H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  General Aubrey was not a disreputable man; he was kind and well-bred in his camp and country way; but he was chuckle-headed and impulsive; and when he was nervous (Sophia had no idea that a man of nearly seventy could be shy) and in wine, he felt he had to be talking: his outré facetiousness, his broad, earthy pleasantries shocked her extremely, and he seemed to her a coarse, licentious, rakish, unprincipled caricature of his son. Her only consolation was that the General and her mother had not come into contact; and that her mother had not seen the second Mrs Aubrey.

  She remembered the General's loud, candid voice, so reminiscent of his son's, calling out from the end of the long table that Jack 'had not a groat to bless himself with—never would have—all the Aubreys were unlucky with money—they had to be lucky in marriage'. She remembered the endless pause after dinner, with the little boy poking holes in the fire-screen: the concentrated urgency with which she willed the General to have done with his bottle, to come in, drink his tea and go away before her mother's return, now long overdue. She remembered how she and the laughing Mrs Aubrey had supported him into the carriage—the interminable farewells—the General recalling some endless anecdote about a fox-chase and losing himself in it while the child played havoc with the flowerbeds, shrieking like a barn-owl. Then ten minutes later, while she was still shattered, her mother's return, the scene, the cries, tears, swooning, bed, extreme pallor, reproaches.

  'Stephen I say, Stephen, I ain't interrupting you, am I?' said Jack, coming out of his room with a letter in his hand 'Here's a damned thing. Here's Sophie writing me the damnedest rigmarole. I can't show it you—some very private things in it, you understand me—but the drift of it is, that if I choose to feel myself free, nothing would make her happier. Free to do what, in God's name? God damn and blast my eyes, we are engaged to be married, ain't we? If it were any other woman on earth, I should think there was some other man hanging about. What the devil can she mean by it? Can you make head or tail of it?'

  'It may be that someone has fabricated—it may be that someone has told her that you have come to India to see Diana Villiers,' said Stephen, hiding his face with shame as he spoke. This was a direct attempt at keeping them apart, for his own purposes—partly for his own purposes. It was wholly uncandid, of course, and he had never been uncandid with Jack before. It filled him with anger; but still he went on, 'or that you may see her here.'

  'Did she know Diana was in Bombay?' cried Jack.

  'Sure it was common knowledge in England.'

  'So Mother Williams knew?'

  Stephen nodded.

  'Ah, that is Sophie, from clue to earing,' cried Jack, with such a radiant smile. 'Can you imagine a sweeter thing to say? And such modesty, do you see? As if anyone could look at Diana after—however,' he said, recollecting himself and looking deprecatingly at Stephen, 'I don't mean to say anything wrong, or uncivil. But not a reproach, not an unkind word in the whole letter—Lord, Stephen, how I love that girl.' His bright blue eyes clouded, ran over, and he wiped them with his sleeve. 'Never a hint of being ill-used, though I know damned well what kind of life that woman leads her: to say nothing of filling her mind with ugly tales. A shocking life—you know Cecilia and Frankie are gone off, married?—that makes it even worse. Lord, how I shall press on with the refitting! Even faster now. I long to get back into the Atlantic or the Med: these are not waters where a man can look for any distinction now, far less any wealth. If only we had picked up a single decent prize off the Isle of France, I should write to her to come out to Madeira, and be damned to . . . A few hundred would buy us a neat cottage. How I should love a neat cottage, Stephen—potatoes, cabbages, and things.'

  'Upon my word, I cannot tell why you do not write, prize or no prize. You have your pay, for all love.'

  'Oh, that would not be right, you know. I am nearly clear of debt, but there is still a couple of thousand to find. It would scarcely be honourable to pay it off with her fortune, and then only have seven shillings a day to offer her.'

  'Do you pretend to teach me the difference between honourable and dishonourable conduct?'

