CHAPTER XXIVDESCENT

“You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed any advice which carried you from England to a wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, only have struck my flag and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo.”

The die was cast. He had chosen with Faust: “Evil be thou my good.” God and Emma was his heart’s cry, against Fanny and the man-made laws that love mocks at. But here again he salved his conscience. Fanny should have all but love, every respect, every honour due from man to wife should be hers. All but the one thing she craved. Yet Nelson might have been moved had he seen the tears falling like rain over that letter. Even Emma might have pitied.

His other letters afforded him small comfort also. Troubridge, his honest true-hearted friend, his right-hand captain, had also gathered up his courage to write.

“Pardon me, my Lord. It is my sincere esteem for you that makes me mention it. I know you can have no pleasure sitting up all night at cards; why, then, sacrifice your health, comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country where your stay cannot be long? Your Lordship is a stranger to half that happens, or the talk it occasions; if you knew what your friends feel for you, I am sure you would cut all the nocturnal parties. The gambling of the people of Palermo is openly talked of everywhere. I beseech your Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my feelings. Lady H—’s character will suffer, nothing can prevent people from talking. A gambling woman in the eye of an Englishman is lost. You will be surprised when I tell you I hear in all companies the sums won and lost on a card in Sir William’s house. It furnishes matter for a letter constantly both to Minorca, Naples, Messina, etc., and finally England. I trust your Lordship will pardon me; it is the sincere esteem I have for you that makes me risk your displeasure.”

But Nelson could not pardon in the cold searching dawn after that enchanted night. Something sickened and revolted within him—that others should watch, should guess. He flung it furiously down and would not answer it. His feeling to Troubridge was never the same again.

The Admiralty in London also was growing uneasily suspicious. They much misliked his journey in theFoudroyantwith the Hamiltons to Naples to punish the Neapolitan King’s rebels and pave the way for setting him on his throne again. They could not be made to sympathize with Nelson’s execution of Caracciolo, the traitor Neapolitan Admiral; with Emma, the Queen’s emissary, in the background suspiciously all the time. They could not be made to comprehend that it was a British Admiral’s business to punish a foreign king’s traitors for him. They could not be made to comprehend the advantages of a beautiful ambassadress’s presence on board a British man-of-war in war-time, more especially as the scandal concerning her grew in volume daily.

Nor could the unsympathetic Admiralty be made to comprehend why in such stirring times it was necessary that Nelson should linger at Palermo. And furthermore, the Foreign Office began to bestir itself and ominous rumblings were heard. Their Ambassador appeared to be devoting himself far more to Neapolitan interests than to British. If Sir William Hamilton had grown so old that he was in the hands of his wife—and such a wife!—it was certainly time that inquiry should be made in that little paradise of Palermo.

Nelson sank lower and lower into depression of mind and body. The joyous wellspring of energy was dried up in him. He was ill—ill at ease. He drew up a codicil to his will that should tell all the world, if he fell, how he idealized this woman who was the world’s butt.

“I give and bequeath to my dear friend Emma Hamilton, wife of the Right Hon. Sir William Hamilton, a nearly round box set with diamonds said to have been sent me by the mother of the Grand Signior, which I request she will accept and never part from as a token of regard and respect for her very eminent virtues (for she, the said Emma Hamilton, possesses them all to such a degree that it would be doing her injustice was any particular one to be mentioned) from her faithful and affectionate friend.”

No, he would not be ashamed. He would glory in their love. And she fed every flame with the oil of her own passionate nature. He detested the French, therefore she must loathe them more. He saw her kiss a Turkish sword encrusted with valiant French blood, and did not rebuke her. She urged him on in what she believed to be the cause of God and her Queen, in that vindictive hatred of the enemy which, with herself, is the only accusation that malice itself dare hurl against Nelson.

Greville’s cold insight would have understood what Nelson’s could not; that, unrestrained, flattered, adored, the baser elements of her character were coming inevitably into play and that she would most certainly injure not only herself but all who trusted her unless rudely and violently checked as he had checked her often. But then Greville knew her past utterly; Nelson only what she chose to tell him and with her own extenuations. Greville knew the plebeian ignorance which underlay all her experience. He would have used her but never trusted her: Nelson trusted her and was used by her, blinded by the kind heart, the gallant courage, which never failed her at the worst. Greville had made her. Nelson was to unmake her and reduce her to her original elements again—the wild uneducated hoyden of Up Park, with a difference. She was like a vine, trained, pruned, fruit-bearing, in Greville’s prudent hands. She was the same plant, untrained, untended in Nelson’s, bearing bitter, unripened, wild grapes only.

Lord Keith wrote coldly to him, commanding his presence at the final destruction of the French-Egyptian Fleet. He ordered that Palermo no longer should be the rendezvous of the British Fleet, and that Syracuse should be substituted. Nelson received it furiously as censure on his lingering at Palermo. He sent hisFoudroyantto help in the blockade of Malta, but himself he would not go. He would stay; he was in weak health; he would return to England.

Troubridge once more wrote passionately:

“Will your Lordship come and hoist your flag in theCulloden? Rely on everything I can do to make it pleasant. Your friends absolutely, so far as they dare, insist on your staying to sign the capitulation. Be on your guard. I see a change in language since Lord Keith was here.”

And yet, to the grief of all his friends, the last surviving of the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay surrendered to Nelson’s ship, but with Nelson himself in the Garden of Armida. Troubridge had entreated in vain.

Nelson was so angry with himself that his anger overflowed on others. He wrote passionately to Lord Spencer at the Admiralty that his spirit was broken by the indignities inflicted on him and he must have rest, and orders were sent to Lord Keith that if Nelson’s health rendered him unfit for duty he must return to England. Lord Spencer wrote again coldly and sensibly to Nelson:

“It is by no means my wish or intention to call you away from service, but having observed that you have been under the necessity of quitting the blockade of Malta on account of your health, it appears to me much more advisable for you to come home than to be obliged to remain inactive at Palermo. I believe I am joined in this opinion by all your friends here that you will be more likely to recover your health and strength in England than in an inactive situation at a foreign court, however pleasing the respect and gratitude shown to you for your services may be. I trust you will take in good part what I have taken the liberty to write to you as a friend.”

The hint was terribly plain and could not be less, for the scandal of Palermo was raging in England now. Nelson was furious; Emma’s rage unrestrained. Their noble services to be so misunderstood, so under-valued. Good God, what ingratitude? That was her daily cry, and every evening she fled to the arms of her Queen, and they wept together over the black hearts of men.

Lord Minto, who knew and understood Nelson better than most, wrote in extenuation of the infatuation that all the world now ridiculed. The pitiable side of it was that Emma’s past, and indeed her present, made it far more a subject of ridicule than of anything else. A mere light woman! A woman who had—and then followed the black catalogue. That Nelson should trifle with his honour for such as she! But Minto wrote more wisely, more kindly.

