Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O’Brian Page A

would hardly provide light enough, while in this heat lanterns are most disagreeable. My cabin has much to be said for it, but it wants privacy: every word uttered there may be heard on deck—I do not suggest any deliberate eavesdropping on the part of my shipmates, but the fact is there: within a yard of the skylight stands the helmsman—sometimes two helmsmen—and the quartermaster, to name only the foremast hands.'
       'Perhaps we might speak French?' suggested Clarissa. 'I am reasonably fluent.'
       'Very well,' said Stephen, opening the door for her and bolting it against intrusion.
       'By the way,' she said, pausing with her hand on the fastening of her dress, 'it is true even at sea, is it not, that medical men never talk about their patients?'
       'It is true for officers and their wives; but where the hands are concerned there are some diseases that have to be recorded. Where I am consulted personally I speak to no one, not even my assistant or a specialist, without the patient's consent. The same applies to Mr Martin.'
       'Oh what a relief,' said Mrs Oakes, and as she slipped off her dress Stephen observed that she now possessed a pair of drawers, made of number ten sailcloth, so windworn and sunbleached as to be almost as soft as cambric, a gift no doubt from the sailmaker, whose perquisite it was—she was very popular among the foremast hands, whose gaze followed her with a fond longing.
       At the end of his examination he said 'I think I may assert without much fear of error that your notion of pregnancy is quite mistaken. And I am obliged to add, that the likelihood of any such state is exceedingly remote.'
       'Oh what a relief!' cried Mrs Oakes again, but with much greater emphasis. 'Mr Redfern told me that; but he was only a surgeon, and I am so glad to have his words confirmed by higher authority. I cannot tell you what a curse it is to have hanging over one's head. Anyhow, I loathe children.'
       'All children?'
       'Oh of course there are some dear little creatures, so pretty and affectionate; but I had rather have a pack of baboons in the house than the usual little boy or girl.'
       'Sure, there are few amiable baboons. Now I shall send you some physic to be taken every night before retiring, and next month you will come to see me again.'
       This conversation was carried on in French, perfectly current on either side, with a slight English accent on Clarissa's and a southern intonation on Stephen's; and no sooner was it finished and the patient gone than Martin walked in. If he had chosen his moment with care he could hardly have given a better proof of the rarity of places for private talk in a man-of-war, for having a confidential matter that he wished to discuss with his friend before their evening duties he said, in Latin, that he would have suggested their climbing to the mizzen-top, tertii in tabulatum mali , if there had not been such a wind blowing— nodi decem —that he was afraid to make the ascent; besides, there were papers that might blow away.
       He spoke lightly but it was clear to Stephen that he was much agitated. 'Captain Aubrey has just made me the very generous offer of two livings that are in his gift. I know he spoke to you of the matter, but as you may have forgotten the details I have brought them'—passing the sheets—'As he observed himself, from the worldly point of view neither is at all desirable, but he suggested that the two combined, with a curate looking after the smaller, might answer tolerably well. On the other hand, he added, I might prefer to wait for Yarell, whose present incumbent, a valetudinarian of over seventy, lives in Bath. This page deals with Yarell. And finally, in the kindest way, he told me to turn the matter over in my mind for as long as I pleased. This I have been doing ever since, but I am still undecided. At first I was delighted with the idea of Yarell, which would eventually enable me to do my duty by my family