“When are you thinking of marrying, Brown?” he asked.
“As soon as the law of this country allows, my lord.”
“I’ve no idea how long that means,” said Hornblower.
“I am finding out, my lord. Will that be all you need at present?”
“No. I’ll get up at once — can’t stay in bed after hearing all this exciting news, Brown. I’ll come through with a handsome wedding-present.”
“Thank you, my lord. I’ll fetch your hot water, then.”
Marie was waiting for him in her boudoir when he was dressed. She kissed him good morning, passed a hand over his smoothly shaven cheeks, and, with her arm over his shoulder, led him to her turret window to show him that the apple trees in the orchard below were showing their first blossoms. It was spring; and it was good to be in love and to be loved in this green and lovely land. He took her white hands in his, and he kissed every finger on them, with a surge of reverent passion. As each day passed he had come to admire her the more, her sweetness of character and the unselfishness of her love. For Hornblower respect and love made a heady mixture — he felt he could kneel to her as to a saint. She was conscious of the passion that was carrying him away, as she was conscious of everything about him.
“‘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.
Hornblower, unable to tell one note of music from another, was constrained to listen intently to the rhythm, and, intently watching the actions of the others, he was able to scramble grotesquely through the movements of the dances, handed on from one apple-cheeked woman to another. At one moment he sat gorged and bloated with food at a trestle table, at another he was skipping madly over the courtyard cobbles between two buxom maidens, hand in hand with them and laughing unrestrainedly. It was extraordinary to him — even here he still had moments of self-analysis — that he could ever enjoy himself so much. Marie smiled at him from under level brows.
He was amazingly weary and yet amazingly happy when he found himself back again in the salon of the château, his legs stretched out in inelegant ease while Felix, transformed again into the perfect major-domo, took the orders of him and the Count.
“There is an odd rumour prevalent,” said the Count, sitting upright in his chair apparently as unwearied and as dapper as ever. “I did not wish to disturb the fête by discussing it there. People are saying that Bonaparte has escaped from Elba and has landed in France.”
“That is indeed odd,” agreed Hornblower lazily, the import of the news taking some time to penetrate his befogged brain. “What can he intend to do?”
“He claims the throne of France again,” said the Count, seriously.
“It is less than a year since the people abandoned him.”
“That is true. Perhaps Bonaparte will solve the problem for us that we were discussing a few nights ago. There is no doubt that the King will have him shot if he can lay hands on him, and that will be an end of all possibility of intrigue and disturbance.”
“Quite so.”
“But I wish — foolishly perhaps — that we had heard of Bonaparte’s death at the same time as we heard of his landing.”
The Count appeared grave, and Hornblower felt a little disturbed. He knew his host to be an acute political observer.
“What is it you fear, sir?” asked Hornblower, gradually gathering his wits about him.
“I fear lest he gain some unexpected success. You know the power of his name, and the King — the King or his advisers — has not acted as temperately as he might have done since his restoration.”
The entrance of Marie, smiling and happy, interrupted the conversation, nor was it restarted when they resumed their seats. There were moments during the next two days when Hornblower felt some slight misgivings, even though the only news that came in was a mere confirmation of the rumour of the landing with no amplification. It was a shadow across his happiness, but so great and so intense was the latter that it took more than a slight shadow to chill it. Those lovely spring days, wandering under the orchard blossoms, and beside the rushing Loire; riding — how was it that riding was a pleasure now when always before he had detested it? — through the forest; even driving into Nevers on the one or two ceremonial calls his position demanded of him; those moments were golden, every one of them. Fear of Bonaparte’s activity could not cloud them — not even fear of what would be said to him in a letter that must inevitably soon come from Vienna could do that. On the surface Barbara had nothing to complain about; she had gone to Vienna, and during her absence Hornblower was visiting old friends. But Barbara would know. Probably she would say nothing, but she would know.