‘I think I have played all I can this evening,’ she said. ‘I am sure ’Oratio is as much a master of piquet as he is of whist. Perhaps you can entertain each other with that while I go to bed.’
The Count was on his feet with his usual deferential politeness, asking if she felt quite well, and, when she assured him that she was merely tired, escorting her to the door exactly as he would have escorted a queen.
‘Good night, ’Oratio,’ said Marie.
‘Good night, madame,’ said Horatio, standing by the card-table.
One glance passed between them – one glance, enduring less than one-tenth of a second, but long enough for each to tell the other all.
‘I trust Marie was correct in her assumption that you are a master of piquet, ’Oratio,’ said the Count, returning from the door. ‘She and I have played much together in default of whist. But I am taking it for granted that you wish to play? How inconsiderate of me! Please—’
Hornblower hastened to assure the Count that he would like nothing better.
‘That is delightful,’ said the Count, shuffling the cards with his slender white fingers. ‘I am a fortunate man.’
He was fortunate at least in his play that night, taking his usual bold risks and being rewarded by unpredictable good luck in his discards. His minor seizièmes outranked Hornblower’s major quints, a quatorze of knaves saved him when Hornblower had three aces, three kings and three queens, and twice carte blanche rescued him from disaster in face of Hornblower’s overwhelming hands. When Hornblower was strong, the Count was lucky; and when Hornblower was weak the Count was overpoweringly strong. At the conclusion of the third partie Hornblower gazed helplessly across at him.
‘I fear this has not been very interesting for you,’ said the Count remorsefully. ‘This is a discourteous way to treat a guest.’
‘I would rather lose in this house,’ said Hornblower, perfectly truthfully, ‘than win in any other.’
The Count smiled with pleasure.
‘That is too high a compliment,’ he said. ‘And yet I can only say in reply that with you in this house I care not whether I win or lose. I trust that I shall have the further good fortune of your making a long stay here?’
‘Like the fate of Europe,’ said Hornblower, ‘that depends on the Congress of Vienna.’
‘You know this house is yours,’ said the Count, earnestly. ‘Marie and I both wish you to look on it as your own.’
‘You are too good, sir,’ said Hornblower. ‘May I ring for my candle?’
‘Allow me,’ said the Count, hastening to the bell-cord. ‘I trust you are not overtired after your journey? Felix, milord is retiring.’
Up the oaken stairs with their carved panelling, Felix hobbling goutily ahead with the candle. A sleepy Brown was waiting for him in the sitting-room of the little suite, to be dismissed at once when Hornblower announced his intention of putting himself to bed. That door there, inconspicuous in the corner, led to the hall outside Marie’s suite in the turret – how well Hornblower remembered it. Generations of the Ladons, Count of Graçay, had conducted intrigues in the château; perhaps kings and princes had passed through that door on the way to their lights-of-love.
Marie was waiting for him, weighted down with longing, heavy with love, tender and sweet. To sink into her arms was to sink into peace and happiness, illimitable peace, like that of a sunset-lit sea. The rich bosom on which he could pillow his head made him welcome; its fragrance comforted while it intoxicated. She held him, she loved him, she wept with happiness. She had no more than half his heart, she knew. He was cruel, unthinking, selfish, and yet this bony, slender body that lay in her arms was everything in the world to her. It was monstrous that he should come back to claim her like this. He had made her suffer before, and she knew her suffering in the past would be nothing compared with her suffering that lay in the future. Yet that was his way. That was how she loved him. Time went so fast; she had only this little moment before a lifetime of unhappiness to come. Oh, it was so urgent! She caught him to her madly, crying out with passion, crying out to time to stand still. It seemed to do so at that moment. Time stood still while the world whirled round her.
XVIII
‘May I speak to you, my lord?’ asked Brown.
He had put the breakfast tray by the bed, and had drawn aside the window curtains. Spring sunshine was gleaming on the distant Loire. Brown had waited respectfully until Hornblower had drunk his first cup of coffee and was coming slowly back to the world.
