Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘I will see Miss Williams home,’ said Stephen.

‘No, no, please go on,’ begged Sophia, with tears brimming in her eyes. ‘Please, please - I am perfectly -,

A quick drumming of hooves and Diana came into the field. Her whole being was concentrated on the fence and what lay beyond it, and she saw them only a vague group muddling in a gate. She was sitting as straight and supple as if she had been riding for no more than half an hour: she was part of her horse, completely unaware of herself. She went straight at the fence, gathered her horse just so, and with a crash and a spray of mud they were over. Her form, her high-​held head, her contained joy, competent, fierce gravity, were as beautiful as anything Jack or Stephen had ever seen. She had not the slightest notion of it, but she had never looked so well in her life. The men’s faces as she flew over, high and true, would have made Mrs Williams more uneasy by far.

Mrs Williams longed for the day of the ball; she made almost as many preparations as Jack, and Mapes Court was filled with gauze, muslins and taffeta. Her mind was filled with stratagems, one of which was to get Diana out of the way for the intervening days. Mrs Williams had no defined suspicions, but she smelt danger, and by means of half a dozen intermediaries and as many letters she managed to have a mad cousin left unattended by his family. She could not do away with the invitation, publicly given and accepted, however, and Diana was to be brought back to Champflower by one of Captain Aubrey’s guests on the morning of February the fourteenth.

‘Dr Maturin is waiting for you, Di,’ said Cecilia. ‘He is walking his horse up and down in a fine new bottle-​green coat with a black collar. And he has a new tie-​wig. I suppose that is why he went up to London. You have made another conquest, Di: he used to be quite horrid, and all unshaved.’

‘Stop peering from behind that curtain like a housemaid, Cissy. And lend me your hat, will you?’

‘Why, he is quite splendid now,’ said Cecilia, peering still and puckering the gauze. ‘He has a spotted waistcoat too. Do you remember when he came to dinner in carpet slippers? He really would be almost handsome if he held himself up.’

‘A fine conquest,’ said Mrs Williams, peering too. ‘A penniless naval surgeon, somebody’s natural son, and a Papist. Fie upon you, Cissy, to say such things.’

‘Good morning, Maturin,’ said Diana, coming down the steps. ‘I hope I have not kept you waiting. What a neat cob you have there, upon my word! You never found him in this part of the world.’

‘Good morning, Villiers. You are late. You are very late.’

‘It is the one advantage there is in being a woman. You do know I am a woman, Maturin?’

‘I am obliged to suppose it, since you affect to have no notion of time - cannot tell what o’clock it is. Though why the trifling accident of sex should induce a sentient being, let alone such an intelligent being as you, to waste half this beautiful clear morning, I cannot conceive. Come, let me help you to mount. Sex - sex. .

‘Hush, Maturin. You must not use words like that here. It was bad enough yesterday.’

‘Yesterday? Oh, yes. But I am not the first man to say that wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas. Far from it. It is a commonplace.’

‘As far as my aunt is concerned you are certainly the first man who ever used such an expression in public.’

They rode up Heberden Down: a still, brilliant morning with a little frost; the creak of leather, the smell of horse, steaming breath. ‘I am not in the least degree interested in women as such,’ said Stephen. ‘Only in persons. There is Polcary,’ he added, nodding over the valley. ‘That is where I first saw you, on your cousin’s chestnut. Let us ride over there tomorrow. I can show you a remarkable family of particoloured stoats, a congregation of stoats.’

‘I must cry off for tomorrow,’ said Diana. ‘I am so sorry, I have to go to Dover to look after an old gentleman who is not quite right in the head, a sort of cousin.’

‘But you will be back for the ball, sure?’ cried Stephen.

‘Oh, yes. It is all arranged. A Mr Babbington is to take me up on his way. Did not Captain Aubrey tell you?’

‘I was back very late last night, and we hardly spoke this morning. But I must go to Dover myself next week. May I come and beg for a cup of tea?’

‘Indeed you may. Mr Lowndes imagines he is a teapot; he crooks one arm like this for the handle, holds out the other for the spout, and says, “May I have the pleasure of pouring you a cup of tea?” You could not come to a better address. But you also have to go to town again, do you not?’

‘I do. From Monday till Thursday.’

She reined in her horse to a walk, and with a hesitation and a shyness that changed her face entirely, giving it a resemblance to Sophia’s, she said, ‘Maturin, may I beg you to do me a kindness?’

‘Certainly,’ said Stephen, looking straight into her eyes and then quickly away at the sight of the painful emotion in them.

‘You know something of my position here, I believe Would you sell this bit of jewellery for me? I must have something to wear at the ball.’

‘What must I ask for it?’

‘Would they not make an offer, do you think? If I could get ten pounds, I should be happy. And if they should give so much, then would you be even kinder and tell Harrison in the Royal Exchange to send me this list immediately? Here is a pattern of the stuff. It could come by the mail-​coach as far as Lewes, and the carrier could pick it up. I must have something to wear.’

Something to wear. Unpicked, taken in, let out, and folded in tissue-​paper, it lay in the trunk that stood waiting in Mr Lowndes’s hall on the morning of the fourteenth.

‘Mr Babbington to see you, ma’am,’ said the servant.

Diana hurried into the parlour - her smile faded -she looked again, and lower than she would have thought possible she saw a figure in a three-​caped coat that piped, ‘Mrs Villiers, ma’am? Babbington reporting, if you please, ma’am.’

‘Oh, Mr Babbington, good morning. How do you do? Captain Aubrey tells me you will be so very kind as to take me with you to Melbury Lodge. When do you please to start? We must not let your horse take cold. I have only a little trunk - it is ready by the front door. You will take a glass of wine before we leave, sir? Or I believe you sea-​officers like rum?’

‘A tot of rum to keep out the cold would be prime. You will join me, ma’am? It’s uncommon parky, out.’

‘A very little glass of rum, and put a great deal of water in it,’ whispered Diana to the servant. But the girl was too flustered by the presence of a strange dogcart in the courtyard to understand the word ‘water’, and she brought a dark-​brown brimming tumbler that Mr Babbington drank off with great composure. Diana’s alarm increased at the sight of the tall, dashing dogcart and the nervous horse, all white of eye and laid-​back ears. ‘Where is your groom, sir?’ she asked. ‘Is he in the kitchen?’

‘There ain’t a groom in this crew, ma’am,’ said Babbington, now looking at her with open admiration. ‘I navigate myself. May I give you a leg up? Your foot on this little step and heave away. Now this rug - we make it fast aft, with these beckets. All a-​tanto? Let go by the head,’ he called to the gardener, and they dashed out of the forecourt, giving the white-​painted post a shrewd knock as they passed. -

Mr Babbington’s handling of the whip and the reins raised Diana’s dismay to a new pitch; she had been brought up among horse-​soldiers, and she had never seen anything like this in her life. She wondered how he could possibly have come all the way from Arundel without a spill. She thought of her trunk behind and when they left the main road, winding along the lanes, sometimes mounting the bank and sometimes shaving the ditch’s edge, she said, ‘It will never do. This young man will have to be taken down.’