Post Captain (9 page)

'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.

'Evens on the speckled pie! Evens on the speckled pie!' cried a tall gipsy with a red scarf round his neck.

'Done with you,' said Jack. 'Five guineas at even odds on the speckled pie.'

'Done and done,' said the gipsy looking round. His eyes narrowed, and in a jocular, wheedling voice he went on, 'Five guineas, gentleman? Oh, such a purse for a poor travelling man and a half-pay captain! I lays my money down, éh?' He placed the five bright coins on the rim of the pit. Jack thrust out his jaw and matched the guineas one by one. The owners of the birds set them to the ring, clasping them just so and whispering close to their proud close-cropped heads. The cocks stalked out on their toes, darting glances sideways, circling before they closed. Both flew up at the same moment, the steel spurs flashing as they struck; up and up again, a whirlwind in the middle of the pit and a savage roaring all round it.

The speckled pie, staggering, one eye gone and the other streaming blood, stood his ground, peering through the mist for his enemy: saw his shadow and lurched in to get his death-wound. Still he would not die; he stood with the spurs labouring his back until the mere weight of his exhausted opponent bore him down - an opponent too cruelly lacerated to rise and crow.

'Let us go and sit outside,' said Stephen. 'Pot-boy, there, bring us a pint of sherry-wine on the bench outside. Do you mind me, now?'

'Sherry, for all love!' he said. 'The pretentious young whore is wicked enough to call this sherry-wine. Here are letters for you, Jack.'

'The speckled pie did not really want to fight,' said Jack.

'He did not. Though he was a game bird, to be sure. Why did you bet on him?'

'I liked him; he had a rolling walk like a sailor. He was not what you would call a wicked bloody cock, but once he was in the ring, once he was challenged, he would fight. He was a rare plucked 'un, and he went on even when there was no hope at all. I am not sorry I backed him: should do it again. Did you say there were letters?'

'Two letters. Use no ceremony, I beg.'

'Thank you, Stephen. The Admiralty acknowledges Mr Aubrey's communication of the seventh ultimo. This is from Bath: I will just see what Queenie has to say.

Oh my God.'

'What's amiss?'

'My God,' said Jack again, beating his clenched fist on his knee. 'Come, let's get out of this place. Sophie's to be married.'

They rode for a mile, Jack muttering broken sentences, ejaculations to himself, and then he said, 'Queenie writes from Bath. A fellow by the name of Adams - big estate in Dorset - has made Sophia an offer. Pretty brisk work, upon my soul. I should never have believed it of her.'

'Is this gossip Lady Keith has picked up?'

'No, no, no! She called on Mother Williams for my sake - my idea was she could not refuse to see me when I went down. Queenie knows everybody.'

'Certainly. Mrs Williams would be flattered by the acquaintance.'

'Yes. So she went, and Mrs Williams, tittering with joy, told her the whole thing, every last detail of the estate. Would you have believed it of Sophia, Stephen?'

'No. And I doubt the truth of the report, in so far as it assumes that the offer has been made directly and not through the mother, as a mere proposition.'

'By God, I wish I were in Bath,' said Jack in a low voice, his face dark with anger. 'Who would have believed it of her? That pure face - I should have sworn... Those sweet, kindest words so short a while ago; and now already things have gone as far as an offer of marriage! Think of the hand-holding, paddling... By God, and such a pure, pure face.'

Stephen said that this was no evidence, that Mrs Williams was capable of any invention; he was intelligent, comforting and wise, and he knew that he might as well have been talking to his mule. Jack's face had closed in a particular hard, determined set; he said he had thought for once he had found a perfectly straightforward girl - nothing hole-in-the-corner, nothing uneasy and complicated - but he would say no more about it; and when they came to the Newton Priors crossroads he said, 'Stephen, I know you mean very, very kindly, but I think I shall ride over the Downs to Wivenhoe. I'm not fit company for man or beast. You will not be wanting the cob? And don't wait supper - I shall get a bite somewhere on the road.'

'Killick,' said Stephen, 'put the ham and a pot of beer in the Captain's room. He may come home late. I am going out.'

