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 tell 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.'
?t 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.'
They said nothing as they walked along the road. Stephen reflected upon Sophie's confinement: he had not been present, but he understood from his colleagues that it had been unusually difficult and prolonged--a bad presentation--yet there had been no essential lesion. He also reflected upon Jack's life at Ashgrove Cottage; and standing before the fire in the Crown, a fine great, posting-inn on the main Portsmouth road, he said, 'Were we to speak generally, we might say that upon the whole sailors, after many years of their unnatural, cloistered life, tend to regard the land as Fiddler's Green, a perpetual holiday; and that their expectations cannot be attempted to be fulfilled. What the ordinary landsman accepts as the common lot, the daily round of domestic ills, children, responsibilities, the ordinary seaman is apt to look upon as a disappointment of his hopes, an altogether exceptional trial, and an invasion of his liberty.'
'I catch your drift, old Stephen,' said Jack with a smile, 'and there is a great deal in what you say. But not every ordinary seaman has Mrs Williams to live with him. I am not complaining, mark you. She is not a bad sort of a woman at all; she does her best according to her own lights, and she is truly devoted to the children. The trouble is that I had somehow got the wrong notion of marriage. I had thought there was more friendship and confidence and unreserve in it than the case allows. I am not criticizing Sophie in the least degree, you understand -
'Certainly not.'
'--but in the nature of things . . . The fault is entirely on my side, I am sure. When you are in command, you get so sick of the loneliness, of playing the great man and so on, that you long to break out of it; but in the nature of things it don't seem possible.' He relapsed into silence.
After a while Stephen said, 'So if you were ordered to sea, brother, I collect you would not rage and curse, as being snatched away from domestic felicity--the felicity, I mean, of a parent guiding his daughters' first interesting steps?'
I should kiss the messenger,' Jack.
'This I had supposed for some time now,' murmured Stephen.
'For one thing, I should be on full pay,' continued Jack, land for another, there would be a chance of prize- money, and I might be able to give them portions.' At the word prize-money the old piratical look gleamed in his bright blue eye and he straightened to his full height. 'And indeed I have some hopes of a ship. I pepper the Admiralty with letters, of course, and some days ago I wrote to Bromley: there is a frigate fitting out in the Dockyard, the old Diane, doubled and braced with Snodgrass's diagonals. I even pester Old Jarvie from time to time, though he don't love me. Oh, I have half a dozen irons in the fire--I suppose you have not been up to anything, Stephen? Not another Surprise*Se, with an envoy for the East Indies?'
'How come you to ask such a simple question, Jack? Hush: do not gape, but look privily towards the stair. There is a most strikingly handsome woman.'
Jack glanced round, and there in fact was a most strikingly handsome woman, young, spry, a lady very much alive, wearing a green riding-habit; she was aware of being looked at, and she moved with even more grace than nature had provided.
He turned heavily back to the fire. 'I have no use for your women,' he said. 'Handsome or otherwise.'
'I never expected you to utter so weak a remark,' said Stephen. 'To lump all women together in one undiscriminated heap is as unphilosophical as to say . . . '
'Gentlemen,' said the host of the Crown, 'your dinner is on the table, if you please to walk in.'
It was a good dinner, but even the soused hog's face did not restore Captain Aubrey's philosophy, nor give his expression the old degree of cheerfulness that Stephen had known outlast privation, defeat, imprisonment and even the loss of his ship.
After the first remove, which had been entirely taken up with memories of earlier commissions and former shipmates, they spoke of Mrs Williams's affairs. That lady, having lost her man of business by death, had been unfortunate in her choice of a new one, a gentleman with a scheme of investment that must infallibly yield seventeen and a half per cent. Her capital had been engulfed and with it her estate, though up until the present she still retained the house whose rent paid the interest on the mortgage. 'I cannot blame her,' said Jack. 'I dare say I should have done the same myself: even ten per cent would have been wonderfully tempting. But I wish she had not lost Sophie's dowry too. She did not choose to transfer it until the Michaelmas dividends were due, and in decency we could hardly press her, so it all went, being in her name. I mind the money, of course, but even more than that I mind its making Sophie unhappy. She feels she is a burden, which is the greatest nonsense. But what can I say? I might as well talk to the cathead.'
