Clarissa Oakes Read Free Page A

men with singular powers to cry out, to argue or even to feel anything but a faint despair. 'I shall bleed you,' he said, 'and mix a gentle cholagogue. And since we are now quite clear of New South Wales and of your thaumaturge's territory, I advise you to resume both your sea-bathing and your practice of climbing briskly to the topmost pinnacle.'
       'Very well. But you do not mean me to take medicine today, Stephen? Tomorrow is divisions, you remember.'
       Stephen knew that for Jack Aubrey, as for so many other captains and admirals of his acquaintance, taking medicine meant swallowing improbable quantities of calomel, sulphur, Turkey rhubarb (often added to their own surgeon's prescription) and spending the whole of the next day on the seat of ease, gasping, straining, sweating, ruining their lower alimentary tract. 'I do not,' he said. 'It is only a mixture, to be followed by a series of comfortable enemata.'
       Jack watched the steady flow of his blood into the bowl: he cleared his throat and said 'I suppose you have patients with, well, desires?'
       'It would be strange if I had not.'
       'I mean, if you will forgive a gross expression, with importunate pricks?'
       'Sure, I understand you. There is little in the pharmacopoeia to help them. Sometimes'—waving his lancet—'I propose a simple little operation—a moment's pang, perhaps a sigh, then freedom for life, a mild sailing on an even keel, tossed by no storms of passion, untempted, untroubled, sinless—but when they decline, which they invariably do, though they may have protested that they would give anything to be free of their torments, why then unless there is some evident physical anomaly, all I can suggest is that they should learn to control their emotions. Few succeed; and some, I am afraid, are driven to strange wild extremes. But were the case to apply to you, brother, where there is a distinct physical anomaly, I should point out that Plato and the ancients in general made the liver the seat of love: Cogit amare jecur , said the Romans. And so I should reiterate my plea for more sea-bathing, more going aloft, more pumping of an early morning, to say nothing of a fitting sobriety at table, to preserve the organ from ill-considered freaks.' He closed the vein, and having washed his bowl in the quarter-gallery he went on, 'As for the blue devils of which you complain, my dear, do not expect too much from my remedies: youth and unthinking happiness are not to be had in a bottle, alas. You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed, it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.'
       'Stephen, surely you would never consider me middle-aged, would you?'
       'Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led as unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey.'
       'My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming buttercup-yellow.'
       Jack wore his hair long, clubbed and tied with a broad black bow. Stephen plucked the bow loose and brought the far end of plait round before his eyes.
       'Well I'm damned,' said Jack, looking at it in the sunlight. 'Well I'm damned; you are quite right. There are several grey hairs . . . scores of grey hairs. It is positively grizzled, like a badger-pie. I had