The Mauritius Command Read online

  � am very well, I thank you. And you too, my dear, you are blooming, blooming." She was indeed. She had caught up most of the wisps of hair he had seen streaming from the window, but one had escaped and its disorder enchanted him; yet for all the complacency with which he gazed upon her he could not conceal from his private mind that the tendency to plumpness he had once warned her of was quite gone, that were the present flush of pleasure not on her face she might look worn and even haggard, and that her hands, once so elegant, were now coarse and reddened.

  Mrs Williams walked in. Stephen rose to bow, to ask after her health and that of her other daughters, and to answer her questions. He was about to sit down again after a tolerably detailed account of Mrs Williams" providential recovery when she cried, "Not on the settle., Doctor Maturin, if you please. It is bad for the cane. You will be more comfortable In Captain Aubrey's chair."

  A thump and a dismal howling above-stairs called Sophie from the room, and presently Jack went after her. Mrs Williams, feeling that she had been a little abrupt in the matter of his sitting, gave Stephen a history of the settle since its manufacture in Dutch William's time: she had brought it with her from dear Mapes, where no doubt he remembered it in the summer drawing room; she liked Captain A's cottage to have something of the air of a gentleman's house, and in any case she could not bear leaving so valuable, so historical a piece to her tenant, a worthy sort of man no doubt, but something in the commercial line, and people in that walk of life would not scruple to sit on it. The clock also came from Mapes, the most accurate clock in the county.

  "A handsome clock it is too," said Stephen. "A regulator, I believe. Could it not be set a-going?"

  "Oh, no, sir," said Mrs Williams with a pitying look. "Was it to be set a-going, the works would instantly start to wear." From this she carried on to wear in general and the prohibitive cost of repairs, with an aside about Captain A's being handy in the house.

  Captain Aubrey's voice, though well calculated to carry from one end of a ship to another in a gale, was less suited to the confidential domestic whisper, and at intervals in Mrs Williams's stream of words his deep rumble could be heard, not perhaps quite as good-humoured as once it was, expostulating about a fair-sized piece of ham that could be dressed, a sea pie that could be knocked up in a moment. Stephen turned his attention to Mrs Williams, and shading his eyes with his hand he studied her carefully. It appeared to him that her misfortune had had remarkably little effect on her: her restless, aggressive urge to dominate seemed if anything to have increased; she looked well, and as happy as it was in her nature to be. Her frequent references to her former grandeur might have been references to a myth in which she did not herself believe, a dream from which she had wakened to her present reality. Perhaps she had been born to play the part of a contriving manager with two hundred a year, so that at last she was fulfilling her real purpose. Was it a remarkable display of courage, or was it stark insensibility? For some time now she had been on the subject of servants, producing the usual threadbare observations with great conviction and volubility. In her young days they had been perfect; now they were difficult to find, impossible to keep, idle, false, dishonest, and often downright evil. "Only this morning, only this very morning," she said, "I caught the cook fingering a heap of toadstools. Can you imagine such wickedness, Dr. Maturin? To finger toadstools and then to touch my grandchildren's food with her nasty hands! There's a Welsh woman for you!"

  "Did you attend to her explanation, ma'am?"

  "Of course not, Lies, all lies, you know, in the kitchen. I flung them out of the door and gave her a piece of my mind. Character, forsooth! Don't she wish she may get it."

  After a short pause Stephen said, "I saw an osprey this morning in that noble hanger over the way."

  "Did you, sir, indeed? Well, I declare. In that little wood we see from the window? It is quite well, for Hampshire. But when you know the neighbourhood as well as I know it, you will find that it is nothing in comparison of the woods at Mapes. They stretched into the next county, sir, and they were full of ospreys. Mr. Williams used to shoot any number of "em. I dare say this osprey of yours was a stray from Mapes."

  For some time Stephen had been aware of a snuffling behind the door. Now it opened and a little girl with yellow hair and a heavy cold came bursting in. She stared at him with an arch look, then buried her head in her grandmother's lap; to Stephen's relief all Mrs Williams's entreaties that she should stand up, that she should shake the gentleman's hand and give him a kiss, were in vain, and there she reclined, while her grandmother gently stroked her hair.

  Mrs Williams had never, to Stephen's knowledge, shown the least kindness to her daughters; her face, voice and manner were unfitted for the expression of kindness; yet here it was, glowing in her whole squat person as she explained that this was little Cecilia, the child of her middle daughter, who was following her husband's regiment and who therefore could not look after her, poor thing.

  "I should have known her anywhere," said Stephen. "A fine child."

  Sophie returned and the child at once began to shout, "Aunt, Aunt, Cook tried to poison me with toadstools." She kept up this unvaried cry for some time, and over it Stephen said to Sophie, "I am strangely remiss: you must forgive me. I am come to beg you all to dine with me, and I have not yet delivered my invitation."

  "You are very good," said Mrs Williams at once, "but I am afraid that would be quite impossible, because " she looked about for some reason why it should be quite impossible, but was obliged to take refuge in hushing the child. Stephen went on, "I am staying at the Crown in Petersfield, and have bespoke a variety of dishes."

