Blue At The Mizzen Part 6

'No, my dear,' said Stephen. 'In such a case, and with such a person, I think it would be a plain yes or no. In the event of the first, I believe I should like to stay a week, if a week can be allowed. Otherwise we may sail away that same day, as far as I am concerned.'

They parted for the night with expressions of the utmost good will on either side; and early in the morning Dr. Jacob's rather frowzy appearance in the great cabin changed the atmosphere quite remarkably. He explained the situation in Chile with a wealth of details (many of which Stephen had forgotten, his mind being elsewhere) which Adams, the captain's clerk, took down in a shorthand of his own.

The explanation was interrupted by the arrival of the casks of rhubarb: then by important quant.i.ties of round shot and a little chain; and then by the necessity of hauling off into the fairway, so that once the galley fires were doused and every living spark aboard extinguished, the powder-hoy could come alongside and deliver her deadly little copper-ringed barrels to the gunner and his mates.

With a fair wind and a flowing sheet the Surprise, stores and water all completed - no stragglers, no drunken hands taken up by the Funchal police - bore away a little east of south; and by the time stern-lanterns and top-lights were lit, those hands who were inclined to smoke their tobacco rather than chew it gathered in and about the galley, where in addition to the pleasure of their pipes they had the much-appreciated company of women, perfectly respectable women, Poll Skeeping, Stephen's loblolly-girl, and her friend Maggie, the bosun's wife's sister.

'So it seems the Doctor's mate has come aboard again,' said Dawson, the captain of the head, who knew it perfectly well but who liked to hear the fact confirmed.

'Was he carrying another Hand of Glory? How I hope he was carrying another Hand of Glory, G.o.d bless him, ha, ha, ha!'

'No, nor another unicorn's horn; that will be for next time.'

All those who had shared in the Surprise's most recent and most glorious prize laughed aloud; and a Shelmerston-ian, who had not been there of course, said, 'Tell us about it again.'

They told him about it again, about those splendid barrels brim-full of prize-money, with such vehemence and conviction, most of them speaking at once, that the blazing gold seemed almost to be there before them.

'Ah,' said one, in the ensuing silence, 'we'll never see days like that again.' A pause, and a general sigh of agreement; though many spoke with very strong approval of the doctors and the luck they brought.

'So we are bound for Freetown,' observed Poll Skeeping.

'Yes,' said Joe Plaice, one of Killick's friends and a fairly reliable source of information. 'Which the Doctor - our doctor - is sweet on the Governor's lady: or, as you might say, his widow. She lives there still, in a house.'

'What, an ugly little b.u.g.g.e.r like him, and that lovely piece?' cried Ebenezer Pierce, foretopman, starboard watch.

'For shame, Ebenezer,' said Poll. 'Think of your arm he saved.'

'Still,' said Ebenezer, 'you can be a very clever doctor and still no great beauty.' And in the inimical silence he walked aft, affecting unconcern, and tripped over a bucket.

'I wish the Doctor well, by G.o.d,' said a carpenter's mate. 'He's had it cruel hard.'

CHAPTER FIVE.

' "Governor welcomes Surprise: should be happy to see Captain, gunroom and mids.h.i.+pmen's berth at half-past four o'clock",' called the signal mids.h.i.+pman to the first lieutenant, who relayed the message to Captain Aubrey, three feet from its source.

'Very kind in him, I am sure,' said Jack. 'Please reply "Many thanks: accept with pleasure: Surprise." No: scrub that. "With greatest pleasure: Surprise." You know the moorings as well as I do, Mr. Harding: carry on, if you please, bearing the surf and our number one uniforms in mind.'

