Post Captain (29 page)

'Must I not go ashore?'

'No, of course you must not, and that's the end to it. You must make your bed and lie on it.' He paused, with a feeling that this was not quite the epigram that he had wished. 'Now let me tell you of my interview with that scrub Harte...'

'If, then, as I understand you, we are to spend some time in this place, you will have no objection to granting me some days' leave of absence. Apart from all other considerations, I must get my dement and my compound fracture of the femur ashore: the hospital at Dover is at an inconsiderable distance - a most eligible port.'

'Certainly,' cried Jack, 'if you give me your word not to run, so that I have all the trouble of careering over the country after you with a posse - a posse navitatum. Certainly. Any time you like to name.'

'And when I am there,' said Stephen deliberately, 'I shall ride over to Mapes.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

'A gentleman to see Miss Williams,' said the maid.

'Who is it, Peggy?' cried Cecilia.

'I believe it is Dr Maturin, Miss.'

'I will come at once,' said Sophia, throwing her needlework into a corner and casting a distracted glance at the mirror.

'It must be for me,' said Cecilia. 'Dr Maturin is my young man.'

'Oh, Cissy, what stuff,' said Sophia, hurrying downstairs.

'You have one, no two already,' whispered Cecilia, catching her in the corridor. 'You can't have three. Oh, it's so unfair,' she hissed, as the door closed and Sophia walked into the morning-room with a great air of composure.

'How happy I am to see you,' they said, both together, looking so pleased that a casual observer would have sworn they were lovers, or at least that there was a particular attachment between them.

'Mama will be so disappointed to have missed you,' said Sophia. 'She has taken Frankie up to town, to have her teeth filed, poor pet.'

'I hope Mrs Williams is well, and Miss Cecilia? How is Mrs Villiers?'

'Diana is not here, but the others are very well, I thank you. How are you, and how is Captain Aubrey?'

'Blooming, blooming, thank you, my dear. That is to say, I am blooming: poor Jack is a little under the weather, what with his new command, and a crew of left-handed hedgecreepers from half the gaols in the kingdom.'

'Oh,' cried Sophie, clasping her hands, 'I am sure he works too hard. Do beg him not to work too hard, Dr Maturin. He will listen to you - I sometimes think you are the only person he will listen to. But surely the men must love him? I remember how the dear sailors at Melbury ran to do whatever he said, so cheerfully; and he was so good to them - never gruff or commanding, as some people are with their servants.'

'I dare say they will come to love him presently, when they appreciate his virtues,' said Stephen. 'But for the moment we are all at sixes and sevens. However, we have four old Sophies aboard - his coxswain volunteered - and they are a great comfort.'

'I can quite see they would follow him anywhere in the world,' said Sophia. 'Dear things, with their pigtails and buckled shoes. But tell me, is the Polychrest really so very - ? Admiral Haddock says she can never swim, but he loves to make our flesh creep, which is very ill-natured in him. He says she has two main topsail yards, in such a sneering, contemptuous way. I have no patience with him. Not that he means it unkindly, of course; but surely it is very wrong to speak lightly of such important things, and to say she will certainly go to the bottom? It is not true, is it, Dr Maturin? And surely two main topsail yards are better than one?'

'I am no sailor, as you know, my dear, but I should have thought so. She is an odd, pragmatical vessel, however, and she has this way of going backwards when they mean her to go forwards. Other ships find it entertaining, but it does not seem to please our officers or seamen. As for her not floating, you may set your mind at rest. We had a nine days' blow that took us far out into the chops of the Channel, with an ugly, pounding sea that partially submerged us, shaking away spars, booms, ropes; and she survived that. I do not suppose Jack was off the deck more than three hours at a time - I remember seeing him lashed to the bitts, up to his middle in the water, bidding the helmsman ease her as the seas came in; and on catching sight of me said, "She'll live yet." So you may be quite easy.'

'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Sophia in a low voice. 'At least, I do hope he eats well, to keep up his strength.'