  'No, no, of course not—pray don't fly out at me, Stephen. I have spoke awkward again. No, what I mean is, it would not be right for me, do you understand? I could not bear it, to have Mrs Williams call me a fortune-hunter. It is different in Ireland, I know—oh damn it, I am laid by the lee again—I do not mean you are a fortune-hunter, but you see it differently in your country. Autre pays, autre merde. But in any case, she has sworn never to marry without her mother's consent: so that claps a stopper over all.'

  'Never in life, my dear. If Sophie comes to Madeira Mrs Williams will be bound either to give her consent or to face a delighted neighbourhood. She was obliged to the same course in the case of Cecilia, I believe.'

  'Would not that be rather Jesuitical, Stephen?' said Jack, looking into his face.

  'Not at all. Consent unreasonably withheld may justifiably be compelled. I am concerned with Sophie's happiness and yours, rather than with pandering to Mrs Williams's sordid whims. You must write that letter, Jack; for you are to consider, Sophie is the beauty of the world; whereas although you are tolerably well-looking in your honest tarpaulin way, you are rather old and likely to grow older; too fat, and likely to grow even fatter—nay, obese.' Jack looked at his belly and shook his head. 'Horribly knocked about, earless, scarred: brother, you are no Adonis. Do not be wounded,' he said, laying his hand on Aubrey's knee, 'when I say you are no Adonis.'

  'I never thought I was,' said Jack.

  'Nor when I add that you are no Fox either: no flashing wit to counterbalance want of looks, wealth, grace and youth.'

  'Sure I never set up for a wit,' said Jack. 'Though I can bring out a good thing on occasion, given time.'

  'And Sophie, I say again, has real beauty: and there are Adonises, witty, moneyed Adonises, in England. Again, she is led a devil of a life. Two younger sisters have married: you are aware of the importance of marriage to a young woman—the status, the escape, the certified guarantee of not having failed, the virtual certainty of a genteel subsistence. You are a great way off, ten thousand miles and more: you may be knocked on the head from one moment to the next, and at no time is there more than a two-inch plank between you and the grave. You are half the world away from her and yet within half a mile of Diana. She knows little or nothing of the world, little or nothing of men apart from what her mother tells her—small good, you may be sure. Lastly, there is her high sense of duty. Now although Sophie carries humanity to a high pitch of perfection, no young woman more, still she is human and she is affected by human considerations. I do not say for a moment that she coldly weighs them up; but considerations, the pressures, are there, and they are very strong. You must certainly write your letter, Jack. Take pen and ink.'

  Jack gazed at him for a while with a heavy, troubled countenance, then stood up, sighed, pulled in his belly, and said, 'I must go down to the yard: we are shipping the new capstan this evening. Thank you for what you have told me, Stephen.'

  It was Stephen who took pen and ink and sat down to his diary. 'I must go down to the yard, said he: we are stepping the new capstan this evening. Had there been powder-smoke in the room, a tangible enemy at hand, there would have been none of this hesitation, no long stare: he would have known his mind and he would have acted at once, with intelligent deliberation. But now he is at a stand. With that odious freedom I prattled on: in doing so I overcame my shame; but it was bitter cruel and sharp while it lasted. In the instant between his asking, could I make head or tail of it? and my reply, the Devil said to me, "If Aubrey is really vexed with Miss Williams, he will turn to Diana Villiers again. You already have your work cut out with Mr Canning." I fell at once. Yet already I have almost persuaded myself that my subsequent words were the same as those an honest man would have used: myself, if this attachment had not existed. Liaison I cannot say, since liaison implies a mutual attraction and I have no sort of evidence for this other than my oh
so fallible intuition. I long for the seventeenth. Already I am beginning to murder time, like an ardent boy: such an ugly crime. The sea-festival will perhaps knock six innocent hours on the head.'

