Captain Hoste should carry his news, the Admiralty despatches should go

through Naples, but nothing in heaven or earth should keep himself from

Naples, that he might thank, praise, bless her, who had made all things

possible to him and to England. Europe lifted her head and rejoiced with

exceeding great joy; India also, for he sent a messenger speeding to

Bombay by Aleppo and Baghdad to announce that the menace was crushed,

and Clive’s work perpetuated forever.

She was in the room of mirrors watching as she watched now daily, for

news from the Fleet. Her life was almost unbearably anxious. Sir

William, torn from the peaceful pursuits of years of dilettantism and

converted in spite of his aversion into a serious diplomat, was gravely

ill more than once from the strain.

It could not be otherwise, for he was hard upon sixty-eight, and the

whole world-struggle was centring in the Mediterranean so that Naples,

which had been the appointment _par excellence_ for idle delights,

became the most strenuous point of the pitched battle with the French by

sword and pen. The Queen was aged and querulous with unceasing cares and

the misery of a foolish husband undermining her at every turn. She made

her own mistakes, too, in plenty; of cruel harshness in dealing with the

incipient revolutionaries of Naples and Palermo, and foolish efforts

which weakened her cause. And every day she leaned more heavily on Emma,

and every day Emma responded with more feverish zeal. Mistaken also,

often enough, but with the clear purpose of breaking the revolution, and

aiding Nelson and England, and the Two Sicilies through them.

So she watched at her window, with Sir William, ill and a little

querulous also beside her, and saw a ship coming up the bay. The Queen

was at her Palace at Caserta; the city lay sweltering under the August

heat. She herself was enervated and half exhausted, suffering the

reaction of a fierce excitement and prolonged suspense.

Guns—the salute to the Royal flag at San Elmo, the forts replying. She

hurried out breathless. A ship that had the air of a battered sea-bird,

making harbour after long gales and struggles. A small ship—the

_Mutine_. She delayed neither at Capri nor Ischia, she came steadily on

and dropped anchor as near shore as possible.

Emma did not awake the sleeping old man, since the guns had failed to do

it. After all, it might be nothing, a trifle, and he needed rest; but

again and very quietly, she took his glass and watched proceedings with

a pitying glance first at the wrinkled face and dropped jaw beside her.

A boat putting off from the ship. How often now she had watched those

boats and tried to guess their errands!

She arranged her hair and went quietly to the reception room. It

probably would mean that Nelson had news of the French Fleet and a

battle was imminent. Still—still suspense!

Time is long when one waits, however one may control oneself, and though

she sat at first resolutely, presently she was pacing up and down,

quicker and quicker as the pulses beat faster in her brain.

What was that! A cheer in the distance!—the screeching foreign cheer

she had ridiculed with Nelson. It came nearer; it gained volume. Yes,

the people were screaming like mad. Naples was yelling for joy. For

what? For what?

She rushed to the windows. Two uniformed young men were walking,

swiftly, steadily to the Embassy, looking neither to the right nor left.

Whatever the cheers came from it was not from any words of theirs. They

spoke neither to each other nor to any one else, and still the crowd ran

after them, yelling, cheering.

She could bear it no longer. She flew to the entrance where many of the

Embassy servants, men and women, had assembled. And as the officers

neared it, she stood there, white and strained to receive them, both

hands clasped upon her fluttering heart.

“What is it?” she shaped with her pale lips but could get out no word.

They knew her. Hoste and Capel had both shared her hospitalities. They

waved back the crowd at the gates, and came running lightly up the

approach.

“Madam, a great, a glorious victory. The French Fleet annihilated.”

And as the words left Hoste’s lips, some strain seemed to snap in her.

She flung up her arms and fainted dead away, falling cruelly on the

marble steps before them.

