“I couldn’t play that music, sir, not for nothing.”
The blue eyes looked over Hornblower’s head at infinity; perhaps at some vision invisible to the rest of the world.
“You were a fool to disobey an order.”
“Yes, sir. Mebbe so, sir.”
The broad Yorkshire which Hudnutt spoke sounded odd in this tropical setting.
“How did you come to enlist?”
“For the music, sir.”
It called for more questions to extract the story. A boy in a Yorkshire village, not infrequently hungry. A cavalry regiment billeted there, in the last years of the war. The music of its band was like a miracle to this child, who had heard no music save that of wandering pipers in the ten years of his life. It made him conscious of – it did not create for it already existed – a frightful, overwhelming need. All the children of the village hung round the band (Hudnutt smiled disarmingly as he said this) but none so persistently as he. The trumpeters noticed him soon enough, laughed at his infantile comments about music, but laughed with sympathy as time went on; they let him try to blow their instruments, showed him how to cultivate a lip, and were impressed by the eventual results. The regiment returned after Waterloo, and for two more years the boy went on learning, even though those were the hungry years following the peace, when he should have been bird-scaring and stone-picking from dawn to dark.
And then the regiment was transferred and the hungry years went on, and the boy labourer began to handle the plough still yearning for music, while a trumpet cost more than a year’s full wages for a man. Then an interlude of pure bliss – the disarming smile again – when he joined a wandering theatrical troupe, as odd-job boy and musician; that was how he came to be able to read music although he could not read the printed word. His belly was empty as often as before; a stable yard meant a luxurious bed to him; those months were months of flea-bitten nights and foot-sore days, and they ended in his being left behind sick. That happened in Portsmouth, and then it was inevitable that, hungry and weak, he should be picked up by a marine recruiting-sergeant marching through the streets with a band. His enlistment coincided with the introduction of the cornet à pistons into military music, and the next thing that happened to him was that he was shipped off to the West Indies to take his place in the Commander-in-Chief’s band under the direction of Drum-Major Cobb.
“I see,” said Hornblower; and indeed he could dimly see.
Six months with a travelling theatrical troupe would be poor preparation for the discipline of the Royal Marines; that was obvious, but he could guess at the rest, at this sensitiveness about music which was the real cause of the trouble. He eyed the boy again, seeking for ideas regarding how to deal with this situation.
“My Lord! My Lord!” This was Gerard hastening up to him. “The packet’s signalled, My Lord. You can see the flag at the lookout station masthead!”
The packet? Barbara would be on board. It was three years since he had seen her last, and for three weeks now he had been awaiting her from minute to minute.
“Call away my barge. I’m coming,” he said.
A wave of excitement swept away his concern regarding the Hudnutt affair. He was about to hurry after Gerard, and then hesitated. What could he say in two seconds to a man awaiting trial for his life? What could he say when he himself was bubbling with happiness, to this man caged like an animal, like an ox helplessly awaiting the butcher?
“Goodbye, Hudnutt.” That was all he could say, leaving him standing dumbly there – he could hear the clash of keys and padlock as he hastened after Gerard.
Eight oars bit into the blue water, but no speed that they could give the dancing barge could be fast enough to satisfy him. There was the brig, her sails trimmed to catch the first hesitant puffs of the sea breeze. There was a white dot at her side, a white figure – Barbara waving her handkerchief. The barge surged alongside and Hornblower swung himself up into the main chains, and there was Barbara in his arms; there were her lips against his, and then her grey eyes smiling at him, and then her lips against his again, and the afternoon sun blazing down on them both. Then they could stand at arm’s length and look at each other, and Barbara could raise her hands and twitch his neckcloth straight, so that he could be sure they were really together, for Barbara’s first gesture was always to straighten his neckcloth.