‘What is it?’ asked Hornblower, blinking over at him where he stood against the wall. Brown’s attitude was not a usual one. Some of the deferential bearing of the gentleman’s servant had been replaced by the disciplined erectness of the old days, when a self-respecting sailor held his head up and his shoulders back whether he was being condemned to the cat or commended for gallantry.
‘What is it?’ asked Hornblower again, consumed with curiosity.
He had had one moment of wild misgiving, wondering if Brown were going to be such a frantic fool as to say something about his relations with Marie, but the misgiving vanished as he realised the absurdity and impossibility of such a thing. Yet Brown was acting strangely – one might almost think he was feeling shy.
‘Well, sir – I mean my lord’ (that was the first time Brown had slipped over Hornblower’s title since the peerage was conferred), ‘I don’t know rightly if it’s anything your lordship would wish to know about. I don’t want to presume, sir – my lord.’
‘Oh, spit it out, man,’ said Hornblower testily. ‘And call me “sir”, if it’s any comfort to you.’
‘It’s this way, my lord. I’m wanting to get married.’
‘Good God!’ said Hornblower. He had a vague idea that Brown had been a terror for women, and the possibility of his marrying had never crossed his mind. He hastened to say what he thought would be appropriate. ‘Who’s the lucky woman?’
‘Annette, my lord. Jeanne and Bertrand’s daughter. And I am the lucky one, my lord.’
‘Jeanne’s daughter? Of, of course. The pretty one with the dark hair.’
Hornblower thought about a lively French girl marrying a sturdy Englishman like Brown, and for the life of him he could see no reason against it at all. Brown would be a better husband than most – it certainly would be a lucky woman who got him.
‘You’re a man of sense, Brown,’ he said. ‘You needn’t ask me about these things. I’m sure you’ve made a wise choice, and you have all my best wishes for your happiness and joy.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘If Annette can cook as well as her mother,’ Hornblower went on meditatively, ‘you’re a lucky man indeed.’
‘That was another thing I wanted to say to you, my lord. She’s a cook second to none, young though she is. Jeanne says so herself, and if she says so—’
‘We can be sure of it,’ agreed Hornblower.
‘I was thinking, my lord,’ went on Brown, ‘not wanting to presume, that if I was to continue in your service your lordship might consider engaging Annette as cook.’
‘God bless my soul,’ said Hornblower.
He mentally looked down a vista a lifetime long of dinners as good as Jeanne cooked. Dinners at Smallbridge had been almost good but most decidedly plain. Smallbridge and French cooking offered a most intriguing study in contrasts. Certainly Smallbridge would be more attractive with Annette as cook. And yet what was he thinking about? What had happened to those doubts and tentative notions about never seeing Smallbridge again? Some such ideas had certainly passed through his mind when he thought about Marie, and yet here he was thinking about Smallbridge and thinking about Annette heading his kitchen. He shook himself out of his reverie.
‘Of course I can give no decision on the point myself,’ he said, fencing for time. ‘Her Ladyship will have to be consulted, as you understand, Brown. Have you any alternative in mind?’
‘Plenty, my lord, as long as you are satisfied. I’ve thought
of starting a small hotel – I have all my prize-money saved.’
‘Where?’
‘In London, perhaps, my lord. But maybe in Paris. Or in Rome. I have been discussing it with Felix and Bertrand and Annette.’
‘My God!’ said Hornblower again. Nothing like this had crossed his mind for a single moment, and yet— ‘I have no doubt you would be successful, Brown.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘Tell me, this seems to have been a lightning courtship. Is that so?’
‘Not really, my lord. When I was here last Annette and I – you understand, my lord.’
‘I do now,’ said Hornblower.
It was fantastic that Brown, the man who hove the line that saved the Pluto, the man who silenced Colonel Caillard with a single blow of his fist, should be talking calmly about the possibility of opening an hotel in Rome. Actually it was no more fantastic than that he himself should have seriously debated with himself the possibility of becoming a French seigneur, and turning his back on England. He had done that no later than last night; love for Marie had grown during the last five days even while his passion was indulged – and Hornblower was not the sort of fool to be ignorant of how much that implied.
