A/N: In Persuasion, really until its final pages, we get to know Frederick Wentworth only through Anne's eyes, past and present. He rarely speaks his occurrent thoughts or feelings. This chapter attempts to get us better acquainted with the man.

Tides of Bath

Chapter Two: Mal de Debarquement

Each woman is a briefe of womankind,
And doth in little even as much containe,
As, in one day and night, all life we finde,
Of either, more is but the same againe:
God fram'd her so, that to her husband she,
As Eve, should all the world of woman be.

— Overbury, Wife

Wentworth leaned against the back of the stagecoach interior, closing his book and then closing his eyes.

London was thinning outside as the carriage headed from the city. For a time, the crush and noise and stink of the city had overwhelmed, and so distracted him. But the crowd now was just his three fellow travelers, an aged, large, soft man, fashionably dressed but overspilling his clothes, and, beside him, a mother and child.

The child, perhaps four or five, a boy, sat with his brown eyes wide, staring by turns at Wentworth across from them and then the other man, past his mother, but always pressed against his mother's side. She was a woman whose face mixed immobile severity and mobile kindness. When she smiled, reassuringly, at the boy, her hard, pointed features softened, and indulgent maternity presented itself in her face.

When the boy looked at Wentworth again, Wentworth nodded and grinned. The boy, after a moment's shy indecision, grinned back. The mother watched the exchange and then she smiled at Wentworth. He bowed his head to her slightly, although he had given her a more formal bow before they entered the stagecoach. She widened her smile cautiously in acknowledgment, and then he noticed her eyes resting on the spine of his book.

He was reading a small, leather-bound copy of Overbury's Wife, a gift from his capable first lieutenant on the Laconia, James Benwick. Benwick had not long ago formed an attachment, a quite serious attachment, with a young woman, Fanny Harville. Benwick was, although a gifted and diligent officer, a reading man, a thinker. As such, and with his thoughts turning to matrimony, Benwick had procured a copy of Overbury. Wentworth had seen the book in Benwick's hands in off-hours, and Benwick had troubled to notice his captain's notice. When he finished with the book, and without any trace of irony or smirk, he offered it to Wentworth.

Wentworth had thought to refuse it but had to admit to himself that the turn of his thoughts, the nature of his plans, made the book of interest to him, led him to notice it when Benwick had it in hand. So, he accepted the book, although he had not found time to read any of it until he was aboard the stagecoach. The titular poem, long enough and dull enough, formed only a small portion of the book, which contained a miscellany of poems, essays, and sketches. Wentworth had been reading The True Character of a Dunce, with wry, somewhat bitter, amusement, when he stopped to sit back and look at the last of London.

Wentworth held the book up, and, capitalizing on the relaxed proprieties among fellow-travelers, hazarded a comment and question. "The gift of a friend. Do you know it?"

The woman shook her head before answering, looking away from him to shift the carpetbag at her feet. "No, sir, I do not know the book. The state itself, of course," she looked back at him, "I am quite familiar with, being both wife and mother."

Wentworth nodded politely. The woman, emboldened by Wentworth's speaking, allowed herself to continue. "Do you read for information or enjoyment?"

"Both, I suppose. Although I confess I had finished with Wife and had moved on to an essay on...well, dunces."

The small boy chuckled at this and Wentworth grinned at him again. "I fear," Wentworth added, shifting address slowly from the boy to the mother, "that the character delineated seems too close to my own for my liking."

The woman smiled anew, and, nodding, put her arm around her son. She seemed amused but cautious about allowing the conversation to continue too long, to move towards acquaintance. But her son tugged at her sleeve and when she bent down, he cupped her ear and whispered to her.

She laughed softly and looked at the boy, then back at Wentworth, reddening. "My son would like to know why you...call yourself a dunce?" She gave Wentworth a careful look meant to free him from any obligation to answer.

Wentworth chuckled and looked at the boy. "I find that I am too often as the dunce is. That I 'sleep as I go', and that my thoughts, 'seldom reach an inch further than my eyes'. I am a sailor, you see, a man of wonted action, and I have perhaps been too little given to careful reflection or observation. I admire alacrity and decision, resolution, and daring, perhaps...overmuch. But, now that I am on dry land again, I am hoping to improve myself, to read, to awaken myself, and to look past my eyes."

