“We won’t stay at Arthur’s late,” said Barbara.
Arthur was her brother the Duke of Wellington, lately and strangely transferred from commanding the army fighting France to His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy to His Most Christian Majesty. Hornblower looked his surprise.
“We shall go on to the Polignacs’,” explained Barbara. “To meet M. le Prince.”
“Very well, dear,” said Hornblower. He thought he kept the resignation out of his voice perfectly convincingly.
M. le Prince; that was the Prince of Condé, of a younger Bourbon line. Hornblower had begun to learn his way through the complexities of French society — the complexities of the last century transported bodily back into this. He wondered if he were the only man who thought of them as outmoded anachronisms. M. le Prince; M. le Duc — that was the Duc de Bourbon, wasn’t it? Monsieur — plain Monsieur, with no honorifics at all — was the Comte d’Artois, the King’s brother and heir. Monseigneur, on the other hand, was the Duc d’Angoulême, Monsieur’s son, who would one of these days be Dauphin if his father survived his uncle. The very name of Dauphin was anachronistic, smacking of the Dark Ages. And the future Dauphin, as Hornblower well knew, was a man of convinced stupidity whose characteristic most easily remembered was a high-pitched mirthless laugh something like the cackling of a hen.
They had descended the stairs by now and Brown was waiting to hand them into the waiting carriage.
“The British Embassy, Brown,” said Hornblower.
“Yes, my lord.”
Brown had not stumbled over the new title once in the twenty-four hours he had borne it; Hornblower felt in his exasperation that he would have given anything for Brown to slip into ‘Aye aye, sir’. But Brown was too clear-headed and quick-thinking a person to make any such blunder; it was surprising that Brown should have elected to stay on in his service. He might well have made a career for himself.
“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying,” said Barbara.
“Please forgive me, dear,” said Hornblower — there was no denying the accusation.
“It’s very important indeed,” said Barbara. “Arthur is going to Vienna to represent us at the Congress. Castlereagh has to come home to manage the House.”
“Arthur will give up the Embassy?” asked Hornblower, making polite conversation. The carriage roared over the cobbles; the occasional lights revealed through the windows the bustling multi-uniformed crowd of Paris in the whirl of peace.
“Of course. This is much more important. All the world will be in Vienna — every Court, in the world will be represented.”
“I suppose so,” said Hornblower. The destinies of the world were to be decided at the Congress.
“That’s what I was going to tell you about. Arthur will need a hostess there — there’ll be constant entertaining, of course — and he has asked me to come and act for him.”
“My God!” Polite conversation had led straight to the brink of this abyss.
“Don’t you think it’s wonderful?” asked Barbara.
Hornblower was on the point of saying ‘Yes, dear’ when rebellion surged up within him. He had endured for his wife’s sake uncounted martyrdoms already. And this would be one far more violent and prolonged. Barbara would be the lady of the house, hostess of the most important delegate to the most important Congress in the world. The seeds of diplomacy, Hornblower had already learned, were planted far more often in drawing-rooms than in Cabinets. Barbara’s drawing-room would be a place of intrigue and double-dealing. She would be hostess, Wellington would be the man of the house, and he — what would he be? Something even more unnecessary than he was at present. Hornblower saw stretching before him a three months’ vista of salons and balls and visits to the ballet, outside the inner circle, outside the outer circle too. No Cabinet secrets would be entrusted to him, and he did not want to have anything to do with the petty gossip and polite scandal of the great world. A fish out of water was what he would be — and not a bad metaphor, either, when applied to a naval officer in the salons of Vienna.
“You don’t answer me?” said Barbara. “I’m utterly damned if I’ll do it!” said Hornblower — strange that, with all his tact and intuition, he always took a sledge-hammer in his rare arguments with Barbara, to kill flies with.
“You won’t do it, dear?”
In the course of that brief sentence Barbara’s tone changed from disappointment at the beginning to bitter hostility at the end.
“No!” said Hornblower, in a roar. He had kept the lid on his feelings for so long and so tightly that the explosion was violent when it came.
“You’ll deprive me of the greatest thing that has ever happened to me?” said Barbara, a hint of ice edging the words.
Hornblower fought down his feelings. It would be easier to give way — ever so easy. But no, he would not. Could not. Yet Barbara was quite right about its being a wonderful thing. To be hostess to a European Congress, to help mould the future of the world — and then, on the other hand, Hornblower had no wish whatever to be a member, and an unimportant member at that, of the Wellesley clan. He had been captain of a ship too long. He did not like politics, not even politics on a European scale. He did not want to kiss the hands of Hungarian countesses, and exchange inanities with Russian grand dukes. That had been fun in the old days when his professional reputation hinged on some such success, as it had done. But he needed more of a motive than the mere maintenance of his reputation as a beau.
Quarrels in a carriage always seemed to reach a climax just as the drive ended. The carriage had halted and porters in the Wellington livery were opening the door before Hornblower had had time either to explain or make amends. As they walked into the Embassy Hornblower’s apprehensive side glances revealed that Barbara’s colour was high and her eyes dangerously bright. So they remained during the whole of the reception; Hornblower looked across the room at her whenever he could, and every time she was clearly in high spirits, or laughing with the groups in conversation with her, tapping with her fan. Was she flirting? The red coats and the blue coats, the black coats and the green coats, that assembled round her bent their shoulders in obvious deference to her. Every glance Hornblower took seemed to increase his resentment.
But he fought it down, determined to make amends.
“You had better go to Vienna, dear,” he said, as they were once more in the carriage on their way to the Polignacs’. “Arthur needs you — it’s your duty.”
“And you?” Barbara’s tone was still chilly.
“You don’t need me. The skeleton at the feast, dear. I’ll go to Smallbridge.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Barbara. Proud as she was, she resented a little having to be beholden to anyone. To ask permission was bad enough; to receive grudging permission was dreadful.
Yet here they were at the Polignacs’.
“Milord and milady Hornblower,” roared the major-domo.
They paid their respects to the Prince, received their hosts’ and hostess’s greetings. What in the world — ? What — ? Hornblower’s head was spinning. His heart was pounding, and there was a roaring in his ears like when he had battled for his life in the waters of the Loire. The whole glittering room was seemingly banked in fog, save for a single face. Marie was looking at him across the room, a troubled smile on her lips. Marie! Horablower swept his hand over his face, forced himself to think clearly as he had sometimes had to do when exhausted in battle. Marie! Not so many months before his marriage to Barbara he had told Marie he loved her, and he had been on the verge of sincerity when he said it. And she had told him she loved him, and he had felt her tears on his face. Marie the tender, the devoted, the sincere. Marie, who had needed him, whose memory he had betrayed to marry Barbara.