Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

'If you had seen Emily thank the keeper for his explanations and beg him to accept this sixpence, I believe it would have touched your heart,' said Stephen, by the hall fire at Black's.

'Perhaps,' said Sir Joseph. 'I have heard that there is good in children. But even a greater example of affectionate attention would not tempt me into the wild adventure of begetting any. I do wish, my dear Stephen, that now you are as rich as a Jew again you would take a post-chaise like a Christian, rather than this vile coach: you will be huddled in with all and sundry, bumped about in an odious promiscuity, pushed, snored upon all night, suffocated, and then put out at your destination a little before dawn, for God's sake!'

'It is quicker than the mail-coach. And I have paid for my ticket.'

'I see you are set upon it. Well, God be with you. We must be away. Charles, a coach for the Doctor, if you please. How I wish these bags may all arrive at Dorchester' - pushing one crossly with his foot - 'At least I shall go to the Golden Cross with you, and make sure they are taken aboard.'

Through Sir Joseph's care the bags did reach Dorchester and the King's Arms in the thin grey light, the faintly drizzling Saturday morning. The guard put them down, thanked Stephen for his tip, and bawled into the courtyard, 'Hey, Joe: show the gent into the coffee-room. Three small trunks and a brown-paper parcel.'

The other inside passengers had been much as Blaine had described them, and one had an unfortunate way of jerking out his legs in his sleep. However, the King's Arms gave Stephen a famous breakfast, smoked trout, eggs and bacon, a delicate small lamb chop: the coffee was more than passable, and humanity returned like a slowly rising tide. 'I should like a chaise, if you please, to take me to Woolcombe as soon as I have finished,' he said to the waiter. 'And I could wish to be shaved.'

'Directly, sir,' said the waiter. 'I will tell the barber to step in. And I believe you will have a pleasant ride. The day is clearing from the east.'

So it was, and before the chaise was half-way to Woolcombe the sun heaved up his brilliant rim above Morley Down. This was very familiar country now and presently they were running along the side of Simmon's Lea: far over he could make out three riders and a man running with them, far down towards the mere, a woman and two children, one of whom he could have sworn was his daughter if the little figure had not been riding astride: but the runner was certainly Padeen.

'The next on your right,' he called to the post-boy.

'I know it, sir,' said the post-boy, smiling back at him. 'Our Maggie is in service there.' He swung the chaise into the forecourt.

'The farther wing,' said Stephen, since that was where Diana, Clarissa and Brigid lived: he would pay his respects to Sophie later; and to Mrs Williams, in the west wing, later still.

'Just put these inside the door,' he said as he paid the post-boy. 'The brown-paper parcel I shall carry myself.'

He walked up the stairs and opened the door gently. As he had expected, Diana was still in bed, pink and sleepy. 'Oh Stephen,' she cried, sitting up and opening her arms. 'What joy to see you - I was thinking of you not five seconds ago.' They embraced: she looked at him tenderly. 'You are surprisingly well,' she said. 'Have you had breakfast?' Stephen nodded. 'Then take off your clothes and come into my bed. I have countless things to tell you.'

'Dear me, Stephen,' she said, lying back, her hair, her black hair wildly astray on the pillow and her blue eyes filled with a splendid light. 'I have a thousand things to tell you, but you have driven them all out of my mind.' She stroked the limp arm lying over her bosom for a while and then said, 'Tell me, have you just come from the fleet? Are you on leave? Is Jack with you?'

'I am not. I am just come down from London. I have not seen Jack these many weeks: he is still with the blockading squadron.'

'Then you don't know that my Aunt Williams came to live here after her friend Mrs Morris ran off with that odious manservant they had - Briggs. Just then the west wing was being done up and oh such quantities of other things, so she was put into Jack's room and there, poking and prying everywhere, she found a box of letters that silly goose Amanda Smith wrote him from Canada, telling him he had got her with child: and certainly she begged him to go through the motions, you know. These Aunt Williams seized and ran to Sophie as fast as ever she could and poured out all her bile and Methody cant about fornication and so on, working the poor girl up into a frenzy of self-righteousness and jealousy. It had always astonished me that a woman with as much sense as Sophie - and she is no fool, you know - can be so influenced by her mother, who is a fool, a downright great God-damned fool, even where money is concerned, which is saying a great deal. But there it is. Sophie wrote him a letter with all kinds of high-flown Drury-Lane stuff: and when the poor fellow came posting up from Plymouth to say he was sorry and should never do it again she turned him away, clean away. So away he went, with a parting shot about goddam ill-natured unforgiving shrews that went home. And she has been crying her eyes out ever since.'

'Poor soul, poor soul. But it was an ill-fated marriage. She has never taken pleasure in the act itself: she has always dreaded pregnancies: and her deliveries have been extremely painful. It has long seemed to me that jealousy and frigidity or at least tepidness are in direct proportion to one another. And Jack is what is ordinarily called a very full-blooded man.'

'I dare say you are right about frigidity and jealousy. But I believe you are wrong in calling Sophie frigid. Certainly, when her mother is by, I think she would be a poor companion for a lively, eager man - indeed, Jack would never have got her into his bed at all if she had not run away in a ship, far from her mother's eye. And then again I have it on the best authority that Jack is no artist in these matters. He can board and carry an enemy frigate with guns roaring and drums beating in a couple of minutes; but that is no way to give a girl much pleasure. In better hands she would, I am sure, have been a very likely young woman; and oh so much happier.'

'Clearly, you know more about these things than I.'

'She has a lovely body still, in spite of these children,' said Diana. 'But what is the use of a lovely body if neither you nor anyone else enjoys it?'

'Sure it is a great waste: the great shame of the world.'

'Clarissa, who knows a great deal about the subject, and I - but Lord, I have left out a most important part. I never told you that Aunt Williams is gone back to Bath. Mrs Morris's fellow turned out to have several wives already and he has been taken up for bigamy, false pretences, personation, forgery, theft and God knows what, a right wrong 'un. And Aunt Williams is to be the prime witness for the prosecution. She is so proud and important - swears she will never leave till the man is hanged and she and her friend will end their days together - I bought them a little place just off the Paragon.'

'Barham Down is sold then? How clever of you.'

'No, no. That is another thing I was forgetting. After you had been gone a while I began to think it was just Goddamned silly to squalor along on two hundred a year when you have an enormous great diamond like the Blue Peter. I happened to mention it to Cholmondeley - I still had his coach until a little while ago - and he agreed it was great nonsense: why did I not borrow fifty thousand or so until our affairs were settled? He could easily arrange it in the City. So I said yes, and now I am absolutely swimming in money. Do let me give you some money, Stephen dear.'

'Sweetheart, honey, you are kindness itself, but our affairs are already settled. They are just as they were, or even somewhat better; my loss of the receipt did not signify, and I shall unpawn your bauble tomorrow. Now I come to think of it,' he went on, stalking like Adam across the room to his brown-paper parcel, 'here is a present to go with the jewel.' He unwrapped a swathe of Lyons silk velvet, blacker than the darkest night.