‘You are to consider, ma’am,’ said Stephen, ‘that they have spent much of their life aboard a man-of-war, where there are no gentlewomen to be addressed, and where curtseys, if they exist, are reserved for officers.’
Mrs Williams sniffed, and then said ‘They are your property, I collect; and if so, I must inform you that no slaves can be countenanced in England, so that you are likely to lose your price. In the colonies, yes: but we must always remember that England is a free country and that as soon as slaves set foot on English soil they to are free: as a foreigner you cannot of course understand our love of liberty. But we must never forget to look closely at all sides of a bargain, or we may find ourselves buying a mare’s nest.’ ill nature and ill temper urged her to add something about charity beginning at home, since a moment’s reflection on their clothes and uncowed manners suggested that they might be protégées rather than bondservants, but angry though she was she did not dare go farther, and after contemplating her for a moment with his pale eyes Stephen took up his hat, bowed, said ‘Servant, ma’am,’ and hurried off to the kitchen, where he found the little girls telling two superannuated ship’s cooks about the glories of the green ice they had seen off the Horn.
For the rest of the journey they were very quiet, gazing at the wonderfully unfamiliar English countryside in the gentle evening light. So was Stephen. His mind, like Jack’s, was
confused by a variety of strong emotions – intense anticipation and a dread he did not choose to name – and like Jack he took refuge in reflecting upon Mrs Williams. There was not only the change from the broken-spirited poor relation, perpetually aware of her dependence, back to her former degree of assurance – though not indeed of dominance: Sophie had grown much stronger – and of indignant self-righteousness; there was also a change in that earlier being, with a barely definable raffishness superadded, an ease in throwing herself into a comfortable chair, an occasional absurdly inappropriate gross or at least ungenteel and totally incongruous expression, as though by handling bets she had absorbed some of the coarse side of the turf. ‘It would not surprise me if she has taken to putting gin in her tea,’ he said, ‘and to the use of snuff.’
Shortly after this the rain began to fall; the landscape vanished, and Emily went to sleep on Padeen’s knee. The postilion drew up to light his lamps inside the carriage, begged pardon, asked the direction again, and drove on slowly, clop, clop, clop. After a mile or so and a shouted exchange with a farmcart the postilion stopped again, came to the door, begged pardon and feared they had taken the wrong lane. He would have to turn when he found a gate into a field. This happened once or twice, but not long after sunset they found themselves in the familiar high bare country rising to Barham Down.
The carriage drew up before the great middle door; no lights to be seen within. The little girls woke, anxious, dismayed; Padeen began unstrapping the baggage; Stephen rang the bell and knocked, his heart beating high.
No answer, but somewhere in the back of the house, perhaps the kitchen, a dog began to bark. He knocked again, the queer feeling in his bosom: pulled the bell-wire; and the bell itself could be heard ringing far inside.
A light through the cracks of the door; it opened on the chain and Clarissa’s voice asked ‘Who is there?’
‘Stephen Maturin, my dear. I am sorry we are so late.’
The chain came off with a rattle and the door swung wide, showing Clarissa with a lantern on a table by her side and a horse-pistol in her hand. ‘Oh how very glad I am to see you,’ she cried, yet with a certain embarrassment in her joy. She carefully uncocked the pistol – evidently loaded and for use – laid it on the table and held out her hand.
‘Nonsense,’ he cried, ‘we embrace’ and kissed her.
‘You have not changed,’ she said, smiling, and stood back, motioning him in.
‘You are alone, I doubt?’ said he, not moving but with his eyes searching the long dark hall and his ears on the strain.
‘Yes.. . yes,’ she answered hesitantly. ‘Well, but for Brigid.’ He went out, settled with the post-boy and came back with the little girls, Padeen following with the baggage. ‘Here are some old shipmates, Clarissa,’ he said, leading them forward. ‘Sarah and Emily, you must make your bobs to Mrs Oakes, and ask her how she does.’
‘How do you do, ma’am?’ they said in unison.
‘Very well indeed, my dears,’ she replied, kissing them. She shook Padeen’s hand, and although they had not agreed very well when they sailed together in the Nutmeg the travellers now felt much drawn to a well-known face and a familiar voice in these utterly strange and foreign surroundings. Not only was the country strange – nothing of shipboard about it, nothing of the pleasures of a port, filled with unknown people who might fly out at you – but this particular house was quite outside their experience. It was in fact an unusual building, tall, gaunt and cold, one of the few large old houses that had not been altered in
the last two centuries, so that the great hail ran right up the whole height to the roof, sombre indeed on such an evening and by the light of a single lantern.
Clarissa led them slowly, almost as it were reluctantly, quite through its length and then turned right-handed into a carpeted room with candles and a fire. A small girl was building card-houses on a table near the grate.
Clarissa murmured ‘Do not mind if she does not speak,’ and Stephen could feel the controlled anguish in her voice.
The girl at the table was lit by the fire and two candles: she was three-quarters turned towards Stephen and he saw a slim fair-haired child, quite extraordinarily beautiful: but with a disquieting, elfin, changeling beauty. Her movements as she handled the cards were perfectly coordinated; she glanced at Stephen and the others for a moment without the least interest, almost without ceasing to place her cards, and then carried on with the fifth storey.
‘Come, my dear, and pay your duty to your father,’ said Clarissa, taking her gently by the hand and leading her, unresisting, to Stephen. There she made her bob, standing as straight as a wand, and with only a slight shrinking away she allowed her face to be kissed. Then she was led to the others; their names were clearly stated; they too made their bobs and Brigid walked easily back to her card-house, unconscious of their smiling black faces, though she did look straight up into Padeen’s for a moment.
‘Padeen,’ said Clarissa, ‘will you go down that long corridor, now? The first door on your right hand’ – she held up her right hand- ‘is the kitchen, and there you will find Mrs Warren and Nellie. Please give them this note.’
Stephen sat in an elbow-chair away from the light, watching his daughter. Clarissa asked Sarah and Emily about their journey, about Ashgrove and about their clothes. They all sat on a sofa, talking away readily enough as their shyness wore off; but their eyes were fixed on the slight, wholly self-possessed, self-absorbed figure by the hearth.
Mrs Warren and Nellie took some time to appear, since they had to fetch clean aprons and caps to be presented to the Doctor – the master of the house, after all. An ancient whitemuzzled kitchen dog shuffled in after them and the first relief to Stephen’s quite extraordinary pain – extraordinary in that he had never known any of the same nature or the same intensity – came when the old dog sniffed at the back of Brigid’s leg and without stopping her left hand’s delicate motion she reached down with the other to scratch his forehead, while something of pleasure showed through her gravity. Otherwise nothing disturbed her indifference. She saw her tall cardhouse fall, the tottering victim of a draught, with perfect composure; she ate her bread and milk together with Emily and Sarah, unmoved by their presence; and after a good-night ceremony in which Stephen blessed her she went off to bed with neither reluctance nor complaint. He observed with still another kind of pang that if ever their eyes met hers moved directly on, as they might have moved on from those of a marble bust, or of a creature devoid of interest, since it belonged to a different order.
‘Can she speak at all?’ he asked when he and Clarissa were sitting at the dining-table – cold chicken and ham, cheese, and an apple-pie: the servants sent off to bed long since. ‘I am not sure,’ said Clarissa. ‘On occasion I have heard her doing something very like it; but she always stops when I come in.’