Post Captain (5 page)

Had she seen them out one day with young Mr Edward Savile's pack she would have been more anxious still. Sophia did not really care for hunting: she liked the gallops, but she found the waiting about dull and she minded terribly about the poor fox. Her mare had spirit but no great stamina, whereas Diana's powerful, short-coupled bay gelding had a barrel like a vault of a church and an unconquerable heart; he could carry Diana's eight stone from morning till night, and he loved to be in at the kill.

They had been hunting since half past ten, and now the sun was low. They had killed two foxes, and the third, a barren vixen, had led them a rare old dance, right away into the heavy country beyond Plimpton with its wet plough, double oxers, and wide ditches. She was now only one field ahead, failing fast and heading for a drain she knew. At the last check Jack had a lucky inspiration to bear away right-handed, a short-cut that brought him and Sophia closer to hounds than anyone in the field; but now there was a bank, a towering fence, mud in front of it and the gleam of broad water beyond. Sophia looked at the jump with dismay, put her tired horse at it without any real wish to reach the other side, and felt thankful when the mare refused it. She and her mount were quite done up; Sophia had never felt so tired in her life; she dreaded the sight of the fox being torn to pieces, and the pack had just hit off the line again. There was a deadly implacable triumph in the voice of the old bitch that led them. 'The gate, the gate,' called Jack, wheeling his horse and cantering to the corner of the field. He had it half open - an awkward, sagging, left-handed gate - when Stephen arrived. Jack heard Sophia say 'should like to go home - pray, pray go on - know the way perfectly.' The piteous face wiped away his look of frustration; he lost his fixed 'boarders away' expression, and smiling very kindly he said, 'I think I will turn back too: we have had enough for today.'

'I will see Miss Williams home,' said Stephen.

'No, no, please go on,' begged Sophia, with tears brimming in her eyes. 'Please, please - I am perfectly -,

A quick drumming of hooves and Diana came into the field. Her whole being was concentrated on the fence and what lay beyond it, and she saw them only a vague group muddling in a gate. She was sitting as straight and supple as if she had been riding for no more than half an hour: she was part of her horse, completely unaware of herself. She went straight at the fence, gathered her horse just so, and with a crash and a spray of mud they were over. Her form, her high-held head, her contained joy, competent, fierce gravity, were as beautiful as anything Jack or Stephen had ever seen. She had not the slightest notion of it, but she had never looked so well in her life. The men's faces as she flew over, high and true, would have made Mrs Williams more uneasy by far.

Mrs Williams longed for the day of the ball; she made almost as many preparations as Jack, and Mapes Court was filled with gauze, muslins and taffeta. Her mind was filled with stratagems, one of which was to get Diana out of the way for the intervening days. Mrs Williams had no defined suspicions, but she smelt danger, and by means of half a dozen intermediaries and as many letters she managed to have a mad cousin left unattended by his family. She could not do away with the invitation, publicly given and accepted, however, and Diana was to be brought back to Champflower by one of Captain Aubrey's guests on the morning of February the fourteenth.

'Dr Maturin is waiting for you, Di,' said Cecilia. 'He is walking his horse up and down in a fine new bottle-green coat with a black collar. And he has a new tie-wig. I suppose that is why he went up to London. You have made another conquest, Di: he used to be quite horrid, and all unshaved.'

'Stop peering from behind that curtain like a housemaid, Cissy. And lend me your hat, will you?'

'Why, he is quite splendid now,' said Cecilia, peering still and puckering the gauze. 'He has a spotted waistcoat too. Do you remember when he came to dinner in carpet slippers? He really would be almost handsome if he held himself up.'

'A fine conquest,' said Mrs Williams, peering too. 'A penniless naval surgeon, somebody's natural son, and a Papist. Fie upon you, Cissy, to say such things.'

'Good morning, Maturin,' said Diana, coming down the steps. 'I hope I have not kept you waiting. What a neat cob you have there, upon my word! You never found him in this part of the world.'

'Good morning, Villiers. You are late. You are very late.'

'It is the one advantage there is in being a woman. You do know I am a woman, Maturin?'

'I am obliged to suppose it, since you affect to have no notion of time - cannot tell what o'clock it is. Though why the trifling accident of sex should induce a sentient being, let alone such an intelligent being as you, to waste half this beautiful clear morning, I cannot conceive. Come, let me help you to mount. Sex - sex..

'Hush, Maturin. You must not use words like that here. It was bad enough yesterday.'

