The equerry and the chevalier d’honneur and the almoner were on their feet by now. Howard was goggling at him across the room; Dobbs’ face was invisible as he bent over his pen, but the back of his neck was a warm purple which clashed with the scarlet of his tunic.
‘Please go on, Colonel.
“During the few days in which I have had the honour of working with His Royal Highness, it has been made plain to me that His Royal Highness has neither the tact nor the administrative ability desirable in one in so high a station”.’
‘Sir!’ said the equerry. ‘You cannot send that letter.’
He spoke first in French and then in English; the chevalier d’honneur and the almoner made bilingual noises of agreement.
‘No?’ said Hornblower.
‘And you cannot send His Royal Highness back to England. You cannot! You cannot!’
‘No?’ said Hornblower again, leaning back in his chair.
The protests died away on the lips of the three Frenchmen. They knew as well as Hornblower, as soon as they were forced to realise the unpalatable truth, who it was that held the power in Le Havre. It was the man who had under his command the only disciplined and reliable military force, the man who had only to give the word to abandon the city to the wrath of Bonaparte, the man at whose word the ships came in and went out again.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Hornblower with elaborate concern, ‘that His Royal Highness would physically oppose an order from me consigning him on board a ship? Have you gentlemen ever witnessed a deserter being brought in? The frog-march is a most undignified method of progression. Painful, too, I am informed.’
‘But that letter,’ said the equerry, ‘would discredit His Royal Highness in the eyes of the world. It would be a most serious blow to the cause of the Family. It might endanger the succession.’
‘I was aware of that when I invited you gentlemen to hear me dictate it.’
‘You would never send it,’ said the equerry with a momentary doubt regarding Hornblower’s strength of will.
‘I can only assure you gentlemen that I both can and will.’
Eyes met eyes across the room, and the equerry’s doubt vanished. Hornblower’s mind was entirely made up.
‘Perhaps, sir,’ said the equerry, clearing his throat and looking sidelong at his colleagues for their approval, ‘there has been some misunderstanding. If His Royal Highness has refused some request of Your Excellency’s, as I gather has been the case, it must have been because His Royal Highness did not know how much importance Your Excellency attached to the matter. If Your Excellency would allow us to make further representations to His Royal Highness—’
Hornblower was looking at Howard, who very intelligently recognised his cue.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Howard. ‘I’m sure His Royal Highness will understand.’
Dobbs looked up from his paper and made corroborative sounds. But it took several minutes before Hornblower could be persuaded to postpone putting his decision into instant effect. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he yielded to the pleadings of his own staff and the Duke’s. After the equerry had led his colleagues from the room to seek the Duke, Hornblower sat back with a real relaxation replacing the one he had simulated. He was tingling and glowing both with the after effects of excitement and with his diplomatic victory.
‘His Royal Highness will see reason,’ said Dobbs.
‘No doubt about it,’ agreed Howard, judiciously.
Hornblower thought of the twenty seamen chained in the hold of the Nonsuch expecting to be hanged tomorrow.
‘An idea has struck me, sir,’ said Howard. ‘I can send a flag of truce out to the French forces. A parlementaire – a mounted officer with a white flag and a trumpeter. He can carry a letter from you to General Quiot, asking for news about Captain Bush. If Quiot knows anything at all I’m sure he’ll have the courtesy to inform you, sir.’
Bush! In the excitement of the last hour Hornblower had forgotten about Bush. His pleasurable excitement escaped from him like grain from a ripped sack. Depression closed in upon him again. The others saw the change that came over him; as an example of the affection for him which he had inspired in this short time of contact it is worthy of mention that they would rather have seen the black thundercloud of rage on his brow than this wounded unhappiness.
