The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ he is twice as willing to oblige you. And of course if you have a good many friends and relatives in the House, you are more important still, because if you were all to vote against the administration together you might bring them down and turn the ministers out. And then it is even better to be in the House of Lords, if you can manage it, because, do you see, a minister might decide that it was worth while offending a member of the Commons’ house, for at the next election he may not come in again, but a peer, once he is in, is in for the rest of his life, and he could do you an ill turn for years and years. But it is all pretty complicated, and not at all as simple as that.’

      ‘How do the people without interest get along?’

      ‘They have to rely on merit.’

      ‘Does that answer?’

      ‘Well,’ said Jack slowly, ‘valour and virtue are very good things, I am sure: but I should be sorry to have to rely upon them alone, for my part.’

      Tobias made no reply, and they rode for a long way in silence through the rain. Jack looked at him from time to time, and regretted that he had been quite so talkative about the squalid side of political life.

      ‘You’re pretty shocked, an’t you?’ he said at last.

      ‘No,’ said Tobias. ‘I had always read that the world was like that. What I was thinking about was your poem which begins Historic Muse, awake’

      ‘Were you indeed?’ said Jack, very pleased.

      ‘Yes. I was wondering whether “Spain’s proud nation, dreaded now no more” was quite right: “now” could mean now, and thus confuse the reader’s mind.’

      ‘Oh no, Toby. Think of what goes before –

      ‘Twas in Eliza’s memorable reign

      When Britain’s fleet, acknowledged, ruled the main,

      When Heav’n and it repelled from Albion’s shore

      Spain’s – and so on.

      It was then that it was not dreaded now, do you see? I have composed a great deal more of it, Toby.’

      Oh.’

      ‘Should you like to hear it?’

      ‘If you please.’

      ‘I will begin at the beginning, so that you lose none of the effect.’ ‘I know the beginning, Jack,’ said Toby piteously, ‘by heart.’ ‘Never mind,’ said Jack hurriedly, and in a very particular chant he began,

      ‘Historic Muse awake! And from the shade

      Where long forgotten sleep the noble dead (I am sorry that

       don’t rhyme better)

      Some worthy chief select, whose martial flame

      May rouse Britannia’s sons to love of fame …’

      The verse lasted until they were so close to London that the increased traffic made declamation impossible; but still the rain fell with the same steadiness, and Jack said, as they climbed Highgate Hill, ‘I am very sorry that it has not cleared up: I wanted to show you London from here – you can see it all spread out, and the river winding, and millions of lights in the evening. Besides, I thought that you would like to hear some lines I wrote about the prospect while we were actually looking at it. It is in praise of London, considered as a nest of singing-birds – poets, you know.’

      ‘A pretty wet nest, Jack?’

      ‘Of course, it was not like this in the poem,’ said Jack, reining in and peering through the darkening veils of drizzle, ‘but flowery, with meads and zephyrs. Nymphs, too. But I dare say you would like to hear it anyhow, and take the view on trust.’

      As Jack reached the last few lines he quietly loosened the flaps on his saddle-bow and brought out a long pistol, which he cocked: at the sound a lurking pair of shadows in the trees behind them walked briskly off.

      ‘We had better look to our priming,’ he said, sheltering his pistol as well as he could from the rain. ‘There are a terrible lot of thieves about. We don’t run much risk, being mounted, particularly as the rain usually keeps the poor devils indoors; but Cousin Charles got into a by-lane when he was trying to avoid the Holloway turnpike – you can just see it from here, right ahead – and half a dozen of them got about him and pulled him off his horse. They dragged him off towards Black Mary’s Hole, over the way there’ – pointing through the soaking twilight – ‘and used him most barbarously.’

      It was completely dark by the time they reached the town, and it must be confessed that Tobias was sadly disappointed with it; he had expected something splendid, definite and comprehensible, not perhaps so distinct as a walled city with light and splendour inside the gates and open country outside, but something not unlike it. As it was, they rode through a vague and indeterminate region of incompleted new building interspersed with scrubby fields and then (seeing that Jack always took the most direct line possible) through a series of narrow, dirty, ill-lit back streets.

      ‘Here we are,’ said Jack, as his horse stopped in the narrowest, dirtiest and smelliest of them all, with no light whatever. ‘Jedediah! Jedediah!’ he shouted, banging on the door.

      After a long pause, while the rain dripped perpetually from the eaves and somewhere a broken gutter poured a solid cascade into the street, there came a slow shuffling noise from within and a gleam of light under the door.

      ‘Who’s there?’ asked a voice.

      ‘Hurry up, Jedediah, damn your eyes,’ called Jack, beating impatiently.

      ‘Oh, it’s Master Jack,’ said the voice to itself, and with a rumble of bolts and chains the door opened. He had been expected all day, but as usual Jedediah was amazed to see him, and holding the lantern high he exclaimed, ‘Why, bless my soul, it’s Master Jack. And Master Jack, you’re wet. You’re as wet as a drowned rat.’

      ‘It is because of the rain,’ said Jack. ‘Now take the horses in and rub them down, and tell Mrs Raffald I shall be back to sleep. We are going round to Mrs Fuller’s now. Come on, Toby, climb down.’

      ‘The other young gentleman is wet, too,’ said Jedediah, taking the horses.

      At the beginning of the journey Jack had assumed that Tobias would stay at his family’s house, but he had run up against his friend’s delicacy, and knowing Tobias’ immovable obstinacy in such matters, he had proposed a very simple alternative. Mrs Fuller, who had been in the family for a great many years, now let lodgings for single gentlemen in Little Windmill Street, just round the corner from Marlborough Street: she received Jack with a hearty kiss (having been his nurse at one time) and told him that he was wet, disgracefully wet.

      ‘Wet through and through,’ she said, tweaking his coat open and plucking at his shirt with that strong authority that belongs to her age and sex. ‘Come now, take it off this minute, or you will catch your death. You too, young gentleman: come into the kitchen at once. Nan, come and pull the gentlemen’s boots off. Good Lord preserve us all alive! he has come out in his slippers.’ Mrs Fuller gazed upon Tobias with unfeigned horror. ‘Where is his cloak-bag?’ she asked Jack, as if Tobias could not be trusted to give a sensible answer.

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