The Commodore, page 6
'To be sure I can, Stephen,' said Jack, quite loud. 'It is much better today; and I am so glad to see you. But as for my being brought low, it is only my head; my heart is bounding about like a lamb. I had such a signal on Wednesday morning, brought up post-haste from the port-admiral, that valuable man. Such a signal... but tell me, how did your journey go? Was all well in town?'
'Very well, I thank you. Sir Joseph asked me to bring a statue down for a friend at Weymouth, so I came back with Tom in the Ringle, picking Sarah and Emily up at Shelmerston and coming on by chaise. Tom came along with us, for orders. You can hear him roaring on the terrace. I mean to take the girls on to Barham to see Diana for a while, and then to carry them up to the Grapes, to live with Mrs Broad. But Jack, your house is in a strange turmoil, I find. Will I go and bid Tom bring up all standing?'
'Never in life. I am sorry for the din - that screeching is Sophie from upstairs, I think, talking to him - but the fact of the matter is, the children have reported sick, the three of 'em, and with me laid up, the place is all ahoo. Would you like to hear about my signal, Stephen?'
'If you, please.'
'Well, I am to have Bellona, 74, with a broad pennant and Tom as captain under me; Terrible, another 74; and three frigates, one of which is sure to be the Pyramus; and perhaps half a dozen slops, for the cruise off Africa that Heneage Dundas told me of. Ain't you amazed? I was, I promise you. I thought it was just one of those things people throw out, far too good to be true.'
'I give you all the joy in the world of your command, my dear: long, long may it prosper.'
'You will come with me, Stephen, will you not? It is mostly for putting down the slave-trade, you remember; and by the twenty-fifth of next month all should be assembled, manned and equipped.
'I should be very happy. But now, my dear Commodore, I must go and look at your children. I promised poor distracted Sophie so to do while your medical man was there, so that we might lay our physical heads together. I also promised not to tire you. Then I must hurry on to Barham: if I am not there by dark Diana will think we have been overturned in some remote, ill-favoured ditch.'
Jack's spirits fell at once. He hesitated, and said 'It is quite a while since Sophie has seen her - some disagreement with Diana's aunt, I believe. But Stephen, do not be disappointed if she is away. Nobody knew we were coming back, you know.'
Stephen smiled and said 'Diana and I will come and see you on your feet in a few days' time, I hope; but in the meanwhile I shall desire Dr Gowers to prescribe a little hellebore to calm the turbulence of your spirits and procure a healing equanimity. God bless, now.'
In the hall he found Tom Pullings, entirely alone, leaping and making antic gestures: on hearing Stephen he span round,showing a face of such laughing delight that the Devil himself could not have failed to smile. 'Can I see the Captain now, do you think?' he asked.
'You may; but do not speak loud, do not agitate his mind.' Pullings took his elbow in an iron grip and whispered 'He is to hoist a broad pennant in Bellona, and he has named me to be captain under him - he has made me post! I am a post-captain! I never thought it could happen.'
Stephen shook his hand and said 'I am so happy. At this rate, Tom, I shall live to congratulate you on your flag.'
'Thank you, thank you, sir,' called Tom after him as he hurried up the stairs. 'I have never heard a sentiment so well expressed; nor with such elegance and wit, neither.'
'Sophie, my love,' said Stephen, kissing her on both cheeks, 'you are in the most charming bloom, joy: but there is some degree of nervous tension, even a hint of febrility. I believe, Dr Gowers, that we might profitably exhibit a modest dose of hellebore for Mrs Aubrey as well as for the Commodore.'
'The Commodore,' murmured Sophie, squeezing his arm. They looked at the children, all struck dumb for the moment, and presently Stephen said 'I quite agree with my colleague. This is an advanced state of the commencement of measles: look at the swollen, bloated appearance of poor Charlotte's face.'
'I am not Charlotte. I am Fanny; and my face is neither swollen nor bloated.'
'Oh Fanny, for shame,' cried her mother, in great distress, tears starting from her eyes.
'So bloated and so swollen that the eruption cannot be long delayed: but I am sorry that it should be the measles, since I cannot bring my little girls up to see the invalids. Like many other black people they have no protection against the disease, and frequently succumb. And now, dear Sophie, I must go and collect them: do not move, I beg.' And privately in her ear 'I am so very happy about Jack.'
On the stairs he murmured to himself 'Presently I shall see a little face that is neither swollen nor bloated; one that is incapable of such a gross reply.'
In the drawing-room he found no one but Mrs Williams, still simmering with ill-temper.
'Where are Sarah and Emily?' he asked.
'The little niggers? I sent them to the kitchen, where they belong,' said Mrs Williams. When I came in they neither curtseyed nor called me ma'am. And when I said "Don't you know you must not just say good day and no more as if you was addressing the cat and don't you know you must curtsey to a gentlewoman?" they only looked at one another and shook their heads.'
'You are to consider, ma'am,' said Stephen, 'that they have spent much of their life aboard a man-of-war, where there are no gentlewomen to be addressed, and where curtseys, if they exist, are reserved for officers.'
