pretty stroke. Do not you find watching good cricket restful, absorbing, a balm to the anxious, harassed mind?’
‘I do not. It seems to me, saving your presence, unspeakably tedious.’
‘Perhaps some of the finer shades may escape you. Well played, sirs Oh very well played indeed. That was as pretty a late cut as ever I have seen -• how they run, ha, ha – he was very nearly run out – see how the bails fly! But he was just within his ground. It is years since I have seen such a serious game of cricket.’
‘This one is serious enough, for all love. Nay, funereal.’
‘You know Sir Joseph Banks, of course?’
‘The Great Cham of Botany? Sure I know him, since he is the president of the Royal Society.’
‘He was at the same school as I, though of an earlier generation; he often came down to watch us, and once he told me that cricket was played regularly in Heaven; and that, from a man with his attainments, is surely a recommendation.’
‘I must draw what comfort I can from the doctrine of Limbo.’
‘Butterfingers,’ cried Martin as mid-on dropped a catch and fumbled for the ball behind him. The batsman beckoned for the run: mid-on whipped round and threw down the wicket with diabolic force and speed. ‘Oh the dog’ said Martin, ‘oh the artful hound,’ and when the cheering, hooting, and calling out had stopped he went on, ‘I was so very sorry to have missed Mowett. This publisher wishes him to bring the book out by subscription and I had hoped to tell him something of the disadvantages of such a method; nothing can easily exceed the misery of going about among one’s acquaintance with a subscription-list and desiring them to put down half a guinea. I wished to warn him against the man, too; he is tolerably notorious in Grub Street, I find, and I am afraid sailors ashore arc not always as cautious as they should be, considering the rapacious duplicity of certain Landsmen.’
After some more considerations of this kind, Martin undertook to make Stephen love cricket by showing him the finer shades; but when, having endured ten overs more, Stephen found that there were still five men to go in and be got out, he observed that he had seen a wryneck over on the far side of the demesne, and he made no doubt it was still there. Yet even this would not move Martin, who said, ‘A wryneck? Yes, they call him the cuckoo’s mate in these parts, and the cuckoo is here. Dear me, yes. Hear them: three at least. Cuckoo, cuckoo. Oh word of fear, unpleasing to a married ear. Lord, and to think I shall be a husband in a fortnight’s time! Pitch it up, man, pitch it up, or you will never get him out. Long hops are no good to man or beast.’
The afternoon was even more perfect than the morning, and Stephen spent much of it wandering in Jack’s woods and meadows; he visited the lesser pettichaps and many another bright-eyed bird, including a hen-pheasant sitting hard, and a goshawk with a silver bell on her leg, perched on a branch, that looked at him doubtfully as he passed. He had plenty of time to reflect on Babbington’s situation, and he did so; but to no purpose. In the evening, when as Martin had predicted the match ended in a draw, he said ‘William, I am sorry to say I have nothing positive or even moderately intelligent to offer. It has of course occurred to you that an injured husband in the Admiralty itself is capable of hurting a sea-officer’s career?’
‘Yes, and I have weighed it pretty carefully; but, you know, my cousins and I can certainly rely on five and probably on seven votes in the Commons, and that is where support for the ministry really counts at present, rather than in the Lords. So I think that cancels out.’
‘You know more about these things than I do, sure. The only other observation I have to offer is that it is probably unwise to trust any man you do not know very well, above all a man who dislikes you. I do not say this against Wray in particular; I only throw it out as
a generality. A generality worthy of La Pallice, I must confess.’
‘I was sure you would be in favour of our bolting,’ cried Babbington, shaking his hand.
‘I am nothing of the kind,’ said Stephen.
‘I always knew you were the best headpiece in the service, and I shall tell Fanny so when I bring Tartarus home.’
‘She is on the Brest blockade, I collect?’
‘Yes, and we sail on Monday, alas, unless there is some reprieve.’
‘You will miss Sophie.’
‘I am afraid so, more’s the pity; but at least we shall be able to lend a hand in getting the place ready for her.’
Stephen had seen Captain Aubrey, his officers and men getting their ship ready for an admiral’s inspection, but he had not seen Jack preparing the house for the return of a dearly-loved, long-absent wife. It was an impressive sight, and all the more so because Jack was increasingly aware that Sophie might be very bitterly offended against him; he was nervous, apprehensive, deprecating.
In ships of the Royal Navy painting went on nearly all the time when the weather would allow it, while in those which made a clean sweep fore and aft at quarters, as did all Jack’s commands, the carpenters, their crews, and the captain’s joiners took it as a matter of course that all the bulkheads, all the internal walls, together with the accurately fitted doors and lockers, should be taken down every evening and put up again an hour or so later. Jack therefore had very highly skilled labour at his disposal, and not only his own people either but all the best Tartarians and two expert joiners from Portsmouth as well: and on Wednesday they had set about the house, removing every door, shutter and window, scraping them, rubbing them down, and laying on the first coat.
Now the second coat of a quick-drying naval paint
could go on, followed by the massive cleaning of everything in sight, so that late on Sunday the principal rooms could he restored to use and the rest on Monday morning.
Meanwhile hammocks had been slung in the loose-boxes and the coach-house filled with furniture.
You will not mind turning out rather early tomorrow, Stephen?’ said Jack that night. ‘With a little extra time I believe we may take up the flag-stones in the hall, kitchen, scullery and pantry, and grind them to a good fresh white, squaring their angles and giving them a true surface. It was Babbington’s idea. His captain of the hold was once a master stone-dresser, and he says all we need is a bear, a staging and half a bushel of Purbeck grit.’
Stephen had grown used to extreme discomfort at sea or in any other place where the Navy carried its Hebraic notions of ritual cleanliness, but never had he experienced anything to touch the desolation of Ashgrove Cottage shortly after the various working-parties had moved in at dawn. Now all the doors and windows were out, made fast by dowels to an ingenious system of lines in the stable-yard that allowed both sides the maximum of sun and air, and throughout the house there was the sound of sluicing water, violent scrubbings and thumping, and strong nautical cries which strengthened the impression that the place had been boarded and carried by storm. In spite of the celestial
weather the cottage was like something between a manufactory, a water-works and a house of correction with the inmates put to hard labour, and Stephen was glad to get away from it, driving Martin to Portsmouth in the gig, there to take the Salisbury coach.
Once removed from cricket, Martin became a reasonable companion again, and they took particular delight in the whinchats and wheatears on Ports Down and in a middle-spotted woodpecker eating ants like its great green cousin, which neither had seen before; but once they were in the town the future husband tended to predominate. lie drew a list from his pocket and said
‘One conical gravy-strainer, one bottle-jack and crane, three iron spoons, one jelly-bag, indifferent big: you will not mind if we look into an ironmonger’s, Maturin? Now that I am sure of my pay, I believe I may venture upon a copper gravy-strainer and a brass bottle-jack; but it is a consequential purchase, you know, and I should be most grateful for your advice.’
Stephen’s advice on bottle-jacks was of no great value, but he gave it for rather more than half a wavering, undecided hour, he having a sincere regard for Martin. Yet well-founded though it was, his affection would not run to discussing the merits of different kinds of copper-bottomed tin-bodied well-kettles for an equal length of time; he left Martin with the ironmonger’s kind and infinitely patient wife and stepped across the street to a silversmith’s, where he bought a teapot, cream-jug and sugar-bowl as a wedding-present.