'No,' said Stephen, with great satisfaction, 'that he does not. I am glad to say he does not eat at all well. I used to tell him over and over again, when he had Louis Durand as his cook, that he was digging his grave with his teeth:

he ate far, far too much three times a day. Now he has no cook; now he makes do with our common fare; and he is much the better for it - has lost two stone at least. He is very poor now, as you know, and cannot afford to poison himself; to ruin his constitution: it is true that he cannot afford to poison any guests either, which grieves him. He no longer keeps a table. But you, my dear, how are you? It seems to me that you are more in need of attention than our honest tar.' He had been watching her all this time, and although that unbelievable complexion was as lovely as ever, it was lovely in a lower tone, once the pinkness of surprise had faded; there was tiredness, sorrow, a want of light in her eyes; and something of the straight spring had gone. 'Let me see your tongue, my dear,' he said taking her wrist. 'I love the smell of this house,' he said, as he counted automatically. 'Orris-root, I believe? There was orris-root everywhere in my childhood home - smelt it as soon as you opened the door. Yes, yes. Just as I thought. You are not eating enough. What do you weigh?'

'Eight stone and five pounds,' said Sophia, hanging her head.

'You are fine-boned, sure; but for an upstanding young woman like you it is not nearly enough. You must take porter with your dinner. I shall tell your mother. A pint of good stout will do all that is required: or almost all.'

'A gentleman to see Miss Williams,' said the maid. 'Mr Bowles,' she added, with a knowing look.

'I am not at home, Peggy,' said Sophie. 'Beg Miss Cecilia to see him in the drawing-room. Now I have told a lie,' she said, catching her lip behind her teeth. 'How dreadful. Dr

Maturin, would you mind coming for a walk in the park, and then it will be true?'

'With all the pleasure in life, lamb,' said Stephen.

She took his arm and led him quickly through the shrubbery. When they came to the wicket into the park she said, 'I am so wretchedly unhappy, you know.' Stephen pressed her arm, but said nothing. 'It is that Mr Bowles. They want me to marry him.'

'Is he disagreeable to you?'

'He is perfectly hateful to me. Oh, I don't mean he is rude or unkind or in the least disrespectful - no, no, he is the worthiest, most respectable young man. But he is such a bore, and he has moist hands. He sits and gasps -he thinks he ought to gasp, I believe - he sits with me for hours and hours, and sometimes I feel that if he gasps at me just once more, I shall run my scissors into him.' She was speaking very quick, and now indignation had given her colour again. 'I always try to keep Cissy in the room, but she slips away - Mama calls her - and he tries to get hold of my hand. We edge slowly round and round the table - it is really too ridiculous. Mama - nobody could mean to be kinder than my dear Mama, I am sure - makes me see him - she will be so vexed when she hears I was not at home to him today - and I have to teach Sunday school, with those odious little tracts. I don't mind the children, much - poor little things, with their Sundays spoilt, after all that long church - but visiting the cottagers makes me perfectly wretched and ashamed - teaching women twice my age, with families, who know a hundred times more about life than I do, how to be economical and clean, and not to buy the best cuts of meat for their husbands, because it is luxurious, and God meant them to be poor. And they are so polite and I know they must think me so conceited and stupid. I can sew a little, and I can make a chocolate mousse, but I could no more run a cottage with a husband and little children in it on ten shillings a week than I could sail a first rate. Who do they think they are?' she cried. 'Just because they can read and write.'

'I have often wondered,' said Stephen. 'The gentleman is a parson, I take it?'

'Yes. His father is the bishop. And I will not marry him, no, not if I have to lead apes in Hell. There is one man in the world I will ever marry, if he would have me

- and I had him and I threw him away.'

The tears that had been brimming now rolled down her cheeks, and silently Stephen passed her a clean pocket-handkerchief.

They walked in silence: dead leaves, frosted, withered grass, gaunt trees; they passed the same palings twice, a third time.

'Might you not let him know?' asked Stephen. 'He cannot move in the matter. You know very well what the world thinks of a man who offers marriage to an heiress when he has no money, no prospects, and a load of debts. You know very well what your mother would say to such a proposal: and he is delicate in the point of honour.'

'I did write to him: I said all I could in modesty; and indeed it was the most forward, dreadful thing. It was not modest at all.'

'It came too late..

'Too late. Oh, how often I have said that to myself, and with such grief. If he had come to Bath just once again, I know we should have come to an understanding.'

'A secret engagement?'

'No. I should never have consented to that: but an understanding - not to bind him, you understand, but just to say that I should always wait. Anyhow, that is what I agreed in myself; but he never came again. Yet I did say it, and I feel myself bound in honour, whatever happens, unless he should marry elsewhere. I should wait and wait, even if it means giving up babies - and I should love to have babies. Oh, I am not a romantic girl: I am nearly thirty, and I know what I am talking about.'