The boy laughed and smiled at Wentworth's phrase, and the head shake and deliberately widened eyes that accompanied it. Satisfied, still smiling, the boy closed his eyes and leaned more heavily against his mother. The afternoon heat and the dust of travel had settled on them all, and a few moments later, the mother was asleep, joining her son, leaning against each other, and the large man was snoring beside them, his round head propped against the stagecoach, his mouth open, despite the dust.

Wentworth opened his book and began to read again. The essay on Dunces — Wentworth only then noticed it was by John Donne — ended unhopefully: "...Such as he is you must take him, for there is no hope he should ever become better."

Wentworth read the sentence three or four times, and, with a rueful pang in his chest, turned to try to attend to the passing scenery and ignore the loud snoring gentleman across from him.

Wentworth took out his watch and consulted it in the dusk, giving it a wind before putting it back into his waistcoat pocket. His companions were still sleeping and he knew they would be stopping for the night soon. The air was cooler and he looked across at the sleeping boy.

He had not only been hoping to amuse the mother and son by what he said earlier. It was not untruth. His intentions to marry had made him wonder about himself, about those features of his character on which he put the most value. They were features that distinguished him as a sailor, as a captain, but it was no longer clear they distinguished him as a man. Heroism on the water and heroism off it might not look quite as much the same as he had always believed. He was growing older, and he had seen and experienced much, and many things unpleasant, extremely unpleasant. It was perhaps an understandable occupational hazard to judge all of life by the standards of one's occupation, but, even if it was understandable, that did not make it wise. Benwick had prompted Wentworth to reconsider, as had the brother of Fanny Harville, the estimable Captain Harville.

Harville was not, like Benwick, a reading man, but he was a man who cared about his family deeply, who treasured domestic comforts above all others, and who treated his sister, his wife, and his children with a ready, responsive tenderness that was a lesson to Wentworth. Both men understood their station and their duties, but they also understood the duties to change as their station changed, and they could make the changes.

Wentworth felt that the needed to master that lesson more fully than he had. He would have no luck finding a wife by presenting an unbending maritime manner. He did not want to become another somebody's captain; he wanted to be a particular somebody's husband. He wanted to be beloved, not obeyed. As a rational man, he wanted a sensible wife, an honest, intelligent, and feeling woman. He hoped to be a better man, even a better captain, for it — for her.

But he was worried, worried that he had hardened too much, spent too much time at sea, too much time as a captain. The last time he had engaged the other, non-martial side of himself had been with Anne Elliot, and that had ended so unhappily that he had stowed the tenderer parts of himself away, below decks, and had never retrieved them, not until now. He was frankly uncertain that they had survived their stowage unspoiled. He knew he had smooth, plausible manners — but was he capable of attaching the sort of woman he wanted? Five years ago, he had failed to attach Anne deeply enough to carry his point with her. — How would he do now when he was so long out of practice? Would he suffer, continue to suffer, reverse sea sickness — land sickness — and prove unsteady and ill-at-ease on dry land?

The true character of a dunce. He was indeed worried that he had, and would show himself truly to have, the character of a dunce.

The stagecoach had stopped at an inn and the mother and her son had been reunited with the husband and father. The older man sat near Wentworth as they both ate an indifferent meal, the older man with his face held close to his plate, eating quickly and without either apparent relish or disrelish.

Wentworth had put out his candle and gone to bed, after having read a bit more from Overbury. He was still, unmoving, for the first time since dawn. But his thoughts remained in motion; he was plagued by incessant cognition. He was working to secure a future that kept bringing the past before his mind.

In the dark, he fought to allow reason to temper both his memory and his imagination. He would be in Bath the day after next and would begin to act on his intention. He feared that Bath would be revealed a pitfall covered in flowers. So had his time in the environs of Kellynch Hall, the seat of Sir Walter Elliot, Anne's peacock of a father, been revealed to be. He was determined not to choose a woman who could not make her own choice again. He would keep a careful watch for one such as Lady Russell hiding in the wings, waiting to sweep in and destroy his prospects a second time.

