Indirect illustration of character

I am fond of the Aubrey-Maturin series of books more than any other series. The stories are good and the people are magnificent. Each is unique and well-drawn, but particularly the main characters that persist throughout all 20 books. Not only are they well done, but one is allowed to see them grow, change, develop and alter as time and events pass and occur.

And, with such a scope to work with, O'Brian is more easily able to show what they are like rather than merely telling. Not that he would have been unable or disinclined to do so even in a single book, but the opportunity afforded in 20 is greater by far.

There is a particular character with whom Maturnin interacts in the third book (the one I am reading now; I re-read the series every year) that I find particularly illuminating as to Maturin's inclinations and character and I find the whole thing very, very moving. I'm going to spoil a minor sub-plot in the third book, so if you're scrupulous about such things, don't read further.

In the course of Maturin's explorations of the city of Bombay while the ship is being repaired and refitted, he encounters a young native girl who becomes his guide. Maturin considers her in his journal while recording his experiences.

This dear child Dil teaches me a great deal, talking indefatigably, a steady flow of comment and narrative, with incessant repetition where I do not understand - she insists on being understood and no evasion deceives her.
....
The ancient gentlewoman, offering me the child for twelve rupees, assured me that she was a virgin and wished to show me the fibula that guaranteed her state. It would have been quite superfluous: what could be more virginal than this tubular fearless creature that looks me directly in the face as though I were a not very intelligent tame animal, and that communicates her thoughts, views the moment they are born as though I, too, were a child? She can throw a stone, leap, climb like a boy; and yet she is no garçon manqué neither, for in addition to this overflowing communicative affection she also has a kind of motherliness and wishes to rule my movements and my diet for my own good - disapproves of my smoking bhang, eating opium, wearing trousers of more than a given length. Choleric, however: on Friday she beat a doe-eyed boy who wished to join himself to us in the palm-grove, threatening his companions with a brickbat and with oaths that made them stare. She eats voraciously: but how often in the week? She owns one piece of cotton cloth that she wears sometimes as a kilt, sometimes as a shawl; an oiled black stone that she worships perfunctorily; and her fibula. When fed she is, I believe, perfectly happy; longing only, but with no real hope, for a silver  bangle. Almost all the children are encumbered with them, and clank as they go. How old is she? Nine? Ten? The menarche is not far off - a hint of a bosom, poor child. I am tempted to purchase her: above all I should wish to preserve her in this present state, not sexless, but unaware of her sex, free of her person and of all the gutters and bazaars of Bombay, wholly and immediately human: wise too. But only Joshua could halt the sun. In a year's time or less she will be in a brothel. Would a European house be better? A servant, washed and confined? Could I keep her as a pet? For how long? Endow her? It is hard to think of her lively young spirit sinking, vanishing in the common lot.

Stephen Maturin later goes to witness a procession for a sea-festival in which the woman he loves, Diana Villiers, returns to Bombay from elsewhere in India. He was anticipating her return, but not so soon and is taken off-guard. Dil goes with him to watch the festival. When the familiar English terms (which now, being archaic, seem formal) are used it is to indicate that the language being spoken is a native tongue.

A warm hand slipped into his, and looking down Stephen saw Dil smiling up at him. 'Art very strangely clothed, Stephen,' she said. 'I almost took thee for a topi-wallah. I have a whole leaf of pondoo: come and eat it before it spills. Mind thy good bazaar shirt in the dung - it is far too long, thy shirt.' She led him across the trampled grass to the rising glacis of the fort, and there, finding an empty place, they sat down. 'Lean thy head forward,' she said, unfolding the leaf and setting the turgid mess between them. 'Nay, nay, forward, more forward. Dost not see thy shirt all slobbered, oh for shame. Where wast thou brought up? What mother bore thee? Forward.' Despairing of making him eat like a human being, she stood up, licked his shirt clean, and then, folding her brown jointless legs under her she squatted close in front of him. 'Open thy mouth.' With an expert hand she moulded the pondoo into little balls and fed him. 'Close they mouth, Stephen. Swallow. Open. There, maharaj. Another. There, my garden of nightingales. Open. Close.' The sweet, gritty unctuous mass flowed into him, and all the time Dil's voice rose and fell. 'Thou canst not eat much better than a bear. Swallow. Pause now and belch. Dost not know how to belch? Thus. I can belch whenever I choose. Belch twice. Look, look; the Mahratta chiefs.'
....
'That is Peshwa in the middle: and there is the Bhonsli rajah - har, har mahadeo! Another ball and all is gone. Open. Thou has fifteen teeth above and one less below. There is a European carriage, filled with Franks. Pah, I can smell them from here, stronger than camels. They eat cow and pig - it is perfectly notorious. Thou hast no more skill in eating with thy fingers than a bear or a Frank, poor Stephen: art thou a Frank at times?'