  The ceremony took place all along the shore of Back Bay, from Malabar Point to the Fort; and the broad parklike stretch of grass before the Fort was one of the best places for viewing the preparations. Like all Hindu ceremonies he had seen, this appeared to be going forward with great excitement, great good humour, and a total lack of organisation. There were some groups already on the strand, with their leaders standing waist-deep, wafting flowers into the sea, but most of the inhabitants of Bombay seemed to have gathered here on the green to mill about in their best clothes, laughing, singing, beating drums, eating sweetmeats and saucers of cooked food from tiny stalls, breaking off now and then to form a vague procession, chanting a shrill and powerful hymn. Great warmth, an infinite variety of smells and colours, the bray of conchs, deep hooting trumpets, countless people, and winding in and out among the people elephants with crowded castles on their backs, bullock-carts, hundreds and hundreds of palanquins, horsemen, holy cows, European carriages.

  A warm hand slipped into his, and looking down Stephen saw Dil smiling up at him. 'Art very strangely clothed, Stephen,' she said 'I almost took thee for a topi-wallah. I have a whole leaf of pondoo: come and eat it before it spills. Mind thy good bazaar shirt in the dung—it is far too long, thy shirt.' She led him across the trampled grass to the rising glacis of the fort, and there, finding an empty place, they sat down. 'Lean thy head forward,' she said, unfolding the leaf and setting the turgid mess between them. 'Nay, nay, forward, more forward. Dost not see thy shirt all slobbered, oh for shame. Where wast thou brought up? What mother bore thee? Forward.' Despairing of making him eat like a human being, she stood up, licked his shirt clean, and then, folding her brown jointless legs under her she squatted close in front of him. 'Open thy mouth.' With an expert hand she moulded the pondoo into little balls and fed him. 'Close thy mouth, Stephen. Swallow. Open. There, maharaj. Another. There, my garden of nightingales. Open. Close.' The sweet, gritty unctuous mass flowed into him, and all the time Dil's voice rose and fell. 'Thou canst not eat much better than a bear. Swallow. Pause now and belch. Dost not know how to belch? Thus. I can belch whenever I choose. Belch twice. Look, look; the Mabratta chiefs.' A splendid group of horsemen in crimson with gold-embroidered turbans and saddle-cloths. 'That is the Peshwa in the middle: and there the Bhonsli rajah—har, har, mahadeo! Another ball and all is gone. Open. Thou hast fifteen teeth above and one less below. There is a European carriage, filled with Franks. Pah, I can smell them from here, stronger than camels. They eat cow and pig—it is perfectly notorious. Thou hast no more skill in eating with thy fingers than a bear or a Frank, poor Stephen: art thou a Frank at times?' Her eyes were fixed upon him with alert penetrating curiosity, but before he could reply they had darted off to an approaching line of elephants, so covered with housings, paint, howdahs and tinsel that below nothing could be seen but their feet shuffling in the dust and before nothing but their gilt, silver-banded tusks and questing trunks.

  'I shall sing thee the Marwari hymn to Krishna,' said Dil, and began in a nasal whine, slicing the air with her right hand as she sang. Another elephant crossed in front of them, a trim pole set up on the howdah, bearing a streamer that read Revenge as it floated on the breeze: most of the ship's starboard maintopmen were there, clinging to one another in a tight mass, while their larboard colleagues ran behind, calling out that they had had their spell, mates, and fair was fair. A competing elephant from the Goliath, almost hidden by a mass of delighted seamen in shore-going rig, white sennit hats and ribbons. Mr Smith, a sea-officer of the small, trim, brisk, round-headed, port-wine kind, once shipmates with Stephen in the Lively and now second in the Goliath, rode by on a camel, with his legs folded negligently over the creature's neck to the manner born: he cut nimbly between the elephant and the bank, with his face at Stephen's level, some fifteen feet away the Goliaths roared out to Mr Smith, waving bottles and cheering, and Smith waved back to them. His mouth could be seen opening and closing, but no sound pierced through the din. Dil sang on, hypnotised by her unvarying chant and the flow of words.

  More and more Europeans appeared, now that the day was growing cooler. Carriages of every kind. A disreputable drove of midshipmen from the Revenge and the Goliath, mounted on little Arab horses, asses and an astonished bullock.

