Hornblower shrugged his shoulders with a carelessness quite unassumed for once.
“They were going to shoot me if they caught me. This makes no difference.”
He dallied with the notion of a modern government dabbling in secret murder, for a moment was inclined to put it aside as quite impossible, as something one might believe of the Turks or perhaps even of the Sicilians, but not of Bonaparte, and then he realized with a shock that it was not at all impossible, that a man with unlimited power and much at stake, with underlings on whose silence he could rely, could not be expected to risk appearing ridiculous in the eye of his public when a mere murder would save him. It was a sobering thought, but he made himself smile again, bravely.
“You have all the courage characteristic of your nation, Captain,” said the Count. “But this news of your death will reach England. I fear that Madame Orrenblor will be distressed by it?”
“I am afraid she will.”
“I could find means of sending a message to England — my bankers can be trusted. But whether it would be advisable is another matter.”
If it were known in England that he was alive it would be known in France, and a stricter search would be instituted for him. It would be terribly dangerous. Maria would draw small profit from the knowledge that he was alive if that knowledge were to cause his death.
“I think it would not be advisable,” said Hornblower.
There was a strange duality in his mind; the Hornblower for whom he could plan so coolly, and whose chances of life he could estimate so closely, was a puppet of the imagination compared with the living, flesh and blood Hornblower whose face he had shaved that morning. He knew by experience now that only when a crisis came, when he was swimming for his life in a whirlpool, or walking a quarterdeck in the heat of action, that the two blended together — that was the moment when fear came.
“I hope, Captain,” said the Count, “that this news has not disturbed you too much?”
“Not at all, sir,” said Hornblower.
“I am delighted to hear it. And perhaps you will be good enough to give Madame la Vicomtesse and myself the pleasure of your company again to-night at whist, you and Mr Bush?”
Whist was the regular way of passing the evening. The Count’s delight in the game was another bond of sympathy between him and Hornblower. He was not a player of the mathematical variety, as was Hornblower. Rather did he rely upon a flair, an instinctive system of tactics. It was marvellous how often his blind leads found his partner’s short suit and snatched tricks from the jaws of the inevitable, how often he could decide intuitively upon the winning play when confronted by a dilemma. There were rare evenings when this faculty would desert him, and when he would sit with a rueful smile losing rubber after rubber to the remorseless precision of his daughter-in-law and Hornblower. But usually his uncanny telepathic powers would carry him triumphantly through, to the exasperation of Hornblower if they had been opponents, and to his intense satisfaction if they had been partners — exasperation at the failure of his painstaking calculations, or satisfaction of their complete vindication.
The Vicomtesse was a good well-taught player of no brilliance whose interest in the game, Hornblower suspected, was entirely due to her devotion to her father-in-law. It was Bush to whom these evenings of whist were a genuine penance. He disliked card games of any sort — even the humble vingt-et-un — and in the supreme refinement of whist he was hopelessly at a loss. Hornblower had cured him of some of his worst habits — of asking, for instance, “What are trumps?” halfway through every hand — had insisted on his counting the cards as they fell, on his learning the conventional leads and discards, and by so doing had made of him a player whose presence three good players could just tolerate rather than miss their evening’s amusement; but the evenings to him were periods of agonized, hard-breathing concentration, of flustered mistakes and shamefaced apology — misery made no less acute by the fact that conversation was carried on in French in which he could never acquire any facility. Bush mentally classed together French, whist, and spherical trigonometry as subjects in which he was too old ever to make any further progress, and which he would be content, if he were allowed, to leave entirely to his admired captain.