The Mauritius Command

by Patrick O'Brian

  'From a philosophical point of view, her behaviour is logical enough. Reflect upon the continual, wearisome pregnancies, the price of a momentary and I may say aleatory pleasure. Reflect upon the physical discomfort of a full udder, to say nothing of the necessary parturition, with its attendant perils. I do not mention the uneasiness of seeing one's offspring turned into a blanquette de veau; for this is peculiar to the cow. Were I a female of any kind, I should beg to decline these general cares; and were I, in this particular case, a heifer, I should certainly choose to remain dry. Yet it must be confessed that from a domestical point of view celibacy in a cow takes on a different aspect entirely: here the general good calls out for teeming loins.'

  'Yes,' said Jack. 'It does. Now here is Sophie's garden. It will be full of roses, come next June. Do you think they look a trifle spindly, Stephen? Do you think I should cut them back very hard, this winter?'

  'Nothing do I know about gardening,' said Maturin. 'Nothing at all. But perhaps they may be a little, shall I say, rachitic?'

  'I don't know how it is,' said Jack, 'I don't seem to have much luck with ornamental plants: that was supposed to be a lavender hedge, do you see? The roots came from Mapes. However, come and look at my cabbages. I am quite proud of them.' They passed through a wicket-gate and came to a plot at the back of the cottage: a sea of greenery, with a noble steaming dunghill beyond it. 'There,' cried Jack, 'have you ever seen the like?'

  'I have not,' said Stephen.

  'You may think them rather close, but I reasoned this way: for slinging hammocks we allow fourteen inches a man; now a man will eat a cabbage, and the part cannot be greater than the whole; so I set them by that reckoning, and it has answered amazingly.' He laughed with satisfaction. 'Do you remember the old Roman that could not bear to cut 'em?'

  'Diocletian, I believe.'

  'Just so. How I understand him. And yet, you know, whenever I do bring myself to spoil a rank, precious little encouragement do I get. Always this silly cry of caterpillars. Lord, if they had ate a tenth part of what we have ate in the way of weevils and bargemen in our biscuit, month in month out, on blockade, they would thank Heaven fasting for an honest green caterpillar.'

  They stood a while, contemplating the cabbage-patch, and in the stillness Stephen could actually hear the innumerable jaws at work. His eyes wandered from the mass of green to the dunghill: on top of it he noticed the bolets, chanterelles, blewits and collops that he had picked a little while before. The crash of a slamming door above interrupted their meditations; this was followed by the sound of heavy steps within, and the back-door opened, to display a square, red-faced woman, the spit of Mrs Williams but for a cast in her left eye and, when she spoke, a shrill Welsh voice. She had her box on her shoulder.

  'Why, Bessie,' cried Jack. 'Where are you going? What are you about?'

  Passion so choked the woman that for a moment her lips moved with never a sound; then all at once the words came darting out, accompanied by so venomous a look that Stephen crossed himself. 'A character, a character, that's all I want. Near with the sugar, nearer with the tea. A character I want, is all.' With this she vanished round the corner of the cottage.

  Jack looked after her, and observed in a low voice, 'That makes the fourth this year. It is the damnedest thing, Stephen: I managed a ship's company of three hundred odd as easy as kiss your hand, but I cannot get the least notion of discipline into this establishment.' He paused, brooding, and added, 'You know very well I was no friend to the cat at sea; but rot me, I can see it has its uses.' Another reflective pause in which his face took on the stern, implacable expression of one who orders a dozen lashes to be laid on; then this look was replaced by one of concern and he cried, 'Oh Stephen, what a wretched host I am. You must be clemmed. Come in, come in, and we'll have a glass of grog. This way: you will not mind walking through the scullery—no ceremony, eh? Sophie must be somewhere in front.'

  As he spoke a minute window opened above their heads and Sophie's head emerged. Her distracted look instantly changed to open delight, the sweetest smile. 'Oh Stephen,' she cried, 'how very happy I am to see you. Come in. I shall be down directly.' Stephen plucked off his hat, bowed and kissed his hand, though indeed he could perfectly well have reached hers from where he stood.

  'Step in,' said Jack, 'and mind your head on the beam.'