They thought they had killed her. They carried her between them into the

long cool room of so many agitations and Sir William was awaked and came

down; trembling, incredulous. “Thank God!” he said, when they told him,

and even then could scarcely take it in. He ran and announced it from

the steps of the Embassy while Emma still lay in her death-like swoon,

and the populace dispersed, running also shouting to carry the news all

over the city. Then and then only, he devoted himself to her, and saw

her faint eyelids flutter, and the pale rose dawn again in lip and

cheek.

She was badly bruised from the fall. But what of that? Joy is a great

physician, and presently she was sitting up, propped on cushions with

the two eager young men raining their story upon her in reply to her

passionate questions. Oh, joy of joys, glory of glories! Could she write

to Nelson? Yes—for they must stay three days and then rejoin him with

the utmost speed. But she must take them out to Caserta—the Queen must

hear. Ill? Faint? she repelled the thought with indignation. Not an

hour, not a minute must be lost. “My cloak—my hat! Order the carriage!”

They could not stay her, a whirlwind would not have done that, and

English flags were ordered for the carriage, and a garland for each

horse’s neck, and she and Sir William with the two young men got into it

and were driven through the raving streets, she bowing, smiling,

pointing to them with gestures of Roman pride: a younger Volumnia, drunk

with joy, scarcely herself knowing what she said and did.

She has been censured for this. Persons of superior breeding have called

it “bad taste” and certainly it was exuberant and unrestrained. But

there are moments in life when taste does not appear the one thing

necessary to salvation. Naples must know its saviour. It must know that

the slight, pale sailor of their memories had met that Apocalyptic power

of Napoleon undismayed and had conquered. Rome might be in the hands of

the French, but Naples was free.

So they came to Caserta and the vast Palace, Emma leading her three men,

proud as an Empress, through the immense marble halls, and up the broad,

lion-guarded staircase. They were English. She was English. She would

speak for them. Italy might flaunt with her marble palaces, but England

was her protector.

The Queen stood in the great cool salon, the dim sun-shiny air sweet

with flowers. Two ladies stood behind her. Her face was worn almost to

attenuation with gnawing care and bitter angers. She had not seen Emma

for some days. There had been a lull since the visit of Nelson, and she

had had her own sore troubles with the King over the victualling

business.

Now Emma approached, walking magnificently; an almost visible light

encircling her.

“Madam, I bring Your Majesty great news, glad news! Your enemies are

crushed. The immortal Nelson has destroyed the French Fleet at Aboukir.”

Her voice never shook. She was in complete control of herself. “And

lives,” she added, “for fresh and greater victories, if they are

needed.”

Marie Caroline stared at her, as if unbelieving.

“Send for the King,” she gasped, and one of the ladies ran, almost

tripping over her long skirt at the door. He came hurrying, shambling

in, his large mouth open foolishly, his big hands shaking.

“News? What is it?”

The Queen motioned with dry lips to Emma.

“Nelson has destroyed the French Fleet at Aboukir. Thanks be to God

Almighty. Their day is done.”

The Queen broke down into wild sobbing, her ladies clustering about her.

The King, with a false joy illuminating his face, sprang forward and

clasped the hands of Hoste and Capel.

“And the Admiral? Is he well—the dear and great man?”

The whole room seemed to dissolve into a mere clamour of congratulation,

question and answer. The Queen clasped Emma about the shoulders and

kissed her cheek passionately, and Emma, radiant, laughing, rejoicing,

cried aloud her English “Hip, hip, hurra!” and every soul present joined

in it as best they might.

“Take me back,” she gasped to Sir William, at length, “that I may write

to our immortal Nelson.”

How she wrote the world knows. It was her victory as well as his. He

owned it, the Fleet owned it. What should she write, what words could

ever hold her swelling pride and triumph? Even yet, a century and more

away, they pulse and throb with a burning life-blood.

He had written to her too in that great hour. She held his letter in her

hand.

“Emma, for God’s sake, rest,” Sir William entreated when they got home.

How could she? She brushed him aside, and got her pen and wrote with a

hand that stumbled at her racing thoughts. She could not. She was forced

to lay it aside a day or two, by mere physical weakness.

