The Reverse of the Medal (24 page)

It was in this loose-box, which had once sheltered Jezebel, Jack's candidate for the Oaks, that they ate their supper, lit by a stable-lantern. They had, if not a vast stretch of time, then at least a very great number of events to communicate, and they were rarely silent. One of the difficulties was to know just how much had already been told by letter - which letters had arrived and which had miscarried.

'The very last I had from you,' said Jack, and as he spoke he realized that he was running fast into uncharted shoaling water. However, there was no help for it now, and in a somewhat constrained voice he went on, looking at his plate, 'was in Barbados. A copy of one you sent to Jamaica too, I believe.'

'Oh yes,' cried Sophie. 'The one that kind, attentive young man offered to carry. And so he found you, then? I am so glad, my dear.' She looked at him, hesitated, and then flushing a little she went on, 'I thought him so particularly amiable, all one could wish in a young man, and very much hope he will give us a long visit as soon as ever his duties allow. I should very much like the children to know him.'

By eleven o'clock on Monday morning the last pieces of the disrupted pattern fell into place, and Ashgrove Cottage, new-painted, new-floored, its brass, glass, pump-handles and all metalwork gleaming with a somewhat aggressive naval cleanliness, looked very much as Jack had wished Sophie to see it when she arrived.

At noon Babbington's men were regaled with roast beef and plum duff, and then packed, reasonably sober, into two waggons to take the Tartarus to sea on the evening tide; and now Jack was leading Sophie about the wood beyond the shrubbery to show her the improvements he had in mind.

'This is the path that Stephen calls the boreen,' he observed. He has some very strange expressions, poor dear fellow. How I hope I did not offend him, by taking notice of his way of saying Cato: sometimes he is a little touchy.'

Stephen had driven in to Portsmouth on Sunday to hear Mass in a Romish chapel there, and he had not reappeared, only sending Padeen back with a message to the effect that he found himself obliged to go to London and begged to be excused.

'I am sure you did not, my dear,' said Sophie. She was morally certain that Stephen found her deeply affectionate sympathy more painful than any other, and she was wondering how this could be phrased or indeed whether it could be said at all when they saw Killick hurrying towards them from the house.

Killick was perfectly used to having the Captain pursued for debt and to foiling the bums, and there was a concerned, intelligent, knowing look on his face that instantly brought some of these episodes to mind.

'Is it the bailiffs?' asked Jack.

'It is a rum cully, sir,' said Killick, 'more like a gent. And sir,' he said in a low, anxious voice behind his hand, 'it's no good tipping them the go-by. There's a party of heavyweight coves each end of the lane and behind, and they look precious like Bow Street runners.'

'I will deal with him,' said Jack, smiling, and he walked into the house. There he found a calm, self-possessed man with a folded paper in his hand. 'Good day, sir,' he said. 'I am Captain Aubrey. What may I do for you?'

'Good day to you, sir,' replied the man. 'Might we step into a private room? I have been sent from London on a matter that affects you most particularly.'

'Very well,' said Jack, opening a door. 'Please to mind the paint-work. Now, sir, what is this matter you are speaking about?'

'I am concerned to say that it is a warrant for your arrest.'

'The Devil it is! At whose suit?'

'It is not an arrest for debt, sir. It is an arrest by warrant.'

'On what charge?' asked Jack, amazed.

'Conspiracy to defraud the Stock Exchange.'

'Oh, is that all?' said Jack with great relief. 'Good Lord, I can very easily explain my dealings with them.'

'I am sure you can, sir. But in the meanwhile I must ask you to come with me. I trust you will not make my duty more unpleasant than it has to be - I trust you will not oblige me to place a gentleman of your quality under restraint. If you will give me your word not to attempt an escape, I will delay the execution of this warrant for half an hour so that you may make your arrangements. But then we must set off for London: I have a carriage waiting at the door.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

'I wish I had better news for your return,' said Sir Joseph, 'but at times one's friends are sadly disappointing.'

'At others, however, they exert themselves to a degree that even the most sanguine could never expect,' said Stephen.

