'If they were to watch all the households in Boston that are opposed to Mr Madison's war, they would need a couple of regiments.'
'But not all these households include an eminent citizen, the proprietor of five considerable vessels. I should be happy to give your friends the meeting, but I had rather it took place in some discreet tavern or coffee-house.'
'I own more than that,' said Mr Herapath. 'However, you may be right; it may be wiser. I honour your caution, Dr Maturin. It shall be so.'
In order that it might be so he walked Stephen home a roundabout way that took them past the harbour. He pointed out two of his barques, tied up against the wharf, their tall masts reaching up until they were no more than a faint trace in the fog. 'That is Arcturus,' he said, 'seventeen hundred tons burden, and the other Orion, a little better than fifteen hundred. If it were not for this damned war, they would be plying to the Far East and back, out by the Cape for Canton, and home by the East Indies and the Horn, with three thousand tons of silks and tea and spices, with china under all; but much as I respect the gentlemen of the Royal Navy I cannot afford to offer them prizes of that value. So here they lie, with nothing but a couple of ship-keepers in them. Joe!' he shouted.
'What now?' called Joe from out of the fog.
'Mind your fenders.'
'I am a-minding of them, ain't I?'
'God's my life,' said Herapath to Stephen, 'to speak to the owner so, and a black man at that! It could never have happened in the old days. With his democratical notions, that wicked fellow Jefferson has rotted the moral fibre of the whole country.'
Jefferson, who had prompted Joe's reply, lasted until they reached a tavern, a quiet, respectable place frequented by shipmasters, which would do very well for their meeting, and then, having impressed the place on Stephen's memory, Herapath led him up the hill, through a series of alleys. 'How well you know your way,' said Stephen.
'It would be strange if I did not,' replied Herapath. 'My sister Putnam has been in Dr Choate's care these many years, and I visit her every new moon. She is a werewolf.'
'A werewolf,' said Stephen to himself, and he turned it over in his mind until they went up a flight of steps and the familiar building came in sight. At the gates of the Asclepia they uttered expressions of mutual esteem, and Mr Herapath left his best compliments for Captain Aubrey if, in view of his son's conduct, they should be acceptable, together with an offer of any assistance that the Captain might stand in need of. 'I should dearly love to show my gratitude,' he said, 'for although Michael may not be all I could wish, he is my son, and Captain Aubrey preserved him from drowning.'
'Perhaps you would like to walk in for five minutes?' said Stephen. 'The Captain is not well enough for a longer visit, but I believe it would do him good to see you. He loves to talk of ships with those who understand them, and in spite of the circumstances to which you refer, he retains an affectionate memory of your son.'
The Captain was asleep when they came into the room: asleep, with a look of deep unhappiness on his face, and the face was pallid, unhealthy, the long-established tan faded to a nasty yellow, the breathing laboured, with a râle that Stephen did not like to hear at all. 'What you need, my friend,' he said to himself as they stood there, 'is a victory, even quite a small victory, by sea; otherwise, you will eat your heart out—pule into a decline. Failing that, I believe we must try more steel and bark . . . steel and bark.'
'Why, Stephen, there you are,' said Jack, opening his eyes, wide awake at once, as he always was.
'So I am, too; and I have brought Mr Herapath with me, the father of my assistant who behaved so very well during our epidemical distemper. Mr Herapath also served the King in the former war, and he is the owner of several eminent ships, two of which you have remarked upon—they can be seen from this window here.'
'Your servant, sir,' said each, and Jack went on. 'Those two fine barques with the Nelson chequer and pole topgallantmasts, the finest in the harbour?'
Mr Herapath made his acknowledgments for Jack's preservation of his son, and they fell to talking of the ships: Herapath had made several voyages; he loved the sea, and he was a more amiable person here than in his own house. Their conversation was animated, and free.
Sitting by the window and looking at the fog, Stephen drifted far away: in less than four and twenty hours Diana would be here. Images of her moving, walking across the room, riding, setting her horse at a fence, flying over with her head held high. A distant clock struck the hour, followed by several more.
'Come, gentlemen,' he said.
