Read Online 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey by Patrick O’Brian - Free Book Online Page B

long since.”
    “ I shall go upstairs - I shall go on deck, and ask whether it would be proper to enqu ire. Ladies, forgive me, I beg.”
    No. It would be most improper. Jack was surprised that a man who had seen so much sea-time could suppose the thing possible or even decent - it was not exactly mutinous but it would deserve and certainly receive an exceptionally harsh reproach. But in any case Stephen was talking great nonsense. The Portuguese had been aboard Lord Leyton this hour and more and there had been no sign of mail — nothing handed up the side, no passing out of bags, no hurrying to and fro. No. The boat had done nothing more than deliver a gentleman, the gentleman in regimentals who was now walking up and down the quarterdeck with the Admiral, arm in arm. “ I have been staring at him with my glass, in this ill -bred fashion, for some little time,” said Jack. “ For although I think I know the face and carriage I cannot put a name to either. Should you like to take a look?”
    “ Sure, it is very ill-bred: but I might, to make you easy . ” Stephen took the telescope, focused it, and almost at once, as the two men on the far ship turned, he said coldly, “ It is Henry Miller. He was at Trinity in my time and he killed Edward Taaffe in the Fifteen Ac res when I was in my last year.”
    “ Miller? Yes, of course, my neighbour over by Caxley. He must be related to the Admiral — Miller is Lord Leyton's family name, and that person over there often spoke of a peerage going to some fairly close connexion. Cousin, of course: they would not be walk ing arm in arm, otherwise.” After a pause Jack went on, “ What do you mean by your Fifteen Acres?”
    “ It is a space in the Phoenix Park - you know the great park in Dublin , I am sure?” Jack nodded. “ And that is where people go, particularly the young men of Trinity, to settle matters of honour.”
    “ Just so: and he killed a gunner officer in Malta, too. He is said to be a very good shot; and he has capital pistols. I have heard him called Hair-Trigger Miller; and to be sure I h ave seen him bring down a great many pheasants.”
    “ Would you say he was a quarrelsome man, at all?”
    “ I scarcely know him. We are necessarily acquainted, but he is not the sort of man whose acquaintance I should value – in short, I do not like him. It is not the fighting. As you know, duels are much more usual in the army than with us, or even the Marines. And anyhow you and I have both been out from time to time .. . cannot top it the Holy Joe.” Jack stared o ut over the water and went on. “ For all I know he may be well enough liked in his regiment: but his reputation in the neighbourhood is so indifferent that I was astonished to learn that he had called on Edward and Christine when they settled in Medenham, and then at Woolcombe when Christine was staying there, with Edward so far in the north. I have no room to blackguard a man for incontinence, being no model myself: but there are limits . . . You know very well, Stephen, how much influence a man with a large household and a considerable estate can bring to bear on his dependents – his dependents’ daughters – and there were some very ugly tales of girls in child being turned away. I know very little: yet his conduct does seem to matc h with the general reprobation.”
    “He is not married, I take it?”
    “ No, nor ever has been. Being almost next in succession to the Leyton title, he is said to be saving himself up for some very brilliant match.”
    “Can you square a man’ s valuing a peerage very highly with his going out and risking his life so often?”
    “ Yes, if he is an unusually resentful unloved creature and at the same time an uncommon good shot.”
    “ Sir, if you pleas e,” said the officer of the watch, stepping aft and taking off his hat, “Flag is breaking out a signal.” Speaking in the high, staccato, expressionless voice usual on such occasions, the duty-midshipman