'But surely now you could make him understand your mind?'

'He did not come in London. I cannot pursue him, and perhaps distress and embarrass him. He may have formed other attachments - I mean no blame: these things are quite different with men, I know.'

'There was that wretched story of an engagement to marry a Mr Allen.'

'I know.' A long pause. 'That is what makes me so cross and ill-natured,' said Sophia at last, 'when I think that if I had not been such an odious ninny, so jealous, I might now be... But they need not think I shall ever marry Mr Bowles, for I shall not.'

'Would you marry without your mother's consent?'

'Oh, no. Never. That would be terribly wrong. Besides, quite apart from its being wicked - and I should never do it - if I were to run away, I should not have a penny; and I should love to be a help to my husband, not a burden. But marrying where you are told, because it is suitable, and unexceptionable, is quite different. Quite different. Quick - this way. There is Admiral Haddock, behind the laurels. He has not seen us - we will go round by the lake:

no one ever comes there. Do you know he is going to sea again, by the way?' she asked in another tone.

'In command?' cried Stephen, astonished.

'No. To do something at Plymouth - the Fencibles or the Impress Service - I did not attend. But he is going by sea. An old friend is to give him a lift in the Généreux.'

'That is the ship Jack brought into Mahon when Lord Nelson's squadron took her.'

'Yes, I know: he was second of the Foudroyant then. And the admiral is so excited, turning over all his old uniform-cases and taking in his laced coats. He has asked Cissy and me for the summer, for he has an official residence down there. Cissy is wild to go. This is where I come to sit when I cannot bear it any longer in the house,' she said, pointing to a little green-mouldy Grecian temple, leprous and scaling. 'And this is where Diana and I had our quarrel.'

'I never heard you had quarrelled.'

'I should have thought we could have been heard all over the county, at least. It was my fault; I was horrid that day. I had had Mr Bowles to endure all the afternoon, and I felt as though I had been flayed: so I went for a ride as far as Gatacre, and then came back here. But she should not have taunted me with London, and how she could see him whenever she liked, and that he had not gone down to Portsmouth the next day at all. It was unkind, even if I had deserved it. So I told her she was an ill-natured woman, and she called me something worse, and suddenly there we were, calling names and shouting at one another like a couple of fishwives - oh, it is so humiliating to remember. Then she said something so cruel about letters and how she could marry him any moment she chose, but she had no notion of a half-pay captain nor any other woman's leavings that I quite lost my temper, and swore I should thrash her with my riding-crop if she spoke to me like that. I should have, too: but then Mama came, and she was terribly frightened and tried to make us kiss and be friends. But I would not; nor the next day, either. And in the end Diana went away, to Mr Lowndes, that cousin in Dover.'

'Sophie,' said Stephen, 'you have confided so much in me, and so trustingly..

'I cannot tell you what a relief it has been, and what a comfort to me.'

that it would be monstrous not to be equally candid with you. I am very much attached to Diana.'

'Oh,' cried Sophia. 'Oh, how I hope I have not hurt you. I thought it was Jack - oh, what have I said?'

'Never be distressed, honey. I know her faults as well as any man.'

'Of course, she is very beautiful,' said Sophia, glancing at him timidly.

'Yes. Tell me, is Diana wholly in love with Jack?'

'I may be wrong,' she said, after a pause, 'I know very little about these things, or anything else; but I do not believe Diana knows what love is at all.'

'This gentleman asks whether Mrs Villiers is at home,' said the Teapot's butler, bringing in a salver with a card upon it.

'Show him into the parlour,' said Diana. She hurried into her bedroom, changed her dress, combed her hair up, looked searchingly into her face in the glass, and went down.

'Good day to you now, Villiers,' said Stephen. 'No man on earth could call you a fast woman. I have read the paper twice through - invasion flotilla, loyal addresses, price of Government stock and list of bankrupts. Here is a bottle of scent.'

'Oh thank you, thank you, Stephen,' she cried, kissing him. 'It is the real Marcillac! Where on earth did you find it?'

'In a Deal smuggler's cottage.'

'What a good, forgiving creature you are, Maturin. Smell - it is like the Moghul's harem. I thought I should never see you again. I am sorry I was so disagreeable in London. How did you find me out? Where are you? What have you been doing? You look very well. I dote upon your blue coat.'

'I come from Mapes. They told me you were here.'

'Did they tell you of my battle with Sophie?'

'I understood there had been a disagreement.'