10 Lord Hornblower

received a step in the peerage, had actually reverted from a territorial to a personal title, becoming Marquis Wellesley instead of Earl of Mornington. Another brother-in-law, unable to use the Wellesley name in consequence of his brother’s pre-emption of it, had become Wellington, apparently in an effort to retain as much of the family name as possible. He was a Duke now, far above a mere Baron, and yet they were all three Peers together. Lords, hereditary legislators. Little Richard was now the Honourable Richard Hornblower, and some time would be Lord Hornblower in succession to his father. All the formalities regarding titles were a little amusing. Barbara, for instance; as the daughter of an earl — it was her father’s rank that mattered, not the fact that one brother was now a marquis and one a duke — she had had higher precedence than as the wife of a Knight of the Bath. She had been Lady Barbara Hornblower up to yesterday. But now as a result of her husband’s peerage she would be Lady Hornblower. Lord and Lady Hornblower. It sounded well. It was a great honour and distinction, the coping-stone of his professional career. Oh, to be truthful about it, it was the sheerest lot of tommy-nonsense. Robes and a coronet. Hornblower stiffened in his chair as a thought struck him. Freeman’s ridiculous prophecy over the cards in the cabin of the Flame about a golden crown had this much confirmation now. It was an amazingly shrewd guess on the part of Freeman; it had never occurred to him himself for one moment that he might become a peer. But the rest of Freeman’s prophecy had fallen to the ground. Danger and a fair woman, Freeman had foreseen. And now the danger was all over with the coming of peace, and there was no fair woman in his life, unless Barbara, with her blue eyes and light-brown hair, could be called fair.

He rose to his feet in his irritation, and perhaps was going to stamp round the room, but Barbara came in at that moment from her bedroom, ready for the Ambassador’s party. She was all in unrelieved white, for the party had been planned as a culminating demonstration of loyalty to the Bourbons, and the women were to wear white regardless as to whether or not their complexions could stand it; maybe that was the most convincing proof of loyalty to the newly restored dynasty that could be offered. Hornblower picked up his hat and cloak in readiness to escort her; it was the fortieth time in forty nights, he fancied, that he had done just the same thing.

“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 Conde, 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’Angouleme, 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.