“‘Oratio,” she said — why should it stir him so frightfully to hear that ridiculous name of his pronounced in that fashion?
He clung to her, and she held him and comforted him as she always did. She had no thought for the future now. In the future lay tragedy for her, she knew; but this was the present, and during this present Hornblower had need of her. They came out of their paroxysm of passion smiling as they always did.
“You heard the news about Brown?” he asked.
“He is going to marry Annette. That is very proper.”
“It does not seem to be news to you?”
“I knew it before Brown did,” said Marie. There was a dimple that came and went in her cheek, and a little light of mischief could sparkle in her eyes. She was wholly and utterly desirable.
“They should make a good pair,” said Hornblower.
“Her chest of linens is all ready,” said Marie, “and Bertrand had a dot for her.”
They went downstairs to tell the Count the news, and he heard it with pleasure.
“I can perform the civil ceremony myself,” he said. “Do you remember that I am the maire here, ‘Oratio? A position that is almost a sinecure, thanks to the efficiency of my adjoint, and yet I can make use of my powers should the whim ever overtake me.”
Fortunately, as regards the saving of time, Brown was able — as they found out on calling him in to ask him — to declare himself an orphan and head of his family, thus obviating the need for parental permission on which French law insisted. And King Louis XVIII and the Chamber had not yet carried out their declared intention of making a religious ceremony a necessary part of the legal marriage. There would be a religious ceremony, all the same, and the blessing of the Church would be given to the union, with the safeguards always insisted on in a mixed marriage. Annette was never to cease to try to convert Brown, and the children were to be brought up in the Catholic faith. Brown nodded as this was explained to him; religious scruples apparently weighed lightly enough on his shoulders.
The village of Smallbridge had already been scandalised by the introduction into its midst of Barbara’s negro maid: it had shaken disapproving heads over Hornblower’s and Barbara’s heathen habit of a daily bath; what it would say in the future about the presence of a popish female and a Popish family Hornblower could hardly imagine. There he was, thinking about Smallbridge again. This was a double life in very truth. He looked uneasily across at the Count whose hospitality he was abusing. It was hard to think of guilty love in connection with Marie — there was no guilt in her. And in himself? Could he be held guilty for something he could do nothing to resist? Was he guilty when the current whirled him away in the Loire, not a mile from where he was standing at present? He shifted his glance to Marie, and felt his passion surge up as strongly as ever, so that he started nervously when it penetrated his consciousness that the Count was addressing him in his gentle voice.
“‘Oratio,” said the Count, “shall we dance at the wedding?”
They made quite a gala occasion of it, a little to the surprise of Hornblower, who had vague and incorrect ideas about the attitude of French seigneurs of the old regime towards their dependants. The barrels of wine were set up in the back courtyard of the château, and quite an orchestra was assembled, of fiddlers, and of pipers from the Auvergne who played instruments something like Scottish bagpipes that afflicted Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear atrociously. The Count led out fat Jeanne in the dance, and the bride’s father led out Marie. There was wine, there were great masses of food, there were bawdy jokes and highfalutin speeches. The countryside seemed to show astonishing tolerance towards this marriage of a local girl to an heretical foreigner — local peasant farmers clapped Brown on the back and their wives kissed his weather-beaten cheeks amidst screams of mirth. But then, Brown was universally popular, and seemed to know the dances by instinct.