‘When are you thinking of marrying, Brown?’ he asked.
‘As soon as the law of this country allows, my lord.’
‘I’ve no idea how long that means,’ said Hornblower.
‘I am finding out, my lord. Will that be all you need at present?’
‘No. I’ll get up at once – can’t stay in bed after hearing all this exciting news, Brown. I’ll come through with a handsome wedding-present.’
‘Thank you, my lord. I’ll fetch your hot water, then.’
Marie was waiting for him in her boudoir when he was dressed. She kissed him good morning, passed a hand over his smoothly shaven cheeks, and, with her arm over his shoulder, led him to her turret window to show him that the apple trees in the orchard below were showing their first blossoms. It was spring; and it was good to be in love and to be loved in this green and lovely land. He took her white hands in his, and he kissed every finger on them, with a surge of reverent passion. As each day passed he had come to admire her the more, her sweetness of character and the unselfishness of her love. For Hornblower respect and love made a heady mixture – he felt he could kneel to her as to a saint. She was conscious of the passion that was carrying him away, as she was conscious of everything about him.
‘’Oratio,’ she said – why should it stir him so frightfully to hear that ridiculous name of his pronounced in that fashion?
He clung to her, and she held him and comforted him as she always did. She had no thought for the future now. In the future lay tragedy for her, she knew; but this was the present, and during the present Hornblower had need of her. They came out of their paroxysm of passion smiling as they always did.
‘You heard the news about Brown?’ he asked.
‘He is going to marry Annette. That is very proper.’
‘It does not seem to be news to you?’
‘I knew it before Brown did,’ said Marie. There was a dimple that came and went in her cheek, and a little light of mischief could sparkle in her eyes. She was wholly and utterly desirable.
‘They should make a good pair,’ said Hornblower.
‘Her chest of linens is all ready,’ said Marie, ‘and Bertrand has a dot for her.’
They went downstairs to tell the Count the news, and he heard it with pleasure.
‘I can perform the civil ceremony myself,’ he said. ‘Do you remember that I am the maire here, ’Oratio? A position that is almost a sinecure, thanks to the efficiency of my adjoint, and yet I can make use of my powers should the whim ever overtake me.’
Fortunately, as regards the saving of time, Brown was able – as they found out on calling him in to ask him – to declare himself an orphan and head of his family, thus obviating the need for parental permission on which French law insisted. And King Louis XVIII and the Chamber had not yet carried out their declared intention of making a religious ceremony a necessary part of the legal marriage. There would be a religious ceremony, all the same, and the blessing of the Church would be given to the union, with the safeguards always insisted on in a mixed marriage. Annette was never to cease to try to convert Brown, and the children were to be brought up in the Catholic faith. Brown nodded as this was explained to him; religious scruples apparently weighed lightly enough on his shoulders.
The village of Smallbridge had already been scandalised by the introduction into its midst of Barbara’s negro maid; it had shaken disapproving heads over Hornblower’s and Barbara’s heathen habit of a daily bath; what it would say in the future about the presence of a popish female and a popish family Hornblower could hardly imagine. There he was, thinking about Smallbridge again. This was a double life in very truth. He looked uneasily across at the Count whose hospitality he was abusing. It was hard to think of guilty love in connection with Marie – there was no guilt in her. And in himself? Could he be held guilty for something he could do nothing to resist? Was he guilty when the current whirled him away in the Loire, not a mile from where he was standing at present? He shifted his glance to Marie, and felt his passion surge up as strongly as ever, so that he started nervously when it penetrated his consciousness that the Count was addressing him in his gentle voice.
‘’Oratio,’ said the Count, ‘shall we dance at the wedding?’
