“I’ll take Horatio down for his bread and milk, dear,” said Maria.
“Yes, dear,” said Hornblower through the lather.
The mirror caught Maria’s reflection, and he forced himself back into the world again. She was standing pathetically looking at him, and he put down his razor, and took up the towel and wiped the lather from his mouth.
“Not a kiss since yesterday!” he said. “Maria, darling, don’t you think you’ve been neglecting me?”
She came to his outheld arms; her eyes were wet, but the gentleness of his voice and the lightness of his tone brought a smile to her lips despite her tears.
“I thought I was the neglected one,” she whispered.
She kissed him eagerly, possessively, her hands at his shoulders, holding him to her swollen body.
“I have been thinking about my duty,” he said to her, “to the exclusion of the other things I should have thought about. Can you forgive me, dearest?”
“Forgive!” the smile and the tears were both more evident as she spoke. “Don’t say that, darling. Do what you will — I’m yours. I’m yours.”
Hornblower felt a wave of real tenderness rise within him as he kissed her again; the happiness, the whole life, of a human creature depended on his patience and his tact. His wiping off of the lather had not been very effective; there were smears of it on Maria’s face.
“Sweetness,” he said, “that makes you my very dearest possession.”
And while he kissed her he thought of Atropos riding to her anchor out there in the river, and despised himself as a hypocritical unfaithful lover. But his concealment of his impatience brought its reward, for when little Horatio began to wail again it was Maria who drew back first.
“The poor lamb!” she said, and quitted Hornblower’s arms to go and attend to him. She looked up at her husband from where she bent over the child, and smiled at him. “I must see that both of these men of mine are fed.”
There was something Hornblower had to say, but it called for tact, and he fumbled in his mind before he found the right way to say it.
“Dearest,” he said. “I do not mind if the whole world knows I have just kissed you, but I fear lest you would be ashamed.”
“Goodness!” said Maria, grasping his meaning and hurrying to the mirror to wipe off the smears of lather. Then she snatched up the baby. “I’ll see that your breakfast is ready when you come down.”
She smiled at him with so much happiness in her face, and she blew him a kiss before she left the room. Hornblower turned again to renew the lather and prepare himself for going on board. His mind was full of his ship, his wife, his child, and the child to be. The fleeting happiness of yesterday was forgotten; perhaps, not being aware that he was unhappy now, he could be deemed happy today as well, but he was not a man with a gift for happiness.
With breakfast finished at last he took boat again at the Hard to go the short distance to his ship; as he sat in the stern‑sheets he settled his cocked hat with its gold loop and button, and he let his cloak hang loose to reveal the epaulette on his right shoulder that marked him as a captain of less than three years’ seniority. He momentarily tapped his pocket to make sure that his orders were in it, and then sat upright in the boat with all the dignity he could muster. He could imagine what was happening in Atropos — the master’s mate of the watch catching sight of the cocked hat and the epaulette, the messenger scurrying to tell the first lieutenant, the call for sideboys and bosun’s mates, the wave of nervousness and curiosity that would pass over the ship at the news that the new captain was about to come on board. The thought of it made him smile despite his own nervousness and curiosity.
“Boat ahoy!” came the hail from the ship.
The boatman gave an inquiring glance at Hornblower, received a nod in return, and turned to hail back with a pair of lungs of leather.