Post Captain (4 page)

The butler carried away the tea-tray, mended- the fire and began to light the candles. 'How the evenings are drawing in,' said Mrs Williams. 'Never mind the sconces by the door. Pull the curtains by the cord, John. Touching the cloth wears it so, and it is bad for the rings. And now, Admiral, what have you to tell us of the other gentleman at Melbury Lodge, Captain Aubrey's particular friend?'

'Oh, him,' said Admiral Haddock. 'I do not know much about him. He was Captain Aubrey's surgeon in this sloop. And I believe I heard he was someone's natural son. His name is Maturin.'

'If you please, sir,' said Frances, 'what is a natural son?'

'Why... 'said the admiral, looking from side to side.

'Are sons more natural than daughters, pray?'

'Hush, my dear,' said Mrs Williams.

'Mr Lever called at Melbury,' said Cecilia. 'Captain Aubrey had gone to London - he is always going to London, it appears - but he saw Dr Maturin, and says that he is quite strange, quite like a foreign gentleman.

He was cutting up a horse in the winter drawing-room.'

'How very undesirable,' said Mrs Williams. 'They will have to use cold water for the blood. Cold water is the only thing for the marks of blood. Do not you think, Admiral, that they should be told they must use cold water for the marks of blood?'

'I dare say they are tolerably used to getting rid of stains of that kind, ma'am,' said the admiral. 'But now I come to think of it,' he went on, gazing round the room 'what a capital thing it is for you girls, to have a couple of sailors with their pockets full of guineas, turned ashore and pitched down on your very doorstep. Anyone in want of a husband has but to whistle, and they will come running, ha, ha, ha!'

The admiral's sally had a wretched reception; not one of the young ladies joined in his mirth. Sophia and Diana looked grave, Cecilia tossed her head, Frances scowled, and Mrs Williams pursed up her mouth, looked down her nose and meditated a sharp retort.

'However,' he continued, wondering at the sudden chill in the room 'it is no go, no go at all, now that I recollect. He told Trimble, who suggested a match with his sister-in-law, that he had quite given up women. It seems that he was so unfortunate in his last attachment, that he has quite given up women. And indeed he is an unlucky wight, whatever they may call him: there is not only this wretched business of his promotion and his father's cursed untimely marriage, but he also has a couple of neutral prizes in the Admiralty court, on appeal. I dare say that is why he is perpetually fagging up and down to London. He is an unlucky man, no doubt; and no doubt he has come to understand it. So he has very rightly given up all thoughts of marriage, in which luck is everything - has quite given up women.'

'It is perfectly true,' cried Cecilia. 'There is not a single woman in the house! Mrs Burdett, who just happened to be passing by, and our Molly, whose father's cottage is directly behind and can see everything, say there is not a woman in the house! There they live together, with a parcel of sailors to look after them. La, how strange! And yet Mrs Burdett, who had a good look, you may be sure, says the window-panes were shining like diamonds, and all the frames and doors had been new-painted white.'

'How can they hope to manage?' asked Mrs Williams. 'Surely, it is very wrong-headed and unnatural. Dear me, I should not fancy sitting down in that house. I should wipe my chair with my handkerchief, I can tell you.'

'Why, ma'am,' cried the admiral, 'we manage tolerably well at sea, you know.'

'Oh, at sea... 'said Mrs Williams with a smile.

'What can they do for mending, poor things?' asked Sophia. 'I suppose they buy new.'

'I can just see them with their stockings out at heel,' cried Frances, with a coarse whoop, 'pegging away with their needles - Doctor, may I trouble you for the blue worsted? After you with the thimble, if you please." Ha, ha, ha, ha!'

'I dare say they can cook,' said Diana. 'Men can broil a steak; and there are always eggs and bread-and-butter.'

'But how wonderfully strange,' cried Cecilia. 'How romantic! As good as a ruin. Oh, how I long to see 'em.'

