‘But Lady Keith -’ She stopped. Lady Keith’s letter had reached Melbury that morning, and it had not been mentioned at dinner. Stephen passed the sari through his hands, observing that sometimes the Company’s officer looked gay, even ecstatic, sometimes agonized. ‘If you suppose you have the right to ask me for explanations,’ said Diana, ‘you are mistaken. We happened to meet, riding. If you think that just because I have let you kiss me once or twice - if you think that just because you have come here when I have been ready to fling myself down the well or play the fool to get away from this odious daily round -nothing but a couple of toothless servants in the house - that you are my lover and I am your mistress, you are wrong. I never have been your mistress.’
‘I know,’ said Stephen. ‘I desire no explanation; I assume no rights. Compulsion is the death of friendship, joy.’ A pause. ‘Will you give me something to drink, Villiers my dear?’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she cried, with a ludicrous automatic return of civility. ‘What may I offer you? Port? Brandy?’
‘Brandy, if you please. Listen,’ he said, ‘did you ever see a tiger?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Diana vaguely, looking for the tray and the decanter. ‘I shot a couple. There are no proper glasses here. Only from the safety of a howdah, of course. You often see them on the road from Maharinghee to Bania, or when you are crossing the mouths of the Ganges. Will this tumbler do? They swim about from island to island. Once I saw one take to the water as deliberately as a horse. They swim low, with their heads up and their tails long out behind. How cold it is in this damned tower. I have not been really warm right through since I came back to England. I am going to bed; it is the only warm place in the house. You may come and sit by me, when you have finished your brandy.’
The days dropped by, golden days, the smell of hay, a perfect early summer - wasted, as far as Jack was concerned. Or nine parts wasted; for although his naval and legal business grew steadily darker and more complex, he did go twice to Bath to see his old friend Lady Keith, calling up on Mrs Williams in the bosom of her family the first time and meeting Sophia - just happening to meet Sophia - in the Pump Room the second. He came back both elated and tormented, but still far more human, far more like the cheerful resilient creature Stephen had always known.
‘I am resolved to break,’ wrote Stephen. ‘I give no happiness; I receive none. This obsession is not happiness. I see a hardness that chills my heart, and not my heart alone. Hardness and a great deal else; a strong desire to rule, jealousy, pride, vanity; everything except a want of courage. Poor judgment, ignorance of course, bad faith, inconstancy; and I would add heartlessness if I could forget our farewells on Sunday night, unspeakably pathetic in so wild a creature. And then surely style and grace beyond a certain point take the place of virtue - are virtue, indeed? But it will not do. No, no, you get no more of me. If this wantonness with Jack continues I shall go away. And if he goes on he may find he has laboured to give himself a wound; so may she - he is not a man to be played with. Her levity grieves me more than I can express. It is contrary to what she terms her principles; even, I believe, to her real nature. She cannot want him as a husband now. Hatred of Sophia, of Mrs W? Some undefined revenge? Delight in playing with fire in a powder-?magazine?’
The clock struck ten; in half an hour he was to meet Jack at Plimpton cockpit. He left the brown library for the brilliant courtyard, where his mule stood gleaming lead-?coloured, waiting for him. It was gazing with a fixed, cunning expression down the alley beyond the stables, and following its eyes Stephen saw the postman stealing a pear from the kitchen-?garden espalier.
‘A double letter for you, sir,’ said the postman, very stiff and official, with hurried pear-?juice dribbling from the corner of his, mouth. ‘Two and eightpence, if you please. And two for the Captain, one franked, t’other Admiralty.’ Had he been seen? The distance was very great, almost safe.
‘Thankee, postman,’ said Stephen, paying him. ‘You have had a hot round.’
‘Why, yes, sir,’ said the postman, smiling with relief. ‘Parsonage, Croker’s, then Dr Vining’s - one from his brother in Godmersham, so I’d suppose he’ll be over this Sunday - and then right up to young Mr Savile’s - his young lady. Never was there such a young lady in the writing line; I shall be glad when they are married, and say it by word of mouth.’
‘You are hot, thirsty: you must try a pear - it will keep the humours in motion.’
The main had started when Stephen walked in: a tight-?packed ring of farmers, tradesmen, gipsies, horsecopers, country gentlemen, all too excited, the only tolerable thing the courage of the birds there in the pit.
‘Evens on the speckled pie! Evens on the speckled pie!’ cried a tall gipsy with a red scarf round his neck.
‘Done with you,’ said Jack. ‘Five guineas at even odds on the speckled pie.’
‘Done and done,’ said the gipsy looking round. His eyes narrowed, and in a jocular, wheedling voice he went on, ‘Five guineas, gentleman? Oh, such a purse for a poor travelling man and a half-?pay captain! I lays my money down, eh?’ He placed the five bright coins on the rim of the pit. Jack thrust out his jaw and matched the guineas one by one. The owners of the birds set them to the ring, clasping them just so and whispering close to their proud close-?cropped heads. The cocks stalked out on their toes, darting glances sideways, circling before they closed. Both flew up at the same moment, the steel spurs flashing as they struck; up and up again, a whirlwind in the middle of the pit and a savage roaring all round it.
The speckled pie, staggering, one eye gone and the other streaming blood, stood his ground, peering through the mist for his enemy: saw his shadow and lurched in to get his death-?wound. Still he would not die; he stood with the spurs labouring his back until the mere weight of his exhausted opponent bore him down - an opponent too cruelly lacerated to rise and crow.
‘Let us go and sit outside,’ said Stephen. ‘Pot-?boy, there, bring us a pint of sherry-?wine on the bench outside. Do you mind me, now?’
‘Sherry, for all love!’ he said. ‘The pretentious young whore is wicked enough to call this sherry-?wine. Here are letters for you, Jack.’
‘The speckled pie did not really want to fight,’ said Jack.
‘He did not. Though he was a game bird, to be sure. Why did you bet on him?’
‘I liked him; he had a rolling walk like a sailor. He was not what you would call a wicked bloody cock, but once he was in the ring, once he was challenged, he would fight. He was a rare plucked ‘un, and he went on even when there was no hope at all. I am not sorry I backed him: should do it again. Did you say there were letters?’
‘Two letters. Use no ceremony, I beg.’
‘Thank you, Stephen. The Admiralty acknowledges Mr Aubrey’s communication of the seventh ultimo. This is from Bath: I will just see what Queenie has to say.
