The Surgeon's Mate

  'It is not that damned legal business,' said Jack. 'Indeed, sometimes I almost welcome all the endless paper-work; it acts as a kind of . . . No. The truth of the matter is—why, the truth of the matter is—.' He gave a short account of it, and ended, 'So, do you see, I hope that if I am ordered abroad, she will not come back here; or at least if she does that she will not settle just at hand. She spoke of Winchester, in her last. You need not tell me I am a scrub, Stephen; I know it very well.'

  'I am not concerned with the moral issue,' said Stephen, 'but rather with what may usefully be done.' He was in fact surprised at such an abject degree of moral cowardice in a man whose physical courage could not be questioned: but, he reflected, he was not married; he did not know anything of domestic warfare at first hand, nor of the stakes involved, though he had some notion of the crushing nature of either defeat or victory and the extraordinarily powerful emotions that might come into play. He loved Sophie dearly, but he knew, and had long deplored, the jealous, possessive side of her character. The post-chaise bowled along: his mind drifted off to considerations on marriage, on the small number of successful unions he had known, and upon the probable balance of happiness and unhappiness, on the advantages and corresponding defects of other systems. 'Monogamy seems the only solution, alas,' he said to himself, 'although in a way it is as absurd as monarchy: Heaven forbid that we should fall into the errors of the Musulmans and Jews.'

  'I will just say this,' said Jack, breaking in on his thoughts, 'though I know it don't amount to much. I have sent all I could: at least she is not short of money.' A pause, and he added, 'That is why the delay over the Waakzaamheid is so uncommon awkward, coming at this time, when most of what I have is tied up. It affects you too, Stephen: you share in head-money and gun-money; and seeing that you are pretty nearly the only surviving warrant officer, it should be a tidy sum.'

  'I have a few observations to make,' said Stephen, brushing the Waakzaamheid aside. 'I offer them for what they are worth: they may be pertinent: they may be of some comfort to you. In the first place you must know that in women of an hysterical tendency, like the young person in question—for it would be idle, as well as uncandid, to feign that I do not know who she is—'

  'I named no names,' cried Jack. 'God damn me, Stephen, if I so much as hinted at her name.'

  'Ta, ta, ta,' said Stephen, waving his hand. 'In women of an hysterical tendency, I say, false pregnancies are by no means rare. All the gross symptoms of the nine-months disease are to be seen, the tumid belly, the suppression of the menses, even the production of milk; everything, except for the result. Secondly, I must tell you, as I told another friend not long ago, that even in the case of true pregnancy, rather better than twelve out of a hundred women miscarry. And thirdly, you are to consider the possibility of there being no pregnancy at all, true or hysterical. The lady may deceive herself; or she may deceive you. You would not be the first man to be cozened so. As I understand it, she has in fact made no very strenuous attempts to return, though several packets have gone to and fro. And it cannot be denied that a demand for money has a sadly untoward appearance.'

  'Oh come, Stephen, what a blackguard thing to say. I know her. She may be rather—she may not be very wise—but she is incapable of doing that. Besides, I have begged her not to come—not yet. I tell you, Stephen, I know her.'

  'Oh, as for knowing a woman . . . We read enter in unto her and know her: very well, and for the space of that coming together there is perhaps a true knowledge, a full communication; but after? It was a blackguard thing to say, I admit; but this is a blackguard world, in parts; and I should never have said it if I had not reasons to suppose that there might be some truth in it. I assert nothing, Jack, but the lady's reputation is very far from being perfect, as I know from another source, and I strongly advise you to take no decided step until you have some irrefragable independent evidence of her state—until you have really sifted the matter.'

  'I know you mean it very kindly, Stephen,' said Jack, 'but I do beg you will not say things like that. It makes me feel more of a scrub than ever. I really cannot behave like a thief-taker towards a person who has . . . London Bridge already,' he cried, looking out of the window.'