He walked slowly at first, his heart and breathing quite undisturbed, but when the familiar miles had passed under him and he started to climb Polcary, the stronger rhythm had returned, increasing as all his resolution fell away, and by the time he reached the top of the hill his heart was keeping time with his brisk busy watch. 'Thump, thump, thump, you fool,' he said smiling as he timed it. 'It is true, of course, that I have never climbed the hill so fast - my legs are in training, ha, ha, ha. A pretty sight I should look. Kind night that covers me.'

More slowly now, his senses keen for the least movement in the wood, in Gole's Hanger or the lane beyond: far on his right hand the barking of a roe-buck in search of a doe, and on his left the distant screaming of a rabbit with a stoat at work upon it. An owl. Dim, fast asleep among its trees, the vague shape of the house, and at its far end the one square eye in the tower, shining out.

Down to the elms, silent and thick-leaved now: the house full-view. And under the elms his own cob tethered to a hazel-bush. He recognized the animal before it whinnied, and he stood stock-still. Creeping forward at its second neigh he stroked its velvet muzzle and its neck, patted it for a while, still staring over its withers at the light, and then turned. After perhaps a hundred yards, with the tower sunk in the trees behind him, he stopped dead and put his hand to his heart. Walked on: a heavy, lumpish pace, stumbling in the ruts, driving himself forward by brute force.

'Jack,' he said at breakfast next morning, 'I think I must leave you: I shall see whether I can find a place on the mail.'

'Leave me!' cried Jack, perfectly aghast. 'Oh, surely not?'

'I am not entirely well, and conceive that my native air might set me up.'

'You do look miserably hipped,' said Jack, gazing at him now with attention and deep concern. 'I have been so wrapped up in my own damned unhappy business -and now this - that I have not been watching you. I am so sorry, Stephen. You must be damned uncomfortable here, with only Killick, and no company. How I hope you are not really ill. Now I recollect, you have been low, out of spirits, these last weeks - no heart for a jig. Should you like to advise with Dr Vining? He might see your case from the outside, if you understand me. I am sure he is not so clever as you, but he might see it from the outside. Pray let me call him in. I shall step over at once, before he starts on his rounds.'

It took Stephen the interval between breakfast and the coming of the post to quiet his friend - -he knew his disease perfectly - had suffered from it before - it was nothing a man could die of - he knew the cure -the malady was called solis deprivatio.'

'The taking away of the sun?' cried Jack. 'Are you making game of me, Stephen? You cannot be thinking of going to Ireland for the sun.'

'It was a kind of dismal little joke,' said Stephen. 'But I had meant Spain rather than Ireland. You know I have a house in the mountains behind Figueras: part of its roof has fallen in, the part where the sheep live - I must attend to it. Bats there are, free-tailed bats, that I have watched for generations. Here is the post,' he said, going to the window and reaching out. 'You have one letter. I have none.'

'A bill,' said Jack, putting it aside. 'Oh yes you have, though. I quite forgot. Here in my pocket. I happened to see Diana Villiers yesterday and she gave me this note to deliver - said such handsome things about you, Stephen. We said what a capital shipmate you were, and what a hand with a 'cello and a knife. She thinks the world of you...'

Perhaps: the note was kind, in its way.

My dear Stephen,

How shabbily you treat your friends - all these days without a sign of life. It is true I was horribly disagreeable when last you did me the pleasure of calling. Please forgive me. It was the east wind, or original sin, or the full moon, or something of that kind. But I have found some curious Indian butterflies - just their wings - in a book that belonged to my father. If you are not too tired, or bespoke, perhaps you might like to come and see them this evening.

D.V.

..not that there is any virtue in that. I asked her over to play with us on Thursday; she knows our trio well, although she only plays by ear. However since you must go, I will send Killick to make our excuses.'

'Perhaps I may not leave so soon. Let us see what next week brings; the sheep are covered with wool, after all; and there is always the chapel for the bats.'

The road, pale in the darkness, Stephen riding deliberately along it, reciting an imagined dialogue. He rode up to the door, then tethered his mule to a ring, and he was about to knock when Diana opened to him.

