Desolation island Read online

  "For the best part of a year," said Sir Joseph, with the unuttered addition, "If I don't sink him first."

  Stephen nodded, and after a while he said, "Certainly I was vexed by his blundering attempt at manipulating me: the guileless sea-dog lulling a suspected double agent by telling him what steps have been taken, for all love! That I should be attempted to be gulled with such sad archaic stuff: it would not have deceived a child of moderate intelligence. He spoke of his own mere motion, did he not? The alleged Home Office was so much primitive naval cunning?"

  Sir Joseph sighed and nodded.

  "Of course," said Stephen, "a moment's reflection would have told me that. I cannot conceive how my wits came to desert me so. But the Dear knows they have been wandering these many days

  Gomez's reports."

  Stephen had left them in a hackney-coach, as Sir Joseph knew very well: the classic lapse of an overtired, overworked agent. "They were recovered within twenty-four hours, the seals unbroken," he said. "No harm was done. But it is true that you are not in form. I told poor Warren . . . that unpardonable error with . . . that the Vigo trip was too much for any man, immediately after Paris. My dear Maturin, you are knocked up: you must forgive me for saying so, but you are quite knocked up. As a friend I see you better than you see yourself. Your face has fallen away; your eyes are sunk; you are a wretched colour. I do beg you will seek advice."

  "Certainly my health is but indifferent," said Stephen, tapping his liver. "I should never have flown out upon the Admiral had I been in the full possession of my faculties. I am engaged upon a course of physic that allows me to carry on from day to day, but it is a Judas-draught, and although I can stop the moment I please, it may play me an ugly trick. I suspect it of having clouded my judgement in a case where I lost my patient, and that weighs upon me cruelly.' Stephen very rarely confided in any man, but he had a great liking and respect for Sir Joseph, and now, in his pain, he said, "Tell me, Blaine, just how far was Diana Villiers involved in this affair? You know the importance I attach . . . you know the nature of my concern."

  "I wish with all my heart I could make a clear-cut reply; but in all honesty I can give you no more than my impression. I think Mrs Wogan did impose upon her to a large extent; but Mrs Villiers is no fool, and a clandestine correspondence rarely assumes the form of foolscap documents forty pages long. And then the precipitate departure - chaise and four all night and day to Bristol - a six-oared boat and the rowers promised twenty pounds a head to overtake the Sans Souci lying windbound in Lundy Roads gives some colour to the notion of an uneasy conscience. Yet I am inclined to think that the haste was the fact of Mr Johnson, moved by a purely personal motive. Not that as an American he might not also be interested in information of value to his own country: though we have not established any connection whatsoever between him and Mrs Wogan, apart from this perhaps fortuitous common acquaintance with Mrs Villiers and, of course, a common interest in America. But at all events it is the United States that have benefited from these activities, not France. Mrs Wogan was their Aphra Behn. Their Aphra Behn," he repeated, finding no response.

  "Aphra Behn, the lewd woman that wrote plays in the last age?" said Stephen at last.

  "No, no: there you are out for once, Maturin," said Sir Joseph with great satisfaction. "You have fallen into the vulgar error. As to her morals, I have nothing to say, but she was first and foremost an intelligence agent. I had some of her Antwerp reports in my hands not a week since, when we were looking through the Privy Council files, and they were brilliant, Maturin, brilliant. For intelligence, there is nothing like a keen-witted, handsome woman. She told us that De Ruyter was coming to burn our ships. It is true that we did nothing about it, and that the ships were burnt; but the report itself was a masterpiece of precision. Yes, yes."