Stephen sees Diana unexpectedly, arriving in a carriage. After a few seconds, she sees him and runs over to speak to him in her great surprise that he should be in India. After their initial greetings:

 'Stephen,' muttered Dil again

'Who is your sweet companion?' asked Diana.

'Allow me to name Dil, my particular friend and guide.'

'Stephen, tell the woman to take her foot from off my khatta,' said Dil, with a stony look.

'Oh daughter, I beg thou wilt forgive me,' cried Diana, bending and brushing the dust off Dil's rag. 'Oh how sorry I am. If it is spoilt, thou shalt have a sari made of Gholkand silk, with two gold threads.'

Dil looked at the trodden place. She said, 'It will pass,' and added, 'Thou dost not smell like a Frank.'

Diana smiled and wafted her handkerchief at the child, spreading the scent of attar from Oudh. 'Pray take it, Dil-Gudaz,' she said. 'Take it, melter of hearts, and dream of Sivaji.'

Dil writhed her head away, the conflict between pleasure and displeasure plain on her averted face; but pleasure won and she took the handkerchief with a supple, pretty bow, thanked the Begum Lala and smelt it voluptuously.

Diana arranges for Stephen to come and visit her, she returns a friendly affection for him and seems unaware of the degree of his love for her. Diana asks Dil to guide Stephen.

'...then through the garden. He will certainly be lost without a wise hand to guide him; so bring him tomorrow night, I pray, and thou shalt have three wishes.'

'Certainly he needs guidance.'

Diana departs and Dil laughs wildly at the situation.

'Oh, Krishna, Krishnaji, oh Stephen bahadur, Sivaji, oh melter of hearts - ha, ha, ha! ... Dost thou understand?'

'Perhaps not quite as well as thou.'

'I shall explain, make clear. She is wooing thee - she wishes to see thee by night, oh shameless, ha, ha, ha! But why, when she has three husbands? Because she must have a fourth, like the Tibetans: they have four husbands, and the Frank women are very like Tibetans - strange, strange ways. The three have not given her a child, so a fourth there must be, and she has chosen thee because thou art so unlike them. She was warned in a dream, no doubt: told where to find thee, so unlike the rest.'

Stephen decides to buy Dil the silver bracelets she so desires and consult with Diana about how to best care for Dil. He buys the bracelets and gives them to her before seeing Diana. Instead of having her come with him when he visits Diana, he asks her to take a letter back to the ship.

'Bah,' she cried, kicking the ground. 'I want to go with thee. Besides, if I do not go with thee, where are my three wishes? There is no justice in the world.'

It had never been difficult to make out the nature of Dil's wishes, whatever their number: from the first day of their friendship she had spoken of bracelets, silver bracelets; she had told him, objectively and at length, the size, weight and quality of every kind in the Presidency as well as those current in the neighbouring province and kingdoms; and he had seen her kick more than one well-furnished clanking child from mere envy. They walked to a grove of coconut-palms overlooking Elephanta Island. 'I have never yet seen the caves,' he observed, and took a cloth parcel from his bosom. As though she, too, had been warned in a dream, Dil stopped breathing and watched with motionless intensity. 'Here is the first wish,' he said, taking out one bangle. 'Here is the second,' taking out two. 'And here is the third,' taking out three more.