They made quite a gala occasion of it, a little to the surprise of Hornblower, who had vague and incorrect ideas about the attitude of French seigneurs of the old régime towards their dependants. The barrels of wine were set up in the back courtyard of the château, and quite an orchestra was assembled, of fiddlers, and of pipers from the Auvergne who played instruments something like Scottish bagpipes that afflicted Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear atrociously. The Count led out fat Jeanne in the dance, and the bride’s father led out Marie. There was wine, there were great masses of food, there were bawdy jokes and highfalutin speeches. The countryside seemed to show astonishing tolerance towards this marriage of a local girl to an heretical foreigner – local peasant farmers clapped Brown on the back and their wives kissed his weather-beaten cheeks amidst screams of mirth. But then, Brown was universally popular, and seemed to know the dances by instinct.
Hornblower, unable to tell one note of music from another, was constrained to listen intently to the rhythm, and, intently watching the actions of the other, he was able to scramble grotesquely through the movements of the dances, handed on from one apple-cheeked woman to another. At one moment he sat gorged and bloated with food at a trestle table, at another he was skipping madly over the courtyard cobbles between two buxom maidens, hand in hand with them and laughing unrestrainedly. It was extraordinary to him – even here he still had moments of self-analysis – that he could ever enjoy himself so much. Marie smiled at him from under level brows.
He was amazingly weary and yet amazingly happy when he found himself back again in the salon of the château, his legs stretched out in inelegant ease while Felix, transformed again into the perfect major-domo, took the orders of him and the Count.
‘There is an odd rumour prevalent,’ said the Count, sitting upright in his chair apparently as unwearied and as dapper as ever. ‘I did not wish to disturb the fête by discussing it there. People are saying that Bonaparte has escaped from Elba and has landed in France.’
‘That is indeed odd,’ agreed Hornblower lazily, the import of the news taking some time to penetrate his befogged brain. ‘What can he intend to do?’
‘He claims the throne of France again,’ said the Count, seriously.
‘It is less than a year since the people abandoned him.’
‘That is true. Perhaps Bonaparte will solve the problem for us that we were discussing a few nights ago. There is no doubt that the King will have him shot if he can lay hands on him, and that will be an end of all possibility of intrigue and disturban
ce.’
‘Quite so.’
‘But I wish – foolishly perhaps – that we had heard of Bonaparte’s death at the same time as we heard of his landing.’
The Count appeared grave, and Hornblower felt a little disturbed. He knew his host to be an acute political observer.
‘What is it you fear, sir?’ asked Hornblower, gradually gathering his wits about him.
‘I fear lest he gain some unexpected success. You know the power of his name, and the King – the King or his advisers – has not acted as temperately as he might have done since his restoration.’
The entrance of Marie, smiling and happy, interrupted the conversation, nor was it restarted when they resumed their seats. There were moments during the next two days when Hornblower felt some slight misgivings, even though the only news that came in was a mere confirmation of the rumour of the landing with no amplification. It was a shadow across his happiness, but so great and so intense was the latter that it took more than a slight shadow to chill it. Those lovely spring days, wandering under the orchard blossoms, and beside the rushing Loire; riding – how was it that riding was a pleasure now when always before he had detested it? – through the forest; even driving into Nevers on the one or two ceremonial calls his position demanded of him; those moments were golden, every one of them. Fear of Bonaparte’s activity could not cloud them – not even fear of what would be said to him in a letter that must inevitably soon come from Vienna could do that. On the surface Barbara had nothing to complain about; she had gone to Vienna, and during her absence Hornblower was visiting old friends. But Barbara would know. Probably she would say nothing, but she would know.
And great as was Hornblower’s happiness it was not untrammelled, as Brown’s happiness was untrammelled – Hornblower found himself envying Brown and the public way in which Brown could claim his love. Hornblower and Marie had to be a little furtive, a little guarded, and his conscience troubled him a little over the Count. Yet even so, he was happy, happier than he had ever been in his tormented life. For once self-analysis brought him no pangs. He had doubts neither about himself nor about Marie, and the novelty of that experience completely overlaid all his fears and misgivings about the future. He could live in peace until trouble should overtake him – if a spice to his happiness were necessary (and it was not), it was the knowledge that trouble lay ahead and that he could ignore it. All that guilt and uncertainty could do was to drive him more madly still into Marie’s arms, not consciously to forget, but merely because of the added urgency they brought.
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