Hornblower scrambled down awkwardly from the chaise. He stooped to kiss Marie’s hand; he went into the Count’s arms and laid cheek to cheek to the manner born. The Count was patting his shoulder.
“Welcome. Welcome.”
There was no pleasure on earth comparable with this sensation of being looked for and of feeling that his arrival was causing pleasure. Here was the well-remembered drawing-room with the old gilt Louis-Seize chairs. The Count’s wrinkled old face was mobile with delight, and Marie was smiling. This man had broken her heart once, and she was ready to let him break it all over again — she knew he would — because she loved him. All Hornblower was conscious of was her smile, welcoming and — and — was it maternal? There was a proud sadness in that smile, like that perhaps of a mother watching her son grown up now and soon to be lost to her. It was only a fleeting feeling that Hornblower had; his powers of observation were negatived immediately by his own wave of personal feeling. He wanted to take Marie to him, to feel her rich flesh in the circle of his arms, to forget his troubles and doubts and disillusionments in the intoxication of her embrace; just as four years ago he had found oblivion there, selfishly.
“A more cheerful arrival than your last, milord,” said the Count.
Hornblower’s last arrival had been as a fugitive, carrying the wounded Bush, and hunted by Bonaparte’s gendarmes.
“Yes, indeed,” said Hornblower. Then he realised how formally the Count had addressed him. “Must I be ‘milord’ to you, sir? It seems —”
They all smiled together.
“I shall call you ‘Oratio, then, if you will permit me,” said the Count. “I feel the greatness of the honour of such intimacy.”
Hornblower looked towards Marie.
“‘Oratio,” she said. “‘Oratio.”
She had called him that before in little broken tones when they had been alone together. Just to hear her say it again sent a wave of passionate emotion through Hornblower’s body. He was filled with love — the sort of love of which he was capable. He was not conscious yet of any wickedness about his action in coming thus to torment Marie again. He had been overborne by his own wild longing — and perhaps in his excuse it could also be pleaded that his silly modesty made him incapable of realising how much a woman could love him. Here came Felix with wine; the Count raised his glass.
“To your happy return, ‘Oratio,” he said.
The simple words called up a momentary pageant in Hornblower’s memory, a sort of procession of returns, like the procession of kings in Macbeth’s imagination. A sailor’s life was a chain of departures and homecomings. Home-comings to Maria now dead and gone, homecomings to Barbara — and now this homecoming to Marie. It was not well to think of Barbara while he was with Marie; he had thought of Marie while he was with Barbara.
“I suppose Brown has made himself comfortable, Felix?” he asked. A good master always sees after the wellbeing of his servant — but this question was also intended to change his own train of thought.
“Yes, milord” said Felix. “Brown has made himself at home.”
Felix’s face was devoid of expression, his voice devoid of tone. Were they too much so? Was there some subtle implication about Brown of which Hornblower should be aware? It was curious. Yet Brown was still the model servant when Hornblower found him in his room on withdrawing there to make ready for dinner. The portmanteaux and dressing-case were unpacked, the black dress-coat — London’s latest fashion — was laid out with the shirt and cravat. A cheerful fire burned in the bedroom grate.
“Are you glad to be here again, Brown?”
“Very glad indeed, my lord.”
An accomplished linguist indeed was Brown — he could speak with fluency the language of the servant, the language of the lower deck, the language of the country lanes and of the London alleys, and French besides. It was faintly irritating that he never mixed them up, thought Hornblower, tying his cravat.
In the upper hall Hornblower met Marie, about to descend to dinner like himself. They both of them stood stock still for a moment, as though each of them was the last person in the world the other expected to see. Then Hornblower bowed and offered his arm, and Marie curtsied and took it. The hand she laid on his arm was trembling, and the touch of it sent a wave of warmth against him as though he were passing by an open furnace door.