Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

Invitations fell off, for not only was he much taken up with his affairs, but he had become prickly, over-​sensitive to the least unintentional slight; and presently Mapes was the only place where he dined. Mrs Villiers, supported by the parson, his wife and sister, could perfectly well invite Melbury Lodge.

It was after one of these dinners that they rode back, stabled the cob and the mule and said good night to one another.

‘You would not care for a hand of cards, I suppose?’ said Jack, pausing on the stairs and looking down into the hall.

‘I would not,’ said Stephen. ‘My mind is turned elsewhere.’

His person, too. He walked fast through the night over Polcary Down, carefully skirted a group of poachers in Gole’s Hanger, giving them a wide berth, and paused under a clump of elms that stood, swaying and creaking in the wind, over against Mapes Court. The house was of some antiquity, irregular in spite of its modern alterations, and the oldest wing ended in a blunt square tower: one window lit. He passed quickly through the kitchen-​garden, his heart beating, beating, so that when he stood at the little door deep in the base of the tower he could hear it, a sound like the hoarse panting of a dog. His face set in a steady, unmoved acceptance of defeat as he reached for the handle. ‘I take my happiness in my hands every time I come to this door,’ he said, not trying it for a moment. He felt the lock’s silent response: turned it slowly.

He walked up the spiral staircase to the first floor, where Diana lived: a little sitting-​room with her bedroom opening out of it, the whole communicating with the rest of the house by a long corridor that opened into the main staircase. There was no one in the sitting-​room. He sat down on the sofa and looked attentively at the gold-​thread embroidery of a sari that was being turned into a European dress. Under the golden light of the lamp gold tigers tore a Company’s officer lying on the spotted ground with a brandy-​bottle in his hand: sometimes in his right hand, sometimes in his left, for the pattern had many variations.

‘How late you are, Maturin,’ said Diana, coming in from her bedroom; she was wearing two shawls over her peignoir and her face was tired - no welcome. ‘I was going to bed. However, sit down for five minutes. Eugh, your shoes are covered with filth.’

Stephen took them off and set them by the door. ‘There was a gang with lurchers over by the warren. I stepped off the road. You have a singular gift for putting me at a disadvantage, Villiers.’

‘So you walked again? Are you not allowed out at night? Anyone would think you were married to that man. How are his affairs, by the way? He seemed cheerful enough this evening, laughing away with that goose Annie Strode.’

‘There is no improvement, I am afraid. The ship-​owners’ man of business is an avid brute, with no intelligence, sense, or bowels. Ignorant voracity - a wingless vulture - can soar only into the depths of ignominy.’

‘But Lady Keith -’ She stopped. Lady Keith’s letter had reached Melbury that morning, and it had not been mentioned at dinner. Stephen passed the sari through his hands, observing that sometimes the Company’s officer looked gay, even ecstatic, sometimes agonized. ‘If you suppose you have the right to ask me for explanations,’ said Diana, ‘you are mistaken. We happened to meet, riding. If you think that just because I have let you kiss me once or twice - if you think that just because you have come here when I have been ready to fling myself down the well or play the fool to get away from this odious daily round -nothing but a couple of toothless servants in the house - that you are my lover and I am your mistress, you are wrong. I never have been your mistress.’

‘I know,’ said Stephen. ‘I desire no explanation; I assume no rights. Compulsion is the death of friendship, joy.’ A pause. ‘Will you give me something to drink, Villiers my dear?’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she cried, with a ludicrous automatic return of civility. ‘What may I offer you? Port? Brandy?’

‘Brandy, if you please. Listen,’ he said, ‘did you ever see a tiger?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Diana vaguely, looking for the tray and the decanter. ‘I shot a couple. There are no proper glasses here. Only from the safety of a howdah, of course. You often see them on the road from Maharinghee to Bania, or when you are crossing the mouths of the Ganges. Will this tumbler do? They swim about from island to island. Once I saw one take to the water as deliberately as a horse. They swim low, with their heads up and their tails long out behind. How cold it is in this damned tower. I have not been really warm right through since I came back to England. I am going to bed; it is the only warm place in the house. You may come and sit by me, when you have finished your brandy.’

The days dropped by, golden days, the smell of hay, a perfect early summer - wasted, as far as Jack was concerned. Or nine parts wasted; for although his naval and legal business grew steadily darker and more complex, he did go twice to Bath to see his old friend Lady Keith, calling up on Mrs Williams in the bosom of her family the first time and meeting Sophia - just happening to meet Sophia - in the Pump Room the second. He came back both elated and tormented, but still far more human, far more like the cheerful resilient creature Stephen had always known.

‘I am resolved to break,’ wrote Stephen. ‘I give no happiness; I receive none. This obsession is not happiness. I see a hardness that chills my heart, and not my heart alone. Hardness and a great deal else; a strong desire to rule, jealousy, pride, vanity; everything except a want of courage. Poor judgment, ignorance of course, bad faith, inconstancy; and I would add heartlessness if I could forget our farewells on Sunday night, unspeakably pathetic in so wild a creature. And then surely style and grace beyond a certain point take the place of virtue - are virtue, indeed? But it will not do. No, no, you get no more of me. If this wantonness with Jack continues I shall go away. And if he goes on he may find he has laboured to give himself a wound; so may she - he is not a man to be played with. Her levity grieves me more than I can express. It is contrary to what she terms her principles; even, I believe, to her real nature. She cannot want him as a husband now. Hatred of Sophia, of Mrs W? Some undefined revenge? Delight in playing with fire in a powder-​magazine?’

The clock struck ten; in half an hour he was to meet Jack at Plimpton cockpit. He left the brown library for the brilliant courtyard, where his mule stood gleaming lead-​coloured, waiting for him. It was gazing with a fixed, cunning expression down the alley beyond the stables, and following its eyes Stephen saw the postman stealing a pear from the kitchen-​garden espalier.

‘A double letter for you, sir,’ said the postman, very stiff and official, with hurried pear-​juice dribbling from the corner of his, mouth. ‘Two and eightpence, if you please. And two for the Captain, one franked, t’other Admiralty.’ Had he been seen? The distance was very great, almost safe.

‘Thankee, postman,’ said Stephen, paying him. ‘You have had a hot round.’

‘Why, yes, sir,’ said the postman, smiling with relief. ‘Parsonage, Croker’s, then Dr Vining’s - one from his brother in Godmersham, so I’d suppose he’ll be over this Sunday - and then right up to young Mr Savile’s - his young lady. Never was there such a young lady in the writing line; I shall be glad when they are married, and say it by word of mouth.’

‘You are hot, thirsty: you must try a pear - it will keep the humours in motion.’

The main had started when Stephen walked in: a tight-​packed ring of farmers, tradesmen, gipsies, horsecopers, country gentlemen, all too excited, the only tolerable thing the courage of the birds there in the pit.