The captain and the officers of the frigate had done pretty well - even very, very well - out of their Barbary prize, but from the depths of their beings rose an anxious care for the outward marks of their rank, insignificant in comparison with those of their fellows in the army (often well-to-do), but of the first importance to a sailor living or attempting to live on his pay. Another fact that tempered their delight in the invitation was the Royal Navy's custom of feeding its mids.h.i.+pmen (as much as it fed them at all, apart from their private stock, stores, and family pots of jam) at noon; the officers rather later; and the captain whenever he chose, usually at about one or half-past. So as usual, in response to an official, land-borne invitation, the Surprises approached Government House, groomed to the highest state of cleanliness and polish, but slavering with greed or with appet.i.tes wholly extinguished. Yet at least this time their precious uniforms, thanks to a little new jetty or pier, were still immaculate; and as soon as they had been properly introduced to Sir Henry, given their gla.s.s of sherry and seated, the officers with a female partner and the mids.h.i.+pmen promiscuously, their spirits began to revive.

Jack's partner was of course Lady Morris: Stephen's, apparently without any regard for his humble service rank, was Christine Wood. This was obviously the result of a deliberate manoeuvre on Lady Morris's part - she said something about 'common interest in birds' as Christine made her curtsey and Stephen his bow, and was sure that dear Mr. Harding would forgive her when she introduced him to the ADC's ravis.h.i.+ng young wife - would forgive her on the grounds of a previous acquaintance, in spite of his seniority.

Previous acquaintance or not, they were painfully embarra.s.sed, tongue-tied and awkward as they sat there, crumbling bread and responding to the usual civilities from their other neighbours. It was only when a plantain-eater uttered its horrible screech that Stephen cried, 'Surely it is too far north for that creature?' and she replied almost sharply that in spite of Hudson, Dumesnil and others Sierra Leone was by no means the northern limit of the plantain-eaters - two pairs had bred in her garden this year and there were reports of others well beyond the river, even. This re-established them on their former basis of scientific candour, and he told her of his anomalous nuthatch in the Atlas, of the numerous bodies of lions that would gather to roar at one another from either side of a river in those parts, of the extraordinary wealth of flamingos: presently their earlier friends.h.i.+p, affection and more than affection flowed back like a making tide on an open strand, flowed imperceptibly but without the least question. Like civilised creatures they paid proper attention to their other neighbours; but to the observant part of the company in general their particularity was so evident that a Mrs. Wilson, whose daughter was on Stephen's left, was heard to say, 'Really, the gentleman seems quite besotted with that Mrs. Wood.' Her friends replied that a rich widow would naturally seem very desirable to a penniless naval surgeon.

When they parted he said, 'I am so very glad to have seen you again. I am a most indifferent writer and I am only too painfully aware that my answers to your dear letters - to one above all - have been painfully inadequate. May I presume to call upon you tomorrow? I long to see your latest remarks on Adanson: and then again there is all the northern sh.o.r.e of the marsh that we had to leave unexplored - did you in the end fix our porphyria as a breeding species?'

'I should be very happy to see you,' she said, a little nervously. 'Shall we say at about ten, if your duty allows? You know where I live, I presume?'

'I do not.'

'It is the rather brutal square building below Government House, perhaps half a mile to the north, almost at the edge of the water: I bought it myself as a holiday place - in no way official, and as I said, near the sh.o.r.e. I shall send Jenny, in case you should miss the way.'

Well before ten Jenny came alongside in a skiff expertly rowed by Square, a beaming Kruman who had accompanied Stephen on his earlier visit, and who now hailed the s.h.i.+p with such pleasure that all who heard him smiled.

'Dear Square, how happy I am to see you again,' said Stephen, descending with his usual grace, saved at the last minute by a powerful hand.

'The lady said I was to see you safe aboard, oh mind them thole-pins.' Square seized him again, and somehow balancing the frail craft while Jenny slid forward, set him down in the stern.

'Easy does it, Square,' called Jack, voicing the anxiety of all aboard.

And in fact easy did it: in time they saw Dr. Maturin creep up the few remaining steps of a solid, unmoving ladder (the tide was almost full) and walk firmly away into the town. 'What possessed me not to lay on my own barge I cannot imagine,' said Jack to his first lieutenant, who shook his head, unable to offer any comfort.