XIV
It was the day that the parlementaire returned; Hornblower would always remember it for that reason. Quiot’s courteous letter left no ground for hope whatever; the gruesome details which it included told the whole story. A few rags and tatters of men had been found and had been buried, but nothing that could be identified as any individual. Bush was dead; that burly body of his had been torn into shreds by the explosion. Hornblower was angry with himself for allowing the fact that Bush’s grave would never be marked, that his remains were utterly destroyed, to increase his sadness. If Bush had been given a choice, he presumably would have chosen to die at sea, struck down by a shot in the moment of victory at the climax of a ship-to-ship action; he would have wished to have been buried in his hammock, round-shot at his feet and head, with seamen weeping as the grating tilted and the hammock slid from under the flag into the sea and the ship rocked on the waves, hove-to with backed topsails. It was a horrid irony that he should have met his end in a minor skirmish on a river bank, blown into bloody unidentifiable rags.
And yet what did it matter how he died? One moment he had been alive and the next dead, and in that he had been fortunate. It was a far greater irony that he should have been killed now, after surviving twenty years of desperate warfare. Peace was only just over the horizon, with the allied armies closing in on Paris, with France fast bleeding to death, with the allied Governments already assembling to decide on the peace terms. Had Bush survived this one last skirmish, he would have been able to enjoy the blessings of peace for many years, secure in his captain’s rank, in his pension, in the devotion of his sisters. Bush would have enjoyed all that, if only because he knew that all sensible men enjoyed peace and security. The thought of that only increased Hornblower’s feeling of bitter personal loss. He had never thought he could mourn for anyone as he mourned for Bush.
The parlementaire had only just returned with Quiot’s letter; Dobbs was still eagerly questioning him about what he had been able to observe of the condition of the French forces, when Howard came rapidly in.
‘Gazelle, sloop of war, just entering the harbour, sir. She is wearing the Bourbon flag at the main and makes this signal, sir. “Have on board Duchess of Angoulême”.’
‘She has?’ said Hornblower. His spirit climbed wearily out of its miserable lethargy. ‘Tell the Duke. Let Hau know and tell him to arrange about salutes. I must meet her on the quay along with the Duke. Brown! Brown! My dress coat and my sword.’
It was a watery day with a promise of early spring. The Gazelle came warping against the quay, and the salutes rolled round the harbour just as they had done when His Royal Highness arrived. The Duke and his entourage stood in almost military formation on the quay; upon the deck of the Gazelle was gathered a group of women in cloaks awaiting the casting of the brow across to the quay. Bourbon court etiquette seemed to dictate a rigid absence of any appearance of excitement; Hornblower, standing with his staff a little to the rear and to the side of the Duke’s party, noted how the women on deck and the men on the quay made no signal of welcome to each other. Except for one woman, who was standing by the mizzenmast waving a handkerchief. It was something of a comfort to see that there was at least one person who refused to be bound by stoical etiquette; Hornblower supposed that it must be some serving-woman or lady’s maid who had caught sight of her lover in the ranks on the quay.
Over the brow came the Duchess and her suite; the Duke took the regulation steps forward to greet her. She went down in the regulation curtsy, and he lifted her up with the regulation condescension, and they put cheek to cheek in the regulation embrace. Now Hornblower had to come forward to be presente
d, and now he was bowing to kiss the gloved hand laid upon his levelled forearm.
‘Sir ’Oratio! Sir ’Oratio!’ said the Duchess.
Hornblower looked up to meet the blue Bourbon eyes. The Duchess was a beautiful woman of some thirty years of age. She had something urgent to say, obviously. As if tongue-tied, she was unable to say it, the rules of etiquette making no allowance for this situation. Finally she made a frantic gesture, and looked round her to call Hornblower’s attention to someone behind her. A woman stood there, standing alone, separated a little from the group of ladies-in-waiting and dames d’honneur. It was Barbara – Hornblower had to look twice before he could believe his eyes. She stepped towards him, smiling. Hornblower took two strides towards her – in the midst of them he thought briefly of the necessity of not turning his back upon royalty, but threw discretion to the winds – and she was in his arms. There was a tumult of thoughts in his mind as she put her lips, icy cold from the sea air, against his. It was sensible enough that she had come, he supposed, although he had always strongly disapproved of captains and admirals who had their wives with them on active service. As the Duchess had come it would be quite desirable to have Barbara here as well. All this in a flash, before more human feelings became apparent. A warning cough from Hau behind him told him that he was holding up the proceedings, and he hastily took his hands from Barbara’s shoulders and stepped back a little sheepishly. The carriages were waiting.
