THE PROCESS
BUT while those letters were speeding to Greville, Sir William, not
unobservant that absence appeared to make the heart grow fonder,
resolved to try the same prescription on his own account.
A visit to Rome was desirable and necessary in diplomatic interests, and
a little diplomatic reflection might not be amiss for Emma. He had come
to be so necessary a part of her daily life that it would be as well she
should realize how much she owed to his presence—an experiment he would
not have ventured earlier but felt might be well essayed now. He had
proved on that celebrated evening that chaste indignation might be
surmounted by the wish to shine, and it emboldened him.
They met a day or two later in the beautiful boudoir he had lately
fitted for her with great mirrors entirely covering the wall opposite
the Chinese-fashion semi-circular window to reflect and repeat the
glorious sea and sky beyond. It might indeed have been a palace beneath
the sea for light and shimmer, and she delighted to watch the lovely
progress of the day from dawn to sunsetting and twilight and moonlight.
She had caught the moon and every star in her own chamber, she would
say, laughing.
“See; here is Venus!” pointing to her mirrors, “and I can swim along
that moon-path to heaven.”
It was a room sacred to their meetings. The written sheets of the first
part of his book on Etruscan urns lay on the table and Emma—Emma!—was
reading them with him and learning every day to be more and more his
companion.
Now he came in quietly, with a certain gravity, very different from his
usual delight in that morning entry.
“I have a piece of news for you, Emma. I am going away for some weeks.”
The pencil slipped from her fingers. She looked up startled.
“Away!”
“Yes. It is necessary, but even if it had not been necessary I should
have gone. I think you understand the reason very well.”
“You are angry with me?” The quick breath caught on the words.
“No. It is rather you who are angry with me.”
It faced her with a dilemma. She looked down, and her cheeks crimsoned.
“I read your silence very well,” he went on calmly. “Your heart is not
ungrateful but your modesty was alarmed. You consider yourself
Greville’s wife in all but name. Am I wrong?”
She moved her head slightly, but said nothing.
“Well, that matter is for you and Greville to settle, and since we both
have written, for I wrote and conclude you have done the same, we shall
soon know his mind. Meanwhile I wish to assure you that you have no
occasion for alarm. I shall not offend in that respect again. You are
perfectly safe.”
Terror seized her. What was there in Greville to count on? What would be
her fate if Sir William were offended beyond hope? How could she convey
to him that her prayer had really been, “O Lord, protect me, but do not
protect me too much!” How could she make him understand her doubts and
fears? Impossible! Therefore she took refuge in a quiet grief which must
touch and plead for her.
“You are angry with me,” she repeated sorrowfully, “and what can I say?
Oh, if you could but see the warm true affection in my heart you would
not be so cruel to your unhappy Emma. Once you said I was your friend—”
“You are my dear friend. I shall never call you otherwise.”
She turned with eyes swimming in sudden tears.
“Do you call me your dear friend? Ah, what a happy creature is your
Emma—me that had no friend, no protector, nobody that I could trust,
and now to be the friend, the Emma of Sir William Hamilton!”
He was literally obliged to look away from her. How otherwise could he
persist in his purpose of leaving her to the cruel reflection that she
had wounded him. And yet it was necessary that he should go. He knew it.
Still, he trifled with temptation.
“And yet, though you feel this, you were shocked at the thought of being
wholly mine, Emma; bound to me by the tenderest ties?”
She looked down and muttered the one word, “Greville.”
“Yes, you are right. That brings us back to where we started. We have
written to Greville. I shall go away and leave you to reflection which
will deeply affect us both. There is no more to be said at present.”
“Oh, don’t go!” It came like an involuntary cry. “Won’t you miss me?
Won’t you miss accompanying my songs with your viola; and how can I sing
if you are gone? And the book”—she laid her hand on the sheets—“and
the garden? If you go I will go nowhere until you come back. It’s all
nothing to me unless you’re here.”
He wanted to improve on that admission but held himself strongly back.
“My dear Emma, I have called you my friend. I wish this matter settled
with reason and good sense, and to that end we must separate a while
that we may both reflect. I have my thinking to do as well as you yours.
This pleasant delightful life has drifted us into a situation which may
hold its difficulties for me as well as for you if I am not careful. It
will really be best we should meet no more until you have heard from
Greville. Let us postpone any discussion until then.”
