The stranger looked down at his muddaubed clothes and at the trickles of water draining from them.
“I could find your Highness a change of clothing,” suggested Hornblower.
“No time for that, even, thank you, my lord. Farther down the railway line, beyond this unfortunate landslide, and beyond the tunnel—I think at a place called Maidstone—I can catch another train which will take me to Dover. From thence the steam packet to Calais—the train to Paris—and my destiny!”
“So Your Highness wishes to be driven to Maidstone?”
“Yes, my lord.”
It was eight miles of fairly easy road—not an impossibly extravagant request from a stranger in distress. But the wind was southwesterly—Hornblower pulled himself up with a jerk. These steam packets paid no attention to wind or tide, although it was hard for a man who had all his life commanded sailing vessels to remember it. The madman had a sane enough plan up to a point—as far as Paris. There he would presumably be put away in an asylum where he would be harmless and unharmed. Not even the excitable French would do anything to injure so entertaining an eccentric. But it would be hard on the coachman to have to turn out on a night like this and drive sixteen miles at a madman’s whim. Hornblower changed his mind again. He was wondering how to decline the request without hurting the poor soul’s feelings when the door from the drawingroom opened to admit Barbara. She was tall and straight and beautiful and dignified; now that the years had made Hornblower stoopshouldered her eyes were on a level with his.
“Horatio—” she began, and then paused when she saw the stranger; but someone who knew Barbara well—Hornblower, for instance—might guess that perhaps she had not been unaware of the presence of a stranger in the diningroom before she entered, and that perhaps she had come in like this to find out what was going on. Undoubtedly she had removed her spectacles for this public appearance.
The stranger came to polite attention in the presence of a lady.
“May I have the honour of presenting my wife to Your Highness?” asked Hornblower.
The stranger made a low bow, and, advancing, took Barbara’s hand and stooped low over it again to kiss it. Hornblower watched with some little annoyance. Barbara was woman enough to be susceptible to a kiss on the hand—any rascal could find his way into her good graces if he could perform that outlandish ceremony in the right way.
“The beautiful Lady Hornblower,” said the stranger. “Wife of the most distinguished sailor in Her Majesty’s Navy, sister of the great Duke—but best known as the beautiful Lady Hornblower.”
This madman had a way with him, as well as being well informed. But the speech was thoroughly out of character, of course; Napoleon had always been notorious for his brusquerie with women, and had been said to limit his conversation with them to questions about the number of their children. But it would never occur to Barbara to think like that when such a speech had just been made to her. She turned an inquiring blue eye on her husband.
“His Highness—” began Hornblower.
He played the farce out to the end, recounting the stranger’s request and laying stress on the importance of his arrival in Paris.
“You have already ordered the carriage, I suppose, Horatio?” asked Barbara.
“As a matter of fact I haven’t yet.”
“Then of course you will. Every minute is of importance, as His Highness says.”
“You are too kind, my dear lady,” said His Highness.
“But—” began Hornblower, and he said no more under the gaze of that blue eye. He walked across and pulled at the bell cord, and when Brown appeared he gave the necessary instructions.
“Tell Harris he can have five minutes to put the horses to. Not a second longer,” supplemented Barbara.
“Yes, my lady.”
“My lady, my lord,” said the stranger as Brown withdrew. “All Europe will be in your debt for this act of kindness. The world is notoriously ungrateful, but I hope the gratitude of Bonaparte will be unmistakable.”
“Your Highness is too kind,” said Hornblower, trying not to be too sarcastic.
“I hope Your Highness has a pleasant journey,” said Barbara, “and a successful one.”
The fellow had won every bit of Barbara’s esteem, obviously. She ignored her husband’s indignant glances until Brown announced the carriage and the stranger had rolled away into the deluging rain.
“But my dear—” protested Hornblower at last. “What on earth did you do that for?”
“It’ll do Harris no harm to drive to Maidstone and back,” said Barbara. “The horses are never exercised enough in any case.”
“But the man was mad,” said Hornblower. “A raving lunatic. A stark, staring, idiotic impostor, and not a very good impostor at that.”
“I think there was something about him,” said Barbara, sticking to her guns. “Something—”
“You mean he kissed your hand and made pretty speeches,” said Hornblower in a huff.
It was not until six days later that The Times published a dispatch from Paris.
Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the Pretender to the Imperial Throne, was today nominated as a candidate in the elections about to be held for the Presidency of the French Republic.
And it was not until a month after that that a liveried servant delivered a packet and a letter at Smallbridge. The letter was in French, but Hornblower had no difficulty in translating it—
My Lord
I am commanded by Monseigneur His Highness the Prince-President, as one of his first acts on assuming the control of the affairs of his people, to convey to you His Highness’s gratitude for the assistance you were kind enough to render him during his journey to Paris. Accompanying this letter Your Lordship will find the insignia of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and I have the pleasure of assuring Your Lordship that at His Highness’ command I am requesting of Her Majesty the Queen, through Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, permission for you to accept them.
I am also commanded by His Highness to beg that you will convey to Her Ladyship your wife his grateful thanks as well, and that you will present for her acceptance the accompanying token of his esteem and regard, which His Highness hopes will be a fitting tribute to the beautiful eyes which His Highness remembers so well.
With the highest expressions of my personal regard,
I am,
Your most humble and obedient servant
Cadore, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“Humbug!” said Hornblower. “The fellow will be calling himself Emperor before you can say Jack Robinson. Napoleon the Third, I suppose.”
“I said there was something about him,” said Barbara. “This is a very beautiful sapphire.”
It certainly matched the eyes into which Hornblower smiled with tender resignation.