  In the long pause that followed Stephen considered Sir Joseph as he sat there musing by the fire, his fine, kindly face, more like that of a country gentleman than of an official who had spent most of his life behind a desk, set in an amiable expression; and it occurred to him that somewhere in that keen, capacious mind a thought was forming: 'If Maturin is in fact reaching the end of his usefulness, we had better get him out of the way before he makes some costly mistake.' The thought would no doubt be tempered with genuine regard, friendship, and humanity, even by gratitude; it would probably contain a clause to the effect that Maturin might yet recover, and that in his powers, his connections, and his unrivalled knowledge of the situation in his own particular sphere might be put to service; but as things stood, with regard to many factors, including the position of the Admiralty, the thought even without any qualification, would be a reasonable and indeed proper thought in the official part of Sir Joseph's mind. A well-run intelligence service must have its system of dealing with those who were past their best or who had fallen by the wayside and who yet knew too much: a knacker's yard run with more or less brutality according to the nature of the chief; or at least a temporary limbo.

  Sir Joseph felt the pale eye upon him, and it was with a certain uneasiness that he returned to Aphra Behn. "Yes. She was a brilliant agent, brilliant, And we might call Mrs Wogan the Behn of Philadelphia. She too turns an elegant verse, and she writes a pretty play; letters are as good a shield as natural philosophy, perhaps even better. But unlike Mrs Behn she has been caught, and she is to be packed off on the first ship bound for New Holland, lucky not to be hanged. I never like to see a woman hanged, do you, Maturin? But I was forgetting - all is grist to your grisly mill, and you have your female subjects too. She is not to be hanged, because the D of C, as our Admiral would put it, has made interest for her: it seems they were bed-fellows not long since. For the same reason she is to be treated with certain regards - a corner to herself aboard, perhaps a woman, and no servitude when she arrives at Botany Bay, there to spend the rest of her days. Botany Bay! What a goal for a naturalist, if not for an adventuress! Maturin, you need, you deserve, a break, a holiday to set you up. Why do not you accompany this ship? To keep your hand in, you can plumb the lady's mind; it contains a vast deal more than was revealed to us, of that I am very sure, and what she has to say may resolve your doubts about Mrs Villiers. To make my suggestion more tempting, I may observe that the ship in question is to be commanded by your friend Aubrey, though he don't yet know this part of his duty. The Leopard, for the Leopard is her name, was already under orders for Botany Bay to deal with the unfortunate Mr Bligh, of whose predicament you are aware; when she has done this, and has delivered Mrs Wogan, together with some people we shall add as a blind, she is to Join our force in the East Indies, where, with your spirits quite recovered, you will be of the utmost service. Pray do consider of it, Maturin."

  Stephen's longing, temporarily allayed by food, had returned with even greater force. lie left the parlour for his bedroom and his draught, and returning he said, "Your Mrs Wogan, now: you speak of her as a second Aphra Behn, and therefore as a woman of shining parts."

  "Perhaps I was going a little far: I should have added qualifications for time and place; The Americans' intelligence is but an infant plant - you will remember the ingenuous young man that came with their Mr Jay - and native shrewdness, even where it exists, is no substitute for some hundred years of practice. Yet even so, this young woman had been well tutored; she knew what questions to ask, and she learnt many of the answers. I was surprised to find that there was no French connection: none, at least, that we could fix upon. But my comparison really does not hold, for whereas the Mrs Behn I meet in our files shows a most remarkable sagacity, and a grasp of the situation that would do honour to any politician, Mrs Wogan seems to me a somewhat simple lady at bottom, relying upon intuition and dash whenever she is required to go beyond her plain instruction, rather than upon any considerable fund of knowledge."

  "Please to describe her."

  "She is between twenty-five and thirty, but she still retains her bloom: black hair, blue eyes: about five foot eight, but looks taller, since she stand
s so straight - magnificent carriage of her head. A slight but undeniable figure; though these things, you know, can be improved by stuffing. A thoroughly genteel air, nothing bold -or flaunting. Writes like a cat, with every third word underlined, and cannot spell. Speaks excellent French, however, and sits a horse to admiration: no other education that can be detected."

  "You might almost be describing Mrs Villiers," said Stephen, with a painful smile.