'Good night, Villiers,' he said. 'I thank you for your note.'

'I love the way you say good night, Stephen,' she said, smiling. She was obviously in spirits, certainly in high good looks. 'Are you not amazed to see me here?'

'Moderately so.'

'All the servants are out. How formal you are, coming to the front door! I am so happy to see you. Come into my lair. I have spread out my butterflies for you.'

Stephen took off his shoes, sat deliberately on a small chair and said, 'I have come to pay my adieux. I leave the country very soon - next week, I believe.'

'Oh, Stephen... and will you abandon your friends? What will poor Aubrey do? Surely you cannot leave him now? He seems so very low. And what shall I do? I shall have no one to talk to, no one to misuse.'

'Will you not?'

'Have I made you very unhappy, Stephen?'

'You have treated me like a dog at times, Villiers.'

'Oh, my dear. I am so very sorry. I shall never be unkind again. And so you really mean to go? Oh, dear. But friends kiss when they say good-bye. Come and just pretend to look at my butterflies - I put them out so prettily - and give me a kiss, and then you shall go.'

'I am pitifully weak with you, Diana, as you know very well,' he said. 'I came slowly over Polcary, rehearsing the words in which I should tell you I had come to break, and

that I was happy to do so in kindness and friendship, with no bitter words to remember. I cannot do so, I find.'

'Break? Oh dear me, that is a word we must never use.'

'Never.'

Yet the word appeared five days later in his diary. 'I am required to deceive JA, and although I am not unaccustomed to deception, this is painful to me. He endeavours to delude me too, of course, but out of a consideration for what he conceives to be my view of right conduct of his relationship with Sophia. He has a singularly open and truthful nature and his efforts are ineffectual, though persistent. She is right: I cannot go away with him in his present difficulties. Why does she increase them? Mere vice? In another age I should have said diabolic possession, and it is a persuasive answer even now - one day herself and none so charming, the next cold, cruel, full of hurt. Yet by force of repetition words that wounded me bitterly not long ago have lost their full effect; the closed door is no longer death; my determination to break grows stronger: it is becoming more than an intellectual determination. I have neither remarked this myself nor found it in any author, but a small temptation, almost an un-temptation, can be more dominant than a great one. I am not strongly tempted to go to Mapes; I am not strongly tempted to drink up the laudanum whose drops I count so superstitiously each night. Four hundred drops at present, my bottled tranquillity. Yet I do so. Killick,' he said, with the veiled dangerous look of a man interrupted at secret work, 'what have you to say to me? You are confused, disturbed in your mind. You have been drinking.'

Killick stepped closer, and leaning on Stephen's chair he whispered. 'There's some ugly articles below, sir, asking for the Captain. A black beetle in a scrub wig and a couple of milling coves, prize-fighters. Awkward buggers in little round hats, and I see one of 'em shove a staff under his coat. Bums. Sheriff's officers.'

Stephen nodded. 'I will deal with them in the kitchen. No, the breakfast-room: it looks on to the lawn. Pack the Captain's sea-chest and my small valise. Give me those letters of his. Put the mule to the little cart and drive to the end of Foxdene lane with our dunnage.'

'Aye aye, sir. Pack, mule and cart, and Foxdene it is.'

Leaving the bums grim and wooden in the breakfast-room, Stephen smiled with pleasure: here at last was a concrete situation. He knew where he should find them within a mile or two; but he did not know what it would cost him when, having toiled up the chalky slope in the sun, he met their expressions of cold anger, resentment, and hostility.

'Good morning, now,' he said, taking off his hat. Diana gave him a distant nod and a look that pierced him cruelly. 'You seem to have had a hot walk, Dr Maturin. How eager you must be to see -'

'You will forgive me if I say a word to Captain Aubrey, ma'am,' he said, with a look as cold as her own, and he led the cob aside. 'Jack, they have come to arrest you for debt. We must cross to France tonight and so to Spain. Your chest and the little cart will be at the end of Foxdene lane by now. You shall stay with me at my house: it falls out very well. We may catch the Folkestone packet if we drive hard.' He turned, bowed to Diana, and set off down the hill.