Mrs Williams sniffed, and then said 'They are your property, I collect; and if so, I must inform you that no slaves can be countenanced in England, so that you are likely to lose your price. In the colonies, yes: but we must always remember that England is a free country and that as soon as slaves set foot on English soil they to are free: as a foreigner you cannot of course understand our love of liberty. But we must never forget to look closely at all sides of a bargain, or we may find ourselves buying a mare's nest.'
Ill nature and ill temper urged her to add something about charity beginning at home, since a moment's reflection on their clothes and uncowed manners suggested that they might be prot�es rather than bondservants, but angry though she was she did not dare go farther, and after contemplating her for a moment with his pale eyes Stephen took up his hat, bowed, said 'Servant, ma'am,' and hurried off to the kitchen, where he found the little girls telling two superannuated ship's cooks about the glories of the green ice they had seen off the Horn.
For the rest of the journey they were very quiet, gazing at the wonderfully unfamiliar English countryside in the gentle evening light. So was Stephen. His mind, like Jack's, was confused by a variety of strong emotions - intense anticipation and a dread he did not choose to name - and like Jack he took refuge in reflecting upon Mrs Williams. There was not only the change from the broken-spirited poor relation, perpetually aware of her dependence, back to her former degree of assurance - though not indeed of dominance: Sophie had grown much stronger - and of indignant self-righteousness; there was also a change in that earlier being, with a barely definable raffishness superadded, an ease in throwing herself into a comfortable chair, an occasional absurdly inappropriate gross or at least ungenteel and totally incongruous expression, as though by handling bets she had absorbed some of the coarse side of the turf. 'It would not surprise me if she has taken to putting gin in her tea,' he said, 'and to the use of snuff.'
Shortly after this the rain began to fall; the landscape vanished, and Emily went to sleep on Padeen's knee. The postilion drew up to light his lamps inside the carriage, begged pardon, asked the direction again, and drove on slowly, clop, clop, clop. After a mile or so and a shouted exchange with a farmcart the postilion stopped again, came to the door, begged pardon and feared they had taken the wrong lane. He would have to turn when he found a gate into a field. This happened once or twice, but not long after sunset they found themselves in the familiar high bare country rising to Barham Down.
The carriage drew up before the great middle door; no lights to be seen within. The little girls woke, anxious, dismayed; Padeen began unstrapping the baggage; Stephen rang the bell and knocked, his heart beating high.
No answer, but somewhere in the back of the house, perhaps the kitchen, a dog began to bark. He knocked again, the queer feeling in his bosom: pulled the bell-wire; and the bell itself could be heard ringing far inside.
A light through the cracks of the door; it opened on the chain and Clarissa's voice asked 'Who is there?'
'Stephen Maturin, my dear. I am sorry we are so late.'
The chain came off with a rattle and the door swung wide, showing Clarissa with a lantern on a table by her side and a horse-pistol in her hand. 'Oh how very glad I am to see you,' she cried, yet with a certain embarrassment in her joy. She carefully uncocked the pistol - evidently loaded and for use - laid it on the table and held out her hand. 'Nonsense,' he cried, 'we embrace' and kissed her.
'You have not changed,' she said, smiling, and stood back, motioning him in.
'You are alone, I doubt?' said he, not moving but with his eyes searching the long dark hall and his ears on the strain.
'Yes.. . yes,' she answered hesitantly. 'Well, but for Brigid.' He went out, settled with the post-boy and came back with the little girls, Padeen following with the baggage. 'Here are some old shipmates, Clarissa,' he said, leading them forward. 'Sarah and Emily, you must make your bobs to Mrs Oakes, and ask her how she does.'
'How do you do, ma'am?' they said in unison.
'Very well indeed, my dears,' she replied, kissing them. She shook Padeen's hand, and although they had not agreed very well when they sailed together in the Nutmeg the travellers now felt much drawn to a well-known face and a familiar voice in these utterly strange and foreign surroundings. Not only was the country strange - nothing of shipboard about it, nothing of the pleasures of a port, filled with unknown people who might fly out at you - but this particular house was quite outside their experience. It was in fact an unusual building, tall, gaunt and cold, one of the few large old houses that had not been altered in the last two centuries, so that the great hail ran right up the whole height to the roof, sombre indeed on such an evening and by the light of a single lantern.
Clarissa led them slowly, almost as it were reluctantly, quite through its length and then turned right-handed into a carpeted room with candles and a fire. A small girl was building card-houses on a table near the grate.
Clarissa murmured 'Do not mind if she does not speak,' and Stephen could feel the controlled anguish in her voice.
The girl at the table was lit by the fire and two candles: she was three-quarters turned towards Stephen and he saw a slim fair-haired child, quite extraordinarily beautiful: but with a disquieting, elfin, changeling beauty. Her movements as she handled the cards were perfectly coordinated; she glanced at Stephen and the others for a moment without the least interest, almost without ceasing to place her cards, and then carried on with the fifth storey.