  "Yes, indeed. I was so struck by the likeness that I wondered whether there might be some relationship; but it appears there is none. The details of her birth escape my mind for the moment, but they are all in the files and I shall see that you have them. No relationship, I believe; yet there is indeed a striking resemblance.' He might have added that in Mrs Wogan's case too there was a hopeless lover, a young man who hung on the borders of her life; a young man so peripheral that he had been set free. Those who took him up found no hint of guilty knowledge, and it was thought better to let him go: Sir Joseph retained only a recollection of the deep unhappiness and the somewhat unusual name of Michael Herapath. "Yet when I speak of her apparent simplicity,"he went on, "I may be one of that numerous company of men who have been deceived by women. There is more in this than we know at present, and the skein is well worth the untangling. As I say, it would keep your hand in, Maturin, and it might even yield a Jewel. Pray do consider of it."

  During his Journey down to Hampshire Stephen turned it over in his mind, but only with the surface of his mind, the rest being taken up with -longing, with a continuous, painful evocation of Diana's person, voice, and movement, a statement of her moral imperfections, her levity and her extravagance; then with a keener longing still, and an absurd tenderness. As for Sir Joseph's proposition, he did not care one way or another and in any case he knew that there was little choice - virtually none for him. lie would go, and if past experience were still a guide, the naturalist within would revive in time. He would make vast collections; huge areas would open to his view; his heart would beat again at the sight of new species, new genera of plants, birds, and quadrupeds; and the Indies might provide some of those encounters with the enemy that wiped out everything but the extreme excitement of the contest. But was past experience still a guide? The stimulation of London and of all his meetings there died away as he travelled, and it was succeeded by an indifference greater than he had ever known.

  In this grey state of mind he arrived at Ashgrove Cottage, and there, since his indifference did not extend to his friends' concerns, he was instantly aware that something was amiss. His welcome was as kind as ever he could have wished, but Jack's weather- and war-beaten face was even redder than usual; he was rather larger than life and taller, and there were traces of recent storms in their constrained behaviour to one another. Stephen was not very much surprised to learn that the new filly had shown a strange inability to run faster than others after the first three furlongs, and that she was given to crib-biting, jibbing, kicking, rearing, and windsucking; nor that a gang of Kimber's workmen had stoned his buzzard's nest; nor that Kimber himself was in disfavour for having made an unexpected and very costly revision of his estimates; but he was quite startled when Jack took him aside and told him that he was in a most hellfire rage with the Admiralty - was about to throw up the service - his flag be damned. fie was used to their blackguardly ways - had suffered from them ever since he had first worn the curse of God - but had never supposed they would presume to use him so - had never supposed they could be such -s as to tell him, without a moment's warning, that Leopard was to be used for transportation.

  "To a landsman,"said Stephen, "this might seem a ship's prime function, its true raison d'etre."

  "No, no; what I mean is transportation - ' cried Jack.

  "So I had understood." the transportion of convicts. Convicts, Stephen! God's my life! I am sent a letter in a damned crabbed hand, telling me that I am to expect a tender from the hulks - the hulks, in the name of all that's pure with a score or so of assorted murderers that I am to receive aboard and carry to Botany Bay. Orders are sending to the Yard for the building of a cage in the forepeak, and accommodation for their keepers. By God, Stephen, to expect an officer of my seniority to turn his ship into a transport, and to play the turnkey! I am writing them such a letter! You must help me to some epithets, Stephen. And what really angers me is, that Sophie doesn't seem able to grasp how monstrous their conduct is. I tell her it Is a most improper proposal, but I wonder at their effrontery, and that I shall stick to Ajax, the new seventy-four, a fine ship, with no flash Newgate cullies lurking in the hold. But no. She sighs; says I know best, of course; and then five minutes later there she is, crying up the Leopard, and what a delightful, interesting voyage it would be, and so comfortable, with all my old shipmates and followers. Anyone would think she wished me away - out of the country as soon as possible. For Leopard(I's orders are advanced, and she sails on Saturday sennight."

  "To an impartial mind, it is a little strange to see your dignity so offended by a score of prisoners. You, who have so willingly stuffed your holds with French and Spanish prisoners, to take such exception to a few of your own countrymen, whom you have always rated much higher than any foreigner, and who in any case would never be brought into contact with you, being under the conduct of proper persons.

  "They are completely different. Prisoners of war and gaolbirds are completely different."

