“Continue, if you please,” he ordered. “‘Having regard to these conditions, I therefore proceeded —'”
It was finished in the end — it was the third time that morning that Hornblower had recounted his adventures, and they had lost all their savour for him now. He was dreadfully tired — his head drooped forward at his breast as he squatted on the gun, and then he woke with a snort. He was actually falling asleep while he sat.
“You are tired, sir,” said the secretary.
“Yes.”
He forced himself to wake up again. The secretary was looking at him with eyes shining with admiration, positive hero-worship. It made him feel uncomfortable.
“If you will just sign this, sir, I will attend to the seal and the superscription.”
The secretary slipped out of the chair and Hornblower took the pen and dashed off his signature to the document on whose evidence he was soon to be tried for his life.
“Thank you, sir,” said the secretary, gathering the papers together.
Hornblower had no more attention to spare for him. He threw himself face downward on to the cot, careless of appearances. He went rushing giddily down a tremendous slope into blackness — he was snoring before the secretary had reached the door, and he never felt the touch of the blanket with which the secretary returned, five minutes later, tiptoeing up to the cot to spread it over him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Something enormously painful was recalling Hornblower to life. He did not want to return. It was agony to wake up, it was torture to feel unconsciousness slipping away from him. He clung to it, tried to recapture it, unavailingly. Remorselessly it eluded him. Somebody was gently shaking his shoulder, and he came back to complete consciousness with a start, and wriggled over to see the Admiral’s secretary bending over him.
“The Admiral will dine within the hour, sir,” he said. “Captain Calendar thought you might prefer to have a little time in which to prepare.”
“Yes,” grunted Hornblower. He fingered instinctively the long stubble on his unshaven chin. “Yes.”
The secretary was standing very stiff and still, and Hornblower looked up at him curiously. There was an odd, set expression on the secretary’s face, and he held a newspaper imperfectly concealed behind his back.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Hornblower.
“It is bad news for you, sir,” said the secretary.
“What news?”
Hornblower’s spirits fell down into the depths of despair. Perhaps Gambier had changed his mind. Perhaps he was going to be kept under strict arrest, tried, condemned, and shot. Perhaps —
“I remembered having seen this paragraph in the Morning Chronicle of three months ago, sir,” said the secretary. “I showed it to his Lordship, and to Captain Calendar. They decided it ought to be shown to you as early as possible. His Lordship says —”
“What is the paragraph?” demanded Hornblower, holding out his hand for the paper.
“It is bad news, sir,” repeated the secretary, hesitatingly.
“Let me see it, damn you.”
The secretary handed over the newspaper, one finger indicating the paragraph.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” he said. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
It was a very short paragraph.
We regret to announce the death in childbed, on the seventh of this month, of Mrs Maria Hornblower, widow of the late Captain Horatio Hornblower, Bonaparte’s martyred victim. The tragedy occurred in Mrs Hornblower’s lodgings at Southsea, and we are given to understand that the child, a fine boy, is healthy.
Hornblower read it twice, and he began on it a third time. Maria was dead, Maria the tender, the loving.
“You can find consolation in prayer, sir —” said the secretary, but Hornblower paid no attention to what the secretary said.
He had lost Maria. She had died in childbed, and having regard to the circumstances in which the child had been engendered, he had as good as killed her. Maria was dead. There would be no one, no one at all, to welcome him now on his return to England. Maria would have stood by him during the court martial, and whatever the verdict, she would never have believed him to be at fault. Hornblower remembered the tears wetting her coarse red cheeks when she had last put her arms round him to say goodbye. He had been a little bored by the formality of an affectionate goodbye, then. He was free now — the realization came creeping over him like cold water in a warm bath. But it was not fair to Maria. He would not have bought his freedom at such a price. She had earned by her own devotion his attention, his kindness, and he would have given them to her uncomplainingly for the rest of his life. He was desperately sorry that she was dead.