'Yesterday? Oh, yes. But I am not the first man to say that wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas. Far from it. It is a commonplace.'

'As far as my aunt is concerned you are certainly the first man who ever used such an expression in public.'

They rode up Heberden Down: a still, brilliant morning with a little frost; the creak of leather, the smell of horse, steaming breath. 'I am not in the least degree interested in women as such,' said Stephen. 'Only in persons. There is Polcary,' he added, nodding over the valley. 'That is where I first saw you, on your cousin's chestnut. Let us ride over there tomorrow. I can show you a remarkable family of particoloured stoats, a congregation of stoats.'

'I must cry off for tomorrow,' said Diana. 'I am so sorry, I have to go to Dover to look after an old gentleman who is not quite right in the head, a sort of cousin.'

'But you will be back for the ball, sure?' cried Stephen.

'Oh, yes. It is all arranged. A Mr Babbington is to take me up on his way. Did not Captain Aubrey tell you?'

'I was back very late last night, and we hardly spoke this morning. But I must go to Dover myself next week. May I come and beg for a cup of tea?'

'Indeed you may. Mr Lowndes imagines he is a teapot; he crooks one arm like this for the handle, holds out the other for the spout, and says, "May I have the pleasure of pouring you a cup of tea?" You could not come to a better address. But you also have to go to town again, do you not?'

'I do. From Monday till Thursday.'

She reined in her horse to a walk, and with a hesitation and a shyness that changed her face entirely, giving it a resemblance to Sophia's, she said, 'Maturin, may I beg you to do me a kindness?'

'Certainly,' said Stephen, looking straight into her eyes and then quickly away at the sight of the painful emotion in them.

'You know something of my position here, I believe Would you sell this bit of jewellery for me? I must have something to wear at the ball.'

'What must I ask for it?'

'Would they not make an offer, do you think? If I could get ten pounds, I should be happy. And if they should give so much, then would you be even kinder and tell Harrison in the Royal Exchange to send me this list immediately? Here is a pattern of the stuff. It could come by the mail-coach as far as Lewes, and the carrier could pick it up. I must have something to wear.'

Something to wear. Unpicked, taken in, let out, and folded in tissue-paper, it lay in the trunk that stood waiting in Mr Lowndes's hall on the morning of the fourteenth.

'Mr Babbington to see you, ma'am,' said the servant.

Diana hurried into the parlour - her smile faded -she looked again, and lower than she would have thought possible she saw a figure in a three-caped coat that piped, 'Mrs Villiers, ma'am? Babbington reporting, if you please, ma'am.'

'Oh, Mr Babbington, good morning. How do you do? Captain Aubrey tells me you will be so very kind as to take me with you to Melbury Lodge. When do you please to start? We must not let your horse take cold. I have only a little trunk - it is ready by the front door. You will take a glass of wine before we leave, sir? Or I believe you sea-officers like rum?'

'A tot of rum to keep out the cold would be prime. You will join me, ma'am? It's uncommon parky, out.'

'A very little glass of rum, and put a great deal of water in it,' whispered Diana to the servant. But the girl was too flustered by the presence of a strange dogcart in the courtyard to understand the word 'water', and she brought a dark-brown brimming tumbler that Mr Babbington drank off with great composure. Diana's alarm increased at the sight of the tall, dashing dogcart and the nervous horse, all white of eye and laid-back ears. 'Where is your groom, sir?' she asked. 'Is he in the kitchen?'

'There ain't a groom in this crew, ma'am,' said Babbington, now looking at her with open admiration. 'I navigate myself. May I give you a leg up? Your foot on this little step and heave away. Now this rug - we make it fast aft, with these beckets. All a-tanto? Let go by the head,' he called to the gardener, and they dashed out of the forecourt, giving the white-painted post a shrewd knock as they passed. -

Mr Babbington's handling of the whip and the reins raised Diana's dismay to a new pitch; she had been brought up among horse-soldiers, and she had never seen anything like this in her life. She wondered how he could possibly have come all the way from Arundel without a spill. She thought of her trunk behind and when they left the main road, winding along the lanes, sometimes mounting the bank and sometimes shaving the ditch's edge, she said, 'It will never do. This young man will have to be taken down.'

The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent the other side. The horse slowed to a walk - the bean-fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart.

'I beg your pardon,' said the midshipman in the silence.