'Should you like a hammock, sir?' asked Square, meaning one of those drooping cus.h.i.+oned nets, extended by poles and a yoke, which served as sedan chairs or hackney coaches in Freetown.

'I had as soon walk,' said Stephen. 'But let us skirt the market-place, and perhaps Jenny will buy us each a length of sugar-cane.'

This they did, gazing over the great crowded, immensely vociferous square on the right hand, piled with glorious fruit, fish-slabs with half the wealth of the Atlantic, decently shrouded booths beyond, holding dark, nameless flesh; while away on the left, spotted with disconsolate camels and a.s.ses, an anonymous pasture stretched beyond the walls right down to the water's edge - varying waters, salt, fresh, and semi-liquid mud among the mangroves, with the brutal square building in its garden a great way off but quite distinct.

At the first heap of sugar-cane Stephen gave Jenny a small silver piece and they turned off to the left, threading their way down through as surprising a mixture of African and European nations as can well be imagined, with a plentiful sprinkling of Arabs and Moors and Syrians, and crosses of almost every shade including some with naturally rather than henna'ed red hair. But as soon as they were clear of the town the easy downward slope had almost no one on it and Stephen walked with his gaze well above the horizon, indeed half-way up the sky, for already the rising currents of air had carried many a soaring bird aloft.

He was intent upon one of them: a vulture, of course; but what vulture? Griffon? Lappet-faced? Hooded? Possibly Ruppell's griffon? The light, though strong, was awkwardly placed for the distinguis.h.i.+ng marks of a very high bird planing on the south-west breeze.

'Sir,' said Square, stopping on the edge of a small freshwater stream that ran down from the right. And following the pointed finger, Stephen saw an exactly defined print in the mud, a leopard's left fore-paw, perfect even to the slight claw-mark, and strikingly recent.

'They come for dogs,' said Jenny. It was perfectly true, but neither of the men thought it her place to say so; and the word 'spots' died in her mouth.

'This is much more promising,' observed Stephen, his small telescope having shown him the surface of the bay dotted with water-fowl and perhaps some few waders far over. The minute 'ping' of his watch - it could hardly be called a chime - interrupted his close examination of the flamingos, and he said, 'Come, Square, come, Jenny. We must not be late.'

In through a ma.s.sive gate to a stable-yard with an a.s.sembly of bristling, suspicious dogs, kept in order only by Jenny's presence and firm admonition, and so round to the front, where Mrs. Wood had just finished thrusting her put-tee'd legs into riding-boots. 'Oh,' cried she, 'I do beg pardon for not having come out to meet you - we had a roaring, bellowing night of it with that d.a.m.ned leopard, and the dogs are still very cross - what she hopes to gain by it, I cannot imagine. Should you like some canvas-topped boots? I can almost promise a tolerable bird, if we go almost at once: but we should have to paddle or even wade a little by the mangrove and the leeches are such a nuisance.' She sounded so very like her brother Edward when she said this that Stephen replied, 'Dear Miss Christine, how kind you are: I truly detest a leech.' But collecting himself as she laced the sailcloth tops he went on, 'Forgive my familiarity, I beg: that is what Edward and I used to call you.'

'And he called you Stephen, as I did when speaking of you to him: so if I may, I shall go on. It comes so naturally.'

Perfectly naturally, by the time they reached the water and she was explaining its very curious nature. 'Now look, Stephen, beyond the pygmy geese but before the flamingos..."

'Christine, can you make out whether the nearer bird is a greater flamingo or the slightly smaller kind?'