It terrified her, but what could she say? Her mind was a tossing sea.
She wished to keep them both—the one as a lover, the other as an
indulgent friend—and it looked most alarmingly as if neither could be
trained into the position she wished him to fill.
“May I write to you?” she faltered.
“Certainly. And pray write fully to Greville. Your mind and his will be
the easier for it. The position cannot be made too clear. Now, we will
not meet except in public until I return.”
He got himself out of the room somehow, out of range of those imploring
eyes. And yet what they implored she knew no more than he. And though he
took her to Sorrento where she was the hostess at an informal
entertainment, the centre of all thoughts and admiration, she could not
catch a single responsive look from his eyes. His private band was there
and accompanied her in her latest, most brilliant song. The applause was
deafening, but he was talking to my Lady Diana Beauclerck before it
ceased and she could not see a single motion of his hands to swell the
uproar. She sang again some of the Piedigrotta songs—redolent of the
country and the people—this time in costume and with her tambourine,
and yet could extract nothing but the placid smile of general
benevolence with which he regarded all the company. Her fears grew
steadily, and by the time he departed before she was up, she was on
tenter-hooks.
She went and shut herself that evening into the room of the mirrors and
did the serious thinking he recommended, with a little note of farewell
from him in her hand. He was hurt and she had hurt him. How far had she
hurt herself in doing it? Could it be possible that she had been
foolishly, madly mistaken in her course throughout; that if she had
written to Greville rather on her triumphs than her sorrows, he might
have valued her more highly? Men did not like perpetual moaning and
whining, and Greville of all men would not bear it. Could that be the
reason why he had not troubled to answer her letters? If so—oh, if she
could but recall the last two she had written! And as to Sir
William—had she not deafened and besieged him with her Greville
lamentations and was not that madness also? What could have possessed
her to weary them both with such folly? Surely the merest beginner
should have known better; and she—the beauty, the genius whom all her
world applauded, who could not only delight but fascinate every man who
looked into her eyes—_she_ to behave like a love-sick country girl!
She would write to Sir William—yes, but letters that should neither
lament nor weary him. She would write to Greville—yes, but it should be
a song of triumph. Not a minute would she lose! Sir William first. He
should find the letter waiting his arrival. What could she tell him he
did not know? The convent—that would amuse him. She would prattle on
paper as she talked when she drew up her stool beside his chair and told
him the day’s adventures. And first, she began with his health and
happiness and comfort, leaning on them, but not too strongly—no
sentiment—and then passed on.
“I had hardly time to thank you for your kind letter of this
morning as I was busy preparing for to go on my visit to the
convent of Santa Romita and endead I am glad I went but
to-morrow I dine with them in full assembly. I am quite charmed
with Beatrice Acquaviva. Such is the name of the charming whoman
I saw to-day. O Sir William, she is a pretty whoman! She is 29
years old. She took the veil at 20 and does not repent to this
day, though if I am a judge of physiognomy her eyes does not
look like the eyes of a nun. They are always laughing and
something in them vastly alluring, and I wonder the men of
Naples woud suffer the onely pretty whoman who is realy pretty
to be shut in a convent. But it is like the mean-spirited ill
taste of the Neapolitans. I told her I wondered how she woud be
lett to hide herself from the world, and I daresay thousands of
tears was shed the day she deprived Naples of one of its
greatest ornaments. She answered with a sigh, that endead
numbers of tears was shed and once or twice her resolution was
allmost shook. And since that time one of her sisters had
followed her example. But I think Beatrice is charming and I
realy feil for her an affection. Her eyes, Sir William, is I
don’t know how to describe them. I stopt one hour with them and
I had all the good things to eat and I promise you they don’t
starve themselves, but their dress is very becoming, and she
told me she was allowed to wear rings and mufs and any little
thing she liked and endead she displayed to-day a great deal of
finery, for she had four or five dimond rings on her fingers and
seemed fond of her muff. She has excellent teeth and shows them
for she is always laughing. She kissed my lips, cheeks and
forehead and every moment exclaimed ‘Charming fine creature,’
admired my dress, said I looked like an angel, for I was in
clear white dimity and a blue sash. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘it would
be worth while to live for such a one as you. Your good heart
would melt at any trouble that befel me and partake of one’s
greef or be equaly happy at one’s good fortune.’ In short I sat
and listened to her and the tears stood in my eyes and I loved
her at that moment. Did she not speak very pretty? But not one
word of religion. There is sixty whomen and all well-looking but
not like the fair Beatrice. ‘O Emma,’ she says to me, ‘they
brought here the Viene minister’s wife but I did not like the
looks of her at first. She was little, short, pinched face and I
received her cooly. How different from you. We may read your
heart in your countenance, your complexion, in short your figure
and your features is rare, for you are like the marble statues I
saw when I was in the world.’ I think she flattered me up but I
was pleased.”
