– though indeed she was a good-natured child. Mrs Williams was obscurely aware of this; she looked stupid, uncertain, and almost respectful, though he felt that resentment might not be far away. Having observed how affable Lord Melville was, very much the gentleman, she told Jack that they had read about his escape in the paper: she hoped his return meant
that everything was well with him: but how came he to be in India? She had understood he had withdrawn to the Continent in consequence of some. . . to the Continent.
‘So I did, ma’am. Maturin and I went to France, where that scoundrel Bonaparte very nearly laid us by the heels.’
‘But you came home in an Indiaman. I saw it in the papers – in The Times.’
‘Yes. She touched at Gibraltar.’
‘Ah. I see. So now the mystery is cleared up: I thought I should get to the bottom of it at last.’
‘How is dear Dr Maturin?’ asked Cecilia. ‘I hope to see him.’
‘Yes, how is the worthy Dr Maturin?’ said her mother.
‘He is very well, I thank you. He was in the far room some moments ago, talking to the Physician of the Fleet. What a splendid fellow he is: he nursed me through a most devilish fever I caught in the mountains, and dosed me twice a day until we reached Gibraltar.
Nothing else would have brought me home.’
‘Mountains – Spain,’ said Mrs Williams with strong disapproval. ‘You will never get me there, I can tell you.’
‘So you travelled right down through Spain,’ said Cecilia. ‘I dare say it was prodigiously romantic, with ruins, and monks?’
‘There were some ruins and monks, to be sure,’ said Jack, smiling at her. ‘And hermits too. But the most romantic thing I saw was the Rock, rearing up there at the end of our road like a lion. That, and the orange-tree in Stephen’s castle.’
‘A castle in Spain!’ cried Cecilia, clasping her hands.
‘Castle!’ cried Mrs Williams. ‘Nonsense. Captain Aubrey means some cottage with a whimsical name, my love.’
‘No, ma’am. A castle, with towers, battlements, and all that is proper. A marble roof, too.
The only whimsical thing about it was the bath, which stood just off a spiral staircase, as bald as an egg: it was marble too, carved out of a single block – amazing. But this orange-tree was in a court with arches all round, a kind of cloister, and it bore oranges, lemons, and tangerines all at the same time! Green fruit, ripe fruit, and flowers, all at the same time and such a scent. There’s romance for you! Not many oranges when I was there, but lemons fresh every day. I must have eaten -‘
‘Am I to understand that Dr Maturin is a man of property?’ cried Mrs Williams.
‘Certainly you are, ma’am. A thumping great estate up where we crossed the mountains –
merino sheep -,
‘Merino sheep,’ said Mrs Williams, nodding, for she knew the beasts existed – what else could yield merino wool?
‘- but his main place is down towards Lerida. By the way, I have not inquired for Mrs Villiers: how rude of me. I hope she is well?’
‘Yes, yes – she is here,’ – dismissing Diana – ‘But I thought he was only a naval surgeon.’
‘Did you indeed, ma’am? However, he is a man of considerable estate: a physician, too –
they think the world of him in-‘
‘Then how did he come to be your surgeon?’ she asked, in a sudden last burst of suspicion.
‘What easier way of seeing the world? Airy, commodious, and paid for by the King.’ This was utterly conclusive. Mrs Williams relapsed into silence for some moments. She had heard of castles in Spain, but she could not remember whether they were good or bad: they were certainly one or the other. Probably good, seeing that Lord Melville was so affable. Oh yes, very good – certainly very good.
‘I hope he will call – I hope you will both call,’ she said at last. ‘We are staying with my sister Pratt in George Street. Number eleven.’
Jack was most grateful; unhappily official business –
he could not call his time his own – but he was sure Dr Maturin would be delighted; and he begged he might be particularly remembered to Miss Williams and Miss Frances.
‘You may have heard, of course, that my Sophie is
– ‘began Mrs Williams, launched upon the precautionary lie, then regretting it and not knowing how to come off handsomely, ‘- that Sophie is, how shall I say – though there is nothing official.’
