The equerry and the chevalier dhonneur and the almoner were on their feet by now. Howard was goggling at him across the room; Dobbs face was invisible as he bent over his pen, but the back of his neck was a warm purple which clashed with the scarlet of his tunic.
Please go on, Colonel.
During the few days in which I have had the honour of working with His
Royal Highness, it has been made plain to me that His Royal Highness has neither the tact nor the administrative ability desirable in one in so high a station.
Sir! said the equerry. You cannot send that letter.
He spoke first in French and then in English; the chevalier dhonneur and the almoner made bilingual noises of agreement.
No? said Hornblower.
And you cannot send His Royal Highness back to England. You cannot! You cannot!
No? said Hornblower again, leaning back in his chair.
The protests died away on the lips of the three Frenchmen. They knew as well as Hornblower, as soon as they were forced to realise the unpalatable truth, who it was that held the power in Le Havre. It was the man who had under his command the only disciplined and reliable military force, the man who had only to give the word to abandon the city to the wrath of Bonaparte, the man at whose word the ships came in and went out again.
Dont tell me, said Hornblower with elaborate concern, that His Royal Highness would physically oppose an order from me consigning him on board a ship? Have you gentlemen ever witnessed a deserter being brought in? The frogmarch is a most undignified method of progression. Painful, too, I am informed.
But that letter, said the equerry, would discredit His Royal Highness in the eyes of the world. It would be a most serious blow to the cause of the Family. It might endanger the succession.
I was aware of that when I invited you gentlemen to hear me dictate it.
You would never send it, said the equerry with a momentary doubt regarding Hornblowers strength of will.
I can only assure you gentlemen that I both can and will.
Eyes met eyes across the room, and the equerrys doubt vanished. Hornblowers mind was entirely made up.
Perhaps, sir, said the equerry, clearing his throat and looking sidelong at his colleagues for their approval, there has been some misunderstanding. If His Royal Highness has refused some request of Your Excellencys, as I gather has been the case, it must have been because His Royal Highness did not know how much importance Your Excellency attached to the matter. If Your Excellency would allow us to make further representations to His Royal Highness
Hornblower was looking at Howard, who very intelligently recognised his cue.
Yes, sir, said Howard. Im sure His Royal Highness will understand.
Dobbs looked up from his paper and made corroborative sounds. But it took several minutes before Hornblower could be persuaded to postpone putting his decision into instant effect. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he yielded to the pleadings of his own staff and the Dukes. After the equerry had led his colleagues from the room to seek the Duke, Hornblower sat back with a real relaxation replacing the one he had simulated. He was tingling and glowing both with the after effects of excitement and with his diplomatic victory.
His Royal Highness will see reason, said Dobbs.
No doubt about it, agreed Howard, judiciously.
Hornblower thought of the twenty seamen chained in the hold of the Nonsuch, expecting to be hanged tomorrow.
An idea has struck me, sir, said Howard. I can send a flag of truce out to the French forces. A parlementaire a mounted officer with a white flag and a trumpeter. He can carry a letter from you to General Quiot, asking for news about Captain Bush. If Quiot knows anything at all Im sure hell have the courtesy to inform you, sir.
Bush! In the excitement of the last hour Hornblower had forgotten about Bush. His pleasurable excitement escaped from him like grain from a ripped sack. Depression closed in upon him again. The others saw the change that came over him; as an example of the affection for him which he had inspired in this short time of contact it is worthy of mention that they would rather have seen the black thundercloud of rage on his brow than this wounded unhappiness.
Chapter XIV
parlementairewould have chosen to die at sea, struck down by a shot in the moment of victory at the climax of a ship-to-ship action; he would have wished to have been buried in his hammock, round-shot at his feet and head, with seamen weeping as the grating tilted and the hammock slid from under the flag into the sea and the ship rocked on the waves, hove-to with backed topsails. It was a horrid irony that he should have met his end in a minor skirmish on a river bank, blown into bloody unidentifiable rags.
And yet what did it matter how he died? One moment he had been alive and the next dead, and in that he had been fortunate. It was a far greater irony that he should have been killed now, after surviving twenty years of desperate warfare. Peace was only just over the horizon, with the allied armies closing in on Paris, with France fast bleeding to death, with the allied Governments already assembling to decide on the peace terms. Had Bush survived this one last skirmish, he would have been able to enjoy the blessings of peace for many years, secure in his captains rank, in his pension, in the devotion of his sisters. Bush would have enjoyed all that, if only because he knew that all sensible men enjoyed peace and security. The thought of that only increased Hornblowers feeling of bitter personal loss. He had never thought he could mourn for anyone as he mourned for Bush.