  The only thing in the scullery apart from a vast copper and its smell of boiling baby-clothes was a young woman on a chair with her apron over her head, rocking mutely to and fro. Three paces carried them through it however, into a narrow passage and so to the parlour, a pleasant little room with a bow window, made more spacious by a number of sea-going devices such as lockers under the windows and compact brass bound ship's furniture, yet somewhat marred by incongruous great objects never designed for a cottage, such as a high-backed caned seat for five or six people and a long case clock whose hood would not fit under the ceiling and which therefore stood bareheaded in a corner, shedding desolation. Jack had scarcely time to ask Dr. Maturin whether the bow did not remind him of the stern window of the brig in which they had first sailed together when there was the sound of steps on the stairs and Sophie ran in. She kissed Stephen with sisterly affection and holding him by both hands scrutinized him for his health, his happiness and his general welfare with a tenderness that went straight to his heart, talking all the time with extreme rapidity—'she was amazed, delighted—where had he been?—had he been quite well?—he could not imagine how pleased she was—had he been here long?—why had not Jack called her?—she had missed a quarter of an hour of him—she was sure the twins would remember him—they would be so excited—and little Cecilia too of course—he was hungry, was he not?—he would take a piece of seed-cake—how was he?'

  'I am very well, I thank you. And you too, my dear, you are blooming, blooming.' She was indeed. She had caught up most of the wisps of hair he had seen streaming from the window, but one had escaped and its disorder enchanted him; yet for all the complacency with which he gazed upon her he could not conceal from his private mind that the tendency to plumpness he had once warned her of was quite gone, that were the present flush of pleasure not on her face she might look worn and even haggard, and that her hands, once so elegant, were now coarse and reddened.

  Mrs Williams walked in. Stephen rose to bow, to ask after her health and that of her other daughters, and to answer her questions. He was about to sit down again after a tolerably detailed account of Mrs Williams' providential recovery when she cried, 'Not on the settle., Doctor Maturin, if you please. It is bad for the cane. You will be more comfortable In Captain Aubrey's chair.'

  A thump and a dismal howling above-stairs called Sophie from the room, and presently Jack went after her. Mrs Williams, feeling that she had been a little abrupt in the matter of his sitting, gave Stephen a history of the settle since its manufacture in Dutch William's time: she had brought it with her from dear Mapes, where no doubt he remembered it in the summer drawing room; she liked Captain A's cottage to have something of the air of a gentleman's house, and in any case she could not bear leaving so valuable, so historical a piece to her tenant, a worthy sort of man no doubt, but something in the commercial line, and people in that walk of life would not scruple to sit on it. The clock also came from Mapes, the most accurate clock in the county.

  'A handsome clock it is too,' said Stephen. 'A regulator, I believe. Could it not be set a-going?'

  'Oh, no, sir,' said Mrs Williams with a pitying look. 'Was it to be set a-going, the works would instantly start to wear.' From this she carried on to wear in general and the prohibitive cost of repairs, with an aside about Captain A's being handy in the house.

  Captain Aubrey's voice, though well calculated to carry from one end of a ship to another in a gale, was less suited to the confidential domestic whisper, and at intervals in Mrs Williams's stream of words his deep rumble could be heard, not perhaps quite as good-humoured as once it was, expostulating about a fair-sized piece of ham that c
ould be dressed, a sea pie that could be knocked up in a moment. Stephen turned his attention to Mrs Williams, and shading his eyes with his hand he studied her carefully. It appeared to him that her misfortune had had remarkably little effect on her: her restless, aggressive urge to dominate seemed if anything to have increased; she looked well, and as happy as it was in her nature to be. Her frequent references to her former grandeur might have been references to a myth in which she did not herself believe, a dream from which she had wakened to her present reality. Perhaps she had been born to play the part of a contriving manager with two hundred a year, so that at last she was fulfilling her real purpose. Was it a remarkable display of courage, or was it stark insensibility? For some time now she had been on the subject of servants, producing the usual threadbare observations with great conviction and volubility. In her young days they had been perfect; now they were difficult to find, impossible to keep, idle, false, dishonest, and often downright evil. 'Only this morning, only this very morning,' she said, 'I caught the cook fingering a heap of toadstools. Can you imagine such wickedness, Dr. Maturin? To finger toadstools and then to touch my grandchildren's food with her nasty hands! There's a Welsh woman for you!'

