The Surgeon’s Mate. Patrick O’Brian

I could not take a walk today, even if there were a dozen Fountains of Youth and a tap-room too at the end of it. I have a damned unpleasant job at the prison, trying to identify the English deserters taken in the Chesapeake: they nearly all of them ran from our men-of-war. But before that I am going to see their master’s mate, the one that was not knocked on the head. Shall you come?’

      ‘No, sir. The combatant officers are your natural province, the non-combatant mine. My particular concern today is their surgeon, an unusually learned man.’

      The unusually learned man was sitting with a mug of spruce-beer in the empty operating-room, looking careworn, sad and weary, but resolute. He accepted Stephen’s offering gracefully, and they talked about some of their cases for a while, taking alternate sips at the mug. When the spruce-beer – ‘a dubious anti-scorbutic, sir, but a grateful beverage on such a day, and no doubt mildly carminative’ – was done, Stephen said, ‘I believe you told me, sir, that before you took to the sea, your practice lay chiefly among the ladies of Charleston?’

      ‘Yes, sir. I was a man-midwife; or, if you prefer it, an accoucheur.’

      ‘Just so. Your experience in these matters is therefore very much greater than mine, and I should be grateful for your lights. Apart from the obvious classical symptoms, what do you find to be the earliest signs of pregnancy?’

      The surgeon pursed his lips and considered. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘there is nothing wholly reliable, of course. But I believe the general facies rarely deceives me – the thickening of the skin; the pasty complexion in the very first stages, rapidly clearing; the cerous appearance of the eyelid and orbicular folds; the pallor of the caruncula lachrymalia; while the old wives’ method of inspecting the nails and hair is not to be despised. And where the physician is familiar with his patient’s ordinary behaviour, he can often form an opinion from variations in it, particularly in the case of younger women: abrupt, apparently causeless changes from gloom and anxiety to a high flow of spirits, even to exultation, will tell him much.’

      ‘Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I am much indebted to you for these remarks.’

      Chapter Two

      In the course of his service in the Royal Navy Stephen Maturin had often reflected upon the diversity among sea-officers: he had sailed with men of great family and with others promoted from the lower deck; with companions who never opened a book and with poetic pursers; with captains who could cap any classical quotation and with some who could scarcely write a coherent dispatch without the help of their clerk; and although most came from the middle rank of society, this species had such a bewildering series of sub-species and local races that only an observer brought up among the intricacies of the English caste-system could find his way among them, confidently assessing their origin and present status. There was also a very great difference in wealth, particularly among the captains, since when merchant ships were thick upon the ground it was possible for an enterprising or a lucky commander to make a fortune in prize-money after a few hours’ eager chase, whereas those who had to live on their pay led a meagre, anxious life, cutting a very poor figure indeed. Nevertheless they were all marked with the stamp of their profession: rich or poor, loutish or polite, they had all been battered by the elements, and many of them by the King’s enemies. Even the most recently promoted lieutenant had served all his youth at sea, while many post-captains as high on the list as Jack Aubrey had been afloat, with few breaks, ever since 1792. They all had a long, long naval war in common, with its endless waiting in the wastes of ocean and its occasional bursts of furious activity.

      None of this applied to their wives however, and here the diversity was greater still. Some sailors, perhaps guided by their apprehensive families, married in their own class or sometimes higher; but others, home after the long and dangerous tedium of the Brest or Toulon blockade or a three-year commission in the Indies, East or West, sometimes flung themselves into the strangest arms. And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often away and handy about the house when ashore, it did make for a curious gathering when the spouses were all invited to a ball.

      Stephen contemplated them from among the potted plants: in spite of their differences in size and shape, the sailors’ uniform made them a single body; much the same, though with more variation, could be said about the soldiers; but the women had chosen their own clothes, and the results were interesting. He had already recognized a former bar-maid from the Keppel’s Head in Portsmouth, now swathed in pink muslin and adorned with a wedding-ring; and there were some other ladies whose faces were vaguely familiar, perhaps from other inns, or from the stage, or from tobacco shops.

      There was a clear distinction between the dresses, between those women who could both choose and afford good ones and those who could not, a distinction almost as clear as that between the jewels the ladies wore: and these ranged from the garnet pendant round the neck of a child who had married a lieutenant with nothing but his pay of a hundred a year to Mrs Leveson-Gower’s rubies, which would have built a thirty-two-gun frigate and provisioned her for six months, and Lady Harriet’s thumping great emeralds. But it was not this that interested Stephen as he stood watching the crowd: he was more concerned with the ladies’ bearing and behaviour, partly as a lesson in female social adaptability in a society so strongly aware of rank, overt or implied, and partly because he had a theory that the more free or even wanton a given past might have been, the more reserved, correct, and even prudish would be the established present.

      His observation, interrupted from time to time by a glance at the top of the staircase to see whether Diana would ever finish dressing, did not bear his theory out and the only conclusion he could draw was that those with style retained it whatever their origins, while those who had none were lumpish or affected or both; though even these were already enjoying themselves. The general gaiety, the universal delight at the Shannon’s victory, so filled the entire gathering that nearly all the women were in good looks, and the ordinary worries of dress and consequence and husband’s rank counted far less than usual. In short, that shared happiness and a strong fellow-feeling abolished distinction for the time being, in spite of the sometimes conflicting but always powerful hierarchies of service rank, social origin, wealth, and beauty.

      This was not a discovery that warranted any very prolonged seclusion among the plants – an uninteresting set, filicales and bromeliads for the most part – and Stephen moved out into the mainstream, where he almost immediately met Jack, accompanied by an equally tall but far bulkier man in the uniform of the First Foot Guards, a blaze of scarlet and gold. ‘Why, there you are,’ said Jack. ‘I have been looking for you. Do you know my cousin Aldington? Dr Maturin, Colonel Aldington.’

      ‘How d’ye do, sir,’ said the soldier in the tone he thought suited to the subfusc garments of a naval surgeon. Stephen only bowed. ‘This is going to be a prodigious fine ball,’ said the Colonel to Jack. ‘I can feel it in the air. The last I was at – oh, and I forgot to tell you, Sophie and I stood up together – was at the Winchester assembly, a miserable affair. Not thirty couple, and never a girl worth looking at. I took refuge in the card-room, and lost four pound ten.’

      ‘Sophie was at the assembly?’ said Jack.

      ‘Yes, she was there with her sister, looking very well: we danced together twice. I flatter myself we – by God, there’s a damned fine figure of a woman,’ he exclaimed, staring at the head of the staircase. Diana was coming down in a long blue dress and a blaze of diamonds that eclipsed all the other jewels in the large, beautiful, and well-filled room: she always held herself very well, and now as she came slowly down, straight and slim, she looked superb. ‘I should not mind dancing with her,’ he said.

      ‘I will introduce you, if you like,’ said Jack. ‘She is Sophie’s cousin.’

      ‘If she is your cousin, she is mine, in a way,’ said the soldier. And then, ‘Damn me if it ain’t Di Villiers. What on earth is she doing here? I knew her in London, years ago. I don’t need an introduction.’

      He set off at once, pushing through the crowd like an ox, and Stephen followed in his wake. Jack watched them go: he was extremely hurt by the thought of Sophie dancing at the assembly. At any other time he would have been pleased to hear