  Sophie asked how he could be so monstrous; he was staying at the cottage, and dining there too. Again the door opened, and both women eagerly turned to Jack. "How they do talk," reflected Stephen:'this was the first time he had ever seen the slightest possible evidence of a relationship between Sophie and her improbable mother.

  "Uncle Aubrey," cried Cecilia, "Cook tried to poison me and the twins with toadstools."

  "What stuff," said Jack. "Stephen, you dine and sleep with us. The galley is all ahoo today, but there will be a capital sea-pie."

  "Jack," said Stephen, 11 have bespoke dinner at the Crown. These dishes will be on the table at the appointed hour, and if we are not there, they will go to waste entirely."

  This remark, he noticed, had a striking effect upon the women. Although they still protested that he should not go, the conviction and the volume of their arguments declined. Stephen said nothing: at times he looked out of the window, at others he watched Sophie and her mother, and their kinship became more apparent. Where did it lie? Certainly not in tone of voice, nor in any particular feature or physical movement. Conceivably it arose from a certain not childish but rather un-adult expression common to both, an expression that a French colleague of his, a physiognomist and a follower of Lavater, had called "the English look', attributing it to frigidity, a well-known characteristic of Englishwomen, and thus to an ignorance of the warming, ripening delights of physical love. "If Dupuytren was right, and if this is indeed the case," he reflected, "then Jack, with his ardent temperament, must be strangely put about." The flood of talk continued. "How well he bears it," thought Stephen, remembering Jack's short way with cackle on the quarterdeck. "I honour his forebearance." Compromises made their appearance: some should go, some should stay. Eventually, after a very long typical family discussion that often began again where it had started, it was agreed that Jack should go, that Stephen should return the next morning for breakfast, and that Mrs Williams, for some reason, should content herself with a little bread and cheese.

  "Nonsense, ma'am," cried Jack, goaded beyond civility at last, "there is a perfectly good piece of ham in the larder, and the makings of a monstrous fine great sea-pie."

  "But at least, Stephen, you will have time to see the twins before you leave," said Sophie quickly. "For the moment they are quite presentable. Pray show them, my dear. I
will be with you in a moment."

  Jack led him up the stairs into a little sloping room, upon whose floor sat two bald babies, dressed in fresh frocks. They had pale, globular faces, and in the middle of each face a surprisingly long and pointed nose called the turnip to an impartial observer's mind. They looked at Stephen steadily: they had not yet reached the age of any social contact whatsoever and there was not the least doubt that they found him uninteresting, dull, even repellent; their eyes wandered elsewhere, dismissing him, both pairs at exactly the same moment. They might have been infinitely old, or members of another genus.

  "Very fine children," said Stephen. "I should have known them anywhere."

  "I cannot tell one from t'other," said Jack. "You would not credit the din they can kick up if things are not quite to their liking. The one on the right is probably Charlotte." He stared at them; they stared at him, unwinking. "What do you think of them, Stephen?" he asked, tapping his forehead significantly.

  Stephen resumed his professional role. He had delivered some scores of babies at the Rotunda in his student days, but since then his practice had lain among adults, particularly among seafaring adults, and few men of his professional standing could have been worse qualified for this task; however, he picked them up, listened to their hearts and lungs, opened their mouths and peered within, bent their limbs, and made motions before their eyes.

  "How old are they?" he asked.

  "Why, they must be quite old by now," said Jack. "They seem to have been here for ever. Sophie will know exactly."

  Sophie came in, and to his pleasure Stephen saw both the little creatures lose their eternal, ancient look; they smiled, wriggled and jerked themselves convulsively with joy, mere human larvae.

  "You need not be afraid for them," he said, as he and Jack walked over the fields towards their dinner. "They will do very well; they may even turn out a pair of phoenixes, in time. But I do beg you will not countenance that thoughtless way people have of flinging them up into the air. It is liable to do great harm, to confuse their intellects; and a girl, when grown into a woman, has greater need of her intellect than a man. It is a grievous error to fling them to the ceiling."

  "God's my life!" cried Jack, pausing in his stride. "You don't tell me so? I thought they liked being tossed up--they laugh and crow and so on, almost human. But I shall never do it again, although they are only girls, poor little swabs."

  �t is curious, the way you dwell upon their sex. They are your own children, for all love, your very flesh; and yet I could almost suppose, and not only from your referring to them as swabs, a disobliging term, that you were disappointed in them, merely for being girls. It is, to be sure, a misfortune for them--the orthodox Jew daily thanks his Maker for not having been born a woman, and we might well echo his gratitude--but I cannot for the life of me see how it affects you, your aim being, as I take it, posterity, a vicarious immortality: and for that a girl is if anything a better assurance than a boy."

