He had not in fact stayed long (though it seemed longer) and the men had little more than the impression of a wellbred man, a fairly agreeable rattle, something of a coxcomb; but it had been long enough for the ladies present to be convinced that he admired Diana extremely.
When he and his friends were gone the place seemed pleasantly empty and free. What small awkwardness there might have been with Heneage and Philip now vanished entirely
* they belonged to the home side – and from dinner-time onwards the household settled down enjoying these last days ashore as much as ever they could. In this they were reasonably successful, in spite of the crises threatening Jack Aubrey’s future. He and Dundas had a great deal of naval talk to exchange quite apart from the very highly-detailed account of how, in a dense fog off Prawle Point a lost and blundering East Indiaman had come smack across the Berenice’s stem with her courses set and all the forces of the tide at three bells in the graveyard watch, shattering her head and bowsprit in the cruellest manner, so that Berenice’s foretopmast came by the board and there was a butt sprung low beneath the starboard cathead – ‘a perfect jet of water, like a God-damned Iceland geyser’.
Much of their talk, which was really not fit for mixed
company because of its profoundly nautical character, was conducted as they walked over the common with guns or sat in hides either side of the mere, according to the direction of the wind; duck had grown more plentiful, mallard for the most part but also the occasional teal. They always invited Stephen for the dawn and evening fighting, but he rarely went: although he would eagerly shoot specimens and of course bring birds home for the pot when they were called for, he was not fond of killing; and since young Philip took care of Brigid and George entirely, he lapsed back into that contented solitude of an only child, going his own way, in silence, without reference to anyone at all. It was a natural way of life and it suited him very well. Sometimes he went driving with Diana, but although he greatly admired her skill – the four bays were likely to be the best-drilled, best behaved, best-paced team in the county quite soon – her concentration on speed distressed him.
Natterjacks were common in no part of the world – he had seen comparatively few – and now in one drive he had been swept past four. Shrews were another of his present studies, and Diana could not be brought to like them very much, having learnt as a child that every time you touched or even saw a shrewmouse you aged a full year; and then, as everybody knew, they gave you the most excruciating rheumatism and made in-calf heifers abort.
He had hoped to interest Brigid if not in shrews then at least in what flowers were still abroad and the more usual birds; but in this he was disappointed, since both children were wholly taken up with admiring Philip, Jack Aubrey’s half-brother, the just legitimized son of the late General Aubrey by a dairy-maid at Woolcombe House, at present a long-legged midshipman in Captain Dundas’ ship. He was indeed a very likeable young fellow, fresh-full of youth and good-nature, and he was very kind to the little creatures, showing them how to lay aloft in the coach-house with haywain ropes for shrouds, made fast to the topmast beams, whirling them to extraordinary heights on swings, teaching them the rudiments of fives, and carrying them to all manner
of curious places in the attics (bats by the hundred), cellars and elsewhere, for he had been born at Woolcombe and he knew the house and its even older buildings through and through.
Sometimes, if Philip would come too, they drove out with Diana, and on shopping days Sophie joined them, but only as far as the village, or Dorchester at the utmost. She was not a cowardly woman – fortitude and courage in plenty, on occasion – but she disliked driving fast; and childhood falls, hard-mouthed froward ponies and inept, sometimes cruel masters had made her reluctant to ride; and on the whole she disliked horses. Clarissa was Diana’s most usual companion, apart from the necessary groom and boy.
Stephen took his disappointment philosophically. After all, he had himself reached nearly seven years of age before he paid really serious attention to voles; and shrews, in spite of the fine crimson teeth that some possessed, had certain unfortunate characteristics: not quite the best mammal to begin with. There was time and to spare for shrews; and in any event Catalonia, where he hoped she would spend much of her time once peace was restored, was much, much richer in species. While as for botany, that would necessarily come with the return of spring.
He therefore wandered alone, much as he had done when he was a boy, peering into the water-shrew’s domain (the streams on the common held scores) and making a rough inventory of the resident birds: he also read a good deal in Woolcombe’s noble but utterly neglected library, where a first folio Shakespeare stood next to Baker’s Chronicle and a whole series of The Malefactor’s Bloody Register mingled with Blackstone’s Commentaries. Yet some of his time he spent at the Hand and Racquet or the Aubrey Arms on the little triangular green, watching the slow, regular sequence of agricultural life and sipping a pot of audit ale. He was taken very much for granted, it being known that he was Captain Jack’s surgeon, and people would sometimes come for a whispered consultation. They treated him kindly, as a person known to be on their side, like the Captain himself,
and they did not conceal their opinions when he was there. He was esteemed not only for his connexions and his pills, but for dividing his custom, trifling though it was, between these two houses and for avoiding the Goat and Compasses, a more pretentious place run by one of Griffiths’ partisans; and although in each house he heard or was directly told quite different things the general burden was the same – intense opposition to the inclosures, hatred of Griffiths and his gamekeepers, who were represented as hired bullies, and of his new intruding tenants, settled on what had been Woolcombe Common, together with a great affection for Captain Aubrey, but a very anxious doubt about his ability to do anything to prevent the destruction of their whole way of life.
All this was confirmed by his slow perambulations of the common and the village with old Harding, who told him the exact nature and tenure of each small holding and cottage (often merely customary, tolerated by indulgence long, long since, but with no formal, written grant) together with its rights on the common. Neither Harding nor Stephen had sentimental, misty views of rural poverty: they both knew too much about the squalor, dirt, idleness, petty thieving, cruelty, frequent drunkenness and not uncommon incest that could occur to have any idyllic notion of a poor person’s life in the country. ‘But,’ said Harding, ‘it is what we are used to; and with all its plagues it is better than being on the parish or having to go round to the farmer’s back door begging for a day’s work and being turned away. No, it ain’t all beer and skittles but with the common a man is at least half his
own man. And without the common he’s the farmer’s dog. That’s why we are so main fond of Captain Jack.’
They were indeed. At all times they were kind and civil, but as the day for the committee’s meeting in London came nearer, so they grew more articulate. ‘Bless you, Squire: you will never let them do us down.’ General cries of ‘Good old Captain jack!’ ‘No inclosures!’ and
‘Down with Black Whiskers’ accompanied his progress through Woolcombe, and those villagers who were now Captain Griffiths’ tenants
moved quickly out of the way: jostling and harsh words were not unknown, even among cousins – in fact the village was full of ill-feeling and potential violence.
This was particularly marked one day when Stephen was sitting outside the Hand and Racquet, sorting a handkerchief-full of mushrooms he had gathered. He heard the greetings and blessings some way along Mill Street and before he saw Captain Aubrey and heard him say, ‘Thankee, William; but where the Devil is my coxswain? Where is Bonden?’
‘Why, sir,’ said William, hesitant, rather frightened, looking about his friends in the vain hope that they might tell. ‘Why, sir, he has gone into the Goat. Which one of Captain Dundas’s men wanted to look at the pretty barmaid.’
He had gone in, sure enough. Now he came out, together with Dundas’ men, violently propelled by a hostile band, with Griffiths’ head gamekeeper foremost.