  A few minutes later they were at the Grapes, where they had stayed together years ago, when Jack was evading his creditors; for the Grapes lay within the liberties of the Savoy, a refuge for flying debtors. Stephen was a poor man; that is to say, he usually lived like a poor man, and an abstemious poor man at that; but he did allow himself some indulgences, and one of these was the keeping of a room in this small quiet comfortable inn all the year round. The people were used to his ways, and he was welcome whenever he came; he had cured Mrs Broad, the landlady and an excellent plain cook, of the marthambles, and the boots of a less creditable disease; he could do much as he pleased at the Grapes and more than once he had brought back an orphan child—a dead orphan child—for dissection, keeping it in his cupboard without adverse comment. Nor was there any comment now, when towards the end of a very late supper of codlings and humble pie he made an unseasonable call for a coach.

  'Do not stir, Jack. We will meet for breakfast, if God allow. Good night to you, so,' he said; and as he put on his greatcoat he observed with satisfaction that however Jack might protest Miss Smith's perfect innocence he had evidently digested at least some of his words as well as three quarters of the humble pie; he was now looking brighter by far, scarcely hangdog at all, and he was laying into the Stilton with a fine healthy appetite.

  Once again it was Sir Joseph who opened the door. 'Here you are at last! Come in, come in,' he cried. 'You have heard the news of poor dear Ponsich?' he asked, showing him upstairs.

  'That is why I came back,' said Stephen.

  'So I hoped. So I have been hoping ever since the telegraph brought your signal. Come, sit by the fire: I will move these papers—forgive the disorder—there is a mort of work in hand. The Americans are giving a great deal of trouble, in spite of your splendid work: half the Spaniards in Wellington's rear are Frenchmen at heart: things are not going well. And now there is this cruel news from the Baltic. If that Emperor of theirs is given a moment's respite he will bounce up like a jack-in-a-box, and all will be to do again. We have been longing for your return ever since the report came in.'

  'Do you know what happened?'

  'Yes. There was a lack of caution, I fear; and only too well do I remember Ponsich saying that he should take the bull by the horns. The sloop stood in, either under-estimating the carry of those great guns or trusting too much in her Danish colours, and before she could even hoist out a boat with a flag of truce they opened a very accurate fire with red-hot shot: one struck her magazine, and she was utterly destroyed. We should have sent a more experienced commander.'

  'He was a young man?'

  'Yes. Just made commander into the Daphne, a very gallant officer, but scarcely twenty-two. Yet even before we had the first rumours and then the confirmation of the disaster we had grown exceedingly uneasy. From the moment Prussia declared the island became an object of great significance, but now, with the political situation changing so fast, it has grown even more important—it may be the price of Saxony's defection. If only we could win the King over on to our side, that would deal the French a very heavy blow, perhaps even a fatal blow, but one of his prime conditions is that we should be able to protect him and Prussia by landing on the Pomeranian coast, to cut off the French in Danzig and elsewhere and to harry their left wing from behind. This we cannot do without Grimsholm. Are you acquainted with the Baltic, Maturin?'

  'Not at all,' said Stephen, 'though I have long wished to know it.'

  'Then pray study this map. Endless dunes all along here, you see,' he said, pointing at the eastern shore. 'Shallow water, and with the prevailing westerlies, a bad lee shore: few good places for landing apart from the estuaries, and the best of those few commanded by this damned island. A meeting of admirals unanimously agreed that even without its pr
otecting shoals, the bad holding-ground and the prevailing winds there was no possibility of taking Grimsholm from the west—from the side of the open sea. And although the senior Marine officer advanced a plan for an assault from the east, his scheme called for a powerful squadron of ships of the line to provide a covering fire, to say nothing of innumerable transports and bombs. His estimate of the probable losses was shockingly high; but even if the losses had been acceptable and the chances of success far greater than he assumed the plan was obliged to be dismissed: we do not possess the men-of-war and transports to carry it out. We simply do not know where to turn for ships. This wretched American war drains our resources, and every day we have complaints from Lord Wellington that we do not cooperate with him on the north coast of Spain, that the Navy is scarcely to be seen, and that the French squadrons in the Bordeaux stream and farther north may attack his dangerously extended lines of communication at any moment. We are terribly short of ships, Maturin; and in this war everything depends on them.'