'A lesser, I do believe. But we shall see better when we are a little farther round and he brings his head up, showing his bill more clearly. Well, between the pygmy geese and those spa.r.s.e dubious flamingos, there is a sandbank that will show in an hour or so: the water on the far side is brackish and on our side fresh: well, fairly fresh except at huge great high tides. But if you look along the sh.o.r.e to the right you will see a fair-sized fresh-water stream coming down through the tall reeds: beyond that a dark bank of mangroves with their feet in the brackish mud, because there the sandbank curls in to the sh.o.r.e. Then farther on, though you can hardly see it from here except for the trees growing on its banks, another stream - a small river, indeed, where Jenny and I go and swim.' Stephen nodded. 'And there is an inlet beyond its mouth where I hope to show you a splendid bird. Oh, and thank you very much for the hermaphrodite crab: there is something like him or her in that small bay. Shall we sit down on the bank here - this dear little northerly breeze keeps the mosquitoes off- and look at the birds? If there are any uncommon stragglers we may be able to make them out between us, or at least take notes.'

There was indeed a splendid wealth of birds on the water, including some very, very old friends such as wigeon, tufted duck, mallard and shoveller, perfectly at home among the neat little pygmy geese, k.n.o.b-billed and spur-winged geese, white-faced tree-duck and the odd anhingas, to say nothing of the blue-breasted kingfisher that darted overhead and the steady patrol of vultures in the upper sky.

'Shall we go on?' asked Christine at last. 'You do not dislike mangroves?'

'Not at all,' he replied. 'I cannot say that I should ever deliberately cultivate one, but I am accustomed to their presence - have crept some miles among them and their loathsome flies further down the coast.'

'These are only a sickly little patch: they have too much sweet water, and they cannot thrive. Yet at least it is oh so much quicker and less painful than struggling through those cruel thorns higher up the slope behind them. I find the best way is to cling to the aerial roots as well as anything else that comes to hand. Undignified, if you like; but better than falling plump into that vile stinking black mud. And we must get along fairly quick. He begins to move when the sun is about this height.'

Stephen understood that 'he' was some particular creature - bird, reptile, possibly mammal, of a rarity that would delight him. He asked no questions and soon he had no time to ask any that might arise as he concentrated on following her practised steps through this slimy shade.

Yet most unhappily, as both sun and tide mounted, Christine moved faster, just too fast for her mud-clogged boots. The aerial roots, pale wands hanging plumb-straight down from the upper tree, betrayed her, and she did indeed fall plump into that vile black stinking mud, angering the small fishes that skipped on its surface, the many kinds of crab, and the little mud-tortoises that preyed on both. Stephen lurched forward to heave her out - met with the same fate - and they wallowed painfully, slowly, on all fours to the extreme edge of the mangrove trees, where clean water and a fairly clean bottom allowed them to crawl ash.o.r.e in a very distressing state of filth.

She gasped, begged his pardon, said, 'How I hope we did not disturb him - probably not - there is two hundred yards to go. Does nakedness worry you?'

'Not in the least. After all, we are both anatomists.'

'Very well,' said she. 'There is nothing for it. We must both strip and rid our clothes of mud, our bodies of leeches. We have clean water here, thanks be: and in my pocket there is salt for the leeches, in a corked bottle. May I give you a hand with your boots?' She did so; he did the same for her; and they stripped off their clothes without the least ceremony, floating the mud out of them, weighing them down with stones; and then they attended to the astonis.h.i.+ngly numerous and avid leeches, each dealing with the other's back in a wholly impersonal manner.

Apart from some artists' models and nations that possessed no clothes at all, Stephen had never seen anyone so unconcerned with nudity: and on reflection he remembered her brother Edward, his intimate friend, telling him that he and she had bathed, naturalised and fished, wearing nothing at all, from small childhood to maturity, in the isolated lake that formed part of their family's park. Well before this, during his first visit, she and her black companion had wandered into his field of vision as he searched the farther sh.o.r.e of a mere for birds and he had admired not only their freedom but also the combination of green, black, white, and the whiter than white of an egret, yet as objectively as he watched duck and cormorants. But now her tall, graceful, willowy shape was emphasised by the thin vermilion streams that flowed from the leech-bites (it did not coagulate, the creatures injecting a substance that thinned the blood, turned it a fine vermilion and allowed them a much longer period of feeding) and these outlined the curve of her long, long legs with an extraordinarily pleasing effect; and now something of the scientist, something of the pure anatomist, began to leave him.