So was Sir William. He laughed to his heart’s content over this
effusion—Emma among the nuns! Certainly she would be a disintegrating
influence. He wrote back, encouraging her to go there as often as she
could, to go everywhere and send him these naïve descriptions—a calm,
friendly letter. Indeed, it ended, “Kindest regards to my dear friend
Emma, from,” etc. She wrote back that in his absence convent society was
the gayest she could endure—nothing where he could have been and was
not was pleasant without him. And then, “Do you call me your dear
friend? Oh, if I could express myself! If I had words to thank you that
I may not be choaked with meanings for which I can find no utterance.”
She found utterance, however, for many gay little descriptions, many
memories of the quiet happy evenings they had had, winged with music and
pleasant talk—evenings when her education was being carried on
delightfully, insensibly, by one of the most cultivated minds in Europe.
That, she knew, was his favourite pursuit now; the pleasure he would
choose in preference to any other. She remembered what he had told her
with such pride as the saying of his intimate friend, the great and
scientific Sir Joseph Banks: “I rejoice to hear she proceeds with
success in her improvement. Her beauty will, I hope, last as long as she
can wish; but her mind, once stored with instruction, will certainly
last as long as she stays this side of heaven.” Could it be wondered
that her head was a little giddy with such notices from such men? After
all, as she herself said: “I am a pretty woman and one cannot be
everything at once.”
Perhaps in any case the forcing process had been a little too rapid for
slow-footed common sense to keep up with it. The environment, too,
carried its own dangers. Not for nothing did Goethe note before quitting
those enchanted shores that “Naples is a paradise. Every one lives,
after his kind, intoxicated with self-forgetfulness. It is the same with
me. I scarcely recognize myself. Yesterday I thought ‘Either you were or
_are_ mad.’”
Emma, after a very different fashion, was in the same case. The general
adoration had, as Greville foresaw, gone to her brain; indeed, it was a
heady draught. She had tasted pleasures she could never now forego.
Greville—of course she loved him—but whereas the alternative had been
Greville or despair, it was now becoming clear to her that the chance
which gave her not only Greville but Hamilton was unique. It could never
recur. If she lost them both her life would run the ordinary course of
such lives as hers; another, other protectors; waning beauty; desertion.
She might, of course, make a marriage, even a wealthy one, but there
again Greville and Hamilton—her twin stars—had spoiled her for the
company of the average man of pleasure, the only type which would
consider her either as a mistress or wife. It is the truth of this
strangely mixed Emma that she loved to learn many things worth learning,
and with very little delicacy of her own she loved to be with those who
naturally owned it and to reflect it until she could half deceive
herself as well as them into the belief that she shared it.
Every day in Sir William’s absence she would order the boat at her
disposal and float about the _cuvette bleue_ of the bay, thinking,
dreaming in a sort of languor that threatened to overwhelm her now. It
was a respite, a lull before she was compelled to make that alarming
definite choice which must sever her from Greville and the past for
ever, for the alternative now was not Greville or despair; it was
Greville or Sir William.
A slow seductive enervation was in the very air. She wandered in the
famous gardens with only a staid old woman as attendant, who followed
decorously a little behind, and scarcely saw how many eyes sought the
lovely Englishwoman; and there one day the King himself met her, and,
overjoyed at the chance of her _cavaliere servente’s_ absence, ventured
to join her among the flowers. A warm languid day, the sun drowsing
among the blossoms and the swaying palms, what could be a more charming
occupation than to see how her Italian had improved since their last
meeting? Emma was all discretion, the monarch all ardour, and old
women—in Italy only, let us believe—not inaccessible to Royal bribes
which ensure their absence at needed moments.