  'Our new allies are little help, I collect?'

  'Not at sea. The Swedes and the Russians may be very good soldiers, but it is the sea that decides the issue here. Besides, at this juncture you can scarcely call Bernadotte an ally at all. As you know, he is a slippery customer, a fellow that could give Judas a hint or two; and at present his chief aim is to take our subsidies in order to lay hold of the unoffending Norway. In any case the Swedes have little in the way of a working navy, nor have the Russians. That is to say, they possess some ships, but they do not know how to manage them. Ever since the English officers withdrew when those countries became our enemies, they have been quite incapable of handling them: and in addition to that, they are desperately slow and stupid. There was a Russian admiral at the meeting, and he suggested that we should starve them out. It was represented to him that they had six months' victuals in the place. Starve them out with a close blockade, says he again, in his execrable French. Starve them out with a six months' close blockade, when we did not possess the ships to do it and when every day is of prime importance! When a week might change the whole face of the northern war! However, not all foreigners are fools. We have a brilliant young Lithuanian, a cavalry officer seconded to us from the Swedish service, and he has provided us with a great deal of fresh intelligence that will I trust enable us to have another go, if you will allow me that low expression, another go with a clearer view of the situation.'

  'Be so kind as to outline your clearer view.'

  'It is very curious. In the last weeks there have been violent changes, caused by differences between the groups on the island. I believe the details are in that yellow folder beside you, if you will be so good. Yes,' he said, putting on his spectacles, 'here they are. I remember the last time you asked me about these groups, these organizations, I could not tell you; but there they are—now I have them. The Catalan force on the island was made up of three main bodies, the Lliga, the Confederació, and the Germandat.' Stephen nodded: he knew them well. 'The Lliga, the Confederació, and the Germandat—you will forgive my pronunciation, Maturin—each under its own leader, and they under the command of a French colonel of artillery. This colonel was called away to the siege of Riga, and in the confusion of events he was not immediately replaced: great dissensions broke out on the island, and the leader of the most powerful group took advantage of the colonel's absence to assume command and to send the officers who disagreed with him to the mainland, where they have been drafted into the Spanish Legion. He now refuses to place himself under the orders of the colonel's replacement, a Major Lesueur, on the grounds of Lesueur's inferior rank and of some alleged irregularity in his appointment by Macdonald. He has written to General Oudinot, stating that as a lieutenant-colonel—I fancy he promoted himself—he would rather die than submit to the affront: we have his letter.'

  'Pray, Sir Joseph, what is the name of the now dominant group and of its commander?'

  'The group is the Germandat,' said Sir Joseph, passing the letter, 'and you will make out his name better from the signature than from my attempt at pronouncing it; he writes like a cat, in any case.'

  Ramon d'Ullastret i Casademon. In some degree Stephen had expected it: the word Germandat had already raised his heart, and perhaps a half-conscious sight of the handwriting had prepared him; but even so he stared at that familiar yet fantastic signature, his godfather's signature, for a long moment before it became real to him, before phantasm and reality could coincide.

  'You know the gentleman?' asked Blaine.

