Chesapeake. Captain Aubrey, of the Royal Navy.'
The captains expressed their pleasure, but it was difficult to see much of it on Lawrence's shy, embarrassed face, and the name of Hornet struck all cheerfulness from Jack's. However, he assumed a decent appearance of cordiality and in spite of their protests called for coffee and sweet biscuits - 'or cookies, as I should say', looking at Lawrence with a smile. He liked the look of him, a big, open-faced man in a white coat, a man with a modest, well-bred air, and obviously a sailor. Lawrence returned the smile - there was clearly a mutual liking in spite of the awkwardness of the situation - and said, 'A little while ago, sir, I had the pleasure of meeting Lieutenant Mowett of your service, and he particularly desired me to wait on you, to bring his respects, to ask how you did, and to tell you that he was coming along very well in the hospital at New York.'
Mowett had been one of Jack's midshipmen many years before, and Lawrence had met him in the course of the murderous action in which the Hornet sank the Peacock. As they talked of the young man, who had had three ribs stove in by a splinter of the Peacock's rail, it became clear that Lawrence and he had gone along very well together during their long voyage from the Demerara river and that Lawrence had been kind to the wounded lieutenant; Jack's heart warmed to him - he was much attached to Mowett.
The five minutes passed, another five, another pot of coffee, and eventually Choate came in and put them out. Jack returned to his telescope, Evans to the dismantled Constitution, and Lawrence to the Chesapeake.
The morning wore on, and part of the afternoon, a brilliant, cheerful day, and at last Stephen came in, still dull and heavy, frowzy from his sleep. 'You look much better, Jack,' he said.
'Yes, I feel it, too. Shannon looked into the port this morning, found the birds flown, all, except Chesapeake and -,
'Did you hear that?' said Stephen, walking to the window.
'The glum-sounding bird?'
'The mourning-dove - there she flies. I dreamt of her. Jack, forgive me. I must go. Diana has invited me to dinner, with Johnson and Louisa Wogan.'
'I trust - I trust she is well?' said Jack.
'Blooming, I thank you: she asked after you most particularly,' said Stephen. There was a pause, but he said no more; and having waited until it was certain that no more would be said, Jack asked, 'Would you like my razor? I stropped it this morning until it would split a hair in four.'
'Oh no,' said Stephen, running his hand over his meagre bristly face. 'This will do very well. I shaved yesterday, or the day before.'
'But you have forgot your shirt. There is blood on it - there is blood on the collar and the cuffs.'
'Never mind. I will pull up my coat. The coat is perfectly respectable; I took it off for the operation. A very pretty operation, too.'
'Stephen,' said Jack earnestly, 'be a good fellow for once, will you now, and humour me? I should be really unhappy if one of my officers dined in an enemy town, looking anything but trim. It could be taken that he was beat, and had no pride in the service.'
'Very well,' said Stephen, and took up the razor.
Trim, shaved and brushed, he hurried through the town: the sharp air cleared his foggy mind, and by the time he reached the hotel his wits were pretty well at his disposition. He was early, which was a relief to him, for a Presbyterian clock, differing as much in time as in doctrine from the many other clocks of Boston, had given him an unpleasant shock: indeed, he was so early that there was no one to receive him. They were still dressing, said the monumental slave, as she showed him into an empty drawing-room.
Here he stood for a while, looking at Johnson's pictures: the bald eagle, the Carolina chickadee, his old friend the black-necked stilt. Then he moved out on to the long balcony, to see whether it might command another public clock - neither he nor Jack possessed a watch. There was one, a great way down the street, but it was obscured by a group of workmen at the far end of the balcony, hauling up lime and sand for some repair, and having craned for some time he gave it up - what did the time matter, after all? From some way along in the other direction, where a curtain streamed from an open window, he heard Diana's voice raised in that familiar tone of reproach he knew so well she was passing Johnson under the harrow. In a more gentlemanly mood Stephen would have moved away at once, but he was not feeling gentlemanly and after a moment he heard Johnson cry, 'My God, Diana, sometimes you are as loud as a hog in a gate.' The voice was strong and exasperated, and it was followed by the slamming of a door.
Stephen stepped silently back into the drawing-room and he was studying the turkey-buzzard when Johnson came in, cordial, welcoming, apparently unruffled. 'You are a tolerably good dissimulator, I find,' said Stephen to himself, and aloud, 'Surely this is a very able man. He gives us not the bird, for no bird ever had this brilliant clarity in every member, but the Platonic idea of the bird, the visible archetype of the turkey-buzzard.'
'Exactly so,' said Johnson, and they talked of the turkey-buzzard and of the bald eagle whose nest Johnson hoped to see on Sunday - it was on a friend's land in the state of Maine - until Mrs Wogan and Michael Herapath arrived: at the same moment Diana Villiers came in through another door, and Stephen observed that although Wogan was dressed with particular care, Diana won hands down. She was wearing the lightest, purest blue, straight from Paris, and it made Wogan's Boston gown look painstaking and provincial: furthermore, she had such a rivi? of blue-white diamonds around her neck as Stephen had rarely seen - a huge stone in the middle.
Even before they sat down to dinner it was clear to him that there was ill-will between Villiers and Wogan on the one hand and Villiers and Johnson on the other; and when they were at their soup, an admirable bisque de homard, it became equally clear that there was an attachment between Johnson and Louisa. They did their best to conceal it, but at times they were a little too formal and at others a little too free, the false note continually obtruding. Stephen was well placed to observe them, since the table at which they dined was rectangular and he occupied the middle of one long side alone, with Herapath and Louisa opposite him, Diana and Johnson at either end, and Wogan on Johnson's right. From Johnson's slightly constrained posture, Stephen was pretty sure that he was pressing Wogan's leg, and from Wogan's jolly, lively face it appeared that she did not dislike it.
Stephen was often rather silent and remote at meals; Diana knew this of old, and she spent most of her efforts during the soup and the course that followed on being agreeable to Michael Herapath. Stephen knew that she was barely acquainted with Herapath and he was surprised by the freedom of her conversation, its rallying, bantering tone, and by her telling an anecdote that was at the least ambiguous, a story either witless or indecent. Herapath too was surprised, but he was a well-bred creature and he concealed it, responding in much the same manner, as far as his habits and abilities would allow. This was not very far in the early stages of the meal, but she repeatedly filled his wine-glass and by the turbot he launched into a tale of his own, the only one of the kind he could remember. Yet half way through it seemed to occur to him that the end bordered too nearly upon the
