Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

‘Colonel Burke,’ said Jack, ‘as I understand it, the offence was not given in public. I believe any expression of regret would meet the case. I have a great esteem for your principal, and I say this out of consideration for him; pray do all you can - my man is deadly.’

Burke gave him a broad stare. ‘So is mine,’ he said in an offended tone. ‘He dropped Harlow like a bird, in Hyde Park. But even if he were not, it would not signify. He don’t want pluck, as I know very well; I should not be here, else. Of course, if your man chooses to put with a blow, and turn the other cheek, I have nothing more to say. Blessed are the peacemakers.’

Jack commanded himself; there was little hope of piercing through Burke’s deep stupidity, but he went on. ‘Canning must certainly have been in wine. The least admission of this - a general expression - will answer. It will be satisfactory, and if need be I shall use my authority to make it so.’

‘Confine your man to his quarters, you mean? Well, you have your own ways in the Navy, I see. It would scarcely answer with us. I will carry your message, of course, but I cannot answer for its coming to anything. I have never had a principal more determined to give satisfaction in a regular way. He is a rare plucked ‘un.’

In his journal Stephen wrote, ‘At most times the diarist may believe he is addressing his future self: but the real height of diary-​writing is the gratuitous entry, as this may prove to be. Why should tomorrow’s meeting affect me in this way? I have been out many, many times. It is true my hands are not what they were; and in growing older I have lost the deeply illogical but deeply anchored conviction of immortality; but the truth of the matter is that now I have so much to lose. I am to fight Canning: made as we are, it was inevitable, I suppose; but how deeply I regret it. I cannot feel ill-​will towards him, and although in his present state of confused passion and shame and disappointment I have no doubt he will try to kill mc, I do not believe he feels any towards me, except as the catalyst of his unhappiness. For my part I shall, sub Deo, nick his arm, no more. Good Mr White would call my sub Deo gross blasphemy and I am tempted to throw down some observations on the matter; but peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere - I must find my priest and go quickly to sleep: sleep is the thing, sleep with a quietened mind.’

From this sleep - but a sleep troubled by hurrying, disjointed dreams - Jack woke him at two bells in the morning watch; and as they dressed they heard young Babbington on deck singing Lovely Peggy in a sweet undertone, as cheerful as the rising day.

They came out of the cabin, into the deathly reek lying over the Hooghly and the interminable mud-​flats, and at the gangway they found Etherege, M’Alister and Bonden.

Under the peepul-​trees on the deserted Maidan a silent group was waiting for them: Canning, two friends, a surgeon, and some men to keep the ground: two closed carriages at a distance. Burke came forward. ‘Good morning, Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘There is no accommodating the affair. Etherege, if you are happy that there is light enough, I think we should place our men; unless, of course, your principal chooses to withdraw.’

Canning was wearing a black coat, and he buttoned it high over his neckcloth. There was light enough now - a fine clear grey - to see him perfectly: perfectly composed, grave and withdrawn; but his face was lined and old, colourless.

Stephen took off his coat and then his shirt, folding it carefully. ‘What are you doing?’ whispered Jack.

‘I always fight in my breeches: cloth carried into a wound makes sad work, my dear.’

The seconds paced out the ground, examined the pistols, and placed their men. A third closed carriage drew up.