CHAPTER TWO

The acquaintance was not slow in coming. With naval promptness Admiral Haddock invited the ladies of Mapes to dine with the newcomers, and presently Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin were asked to dinner at Mapes; they were pronounced excellent young men, most agreeable company, perfectly well-bred, and a great addition to the neighbourhood. It was clear to Sophia, however, that poor Dr Maturin needed feeding properly: 'he was quite pale and silent,' she said. But even the tenderest heart, the most given to pity, could not have said the same for Jack. He was in great form from even the beginning of the party, when his laugh was to be heard coming up the drive, until the last repeated farewells under the freezing portico. His fine open battle-scarred countenance had worn either a smile or a look of lively pleasure from the first to the last, and although his blue eye had dwelt a little wistfully upon the stationary decanter and the disappearing remains of the pudding, his cheerful flow of small but perfectly amiable talk had never faltered. He had eaten everything set before him with grateful voracity, and even Mrs Williams felt something like an affectionate leaning towards him.

'Well,' she said, as their hoof-beats died away in the night, 'I believe that was as successful a dinner-party as I have ever given. Captain Aubrey managed a second partridge - but then they were so very tender. And the floating island looked particularly well in the silver bowl: there will be enough for tomorrow. And the rest of the pork will be delicious, hashed. How well they ate, to be sure: I do not suppose they often have a dinner like that. I wonder at the admiral, saying that Captain Aubrey was not quite the thing. I think he is very much the thing. Sophie, my love, pray tell John to put the port the gentlemen left into a small bottle at once, before he locks up: it is bad for the decanter to leave port-wine in it.'

'Yes, Mama.'

'Now, my dears,' whispered Mrs Williams, having left a significant pause after the closing of the door, 'I dare say you all noticed Captain Aubrey's great interest in Sophia -he was quite particular. I have little doubt that - I think it would be very nice if we were all to leave them alone together as much as possible. Are you attending, Diana?'

'Oh, yes, ma'am. I understand you perfectly well,' said Diana, turning back from the window.

Far over in the moonlit night the pale road wound between Polcary and Beacon Down, and the horsemen were walking briskly up it.

'I wonder, I wonder,' said Jack, 'whether there is any goose left at home, or whether those infernal brutes have eaten it up. At all events, we can have an omelette and a bottle of claret. Claret. Have you ever known a woman that had any notion of wine?'

'I have not.'

'And damned near with the pudding, too. But what charming girls they are! Did you notice the eldest one, Miss Williams, holding up her wine-glass and looking at the candle through it? Such grace... The taper of her wrist and hand - long, long fingers.' Stephen Maturin was scratching himself with a dogged perseverance; he was not attending. But Jack went on, 'And that Mrs Villiers, how beautifully she held her head: lovely colouring. Perhaps not such a perfect complexion as her cousin - she has been in India, I believe - but what deep blue eyes! How old would she be, Stephen?'

'Not thirty.'

'I remember how well she sat her horse... By God, a year or two back I should have -. How a man changes. But even so, I do love being surrounded by girls - so very different from men. She said several handsome things about the service - spoke very sensibly - thoroughly understood the importance of the weather-gage. She must have naval connections. I do hope we see her again. I hope we see them all again.'

They saw her again, and sooner than they had expected. Mrs Williams too just happened to be passing by Melbury, and she directed Thomas to turn up the well-known drive. A deep and powerful voice the other side of the door was singing

You ladies of lubricity

That dwell in the bordello

Ha-ha ha-ha, ha-ha ha-bee

For I am that kind of fellow,

but the ladies walked into the hail quite unmoved, since not one of them except Diana understood the words, and she was not easily upset. With great satisfaction they noticed that the servant who let them in had a pigtail half-way down his back, but the parlour into which he showed them was disappointingly trim - it might have been spring-cleaned that morning, reflected Mrs Williams, drawing her finger along the top of the wainscot. The only thing that distinguished it from an ordinary Christian parlour was the rigid formation of the chairs, squared to one another like the yards of a ship, and the bell-pull, which was three fathoms of cable, wormed and served, and ending in a brass-bound top-block.

The powerful voice stopped, and it occurred to Diana that someone's face must be going red; it was indeed highly coloured when Captain Aubrey came hurrying in, but he did not falter as he cried, 'Why, this is most neighbourly- truly kind - a very good afternoon to you, ma'am. Mrs Villiers, Miss Williams, your servant - Miss Cecilia, Miss Frances, how happy I am to see you. Pray step into the...'

'We just happened to be passing by,' said Mrs Williams, 'and I thought we might just stop for a moment, to ask how the jasmin is thriving.'