‘There’s Di,’ whispered Cecilia, poking Jack with her elbow.
She was walking slowly into the gallery between two men, both tall: a dark blue dress, a black velvet band around her throat, splendid white bosom. He had forgotten that her hair was black, black, her neck a column and her eyes mere dark smudges in the distance. His feelings needed no analysis: his heart, which had stopped while he searched for the empty place by Mrs Williams, now beat to quarters: a constellation, a galaxy of erotic notions raced through his mind, together with an unmixed pleasure in looking at her. How well-bred she looked! She did not seem pleased, however; she turned her head from the man on her right with a lift of her chin that he knew only too well.
‘The gentleman she is walking with is Colonel Colpoys, Admiral Haddock’s brother-in-law, from India. Diana is staying with Mrs Colonel Colpoys in Bruton Street. A pokey, inconvenient little house.’
‘How beautiful he is,’ murmured Cecilia.
‘Colonel Colpoys?’ cried Mrs Williams.
‘No, Mama, the gentleman in the blue coat.’
‘Oh, no, my love,’- lowering her voice, speaking behind her hand and staring hard at Canning – ‘that gentleman is a jay ee double-u.’
‘So he is not beautiful, Mama?’
‘Of course not, my dear’ – as to an idiot – ‘I have just told you he is a’ – lowering her voice again – ‘jay
ee double-u,’ pursing her lips and nodding her head with great satisfaction.
‘Oh,’ said Cecilia, disappointed. ‘Well, all I can say,’ she muttered to herself, ‘is, I wish I had beaux like that following me around. He has been by her all the evening, almost. Men are always following Di around. There is another one.’
The other one, an army officer, was hurrying through the press with a tall thin glass of champagne, bearing it towards her with both hands as though it were a holy object; but before he could urge a fat, staring woman out of his way, Stephen Maturin appeared.
Diana’s face changed at once – a look of straightforward, almost boyish delight -and as he came up she gave him both hands, crying, ‘Oh, Maturin, how very glad I am to see you!
Welcome home.’
The soldier, Canning and Jack were watching intently; they saw nothing to give them uneasiness; the delicate pink flush in Diana’s face, reaching her ears, was that of spontaneous open uncomplicated pleasure; Maturin’s unaltered pallor, his somewhat absent expression, matched her directness. Furthermore, he was looking uncommonly plain – rusty, neglected, undarned.
Jack relaxed in his chair: he had got it wrong, he thought, with a warm and lively pleasure in his mistake:
he often got things wrong. He had set up for penetration, and he had got it wrong.
‘You are not attending,’ said Cecilia. ‘You are so busy quizzing the gentleman in blue, that you are not attending. Mama says they mean to go and look at the Magdalene. That is what Dr Maturin is pointing at.’
‘Yes? Oh, yes. Certainly. A Guido, I believe?’
‘No, sir,’ said Mrs Williams, who understood these things better than other people. ‘It is an oil painting, a very valuable oil painting, though not quite in the modern taste.’
‘Mama, may I run after Dr Maturin and go with them?’ asked Cecilia.
‘Do, my love, and tell Dr Maturin to come and see me. No, Captain Aubrey, do not get up: you shall tell me about your Spanish journey. There is nothing that interests me more than travel, I declare; and if I had had my health I should have been a great traveller, a second
-a second -‘
‘St Paul?’
‘No, no. A second Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Now tell me about Dr Maturin’s establishment.’
Jack could not tell her very much; he had been unwell, delirious at times, and he did not attend to the kind of leases they had in those parts, or the return on capital
– Mrs Williams sighed – had not seen the rent-roll, but supposed the estate was ‘pretty big’
– it took in a good deal of Aragon, as well as Catalonia; it had its drawbacks, however, being sadly infested by porcupines; they were hunted by a pack of pure-bred porcupine-hounds, often by moonlight, the field carrying Cordova-leather umbrellas against the darting of their quills.