“I have letters from Nelson and Lady Hamilton. It does not seem clear whether he will go home. He will, at least, I hope, take Malta first. He does not seem at all conscious of the sort of discredit he has fallen into or the cause of it, for he still writes, not wisely, about Lady Hamilton and all that. But it is hard to condemn and ill-use a hero, as he is in his own element, for being foolish about a woman who has art enough to make fools of many wiser than an admiral.”

True enough, and “the woman” meanwhile was planning on her own account to meet these strokes of fate. Nelson should linger until she was sure of Sir William’s position with the English Government. Sir William should apply for leave. Then, at least, they could return with Nelson, and he would not be exposed to the artifices of a wife most anxious to regain his love. None knew better than Emma that a wife with the world behind her and the sympathy of high and low is a dangerous antagonist for even the most heart-holding mistress.

Sir William, good easy man, needing rest, was glad enough that his restless Emma felt the need of it also, and gladly applied for leave, but was startled indeed to find when it was courteously granted that the Foreign Office had decided he should not return and had swiftly appointed his successor, one who would not be so malleable to the blandishments of the Neapolitan Queen. The world was wearied of the Palermitan celebrations, orgies, and mutual-admiration societies and a sterner régime was to be inaugurated.

The indignant Keith would not even grant a battleship to convey the party, accompanied by Her Majesty of the Two Sicilies, to England. The play was played out. Lady Hamilton had had command of the Fleet long enough, said Keith with dry sarcasm. She must be contented with theFoudroyantto take her as far as Leghorn. The rest of the journey to England must be done by land. Her reign was over.

So ended the Neapolitan chapter of Emma’s life and she must needs put it behind her and continue her journey home with a secret in her bosom not long to be hidden, and the meeting with Lady Nelson ahead like a fear made visible. She had reached her zenith in Naples. In Palermo the sun had begun to slope westward and the shadows to lengthen.

As for Nelson, he left it loaded with favours from the Neapolitan King, Duke of Bronte in Sicily, but sore, sore at heart.

CHAPTER XXIVDESCENT

Thatjourney home, in spite of all the splendours which his own and Emma’s renown and the Queen’s company occasioned, was a nightmare to Nelson. He was utterly besotted on her; he could neither escape from her enchantments nor will to, but as yet his conscience was not wholly silenced, nor the orientation of a lifetime completely changed. The process of deterioration, which could never touch either his genius or his patriotism, had begun in other and subtler nerves of his character but the disease had not as yet sufficiently spread to numb his recognition of what was due to his wife, and she had become an agony to him. How to meet her, what to hope, he could not tell. He who had been able some years before to say, fearless of contradiction, “There is not one action in my life but what is honourable”, could say it no longer. Glory must cover the loss of honour; a tinsel covering to a man’s own inner judgment. Others might make excuses, but he knew very well that when evil and good lay before him he had chosen evilly and must pay the price of that choice. Not indeed in losses that the world could appraise, but in things sacred, secret, on which he must be dumb for ever. What he could not know was that slowly but steadily his perception of what was noble and generous would dim and fail under this creeping paralysis of the soul and that the day was near when he was to treat his wife with such a cruelty as would have filled him with indignant shame if he had heard of it in any other case than his own.

Slowly and steadily the toils strengthened about him. From the day that Emma, pale and weeping, told him the secret that must ruin them both with their home ties and with the world if it could not be hidden, he surrendered all hope of retreat for either of them, and clung to her as one lost soul may cling to another in hell.

That mood passed, and he defied his own convictions. Love was not hell—it was Heaven. It was of God, and here was the proof. His wife had never given him a child. His home was barren of that visible blessing of Heaven. This woman whom he loved, was, in sorrow, fear and secrecy, to fill that cruel emptiness with the sound of a child’s voice, the light of its eyes. What did he not owe her for the agony endured for his sake, and what is a child but God’s blessing visible to man? Surely to such a passion as his it was the sign of approval, the recognition of a marriage sacred beyond all the laws of man. Such love made its own laws, and Heaven recognized them if man ignored them.

It was not that he ever sat down to analyze his problems. That was not Nelson’s way. He saw them in flashes of insight and took them as revelations, and shaped his life and his words in accordance with them. It followed from these that Emma should be perfect to be worthy of the Divine approval on their union. Therefore she was perfect. That his own services to his country were so great that they lifted him above the common judgments of right and wrong. Therefore he might safely despise them. Yet he was miserable—miserable.

But as he grew more and more confident of his own deserts he deteriorated, exactly in the same measure as Emma under the same strain, only he had more to lose and farther to fall than she. He became vainer, more boastful, impatient of anything that could be construed as less than fulsome admiration, suspicious of his old comrades. The word glory was sweeter to him than the word honour. It is significant of much that when he quotes Shakespeare’s noble lines that if it be a sin to covet honour “I am the most offending soul alive,” he substitutes the word glory for Shakespeare’s “honour,” apparently unconsciously. Yet glory is the world’s voice, and honour the man’s own secret and inestimable riches in the sight of the Eternal.

And Emma too fell. From the day of her marriage she had resolved to put certain things behind her forever. She had received a trust. She would justify it with every effort of mind and body. She would crown her husband’s choice with glory. Glory again! And where had it led her? Into a slough deeper and more miry than any she had known in the evil experiences of her young life. Unable to face the truth, she too hardened her heart against all the world.

Many records survive of that journey back through a flattering Europe to the England where they hoped and believed that glory would cover all shortcomings. She grew more and more flamboyant and boastful. Even the Queen, Marie Caroline, began to feel that one might pay too dear for help from a woman of the people, and the comments of some of the Austrian nobles and of her own family in Vienna were like a breath of cold outer air upon a hothouse friendship. She rewarded Emma with recognition, with splendid gifts, with a latest diamond necklace wrought in ciphers of all the Royal children and locks of their hair. She offered her a pension of a £1000 a year, she made protestations of warmest and eternal gratitude. Could a queen do more?

“She adores me!” Emma protested to Nelson and Sir William. “There is nothing she would not do for me. I am the sister of her soul. Neither time nor distance can part us.”

“No doubt, my love,” Sir William answered. “She owes everything to your generous exertions, but our dear Nelson will agree with me that a former Ambassadress of England can accept no pension from a foreign court.”

“Impossible, and Emma would be the last to wish it,” Nelson agreed. Emma, who had not seen this objection perhaps with the same finality, agreed in haste also. There were many things she could not see and therefore blinded Nelson to—for instance, that this blaring, flaring journey across Europe in one party was sheer madness for their hopes in England.

If there is one thing valued in England it is a decent reserve in speech and action—an almost stoic restraint. There are very few sins unpardonable if introduced by perfect good taste, and there the Nelson party sinned daily and flagrantly. Nelson touched the imagination still, but with pity. Hear Lady Minto, writing from Vienna:

“I don’t think him altered in the least. He has the same shock head and the same honest simple manners; but he is devoted to ‘Emma’; he thinks her quite an angel and talks of her as such to her face and behind her back, and she leads him about like a keeper with a bear. She must sit by him at dinner to cut his meat, and he carries her pocket-handkerchief. He is a gig from ribands, orders, and stars, but just the same with us as ever he was.”