  'Did you attend to her explanation, ma'am?'

  'Of course not, Lies, all lies, you know, in the kitchen. I flung them out of the door and gave her a piece of my mind. Character, forsooth! Don't she wish she may get it.'

  After a short pause Stephen said, 'I saw an osprey this morning in that noble hanger over the way.'

  'Did you, sir, indeed? Well, I declare. In that little wood we see from the window? It is quite well, for Hampshire. But when you know the neighbourhood as well as I know it, you will find that it is nothing in comparison of the woods at Mapes. They stretched into the next county, sir, and they were full of ospreys. Mr. Williams used to shoot any number of 'em. I dare say this osprey of yours was a stray from Mapes.'

  For some time Stephen had been aware of a snuffling behind the door. Now it opened and a little girl with yellow hair and a heavy cold came bursting in. She stared at him with an arch look, then buried her head in her grandmother's lap; to Stephen's relief all Mrs Williams's entreaties that she should stand up, that she should shake the gentleman's hand and give him a kiss, were in vain, and there she reclined, while her grandmother gently stroked her hair.

  Mrs Williams had never, to Stephen's knowledge, shown the least kindness to her daughters; her face, voice and manner were unfitted for the expression of kindness; yet here it was, glowing in her whole squat person as she explained that this was little Cecilia, the child of her middle daughter, who was following her husband's regiment and who therefore could not look after her, poor thing.

  'I should have known her anywhere,' said Stephen. 'A fine child.'

  Sophie returned and the child at once began to shout, 'Aunt, Aunt, Cook tried to poison me with toadstools.' She kept up this unvaried cry for some time, and over it Stephen said to Sophie, 'I am strangely remiss: you must forgive me. I am come to beg you all to dine with me, and I have not yet delivered my invitation.'

  'You are very good,' said Mrs Williams at once, 'but I am afraid that would be quite impossible, because ' she looked about for some reason why it should be quite impossible, but was obliged to take refuge in hushing the child. Stephen went on, 'I am staying at the Crown in Petersfield, and have bespoke a variety of dishes.'

  Sophie asked how he could be so monstrous; he was staying at the cottage, and dining there too. Again the door opened, and both women eagerly turned to Jack. 'How they do talk,' reflected Stephen: this was the first time he had ever seen the slightest possible evidence of a relationship between Sophie and her improbable mother.

  'Uncle Aubrey,' cried Cecilia, 'Cook tried to poison me and the twins with toadstools.'

  'What stuff,' said Jack. 'Stephen, you dine and sleep with us. The galley is all ahoo today, but there will be a capital sea-pie.'

  'Jack,' said Stephen, I have bespoke dinner at the Crown. These dishes will be on the table at the appointed hour, and if we are not there, they will go to waste entirely.'

  This remark, he noticed, had a striking effect upon the women. Although they still protested that he should not go, the conviction and the volume of their arguments declined. Stephen said nothing: at times he looked out of the window, at others he watched Sophie and her mother, and their kinship became more apparent. Where did it lie? Certainly not in tone of voice, nor in any particular feature or physical movement. Conceivably it arose from a certain not childish but rather un-adult expression common to both, an expression that a French colleague of his, a physiognomist and a follower of Lavater, had called 'the English look', attributing it to frigidity, a well-known characteristic of Englishwomen, and thus to an ignorance of the warming, ripening delights of physical love. 'If Dupuytren was right, and if this is indeed the case,' he reflected, 'then Jack, with his ardent temperament, must be strangely put about.' The flood of talk continued. 'How well he bears it,' thought Stephen, remembering Jack's short way with cackle on the quarterdeck. 'I honour his forebearance.' Compromises made their appearance: some should go, some should stay. Eventually, after a very long typical family discussion that often began again where it had started, it was agreed that Jack should go, that Stephen should return the next morning for breakfast, and that Mrs Williams, for some reason, should content herself with a little bread and cheese.

