She burned the letter in the candle flame, and went back to bed, and slept until Polly woke her at eight to say the Captain was below, and he looked, Polly said, like a man that had been up all night in a gale.
* * *
He had been up all night, though not in a gale. He had been, he said, at his uncle's house in Russell Square until two in the morning, and then walking.
"He has asked the Council of the Institution to hold a special meeting," he said. They were in the parlour; Mrs. Gage, roused and in her wrapper, was in the doorway, and nobody suggested she should go. "Next Thursday, the third of April, in the lecture theatre, at noon. Two of the Commissioners of Longitude are to attend, Dr. Wray of Oxford and Mr. Carrow from the Admiralty. The tables are to be laid before them, and their merit settled, so that the Board may act at its June meeting. He says it is to clear his name. And you are to be invited, Miss Penrose, very civilly, in writing, to attend and repeat your objection, if you still hold to it." He paused. "He means to ask you, before the Commissioners, by what authority you speak. He knows about Kennington. He told me so. He thinks you will not come. And he thinks that if you do come, you will be finished before you have reached the chalk."
"And you?" said Judith. "What did you tell him?"
Captain Leventhorpe looked at the floor.
"He offered me the Sylph," he said. "A new sloop, building at Deptford for the survey of the Brazils coast. The Admiralty has not named her captain yet, and Mr. Carrow owes my uncle a good many dinners. I have been on half-pay two years, Miss Penrose. There are six hundred commanders on the beach and not forty sloops in commission. I should never have another chance like it." He looked up. "All I had to do was stand up next Thursday and say that I had used the tables at sea and found them sound."
"And what did you say?"
"I said I would stand up next Thursday and tell the Commissioners what happened on the Abrolhos," said Captain Leventhorpe. "And then he said a number of things about my mother, and gratitude, and the respect owing to a man who paid for my first uniform; all of them true. And I said a number of things back, which I had better not repeat before Mrs. Gage. And then I walked to Greenwich and back, and here I am." He tried to smile and did not quite manage it. "I am sorry. I have made a poor bargain on your behalf, I think. You could have made your peace with him. I have made it harder."