With the familiar butt and the balanced weight in his hand, Stephen’s expression changed to one of extreme coldness: his pale eyes fixed with impersonal lethal intensity upon Canning, who had taken up his stance, right foot forward, his whole body in profile. All the men there stood motionless, silent, concentrated as though upon an execution of a sacrament.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Burke, ‘you may fire upon the signal.’ Canning’s arm came up, and along the glint of his own barrel Stephen saw the flash and instantly loosened his finger from the trigger. The enormous impact on his side and across his breast came at the same moment as the report. He staggered, shifted his unfired pistol to his left hand and changed his stance: the smoke drifted away on the heavy air and he saw Canning plain, his head high, thrown back with that Roman emperor air. The barrel came true, wavered a trifle, and then steadied: his mouth tightened, and he fired. Canning went straight down, rose to his hands and knees calling for his second pistol, and fell again. His friends ran to him, and Stephen turned away. ‘Are you all right, Stephen?’ He nodded, still as hard and cold as ever, and said to M’Alister, ‘Give me that lint.’ He mopped the wound, and while M’Alister probed it, murmuring, ‘Struck the third rib; cracked it - deviated across the sternum -the ball is awkwardly lodged - meant to kill you, the dog - I’ll clap a cingulum about it,’ he watched the far group. And his heart sank; the wicked, reptilian look faded, giving way to one of hopeless sadness. That dark flow of blood under the feet of the men gathered round Canning could mean only one thing: he had missed his aim.

M’Alister, holding the end of the bandage in his mouth, followed his glance and nodded, ‘Subclavian, or aorta itself,’ he muttered through the cloth. ‘I will just pin this end and step over for a word with our colleague.’

He came back, and nodded gravely. ‘Dead?’ said Etherege, and looked hesitantly at Stephen, wondering whether to congratulate him: the look of utter dejection kept him silent. While Bonden drew the charge from the second pistol and ranged them both in their cases, Etherege walked Over to Burke: they exchanged a few words, saluted formally, and parted.

People were already moving about the Maidan; the eastern sky showed red; Jack said, ‘We must get him aboard at once. Bonden, hail the carriage.’

The tigers had gone, and servants were openly carrying things away.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Jack, springing up. Diana curtseyed. ‘I have brought you a letter from Stephen Maturin.’

‘Oh how is he?’ she cried.

‘Very low: a great deal of fever, the ball is badly lodged; and in this climate, a wound - but you know all about wounds in this climate.’

Hcr eyes filled with tears. She had expected hardness, but not this cold anger. He was taller than she had remembered him, altogether bigger and more formidable. His face had changed, the boy quite gone, vanished beyond recall: a hard, commanding eye: the only thing she recognised, apart from his uniform, was his yellow hair, tied in a queue. And even his uniform had changed: he was a post-​captain now.

‘You will excuse me, Aubrey,’ she said, and opened the note. Three straggling uneven lines. ‘Diana: you must come back to Europe. The Lushington sails on the fourteenth. Allow me to deal with any material difficulties: rely upon me at all times. I say at all times. Stephen.’

She read it slowly, and again, peering through the mist of tears. Jack stood, his back turned, looking out of the window with his hands behind his back.

Beneath the anger and the distaste for being there, his mind was filled with questions, doubts, a hurry of feelings that he could not easily identify. Righteousness, except where faulty seamanship was concerned, or an offence against Naval discipline, was unfamiliar to him. Was he a contemptible scrub, to harbour this enmity against a woman he had pursued? The severity that filled him from head to toe - was it an odious hypocrisy, fit to damn him in a decent mind? He had gone near to wrecking his career in his pursuit of her: she had preferred Canning. Was this holier-​than-​thou indignation mere pitiful resentment? No, it was not: she had hurt Stephen terribly; and Canning, that fine man, was dead. She was no good, no good at all. Yet that meeting under the trees could have taken place over the most virtuous of women, the world being what it was. Virtue: he turned it over, vaguely watching a horseman winding through the trees. He had attacked her ‘virtue’ as hard as ever he could; so where did he stand? The common cant it is different for men was no comfort. The horseman came in sight again, and his horse into full view: perhaps the most beautiful animal he had ever seen, a chesnut mare, perfectly proportioned, light, powerful. She shied at a snake on the drive and reared, a lovely movement, and her rider sat easy, kindly patting her neck. Virtue: the one he esteemed above all was courage; and surely it included all the rest? He looked at her ghostlike image in the window-​pane: she possessed it - never a doubt of that. She was standing there perfectly straight, so slim and frail he could break her with one hand: a tenderness and admiration he had thought quite dead moved in him.