'What a fine fellow!' cried Herapath as Stephen led him down the stairs. 'The very type of the sea-officer when I was young—no coldness, no pride, nothing like those army men. And a prodigious fighting-captain! How well I remember his action with the Cacafuego! Oh, if only Michael could have been like him . . .'
'I liked that man,' said Jack. 'He did me good. He knows his ships from stem to stern, and he has sound political ideas: he hates a Frenchman as much as I do. I should like to see him again. How did he ever contrive to have such a son?'
'Your own may turn into a book-worm or a Methody parson,' said Stephen. ' 'Tis just as the whim bites, no more; for as you know, one man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him think. But tell me, Jack, how do you feel, and how did you spend your afternoon?'
'Pretty well, I thank you. I saw the Chesapeake come in, one of their thirty-eights; a beautiful ship. I suppose there must have been fog out there too, beyond the bay—anyway, she passed our squadron and came in, in fine style. She is lying beyond the President, near the ordnance quay: you will see her when it clears.' While Stephen took his pulse he told him more about the Chesapeake and about the progress on the other frigates, and then he said, 'By the way, I had a luminous idea. Those Navy Department fellows are all to seek. I have been working it out with an almanack and I find that at the time I am supposed to have brought their Alice B. Sawyer to, Leopard was tearing along at twelve or thirteen knots with the Dutchman in her wake. It is materially impossible that I should have brought anything to. I am quite easy in my mind.'
'Bless you,' said Stephen. And in one of his very rare bursts of confidence he went on, 'I wish I could say the same. Diana will be in Boston shortly, and I am wondering what course to pursue—whether to inflict myself upon her, perhaps unwelcome, perhaps untimely; or whether to affect a frigid indifference and let her make the first step, always provided that she should choose to do so, and that she knows of our being here.'
'Lord, Stephen,' cried Jack, but no more, until recollecting himself he sat up and reached for a letter on his bedside table. 'Speaking of the devil, here is a note for you, perhaps it is from her. Our capture was in the papers. Though I must not say the devil,' he added, after a pause. 'She behaved very handsomely, writing home to tell Sophie we were alive, and I shall always think kindly of her.'
It was not from Diana. Louisa Wogan asked dear Dr Maturin to call on her; she would be alone any time after ten o'clock, and she had a great deal to say to him. But before Stephen had time to make any comment, Dr Choate and his patients, two doors away, struck into the triumphant opening bars of the Clementi C major quintet, playing with a sustained virtuosity and joy that kept their listeners silent until the sombre disenchantment of the finale.
Mrs Wogan was as who should say alone, since she did not count the occasional presence of her slaves, and Michael had taken Caroline to see her grandfather. She had, rather touchingly, dressed for the occasion, and Stephen noticed an emerald ring of surprising size and beauty.
Their conversation was long, and on Louisa Wogan's side remarkably frank. She reminded Stephen of the growth of their friendship, of his distress at the prospect of war between England and the United States, of his support for liberty in Ireland, Catalonia, Greece, and any country where freedom was threatened, of his abhorrence of the English way of pressing American sailors, and of his kindness to the American whalers on Desolation Island—they were, she
said, much attached to him. She then went on to say that, as Stephen knew, she had been educated in France and had lived much in Europe; she had been intimately acquainted with some of the most interesting and influential men in Paris and London, and for this reason she had been able to advise certain American representatives abroad. She possessed the languages, local information, and introductions that were valuable to them; they had consulted her, and they had even given her confidential missions to perform. Their aim had always been the maintenance of peace and of their country's liberty. It was in the course of one of these missions that she had fallen foul of the English law: that was why she was sent to Botany Bay. The English had wanted to hang her, but fortunately she had friends who saved her neck. Botany Bay was an amazingly savage punishment for what in fact amounted to very little, yet at least she had thought she was shot of those odious British intelligence people: but not at all—their malice pursued her even aboard the Leopard. Did Stephen remember some papers in French that were supposed to have been found among a dead officer's belongings and that the Captain gave to Michael Herapath to write out? Stephen had a vague recollection of such a 'task.