'Not at all, not at all,' said Sir Joseph, smiling and waving his hand. 'Yet the fact of the matter is that Holroyd will not appear for Captain Aubrey. I regret it extremely, for Holroyd is one of the few counsel who are well with Lord Quinborough, who is to conduct the trial: Quinborough would not bully him, as he bullies so many counsel, and he might even treat his client decently. Furthermore, Holroyd has an excellent way with a jury -everybody says he is the very man for the case. His refusal vexes me, I must admit, for I had not thought he could refuse my direct request, he being under some obligation to me. Indeed, he looked both shabby and mean when he said that he was not master of his time - that with the trial being hurried on so soon he could not do the defendant justice, being deeply engaged, and a variety of other shuffling excuses.'

'They did not convince you, I collect.'

'No, they did not; and until the afternoon I could not understand why he was making them. But then I dined at the Colebrooks', where I heard that one of the judges had died unexpectedly and that the choice of his successor was in the balance, with Holroyd and a couple of others as the most likely candidates. Since the ministry has set this whole unusually rapid and zealous prosecution on foot with the sole intention of damaging the Radical opposition - of destroying General Aubrey and his friends - Holroyd does not wish to indispose the Chancellor by appearing as the champion of the General's son at this decisive moment. Nor does he wish to indispose Lord Quinborough, who is as furiously anti-Radical as the Chancellor and who is also a member of the Cabinet: it is odd that a judge should be a member of the Cabinet.'

'Jack Aubrey is so far from being a Radical that he hates the name of even a moderate Whig,' said Stephen, who did not give a curse for the composition of the Cabinet. 'When he thinks of politics at all, which may happen twice a year, he is a high Tory.'

'But he can be shown to be the son of a Radical - a damned noisy Radical too, perpetually on his feet in the House, denouncing the ministry - the son of a Radical and at least in this instance the associate of Radicals: so it makes little odds what he may say once or twice a year.'

'Is there any news of the General?'

'He is said to have gone to ground in Scotland, but there is no certainty about it. Some people say he has shaved and hidden himself among the Repentant Magdalenes at Clapham.'

'Do not his parliamentary privileges cover him?'

'I know they cover practically everything except treason and felony, and I do not imagine rigging the market amounts to either; but I dare say he means to make assurance double sure, to lie low, risk nothing, and rely on his son and his friends to take all the blame. He is a horrible old man, you know.'

'I have met General Aubrey.'

'To go back to Holroyd: he did produce one piece of advice. Since the entire defence lies in identifying the man in the post-chaise who started the lie, he said we should apply to an independent thief-taker and he gave me the name of a man who had been useful to him in several cases, the best of his kind in London, often employed by the insurance companies. Since time presses, I took it upon myself to set him at work directly, although his

fees are a guinea a day and coach-hire, and I have him in the kitchen at this moment. You would not object to seeing him?'

'Faith,' said Stephen, 'I have hob-nobbed with the hangman for the sake of an interesting corpse before this, and I am certainly not going to jib at a thief-taker.'

The thief-taker, whose name was Pratt, looked like a discreet tradesman of the middle sort, or possibly a lawyer's clerk; he was conscious of the general dislike for his calling, so close to that of the common informer, and he stood diffidently until he was asked to sit down. Sir Joseph told him that this gentleman was Captain Aubrey's particular friend, Dr Maturin, who had been obliged to attend a patient in the country: Pratt might speak quite openly in his presence.

