He came walking into the “George”, and the first face that he caught sight of was the landlord’s — a shadowy figure with whom he was scarcely acquainted, in this house where the landlady assumed all the responsibility.
“How’s my wife?” demanded Hornblower.
The landlord blinked.
“I don’t rightly know, sir,” he said, and Hornblower turned away from him impatiently and ran up the stairs. He hesitated at the bedroom door, with his hand on the handle; his heart was beating fast. Then he heard a murmur of voices within and opened the door. There was Maria in bed, lying back on the pillows, and the midwife moving about by the window. The light of a candle faintly illuminated Maria’s face.
“Horry!” said Maria; the glad surprise in her voice accounted for her use of the diminutive.
Hornblower took her hand.
“All well, dearest?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Maria.
She held up her lips to be kissed, but even before the kiss was completed she was turning her eyes towards the wicker basket which stood on a small table beside the bed.
“It’s a little girl, darling,” she said. “Our little girl.”
“And a fine little babby too,” added the midwife.
Hornblower walked round the bed and peered into the basket. The blanket there concealed a diminutive figure — Hornblower, grown accustomed to playing with little Horatio, had forgotten how tiny a thing was a new-born baby — and a minute red face, a sort of caricature of humanity, was visible on the little pillow. He gazed down upon it; the little lips opened and emitted a squall, faint and high-pitched, so that little Horatio’s remembered cries were lusty bellows by comparison.
“She’s beautiful,” said Hornblower, gallantly, while the squalling continued and two minute clenched fists appeared above the edge of the blanket.
“Our little Maria,” said Maria, “I’m sure her hair is going to curl.”
“Now, now,” said the midwife, not in reproof of this extravagant prophecy but because Maria was trying to lift herself in bed to gaze at the child.
“She has only to grow up like her mother,” said Hornblower, “to be the best daughter I could wish for.”
Maria rewarded him with a smile as she sank back on the pillow again.
“Little Horatio’s downstairs,” she said. “He has seen his sister.”
“And what did he think of her?”
“He cried when she did,” said Maria.
“I had better see how he is,” suggested Hornblower.
“Please do,” said Maria, but she extended her hand to him again, and Hornblower bent and kissed it.
The room was very warm with a fire burning briskly in the grate, and it smelt of sickness, oppressive to Hornblower’s lungs after the keen January air that had filled them all day.
“I am happy beyond all measure to see you so well, dear,” said Hornblower, taking his leave.
Downstairs as he stood hesitating in the hall the landlady popped her head out from the kitchen.
“The young gennelman’s in here, sir,” she said, “if you don’t mind stepping in.”
Little Horatio was sitting up in a high-chair. His face lit up with a smile as he caught sight of his father — the most flattering experience Hornblower had ever known — and he bounced up and down in his chair and waved the crust he held in his fist.
“There! See him smile ‘cause his daddy’s come home!” said the landlady; then she hesitated before she put forward a suggestion which she knew to verge on the extravagant. “His bedtime’s coming soon, sir. Would you care to play with him until then, sir?”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
“There, baby!” said the landlady. “Daddy’s going to play with you. Oops-a-daisy, then. The bar parlour’s empty now, sir. This way, sir. Emily, bring a candle for the captain.”
Little Horatio was in two minds, once he found himself on the parlour floor, as to which of two methods of progression was most satisfactory to a man almost a year old. On hands and knees he could make prodigious speed, and in any direction he chose. But on the other hand he could pull himself upright by clinging to the leg of a chair, and the radiant expression on his face when he did so was proof of the satisfaction this afforded him. Then, having let go of the chair, provided he had already been successful in the monstrous effort necessary to turn away from it, he could manage to take a step towards his father; he was then compelled to stop and sway perilously on widely separated feet before taking another step, and it was rarely that he could accomplish a step before sitting down on the floor with something of a bump. And was it possible that the monosyllable he said so frequently — “Da” it sounded like — was an attempt to say “Daddy”?
This was happiness again, fleeting, transient, to have his lithe son tottering towards him with a beaming smile.
“Come to Daddy,” said Hornblower, hands outstretched.
Then the smile would turn to a mischievous grin, and down on his hands and knees went young Horatio, galloping like lightning across the room, and gurgling with delirious joy when his father came running after him to seize him and swing him into the air. Simple and delightful pleasure; and then as Hornblower held the kicking gurgling baby up at arm’s length he had a fleeting recollection of the moment when he himself had hung suspended in the mizzen rigging on that occasion when the Indefatigable‘s mizzen mast fell when he was in command of the top. This child would know peril and danger — and fear; in later years. He would not let the thought cloud his happiness. He lowered the baby down and then held him at arm’s length again — a most successful performance, judging by the gurgles it elicited.
The landlady came in, knocking at the door.
“That’s a big man,” she said, and Hornblower forced himself not to feel self-conscious at being caught enjoying the company of his own child.
“Dunno what come over me, sir,” went on the landlady. “I clear forgot to ask if you wanted supper.”
“Supper?” said Hornblower. The last time he had eaten was in the Painted Hall at Greenwich.
“Ham an’ eggs?” asked the landlady. “A bite o’ cold beef?”
“Both, if you please,” said Hornblower.
“Three shakes of a duck’s tail an’ you’ll have ‘em,” said the landlady. “You keep that young feller busy while I get it.”
“I ought to go back to Mrs. Hornblower.”
“She’ll do for another ten minutes without you,” said the landlady, briskly.
The smell of bacon and eggs when they came was heavenly. Hornblower could sit down with appetite while Emily bore little Horatio off to bed. And after bacon and eggs, cold beef and pickled onions, and a flagon of beer — another simple pleasure, that of eating his fill and more, the knowledge that he was eating too much serving as a sauce to him who kept himself almost invariably within bounds and who looked upon overindulgence usually with suspicion and contempt. With his duty carried out successfully today he had for once no care for the morrow, not even when the day after tomorrow would see him engaged in the rather frightening experience of attending the King’s levee. And Maria had come safely through her ordeal, and he had a little daughter who would be as adorable as his little son. Then he sneezed three times running.
Chapter VI
“Whitehall Steps,” said Hornblower, stepping down into his gig at Deptford Hard.
It was convenient having his gig for use here; it was faster than a wherryman’s boat and it cost him nothing.
“Give way!” said the coxswain.
Of course it was raining. The westerly wind still blew and bore with it today flurries of heavy rain, which hissed down on the surface of the river, roared on the tarpaulins of the wretched boat’s crew, and rattled loudly on the sou’wester which Hornblower wore on his head while he sheltered his cocked hat under his boat cloak. He sniffed lamentably. He had the worst cold he had ever experienced, and he needed to use his handkerchief. But that meant bringing a hand out from under his cloak, and he would not do that — with the boat cloak spread round him like a tent as he sat in the stern-sheets, and with the sou’wester on top, he could hope to keep himself reasonably dry as far as Whitehall if he did not disturb the arrangement. He preferred to sniff.