'You would not remember, would you?' she said, with an indulgent smile. 'You were too busy with your stormy petrels.' But then her face grew dark, and she said, 'They were completely false. I have a pretty good idea of who fabricated them, with the help of the people in London—and indeed in my own heart I am quite sure he is one of them, though I did not suspect him at the time, with his open, rather stupid seadog airs. Most of them are Freemasons, you know. Anyhow, it was my obvious duty to get copies, and so I did: and when I went off in the whaler there they were in my bosom, and I was so pleased and proud.' She began to laugh, low and then fuller and fuller, so amused at the backward sight of herself, ridiculously pleased and proud of her poisoned documents. Sally looked in, grinned, and withdrew. Stephen contemplated Mrs Wogan, and Mrs Wogan's heaving bosom: she might be an inept intelligence-agent, but he admired her dash and courage, he loved her acute, her wonderfully rare sense of humour, he had a real affection for her, and, at present, a distinct carnal inclination for her person. The long, long chastity of these recent voyages weighed upon him; he was particularly conscious of her scent, her supple roundnesses, her propinquity on this shabby but convenient sofa. Yet something told him that this was not the moment; that if in former times he might have risked no very severe rebuff, he certainly risked it now. He neither stirred nor spoke.
'But it was no laughing matter,' she said at last. 'When I reached the States with my papers, everyone was delighted, amazed and delighted. But then dreadful things began to happen—I will not go into all that now—but Charles Pole was hanged and Harry Johnson very nearly lost his place. He fairly hates Captain Aubrey and the Leopard.'
'The Mr Johnson who knows Diana Villiers, and who is to come so soon?'
'Yes. They always take the first floor of Franchon's hotel; it is being cleared out for them at this very minute—such a remue-ménage. I long for you two to meet. I am sure Harry Johnson would value your advice; he would love to consult you. When we parted, and when you gave me those lovely furs, I so very nearly told you about him. I wish I had.'
'I should be happy to meet Mr Johnson,' said Stephen.
'I shall take you to see him tomorrow.'
Emerging from Wogan's warren, Stephen reached a broad street, full of citizens in greatcoats and fur caps, chewing tobacco: there was one, however, a middle-aged man in a sheepskin cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, who was not doing so, and as Broad-brim paced soberly between the jets Stephen asked him the way to Franchon's hotel.
'Come, friend, and I will show thee,' said the American. 'Thou dost not seem to feel the cold,' he observed, as they walked along.
'I am not insensible to it, however,' replied Stephen, 'having recently come from a warm climate.'
'There,' said the American, stopping opposite a large, white-painted, elegant building with balconies running across its front. 'That is the house of the Whore of Babylon. Thou art neither so young nor so foolish as to enter into it: but if thou dost, friend, mind thy poke.'
'He that is down needs fear no fall,' said Stephen. 'He that is low, no pride. My poke is empty, and no man can rob me.'
'Art in earnest, friend?' said the American, looking at him attentively.
Stephen nodded: but then, seeing the man's hand go to his pocket, he cried, 'No, no, I have plenty in a drawer at home. Thank you, sir, for having shown me the way; and thank you for what I believe to have been your kind intent.'
Stephen stood there for a while after the American had left him. All things being considered, the Whore seemed to do herself pretty well. A comfortable place, no doubt, though somewhat richer than he would care for for himself; the kind of place where he might eat if invited by wealthy friends, but not alone. The first floor was indeed being turned inside out; pieces of furniture, carpets, rugs, appeared on the long balcony, moving from room to room; and judging by the passionate cries that accompanied every movement the hotel was run by French people. Good food and wine, in all likelihood, if one did not mind the cost. It would suit Diana perfectly.
As he watched he saw Pontet-Canet come out, pause on the sidewalk and call up to a man on one of the upper balconies, 'Yankee Duddle,' he cried, and laughed aloud. 'Yankee Duddle, souviens-toi.'