The pair sat among the rosy oleanders, with the melting sapphire of the
sea in glimpses through divinest blossomed boughs where all the ancient
gods of Italy might have dreamed away the long warm hours. And Ferdinand
urged his love for the exquisite foreigner, and she parried and fenced,
and dared neither wholly discourage the Royal advances nor wholly smile
upon them, and so sat for an hour, basking in the miraculous truth that
she, the once forlorn and forsaken, had it in her power to captivate a
king. He followed her when she arose, beseeching, entreating, she
looking over her shoulder with the look we know so well in the
“Bacchante,” where for Romney’s inspiration she had assumed the arch
repelling-inviting smile that was to catch the King in its golden net.
But when she left the gardens she knew he did not interest her. It would
be useful for writing to Greville. It would convince Hamilton of her
pure fidelity when he returned. That was all the use of it. She
dismissed the Royal wooer with the final wave of her hand, and fell into
heavy thought again.
But she wrote of it to Greville; no tearful plaintive letter this time,
but rather a sinister triumph meant to warn him that longer delay and
hovering about a cold English bride would mean a loss that possibly
nothing could ever replace. Kings would not dispute Miss Middleton with
him. Royal dukes, like His Highness of Gloucester, would not creep to
_her_ feet for an introduction. He would have a commonplace dowdy wife,
no more; and even as regards fortune: If one can sing like an angel,
dance, pose, draw not only men’s but women’s frantic admiration, be a
European celebrity, may not money also fall in golden showers? She
believed it might. Consequently, we boast! We tell Greville sufficient
to let him imagine even greater splendours than as yet have transpired!
At Sorrento they were all “in ecstasies of adoration” when she
entertained there. “I left some dying, some crying and all in despair.
Mind you, this was all nobility and as proud as the devil. _We_ humbled
them! But what astonished them was that I should speak such good
Italian. For I paid them, I spared none of them, though I was civil and
obliging. One asked me if I left a love at Naples that I left them so
soon. I pulled my lip at him, to say ‘I pray, do you take me for an
Italian? Look, sir, I am English. I have one _cavaliere servente_ and I
have brought him with me.’ The house is full of painters painting me. He
[Sir William] has now got nine pictures of me and two a-painting.
Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in cameo for a ring. There
is another man modeling me in wax, and another in clay. All the artists
is come from Rome to study from me. Galucci played some of my solfegos
and you woud have thought he woud have gone mad. He never saw or heard
of such a whoman before. He says when he first came in I frightened him
with a Majesty and Juno look that I received him with. Then he says that
whent off on being more acquainted and I enchanted him by my politeness
and the manner in which I did the honors, and then I almost made him cry
with Handels, and with the comick he could not contain himself for he
says he never saw the tragick and comick muse blended so happily
together.”
Yes, Greville shall know, even if she gives the impression that wide
Italy is emptied of artists who have poured into Naples with no other
occupation than to stare at her! It is the last attempt to bring him to
her feet. He shall know that, before Sir William went, she—she, the
rejected—was the guest of honour on board a foreign man-of-war. No
less!
“We sett down thirty to dine, me at the head of the tables, mistress of
the feast, drest all in virgin white and my hair all in ringlets
reaching allmost to my heals. I assure you it is so long that I realy
lookd and moved amongst it. Sir William said so.”
If that does not move him, nothing will and if he thinks those silken
auburn locks have grown miraculously from knee to heel during that year
in Italy, then let him! Perhaps he has forgotten that little fact with
so much else.
That letter despatched, she turns again to write to Hamilton. When will
he come back?
“One hour’s absence is a year. My friend, my All, my earthly
good, my Kind home in one, you are to me eating, drinking and
cloathing, my comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love
you? Endead I must and ought whilst life is left in me or reason
to think on you.”
Certainly Emma can write with energy and spirit when she will; all the
warmth of a graphic pen, of a warm heart, is hers when she chooses to
express it. Sir William, reading the last, surprises himself by laying
it against his cheek, and murmuring, “Dear child; my beloved Emma!”
hoping and believing that this absence is teaching her some of the
secrets of her own shy heart.