They were sorry—that was the truth of it. But none could deliver him from himself, and Emma triumphed exceedingly. It is interesting to wonder what she would have done could she have known the opinion of the world. Probably nothing otherwise than she did in her immense self-glorification. She, a Lady of the Grand Cross of Malta, given her, alone of Englishwomen, by His Majesty, the Great White Czar!

Lord Fitzharris wrote to his father:

“Lord Nelson and the Hamiltons dined here the other day. It is really disgusting to see her with him. Lady Hamilton is without exception the most coarse, ill-mannered, disagreeable woman I ever met with. The Princess [Esterhazy] had with great kindness got a number of musicians and the famous Haydn to play, knowing Lady H. was fond of music. Instead of attending to them she sat down to the faro table and played Nelson’s cards for him and won between £300 and £400. In short, I could not disguise my feelings and joined in the general abuse of her.”

Indeed, it was difficult for any Englishman to forgive what he conceived to be the public degradation of the national hero. Greville would have understood perfectly, would have said he had predicted all this years ago if Emma were not held strictly in hand. He had, on one occasion now long, long past, said to Sir William, shaping his fine lips delicately in the utterance of an unpleasant word: “It is impossible, my dear Hamilton, to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” He would have reiterated this with his own small smile if he had seen the incidents of that journey.

Yet Emma, with her secret at her heart, wished to conciliate women’s opinion as far as possible, if she had but known how to deal with English women of birth and breeding. She did her best; she thrust her friendship on Mrs. St. George, a lady of quality, who pushed it coolly back upon her. She also viewed the party with the contempt that was a foreshadowing of the English attitude. She set down her reflections in her diary:

“Sir William is old and infirm, all admiration of his wife and never spoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cornelia Knight seems the decided flatterer of the Two and never opens her mouth but to show forth their praise, and Mrs. Cadogan is—what one might expect. After dinner, we had several songs in honour of Lord Nelson, written by Miss Knight and sung by Lady H. She puffs the incense full in his face but he receives it with pleasure, and snuffs it up very cordially. She loads me with all the marks of friendship at first sight. Still she does not gain upon me. Mr. Elliott says, ‘She will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is as vulgar as her own, and play a great part in England.’ ”—A judgment at one time likely enough to be verified.

Yet behind all this glare and glitter what would the commentators have said if they could have seen into the minds of the two chief actors?

There were moments when Emma trembled for her empire over Nelson in thinking of the wife reinforced by English opinion. Nothing but her beautiful face in the glass, and her enormous courage sustained her. If she could but have taken the Queen to England in her train! What suspicions could resist the countenance of a queen? The austere Charlotte herself must surrender before such a battle array. But alas, that was impossible. The tearful farewell must be said in Vienna and Marie Caroline be left to the support of her daughter, the Empress. But it was much on her mind. She felt her way cautiously with Mrs. St. George.

“One takes it for granted that presentation at a court like that of Naples, and my intimate friendship with the Queen will ensure my being received at Windsor,” she said, one day in Dresden.

Instantly the young and charming widow was bristling with carefully concealed caution.

“Why, madam, an ex-ambassadress is generally certain of that on the merits of her position.”

Lady Hamilton hesitated a little. So much was known that she could not afford to ignore the difficulties altogether.

“Oh, but, my dearest madam, your friendship emboldens me to ask your opinion, and I know well that none is better, moving in the high circles you are accustomed to. What is expected? Have you heard anything one way or another?”

Mrs. St. George, none too pleased with this attribution of friendship and thinking the question in the worst possible taste, drew herself up perceptibly.

“Indeed, madam, I have heard nothing. These matters which affect Her Majesty’s good pleasure are not discussed in society. I really can offer no opinion.”

But still Emma persisted: “Indeed, I think ’tis impossible Queen Charlotte should refuse an honour bestowed daily by a queen so much her superior in birth and—”

“I fear, madam, I must insist that the Queen of England has no superior—indeed, no equal,” says the fair Mrs. St. George, slightly tossing her pretty head. “I must only attribute it to your long absence from England that you should think otherwise.”

“No equal!” cries Emma, flushing over neck and bosom. “The daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, the mother of the present Empress, the wife—”

“Madam, you and I are English subjects,” says the young lady with an air of finality.

“But Sir William is the foster brother of King George. His great services—my own—”

“Indeed, I can’t doubt,” interrupts the pretty widow again, “that their Majesties are perfectly capable of noticing and rewarding any service. Her Majesty is known all the world over for her propriety of judgment.”

Emma bursts into a laugh a little too loud and forced for the occasion.

“Well, for my part, I hear the Court is as dull as ditch-water! I care little if she receives me or no. I had much sooner she would settle half Sir William’s pension on me. Fair words butter no parsnips.”

If it be permissible to say of a lady of birth that she slightly sniffed, it may be said of Mrs. St. George. Her disgust was almost visible. She certainly has left it on record.

Yet one may pity the poor woman who had all at stake. Sir William was not in the position of the ordinary husband. He knew her past, and if he should know her present what had she to expect? And Greville, the cool, sardonic Greville, was waiting their arrival in England, and certainly it could not be his interest that all should be confidence and security between her and his uncle.

When she was alone with Nelson, she dwelt on that. It haunted her.

“My own, own Nelson, I wish, I often wish, we had all never resolved to return to England,” she said one day in the hotel at Hamburg, with the English problems looming nearer and nearer. “We were safer there. ’Tis impossible I should say how I dread Greville. I have been honest with you, honest as the day, and you know ’tis his interest to make mischief between me and Sir William. And if he suspects—”

She looked up at him with trembling lips. She had been honest up to a certain point, but not entirely. There had been no mention of “the little Emma.” Nelson’s rapture of fatherhood, his belief that this marvellous experience to be was as new to her as to him, had shut her lips there, and unspeakably she dreaded Greville on that score also. She had always feared him even when she loved him. She feared him doubly now.

“My own dear angel, you shall not, must not fear,” said Nelson tenderly. “Our blessed happy secret shall be our secret always. Yet supposing the very worst—supposing Sir William divorced you—if I found you alone and deserted under a hedge it would be my pride to marry you. You should be my own Duchess of Bronte, and a fig for them all!”

“Your wife?” she reminded him, her head lying wearily back on her chair. But it was not that which made a divorce seem to her the most impossible of things. It was the terrible fear of her own past and Greville’s intimate knowledge of it. He would be a witness. She could hear his cold voice with its perfect enunciation disclosing secret after secret she trembled to think of now. There were things which in spite of Nelson’s infatuation might well give pause to his judgment. She dared not even consider such a possibility.