  More and more Europeans; and incomparably more Hindus, for now the climax was coming near. The strand was almost covered with white-robed brown figures and the sound of horns drowned the low thunder of the sea; yet even so the crowds on the green grew thicker still, and now the carriages advanced at a walk, when they advanced at all. Rising dust, heat, merriment: and above all this immense activity the kites and vultures wheeled in the untroubled sky—effortless rings, higher and higher, the highest losing themselves at last, black specks that vanished in the blue. Dil sang on and on.

  Bringing his eyes down from the vultures and the glare, Stephen found himself looking directly into Diana's face. She was sitting in a barouche under the shade of two apricot-coloured umbrellas with three officers, leaning forward with lively interest to see what had stopped them. Immediately in front of the carriage two bullock-carts had locked their wheels together: the drivers stood there shouting at one another, while the bullocks leaned inwards together against the yoke, closing their eyes, and from behind the shutters the purdah-ladies shrieked abuse, advice and orders. With a dense procession filing by for ever on the right-hand side and the steep slope of the glacis on the left, it was clear that the barouche would have to wait until the bullocks were disentangled: she twisted round with a movement Stephen had forgotten but that was as familiar as the beat of his heart. The servants perched behind with the umbrellas ducked and swerved to give her a better view, but there was no retreat through the crowd and she sat back in her seat, saying something to the man opposite her that made him laugh; and the apricot shadow swept over them again.

  She was, if anything, better looking than when he had seen her last: she was a little too far from him to be sure, but it seemed that the climate, her almost native climate, which turned so many Englishmen yellow, had been kind to her, bringing to her a glow that he had not seen in England. At all events that remembered perfection of movement was there: nothing studied about that sinuous turn, nothing that loosened all his judgment so.

  'What is amiss with thee?' asked Dil, breaking off and looking up at him.

  'Nothing,' said Stephen, staring still.

  'Art sick?' she cried, standing up and spreading her hands upon his heart.

  'No,' said Stephen. He smiled at her and shook his head: he was quite composed.

  She squatted, still staring up; and Diana, looking quickly from side to side, made some mechanical smiling reply to her neighbour's remark. Her eyes swept along the glacis, passed over Stephen, suddenly returned and paused, with a growing look of doubt and then the most extreme astonishment, and all at once her face changed to frank delight: it flushed, turned pale; she opened the door and sprang to the ground, leaving astonishment behind her.

  She ran up the slope, and Stephen, rising, stepped over Dii and took her by her outstretched hands. 'Stephen, upon my soul and honour!' she cried. 'Stephen, how glad I am to see you!'

  'I am glad to see you too, my dear,' he said, grinning like a boy.

  'But in God's name how come you to be here?'

  By sea, by ship—the usual way—brief explanations cut again and again by amazement—ten thousand miles—health, looks, mutual civilities—unabashed staring, smiles—how very, very brown you are! 'Your skin is fairer than I saw it last,' he said.

  'Stephen,' muttered Dil again.

  'Who is your sweet companion?' asked Diana.

  'Allow me to name Dil, my particular friend and guide.'

  'Stephen, tell the woman to take her foot from off my khatta,' said Dil, with a stony look
.

  'Oh daughter, I beg thou wilt forgive me,' cried Diana, bending and brushing the dust off Dil's rag. 'Oh how sorry I am. If it is spoilt, thou shalt have a sari made of Gholkand silk, with two gold threads.'

  Dil looked at the trodden place. She said, 'It will pass,' and added, 'Thou dost not smell like a Frank.'

  Diana smiled and wafted her handkerchief at the child, spreading the scent of attar from Oudh. 'Pray take it, Dil-Gudaz,' she said. 'Take it, melter of hearts, and dream of Sivaji.'

  Dil writhed her head away, the conflict between pleasure and displeasure plain on her averted face; but pleasure won and she took the handkerchief with a supple, pretty bow, thanked the Begum Lala and smelt it voluptuously. Behind them there was the sound of bullock-carts tearing free: the syce stood hovering to say the way was clear, the press extremely great and the horses in a muck-sweat.