it has not been turned out, it has not been touched since Michaelmas.' She started up, gathering her wits and saying, 'I shall never be ready in time,' hurried from the room.

  She was not what she called ready when the coach and four, driven in great style by Diana, rolled in a smooth curve across the courtyard and pulled up exactly at the foot of the steps, discharging an improbable number of people; but she was at the open, welcoming door, pale but properly dressed, conscious that the main rooms of the east wing were as spotless as the decks of a man-of-war (and cleaned in much the same hearty fashion), that an unspeakably well-timed gift of venison ensured their dinner, and that the reprieved Jamaica service, the West India merchants' expression of thanks to Captain Aubrey for ridding them of privateers, would lay it out in splendour.

  She received them prettily, kissing Diana and Brigid, dropping that Mrs Oakes quite a deep curtsy and hoping that she saw her well, and then leading them into the blue parlour to drink tea while their baggage was carried away and whilst Jack, Stephen, an aged groom and a stable-boy put the splendid coach and its team of bays in stable and coach-house.

  'Why, Diana,' called Jack in his strong voice, coming in and brushing the oat-dust from his coat, 'where did you get your magnificent cattle?'

  'I borrowed them from my cousin Cholmondeley,' said she. 'We met him in Bath, glum as a gib cat, with a gouty toe that nailed him to his chair - said the horses were bursting for want of exercise - it made him low in his spirits. So I offered to drive them down here. He will send his coachman to take them back on Thursday.'

  'He must have an amazing opinion of your powers,' said Jack. 'I once asked him to lend me a perfectly ordinary dog-cart with a perfectly ordinary animal to pull it, just for an hour or so, and he would not.'

  'Jack,' said Diana, smiling, 'a thousand repartees come to mind, each wittier than the last, but I shall not utter a single one. This is a very striking case of magnanimity in a poor weak woman who rarely thinks of any repartee until it is far too late to produce it.'

  'Admiral Rodham says that for ship-handling Jack has not his equal in the entire service,' said Sophie.

  Diana looked down without even a hidden smile; and in the silence that followed Stephen watched George and Brigid. The little boy walked round and round her, gazing: sometimes she smiled at him; but sometimes she turned away her head. Eventually he came right up to her, offered her the best part of a biscuit and said, 'Should not you like to see my dormouse? He is a prodigious fine dormouse, and will let you touch him.'

  'Oh, if you please,' she said, jumping up at once.

  'Stephen, Diana, dear Mrs Oakes,' said Jack, 'I do not believe you have any of you been here before. Should you like to see the house? The library is rather good, and the justice-room; though I am afraid much of the rest was modernized a few years ago.'

  'Oh, my dear,' cried Sophie, aware of the horrors stuffed into both, and they totally unswept, 'the light is quite gone, and you really cannot see the panelling when the light is quite gone. Besides, dinner is almost ready, and you must certainly change that disreputable old rat-catcher's coat.'

  Chapter Two

  In general Stephen Maturin was a poor sleeper, and since his youth he had turned to a number of allies against the intolerable boredom - and sometimes far, far worse than boredom, he having a most vulnerable heart - of insomnia: poppy and mandragora being the most obvious, seconded by the inspissated juice of aconite or of henbane, by datura stramonium, creeping skerit, leopard's bane. But here in the soporific atmosphere of Dorset even three cups of coffee a
fter dinner had not been able to keep him awake: he had nodded over his cards to such an extent that by general agreement Sophie took over his hand and he crept off to bed. Here he awoke at dawn in a state of rosy ease and perfect relaxation, infinitely refreshed. In this blessed posture he lay for some time, luxuriating, collecting himself and the recent past and listening both to Diana's even breath and to a moderate chorus of birds, all pleased to see the day.

  Presently life stirred in his bosom: with infinite precaution he collected the clothes he had strewn about the floor, and carrying his shoes he took them to the closet.

  'Why, Stephen, there you are,' called Jack from the breakfast-room, hearing him on the stairs. 'Good morning to you. What an early worm you are to be sure. I trust you slept? You was quite fagged out.'

