“Come in, come in,” he said. He put his hand to a door beside him and then withdrew it. “You will need a better fire than I can offer you in the drawing-room. Felix, show the way to the kitchen — I trust you gentlemen will pardon my receiving you there? This way, sirs. Chairs, Felix, and send the maids away.”
It was a vast low-ceilinged room, stone-flagged like the hall. Its grateful warmth was like Paradise; in the hearth glowed the remains of a fire and all round them kitchen utensils winked and glittered. The woman without a word piled fresh billets of wood upon the fire and set to work with bellows to work up a blaze. Hornblower noticed the glimmer of her silk dress; her piled up hair was golden, nearly auburn.
“Cannot Felix do that, Marie, my dear? Very well, then. As you will,” said their host. “Please sit down, gentlemen. Wine, Felix.”
They lowered Bush into a chair before the fire. He sagged and wavered in his weakness, and they had to support him; their host clucked in sympathy.
“Hurry with those glasses, Felix, and then attend to the beds. A glass of wine, sir? And for you, sir? Permit me.”
The woman he had addressed as ‘Marie’ had risen from her knees, and withdrew silently; the fire was crackling bravely amid its battery of roasting spits and cauldrons. Hornblower was shivering uncontrollably, nevertheless, in his dripping clothes. The glass of wine he drank was of no help to him; the hand he rested on Bush’s shoulder shook like a leaf.
“You will need dry clothes,” said their host. “If you will permit me, I will —”
He was interrupted by the re-entrance of the butler and Marie, both of them with their arms full of clothes and blankets.
“Admirable!” said their host. “Felix, you will attend these gentlemen. Come, my dear.”
The butler held a silken nightshirt to the blaze while Hornblower and Brown stripped Bush of his wet clothes and chafed him with a towel.
“I thought I should never be warm again,” said Bush, when his head came out through the collar of the nightshirt. “And you, sir? You shouldn’t have troubled about me. Won’t you change your clothes now, sir? I’m all right.”
“We’ll see you comfortable first,” said Hornblower. There was a fierce perverse pleasure in neglecting himself to attend to Bush. “Let me look at that stump of yours.”
The blunt seamed end still appeared extraordinarily healthy. There was no obvious heat or inflammation when Hornblower took it in his hand, no sign of pus exuding from the scars. Felix found a cloth in which Hornblower bound it up, while Brown wrapped him about in a blanket.
“Lift him now, Brown. We’ll put him into bed.”
Outside in the flagged hall they hesitated as to which way to turn, when Marie suddenly appeared from the left hand door.
“In here,” she said; her voice was a harsh contralto. “I have had a bed made up on the ground floor for the wounded man. I thought it would be more convenient.”
One maid — a gaunt old woman, rather — had just taken a warming pan from between the sheets; the other was slipping a couple of hot bottles into the bed. Hornblower was impressed by Marie’s practical forethought. He tried with poor success to phrase his thanks in French while they lowered Bush into bed, and covered him up.
“God, that’s good, thank you, sir,” said Bush.
They left him with a candle burning at his bedside — Hornblower was in a perfect panic now to strip off his wet clothes before that roaring kitchen fire. He towelled himself with a warm towel and slipped into a warm woollen shirt; standing with his bare legs toasting before the blaze he drank a second glass of wine. Fatigue and cold fell away from him, and he felt exhilarated and lightheaded as a reaction. Felix crouched before him tendering him a pair of trousers, and he stepped into them and suffered Felix to tuck in his shirt tails and button him up — it was the first time since childhood that he had been helped into his trousers, but this evening it seemed perfectly natural. Felix crouched again to put on his socks and shoes, stood to buckle his stock and help him on with waistcoat and coat.
“Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Vicomtesse await monsieur in the drawing room,” said Felix — it was odd how, without a word of explanation, Felix had ascertained that Brown was of a lower social level. The very clothes he had allotted to Brown indicated that.
“Make yourself comfortable here, Brown,” said Hornblower.
“Aye aye, sir,” said Brown, standing at attention with his black hair in a rampant mass — only Hornblower had had an opportunity so far of using a comb.
Hornblower stepped in to look at Bush, who was already asleep, snoring faintly at the base of his throat. He seemed to have suffered no ill effects from his immersion and exposure — his iron frame must have grown accustomed to wet and cold during twenty-five years at sea. Hornblower blew out the candle and softly closed the door, motioning to the butler to precede him. At the drawing room door Felix asked Hornblower his name, and when he announced him Hornblower was oddly relieved to hear him make a sad hash of the pronunciation — it made Felix human again.
His host and hostess were seated on either side of the fire at the far end of the room, and the Count rose to meet him.
“I regret,” he said, “that I did not quite hear the name which my major-domo announced.”
“Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s ship Sutherland,” said Hornblower.
“It is the greatest pleasure to meet you, Captain,” said the Count, side-stepping the difficulty of pronunciation with the agility to be expected of a representative of the old regime. “I am Lucien Antoine de Ladon, Comte de Graçay.’
The men exchanged bows.
“May I present you to my daughter-in-law? Madame la Vicomtesse de Graçay.”
“Your servant, ma’am,” said Hornblower, bowing again, and then felt like a graceless lout because the English formula had risen to his lips by the instinct the action prompted. He hurriedly racked his brains for the French equivalent, and ended in a shamefaced mumble of “Enchanté.”
The Vicomtesse had black eyes in the maddest contrast with her nearly auburn hair. She was stoutly — one might almost say stockily — built, and was somewhere near thirty years of age, dressed in black silk which left sturdy white shoulders exposed. As she curtseyed her eyes met his in complete friendliness.
“And what is the name of the wounded gentleman whom we have the honour of entertaining?” she asked; even to Hornblower’s unaccustomed ear her French had a different quality from the Count’s.
“Bush,” said Hornblower, grasping the import of the question with an effort. “First Lieutenant of my ship. I have left my servant, Brown, in the kitchen.”
“Felix will see that he is comfortable,” interposed the Count. “What of yourself, Captain? Some food? A glass of wine?”
“Nothing, thank you,” said Hornblower. He felt in no need of food in this mad world, although he had not eaten since noon.
“Nothing, despite the fatigues of your journey?” There could hardly be a more delicate allusion than that to Hornblower’s recent arrival through the snow, drenched and battered.
“Nothing, thank you,” repeated Hornblower. “Will you not sit down, Captain?” asked the Vicomtesse. They all three found themselves chairs.
“You will pardon us, I hope,” said the Count, “if we continue to speak French. It is ten years since I last had occasion to speak English, and even then I was a poor scholar, while my daughter-in-law speaks none.”
“Bush,” said the Vicomtesse. “Brown. I can say those names. But your name, Captain, is difficult. Orrenblor — I cannot say it.”
“Bush! Orrenblor!” exclaimed the Count, as though reminded of something. “I suppose you are aware, Captain, of what the French newspapers have been saying about you recently?”
“No,” said Hornblower. “I should like to know, very much.”