“Their Excellencies the Governor and Milady Barbara ‘Ornblor,” blared the major-domo at the door.
Every eye turned towards them as they entered. The last thing that Hornblower was conscious of, before he plunged into the imbecilities of a social function, was that he had somehow spoiled his wife’s evening, and there was some angry resentment in his heart; against her, not against himself.
CHAPTER XV
The militia had arrived, pouring, still green with sea-sickness, from the close-packed transports. They were something better than a rabble in their scarlet uniforms; they could form line and column, and could march off smartly enough behind the regimental bands, even though they could not help gaping at the strangeness of this foreign town. But they drank themselves into madness or stupor at every opportunity, they insulted the women either innocently or criminally, they were guilty of theft and of wanton damage and of all the other crimes of imperfectly disciplined troops. The officers — one battalion was commanded by an earl, another by a baronet — were not sufficiently experienced to keep their men in hand. Hornblower, facing the indignant protests of the Mayor and the civil authorities, was glad when the horse-transports came in bringing the two regiments of yeomanry that had been promised him. They provided the cavalry he needed for an advanced guard, so that now he could send his little army out in its push towards Rouen, towards Paris itself.
He was at breakfast with Barbara when the news arrived; Barbara in a grey-blue informal garment with the silver coffee-pot before her, pouring his coffee, and being helped by him to bacon and eggs — a domesticity that was still unreal to him. He had been hard at work for three hours before he had come in to breakfast, and he was still too set in his ways to make the change easily from a military atmosphere to one of connubial intimacy.
“Thank you, dear,” said Barbara, accepting the plate from him.
A thump at the door.
“Come in!” yelled Hornblower.
It was Dobbs, one of the few people privileged to knock at that door when Sir Horatio was at breakfast with his wife.
“Despatch from the army, sir. The Frogs have gone.”
“Gone?”
“Up-stick and away, sir. Quiot marched for Paris last night. There’s not a French soldier in Rouen.”
The report that Hornblower took from Dobbs’ hand merely repeated in more formal language what Dobbs had said. Bonaparte must be desperate for troops to defend his capital; by recalling Quiot he had left all Normandy exposed to the invader.
“We must follow him up,” said Hornblower to himself, and then to Dobbs, “Tell Howard — no I’ll come myself. Excuse me, my dear.”
“Is there not even time,” said Barbara to him, sternly, “to drink your coffee and eat your breakfast?”
The struggle on Hornblower’s face was so apparent that she laughed outright at him.
“Drake,” she went on, “had time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too. I was taught that in the schoolroom.”
“You’re quite right, my dear,” said Hornblower. “Dobbs, I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”
Hornblower applied himself to bacon and eggs. Maybe it would be good for discipline, in the best sense of the term, if it became known that the legendary Hornblower, the man of so many exploits, was human enough to listen sometimes to his wife’s protests.
“This is victory,” he said, looking at Barbara across the table. “This is the end.”
He knew it in his soul now; he had arrived at this conclusion by no mere intellectual process. The tyrant of Europe, the man who had bathed the world in blood, was about to fall. Barbara met his eyes, and their emotion admitted of no words. The world which had been at war since their childhood was about to know peace, and peace had something of the unknown about it.
“Peace,” said Barbara.
Hornblower felt a little unsteady. It was impossible for him to analyse his feelings, for he had no data from which to begin his deductions. He had joined the Navy as a boy, and he had known war ever since; he could know nothing of the Hornblower, the purely hypothetical Hornblower, who would have existed had there been no war. Twenty-one years of frightful strain, of peril and hardship, had made a very different man of him from what he would have become otherwise. Hornblower was no born fighting man; he was a talented and sensitive individual whom chance had forced into fighting, and his talents had brought him success as a fighter just as they would have brought him success in other walks of life, but he had had to pay a higher price. His morbid sensitiveness, his touchy pride, the quirks and weaknesses of his character might well be the result of the strains and sorrows he had had to endure. There was a coldness between him and his wife at the moment (a coldness masked by camaraderie; the passion to which both of them had given free rein had done nothing to dispel it) which might in large part be attributed to the defects of his character — a small part of it was Barbara’s fault, but most of it was his. Hornblower wiped his mouth and stood up. “I really should go, dear,” he said. “Please forgive me.”