“This is Manuel, my principal valet, Your Excellency. Any orders Your Excellency may give him will be obeyed as if they came from me. My physician has been sent for and will be here at any moment. So now my wife and I will withdraw and leave Your Excellencies to rest, assuring Your Excellencies that our sincerest hope is for your rapid recovery.”
The crowd thinned away. For one more moment Hornblower had to keep his faculties alert, for the doctor came bustling in, to feel pulses and to look at tongues. He produced a case of lancets and was making preparations to draw blood from Barbara and it was only with difficulty that Hornblower stopped him, and with further difficulty prevented him from substituting leeches for venesection. He could not believe that bleeding would hasten the cure of the lacerations Barbara bore on her body. He thanked the doctor and saw him out of the room again with a sigh of relief and mental reservations regarding the medicines he promised to send in. The maids were waiting to relieve Barbara of the few rags she wore.
“Do you think you will sleep, darling? Is there anything more I can ask for?”
“I shall sleep, dearest.” Then the smile on Barbara’s weary face was replaced by something more like a grin, perfectly un-ladylike. “And as nobody else but us here can speak English I am free to tell you that I love you, dearest. I love you, I love you, more than any words that I know can tell you.”
Servants or no servants, he kissed her then before he left her to go into the adjoining room where the valets awaited him. His body was crisscrossed with angry welts still raw where, during the storm, the force of the waves had flung him against the ropes that held him to the mast. They were horribly painful as he was sponged with warm water. He knew that Barbara’s sweet, tender body must be marked in the same fashion. But Barbara was safe; she would soon be well, and she had said that she loved him. – And – and she had said more than that. What she had told him in that deckhouse had drawn out all the pain from a mental wound far, far, deeper than the physical hurts he now bore. He was a happy man as he lay down in the silk nightshirt with the elaborate heraldic embroidery which the valet had ready for him. His sleep was at first deep and untroubled, but conscience awoke him before dawn, and he went out on to the balcony in the first light, to see the Pretty Jane creeping into the harbour, escorted by a dozen small craft. It irked him that he was not on board, until he thought again of the wife sleeping in the next room.
There were happy hours still to come. That balcony was deep and shaded, looking out over harbour and sea, and there he sat in his dressing-gown an hour later, rocking idly in his chair, with Barbara opposite him, drinking sweet chocolate and eating sweet rolls.
“It is good to be alive,” said Hornblower; there was a potency, an inner meaning, about those words now – it was no hackneyed turn of speech.
“It is good to be with you,” said Barbara.
“Pretty Jane came in this morning safely,” said Hornblower.
“I peeped out at her through my window,” said Barbara.
Mendez-Castillo was announced, presumably having been warned that His Excellency’s guests were awake and breakfasting. He made enquiries on behalf of His Excellency, to receive every assurance of a rapid recovery, and he announced that news of the recent events would be despatched at once to Jamaica.
“Most kind of His Excellency,” said Hornblower. “Now, as regards the crew of the Pretty Jane. Are they being looked after?”
“They have been received into the military hospital. The port authorities have stationed a guard on board the vessel.”
“That is very well indeed,” said Hornblower, telling himself that now he need feel no more responsibility.
The morning could be an idle one now, only broken by a visit from the doctor, to be dismissed, after a new feeling of pulses and looking at tongues, with grateful thanks for his un-tasted medicines. There was dinner at two o’clock, a vast meal served ceremoniously but only sampled. A siesta, and then supper eaten with more appetite, and a peaceful night.