‘You go with the royal pair, sir,’ whispered Hau, hoarsely.
The carriages requisitioned in Le Havre were not striking examples of coach-building, but they served. The Duke and Duchess were seated, and Hornblower handed Barbara in and took his seat beside her, his back and hers to the horses. With a clatter of hoofs and a generous squeaking they set off up the Rue de Paris.
‘Was that not a pleasant surprise, Sir ’Oratio?’ asked the Duchess.
‘Your Royal Highness was far too kind,’ said Hornblower.
The Duchess leaned forward and put her hand on Barbara’s knee.
‘You have a most beautiful and most accomplished wife,’ she said.
The Duke beside her uncrossed his knees and coughed uncomfortably, for the Duchess was acting with a condescension a trifle excessive in a king’s daughter, a future queen of France.
‘I trust you had a comfortable voyage,’ said the Duke, addressing himself to his wife; a mischievous curiosity prompted Hornblower to wonder if there was ever a moment when he did not use a tone of such rigid formality towards her.
‘We will pass over the memory of it,’ said the Duchess with a laugh.
She was a high-spirited and lovely creature, and running over with excitement at his new adventure. Hornblower watched her curiously. Her infancy had been passed as a princess in the most splendid Court of Europe; her childhood as a prisoner of the revolutionaries. Her father and mother, the king and queen, had died under the guillotine; her brother had died in prison. She herself had been exchanged for a parcel of captive generals, and married to her cousin, had wandered through Europe as the wife of the heir to a penniless but haughty Pretender. Her experiences had left her human – or was it that formalities of shabby-genteel royalty had not succeeded in dehumanising her? She was the only living child of Marie Antoinette, whose charm and vivacity and indiscretion had been proverbial. That might explain it.
Here they were, climbing out of the carriage at the Hôtel de Ville; a naval cocked hat was a clumsy thing to keep under the arm while handing ladies out. There was to be a reception later, but time must be allowed for the Duchess’s trunks to be swayed up out of the Gazelle’s hold, and for the Duchess to change her dress. Hornblower found himself leading Barbara to the wing which constituted his headquarters. In the lobby orderlies and sentries came to attention; in the main office Dobbs and Howard gaped at the spectacle of the Governor ushering in a lady. They scrambled to their feet and Hornblower made the presentations. They bowed and scraped to her; they knew of her, of course – everyone had heard about Lady Barbara Hornblower, the Duke of Wellington’s sister.
Glancing automatically at his desk, Hornblower caught sight of Quiot’s letter lying there where he had left it, with its beautiful handwriting and elaborate signature and paraph. It reminded him once more that Bush was dead. That sorrow was real, acute, actual; Barbara’s coming had been so unexpected that it was not real to him yet. That fantastic mind of his refused to dwell on the central point that Barbara was once more with him, but flew off at ridiculous tangents. It liked its details well ordered, and insisted on them; it would not let him sink into simple luxurious happiness, but rather chose to work on the practical details – never thought of until that time – of the arrangement of the life of an officer on active service, who, while locked in a death grapple with an Emperor, yet had a wife to think about. Many-sided Hornblower may have been, but the mainspring of his life was his professional duty. For more than twenty years, for all his adult life, he had been accustomed to sacrifice himself for that, to such an extent and for so long that the sacrifice now was automatic and usually ungrudging. He was so set on his struggle with Bonaparte and had been plunged so deep into it during the last months that he was inclined to resent distractions.
‘This way, dear,’ he said, at length, a little hoarsely – he was about to clear his throat when he checked himself. The need for throat-clearing was a sure symptom of nervousness and shyness. Barbara had lightly teased him out of it years ago, and he would not clear his throat now, not in front of Barbara, not in front of himself.