'Jasmin?' cried Jack.

'Yes,' said Mrs Williams, avoiding her daughters' eyes.

'Ah, the jasmin. Pray step into the drawing-room. Dr Maturin and I have a fire in there: and he is the fellow to tell you all about jasmin.'

The winter drawing-room at Melbury Lodge was a handsome five-sided room with two walls opening on to the garden, and at the far end there stood a light-coloured pianoforte, surrounded by sheets of music and covered by many more. Stephen Maturin rose from behind the piano, bowed, and stood silently watching the visitors. He was wearing a black coat so old that it was green in places, and he had not shaved for three days: from time to time he passed his hand over his rasping jaw.

'Why, you are musicians, I declare!' cried Mrs Williams. 'Violins - a 'cello! How I love music. Symphonies, cantatas! Do you touch the instrument, sir?' she asked Stephen. She did not usually notice him, for Dr Vining had explained that naval surgeons were often poorly qualified and always badly paid; but she was feeling well-disposed today.

'I have just been picking out this piece, ma'am,' said Stephen. 'But the piano is sadly out of tune.'

'I think not, sir,' said Mrs Williams. 'It was the most expensive instrument to be had - a Clementi. I remember its coming by the waggon as though it were yesterday.'

'Pianos do go out of tune, Mama,' murmured Sophia.

'Not Clementi's pianos, my dear,' said Mrs Williams with a smile. 'They are the most expensive in London. Clementi supplies the Court,' she added, looking reproachful, as though they had been wanting in loyalty. 'Besides, sir,' she said, turning to Jack, 'it was my eldest daughter who painted the case! The pictures are in the Chinese taste.'

'That clinches it, ma'am,' cried Jack. 'It would be an ungrateful instrument that fell off, having been decorated by Miss Williams. We were admiring the landscape with the pagoda this morning, were we not, Stephen?'

'Yes,' said Stephen, lifting the adagio of Hummel's D major sonata off the lid. 'This was the bridge and tree and pagoda that we liked so much.' It was a charming thing, the size of a tea-tray - pure, sweet lines, muted, gentle colours that might have been lit by an innocent moon.

Embarrassed, as she so often was, by her mother's strident voice, and confused by all this attention, Sophia hung her head: with a self-possession that she neither felt nor seemed to feel she said, 'Was this the piece you was playing, sir? Mr Tindall has made me practise it over and over again.'

She moved away from the piano, carrying the sheets, and at this point the drawing-room was filled with activity. Mrs Williams protested that she would neither sit down nor take any refreshment whatsoever; Preserved Killick and John Witsoever, able seamen, brought in tables, trays, urns, more coal; Frances whispered 'What ho, for ship's biscuit and a swig of rum,' to make Cecilia giggle; and Jack slowly began shepherding Mrs Williams and Stephen out of the room through the french windows in the direction of what he took to be the jasmin.

The true jasmin, however, proved to be on the library wall; and so it was from outside the library windows that Jack and Stephen heard the familiar notes of the adagio, as silvery and remote as a musical-box. It was absurd how the playing resembled the painting: light, ethereal, tenuous. Stephen Maturin winced at the flat A and the shrill C; and at the beginning of the first variation he glanced uneasily at Jack to see whether he too was jarred by the mistaken phrasing. But Jack seemed wholly taken up with Mrs Williams's account of the planting of the shrub, a minute and circumstantial history.

Now there was another hand on the keyboard. The adagio came out over the sparse wintery lawn with a fine ringing tone, inaccurate, but strong and free; there was harshness in the tragic first variation - a real understanding of what it meant.

'How well dear Sophia plays,' said Mrs Williams, leaning her head to one side. 'Such a sweetly pretty tune, too.'

'Surely that is not Miss Williams, ma'am?' cried Stephen.

'Indeed it is, sir,' cried Mrs Williams. 'Neither of her sisters can go beyond the scales, and I know for a fact that Mrs Villiers cannot read a note. She would not apply herself to the drudgery.' And as they walked back to the house through the mud Mrs Williams told them what they should know about drudgery, taste, and application.

Mrs Villiers started up from the piano, but not so quickly as to escape Mrs Williams's indignant eye - an eye so indignant that it did not lose its expression for the rest of the visit. It even outlasted Jack's announcement of a ball in commemoration of the Battle of Saint Vincent, and the gratification of being the first guests to be bespoke.

