‘A very little glass of rum, and put a great deal of water in it,’ whispered Diana to the servant. But the girl was too flustered by the presence of a strange dogcart in the courtyard to understand the word ‘water’, and she brought a dark-?brown brimming tumbler that Mr Babbington drank off with great composure. Diana’s alarm increased at the sight of the tall, dashing dogcart and the nervous horse, all white of eye and laid-?back ears. ‘Where is your groom, sir?’ she asked. ‘Is he in the kitchen?’
‘There ain’t a groom in this crew, ma’am,’ said Babbington, now looking at her with open admiration. ‘I navigate myself. May I give you a leg up? Your foot on this little step and heave away. Now this rug - we make it fast aft, with these beckets. All a-?tanto? Let go by the head,’ he called to the gardener, and they dashed out of the forecourt, giving the white-?painted post a shrewd knock as they passed. -
Mr Babbington’s handling of the whip and the reins raised Diana’s dismay to a new pitch; she had been brought up among horse-?soldiers, and she had never seen anything like this in her life. She wondered how he could possibly have come all the way from Arundel without a spill. She thought of her trunk behind and when they left the main road, winding along the lanes, sometimes mounting the bank and sometimes shaving the ditch’s edge, she said, ‘It will never do. This young man will have to be taken down.’
The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent the other side. The horse slowed to a walk - the bean-?fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the midshipman in the silence.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Diana coldly. ‘I thought it was the horse.’ A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington’s hash for the moment. ‘Let me show you how we do it in India,’ she said, gathering the reins and taking his whip away from him. But once she had established contact with the horse and had him going steadily along the path he should follow, Diana turned her mind to winning back Mr Babbington’s kindness and good will. Would he explain the blue, the red, and the white squadrons to her? The weather-?gage? Tell her about life at sea in general? Surely it must be a very dangerous, demanding service, though of course so highly and so rightly honoured - the country’s safeguard. Could it be true that he had taken part in the famous action with the Cacafuego? Diana could not remember a more striking disparity of forces. Captain Aubrey must be very like Lord Nelson.
‘Oh yes, ma’am!’ cried Babbington. ‘Though I doubt even Nelson could have brought it off so handsome. He is a prodigious man. Though by land, you know, he is quite different. You would take him for an ordinary person -not the least coldness or distance. He came down to our place to help my uncle in the election, and he was as jolly as a grig - knocked down a couple of Whigs with his stick. They went down like ninepins - both of them poachers and Methodies, of course. Oh, it was such fun, and at Melbury he let me and old Pullings choose our horses and ride a race with him. Three times round the paddock and the horse to be ridden upstairs into the library for a guinea a side and a bottle of wine. Oh, we all love him, ma’am, although he’s so taut at sea.’
‘Who won?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Babbington, ‘we all fell off, more or less, at different times. Though I dare say he did it on purpose, not to take our money.’
They stopped to bait at an inn, and with a meal and a pint of ale inside him Babbington said, ‘I think you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen. You are to change in my room, which I am very glad of, now; and if I had known it was you, I should have bought a pincushion and a large bottle of scent.’
‘You are a very fine figure of a man, too, sir,’ said Diana. ‘I am so happy to be travelling under your protection.’
Babbington’s spirits mounted to an alarming degree; he had been brought up in a service where enterprise counted for everything, and presently it became necessary to occupy his attention with the horse. She had meant to allow him only the dash up the drive, but in the event he held the reins all the way from Newton Priors to the door of Melbury Lodge, where he handed her down in state, to the admiration of two dozen naval eyes.
There was something about Diana, a certain piratical dash and openness, that was very attractive to sea-? officers; but they were also much attracted by the two Miss Simmonses’ doll-?like prettiness, by Frances dancing down the middle with the tip of her tongue showing as she kept the measure, by Cecilia’s commonplace, healthy good looks, and by all the other charms that were displayed under the blaze of candles in the long handsome ballroom. And they were moon-?struck by Sophia’s grace as she and Captain Aubrey opened the ball: Sophia had on a pink dress with a gold sash, and Diana said to Stephen Maturin, ‘She is lovely. There is not another woman in the room to touch her. That is the most dangerous colour in the world, but with her complexion it is perfect. I would give my eye-?teeth for such a skin.’
‘The gold and the pearls help,’ said Stephen. ‘The one echoes her hair and the other her teeth. I will tell you a thing about women. They are superior to men in this, that they have an unfeigned, objective, candid admiration for good looks in other women - a real pleasure in their beauty. Yours, too, is a most elegant dress: other women admire it. I have remarked this. Not only from their glances, but most positively, by standing behind them and listening to their conversation.’
It was a good dress, a light, flimsy version of the naval blue, with white about it - no black, no concessions to Mrs Williams, for it was understood that at a ball any woman was allowed to make the best of herself; but where taste, figure and carriage are equal, a woman who can spend fifty guineas on her dress will look better than one who can only spend ten pounds.
‘We must take our places,’ said Diana a little louder as the second violins struck in and the ballroom filled with sound. It was a fine sight, hung with bunting in the naval way - the signal engage the enemy more closely, among other messages understood by the sailors alone -shining with bees-?wax and candlelight, crowded to the doors, and the lane of dancing figures: pretty dresses, fine coats, white gloves, all reflected in the french windows and in the tall looking-?glass behind the band. The whole neighbourhood was there, together with a score of new faces from Portsmouth, Chatham, London, or wherever the peace had cast them on shore; they were all in their best clothes; they were all determined to enjoy themselves; and so far they were succeeding to admiration. Everyone was pleased, not only by the rarity of a ball (not above three in the season in those parts, apart from the Assembly), but by the handsome, unusual way in which it was done, by the seamen in their blue jackets and pigtails, so very unlike the greasy hired waiters generally to be seen, and by the fact that for once there were more men than women - men in large numbers, all of them eager to dance.
Mrs Williams was sitting with the other parents and chaperons by the double doors into the supper-?room, where she could rake the whole line of dancers, and her red face was nodding and smiling - significant smiles, emphatic nods - as she told her cousin Simmons that she had encouraged the whole thing from the beginning. Crossing over in the dance, Diana saw her triumphant face: and the next face she saw, immediately in front of her, was Jack’s as he advanced to hand her about ‘Such a lovely ball, Aubrey,’ she said, with a flashing smile. He was in gold-?laced scarlet, a big, commanding figure: his forehead was sweating and his eyes shone with excitement and pleasure. He took her in with benevolent approval, said something meaningless but kind, and whirled her about.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Stephen, at the end of the second dance. ‘You are looking pale.’