“Would I ruin you in the eyes of the world, my hero? Not for the sake of all the agony your poor Emma must suffer. No—I will fight it through as I have fought through many a difficulty. With your love to help me, I don’t fear. If that failed me—”

She made an expressive pause, her beautiful mouth quivering. He knelt and put his arm about her, resting his head on her bosom.

“The sun can as soon fall from the sky. Every day you are more and more to me. I glory in it. I thank God for it. My wife wrote to me desiring to meet me on landing, and I wrote to her that I judged it would be best to meet in London. I did this, for your sake, my own heart’s beloved, for I thought it would be easier for you to meet her there in some way yourself can choose. But rest assured that in that matter, as in all else, your own dear Nelson lives but to do your will. You are the best, noblest, most beautiful woman in all the world. You have no equal—you never have had—and all shall be as you will.”

She caressed his hair tenderly with her soft hand. Indeed, she was touched.

“Then I want my Nelson, the dear husband of my heart, to be very, very wise for both our sakes. You must not quarrel with your wife. However malicious and angry she may be, we must not let her put us in the wrong. Remember all I have to hide, and help me, help me. I want to win her friendship—that will be the greatest safety I can have, at all events until this is over. I will do anything in the world to please her—swallow any insult.”

“You shall swallow none!” says Nelson, with his grand air. “If she dares insult you—”

She put her hand on his mouth.

“No, no. You must be patient for my sake. Think of all we have at stake. I would crawl to her feet to carry things off. And you must not be too much with us at first. No, you must not. We must deny ourselves. Remember you are the world’s hero as well as your Emma’s and every eye will be upon you. Of course I know that will carry us through in the end for a man who has served his country like you may do what he will. I am not afraid of our reception in England. It is only your wife. If we can win her, all is won and safe. And Greville. I must please him every way I can, and he must never suspect anything.”

But for all her exhortations she dreaded Nelson’s impetuosity. She would willingly have had him on a foreign station until the crisis was over, much as she needed his help. There were points where she feared that she herself could not restrain him, and one of them was his wife. What was that cold, unknown woman doing—what thinking? She was measuring herself this time against a force she had never fought before. She could glean really nothing of her from Nelson. Men cannot describe women to each other—the equation of sex forbids it. Fanny remained a silent sphinx.

They embarked at Hamburg in a storm which might have prefigured much if they had taken it as an omen. Sir William, terribly shaken and suffering, could only groan aloud that he wished they had never left Naples. This cursed war and its consequences were ruining him in purse and health alike. Emma left his groanings to seek shelter by Nelson, for it seemed at one time as if all her doubts and fears might be settled in a way that would make no appeal to human judgment needful. She found him pale and serious in the little cabin, a letter in his hand, his mind evidently abstracted from the yelling wind and rolling waves. She came and caught his arm for safety, flung against him by the rolling of the ship, and he drew her down beside him.

“It reminds me of theVanguardand the voyage to Palermo!” he said. “But what does that matter? Storms blow themselves out but there are things—”

He stopped, and put the letter in her hand. She knew the writing—Fanny’s. She read it eagerly: “I have this instant received a note from Admiral Young, who tells me if I can send him a letter for you in an hour he will send it, therefore I have only time to say I have had the pleasure of receiving two letters from you. I can with safety put my hand on my heart and say it has been my study to please and make you happy, and I still flatter myself we shall meet before very long. I feel most sensibly all your kindnesses to my dear son, and I hope he will add much to our comfort. Our good father has been in good spirits ever since we heard from you; indeed my spirits were quite worn out, the time had been so long. I thank God for the preservation of my dear husband, and your recent success at Malta. The taking of theGénéreuxseems to give great spirits to all. God bless you, my dear husband, and grant us a happy meeting.” So, with an affectionate prefix and ending, the letter stood.

“It is the answer to mine forbidding her to join me in Palermo,” he said, and there was something in his voice that shot a pang of dread to her heart. That quiet reference to his capturing the French ship—what man of sense could compare it with her own violent outpourings of delight at his successes, she thought. And yet—there was a calm tone of settled, steadfast affection, of wifely ownership, of the family ties—“our good father”—that wounded Emma at every syllable and woke the worst in her. It seemed to rise superior above all she could say or do; the wife, the happy wife who had no secrets, whose position all must do reverence to, while she—she was nothing but a hindrance, a hidden shame, the blot on an honour that nothing else could have spotted. It seemed to set Lady Nelson apart and beyond her. She handed it coldly back.

“A wife who can take your glories so coldly is what I can’t understand. I should have thought—but no matter! If it moves you—if you think she is worthy of your greatness—”

He understood the note of pain in her voice, and clasped her hand in his. She could feel its feverish heat; the nervous thrill in it.

“She is my wife no longer. It is you—my own Emma, the mother of my child. But you have a generous soul, you must know from that letter she has heard the base stories that were scattered from Palermo, and she wants to assure me that neither those nor my refusing to let her come out have made any difference. She is a woman I must respect to my last day for I have never known a spot in her—no, not one. If I could keep her as a friend I would, but the world is so impossible—impossible to what it can’t understand or value. Still, would my Emma value her Nelson, if he could cast such a woman off without a pang? God knows I dread that meeting in London, and to wound her tender heart!”

“Tender?” she cried. “I should have saidnottender—hard. See that cold, cold letter, and you coming home with such honours as was never seen in the world. No—don’t mistake her. She will value the world’s good opinion. She won’t throw away all for you, as I’ve done with all the dangers and ruin likely before me. The one is love; the other—I don’t know what to call it.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he said, his nervous face quivering and lips twitching. “If you asked me I would never see her again. I am all yours—body and soul until death us do part. But—she is a good woman.”

“And I am not good? Oh, Nelson, is this the reward of such love as was never known?”

“You are my saint, my guardian angel. There is not a thought of my heart inconstant to you. She is nothing—nothing! See!”

He tore the letter into tiny fragments, unclosed the porthole by an inch, and as the wind screamed in at it, he pushed his fingers through, and sent the fragments flying on the gale. He closed it again and returned to his seat by Emma.

“Thatfor her!” he said. Even to Emma in her triumph there was something shocking in the incident. Love! To what could it drive a man? Yet she was glad at heart.

They landed in a storm so terrible that only Nelson’s advice and entreaties compelled the pilot to bow to his better judgment, and surely the sight of the English welcome was reassuring, for all Yarmouth had turned out to meet the returning hero. Emma too was not forgotten. Amid the music and rejoicings a ring of fine topaz set in brilliants was bestowed upon her by the enthusiastic welcomers. Sir William was quietly in the background, used indeed by this time to that effacement. Speeches, sentiments, toasts, abounded. Her smiles, bows, exuberance, fanned the popular welcome into roaring flame. Never was such a scene.

“And London will beat it!” she said, triumphant, as they entered the coach for the journey. “We are safe, safe in England. It will be Naples, Palermo, only more, because it’s our own dear country.”