  "The deprivation of liberty is still the same: the subhuman almost servile status. We have both been prisoners of war, and prisoners for debt. We have both sailed with a number of men guilty of the most atrocious crimes. For my part, I have not found my dignity much affected. You, however, are to be the only judge of that; yet I will observe, Jack, that a bird in the hand waits for no man, as you so often say yourself, and that the Ajax is at present little more than a naked keel. Who knows, by the time she floats her occupation may be gone. She may sail on mere visits of courtesy, saluting the French colours with a blank discharge and a friendly cheer?"

  "You do not mean there is danger of peace?" cried Jack, turning quick. "That is to say, I mean the blessings of peace are very capital, nothing finer - but one likes to be warned."

  "I do not. I know nothing about it. I only put it to you that the Ajax will not swim for another six months at the least; that there is something to be said for making hay when no clouds obscure the sun; and that it is your rolling stone that gets the worm."

  "Yes, yes; very true," said Jack gravely. "But that brings me to another point. Six months would be very useful to me in the mining line, to get things in train, you understand. But far more important than that . . . you remember warning me about the Wrays?"

  Stephen nodded.

  "I could hardly credit it at the time, but you were right. I went to Craddock's while you were away: the judge was standing by, and only Andrew Wray, Carroll, Jenyns, and a couple of their friends from Winchester sat down. I watched very close, after what you had said, and although I could not make out what they were at, I saw that every time Wray drummed his fingers that way he has, I lost. I waited half a dozen times to make sure: the sixth time round there was a very pretty penny on the table, and the signals were uncommon clear. I imitated them, by way of taking notice of it to Wray, and told him I did not choose to play on those terms. "I do not understand you, sir,"says he, and I believe he was on the point of making some fling about fellows that did not love to lose, but thought better of it. I told him I should explain more clearly whenever he wished: though upon my word I should have been hard put to it to tell who was receiving his signals. It might have been any man there. I should be sorry if it had been Carroll: I like him. But I must say he looked tolerably green about the gills. They all looked tolerably green about the gills, if it comes to that; but not a man jack of 'em spoke up when I asked whether any other gentleman wished to make an observation. It was an unpleasant moment, and I took it very friendly in Heneage Dundas to come quick across the room and stand by me. A damned unpleasan
t moment."

  So Stephen Maturin imagined: but his imagination, though lively, fell far short of the full unpleasantness - Jack Aubrey's furious anger at finding himself a flat,- a cony, a pigeon to be plucked, not to mention his honest rage at losing a very large sum of money: the silence in that big room, filled with men of considerable rank and standing, when one of the most influential among them was openly, and in a very powerful voice, accused of cheating at cards. The silence in which many, having taken in the whole gravity of the situation, looked discreetly away; and which was broken by artificial conversation as Jack and Dundas walked out.

  "Now Wray is on a tour of the dockyards, looking into corrupt practices, and he will not be back for some considerable time. I did not hear from him before he left, which is strange; but he cannot possibly sit down under this, and I do not wish to be out of the country when he returns. I do not wish to have the look of running off."

  "Wray will not fight you,"said Stephen. "If he let twelve hours go by after such an affront, he will not fight. He will have his satisfaction some other way."

  "I am of your way of thinking: but I do not choose to let him whitewash himself by saying that I am not to be found."

  "Oh come, now, Jack, this is carrying it too far by a very long way, so it is. The world in general knows that service orders take precedence over everything else: such an affair may certainly stand over for a year or more. We both know cases of the kind, and the absent man in no way reflected upon at all."

  "Even so, I had much rather give him all the time he needs for his tour and his . . . "

  The arrival of Admiral Snape and Captain Hallowell to eat their mutton with the Aubreys cut the conversation short, but it was not a great while before Stephen was on the subject once again. Sophie had whispered him to join her early, and as the three sailors were intent upon fighting St Vincent over again, shot by shot, it was not at all difficult for him to come away to the drawing-room while they were setting nutshells up in line of battle, and to come away with the certainty of a long, quiet interval before him.