'Come, my dear, and pay your duty to your father,' said Clarissa, taking her gently by the hand and leading her, unresisting, to Stephen. There she made her bob, standing as straight as a wand, and with only a slight shrinking away she allowed her face to be kissed. Then she was led to the others; their names were clearly stated; they too made their bobs and Brigid walked easily back to her card-house, unconscious of their smiling black faces, though she did look straight up into Padeen's for a moment.
'Padeen,' said Clarissa, 'will you go down that long corridor, now? The first door on your right hand' - she held up her right hand- 'is the kitchen, and there you will find Mrs Warren and Nellie. Please give them this note.'
Stephen sat in an elbow-chair away from the light, watching his daughter. Clarissa asked Sarah and Emily about their journey, about Ashgrove and about their clothes. They all sat on a sofa, talking away readily enough as their shyness wore off; but their eyes were fixed on the slight, wholly self-possessed, self-absorbed figure by the hearth.
Mrs Warren and Nellie took some time to appear, since they had to fetch clean aprons and caps to be presented to the Doctor - the master of the house, after all. An ancient whitemuzzled kitchen dog shuffled in after them and the first relief to Stephen's quite extraordinary pain - extraordinary in that he had never known any of the same nature or the same intensity - came when the old dog sniffed at the back of Brigid's leg and without stopping her left hand's delicate motion she reached down with the other to scratch his forehead, while something of pleasure showed through her gravity. Otherwise nothing disturbed her indifference. She saw her tall cardhouse fall, the tottering victim of a draught, with perfect composure; she ate her bread and milk together with Emily and Sarah, unmoved by their presence; and after a good-night ceremony in which Stephen blessed her she went off to bed with neither reluctance nor complaint. He observed with still another kind of pang that if ever their eyes met hers moved directly on, as they might have moved on from those of a marble bust, or of a creature devoid of interest, since it belonged to a different order.
'Can she speak at all?' he asked when he and Clarissa were sitting at the dining-table - cold chicken and ham, cheese, and an apple-pie: the servants sent off to bed long since. 'I am not sure,' said Clarissa. 'On occasion I have heard her doing something very like it; but she always stops when I come in.'
'How much does she understand?'
'Almost everything, I believe. And unless she is in one of her bad days she is very good and biddable.'
'Affectionate, would you say?'
'I like to think so. Indeed, it is probable; but the signs are hard to make out.'
Stephen ate wolfishly for a while, and cutting himself another piece of cheese he said 'Will you tell me about Diana? I mean, what you feel you can properly say.' Clarissa looked at him doubtfully. 'I do not mean lovers or anything you cannot tell of a friend. For you were friends, I believe?'
'Yes. She was very kind when Oakes was at sea, and kinder still when he was killed; although by that time it was already perfectly clear that Brigid was not like ordinary people, which distressed her extremely, so that she drank too much and might then speak wildly and be indiscreet. But she was very kind. She taught me to ride: such joy. Very kind, and I am not an ungrateful creature, you know,' said Clarissa, laying her hand on Stephen's arm. 'But there were reserves. I believe she was deeply convinced that I was or had been your mistress. When I protested my complete indifference where such matters were concerned she only smiled politely, repeating that catch-phrase Les hommes, cest difficile de s'endormir sans; and I could not prove my point with the confidences that you so kindly listened to on that remote island when we were aboard the Nutmeg, dear ship. Confidences, I may say, that I have never made to anyone but you, and never shall: and as you and Sir Joseph advised, for the world in general I am a governess who disliked her employment in New South Wales and ran away with a sailor.'
'When do you suppose her unhappiness began?'
'Oh, very early; well before I knew her. I believe she missed you cruelly. And from what I have heard the birth was worse than usual - an interminable labour and a fool of a man midwife. The baby was put out to nurse, of course. When it came back it looked enchanting and she thought she would certainly love it. But already there was this total indifference. The child wished neither to love nor to be loved. Diana had never come across anything of the kind and she was completely bewildered as well as being wounded to the heart. When I came I think it was some relief, but it was not nearly enough and she grew more and more unhappy and often difficult. Her aunt Williams was very unkind indeed, I believe. And as time went on there was no improvement in Brigid: rather the reverse. The indifference grew to positive aversion, and even to a cold dislike.'
'Did any of my letters reach her?'
'None while I was here: none except that which Oakes and I brought back, of course. They would have been of the greatest help. She began to give up hope: so many ships are lost. And yet she dreaded your return. Obviously. Presently she took against this house: you would not have wished her to buy it; and indeed it is cold, lonely and inconvenient. The horses she loved almost until the end, but then suddenly she told me that she was giving up the stud, though it was quite successful, and the next week they were all sent up to Tattersalls with Mr Wilson, the manager, all except a stallion and two mares who went into the north country - I forget the name of the house. Near Doncaster. All the grooms except for old Smith, who was to look after my little Arab and the pony and trap, were dismissed, though I know she wrote about among her friends to find new places for them; and she begged me to stay on here with Brigid until she could make arrangements. She left me a quantity of money and said she would write. I did hear from her once, in Harrogate; but not since.'
