Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

Sir Joseph plucked it from him with a glittering eye, hurried over to the light and sat there hunched sideways, devouring the neat pages, accounts and lists. ‘The dog,’ he exclaimed in an undertone. ‘The cunning dog - Edward Griffiths, Edward Griffiths, say your prayers, my man -in the very embassy itself? - so Osborne was right - the hound - God bless my soul.’

‘Well,’ he said aloud, ‘I shall have to share this with my colleagues at the Horse Guards and the Foreign Office, of course; but the document itself I shall keep - le perfide Sir Blame - to gloat upon in my leisured ease: such a document! I am so grateful, Maturin.’ He made as though to shake hands, but recollected himself at the sight of Stephen’s, touched it gently, and said, ‘If it comes to exchanging surprises, I own myself beat out of the ring.’

The postman was a rare visitor to Mapes. Mrs Williams’s bailiff lived in the village, and her man of business called on her once a week; she had few relations with whom she was on letter-​writing terms, and those few wrote seldom. Yet to the eldest daughter of the house the postman’s step, his way of opening the iron gate, was perfectly distinct, and as soon as she heard it she flew from the still-​room, along three corridors and down the stairs into the hall. She was too late, however. The butler had already placed The Ladies’ Fashionable Intelligencer and a single letter on his salver and he was walking towards the breakfast-​room.

‘Is there anything for me, John?’ she cried.

‘Just the magazine and a threepenny one, Miss Sophia,’ said the butler. ‘I am taking them to my mistress.’

Sophia instantly detected the evasion and said, ‘Give me that letter at once, John.’

‘My mistress says I am to take everything to her, to prevent mistakes.’

‘You must give it to me directly. You could be taken up and hanged for keeping people’s letters; it is against the law.’

‘Oh, Miss Sophie, it would be as much as my place is worth.’

At this point Mrs Williams came out of the breakfast-​room, took the post, and disappeared, her black eyebrows joining on her forehead. Sophie followed her, heard the rip of the cover, and said, ‘Mama, give me my letter.’

Mrs Williams turned her angry dark-​red face to her daughter and cried, ‘Do you give orders in this house, miss? For shame. I forbade you to correspond with that felon.’

‘He is not a felon.’

‘Then what is he in prison for?’

‘You know perfectly well, Mama. It is for debt.’

‘In my opinion that is worse: defrauding people of their money is far worse than knocking them on the head. It is aggravated felony. Anyhow, I have forbidden you to correspond.’

‘We are engaged to be married: we have every right to correspond. I am not a child.’

‘Stuff. I never gave more than a conditional consent, and now it is all over. I am quite ill and weary with telling you so. All these fine words of his - so much pretence. We had a narrow escape; many unprotected women have been taken in by fine words, and high-​flown specious promises with not a scrap of solid Government stock to support them when it comes to the point. You say you are not a child; but you are a child in these matters, and you need protecting. That is why I mean to read your letters; if you have nothing to be ashamed of, why should you object? Innocence is its own shield, I have always found - how cross and wicked you look, oh fie upon you, Sophia. But I am not going to let you be made a victim of by the first man that takes a fancy to your fortune, Miss, I can tell you. I shall have no hugger-​mugger correspondence in my house; there has been enough of that, with your cousin going into keeping, or coming upon the town, or whatever you like to call it in your modern flash way of speaking; there was nothing of that kind when I was a girl. But then in my day no girl would ever have been so bold as to speak to her mother like that, nor so wickedly undutiful; even the most brazen chit would have died of shame first, I am very sure.’ Mrs Williams’s spate flowed slower during the last sentences, for she was greedily reading as she spoke. ‘Anyhow,’ she said, ‘all this headstrong violence of yours is quite unnecessary - you have brought on my migraine for nothing - the letter is from Dr Maturin, and you need not blush to have it read:

‘”My dear Miss Williams,

I must beg your pardon for dictating this letter; a misfortune to my hand makes it difficult for me to write. I at once executed the commission you were kind enough to honour me with, and I was so fortunate as to obtain all the books on your list through my bookseller, the respectable Mr Bentley, who allows me a discount of thirty per cent.”‘ Something like pinched approval showed in the lower parts of Mrs Williams’s face.’ “What is more, I have a messenger, in the shape of the Reverend Mr Hinksey, the new rector of Swiving Monachorum, who will be passing through Champflower on his way to be read in, or inducted, as I believe I should say.” Quite right; we say inducted for a clergyman. La, Sophie, we shall be the first to see him!’ Mrs Williams’s moods were violent, but changeable. ‘ “He has a vast carriage, and being as yet unprovided with a family, undertakes to place Clerk of Eldin, Duhamel, Falconer and the rest on the seat; which will save you not only the waiting, hut also the sum of half a crown, which is not to be despised.” No, indeed: eight of ‘em make a pound; not that some fine gentlemen seem to think so. “I rejoice to hear that you will be at Bath, since this will afford me the pleasure of paying my respects to your Mama - I shall be there from the twentieth. But I trust this visit may not mean a decline in her health, or any uneasiness about her former complaint.” He is always so considerate about my sufferings, He really might do for Cissy: if she could get him, that would mean a physician in the family, always at hand. And what does a little Popery signify? We are all Christians, I believe. “Pray tell her that if I can be of any service, I am at her command: my direction will be, at Lady Keith’s, in Landsdowne Crescent. I shall be alone, as Captain Aubrey is detained in Portsmouth.” He is quite of my way of thinking, I see; has cut off all connections, like a well-​judging man. “And so, my dear Miss Williams, with my best compliments to your Mama, to Miss Cecilia and to Miss Frances and so on and so forth. A very pretty, respectful letter, quite properly expressed; though he might have found a frank, among all his acquaintances. A man’s hand, I see, not a woman’s. He must certainly have dictated this letter to a gentleman. You may have it, Sophie. I shall not at all object to seeing Dr Maturin in Bath; he is a sensible man - he is no spendthrift. He might do very well for Cecilia. Never was a gentleman that needed a wife more; and certainly your sister is in need of a husband. With all these militia officers about, and the example she has had, there will be no holding her- the sooner she is safely married the better. I desire you will leave them together as much as possible in Bath.’

Bath, with its terraces rising one above another in the sun; the abbey and the waters; the rays of the sun slanting through the steam, and Sir Joseph Blaine and Mr Waring walking up and down the gallery of the King’s bath, in which Stephen sat boiling himself to total relaxation, dressed in a canvas shift and lodged in a stone niche, looking Gothic. Other male images sat in a range either side of him, some scrofulous, rheumatic, gouty or phthisical, others merely too fat, gazing without much interest at female images, many of them in the same case, on the other side; while a dozen pilgrims stumbled about in the water, supported by attendants. The powerful form of Bonden, in canvas drawers, surged through the stream to Stephen’s niche, handed him out, and walked him up and down, calling ‘By your leave, ma’am - make a lane there mate’ with complete self-​possession, this being his element, whatever the temperature.