After he fell asleep, he dreamt of Lady Russell as a dark grey owl, regarding him with huge eyes, her talons squeezing the branch on which she sat, sat in occult judgment.

It was raining in Bath, and Wentworth stood in a small shop, finishing the purchase of a large, black umbrella. The shop was crowded, not just by patrons, but by others who were hoping to outlast the heavy shower while indoors. As Wentworth stepped away from the counter and into the press of people in the small space, he heard someone note that the rain had stopped.

The door opened and Wentworth filed out among the others onto the wet streets of Bath. The clouds that brought the rain had passed over, and sunlight was peering through a break in the now-intermittent, now-lighter-grey clouds. For the moment, Wentworth's umbrella was unneeded. Carrying it in one hand, he wandered along Milsom street with no particular destination or purpose but to stretch his legs and see the city. Some of it was vaguely familiar from his visit years ago, but only in a general way.

His reception by Sophia and Admiral Croft the night before had been warm and hearty. He had arrived in time to have dinner with them, and then to have a long chat fireside before bed. They had lodgings in Gay Street, comfortable, pleasant, and without ostentation. He had risen later than usual this morning, taken tea with his sister and brother, and then started on his umbrella errand.

After the rain, as the clouds continued to break up, the heat began to rise, the glare of sun intensified by puddles and wet streets. He slowed and stopped, stepping aside to let others pass. He decided to simply look at Bath for a moment, exploring it with his eyes only, without the aid of his feet. He adjusted his hat and noticed that several pretty girls passed him, almost all stealing a glance at his tall figure. He tried not to be too obvious as he examined faces and smiles. But examine them he did; It was his mission, after all.

His odd feeling of land sickness had lessened, his fear of playing a dunce, of plunging into a pitfall, had lessened too. Maybe he would be able to realize his intention, to carry through with his plan. — At least his morning had not been beset by images or remembrances of Anne Elliot. And that was important since it would be difficult for any present woman to usurp Anne's place in his mind so long as Anne was occupying it.

He decided to resume his walk, and did so, but distracted, musing to himself about the faces he had seen and about opportunities he might have for introductions. He progressed further along Milsom Street, guiding his feet more by intuition than sight. Looking up, he saw a man just ahead of him, only a few feet away, standing in the middle of the stream people, but turned away from the street and toward a shop window.

For a moment, after a glance, Wentworth thought the man was looking at a nautical painting displayed in the shop window, when it struck him that the man's posture and movements revealed that he was not looking through the window, into the store, but at himself in the window.

Wentworth started involuntarily; he knew the man: it was Anne's father, Sir Walter Elliot. Sir Walter had not yet seen Wentworth, and Wentworth was about to turn when he saw Sir Walter eye him, or rather, eye his reflection in the window, his reflection standing alongside Sir Walter's own.

Sir Walter rotated slowly, his manner stiff and haughty, and he gazed at Wentworth cooly, looking him up and down. Wentworth bowed, whether stiffly or not he could not tell in his momentary mortification, and Sir Walter bowed slightly and with conspicuous stiffness in return. As had been the case years ago in Kellynch, Wentworth felt tried and judged in that one moment, found still to be unsuitable.

Another man, much younger than Sir Walter but equally tall, and dressed in a similar flaunt of fashion, approached Sir Walter.

"Ah, Sir Walter, my apologies. I was detained for a moment. I trust you have kept yourself entertained."

"Most, most entertained," Sir Walter said, both too quickly and too loudly as he turned from Wentworth. The man looked past Sir Walter at Wentworth. He had seen the recognition pass between the other two men. But when Sir Walter did not exert himself to introduce the man to Wentworth, the man refocused on Sir Walter and they walked away.

Wentworth stood blinking, hardly able to recover from the surprise and discomfort of the moment, when he thought he heard the other man speak a name: "...Anne…" Wentworth's land sickness returned, squeezed him, standing motionless in the heat and glare, and he felt like a falling dunce.

Look-ahoy! We hear from Anne in the next chapter as our story begins in earnest. Thoughts?