'You recall Sir John Jervis's action, ma'am, off Cape Saint Vincent? The fourteenth of February, ninety-seven. Saint Valentine's day.'

'Certainly I do, sir: but' - with an affected simper -'of course my girls are too young to remember anything about it. Pray, did we win?'

'Of course we did, Mama,' hissed the girls.

'Of course we did,' said Mrs Williams. 'Pray sir, was you there - was you present?'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Jack. 'I was third of the Orion. And so I always like to celebrate the anniversary of the battle with all the friends and shipmates I can bring together. And seeing there is a ballroom here -,

'You may depend upon it, my dears,' said Mrs Williams, on the way home, 'that this ball is being given in compliment to us - to me and my daughters - and I have no doubt that Sophie will open it with Captain Aubrey. Saint Valentine's day, la! Frankie, you have dribbled chocolate all down your front; and if you eat so many rich pastries you will come out in spots, and then where will you be? No man will look at you. There must have been a dozen eggs and half a pound of butter in that smaller cake: I have never been so surprised in my life.'

Diana Villiers had been taken, after some hesitation, partly because it would have been indecent to leave her behind and partly because Mrs Williams thought there was no possible comparison between a woman with ten thousand pounds and one without ten thousand pounds; but further consideration, the pondering of certain intercepted looks, led Mrs Williams to think that the gentlemen of the Navy might not be so reliable as the local squires and their hard-faced offspring.

Diana was aware of most of the motions of her aunt's mind, and after breakfast the next day she was quite prepared to follow her into her room for 'a little chat, my dear'. But she was quite unprepared for the bright smile and the repeated mention of the word 'horse'. Hitherto it had always meant Sophia's little chestnut mare. 'How good-natured of Sophie to lend you her horse again. I hope it is not too tired this time, poor thing.' But now the suggestion, the downright offer, wrapped in many words, was of a horse for herself. It was a clear bribe to leave the field clear: it was also meant to overcome Sophia's reluctance to deprive her cousin of the mare, and thus to go riding with Captain Aubrey or Dr Maturin herself. Diana accepted the bait, spat out the hook with contempt, and hurried away to the stables to consult with Thomas, for the great horse-fair at Marston was just at hand.

On the way she saw Sophia coming along the path that led through the park to Grope, Admiral Haddock's house. Sophia was walking fast, swinging her arms and muttering 'Larboard, starboard,' as she came. 'Yo ho, shipmate,' called Diana over the hedge, and

she was surprised to see her cousin blush cherry-pink. The chance shot had gone straight home, for Sophia had been browsing in the admiral's library, looking at Navy Lists, naval memoirs, Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine, and the Naval Chronicle; and the admiral, coming up behind her in his list slippers had said, 'Oh, the Naval Chronicle, is it? Ha, ha! This is the one you want,' - pulling out the volume for 1801. 'Though Miss Di has been before you - forestalled you long ago - made me explain the weather-gage and the difference between a xebec and a brig. There is a little cut of the action, but the fellow did not know what he was about, so he put in a great quantity of smoke to hide the rigging, which is most particular in a xebec. Come, let me find it for you.'

'Oh no, no, no,' said Sophia in great distress. 'I only wanted to know a little about - 'Her voice died away.

The acquaintance ripened; but it did not mature, it did not progress as fast as Mrs Williams would have liked. Captain Aubrey could not have been more friendly -perhaps too friendly; there was none of that languishing she longed to see, no pallor, nor even any marked particularity. He seemed to be as happy with Frances as he was with Sophia, and sometimes Mrs Williams wondered whether he really were quite the thing - whether those strange tales about sea-officers might possibly be true in his case. Was it not very odd that he should live with Dr Maturin? Another thing that troubled her was Diana's horse, for from what she heard and from what little she could understand, it seemed that Diana rode better than Sophia. Mrs Williams could hardly credit this, but even so she was heartily sorry that she had ever made the present. She was in a state of anxious doubt: she was certain that Sophia was moved, but she was equally certain that Sophia would never speak to her of her feelings, just as she was certain that Sophia would never follow her advice about making herself attractive to the gentlemen - putting herself forward a little, doing herself justice, reddening her lips before she came into the room.