  "Perhaps it is a foolish prejudice," said Jack, "but to tell you the truth, Stephen, I had longed for a boy. And to have not one girl but two--well, I would not have Sophie know it for the world, but it is a disappointment, reason how I may. My heart was set on a boy: I had it all worked out in my mind. I should have taken him to sea at seven or eight, with a good schoolmaster aboard to give him a thorough grounding in mathematics and even perhaps a parson for the frills, Latin and morality and so on. He should have spoken French and Spanish as well as you do, Stephen; and I could have taught him a deal of seamanship. Even if I could get no ship for years and years, I knew just what admirals and captains to place him with; he would not have lacked for friends in the service; and if he had not been knocked on the head first, I should have seen him made post by twenty-one or -two. Maybe I should have seen him hoist his flag at last. I could help a boy along, at sea; and the sea is the only thing I know. What use can I possibly be to a parcel of girls? I cannot even give them portions."

  "By the law of averages the next is very likely to be a boy," said Stephen, "and then you will carry out your benevolent scheme."

  "There is no likelihood of another. None at all," said Jack. "You have not been married, Stephen--but I cannot explain--should never have mentioned it. This is the stile to the turnpike: you can see the Crown from here."

  They said nothing as they walked along the road. Stephen reflected upon Sophie's confinement: he had not been present, but he understood from his colleagues that it had been unusually difficult and prolonged--a bad presentation--yet there had been no essential lesion. He also reflected upon Jack's life at Ashgrove Cottage; and standing before the fire in the Crown, a fine great, posting-inn on the main Portsmouth road, he said, "Were we to speak generally, we might say that upon the whole sailors, after many years of their unnatural, cloistered life, tend to regard the land as Fiddler's Green, a perpetual holiday; and that their expectations cannot be attempted to be fulfilled. What the ordinary landsman accepts as the common lot, the daily round of domestic ills, children, responsibilities, the ordinary seaman is apt to look upon as a disappointment of his hopes, an altogether exceptional trial, and an invasion of his liberty."

  "I catch your drift, old Stephen," said Jack with a smile, "and there is a great deal in what you say. But not every ordinary seaman has Mrs Williams to live with him. I am not complaining, mark you. She is not a bad sort of a woman at all; she does her best according to her own lights, and she is truly devoted to the children. The trouble is that I had somehow got the wrong notion of marriage. I had thought there was more friendship and confidence and unreserve in it than the case allows. I am not criticizing Sophie in the least degree, you understand -

  "Certainly not."

  "--but in the nature of things . . . The fault is entirely on my side, I am sure. When you are in command, you get so sick of the loneliness, of playing the great man and so on, that you long to break out of it; but in the nature of things it don't seem possible." He relapsed into silence.

  After a while Stephen said, "So if you were ordered to sea, brother, I collect you would not rage and curse, as being snatched away from domestic felicity--the felicity, I mean, of a parent guiding his daughters" first interesting steps?"

  I should kiss the messenger," Jack.

  "This I had supposed for some time now," murmured Stephen.

  "For one thing, I should be on full pay," continued Jack, land for another, there would be a chance of prize-money, and I might be able to give them portions." At the word prize-money the old piratical look gleamed in his bright blue eye and he straightened to his full height. "And indeed I have some hopes of a ship. I pepper the Admiralty with letters, of course, and some days ago I wrote to Bromley: there is a frigate fitting out in the Dockyard, the old Diane, doubled and braced with Snodgrass's diagonals. I even pester Old Jarvie from time to time, though he don't love me. Oh, I have half a dozen irons in the fire--I suppose you have not been up to anything, Stephen? Not another Surprise*Se, with an envoy for the East Indies?"

  "How come you to ask such a simple question, Jack? Hush: do not gape, but look privily towards the stair. There is a most strikingly handsome woman."

  Jack glanced round, and there in fact was a most strikingly handsome woman, young, spry, a lady very much alive, wearing a green riding-habit; she was aware of being looked at, and she moved with even more grace than nature had provided.

  He turned heavily back to the fire. "I have no use for your women," he said. "Handsome or otherwise."

  "I never expected you to utter so weak a remark," said Stephen. "To lump all women together in one undiscriminated heap is as unphilosophical as to say . . . "

  "Gentlemen," said the host of the Crown, "your dinner is on the table, if you please to walk in."

  It was a good dinner, but even the soused hog's face did not restore Captain Aubrey's philosophy, nor give his expression the old degree of cheerfulness that Stephen had known outlast privation, defeat, imprisonment and even the loss of his ship.
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  After the first remove, which had been entirely taken up with memories of earlier commissions and former shipmates, they spoke of Mrs Williams's affairs. That lady, having lost her man of business by death, had been unfortunate in her choice of a new one, a gentleman with a scheme of investment that must infallibly yield seventeen and a half per cent. Her capital had been engulfed and with it her estate, though up until the present she still retained the house whose rent paid the interest on the mortgage. "I cannot blame her," said Jack. "I dare say I should have done the same myself: even ten per cent would have been wonderfully tempting. But I wish she had not lost Sophie's dowry too. She did not choose to transfer it until the Michaelmas dividends were due, and in decency we could hardly press her, so it all went, being in her name. I mind the money, of course, but even more than that I mind its making Sophie unhappy. She feels she is a burden, which is the greatest nonsense. But what can I say? I might as well talk to the cathead."

  "Allow me to pour you another glass of this port," said Stephen. "It is an innocent wine, neither sophisticated nor muddy, which is rare in these parts. Tell me, who is the Miss Herschel of whom you spoke with such warm approbation?"