But Nelson was silent. His fears were greater than his hopes. Yet Emma was always right and surely her charms would conquer England as they had done Italy. On her he relied. But that welcome was unfortunate for it made her more self-confident, less inclined to be conciliatory than ever before. She was certain they could have it all their own way.

CHAPTER XXVFANNY

Itwas a still Sunday afternoon with a November mist clinging like a cold breath to London, daylight still but the lights showing little starry points in the streets below when Fanny and his old father waited for Nelson at Nerot’s Hotel in St. James’s.

She was a young woman of thirty-six, “not beautiful but eminently pleasing,” as a friend described her, with clear hazel eyes matching abundant hair arranged low over her forehead, almost hiding the brown, finely-marked eyebrows. The charm of her face was the mouth, set in with the pressure of a hinted dimple at each corner and very ready to break into a smile to match the latent smile in her eyes. Her figure was slight and well-formed, under a plain dress of brown satin a little staid in its design for her years, especially with the broad falling collar of Maltese lace and sleeves to match, which Nelson had sent her from the Mediterranean, and which certainly would be more suitable ten years hence. The sleeves half hid really beautiful little hands with a quick nervous gesture about them when she was eager, which the Nelson daughters considered foreign and affected.

But Frances Nelson cared very little about things of that order. She had never gone much into society, was rather alarmed than otherwise by the daring, low-bosomed fashions of the day, imported from the license of France, and was better pleased to escape notice than to attract it. Besides, except for Nelson’s visits to England, her life had been mostly passed in the village of Burnham Thorpe, as the companion of Nelson’s old father: a dull life for a young woman, and one which his daughters, Mrs. Matcham and Mrs. Bolton, were very well pleased to commit to the daughter-in-law.

She really had very little in common with the Nelsons. She had been married extremely young to her first husband, Dr. Nisbet, and was left a widow next year with a child—Josiah. But her life in the Leeward Islands and her few travels with Nelson had given her at least a glimpse of the world outside England, and she was apt to think the family narrow and ignorant. She thought them also excitable and exaggerated in their emotions, which was true enough in its way, and they returned the compliment by styling her cold, reserved, uninteresting. They could not imagine what Horatio had seen in a widow, who had only £4000 “to her fortune” when all was said and done.

Still, it was owned that Fanny was sensible and useful. She had not the sensibility they could admire, was not liable like themselves to interesting heart spasms on the slightest excitement, took things quietly and composedly, and might even be suspected of airs of superiority to those who had sensitive feelings and displayed them. Yet their father would have been a problem without her and certainly none of the sons or their wives coveted his company. Perhaps it was on the whole better she was so staid and quiet. A livelier young woman might have been urgent for more amusement, and old Mr. Nelson was attached to her.

She was certainly reserved. It was extraordinarily difficult for her to express what she felt, and in that respect she was a contrast indeed to her husband, whose emotions, like his family’s, were always more or less in the extreme. For the rest, she seemed to have little initiative, agreed with his opinions gently, and was compliant almost to a fault. His father was exceedingly fond of her and thought her the ideal wife for Horatio, who had agreed in that opinion formerly. In short, a woman of whom it would be difficult to predict her action in really disturbing circumstances.

It was characteristic of her reserve that while all the family were whispering together with clustered heads of the stories which had come in from Naples and Palermo she never uttered a word on the subject. Mrs. Bolton, Mrs. Matcham, both sailed as near the wind as they dared when they visited their father, but Fanny was silent. Not meaningly and bodingly silent, but calmly. It was as if she had heard nothing. For the life of them the two bustling women could not make her out, and went away, discussing the “hussy” at Naples, and lamenting Fanny’s stupidity, who, if she had written “strongly” to Horatio would only have been doing her duty as a wife and might have made some impression. In reality, the quiet woman whose hazel eyes were so reticent had heard more than any of them and lived in an agony of fear and jealous pain. A Nelson would have stormed about the room, stormed in speech and on paper and decreased the pressure somehow by this kind of exhalation. She could not. She endured. She made little tentatives, small hints, in her letters to him which she prayed he might take advantage of for explanation and, when he never did, was helpless and could say no more. She crimsoned even when alone at the mere thought of upbraiding her husband with any liking for another woman.

But she watched his letters, lynx-eyed for any signs of change, and found plenty. “My dearest Fanny,” “My beloved wife,” became “My dear Fanny,” and her “most loving and affectionate husband,” became “affectionate” and from that zero, as it seemed to her, the thermometer never rose again.

And now at last, after long years, they were to meet, and in spite of her calm exterior she was trembling in every limb as if with ague, and could hardly answer the old man’s restless questions for the dryness in her throat.

“I wonder what he’ll look like, Fanny. I wonder if there will be much change in him.”

“Much change, I should think, sir. Time does not stand still.”

“But his true heart can never change. He was always the best of sons.”

“The very best, father. You could not have desired a better.”

“No, and that’s the index of a man’s character—Does he consider his parents? If that’s right, all the rest follows. Ah, you’re a fortunate woman, Fanny. He has given you a great position. What, did I hear a coach down below?”

“No, father, don’t move. I will warn you in time. Stay, let me arrange your hair. I want him to see you at your best.”

She produced a little pocket-comb, and put back the long white locks on his forehead.

“How cold your hands are. Make up the fire. The room is cheerless compared to my study at home,” he said, shivering.

It was cheerless and full of fog. The heavy red damask curtains were looped up in formal folds, the chairs set in line against the flock-papered walls, a stiff armchair on either side of the smouldering fire. The frost seemed to have entered into her soul. Her teeth were almost chattering with cold and fear.

Hark! Far off a cheer! The cheering of a crowd—London shouting its welcome to an honoured guest. She went quietly to the window and looked out on the waiting, silent crowds beneath.

“It might be—no, nothing yet. I’ll watch.”

She stood leaning there while the old man warmed his hands over the now flaming fire.

The cheering grew and grew. It swelled louder, louder. It was as though all the lesser voices of London were drowned in that one unloosing of the heart of a nation. It was grand, terrifying, like the roar of a lion in his deserts. Her face grew deadly pale as she listened.

And now, suddenly and as if at a signal, the crowds beneath broke forth into cheering also. The room vibrated to it, the very air shook forth with the sound of men’s voices mingled with the shriller cries of women. She turned, wordless, and beckoned to his father, who joined her at the window.

The crowd, denser now, had parted and made a narrow lane through the midst. They stood packed on either side, cheering, fluttering handkerchiefs and scarfs—anything!—and turning the corner, came a carriage, with four horses—open.

In the back seat was her husband in full uniform, with a constellation of stars and gold medals on his breast. Beside him, a beautiful woman in plumed hat and furred pelisse, bowing, smiling right and left. In the seat before them a thin distinguished old man taking no active part, but looking on with a kind of detached amusement and pleasure.

The carriage moved very slowly. She could see it all in lamplight and daylight, like a bright picture.

“Does he look well, Fanny? Can you see him? My eyes are dim.”

“Very well, sir. He is in uniform. He has friends with him.”

