“I must congratulate you, Captain, on your appointment to the Sutherland,” said Lady Barbara on his left. A breath of perfume was wafted from her as she spoke, and Hornblower’s head swam. To smell the scent of her, and to hear her voice again, was still some romantic drug to him. He did not know what he said in reply.
“The innkeeper here,” announced the Admiral to the table at large, dipping a ladle into the silver tureen before him, “swore to me that he knew the art of turtle soup, and I entrusted a turtle to his care. God send he spoke the truth. The sherry wine—George, the sherry—I trust you will find tolerable.”
Hornblower incautiously took a mouthful of soup far too hot, and the pain he experienced while swallowing it down helped to bring him back to reality. He turned his head to study the Admiral to whom he would owe obedience for the next two or three years, who had won Lady Barbara’s hand in marriage after a courtship that could not have endured more than three weeks. He was tall and heavily built and darkly handsome. The star of the Bath and the red ribbon set off his glittering uniform. In age he could hardly be much over forty-only a year or two older than Hornblower—so that he must have attained to post rank at the earliest age family influence could contrive it. But the perceptible fullness about his jowl indicated to Hornblower’s mind either self-indulgence or stupidity; both, perhaps.
So much Hornblower saw in a few seconds’ inspection. Then he forced himself to think of his manners, although between Lady Barbara and the Admiral it was hard to think clearly.
“I trust you are enjoying the best of health, Lady Barbara?” he said. A quaint quarterdeck rasp of formality crept into his voice as he tried to hit the exact tone he thought the complicated situation demanded. He saw Maria on the other side of Captain Elliott beyond Lady Barbara, raise her eyebrows a little—Maria was always sensitive to his reactions.
“Indeed, yes,” said Lady Barbara, lightly. “And you, Captain?”
“I have never known Horatio better,” said Maria interposing.
“That is good news,” said Lady Barbara, turning towards her. “Poor Captain Elliott here is still shaken sometimes with the ague he acquired at Flushing.”
It was deftly done; Maria and Lady Barbara and Elliott were at once engaged in a conversation which left no room for Hornblower. He listened for a moment, and then forced himself to turn to Mrs Bolton. She had no fund of small talk. “Yes” and “No” were all she could say, seemingly, and the Admiral on her other side was deep in talk with Mrs Elliott. Hornblower lapsed into gloomy silence. Maria and Lady Barbara continued a conversation from which Elliott soon dropped out, and which was continued across his unresisting body with a constancy which not even the arrival of the next course could interrupt.
“Can I carve you some of this beef, Mrs Elliot?” asked the Admiral. “Hornblower, perhaps you will be good enough to attend to those ducks before you. Those are neats’ tongues, Bolton, a local delicacy—as you know, of course. Will you try them, unless this beef claims your allegiance? Elliott, tempt the ladies with that ragout. They may be partial to foreign kickshaws—made dishes are not to my taste. On the sideboard there is a cold beefsteak pie which the landlord assures me is exactly like those on which his reputation is founded, and a mutton ham such as one only finds in Devonshire. Mrs Hornblower? Barbara, my dear?”
Hornblower, carving the ducks, felt a real pain in his breast at this casual use of the Christian name which was sacred to him. For a moment it impeded his neat dissection of long strips from the ducks’ breasts. With an effort he completed his task, and, as no one else at the table seemed to want roast duck, he took for himself the plateful he had carved. It saved him from having to meet anyone’s eyes. Lady Barbara and Maria were still talking together. It seemed to his heated imagination as if there was something specially pointed about the way Lady Barbara turned her shoulder to him. Perhaps Lady Barbara had decided that it was a poor compliment to her that he should have loved her, now that she had discovered the crudity of his taste from his choice of a wife. He hoped Maria was not being too stupid and gauche—he could overhear very little of their conversation. He could eat little of the food with which the table was covered—his appetite, always finicking, had quite disappeared. He drank thirstily of the wine which was poured for him until he realised what he was doing, and he checked himself; he disliked being drunk even more than over-eating. Then he sat and fiddled with his food on his plate, making a pretence at eating; fortunately Mrs Bolton beside him had a good appetite and was content to be silent while indulging it, as otherwise they would have made a dull pair.
Then the table was swept clear to make room for cheese and dessert.
“Pineapples not as good as we enjoyed at Panama, Captain Hornblower,” said Lady Barbara, turning back to him unexpectedly. “But perhaps you will make a trial of them?”
He was almost too flustered to cut the thing with the silver knife, so much was he taken off his guard. He helped her eventually, awkwardly. Now that he had her attention again he longed to talk to her, but the words would not come—or rather, seeing that what he found he wanted to ask her was whether she liked married life, and, while he just had enough sense not to blurt out that question, he did not have enough to substitute another for it.
“Captain Elliott and Captain Bolton,” she said, “have been plying me incessantly with questions about the battle between the Lydia and the Natividad. Most of them were of too technical a nature for me to answer, especially, as I told them, since you kept me immured in the orlop where I could see nothing of the fight. But everyone seems to envy me even that experience.”
“Her ladyship’s right,” roared Bolton, across the table—his voice was even louder than when Hornblower had known him as a young lieutenant. “Tell us about it, Hornblower.”
Hornblower flushed and fingered his neckcloth, conscious of every eye upon him.
“Spit it out, man,” persisted Bolton; no lady’s man, and oppressed by the company, he had said hardly a word so far, but the prospect of having the battle described found his tongue for him.
“The Dons put up a better fight than usual?” asked Elliott.
“Well—” began Hornblower, lured into explaining the conditions in which he had fought. Everybody listened; apt questions from one or other of the men drew him on, bit by bit. Gradually the story unfolded itself, and the loquaciousness against which Hornblower was usually on his guard led him into eloquence. He told of the long duel in the lonely Pacific, the labour and slaughter and agony, up to the moment when, leaning weakly against the quarterdeck rail, he had known triumph at the sight of his beaten enemy sinking in the darkness.
He stopped self-consciously there, hot with the realisation that he had been guilty of the unforgivable sin of boasting of his own achievements. He looked round the table from face to face, expecting to read in them awkwardness or downright disapproval, pity or contempt. It was with amazement that instead he saw expressions which he could only consider admiring. Bolton, over there, who was at least five years his senior as a captain and ten in age, was eyeing him with something like hero-worship. Elliott, who had commanded a ship of the line under Nelson, was nodding his massive head with intense appreciation. The admiral, when Hornblower could bring himself to steal a glance at him, was still sitting transfixed. There might possibly be a shade of regret in his dark handsome face that his lifetime in the navy had brought him no similar opportunity for glory. But the simple heroism of Hornblower’s tale had fascinated him, too; he stirred himself and met Hornblower’s gaze admiringly.