  'Wonderfully, I thank you: wonderfully: I do not remember getting into bed, and when I woke I could hardly tell where I was, at all. What a pure joy it is, the awareness of having slept.'

  'I am sure of it,' said Jack, for whom this was an everyday occurrence. He poured him a cup of coffee and went on, 'What do you say to taking out a gun and seeing whether we can knock over a rabbit or two? And there might be a snipe in the plashy bottom.'

  'With all my heart.'

  'We can breakfast properly when we come back. But before the women get up let us first have a quick look into the library and the justice-room. I am rather proud of them, and you will not mind a little dust. Or squalor.'

  The library was indeed a noble room, running almost the whole width of the first floor, with five bays to the south and an east window; though the early light had scarcely yet strength enough to show more than shadowy ranges of book-cases, all of a kind, panelling, and countless dim spines behind glass, long tables in the middle, wing-chairs by the fireplace, and some rolled-up sacking bundles, Sophie's shame. 'My great-grandfather the judge was a prodigious reader,' said Jack, 'and so was his great-grandfather - it skips generations, sometimes, like stamina in horses. You must spend a day or two in here, if it comes on to rain.'

  'So must Clarissa Oakes. She has been fairly starved for books.'

  'I had no idea she was a learned lady.'

  'Sure, she has nothing of the bluestocking; but she reads Latin as easily as French, and Greek with no more difficulty than most of us. And she dearly loves a book-room.'

  'Do you suppose she would teach George amo amas amat?'

  'She is a very good-natured woman, in spite of her apparent reserve.'

  'I shall get Sophie to ask her. But for the moment we must jump down to the justice-room and away, or the rabbits will all have gone to ground. I am sorry about this staircase,' he said as they went down. 'I had hoped to make it as it was when I was a boy - I did have the panelling put back in my mother's room - but before the men could get to work on this, funds ran out. Here' - opening a door - 'is the justice-room.'

  'It is not a term I know,' said Stephen, looking at the bare, formal arrangement of a large table set across, with some chairs and benches facing it, the walls clothed in the soberest linenfold oak: no pictures. 'What happens here?'

  'This is where we deal with the manor's legal proceedings, court baron, court leet, and so on. And when I am sitting as a justice of the peace, that is my chair behind the table, with the high back. Sitting as a magistrate, if you follow me.'

  'Long, long ago you once told me that you had it in mind to preach a sermon to the ship's company, there being no chaplain aboard: but even that did not so astonish me as now hearing that you are a judge, my dear; one of the righteous.'

  'Oh,' said Jack, carelessly, 'the Aubreys have always been justices of the county, time out of mind. It had nothing at all to do with the righteousness. Mind your step in the doorway:there is a damned awkward plank. No. I regard it as an infernal nuisance, and it has caused a deal of trouble with my preserving neighbours, because I will not come down heavy on poachers - I often knew them as boys. This is the way to the gun-room. Here is a fourteen-gauge Manton that might suit you.'

  They walked along a passage to the back of the house, coming out in the stable-yard, where Harding was waiting with a dog. 'Should you like me to come along, sir?' he asked.

  'No,' said Jack, 'you wait here for Master George and take him along for the paper. But Bess can come.'

  The rough, more-or-less spaniel bitch heard the words and bounded across, quivering with zeal and gazing into Jack's face to see which way they were to go.

  They went in fact through those back regions where Jack had been so happy as a boy - stables, tack-room, double coach-house, the fine red-brick wall against which he had played single-handed fives for so many hours, the grapehouse, the kitchen garden - where they sat in the grotto for a while and Stephen examined his gun. 'Sure, this is the elegant fowling-piece of the world,' he said, 'and beautifully balanced.'

  'Joe Manton was thoroughly pleased with it. He said the stock had the prettiest grain he had ever seen. And Stephen, take notice of the touch-hole, will you? It is platina, which never corrodes or chokes - no others shoot so sharply.'

