The Fortune of War (19 page)

'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 move 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 Asciepia; 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 R.N. 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 crossly. '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?'

'I confess all,' cried Jack. 'I shifted backstays, I slept out of my ship, I kept false musters, I failed to submit my quarterly returns, I allowed stove casks to be thrown overboard, and I blasted Alice B. Sawyer from the water with both my broadsides, treble-shotted. I throw myself upon the mercy of this honourable court.'

'Note that,' said Brenton to one of his assistants; then, 'Captain Aubrey, do you recognize these papers?'

'Of course I do,' said Jack, in an ordinary voice. 'The one is my commission and the others - let me have a look at them.' They looked very like the packets that Admiral Drury had asked him to take home, together with some of his own victualling notes. The smaller dark man brought the sheaf, and Jack, who had noticed that he was writing, plucked the notebook from his hand and read 'The prisoner, apparently in liquor, acknowledges that he is Captain Aubrey, states that he is a Roman Catholic and makes similar allegations about the British Board of Admiralty; admits that when in command of the Leopard he fired both broadsides at the brig Alice B. Sawyer.'

The door gave a sudden jerk, butting against Winslow's chair: Winslow leapt up with a tremulous howl: the door opened wide, and Mr Bulwer of the Royal Navy appeared.

'Bulwer,' cried Jack, 'I am delighted to see you. Now, gentlemen, you must excuse me: there is an urgent letter that I must finish.'

'Not so quickly, Captain Aubrey; not so quickly, if you please,' said Mr Brenton. 'I have a whole raft of questions yet. You, sir,' - to Bulwer - 'you may wait in the lobby.'

Jack had made an awkward movement in shaking Bulwer's hand; his arm hurt damnably. The peevishness of convalescence rose in a sudden tide: and in any case these were dreary lunatics, not nearly so quick or lively as Butcher Bates; Sir Jahleel Brenton was not a patch on the Emperor of Mexico, and this was a dreary game

- he was tired of it. 'Mr Bates, there,' he cried. 'Friend Zeke, Brother Zeke.' The huge mad glowing face instantly showed at the door, excited, all alive, growing rather wild, a white line of spittle between its grinning lips. 'Good Mr Bates, pray show these gentlemen the door. Show them the way to Mrs Kavanagh: she will give them all a comfortable warm draught.'

'Jack,' said Stephen, coming in with a parcel, 'I have bought us woollen undergarments, just one set apiece

- the winter is passing fast - and bonnets with flaps, to protect the ears. Why, Jack, what's amiss?'

'I must tell you some damned bad news,' said Jack. 'Did you hear the bands playing all over the town, and the people cheering, this afternoon?'

'How could I miss it? I thought they were celebrating the capture of the Java all over again: it was much the same din, with three bands playing "Yankee Doodle" and three "Salem Heroes, Rise and Shine".'

'They were celebrating a victory, true enough; but it was a different victory, a fresh victory. Their Hornet has sunk our Peacock. Engaged her off the Demerara river and sunk her in fourteen minutes.'

'Oh,' said Stephen. There was a curious stab at his heart: he had not known how much he felt for the Navy.

'You may say what you like,' went on Jack, in a flat, dogged voice. 'You may say their Hornet - you remember her, Stephen, the little ship-sloop that was lying in San

Salvador - that their Hornet had a two hundred and ninety-seven-pound broadside and the Peacock only one hundred and ninety-two, but it is still a very bad business. To sink her in fourteen minutes! They killed young Billy Peake, too, and knocked out thirty-seven of his men, as against only three Americans. No wonder they are thumping on their drums. And anyhow, the whole point of war is to bring more guns to bear on your enemy than he can bring to bear on you; or to point them better. The whole point is to win: it is not a game. Bulwer brought the news, so upset he could hardly speak; and he showed me this paper.'