And Greville? Greville receiving his, studies it with care, makes a
pencil note or two of the contents in his useful pocketbook,
and—re-encloses it to Sir William with an admonitory message. “Go on
circumventing Emma. She will surrender at last. It is not in the power
of woman to stand so prolonged a siege.”
And now, the time come, he prepares himself to write to Emma, with the
goal in sight. The message must be brief and vague, but must show her
clearly once and for all that it is finished between them. Miss
Middleton is half wooed, half won, he hopes. There can be no delay. He
writes back tersely, that she is “to oblige Sir William.”
She read this paper in the solitude of that lovely room which had
brought the sea, the blue air, indoors, to keep her company with the
sunshine, and in a frantic passion, half fury, half raging love, she
spat upon it, stamped her foot upon it, spurned it, a girl of the
people, all the veneer gone and rage blazing uncontrolled. She could not
write for a while, her hands shook so violently, every fibre of her body
quivering under the shameful blow. She swallowed a glass of water, her
teeth chattering against the rim. She lay long, half torpid, to compose
herself and could not—a strong and righteous anger at the mean trick
she had never suspected drove her like a ship before a gale. But she
would, she must write if she died for it, and then at long last, as it
seemed, she wrote.
“Nothing can express my rage. Greville, to advise me! You that
used to envy my smiles. How with cool indifference to advise me!
Oh, that is the worst of all. But I will not, no, I will not
rage. If I was with you I would murder you and myself boath. I
will go to London, go into every excess of vice till I dye, a
miserable broken-hearted wretch, and leave my fate as a warning
to young whomen never to be too good, for now you have made me
good you have abandoned me, and some violent end shall finish
our connexion if it is to finish.”
A long pause, and tenderer thoughts stole over her. Her hand delayed.
Must the last words be all cruel poisoned darts? Ah, no. She wrote again
slower, the tears this time falling in large drops like blood upon the
letter.
“It is enough. I have paper that Greville wrote on. He has
folded it up. He wet the wafer. How I envy thee the place of
Emma’s lips that woud give worlds, had she them, to kiss those
lips. I onely wish a wafer was my onely rival. But I submit to
what God and Greville pleases.”
God and Greville! She laid down the pen.
It is not too much to say that with that letter died the last remnant of
virginity in Emma’s heart. It had survived much, but that mean treachery
slaughtered it. It is another and a worse, though never a wholly bad
woman, who survives—a woman dangerously scorned who will dangerously
repay it to Greville and others. She wrote once more before Sir William
returned.
“Pray write, for nothing will make me so angry, and it is not to your
_interest_ to disoblige me, for you don’t know the power I have here. If
you affront me I will make him marry me. God bless you forever.”
A different woman, as may well be seen, but Greville did not realize it.
It must be owned he played his cards from this time clumsily both with
the girl and Sir William. He sent that wild threat to his uncle because
it would set him on his guard. He wrote with a cool superior friendship
to Emma, and quick as lightning she caught his tone, seeing all lost,
and replied in kind. Every nerve, every sense, was on guard now. She
would not injure herself by trying to make trouble between Sir William
and his favourite friend. No, though her girdle should burst, to use her
own graphic phrase, she would keep her temper, play her game and
win—and win. And Greville should see it and suffer! He had more cause
for annoyance than she knew. Miss Middleton refused him, an expected
post slipped through his fingers, and it was all in all to him to be
well with Sir William.
She helped him in her own way and for her own ends. Not a word of
complaint—a summer calm, kindly references to Greville, awaited the
uneasy Sir William when he returned to the Palazzo Sessa. And when they
were alone she pulled her little stool beside him, and looking up with a
smile half sad, half arch, said softly:
“I have my wisdom teeth at last, Sir William. You have seen the last of
the silly impatient Emma. She spread her wings and flew away far beyond
Capri while you were gone. It is a happy grateful girl now who will love
you forever and ever, who did not even know until your dear beloved face
was out of sight how little she could do without you.”
He stooped forward and looked into her face, scarcely believing:
“Emma, dearest and sweetest, do you mean it?”
“And more,” she said, “much more! My eyes are opened.”
He put his arms about her, dazzled, overcome, now that the moment of
surrender was upon him. Her glowing beauty bathed him, the loveliest
lips on earth were pressed to his, the curtain of silken hair fell about
them.
Let a man beware of the hour which fulfils all his wishes.