Stephen melted into the crowd and hurried off to his meeting at the quayside tavern, where, as he had expected, nothing awaited him at this stage but circumspection, generous sentiments of no binding quality, and vehement abuse of Mr Madison. The only solid information he received was that Constellation, a thirty-eight-gun frigate of 1265 tons, cost $314,212 to build at Baltimore, whereas the Chesapeake, also of thirty-eight guns, cost only $220,677 at Norfolk. 'Sixty-one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine pounds two shillings,' said Mr Herapath, looking at his notebook, 'and a dead waste of public money.' For his part Stephen was perfectly noncommittal: who could tell what private animosities there might be among these merchants, to say nothing of the possible agent provocateur?
As he walked back to the Asclepia his mind ran chiefly upon Mrs Wogan. She intended to present him to Johnson as her new recruit: 'consultant' was the term she used, nothing so coarse or injurious as 'spy'—adviser in the cause of peace. He had expressed nothing but a general interest, but her wishes had outrun her judgment, and she was almost sure of him. Mistakenly, as it happened, since he did not intend to play the double agent. He had seen it done, sometimes with spectacular results. But it was not for him, even if he had the necessary skill, which he doubted. There was the danger of being caught by friendship on the other side or by scruples, and above all there was the obligatory extreme depth of dissimulation and he was sick of it, sick of it all. He was sick even of simple dissimulation, dissimulation at one level, and he longed to be shot of it, to be able to speak openly to any man or woman he happened to like: or to dislike, for that matter. Yet he would have to see Johnson . . . Again, just as pretty Wogan had now persuaded herself that he would be an adviser, so in the past her partiality for him had blinded her, so that Jack appeared as the villain of the piece. A belief that was apparently shared by her superiors and that would account for many things: their unwillingness to let him go, their retention of his papers, the odd business about the Alice B. Sawyer, which might be a blundering first attempt at a trumped-up charge. He wondered what they might possess in the way of scruples: some intelligence services he had known let their desire for revenge and further information carry them very far indeed: Bonaparte's agents had no limits at all. He twitched his hands, still crooked and twisted from a French interrogation many years ago.
As far as the nations went, he did not think that there was the least parallel between the United States and France. The States had an active and vocal public opinion—he had read their papers, mostly written in a steady shriek of indignation, with astonishment—whereas the extremely efficient tyranny in France had almost entirely gagged it, and i
n any case the whole concept of government and of public morality was so entirely different. Yet intelligence services were something else again, little worlds of their own, often inhabited by strange, extreme beings: he knew something of the French and Spanish; he had seen the English in the Dublin of 1798, and the riding-school in Stephen's Green, where suspects were put to the question. Infamous creatures, most of the questioners; but even honourable, humane men were capable of almost anything for unselfish motives. On the other hand, the effects of the bomb that Wogan had so proudly carried home would have been felt primarily in France; it was essentially directed at Bonaparte, and only incidentally at the Americans, as his potential allies. The American agents would have suffered in their pride, not in their persons.
He found Jack Aubrey sitting on a chair by the window, surveying the harbour with his telescope. 'You have just missed Mr Andrews,' he cried, on seeing Stephen. 'If you had been a few minutes earlier, you would have caught him: indeed, I wonder you did not run into him on the stairs.'
'Who is Mr Andrews?'
'He is the new agent for prisoners of war, and he came to deliver a protest. He came from Halifax in that slab-sided ketch by the red buoys, and he brought some papers and this note for you: no letters from England yet, at least not for us.'
The note was from Stephen's colleague in Halifax: to all appearance it contained no more than a brief account of the death of a common friend; in fact it told him that Jean Dubreuil was in Washington. Jean Dubreuil was an important man in Paris and he was one of those Stephen had hoped to kill or disable with his bomb. He put the letter back in his pocket and attended. to Jack, who was telling him about the blockade.
'Africa is laid up,' he was saying, 'and Belvidera sprung her mainmast a little above the partners; so we only have Shannon and Tenedos in Massachusetts Bay. Just those two and a tender, a sloop, to watch their President, Congress, Constitution, and now Chesapeake. To be sure, Constitution is laid up and Chesapeake is alongside the sheer-hulk, getting in a new main and mizzen, but President crossed her royal yards this afternoon and Congress is pretty well ready for sea—she has her powder in, as I told Mr Andrews.'
The Fortune of War Page 18