'Well, sir,' said Pratt, 'I wish I had better news for you; I am morally certain how the case lies, but so far I have nothing that will stand up in a court of law. Of course the whole thing is a put-up job, as we say: that was clear from the moment I saw the Captain. Yet even so I made the necessary checks: I found there was no parliamentary draftsman by the name of Ellis Palmer or anything like it, nor any member of the learned societies except a Mr Elliott Palmer who is close on eighty years of age and confined to his house by gout. So when I had satisfied myself in London I went down to Dover. At the Ship they remembered the Quaker and the flash cove and the row about the post-chaise, but nobody had taken much notice of Mr Palmer; they did not remember having seen him before and they could not give me any clear, reliable description. Howsomever, I had better luck at Sittingbourne, where they recalled how particular he had been about his wine and where the daughter of the house said there was something odd about him, because although he had only been there once he talked and behaved like a man who had known the place for years. hcr description matched the Captain's - it is very important to have at least two versions - and I came back to town with some notion of the kind of man I should look for and the kind of place where I might find him -an educated chap - person, I mean - perhaps connected with the bar or even the Church, perhaps an unfrocked parson - likely to frequent the better gambling places -and I travelled back in a chaise with the same post-boy that had driven the Captain and Mr P, dropping the Captain at his club and Mr P in Butcher Row. That is just after Hollywell Street, sir, towards the City.' This aside was for Stephen, who reflected 'My clothes were made in London, my half-boots also; I have not uttered five words, and I am tolerably good at preserving an impassive countenance; yet this man has detected that I am not a native. Either I have been flattering myself these many years, or he is exceptionally acute.' 'And then, sir,' Pratt went on, now addressing himself more to Sir Joseph, 'the post-boy, having seen his fare walk off northwards up Bell Yard, wheeled his chaise down Temple Lane, called a street boy to water his horses in Fountain Court, and went back to the mutton-pie shop on the corner by Temple Bar, where the hackney-coaches stand: it is open all night. He was standing there with some of the drivers he knew, eating his second pie, when he saw Mr P on the other pavement, walking very tired with his little portmanteau and papercase. Mr P crossed Fleet Street, coming from north to south, you follow me, sir, and hailed the first coach. The post-boy did not hear where he went, but the next day I found the driver, who remembered having taken a gentleman from Temple Bar to Lyon's Inn very early in the morning. Lyon's Inn.' Pratt's eye rested on Stephen for a moment, but Stephen happened to know that obscure, out-of-the-way series of courtyards, once the haunt of Chancery lawyers, and he said 'I believe Mr Pratt began by observing that we have nothing yet in the way of legal proof - that we are not approaching a crisis, but rather reviewing the present position - so perhaps I will retire for a moment.' He smiled apologetically at Sir Joseph, adding 'I travelled all night.'

'Of course, of course,' cried Blaine. 'You know the way.' Stephen knew the way. He also knew that a lamp was kept perpetually burning in Sir Joseph's dim, book-lined privy: he took a cigar from his case, broke it in two, lit one half at the lamp (he was no hand with a tinder-box) and sat there drawing the smoke in deep. Somewhere far below him in the house he heard the grinding of a coffee-mill, no doubt fixed to the kitchen wall from the way the vibration travelled, and he smiled: the present tobacco and the prospective coffee soothed at least the very top of his mind, that part which had been so harassed by an exceptionally disagreeable night's journey in a lurching coach with drunken fellow-travellers. The rest of it could not so easily be relieved: he knew little of the English law, but he was almost certain that Jack Aubrey was undone; he was intensely anxious about his friend Martin, upon whom he had operated, perhaps too late, for a badly strangulated hernia and whom he had left comfortable but still in grave danger; and then he had had a particularly trying time with Sophie when he called in at Ashgrove Cottage. He was very deeply attached to her, and she to him; but in this instance her tears, her unconcealed distress and her need for support were something of a disappointment. Of course, exhaustion from her long journey and the sudden overthrow of her happiness accounted for a great deal, but it seemed to him that Diana, or at least his idealized Diana, would have shown more courage, more fortitude, more manliness. Diana might well have used foul language, but surely he would never have heard the faintest echo of Mrs Williams from her. And surely Diana, having failed to bribe or bamboozle those sent to arrest her husband, would have followed him with a change of stockings and a couple of clean shirts in spite of his direct command, instead of wringing her hands. For a while he twisted the knife in his wound, thinking of Diana as a tigress; then, after a final draught that made his head swim, he threw his hissing stump away and walked downstairs.

'Mr Pratt,' he said as they sat drinking their coffee, 'you began by saying that as soon as you saw Captain Aubrey you were convinced that all this was a put-up job. May I ask what led you to this conclusion? Did he produce irrefragable arguments that I am unacquainted with?'

'No, sir, it was not so much what he said as the way he said it. He was so amused at the idea anyone should think him capable of inventing such a rigmarole - he had never heard of a time-bargain or selling forward until Palmer explained - he was sure Palmer would turn up - such a good fellow, and an excellent judge of wine - they would have such a laugh when it was all over. In my calling, sir, I have heard a good many denials and explanations, but never one like that. It would get him nowhere with a jury at the end of a long trial, with him bewildered in a court-room and badgered by the prosecution and maybe the judge - certainly the judge in this case - but man to man in that two-pair front at the Marshalsea - why, as the Romans say, you would give him the blessed sacrament without confession. In my line you get a nose for these things, and I had not listened to him five minutes, no nor two, before I knew he was as innocent as a babe unborn. But dear me, gentlemen, lambs to the slaughter ain't in it: I have rarely seen the like.'