‘Oh, yes, ma’am. I understand you perfectly well,’ said Diana, turning back from the window. Far over in the moonlit night the pale road wound between Polcary and Beacon Down, and the horsemen were walking briskly up it.
‘I wonder, I wonder,’ said Jack, ‘whether there is any goose left at home, or whether those infernal brutes have eaten it up. At all events, we can have an omelette and a bottle of claret. Claret. Have you ever known a woman that had any notion of wine?’
‘I have not.’
‘And damned near with the pudding, too. But what charming girls they are! Did you notice the eldest one, Miss Williams, holding up her wine-glass and looking at the candle through it? Such grace . . . The taper of her wrist and hand – long, long fingers.’ Stephen Maturin
was scratching himself with a dogged perseverance; he was not attending. But Jack went on, ‘And that Mrs Villiers, how beautifully she held her head: lovely colouring. Perhaps not such a perfect complexion as her cousin – she has been in India, I believe – but what deep blue eyes! How old would she be, Stephen?’
‘Not thirty.’
‘I remember how well she sat her horse.. . By God, a year or two back I should have – .
How a man changes. But even so, I do love being surrounded by girls – so very different from men. She said several handsome things about
the service – spoke very sensibly – thoroughly understood the importance of the weather-gage. She must have naval connections. I do hope we see her again. I hope we see them all again.’
They saw her again, and sooner than they had expected. Mrs Williams too just happened to be passing by Melbury, and she directed Thomas to turn up the well-known drive. A deep and powerful voice the other side of the door was singing
You ladies of lubricity
That dwell in the bordello
Ha-ha ha-ha, ha-ha ha-bee
For! am that kind of fellow,
but the ladies walked into the hail quite unmoved, since not one of them except Diana understood the words, and she was not easily upset. With great satisfaction they noticed that the servant who let them in had a pigtail half-way down his back, but the parlour into which he showed them was disappointingly trim – it might have been spring-cleaned that morning, reflected Mrs Williams, drawing her finger along the top of the wainscot. The only thing that distinguished it from an ordinary Christian parlour was the rigid formation of the chairs, squared to one another like the yards of a ship, and the bell-pull, which was three fathoms of cable, wormed and served, and ending in a brass-bound top-block.
The powerful voice stopped, and it occurred to Diana that someone’s face must be going red; it was indeed highly coloured when Captain Aubrey came hurrying in, but he did not falter as he cried, ‘Why, this is most neighbourly
– truly kind – a very good afternoon to you, ma’am. Mrs Villiers, Miss Williams, your servant
– Miss Cecilia, Miss Frances, how happy I am to see you. Pray step into the…’
‘We just happened to be passing by,’ said Mrs Williams,
‘and I thought we might just stop for a moment, to ask how the jasmin is thriving.’
‘Jasmin?’ cried Jack.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Williams, avoiding her daughters’ eyes.
‘Ah, the jasmin. Pray step into the drawing-room. Dr Maturin and I have a fire in there: and he is the fellow to tell you all about jasmin.’
The winter drawing-room at Melbury Lodge was a handsome five-sided room with two walls opening on to the garden, and at the far end there stood a light-coloured pianoforte, surrounded by sheets of music and covered by many more. Stephen Maturin rose from behind the piano, bowed, and stood silently watching the visitors. He was wearing a black coat so old that it was green in places, and he had not shaved for three days: from time to time he passed his hand over his rasping jaw.
‘Why, you are musicians, I declare!’ cried Mrs Williams. ‘Violins – a ‘cello! How I love music. Symphonies, cantatas! Do you touch the instrument, sir?’ she asked Stephen. She did not usually notice him, for Dr Vining had explained that naval surgeons were often poorly qualified and always badly paid; but she was feeling well-disposed today.
‘I have just been picking out this piece, ma’am,’ said Stephen. ‘But the piano is sadly out of tune.’