'Presently the flies will grow intolerable,' she said. 'It would be better to put on damp clothes than to have them crawling about all over one.' Still, she did spread some of the wettest on sun-warmed rocks: they dried quite soon, but even sooner the mounting sun made her uneasy. They put the garments on, as well as they could, and she led the way, murmuring, 'Oh that he may not have gone.'

She reached a last screen of rushes before a small, secluded inlet, and as she did so there leapt into the air a perfectly enormous bird of the heron kind, blueish on top, chestnut below, with immense green legs and a deep, furious baying cry - he filled the narrow s.p.a.ce of sky before vanis.h.i.+ng seawards, leaving Stephen perfectly amazed. He kissed Christine quite ardently, thanking her with the most profound grat.i.tude. She blushed, and said, 'Oh how glad I am we had not flushed him. He is as touchy as a Roman emperor.'

'Lord,' said Stephen, 'that such a bird can fly! Can take to the air!'

When he had recovered from his amazement, which was not soon, and when their clothes were moderately dry, he observed with pleasure that in spite of the fact that they had stalked about together stark naked she had a certain coquetry in arranging the fall of her princ.i.p.al garment. 'Now, should you like to go to the house and have tea and then come down to the hides out there' - nodding to some reed shelters on or just off the true sh.o.r.e - 'so that when the sun is gone I hope to be able to show you a most prodigious wonder. You do not have to go back to the s.h.i.+p directly, I trust?'

'Oh no. If there is any urgency aboard they will send for me; but with my colleague already there, it is scarcely possible.'

'To tea, then; and at least we have a Christian path to the house. Coming down it again, we should be wise to carry a gun. The poor leopard is growing desperate, I fear - so many insatiable cubs.'

'Have you ever seen them?'

'Yes: she keeps them in a tumble of rocks on the hillside, and if you climb an oil-palm about two hundred yards along, you can see them peeping out just after dawn, waiting for her. I drove tenpenny nails into the trunk, and many a good skirt have they cost me, when I slip.'

'Jenny,' she called, walking into the house with a little cloud of dogs, 'tell N'Gombe that we should like tea, and pray run and fetch a really cool cuc.u.mber for sandwiches.

Stephen,' she went on, 'should you like a dressing-gown?'

'No, thank you, my dear: I have walked myself dry.'

'Then forgive me for a moment while I put something decent on my back.'

There were some bird-skins on her work-table, with the heaps of notes required for an intelligent commentary on Adanson, and he looked at them with an interest quite devoid of prying, at the same time revolving one of those curious problems of limit: you may kill a leopard if she a.s.sumes a threatening att.i.tude, thus condemning her beautiful cubs to a hideous and lingering death. You may shoot and skin a number of slightly differing green pigeons and wood-doves with no more of a tremor than Sir Joseph Blaine impaling a b.u.t.terfly. Yet to the question 'You would not destroy the whole litter and be shot of them?' you may reply 'If you had seen a little leopard, I do not think you would ask.'

The door opened. 'Why, my dear,' he said, 'how very fine you look, now you are cleaned and brushed. Pray what is this skin? Clearly a pigeon, but I cannot make out which.'

'He is Gmelin's Treron thomae, from the island down in the Gulf. Here comes the tea: what joy. There is nothing like tea for getting rid of the taste of mangrove mud.'

It was brought with proper ceremony by an immense, grave, very black man, and almost immediately after it was followed by the cuc.u.mber sandwiches and some little round affairs, not unlike marzipan.

