The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ left it behind, and came in his slippers? Was there ever such wickedness?’ cried Mrs Fuller, who considered it a Christian’s duty to wear wool next the skin in all seasons, and to keep dry. ‘However will he change?’

      Jedediah came into the kitchen with the valise and a white packet: he said, ‘I brought the young gentleman’s cloak-bag and this here: under the saddle-flap it was, and might have fallen out any minute of the day or night.’ He put the folded parchment down with some severity.

      ‘Oh yes,’ said Tobias; ‘I forgot it. It is my indenture, Jack, with my plan of the alimentary tract of moles on the back of it.’

      It was clear to Mrs Fuller that they were both demented. The rain had soaked into their wits, and the only way to drive it out again was with warmth, dry clothes, soup, a boiled fowl, a leg of Welsh mutton and the better part of a quart of mixed cordials.

      Thacker’s coffee-house was the meeting-place for naval officers, just as Will’s was for poets and literary men; and Jack, whenever he was free and in London, divided his time between the two. He had seen Admiral Vernon, the hero of Porto Bello, in the first and Mr Pope in the second, and it was difficult to say which had caused him the livelier delight.

      He was at Thacker’s at this moment, with Tobias by his side, waiting for Keppel: at present his face had no lively delight upon it, however, but rather the traces of fatigue, alarm and apprehension. The fatigue was caused by having shown Tobias the sights of London, or at least all those that could be crammed into seven uninterrupted hours of very slow creeping about shop-lined streets, tomb-lined churches, the danker monuments of antiquity and the never-ending alleys of the booksellers’ booths around St Paul’s: Tobias was not used to anything much larger than Mangonell Bagpize, and his amazement was now, in a fine (if muddy) summer’s day, as great as ever he could have wished; but he was utterly careless of the London traffic, and the effort of keeping him alive among the carts, drays, coaches and waggons had perceptibly aged his friend. Jack had known London from his earliest days, and it was difficult for him to marvel, to stand stock-still in the mainstream of impatient crowds to marvel for ten minutes on end, at a perfectly ordinary pastry-cook’s window – ‘What unheard-of luxury, Jack; what more than Persian magnificence – Lucullus – Apicius – Heliogabalus.’ He did marvel, of course, in order not to damp Tobias’ pleasure; but it too was an ageing process. The itinerant bookseller who visited Mangonell market always gratified Tobias with a sight of his wares, although Tobias never bought any of them (this was not from sordid avarice, but because Tobias had never possessed one farthing piece in all his life) and Tobias unquestioningly assumed that London booksellers were equally good-natured: and then again, Tobias, until Jack begged him to stop, said ‘Good day’ to every soul they met, in a manner that would have passed without comment in the country, but which in London was another thing altogether.

      But sight-seeing with Tobias, though it left its mark, was as nothing, nothing whatsoever, compared with taking Tobias to see his patron.

      The Navy, apart from its administrative side, is a tolerably brisk service; those members of it who go to sea have it impressed upon their minds, both by circumstances and by the kindly insistence of their superior officers, that time and tide wait for no man; and Jack was a true sailor in his appreciation of this interesting truth. Within minutes of waking up he had sent a note to his influential cousin; the answer had come back appointing a given hour, and tearing Tobias from the belfry of St Paul’s in Covent Garden, which he had penetrated in order to view the mechanism of the clock (he asserted that it was the earliest illustration of the isochronic principle) and in which he had lingered to look into the ecclesiastical bats. Jack had brushed him, thrust him into a presentable pair of shoes and had conducted him to Mr Brocas Byron’s house. The head of the family was not quite as wise as the Byrons and Chaworths could have wished; indeed, he was what Jack, in an excess of poetical imagery, had termed ‘potty'; and his relatives had persuaded him to leave all matters of political judgment, voting and patronage, to Cousin Brocas.

      Cousin Brocas was no phoenix himself, but at that time the family was not particularly well-to-do in the matter of brains, and at least Cousin Brocas was always on the spot: he was the member for Piddletrenthide (a convenient little borough with only three voters, all of them kin to Mrs Brocas) and he never left London for a moment during the sessions of Parliament. He was rather pompous, and he stood more upon his rank than his noble cousins, but he and Jack had always got along very well together, and, having performed the introductions, Jack left Tobias with Cousin Brocas in entire confidence that they would spend half an hour in agreeable conversation while he stepped round to see whether Keppel had arrived yet, and to leave a message if he had not.

      Judge, then, of his perturbation when upon his return the footman told him that ‘they was a-carrying on something cruel in the libery,’ and the sound of further disagreement fell upon his ears, accompanied by the rumbling of heavy furniture. He darted upstairs: he was in time to prevent Tobias and his patron – or perhaps one should say his intended patron, or his ex-patron – from coming to actual blows, but only just; and Tobias was obliged to be dragged away, foaming and vociferating to the last.

      This accounted well enough for Jack’s depressed appearance; but his mind was filled with apprehension, too. He had a haunting certainty that Keppel would have met with some comparable disaster in his designs upon the vacancies in the Centurion; and while upon the one hand he assured himself that it was better to remain in a state of hopeful ignorance, upon the other he watched the clock and the door with increasing impatience.

      The great hand of Thacker’s clock – a wonderfully accurate clock – crept to the appointed minute, and Keppel walked in, accompanied by his particular friend Mr Midshipman Ransome. Keppel was small, neat and compact; he had been to a wedding and he was dressed with surprising magnificence in a gold-laced hat, an embroidered waistcoat with jewelled buttons and a crimson coat encrusted with gold plait wherever it could be conveniently sewn, and cascades of Mechlin lace at his throat and wrists: Ransome was a big, leonine fellow with a bright blue eye, not unlike Jack, but heavier and older; his kind-looking face was much marked by disagreements with the King’s enemies and his own, as well as the small-pox; and he wore a plain blue coat.

      They stood for a moment in the doorway, looking over the big room with its many boxes: they saw Mr Saunders, the first lieutenant of their own ship, the Centurion, pulled off their hats and bowed very humbly; they saw a lieutenant of the Gloucester, a Marine captain belonging to the Severn and a group of black coats which included Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the Wager and the chaplain of the Pearl; to all of these they bowed with suitable degrees of humility, and then advanced to Jack and Tobias.

      It took some little time to make Tobias understand that he was being introduced: and as he had the unfortunate habit of closing one eye and screwing his pursed mouth violently to one side whenever he was roused from a train of reflection, he did not make quite as favourable an impression as he might have done otherwise. Ransome moved perceptibly backwards, and Keppel said, ‘Your servant, sir,’ in a reserved and distant tone.

      Keppel, in any case, was far from easy. ‘I am very sorry to bring you the news,’ he said. ‘Upon my word, I regret it extremely. But the fact is – the fact is, my dear Byron, the vacancies have gone to a couple of – Irishmen. ‘

      ‘Wery nasty undeserving swabs, I dare say,’ said Ransome, with the intention of bringing comfort, ‘if not Papists, too.’ He spoke in a hoarse whisper, having no other voice left, other than a penetrating bellow, for use only at sea.

      ‘Oh,’ said Jack, horribly disappointed, but smiling with what appearance of nonchalance he could summon. ‘Well, it was prodigious kind to try; and I am much obliged to you.’

      ‘But that ain’t all,’ said Keppel, with still greater embarrassment, after a long and awkward pause. ‘My father, СКАЧАТЬ