‘I think not, sir,’ said Mrs Williams. ‘It was the most expensive instrument to be had – a Clementi. I remember its coming by the waggon as though it were yesterday.’
‘Pianos do go out of tune, Mama,’ murmured Sophia.
‘Not Clementi’s pianos, my dear,’ said Mrs Williams with a smile. ‘They are the most expensive in London. Clementi supplies the Court,’ she added, looking reproachful, as though they had been wanting in loyalty. ‘Besides, sir,’ she said, turning to Jack, ‘it was my eldest daughter who painted the case! The pictures are in the Chinese taste.’
‘That clinches it, ma’am,’ cried Jack. ‘It would be an ungrateful instrument that fell off, having been decorated
by Miss Williams. We were admiring the landscape with the pagoda this morning, were we not, Stephen?’
‘Yes,’ said Stephen, lifting the adagio of Hummel’s D major sonata off the lid. ‘This was the bridge and tree and pagoda that we liked so much.’ It was a charming thing, the size of a tea-tray – pure, sweet lines, muted, gentle colours that might have been lit by an innocent moon.
Embarrassed, as she so often was, by her mother’s strident voice, and confused by all this attention, Sophia hung her head: with a self-possession that she neither felt nor seemed to feel she said, ‘Was this the piece you was playing, sir? Mr Tindall has made me practise it over and over again.’
She moved away from the piano, carrying the sheets, and at this point the drawing-room was filled with activity. Mrs Williams protested that she would neither sit down nor take any refreshment whatsoever; Preserved Killick and John Witsoever, able seamen, brought in tables, trays, urns, more coal; Frances whispered ‘What ho, for ship’s biscuit and a swig of rum,’ to make Cecilia giggle; and Jack slowly began shepherding Mrs Williams and Stephen out of the room through the french windows in the direction of what he took to be the jasmin.
The true jasmin, however, proved to be on the library wall; and so it was from outside the library windows that Jack and Stephen heard the familiar notes of the adagio, as silvery
and remote as a musical-box. It was absurd how the playing resembled the painting: light, ethereal, tenuous. Stephen Maturin winced at the flat A and the shrill C; and at the beginning of the first variation he glanced uneasily at Jack to see whether he too was jarred by the mistaken phrasing. But Jack seemed wholly taken up with Mrs Williams’s account of the planting of the shrub, a minute and circumstantial history.
Now there was another hand on the keyboard. The adagio came out over the sparse wintery lawn with a fine ringing tone, inaccurate, but strong and free; there was harshness in the tragic first variation – a real understanding of what it meant.
‘How well dear Sophia plays,’ said Mrs Williams, leaning her head to one side. ‘Such a sweetly pretty tune, too.’
‘Surely that is not Miss Williams, ma’am?’ cried Stephen.
‘Indeed it is, sir,’ cried Mrs Williams. ‘Neither of her sisters can go beyond the scales, and I know for a fact that Mrs Villiers cannot read a note. She would not apply herself to the drudgery.’ And as they walked back to the house through the mud Mrs Williams told them what they should know about drudgery, taste, and application.
Mrs Villiers started up from the piano, but not so quickly as to escape Mrs Williams’s indignant eye – an eye so indignant that it did not lose its expression for the rest of the visit. It even outlasted Jack’s announcement of a ball in commemoration of the Battle of Saint Vincent, and the gratification of being the first guests to be bespoke.
‘You recall Sir John Jervis’s action, ma’am, off Cape Saint Vincent? The fourteenth of February, ninety-seven. Saint Valentine’s day.’
‘Certainly I do, sir: but’ – with an affected simper -‘of course my girls are too young to remember anything about it. Pray, did we win?’
‘Of course we did, Mama,’ hissed the girls.
‘Of course we did,’ said Mrs Williams. ‘Pray sir, was you there – was you present?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Jack. ‘I was third of the Orion. And so I always like to celebrate the anniversary of the battle with all the friends and shipmates I can bring together. And seeing there is a ballroom here -,