They crossed the little ante-room and Hornblower threw open the door into the bedroom, standing aside for Barbara to pass through, and then he entered after her and shut the door. Barbara was standing in the centre of the floor, her back to the foot of the big bed. There was a smile on one side of her mouth; one eyebrow was raised above the other. She raised one hand to unfasten the clasp of her cloak, but let it drop again, its work uncompleted. She did not know whether to laugh or to cry over this incalculable husband of hers; but she was a Wellesley, and pride forbade her to weep. She stiffened herself just one second before Hornblower came forward to her one second too late.
‘Dear,’ he said, and took her cold hands.
She smiled at him in return, but there could have been more tenderness in her smile, light and playful though it was.
‘You are pleased to see me?’ she asked; she kept her tone light, and kept her anxiety out of it.
‘Of course. Of course, dear.’ Hornblower tried to make himself human, fighting down the instinctive impulse to withdraw into himself that was roused when his telepathic sensitivity warned him of danger. ‘I can hardly believe yet that you are here, dear.’
That was the truth, heartfelt, and to say it was a relief, easing some of his tension. He took her into his arms and they kissed; tears were stinging her eyes when their lips parted again.
‘Castlereagh decided the Duchess should come here, just before he left for Allied Headquarters,’ she explained. ‘So I asked if I could come too.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ said Hornblower.
‘Castlereagh calls her the only man in the whole Bourbon family.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if that were true.’
They were warming to each other now; two proud people, learning anew the sacrifice each had to make to admit to the other their mutual need of each other. They kissed again, and Hornblower felt her body relaxing under his hands. Then came a knocking at the door, and they drew apart. It was Brown, supervising the work of a half-dozen seamen dragging in Barbara’s trunks. Hebe, Barbara’s little Negro maid, hovered on the threshold before coming in with the baggage. Barbara walked over to the mirror and began to take off her hat and cloak before it.
‘Little Richard,’ she said, in a conversational tone, ‘is very well and happy. He talks unceasingly, and he still digs. His particular corner of the shrubbery looks as if an army of badgers had been at work. In that trunk I have some drawings of his that
I kept for you – although one can hardly say they display any noticeably artistic ability.’
‘I’d be astonished if they did,’ said Hornblower, sitting down.
‘Easy with that there portmanteau,’ said Brown to one of the seamen. ‘That’s no barrel o’ beef you’re handling. Handsomely, now. Where shall we put her ladyship’s trunk, sir?’
‘Leave it against the wall there, Brown, if you please,’ said Barbara. ‘Here are the keys, Hebe.’
It seemed quite fantastic and unnatural to be sitting here watching Barbara at the mirror, watching Hebe unpack the baggage, here in a city of which he was military governor. Hornblower’s masculine narrow-mindedness was disquieted by the situation. Twenty years of life at sea had made his lines of thought a little rigid. There should be a time and a place for everything.
A little squeal came from Hebe, instantly suppressed; Hornblower, looking round, caught a rapid interchange of glances between Brown and the seaman – the latter, seemingly, had no such views about time and place and had taken a sly pinch at Hebe. Brown could be trusted to deal with the seaman; it was not a matter in which it was consonant with the dignity of a commodore and a governor to interfere. And Brown had hardly taken his working party away when a succession of knocks at the door heralded a procession of callers. An equerry came in, bearing the royal command that at dinner tonight the company should be in full dress with powder. Hornblower stamped with rage at that; he had not floured his head more than three times in his life, and he felt ridiculous when he did. Immediately afterwards came Hau, his mind beset with the same problems, in a different guise, as were disturbing Hornblower. Under what authority should he issue rations to Lady Barbara and Lady Barbara’s maid? Where should the latter be quartered? Hornblower drove him forth with orders to read the regulations for himself and discover his own legal formulas; Barbara, coolly straightening her ostrich feathers, told him that Hebe would sleep in the dressing-room opening from this bedroom. Next came Dobbs; he had read through the despatches brought by Gazelle, and there were some which Hornblower should see. Moreover, there were certain papers which needed the Governor’s attention. A packet was sailing tonight. And the night orders certainly needed the Governor’s signature. And—’