Her voice was as quiet as when she read aloud in the parsonage study. Her heart seemed to have ceased beating.

Now the carriage was drawing up at the hotel door. The manager, the staff, were waiting on the steps as if for Royalty. Sir William descended first, then Nelson, and together they aided Lady Hamilton’s graceful descent, the magnificent folds of fur falling about her. Fanny drew back from the window and stood by the fire.

Five, ten minutes passed. Of course there would be greetings downstairs, questions, answers. Then feet in the passage outside; a voice—“This way, my Lord,” and the door opened. He came in—if her life depended upon it she could not have moved a limb. Her very agitation froze her, and it was the old man who got at him first and clasped his hand, and put a feeble arm about his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. He did not even see her in the darkening shadows of the room.

“My dear, dear father!” he said. Oh, well-remembered voice! Oh, pain and joy unspeakable! “It’s home to see you again. Is Fanny at Burnham Thorpe?”

She heard the quick startle in his tone, and then she moved into the firelight at last.

“I’m here, my dear husband.”

That was all. There were a million things she wanted to say, pleadings, loving words, passionate entreaties. But how could she? His father was there. They should have met alone, it was cruel, cruel that they had not, and yet even if they had, what could she have said? Nothing, nothing. When the heart is too full it chokes on its own utterances.

He took her hand and kissed her cheek. It was a moment of agonizing embarrassment to her. His father grasped his shoulder and led him to a chair by the fire and poured out all the questions she would have asked if she had dared. But, indeed, her heart was near to bursting. She had been forbidden to meet him, but that bold beautiful woman had shared all the honours of his return and was in London also now, waiting her time. All the Palermitan stories crowded on her mind. Would not one think that a wife who had never offended had more claim than that cold kiss?

She asked him in her soft voice whether he was well; whether he had any pain in what was left of his arm?—the pathetic empty sleeve wrung her heart. She had gathered up the little scraps of family news to tell him; the Boltons, the Matchams, his brothers, William and Maurice, would be coming up next day. Yes, they were all well, all full of eagerness to see him. She did her best, God knows, but what can a woman do so cruelly hampered? It all sounded stiff and unnatural. He took it for anger and answered with cold punctuality.

The lights must be lit; he wished to see how his father looked; and presently there was the mild illumination of wax candles. She felt rather than saw him stealing a furtive glance at her.

“You look paler and thinner. I trust I see you in good health,” he said.

She hurriedly reassured him. “And you too?” she added wistfully.

“My constitution is never a strong one and I have had many cares and anxieties, not to mention dangers, of late years. The Aboukir wound gives me trouble still at times. But I owe everything to the unwearied goodness of my friends, Sir William and Lady Hamilton. But for them I should not be alive to greet you and my father, and whatever you feel for me you should certainly repay in gratitude to them. They have put up at this hotel until they can secure a house, and as I shall be much engaged at the Admiralty, it is my hope that you will show Lady Hamilton every attention possible. I shall take it as a kindness to myself. You owe her much for her goodness to Josiah also.”

“I will do my best,” her pale lips shaped. Josiah! His letters and angry comments on the intimacy which all the world talked of had been a sword in her heart. If Nelson did but know!—but she could not tell him.

“I wrote at your wish and invited them to stay at Round Wood. I hope the letter met you at Yarmouth,” she said timidly.

“Certainly, and I thought it very proper. I handed it to Lady Hamilton. I have asked them to dine with us presently. You and my father cannot too soon meet friends to whom I owe so much.”

Soon indeed! Then even the first meeting was to be broken in upon with suffering! She recalled other returns while he and his father talked on. How eagerly he had clasped her in his arms; how much there had been to hear and tell; what sympathy, eager understanding in it all—and the dear, dear nights when they had been alone; and she lay in his arms and could not sleep for joy to hear his quiet breathing again. But no one could have guessed these thoughts from her quiet face fixed on the fire as she sat listening and very silent now. Of course he thought her angry and sullen; of course he fiercely resented it. She looked older, too, her face seemed dimmed and dull after the brilliant roseate beauty his eyes had feasted on, his lips had tasted.

“Well, we must prepare for dinner!” he said at last, getting up. “I trust my dear father will enjoy meeting two of the most eminent men and women in the world. I ordered dinner as I came up, Fanny. Which is my room?”

“My—” She moved forward silently and led the way to a large and London-dingy bedroom adjoining the sitting-room. He looked with disfavour at the great draped four-poster with its drab curtains and tester.

“I can’t sleep in that catafalque!” he said. “I want fresh air. Make them put me up a camp bed near the door, or better still in the room adjoining, for I am often disturbed at night, and you look as if you needed your sleep. Better give the order now.”

She rang the bell and gave it, and his “traps,” as he called them, were put in the room which opened, hotel-fashion, into hers. For the first time she recovered herself a little and carried her head higher. That insult, for so she took it, fired even her gentleness. He left the door open between them and talked while she changed her dress for dinner.

Indeed she had little to change it to. She had supposed it would be as usual but a day or two in London, and had not made very extensive preparations. But she had a black satin with lace and a bandeau of rows of seed-pearl for her hair, and a chain set with small pearls which had been a gift from his prize money. She dressed herself to the best advantage and looked in the muslin-draped glass and thought she would pass. More she could not feel; and after all, what use to compete with a beauty of European notoriety? She did not ask his opinion when her toilette was finished as she had been accustomed to do.

They went together into the sitting-room when they were ready. It was now brilliant with lights, and a well-spread table, and old Mr. Nelson in the ceremonious evening dress of a clergyman of the old school, and Nelson in silk stockings and orders, and obsequious waiters hovering about and making conversation impossible.

It seemed to Fanny that she could not collect her thoughts—it was dream-like, she had not a word to say.

And now the door opened with a flourish—“Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Miss Knight.”

Habit and breeding will pull a woman together when nothing else will, and Fanny in her desperate need moved forward composedly, with her quiet curtsey to either lady.

Emma trailed in in the gorgeous gold gown of Palermo, too splendid by far for so simple an occasion, girdled below her full bosom with a girdle in the Directory fashion, set with diamonds.

The bandeau which bound her luxuriant curls was of diamonds also, and about her neck the magnificent diamond necklace lately presented by Marie Caroline with the ciphers of the Royal children. Even a plain woman must have glowed in such a dress set off with such a galaxy of jewels but with her velvet skin of lilies and roses, her bright hair, and the crimson bow of her lips she was a figure of dazzling beauty to strike the coldest into amazement. It was a theatrical entry, theatrically contrived with all her dramatic instinct brought to bear, and for the moment it succeeded. Fanny’s heart sank like lead. What hope, what help against such charms? She was an illumination in the room—the very light all gathered about her, and seemed to be reflected in her. Miss Cornelia Knight was an agreeable, brown-complexioned woman in purple—a well-chosen foil for the other’s brilliance. Indeed, Emma’s heart exulted as she greeted with all her exuberance the quiet Fanny in her “dowdy” dress, for so she classed it. Ifthatwas what she had been dreading!—one may finish the sentence on a note of triumph. She took possession of the party. She showered offers of attention on Fanny. Had she been presented yet on the peerage? No? Then she herself would undertake the presentation after her own. She quite expected that one of Sir William’s Hamilton cousins would present her. And nothing would be easier to arrange.

