from the wainscoting under the window on one side, and on the other with his hip just brushing the end of the table as he turned. Russians and Swedes, convoys and privateers, Stockholm and Danzig, all these gave him plenty to think about. It would be cold in the Baltic, too, and he would have to make plans for conserving his crews’ health in cold weather. And the first thing he must do the moment his flotilla was assembled must be to see that in every vessel there was an officer who could be relied upon to read and transmit signals correctly. Unless communications were good all discipline and organization was wasted and he might as well not try to make any plans at all. Bomb- ketches had the disadvantage of—
At this point Hornblower was distracted by a knocking at the door.
“Come in,” he rasped.
The door opened slowly, and revealed to his gaze both Brown and a scared innkeeper in a green baize apron.
“What is it?” snapped Hornblower. Now that he had halted in his quarter-deck walk he was suddenly aware that he was tired; much had happened since the Squire of Smallbridge had been welcomed by his tenants that morning, and the feeling in his legs told him that he must have been doing a fair amount of walking.
Brown and the innkeeper exchanged glances, and then the innkeeper took the plunge.
“It’s like this, sir,” he began, nervously. “His Lordship is in number four just under this sitting-room, sir. His Lordship’s a man of hasty temper, sir, beggin’ your pardon, sir. He says—beggin’ your pardon again, sir—he says that two in the morning’s late enough for anyone to walk up and down over his head. He says—”
“Two in the morning?” demanded Hornblower.
“It’s nearer three, sir,” interposed Brown, tactfully.
“Yes, sir, it struck the half-hour just when he rang for me the second time. He says if only you’d knock something over, or sing a song, it wouldn’t be so bad. But just to hear you walking up and down, sir—His Lordship says it makes him think about death and Judgement Day. It’s too regular, like. I told him who you was, sir, the first time he rang. And now—”
Hornblower had come to the surface by now, fully emerged from the wave of thought that had engulfed him. He saw the nervous gesticulations of the innkeeper, caught between the devil of this unknown Lordship downstairs and the deep sea of Captain Sir Horatio Hornblower upstairs, and he could not help smiling—in fact it was only with an effort that he prevented himself from laughing outright. He could visualize the whole ludicrous business, the irascible unknown peer down below, the innkeeper terrified of offending one or other of his two wealthy and influential guests, and as a crowning complication Brown stubbornly refusing to allow until the last possible moment any intrusion upon his master’s deliberations. Hornblower saw the obvious relief in the two men’s faces when he smiled, and that really made him laugh this time. His temper had been short of late and Brown had expected an explosion, while the wretched innkeeper never expected anything else—innkeepers never looked for anything better than tantrums from the people fate compelled them to entertain. Hornblower remembered damning Brown’s eyes without provocation only that very morning: Brown was not quite as clever as he might be, for this morning Hornblower had been fretting as an unemployed naval officer doomed to country life, while this evening he was a Commodore with a flotilla awaiting him and nothing in the world could upset his temper—Brown had not allowed for that.
“My respects to His Lordship,” he said. “Tell him that the march of doom will cease from this moment. Brown, I shall go to bed.”
The innkeeper fled in huge relief down the stairs, while Brown seized a candlestick—the candle in it was burned down to a stump—and lit his master through into the bedroom. Hornblower peeled off his coat with the epaulettes of heavy bullion, and Brown caught it just in time to save it falling to the floor. Shoes and shirt and trousers followed, and Hornblower pulled on the magnificent nightshirt which was laid out on the bed; a nightshirt of solid China silk, brocaded, with faggoting at the cuffs and neck, for which Barbara had sent a special order all the way to the East through her friends in the East India Company. The blanket-wrapped brick in the bed had cooled a good deal, but had diffused its warmth gratefully over much of the area; Hornblower snuggled down into its mild welcome.
“Good night, sir,” said Brown, and darkness rushed into the room from out of the corners as he extinguished the candle. Tumultuous dreams rushed with it. Whether asleep or awake—next morning Hornblower could not decide which—his mind was turning over all through the rest of the night the endless implications of this coming campaign in the Baltic, where his life and his reputation and his self-respect would be once more at stake.
Chapter Four
Hornblower sat forward on the seat of the coach and peered out of the window.
“Wind’s veering nor’ard a little,” he said. “West-by-north now, I should say.”
“Yes, dear,” said Barbara patiently.
“I beg your pardon, dear,” said Hornblower. “I interrupted you. You were telling me about my shirts.”
“No. I had finished telling you about those, dear. What I was saying was that you must not let anyone unpack the flat sea-chest until the cold weather comes. Your sheepskin coat and your big fur cloak are in it, with plenty of camphor, and they’ll be safe from moth just as they are. Have the chest put straight below when you go on board.”
“Yes, dear.”
The coach was clattering over the cobbles of Upper Deal. Barbara stirred a little and took Hornblower’s hand in hers again.
“I don’t like talking about furs,” she said. “I hope—oh, I hope so much—that you’ll be back before the cold weather comes.”
“So do I, dear,” said Hornblower, with perfect truth.
It was gloomy and dark inside the coach, but the light from the window shone on Barbara’s face, illuminating it like a saint’s in church. The mouth beneath the keen aquiline nose was set firm; there was nothing soft about the grey-blue eyes. No one could tell from Lady Barbara’s expression that her heart was breaking; but she had slipped off her glove, and her hand was twining feverishly in Hornblower’s.
“Come back to me, dear. Come back to me!” said Barbara softly.
“Of course I will,” said Hornblower.
For all her patrician birth, for all her keen wit, for all her iron self-control, Barbara could say foolish things just like any blowsy wife of any ordinary seaman. It made Hornblower love her more dearly than ever that she should say pathetically ‘come back to me’ as if he had power over the French or Russian cannon-balls that would be aimed at him. Yet in that moment a horrible thought shot up in Hornblower’s mind, like a bloated corpse rising to the surface from the ooze at the bottom of the sea. Lady Barbara had seen a husband off to war once before, and he had not returned. He had died under the surgeon’s knife at Gibraltar after a splinter had torn open his groin in the battle of Rosas Bay. Was Barbara thinking of that dead husband now, at this moment? Hornblower shuddered a little at the thought, and Barbara, despite the close sympathy that always existed between them, misinterpreted the movement.
“My darling,” she said, “my sweet.”
She brought her other hand up and touched his cheek, and her lips sought his. He kissed her, fighting down the dreadful doubt that assailed him. He had contrived for months not to be jealous of the past—he was annoyed with himself for allowing it to happen at this time of all times, and his annoyance added to the devil’s brew of emotions within him. The touch of her lips won him over; his heart came out to her, and he kissed her with all the passion of his love, while the coach lurched unstably over the cobbles. Barbara’s monumental hat threatened to come adrift; she had to withdraw from his arms to set it straight and to restore herself to her normal dignity. She was aware of, even if she had misinterpreted, the turmoil in Hornblower’s soul, and she deliberately began a new line of conversation which would help them both to recover their composure ready for their imminent appearance in public again.
“I am pleased,” she said, “whenever I think of the high compliment the government is paying you in giving you this new appointment.”
“I am pleased that you are pleased, dear,” said Hornblower.
