sanguinarysanguinity:

---

“Will you be having dinner on board, sir?” asked Doughty. “No,” replied Hornblower. He hesitated before he
launched into the next speech that had occurred to him, but he decided to continue. “Tonight Horatio
Hornblower dines with Horatio Hornblower.”

---

Maria was quite shocked at the notion that a man should hold a crying baby, even his own, but it was a
delightful kind of shock, all the same, and she yielded the baby to his proffered arms. Hornblower held his
child — it was always a slight surprise to find how light that bundle of clothes was — and looked down at the
rather amorphous features and the wet nose.

“There!” said Hornblower. The act of transfer had quieted little Horatio for a moment at least.

Maria stood bathed in happiness at the sight of her husband holding her son. And Hornblower’s emotions
were strangely mixed; one emotion was astonishment at finding pleasure in holding his child, for he found it
hard to believe that he was capable of such sentiment.

---

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 sadness and distress he had suffered when he parted from Atropos had largely died away by now. He was
back in England, walking as fast as the old man’s legs would allow towards Maria and the children, free for the
moment from all demands upon his patience or his endurance, free to be happy for a while, free to indulge in
ambitious dreams of the frigate Their Lordships might give him, free to relax in Maria’s happy and indifferent
chatter, with little Horatio running round the room, and with little Maria making valiant efforts to crawl at his
feet. The thumping of the barrow wheels beat out a pleasant rhythm to accompany his dreams.

---

“Hullo, son,” said Hornblower, gently.

He did not seem to have much hair yet, under his little cap, but there were two startling brown eyes looking
out at his father; nose and chin and forehead might be as indeterminate as one would expect in a baby, but
there was no ignoring those eyes.

“Hullo, baby,” said Hornblower, gently, again.

He was unconscious of the caress in his voice. He was speaking to Richard as years before he had spoken to
little Horatio and little Maria. He held up his hands to the child.

“Come to your father,” he said.

Richard made no objections. It was a little shock to Hornblower to feel how tiny and light he was —
Hornblower, years ago, had grown used to older children — but the feeling passed immediately.

“There, baby, there,” said Hornblower.

Richard wriggled in his arms, stretching out his hands to the shining gold fringe of his epaulette.

“Pretty?” asked Hornblower.

“Da!” said Richard, touching the threads of bullion.

“That’s a man!” said Hornblower.

His old skill with babies had not deserted him. Richard gurgled happily in his arms, smiled seraphically as he
played with him, kicked his chest with tiny kicks through his dress. That good old trick of bowing the head and
pretending to butt Richard in the stomach had its never-failing success. Richard gurgled and waved his arms in
ecstasy.

---

“Do you think he’s like you?” asked Barbara, as the door closed behind the nurse and baby.

“Well —” said Hornblower, with a doubtful grin.

He had been happy during those few seconds with the baby, happier than he had been for a long long time.

---

“I’ll cherish Richard, darling. Our
child.”

Barbara could have said nothing to endear her more to Hornblower.

---

… the intense pleasure he had known when it first dawned upon him that Richard loved him,
and enjoyed and looked forward to his company.

---

He wanted to have Richard on his knee again, shrieking with laughter over the
colossal joke of having his nose pinched.

---

Hornblower turned the page, and the grubby fingerprints were there, sure enough, along with the shaky X that
Richard Arthur had scrawled under his stepmother’s signature. Hornblower felt a desperate longing to see his
son at that moment, happily muddy and spading away at his hole in the shrubbery, all-engrossed in the
business of the moment with babyhood’s sublime concentration of purpose.

---

There had been that golden
afternoon when he and Richard had lain side by side on their bellies beside the fish-pond, trying to catch
golden carp with their hands; returning to the house with the sunset glowing all about them, muddy and wet
and gloriously happy, he and his little child, as close together as he had been with Barbara that morning. A
happy life; too happy.

---