Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘Show him into the parlour,’ said Diana. She hurried into her bedroom, changed her dress, combed her hair up, looked searchingly into her face in the glass, and went down.

‘Good day to you now, Villiers,’ said Stephen. ‘No man on earth could call you a fast woman. I have read the paper twice through - invasion flotilla, loyal addresses, price of Government stock and list of bankrupts. Here is a bottle of scent.’

‘Oh thank you, thank you, Stephen,’ she cried, kissing him. ‘It is the real Marcillac! Where on earth did you find it?’

‘In a Deal smuggler’s cottage.’

‘What a good, forgiving creature you are, Maturin. Smell - it is like the Moghul’s harem. I thought I should never see you again. I am sorry I was so disagreeable in London. How did you find me out? Where are you? What have you been doing? You look very well. I dote upon your blue coat.’

‘I come from Mapes. They told me you were here.’

‘Did they tell you of my battle with Sophie?’

‘I understood there had been a disagreement.’

‘She angered me with her mooning about the lake and her tragic airs - if she had wanted him, why did she not have him when she could? I do loathe and despise want of decision - shilly-​shallying. And anyhow, she has a perfectly suitable admirer, an evangelical clergyman full of good works: good connections too, and plenty of money. I dare say he will be a bishop. But upon my word, Maturin, I never knew she had such spirit! She set about me like a tiger, all ablaze; and I had only quizzed her a little about Jack Aubrey. Such a set-​to! There we were roaring away by the little stone bridge, with her mare hitched to the post, starting and wincing - oh, I don’t know how long -a good fifteen rounds. How you would have laughed. We took ourselves so seriously; and such energy! I was hoarse for a week after. But she was worse than me - as loud as a hog in a gate, and her words tumbling over one another, in a most horrid passion But I tell you what, Maturin, if you really want to frighten a woman, offer to slash her across the face with your riding whip, and look as if you meant it I was quite glad when my aunt Williams came up, screeching and hallooing loud enough to drown the both of us. And for her part she was just as glad to send me packing, because she was afraid for the parson; not that I would ever have laid a finger on him, the greasy oaf. So here I am again, a sort of keeper or upper-​servant to the Teapot. Will you drink some of his honour’s sherry? You are looking quite glum, Maturin. Don’t be mumchance, there’s a good fellow. I have not said an unkind thing since you appeared: it is your duty to be gay and amusing. Though harking back, I was just as pleased to come away too, with my face intact: it is my fortune, you know. You have not paid it a single compliment, though I was liberal enough to you. Reassure me, Maturin - I shall be thirty soon, and I dare not trust my looking-​glass.’

‘It is a good face,’ said Stephen, looking at it steadily. She held her head up in the hard cold light of the winter sun and now for the first time he saw the middle-​aged woman: India had not been kind to her complexion: it was good, but nothing to Sophia’s; that faintest of lines by her eyes would reach out; the hint of drawn strength would grow more pronounced - haggard; in a few years other people would see that Sophie had slashed it deep. He hid his discovery behind all the command and dissimulation that he was master of and went on, ‘An astonishing face. A damned good figurehead, as we say in the Navy. And it has launched one ship, at least.’

‘A good damned figurehead,’ she said bitterly.

‘Now for the harrow,’ he reflected.

‘And after all,’ she said, pouring out the wine, ‘why do you pursue me like this? I give you no encouragement. I never have. I told you plainly at Bruton Street that I liked you as a friend but had no use for you as a lover. Why do you persecute me? What do you want of me? If you think to gain your point by wearing me out, you have reckoned short; and even if you were to succeed, you would only regret it. You do not know who I am at all; everything proves it.’ -

‘I must go,’ he said, getting up.

She was pacing nervously up and down the room. ‘Go, then,’ she cried, ‘and tell your lord and master I never want to see him again, either. He is a coward.’

Mr Lowndes walked into the parlour. He was a tall, stout, cheerful gentleman of about sixty, wearing a flowered silk dressing-​gown, breeches unbuckled at the knees, and a tea-​cosy in lieu of a wig, or nightcap: he raised the cosy and bowed.

‘Dr Maturin - Mr Lowndes,’ said Diana, with a quick beseeching look at Stephen - deprecation combined with concern, vexation, and the remains of anger.

‘I am very happy to see you, sir, most honoured: I do not believe I have had the pleasure,’ said Mr Lowndes, gazing at Stephen with extreme intensity. ‘I see from your coat that you are not a mad-​doctor, sir. Unless, indeed, this is an innocent deception?’

‘Not at all, sir. I am a naval surgeon.’

‘Very good - you are upon the sea but not in it: you are not an advocate for cold baths. The sea, the sea! Where should we be without it? Frizzled to a mere toast, sir; parched, desiccated by the simoom, the dread simoom. Dr Maturin would like a cup of tea, my dear, against the desiccation. I can offer you a superlative cup of tea, sir.’

‘Dr Maturin is drinking sherry, Cousin Edward.’

‘He would do better to drink a cup of tea,’ said Mr Lowndes, with a look of keen disappointment. ‘However, I do not presume to dictate to my guests,’ he added, hanging down his head.

‘I shall be very happy to take a cup of tea, sir, as soon as I have drunk up my wine,’ said Stephen.

‘Yes, yes!’ cried Mr Lowndes, brightening at once. ‘And you shall have the pot to take with you on your voyages. Molly, Sue, Diana, pray make it in the little round pot Queen Anne gave my grandmama; it makes the best tea in the house. And while it is making, sir, I will tell you a little poem; you are a literary man, I know,’ he said, dancing a few paces and bowing right and left.

The butler brought in the tray, looked sharply from Mr Lowndes to Diana: she shook her head slightly, eased her cousin into a wing-​chair, tidied him, tied a napkin round his neck, and, as the spirit-​lamp brought the kettle to the boil, measured out the tea and brewed it.

‘Now for my poem,’ said Mr Lowndes. ‘Attend! Attend! Anna virumque cano, etc. There, ain’t it capital?’

‘Admirable, sir. Thank you very much.’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ cried Mr Lowndes, cramming his mouth with cake, red with sudden pleasure. ‘I knew you were a man of exquisite sensibilities. Take the bun!’ He flung a little round cake at Stephen’s head, and added, ‘I have a turn for verse. Sometimes my fancy runs to Sapphics, sometimes to catalectic Glyconics and Pherecrateans - the Priapic metre, my dear sir. Are you a Grecian? Should you like to hear some of my Priapean odes?’

‘In Greek, sir?’

‘No, sir, in English.’

‘Perhaps at another time, sir, when we are alone - when no ladies are present, it would give me great pleasure.’

‘You have noticed that young woman; have you? You are a sharp one. But then you are a young man, sir. I too was a young man. As a physical gentleman, sir, do you really

think incest so very undesirable?’

‘Cousin Edward, it is time for your bath,’ said Diana; but he grew confused and unhappy - he was sure it would not do to let that fellow alone with a valuable teapot, but he was too polite to say so; his oblique references to it as ‘the dread simoom’ were not understood, and it took her five minutes of coaxing to get him out of the room.