  It would have been strange if Stephen had not known him. The relationship was taken very seriously in the Catalonia of his childhood and he had spent many, many days in his godfather's house. En Ramon was a hero to him then: a most fervent patriot, one who traced his descent, in the female line, from Wilfred the Shaggy and who refused to speak Spanish unless he was, as he put it, abroad, that is to say in Aragon or Castile; a passionate hunter as much at home on the mountain or in the forest as any other predator, and one to whom the boy Stephen owed his first wolf, his first bear, his first imperial eagle's nest, to say nothing of the desman and the genet; an accomplished horseman; an untiring orator. The heroic light faded somewhat as Stephen advanced in years: En Ramon's pride was seen to contain a fair proportion of vanity; to a more objective eye his eager desire for pre-eminence, to lead rather than to be led, showed as something of a hindrance to the cause of Catalan autonomy; and a truer judgment detected more than a little headstrong foolishness in his godfather. But for all that Stephen retained a lively affection for him; his harmless delight in finery, his stickling for precedence, and even his more serious flaws did not amount to a great deal when they were compared with his courage, his delicate sense of honour, his generosity, and his unvarying kindness to his godson. Stephen could see him, pacing up and down the cold hall at Ullastret, his long knight of Malta's cloak sweeping from side to side as he declaimed a poem about the siege of Barcelona in his grandfather's time, when the Catalans and the English under Lord Peterborough routed the Spaniards, a poem which might have been more impressive, though it would certainly have been less touching, if the often-repeated Peterborough had not so consistently rhymed with mugger. 'I know him,' he said with a smile. 'How is his garrison usually supplied?'

  'Sometimes from Danzig, more often from farther down, by Danish vessels. We took one of them very recently—the day the dispatches were sent—but its only cargo was wine and tobacco; I am afraid they are in no need of munitions or essential food. Their store-houses are crammed with biscuit and salt provisions, and they have all the fresh water they could want. At a pinch they could hold out well over six months.'

  'Wine and tobacco may not be essential,' observed Stephen, 'but they are a wonderful comfort to the Mediterranean mind. Now this, I take it, is a plan of the fortification itself?'

  'Just so. And these are the emplacements. We owe the maps to the young Lithuanian I mentioned just now, a very active fellow and one of the most remarkable linguists I have met. He speaks all the Baltic languages, and although he admits that his Esthonian and Finnish leave something to be desired, his English is well-nigh perfect, and so as far as I can judge is his French. He is an engaging creature and I am sure you would find him useful: that is to say, if you will consent to go, after this inauspicious beginning. It is true that the undertaking is by no means as straightforward as I had supposed.'

  'Oh, clearly I must go,' said Stephen. 'There can be no question of that. Indeed, I have already taken the liberty of mentioning this possibility to my friend Aubrey: that is why I was so late—I stopped at his house for the purpose. I had much rather sail with him; I had much rather have him in the background than any stranger. He is a man of great experience, which as you so rightly observed is essential for an operation of this kind, a Ulysses by sea, whatever he may be by land; and he is at present both willing and able to go with me.'

  'I am sure we are very much obliged to you, dear Maturin,' said Sir Joseph, shaking his ha
nd. 'Very much obliged indeed. As for Aubrey, he would be ideal, always providing we can get round the difficulties of rank; sea-officers, you know, are wonderfully tenacious of their prerogatives, and the vessel we had in mind was only a sloop—but that is a mere detail. I am sure it can be dealt with.'

  'Tell me,' said Stephen, after a silence, 'did Ponsich impose any conditions when he agreed to go to Grims-holm?'

  'Yes, he did.'

  'I wonder whether they were the same as mine. For I should require a clear understanding that in the event of my succeeding in the negotiation, the Catalan troops should not be regarded as prisoners of war, but that they should be carried to Spain as free men with their arms and baggage, and treated with proper regards. I should in any case need to be able to promise this, and I should be most unwilling to be disavowed: in fact, I should insist upon a categoric assurance.'

  'I understand you perfectly. Of course, I cannot give the assurance: that must come from on high. But as Ponsich received an almost identical promise, I have no sort of doubt that it will be forthcoming.'

  'Good. Very good. Have you any more documents that I should see?'

  'Plans, plans and appreciations of the military position: nothing of real interest to you or me. Perhaps we might leave them until tomorrow, when the young man I have mentioned can explain his annotations: he has many talents, but writing a clear hand is not among them. In the meantime let us have a pot of coffee: I am longing to hear of Paris and your reception there.'