  'Nonsense, ma'am,' cried Jack, goaded beyond civility at last, 'there is a perfectly good piece of ham in the larder, and the makings of a monstrous fine great sea-pie.'

  'But at least, Stephen, you will have time to see the twins before you leave,' said Sophie quickly. 'For the moment they are quite presentable. Pray show them, my dear. I will be with you in a moment.'

  Jack led him up the stairs into a little sloping room, upon whose floor sat two bald babies, dressed in fresh frocks. They had pale, globular faces, and in the middle of each face a surprisingly long and pointed nose called the turnip to an impartial observer's mind. They looked at Stephen steadily: they had not yet reached the age of any social contact whatsoever and there was not the least doubt that they found him uninteresting, dull, even repellent; their eyes wandered elsewhere, dismissing him, both pairs at exactly the same moment. They might have been infinitely old, or members of another genus.

  'Very fine children,' said Stephen. 'I should have known them anywhere.'

  'I cannot tell one from t'other,' said Jack. 'You would not credit the din they can kick up if things are not quite to their liking. The one on the right is probably Charlotte.' He stared at them; they stared at him, unwinking. 'What do you think of them, Stephen?' he asked, tapping his forehead significantly.

  Stephen resumed his professional role. He had delivered some scores of babies at the Rotunda in his student days, but since then his practice had lain among adults, particularly among seafaring adults, and few men of his professional standing could have been worse qualified for this task; however, he picked them up, listened to their hearts and lungs, opened their mouths and peered within, bent their limbs, and made motions before their eyes.

  'How old are they?' he asked.

  'Why, they must be quite old by now,' said Jack. 'They seem to have been here for ever. Sophie will know exactly.'

  Sophie came in, and to his pleasure Stephen saw both the little creatures lose their eternal, ancient look; they smiled, wriggled and jerked themselves convulsively with joy, mere human larvae.

  'You need not be afraid for them,' he said, as he and Jack walked over the fields towards their dinner. 'They will do very well; they may even turn out a pair of phoenixes, in time. But I do beg you will not countenance that thoughtless way people have of flinging them up into the air. It is liable to do great harm, to confuse their intellects; and a girl, when grown into a woman, has greater need of her intellect than a man. It is a grievous error to fling them to the ceiling.'

  'God's my life!' cried Jack, pausing in his stride. 'You don't t
ell me so? I thought they liked being tossed up—they laugh and crow and so on, almost human. But I shall never do it again, although they are only girls, poor little swabs.'

  'It is curious, the way you dwell upon their sex. They are your own children, for all love, your very flesh; and yet I could almost suppose, and not only from your referring to them as swabs, a disobliging term, that you were disappointed in them, merely for being girls. It is, to be sure, a misfortune for them—the orthodox Jew daily thanks his Maker for not having been born a woman, and we might well echo his gratitude—but I cannot for the life of me see how it affects you, your aim being, as I take it, posterity, a vicarious immortality: and for that a girl is if anything a better assurance than a boy.'

  'Perhaps it is a foolish prejudice,' said Jack, 'but to tell you the truth, Stephen, I had longed for a boy. And to have not one girl but two—well, I would not have Sophie know it for the world, but it is a disappointment, reason how I may. My heart was set on a boy: I had it all worked out in my mind. I should have taken him to sea at seven or eight, with a good schoolmaster aboard to give him a thorough grounding in mathematics and even perhaps a parson for the frills, Latin and morality and so on. He should have spoken French and Spanish as well as you do, Stephen; and I could have taught him a deal of seamanship. Even if I could get no ship for years and years, I knew just what admirals and captains to place him with; he would not have lacked for friends in the service; and if he had not been knocked on the head first, I should have seen him made post by twenty-one or -two. Maybe I should have seen him hoist his flag at last. I could help a boy along, at sea; and the sea is the only thing I know. What use can I possibly be to a parcel of girls? I cannot even give them portions.'

  'By the law of averages the next is very likely to be a boy,' said Stephen, 'and then you will carry out your benevolent scheme.'

  'There is no likelihood of another. None at all,' said Jack. 'You have not been married, Stephen—but I cannot explain—should never have mentioned it. This is the stile to the turnpike: you can see the Crown from here.'