  'Upon my soul, Jack, you do yourself proud. I have never had a Manton gun at all, let alone one with a platina touchhole, rich as Beelzebub though I was.'

  'Ain't you rich now, Stephen?' he asked with never a hint of vulgar curiosity; only with a very deep concern.

  'I am not. I carried my fortune to Spain, as you know; and there it has been seized. They had wind of my doings in Peru. But I am in no way desperate, Jack. I have my pay much in arrears, I may observe - as a naval surgeon; and we mean to get rid of that ill-omened place at Barham and take a little small cottage somewhere in these parts. No. I am not desperate at all: it is just that I am in no way to indulge in a platina touch-hole to my gun.'

  'Then we are in the same boat, brother. I had scarcely been home a month before writs started coming in - actions for wrongful seizure, forcible detainer and the like, based on my taking slavers who by one damned quibble or another could claim protection. Most were dismissed out of hand, but two or three were argued before the court and although that dear good man Lawrence did all he could, I was cast in damages. Stephen, you would never believe the amount of damages when it comes to shipping and cargo. I have been refused leave to appeal on the most recent, and there are at least two more pending. Lawrence spoke to the Admiralty counsel, a member of the same inn, who told him that my instructions had been perfectly clear: they forbade me to interfere with any protected vessel, and if in spite of that I did so, I must bear the consequences. For my own part, I spoke to the First Sea Lord - I had always regarded him as a friend - but he was pretty cold and distant, as high as Pontius Pilate, and he gave exactly the same answer, except that he said I must pay the consequences. Well, I can not pay them, if any of the other cases goes against me. Even as things are, we can only just scrape by if Sophie sells Ashgrove: this place and the whole Woolcombe estate are entailed.' Stephen shook his head, looking so wretchedly low that Jack went on, 'But like you, I am not at all desperate. I too have my service pay, and so long as I am a member they can't arrest me. Lord, Stephen, we have been very much worse off. Shall we see if we can find any rabbits?'

  The moment that he stirred from his damp seat the spaniel sprang up and whimpered with eagerness, cast to and fro among the seedling asters, and vanished behind a row of myrtle: here she could be heard marking, at a stand, but she was a silent bitch and uttered nothing but an urgent whine.

  'That will be the gate leading to the common,' said Jack. 'I wanted you to see it in any event, a lovely piece of country.' They walked quickly through, and there on the path some thirty yards beyond there was a white scut bobbing along. Jack whipped up his gun; the rabbit made a somersault; the spaniel raced out and brought it back, breathing deep with satisfaction.

  'So this is the common,' said Stephen, looking over a broad expanse of rough pasture, fern-brake, scattered trees, with here and there a pool; the whole agreeably undulating, autumn-coloured, with a fine great sky over it, adorned
with the whitest sailing clouds. 'An elegant common too, so it is; but my ideas are all confused. I had supposed your father and his friends had enclosed it, to your great distress, when we were on the far side of the world.'

  'Certainly they inclosed Woolhampton common and it did grieve me. But this is another piece of common land called Simmon's Lea - it was always my favourite - and now they want to inclose it too. Over my dead body! Such fun I had here when I was a boy: mostly alone but sometimes with young fellows from the farms or the village - netting, ferreting, drawing the mere, poaching on Mr Baldwin's land, leading his keepers a rare old dance, wild-fowling in a hard winter - Heneage Dundas used to come down sometimes. And when the Blackstone came over in this part of the country we would always find a fox in the furze. Did you notice that old chap in the stable-yard?'

  'Certainly.'

  'That was Harding, a real country-man, born and bred in the parish - there are a score of Hardings here. He began as a kennel-boy with the Blackstone, where his father was huntsman; then he whipped-in for another pack, but having a nasty fall he took to being an under-keeper beyond Wimborne, and then after a spell as a water-bailiff he came to us as keeper, oh, well before I was born. I can't remember a time without him. I am no expert on birds, as you are very well aware, but what little I do know I learnt from him. This very path leads to a place where he showed me a nightjar's egg, lying there on the ground. Have you ever seen a nightjar's egg, Stephen?'