“I’ll bid you good‑bye, then, Hornblower,” said St Vincent, offering his hand.
“Good‑bye, my lord.”
St Vincent stood looking at him from under his eyebrows.
“The Navy has two duties, Hornblower,” he said. “We all know what one is — to fight the French and give Boney what for.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“The other we don’t think about so much. We have to see that when we go we leave behind us a Navy which is as good as the one in which we served. You’ve less than three years’ seniority now, Hornblower, but you’ll find you’ll grow older. It’ll seem you’ve hardly had time to look round before you’ll have forty‑three years’ seniority, like me. It goes fast enough, I assure you. Perhaps then you’ll be taking another young officer to present him at the Palace.”
“Er — yes, my lord.”
“Choose carefully, Hornblower, if it ever becomes your duty. One can make mistakes. But let them be honest mistakes.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“That’s all.”
The old man turned away without another word, leaving Hornblower with Bracegirdle under the portico.
“Jervie’s in a melting mood,” said Bracegirdle.
“So it seems.”
“I think he wanted to say he had his eye on you, sir.”
“But he had an anchor out to windward all the same,” said Hornblower, thinking of what St Vincent had said about the chance of one making mistakes.
“Jervie never forgives, sir,” said Bracegirdle, seriously.
“Well —”
Twelve years of service in the Navy had gone far to make Hornblower, on occasions, fatalist enough to be able to shrug off that sort of peril — at least until it was past.
“I’ll take my boat cloak, if you please,” he said, “and I’ll say good-bye, and thank you.”
“A glass of something? A cup of tea? A mouthful to eat, sir?”
“No, thank you, I’d better shove off.”
Maria was waiting for him at Deptford, longing to hear about his visit to Court and his presentation to the King. Maria had been wildly excited when Hornblower had told her what he was going to do. The thought that he was going to meet face to face the Lord’s anointed was almost too much for her — the midwife had come forward with a warning that all this excitement might bring on a fever. And he had not merely been presented to the King, but the King had actually spoken to him, had discussed his professional career with him. Besides, he was to have a real Prince as a midshipman on board his ship — a dispossessed prince, admittedly, but to counter‑balance that was the fact that the prince was a great‑nephew of the King, related by blood to the Royal Family. That would delight Maria as much as his presentation at Court.
She would want to know all about it, who was there (Hornblower found himself wishing he had been able to identify a single one of the figures who had stood behind the throne) and what everyone was wearing — that would be easier, as there had been no women present, of course, at the levee, and practically everyone had been in uniform. He would have to be careful in his account, as it was possible to hurt Maria’s feelings. Hornblower himself fought for his country; it might be better said that he fought for the ideals of liberty and decency against the unprincipled tyrant who ruled across the Channel; the hackneyed phrase “for King and Country” hardly expressed his feelings at all. If he was ready to lay down his life for his King that really had no reference to the kindly pop‑eyed old gentleman with whom he had been speaking this morning; it meant that he was ready to die for the system of liberty and order that the old gentleman represented. But to Maria the King was representative of something other than liberty and order; he had received the blessing of the Church; he was somebody to be spoken about with awe. To turn one’s back on the King was to Hornblower a breach of good manners, something damaging, in some degree, to the conventions which held the country together in the face of its imminent peril; but to Maria it would be something very close to sacrilege. He would have to be careful not to speak too lightly of the old gentleman.