Dinner. Oh, might she show her Ladyship exactly how Lord Nelson liked his meat cut up? She had done it all the way back from Palermo but naturally must now surrender the pleasure to his good wife. Funny, on the contrary, surrendered it to her—it was so obviously the wish—and her own place was at the head of the table with Sir William in attendance.

He revolted her, though after a very different fashion. His manners were perfect, polished, easy, even her inexperience could tell that, but his stories of the Neapolitan Court! His smiling references to the Queen’s amours as something quite in the order of things and to be expected! His hints of French corruption and the manners of the now celebrated Josephine, the wife of the Corsican adventurer! Good heavens, what people had Nelson fallen amongst? What a society was it where such subjects could be discussed! She did her best to reply with courtesy, and Sir William found her a dull young woman and betook himself to the conversation between Miss Knight and Mr. Nelson, throwing in comments on her spirited story of the flight to Palermo, and the still more marvellous history of the return of theFoudroyantto Naples, and the avenging of the King of the Two Sicilies on his rebels, including the hanging of his traitor Admiral Caracciolo, as Miss Knight called him.

“The treacherous animal, he well deserved his fate!” said Sir William, enjoying his glass of the fashionable pink champagne. “And it is not the least of the glories of your glorious husband, madam, that he had the pleasure of ordering his ignominious death. He desired to be shot like a gentleman but my Lord ordered him hanged as the dog he was.”

Again Fanny was silent. She had heard through naval friends in London of the strong censure expressed at the Admiralty, and indeed at Court, on Nelson’s action in thus condemning a foreign admiral. The rights of it she could not know and dared not judge, but it appeared in any case no subject for exultation. Emma’s keen eye and ear were on the talk at that end of the table, and she intervened.

“Indeed, I am certain her Ladyship must have rejoiced with the rest of us when she heard that such a traitor had met with his reward. Oh, madam, did you but know my adorable Queen you would share in the joy that filled us when those rebels were punished by your husband’s noble courage. There is not one admiral in a thousand would have took it in his hands like him.”

Fanny could not but reply: “I am sure my husband did all he thought just and proper.”

She got that out, flushing, and how cold and inadequate it sounded! But she was not the woman to rejoice over corpses dangling at the yard-arm even if she had understood the subject better than she did. Her answer fell into a silence, and then Miss Knight resumed her praises and Sir William commented, and the hostess sat isolated, outshone and forgotten.

Emma was in her most aggressive mood of boastful praise of Nelson’s and her own doings. She had meant to be entirely conciliatory to Lady Nelson, and only achieved condescension. An unreasonable anger possessed her, as if the woman had no business to exist. Certainly she feared her no more. She could understand her at a glance and foresee her rôle. She would raise no objection to the friendship; she would be tame, obedient, easily hoodwinked; a convenient shield until happier days should come. No, all was well. Really, almost a negligible quantity. She thanked her graciously for her invitation to Round Wood. Later on, she quite hoped it might be possible to accept, but at present she and Sir William were so overwhelmed with invitations from Royalty downwards that dear Lady Nelson would understand it was not possible, and so forth.

But Fanny’s quiet eyes were noting everything. Emma was not behind Sir William and far beyond Nelson in the refilling of her glass with the pink champagne which Fanny ignored. Her large commanding figure promised corpulence later on. She spoke too loudly, laughed too often, her speech had no refinement—could not have. What can eradicate origins? She puffed the incense full in Nelson’s face, as another observer had said, and Fanny’s heart saddened, for he had always had too much of the Nelson exaggeration in speech and feeling himself to satisfy her wholly. Even before this she would have prayed him to leave boasting as well as boarding to others if she had dared, and now his loud voice and over-emphasis frightened her.

That dinner was Purgatory to her. It was full of interest to Mr. Nelson, who found all the enthusiasm and excitements highly to his taste, and so expressed himself when the guests had departed with loud hopes of a speedy reunion.

“Indeed, we have had a breath of the great world to-night!” says he, rubbing his hands. “I declare, Horatio, I know not when I have been so interested. Sir William is indeed a man of the first fashion, and her Ladyship a woman of unsurpassable beauty. What did my quiet Fanny think? Her opinion is always valuable.”

She saw Nelson’s eye furtively on her while she answered.

“No one can dispute her beauty, sir. It exceeds the pictures of her I have seen exhibited. But, if my opinion is asked, I think they are personages who move in a very different world from the simple one to which we are accustomed.”

“They move inmyworld,” Nelson interrupted angrily. “And as I have raised you to that world by my successes I shall hope you will do me no discredit with my friends. Much of what you rejoice in now you owe to the Hamiltons, for without them it could not have been accomplished.”

“I hope indeed we shall both of us have cause to rejoice!” she said, strangling a sob in her throat. “You must pardon me if as yet I am a little strange to such society and such stories as Sir William Hamilton gave me of Naples.”

He turned away, then coldly: “I’m dead tired after the journey, and to-morrow will be a busy day.”

He kissed her in the great dingy bedroom and she saw him no more that night. Not only that day but the next were busy beyond all words. He must visit the Admiralty, and returned chagrined by his reception. The truth was the Palermitan stories had poisoned all authoritative sources in England, and his arrival with the Hamiltons, following on the ill-judged journey across Europe, had disgusted many. Public opinion was slowly but surely ranking itself on Fanny’s side, and she, poor bewildered woman, did not know what to do with it.

Nelson had returned all-glorious, but the air was chill after the tropical praise of the Mediterranean. Lord Spencer of the Admiralty had been his friend, but now—he came back furious and flung himself into a chair, before Fanny, who was quietly knitting.

“The Lady of the Admiralty was as cool as ice to me,” he said, with sarcasm that ill hid his annoyance. “Lady Spencer, forsooth! I care little enough for it. Let them get another admiral to fight their battles when they want one! Yet she wrote to me after the Nile a letter that almost overwhelmed me with praise. Women—women!—the most changeable frivolous creatures on all God’s earth. I know but one who never changes; whose warm candid soul is always the same. Oh, if all were like that, what a world it would be! Do you drive out with Lady Hamilton to-day?”

“Certainly, if you wish it!” she said, with her eyes on her knitting. She, who knew the stories afloat, thought their association ill-judged, but what could she say?

“Naturally I wish it, while gratitude is of any consequence, and Heaven knows that you and all the world might learn from her kind heart and accomplishments which I have never seen equalled.”

Silence.

“I go to Court to-morrow,” he said after a while, “and in the evening the Hamiltons dine with us again.”

