The Unknown Shore by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online

it, however, but rather the traces of fatigue, alarm and apprehension. The fatigue was caused by having shown Tobias the sights of London, or at least all those that could be crammed into seven uninterrupted hours of very slow creeping about shop-lined streets,tomb-lined churches, the danker monuments of antiquity and the never-ending alleys of the booksellers’ booths around St Paul’s: Tobias was not used to anything much larger than Mangonell Bagpize, and his amazement was now, in a fine (if muddy) summer’s day, as great as ever he could have wished; but he was utterly careless of the London traffic, and the effort of keeping him alive among the carts, drays, coaches and waggons had perceptibly aged his friend. Jack had known London from his earliest days, and it was difficult for him to marvel, to stand stock-still in the mainstream of impatient crowds to marvel for ten minutes on end, at a perfectly ordinary pastry-cook’s window – ‘What unheard-of luxury, Jack; what more than Persian magnificence – Lucullus – Apicius – Heliogabalus.’ He did marvel, of course, in order not to damp Tobias’ pleasure; but it too was an ageing process. The itinerant bookseller who visited Mangonell market always gratified Tobias with a sight of his wares, although Tobias never bought any of them (this was not from sordid avarice, but because Tobias had never possessed one farthing piece in all his life) and Tobias unquestioningly assumed that London booksellers were equally good-natured: and then again, Tobias, until Jack begged him to stop, said ‘Good day’ to every soul they met, in a manner that would have passed without comment in the country, but which in London was another thing altogether.
    But sight-seeing with Tobias, though it left its mark, was as nothing, nothing whatsoever, compared with taking Tobias to see his patron.
    The Navy, apart from its administrative side, is a tolerably brisk service; those members of it who go to sea have it impressed upon their minds, both by circumstances and by the kindly insistence of their superior officers, that time and tide wait for no man; and Jack was a true sailor in his appreciation of this interesting truth. Within minutes of waking up he had sent a note to his influential cousin; the answer had come back appointing a given hour, and tearing Tobias from the belfry of St Paul’s in Covent Garden, which he had penetrated in order to view the mechanism of the clock (he asserted that it was the earliest illustration of the isochronic principle) and in which he had lingered to look into the ecclesiastical bats. Jack had brushed him, thrust him into a presentable pair of shoes and hadconducted him to Mr Brocas Byron’s house. The head of the family was not quite as wise as the Byrons and Chaworths could have wished; indeed, he was what Jack, in an excess of poetical imagery, had termed ‘potty'; and his relatives had persuaded him to leave all matters of political judgment, voting and patronage, to Cousin Brocas.
    Cousin Brocas was no phoenix himself, but at that time the family was not particularly well-to-do in the matter of brains, and at least Cousin Brocas was always on the spot: he was the member for Piddletrenthide (a convenient little borough with only three voters, all of them kin to Mrs Brocas) and he never left London for a moment during the sessions of Parliament. He was rather pompous, and he stood more upon his rank than his noble cousins, but he and Jack had always got along very well together, and, having performed the introductions, Jack left Tobias with Cousin Brocas in entire confidence that they would spend half an hour in agreeable conversation while he stepped round to see whether Keppel had arrived yet, and to leave a message if he had not.
    Judge, then, of his perturbation when upon his return the footman told him that ‘they was a-carrying on something cruel in the libery,’ and the sound of further disagreement fell upon his ears, accompanied