'Oh, that's all right,' said Diana coldly. 'I thought it was the horse.' A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington's hash for the moment. 'Let me show you how we do it in India,' she said, gathering the reins and taking his whip away from him. But once she had established contact with the horse and had him going steadily along the path he should follow, Diana turned her mind to winning back Mr Babbington's kindness and good will. Would he explain the blue, the red, and the white squadrons to her? The weather-gage? Tell her about life at sea in general? Surely it must be a very dangerous, demanding service, though of course so highly and so rightly honoured - the country's safeguard. Could it be true that he had taken part in the famous action with the Cacafuego? Diana could not remember a more striking disparity of forces. Captain Aubrey must be very like Lord Nelson.

'Oh yes, ma'am!' cried Babbington. 'Though I doubt even Nelson could have brought it off so handsome. He is a prodigious man. Though by land, you know, he is quite different. You would take him for an ordinary person -not the least coldness or distance. He came down to our place to help my uncle in the election, and he was as jolly as a grig - knocked down a couple of Whigs with his stick. They went down like ninepins - both of them poachers and Methodies, of course. Oh, it was such fun, and at Melbury he let me and old Pullings choose our horses and ride a race with him. Three times round the paddock and the horse to be ridden upstairs into the library for a guinea a side and a bottle of wine. Oh, we all love him, ma'am, although he's so taut at sea.'

'Who won?'

'Oh, well,' said Babbington, 'we all fell off, more or less, at different times. Though I dare say he did it on purpose, not to take our money.'

They stopped to bait at an inn, and with a meal and a pint of ale inside him Babbington said, 'I think you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen. You are to change in my room, which I am very glad of, now; and if I had known it was you, I should have bought a pincushion and a large bottle of scent.'

'You are a very fine figure of a man, too, sir,' said Diana. 'I am so happy to be travelling under your protection.'

Babbington's spirits mounted to an alarming degree; he had been brought up in a service where enterprise counted for everything, and presently it became necessary to occupy his attention with the horse. She had meant to allow him only the dash up the drive, but in the event he held the reins all the way from Newton Priors to the door of Melbury Lodge, where he handed her down in state, to the admiration of two dozen naval eyes.

There was something about Diana, a certain piratical dash and openness, that was very attractive to sea-officers; but they were also much attracted by the two Miss Simmonses' doll-like prettiness, by Frances dancing down the middle with the tip of her tongue showing as she kept the measure, by Cecilia's commonplace, healthy good looks, and by all the other charms that were displayed under the blaze of candles in the long handsome ballroom. And they were moon-struck by Sophia's grace as she and Captain Aubrey opened the ball: Sophia had on a pink dress with a gold sash, and Diana said to Stephen Maturin, 'She is lovely. There is not another woman in the room to touch her. That is the most dangerous colour in the world, but with her complexion it is perfect. I would give my eye-teeth for such a skin.'

'The gold and the pearls help,' said Stephen. 'The one echoes her hair and the other her teeth. I will tell you a thing about women. They are superior to men in this, that they have an unfeigned, objective, candid admiration for good looks in other women - a real pleasure in their beauty. Yours, too, is a most elegant dress: other women admire it. I have remarked this. Not only from their glances, but most positively, by standing behind them and listening to their conversation.'

It was a good dress, a light, flimsy version of the naval blue, with white about it - no black, no concessions to Mrs Williams, for it was understood that at a ball any woman was allowed to make the best of herself; but where taste, figure and carriage are equal, a woman who can spend fifty guineas on her dress will look better than one who can only spend ten pounds.

'We must take our places,' said Diana a little louder as the second violins struck in and the ballroom filled with sound. It was a fine sight, hung with bunting in the naval way - the signal engage the enemy more closely, among other messages understood by the sailors alone -shining with bees-wax and candlelight, crowded to the doors, and the lane of dancing figures: pretty dresses, fine coats, white gloves, all reflected in the french windows and in the tall looking-glass behind the band. The whole neighbourhood was there, together with a score of new faces from Portsmouth, Chatham, London, or wherever the peace had cast them on shore; they were all in their best clothes; they were all determined to enjoy themselves; and so far they were succeeding to admiration. Everyone was pleased, not only by the rarity of a ball (not above three in the season in those parts, apart from the Assembly), but by the handsome, unusual way in which it was done, by the seamen in their blue jackets and pigtails, so very unlike the greasy hired waiters generally to be seen, and by the fact that for once there were more men than women - men in large numbers, all of them eager to dance.