They made a good, serious tea, pa.s.sing bird-skins from hand to hand and speaking of their infant greed - m.u.f.fins, crumpets, b.u.t.tered toast with anchovy relish, deeply iced fruit cake - in the most companionable way. But towards the end Stephen noticed that she was looking out of the window with something of the anxiety of one who does not wish to miss the evening rise: he refused 'another cup' and rose briskly at her suggestion that they should go down to the hides - lanterns would bring them up again, so they could stay as long as they chose.

'I shall entrust the gun to you, if I may,' she said, rather as though it were an umbrella, and led the way out with a fine elastic step, putting her boots on again in the hall.

Down, with plenty of light and a three-quarter moon rising over Africa: Stephen said, 'Sometimes, you know, I am shockingly careless of the common decencies of life.'

'You mean taking all our clothes off in that abandoned way?'

'Dear me, no: our forbears did that long before us - long before they had any notion of that ap.r.o.n of fig-leaves. No: what grieves me is my never uttering a single word - not the least enquiry after your chanting-goshawks, begging you to tell me how they do?'

'Alas, Stephen, alas: a bateleur killed their mother, and I did not succeed in bringing them up. You have seen a bateleur, I make no doubt?'

'I have, too. The most remarkable of the eagles - if he is an eagle at all, which some naturalists deny.'

'She was out in the yard, on her perch, and he came down with a noise like a stooping peregrine but twice as loud, chased her into the stable and instantly killed her. Ha.s.san took her body away, netted the eagle, and so left him in the dark. He was - and is - a young bird, and terribly fierce at the slightest threat. But quite soon we were on reasonably good terms. He is surprisingly intelligent, and even kind; indeed very good terms. I turned him free, and even now -for this is his territory - he will come racing down on to my shoulder to ask how I do.'

'How I hope I may see him: he at least is a bird one can never mistake - no tail, no tail at all. You would say a scythe, flying at enormous speed; wonderful gyrations. Tell me, what about bats?'

'I must confess that I have not paid as much attention to bats as I should have done. There are such myriads of birds - one of them, by the way, lives on bats, together with the odd evening pipit. He is a buzzard really, of moderate size but extraordinary agility, as you may imagine: they eat their bats straight out of their talons, in the air. I only know two couples. Here we are: and here is really quite a good path and then a little sort of causeway to the main - well, you can hardly call it a building - but the place or hide from which my husband and his guests used to shoot the flighting duck and the smaller geese. You can stand there, seeing and not being seen: a capital place if you like to watch the waders and many, many of the little things in the reeds. Take care on the causeway - here is the rope.'

Inside it was surprisingly light. Their eyes were already accustomed to the afterglow - it was no more - and they could make out geese and duck by the hundred. 'But my dear Stephen,' she said, gently turning him round to the sh.o.r.e and the trees, 'this is the way you must look, and oh how I hope my nine-days' wonder remembers the appointment. We are rich in nightjars, as you know - do you hear the one over to the east?'

'A dear bird. Our homely European kind, is he not?' 'Certainly; but I meant the deeper croak to the left.' He listened, caught the sound, and said, 'It is a nightjar of a sort, to be sure: the family voice.' The bird stopped: they stood poised, listening: then suddenly she touched his arm. 'There is my bird,' she whispered. 'Oh, how I hope he comes.'

Stephen caught the shrill, lasting churr: and as a waft of air brought the sound closer it soon dropped in pitch, growing much more present. 'Don't move,' she murmured.

They stood taut, their senses at the stretch, the utmost stretch; and clear against the pale sky, not twenty yards before them, flew a bird with a nightjar's action but extraordinarily modified by two immensely elongated flight-feathers on either side, trailing far behind, more than doubling its length. With an instant change of direction it swooped on a pale moth, captured it and flew off, lost against the darkness of the trees.

She had been gripping his arm: now she released it, saying, 'He did come: oh I am so glad. You saw him clear, Stephen?'