She reached forward a hesitant hand and touched them lightly; her fearless and cheerful expression was now timid, very grave. She held one for a moment; put it solemnly down; looked at Stephen gazing at the island in the bay. Put it silently on and squatted there amazed, staring at her arm and the gleaming band of silver: put on another and another; and the rapture of possession seized her. She burst into wild laughter, slipped them all on, all off, all on in a different order, patting them, talking to them, giving them each a name. She leapt up and spun, jerking her thin arms to make the bracelets clink. Then suddenly she dropped in front of Stephen and worshipped him for a while, patting his feet - earnest loving thanks broken by exclamations - how had he known? - preternatural wisdom nothing to him, of course - did he think them better this way round or that? - such a blaze of light! - might she have the cloth they were wrapped in? She took them off, comforting them, put them on again - how smoothly they slipped! - and sat there pressed against his knee, gazing at the silver on her arms.

'Child,' he said, 'the sun has set. It is the dark of the moon and we must go.'

'Instantly,' she cried. 'Give me the chit and I fly to the ship; straight to the ship, ha, ha, ha!'

She ran skipping down the hill: he watched her until she vanished in the twilight, her gleaming arms held out like wings and the letter grasped in her mouth.

Diana and Stephen talk and he expresses his desire to see Dil cared for, but not taken out of her native milieu if at all possible. He doesn't see Dil for a couple days. He visits the caves with Diana and a party of people and they picnic. Diana's lover is also present on a social occasion and sees both Diana's regard for Stephen (he appears to discern her regard for Stephen is of a different order than she has for him, but he mistakes its nature) and Stephen's regard for Diana and becomes jealous. After receiving orders to report back to the ship for departure, Stephen goes to take his leave of Dil.

The alley was unusually crowded... The old woman was sitting in front of [her hovel]... Dil's body in front of her, partly covered with a piece of cloth. On the ground, a bowl with some marigolds in it and four brass coins. The people pressed in a half circle facing her, listening gravely to her harsh, angry voice.

He sat down in the second rank - went down with a grunt, as though his legs had been cut from under him - and he felt an intolerable pain rising in his heart.

The old woman is arguing with a Brahmin about the money needed to buy wood for Dil's funeral pyre. The neighbours help a bit, but they are all so poor nothing like enough is available.

'Here is no one of her caste,' said the man next to Stephen; and other people murmured that that was the cruel pity of the thing - her own people would have seen to the fire. But with a famine coming, no man dared look beyond the caste he belonged to. 'I am of her caste,' said Stephen to the man in front of him, touching his shoulder. 'Tell the woman I will buy the child. Friend, tell the woman I will buy the child and take it down. I will attend to the fire.'

The man looked round at him. Stephen's eyes were remote, his cheeks hollow, lined and dirty; his hair straggled over his face: he might well have been mad, or in another state - removed. The man glanced at his grave neighbours, felt their qualified approval, and called out, 'Grandmother, here is a holy man of thy caste who from piety will buy the child and take it down; he will also provide the wood.'

More conversation - cries - and a dead silence. Stephen felt the man thrust the purse back into his bosom, patting and arranging his shirt around the string.

After a moment [Stephen] stood up. Dil's face was infinitely calm; the wavering flame made it seem to smile mysteriously at times, but the steady light showed a face as far from emotion as the sea: contained and utterly detached. Her arms showed the marks where the bracelets had been torn off, but the marks were slight: there had been no struggle, no desperate resistance.

He picked her up, and followed by the old woman, a few friends and the Brahmin, he carried her down to the strand, her head lolling against his shoulder. The dawn broke as they went down through the bazaar: three parties were already there before them, at the edge of the calm sea beyond the wood-sellers.

Prayers, lustration; chanting, lustration: he laid her on the pyre. Pale flames in the sunlight, the fierce rush of blazing sandalwood, and the column of smoke rising, rising, inclining gently away as the breeze from the sea set in.

'. . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,' he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.

Every time I read this part of the book, it breaks my heart. The idea of innocence lost, destroyed, thoughtlessly obliterated and the obvious pain Stephen feels along with the helplessness wrenches my guts without fail. This may be one of the more notable examples, but Patrick O'Brian excels at evoking this kind of thing throughout his books. He captures humour, the delight of companionship, friendship, enmity, hate; he excels at painting pictures of people with his words. If you haven't read any of his works, you must.