Desolation Island. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ She brought a single sheet, folded, sealed, and addressed in that well-known hand, together with a number of bills from her desk, tied in a roll with a piece of ribbon. Stephen put the letter into his pocket and looked at the accounts: he had never suspected Diana of moderation, had never supposed that she would live within her income nor within any other income, but even so some of the items startled him.

      ‘Ass’s milk,’ he said. ‘Mrs Villiers is not in a consumption, ma’am; and even if she were, which God forbid, here is more ass’s milk than a regiment could drink in a month.’

      ‘It is not for drinking, sir,’ said Mrs Moon. ‘Some ladies like it to bathe in, for their complexions: not that I ever saw a lady less in need of ass’s milk than Mrs Villiers.’

      ‘Well, now, ma’am,’ said Stephen after a while, writing down the sums and drawing a line under them, ‘perhaps you will be so good as to give me a brief account of how Mrs Villiers came to leave so abruptly; for the apartments, I know, were taken until Michaelmas.’

      Mrs Moon’s account was neither brief nor particularly coherent, but it appeared that a gentleman, accompanied by several strong-looking attendants, had asked for Mrs Villiers; on being told that she could not receive a gentleman unknown to her, he had walked upstairs, ordering the porter to stay where he was in the name of the law – the attendants produced truncheons with little crowns on them, and no one dared move. She would never have known they were Bow Street runners, but for some of them guarding the back door and coming into the kitchen: they had told the servants what they were, and they said the gentleman was a messenger from the Secretary of State’s office, or something like that – something in the government line. High words were heard upstairs, and presently the gentleman and two of the runners led Mrs Villiers and her French waiting-woman down and into a coach; they were very polite, but firm, and they desired Mrs Villiers not to speak to Mrs Moon or anyone else; and they locked her door behind them. Then the gentleman came back with two clerks, and they took away a quantity of papers.

      Nobody could tell what to make of it, and then on the Thursday Madam Gratipus, the waiting-woman, suddenly came back and packed up their things. She spoke no English, but Mrs Moon thought she could make out something about America. Most unfortunately Mrs Moon was not at home later that afternoon, when Mrs Villiers came in with a gentleman she called Mr Johnson, an American gentleman, by his old-fashioned, twangling way of speaking through his nose, though very well dressed. It seemed that she was uncommonly cheerful, laughed a great deal, gave a turn about her apartments to see that everything was packed, took a dish of tea, tipped the servants handsomely, left this note for Dr Maturin, and so stepped into a coach and four, never to be seen again. Had said nothing of her destination, and the servants did not like to ask, she being such a high lady and apt to fly out at the least impertinence or liberty, though otherwise esteemed by all – a most open-handed lady.

      Stephen thanked her and gave her a draft for the total sum, observing that he never carried so considerable an amount in gold.

      ‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs Moon. ‘That would be the height of imprudence. Not three days since, and in this very street, a gentleman was robbed of fourteen pounds and his watch, not long after sunset. Shall William call a chair for you, sir, or a coach? It is as black as pitch outside.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Stephen, whose mind was far away.

      ‘Should you not like a coach, sir? It is as black as pitch outside.’

      It was also as black as pitch inside: he knew that the letter in his pocket contained farewells, his dismission, and the ruin of his hopes. ‘I believe not,’ he said, ‘I have only a few steps to go.’

      These steps took him to a coffee-house on the corner of Bolton Street; a very few steps, as he had said. Yet what a quantity of thoughts formed in his mind before he pushed the door, sat down, and called for coffee: thoughts, ideas, recollections forming infinitely faster than the words that could, however inadequately, have expressed them and tracing the history of his long connection with Diana Villiers, a relationship made up of a wide variety of miseries interspersed with rare intervals of shining happiness, but one that he had hoped, until tonight, to bring to a successful end. Yet just as his mind had been too cautious to admit full confidence in his success, so now it was unwilling to see the proof of total failure. He placed the letter on the table and stared at it a while: until it was opened, the letter might still contain a rendezvous; it might still be a letter that fulfilled his hopes.

      Eventually he broke the seal. ‘Maturin – I am using you abominably once again, although this time it is not altogether my fault. A most unfortunate thing has happened that I am not at leisure to explain; but it appears that a friend of mine has behaved most indiscreetly. So much so, that I have been molested by a gang of wretches, of thief-takers, who searched all my few belongings and my papers, and questioned me for hours on end. What crime I am supposed to have committed, I cannot tell; but now that I am at liberty, I am determined to return to America at once. Mr Johnson is here, and he has seen to the arrangements. I was too hasty in my resentment, I see; I should never have flown back to England like a simple passionate headstrong girl – these legal matters – and they are going better – call for patience and deliberation. I shall not see you again, Stephen. Forgive me, but it would not answer. Think of me kindly, for your friendship is very dear to me. DV.’

      In a brief flare of rebellion, anger and frustration he thought of his enormous expense of spirit these last few weeks, of the mounting hope that he had indulged and fostered in spite of his judgement and of their frequently violent disagreements; but the flame died, leaving not so much an active sorrow as a black and wordless desolation.

      When he was walking down the street to the coffee-house, his eye, long accustomed to such things, had automatically taken notice of the two men following him. They were still there when he came out, but he was utterly indifferent to their presence. They preserved him, however, from an ugly encounter in the Green Park, where he wandered among the trees in a deep abstraction, his feet slowly guiding him eastwards to his inn, where he sank straight into a sleep as dull and deep as lead.

      He was spared the slow waking and reconstruction of the day before by Abel, the boots, thundering at the door with the news that there was a messenger who would take no denial, an official messenger who must put his letter into the Doctor’s hands.

      ‘Let him come up,’ said Stephen.

      It was the briefest note, requesting or rather requiring Stephen’s presence at the Admiralty at half past eight o’clock rather than at the appointed time of four. The tone was unusual.

      ‘Is there an answer, sir?’ asked the messenger.

      ‘There is,’ said Stephen, and he wrote it with an equally cold formality: ‘Dr Maturin presents his compliments to Admiral Sievewright, and will wait upon him at half past eight this morning.’

      At a quarter to nine the Admiral was still waiting for Dr Maturin and indeed at nine o’clock itself, for Stephen, hurrying across the parade, had met the former chief of naval intelligence, Sir Joseph Blaine, a keen entomologist and a sure friend, who had just come from an early meeting at the Cabinet Office. They had a hasty word, for Stephen was already late, contracted to meet later in the day and so parted, Stephen to keep his appointment, and Sir Joseph to walk in St James’s Park.

      ‘Hey, hey, Dr Maturin,’ cried the Admiral, as he came into the room, ‘what the Devil is all this? The Home Office people have picked up a couple of trollops that spend their time gathering information, and they have found your name in their papers.’

      ‘I do not understand you, sir,’ said Stephen, looking coldly at the Admiral. This was the first time he had seen him without the actual head of the department, СКАЧАТЬ