'Clear, perfectly clear: and I am amazed, amazed. Thank you very much indeed for showing him to me, dear Christine. Lord, such wealth! Such an acquisition! Will you tell me about him?'

'What very little I know. He is Shaw's Caprimulgus longi-pennis, and he is uncommon in these parts, above all in his full mating plumage - I have seen only two all the time I have been here. That perfectly astonis.h.i.+ng train, by the way, is just the ninth primary on either side; and how the poor bird manages to get into the air I cannot imagine, above all if he happens to be on the ground: we have another nightjar with enormously exaggerated flight feathers, Macrodypteryx vexillarius, but his are only pointed, not bushy at the tips, like ours... But in any case I have never been able to make really valuable observations of either, nor of their plain long-tailed cousin.'

'I should not have missed that for anything. On the face of it those primaries destroy the bird's efficiency, just as the peac.o.c.k's ludicrous train or the lavish display of the birds of paradise may be presumed to cost them a very great deal. Yet they live and even thrive: could it be that our notions, or at least my notions, are fundamentally mistaken?'

'There he is again. And another: the ordinary long-tailed bird.'

They stood in silence, slowly relaxing. 'There is our scops owl,' said she. Some duck pa.s.sed over, wigeon by the sound of their wings, and broke the surface a hundred yards away with a surprising noise in this dead-still night.

'Stephen,' she said after a while. 'I am afraid you are uneasy. Shall I go away for a few minutes? You can whistle when you want me back.'

'No, soul,' he said, 'this is really not the usual physical matter but rather a question of throwing my pet.i.tion into a reasonably acceptable form. In short, it would give me infinite joy if you would marry me: yet before you instantly put me to silence, let me at least say what I can in my own favour. Admittedly, I am very far from being even tolerably good-looking; but from the physician's point of view I am pretty sound, with no grossly evident vices; materially I believe I may say that I am what is ordinarily called well-to-do, with an ancient house and a reasonable estate in Spain - I could without difficulty buy a decent place or set of chambers in London or Dublin: or Paris, for that matter. I stand reasonably well in my profession and in the service. My worst enemies could not truthfully say that I was a loose-liver, addicted to gaming or the bottle. And although in candour I cannot deny that my birth was illegitimate and my church that of Rome, I do not think - I do not like to think - that to a person of your distinguished intelligence, these are total bars to a union, above all since I should make no claims of any kind. Finally I should like to add that as you are aware, I am a widower - your letter touched me to the heart - and that I have a daughter.'

After a while, during which at least three separate nightjars churred and one owl called, she said, 'Stephen, you do me infinite honour, and it grieves me more than I can say to desire you to dismiss the subject from your mind. I have been married, as of course you know, and very unhappily married. I too am pretty sound from the physician's point of view: I too am reasonably wealthy. But - I am speaking of course to an honourable man - my husband was incapable of the physical aspects of marriage and his vain attempts to overcome this defect gave me what I have believed to be an ineradicable disgust for everything to do with that aspect - the whole seemed to me a violent and of course inept desire for possession and physical dominance. And this impression was no doubt reinforced by own fear and reluctance.' And speaking in an entirely different tone after a period of silence she said, 'In your experience as a physician, would you say that this was a usual state of mind in a young married woman?'

He reflected and said, 'I have very rarely encountered a case in which the circ.u.mstances were so extreme as yours: but I do know how often the sorrow and woe that is in marriage arise from want of elementary physical understanding, to say nothing of inept.i.tude, selfishness, gross ignorance...'

'And a kind of hostility, resentment..."

'Agreed, agreed. Please wipe my foolish, self-seeking words from your memory as far as ever you can. But do let us go on exchanging notes on Adanson. There are the lanterns coming down through the trees.'

'Oh dear,' she said, taking his hand. 'I am afraid I have wounded you, a man I esteem more than any who have ever addressed me. Stephen, I am so sorry...'