He went and returned indignant at his reception by the King. Fanny asked him kindly if all had satisfied him, and had a short “No” for her pains and then a diatribe against Royal ingratitude as contrasted with the Neapolitan condescensions. She heard later that day from a source she could trust that His Majesty merely asked after Nelson’s health, and without waiting for an answer turned away and talked with another officer in great good humour. It wrung her heart, and the more so because she knew the cause but too well. It had been very different with the King formerly. She could remember hearing from the faithful Davison how His Majesty had spoken of her husband “with the tenderness of a father,” and now, now, crowned with the glories of Teneriffe, St. Vincent, the Nile, and so much more, he was coldly put aside, and—good God!—for what a woman! She revolved her duty in an agony—to speak or not to speak? To refuse to be seen with her, or go meekly on according to Nelson’s orders? She could not yet decide.

The town rang with stories of the pair. Nelson and Lady Hamilton had been unable to believe that the adulation of Naples and Palermo would not cover everything. They could not be made to realize that it made their case worse.

The sincere Troubridge visited Miss Cornelia Knight and warned her of the storm about to break. She had taken refuge with Mrs. Cadogan but he assured her that was not sufficient.

“I assure you, madam, that no lady who wishes to escape general censure will associate herself with any connection of Lady Hamilton. I owe your mother a kindness which I must repay in this fashion. Lord Nelson’s noble character and glorious career may bear him scatheless, and I trust it will, but I understand the word has gone forth against Lady Hamilton.”

Miss Knight packed up her goods incontinent and fled the same day to shelter under the wing of Mrs. Nepean, wife of the secretary of the Admiralty. Emma tossed her head and grew even louder and more scornful of such fair-weather friends.

Indeed, the poor woman had her own terrible battle to fight, and though she feared Lady Nelson no more, she might well fear her own courage. She dared not leave London, for every eye would fasten on her every movement. She dared not leave Sir William, for that she had never done since their marriage and it must provoke his inevitable suspicion. Her battle must be fought with only her mother’s help, under the roof of the house they had now taken in Piccadilly, and in horrible secrecy and dread—a desperate throw for safety.

Let the initial error be granted, and much that appears detestable in her conduct becomes comprehensible. How could she give her cause away without ruining Nelson? How could she hide her secret but by clinging to Lady Nelson, to every person or thing which could help her to the assumption of innocence? And that she hurt her cause by her loud boastings and triumphings and public protestations of the innocence of her friendship for Nelson, and the bond between her and his wife, her breeding made her as incapable of understanding as though she belonged to another planet.

She grew more blatant and preposterous daily in her frantic efforts to conquer opinion, and little knew how Lady Nelson’s mute face of sorrow, dragged in her wake, spoke against her trumpet-tongued with all who had hearts to feel. As for Nelson, Beckford summed it up in a phrase: “She can make him believe anything she chooses.” She could—and did.

It was one evening when she was out, dazzling in her diamonds at the opera and Sir William was at home with a cold, that Greville came to pay one of his quiet visits to his uncle. He was still a bachelor. His ill success with Miss Middleton had disinclined him to expose himself to any more rebuffs, and a comfortable minor Court appointment really suited him far better than a wife. Especially with his views on the succession to Sir William’s property. He found him lying by the fire on a couch drawn up and comfortably screened against draughts, a catalogue in his hand.

“Rejoice with me, my dear Greville. The very best of good news! I have heard to-day that many of my precious cases were saved from the wreck of theColossus—some of the vases and pictures I most prized.”

Greville was sincerely warm in his congratulations. That, indeed, was a recovery that appealed both to his taste and his sense of money value.

“Yes, and it is my intention to have a sale of some of the objects. Not enough to crowd the market—something very choice and select. I know Beckford and others will be keen to purchase.”

“Certainly. But can you bring yourself to part with them, my dear Hamilton?”

“Must. I need the money. I am £2000 in debt to Nelson for expenses at Palermo, not to mention other and heavier debts. I am sorry to say—for I can be frank with you—that a spirit of extravagance possesses Emma which alarms me very much. And then there were our fearful losses in the Jacobin riot in Naples for which the Government ought certainly to compensate me. And my pension is not satisfactorily settled by any means.”

“True,” said Greville thoughtfully. “Still, it is a painful necessity. And the pictures?”

“I shall sell three portraits of Emma. I have so many, and they are attractive enough to fetch a large price.”

“No doubt.” Greville’s mind was turning to the Edgware Row days and Emma’s tearful anxiety if the stipulated allowance was exceeded by a shilling. She had certainly changed since then.

“I sometimes think you have never understood her,” he said. “Controlled, she has a fine character. Uncontrolled, a danger to herself and others.”

“True, but you are aware that as a man grows to my age his only desire is for peace. It is worth giving way in trifles to secure it.”

“In trifles, yes. But what are trifles?”

“Most things,” says Sir William with his little cynical smile. “Nothing really matters so much as we are apt to suppose.”

There was a pause. Greville could not echo that sentiment. There were things which mattered much to him personally which were bound up with Hamilton’s affairs.

“I have sometimes wondered,” he said slowly, “whether you are aware of the talk flying round the town about Emma’s intimacy with Nelson? It is accusing her in no way to allude to it, for we both know what talk is worth. Still, it is there.”

Sir William’s smile did not relax.

“Jacobin rumours from Naples and Palermo. Nelson is all that is honourable.”

“No doubt. But I assure you the scandal has reached an alarming height, and she is not meeting it wisely. This constant persecution of Lady Nelson—for so it is called—sets all sympathy against her.”

“Emma must pursue her own methods,” Sir William said coolly. “I have long ceased to be responsible for her actions. If I were to check her it would make storms in the house to which I am quite unequal. You remember her temper of old, Greville.”

“The devil of a temper, but I broke it.”

“I cannot, and I assure you it has gained strength with years. No—I am not for opposing Emma.”

“But, my dear Hamilton, do I understand that these rumours give you no pain? I do but my duty in telling you that you are represented as completely hoodwinked and under hers and Nelson’s influence. Heaven forbid I should say it is true, but that is the notion freely expressed.”

“And how many men in London are ridiculed in the same way?”

He reckoned off on his delicate fingers a score of names in the highest positions, which the present recorder, for the peace of great families, reserves in his own discretion.

“I am really content to suffer in such good company,” he concluded placidly. “There is an ignorance, my dear Greville, which is as protective as the shell of the tortoise. I have full confidence in Emma’s high principles and the extraordinary discretion of Nelson. And if I had not, I should act just the same. For God’s sake, imagine me as the wronged hero of a trial for crim. con. What have I ever done to deserve the suspicion of being such a fool as to incur it, and after such a marriage as mine? Consider my marriage, and say no more. I repeat that I have the usual confidence in my wife and my friend.”

Greville understood him perfectly. Indeed, all the old man said was true, and it jumped entirely with Greville’s own convictions. These things happened, and one met them in the way which gave one least trouble. There was no more to be said. Yet he asked one question.

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