“September 8th, 1798.

“MY DEAR, DEAR SIR,

“How shall I begin! What shall I say to you. ’Tis impossible I

can write for I have a fevour caused by agitation and pleasure.

God, what a victory! Never, has there been anything half so

glorious, so compleat. I fainted when I heard the joyfull news

and fell on my side and am hurt. I should feil it a glory to die

in such a cause. No, I would not like to die until I see and

embrace the Victor of the Nile. How shall I describe to you the

transports of Maria Carolina. She fainted and kissed her

husband, her children, walked about the room, cried, kissed,

embraced every person near her, exclaiming, ‘Oh, brave Nelson.

Oh, God bless and protect our brave deliverer. Oh, Nelson,

Nelson, what do we not owe to you. Oh that my swolen heart coud

now tell him personally what we owe to him.’ You may judge, my

dear sir, of the rest. The Neapolitans are mad with joy, and if

you was here now you woud be killed with kindness. Not a French

dog dare show his face. How I glory in the honner of my country

and my countryman. I walk and tread in air with pride, feeling I

was born in the same land with Nelson and his gallant band.

Little dear Captain Hoste will tell you the rest. He dines with

us in the day for he will not sleep out of his ship. He is a

fine good lad. If he is only half a Nelson he will be superior

to all others. I send you two letters from my adorable Queen. We

are preparing your apartment against you come. I wish you coud

have seen our house the three nights of illumination. ’Tis,

’twas covered with your glorious name. Their were 3 thousand

lamps and their shoud have been 3 millions if we had had time.

For God’s sake come to Naples soon. I woud have been rather an

English powder-monkey or a swab in that great victory than an

Emperor out of it.

“The Queen as this moment sent a Dymond ring to Captain Hoste,

six buts of wine and every man on board a guinea each.

“My dress from head to foot is _alla_ Nelson. Ask Hoste. Even my

earrings are Nelson’s anchors; in short, we are be-Nelsoned all

over. I send you some sonets, but must have taken a ship on

purpose to send you all written on you. My mother desires her

love to you.”

Nelson read that letter; his heart throbbing as he read. Who can

understand as she could—none, none, in all the wide world, for she was

a part of it. Dear Fanny! She will write fondly, and with a natural

pride, but this one—Emma!—why a man may see her heart is almost

bursting for triumphant tumultuous joy. She alone feels as he does.

Their hearts beat together. The beautiful exultant creature! Yes, Fanny

will write, but it will not be like this. Oh, to see her, to hear her

voice repeating his own transports. Every word of Hoste’s feeds his

flame of gratitude.

“By God, sir, she’s the loveliest, most wonderful woman in all the

world! She so touched off your doings that I declare I realized them

afresh in her words. Capel can talk of nothing else. She dazzled him.”

Indeed, Nelson himself was dazzled. He had never drunk so sparkling, so

maddening a draught, with all his triumphs. Europe poured her gratitude

at his feet. Her saviour! A peerage from his own England, with a pension

of £2000 a year and a gift of £10,000 from the Great East India Company

whose dominions and commerce he saved, an autograph letter and diamonds

from the Czar, a diamond feather from the Grand Turk with a sable

pelisse also from “that good Turban soul,” as Emma called him—but why

enumerate all the gifts and glories, indeed beyond enumeration? There

was one he coveted more than any—the look in those eyes that saw into

his own soul with perfect sympathy; the sound of that voice which for

him bore the sweetness of fame, the thrill of glory.

On the 22nd September he came to Naples in his battered _Vanguard_ and

no warning breathed from blue air and bluer seas. All was gladness.

Yet there a greater danger than any from any enemy awaited him. His own

heart. And hers.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GARDEN OF ARMIDA

IN those days every interest of Naples centred on the sea and the news

it might bring. The French were still occupying the republic they had

made of Rome and Roman territory and therefore the menace, broken on the

sea, was still very near them by land. But what did that count in the

whirlwind of praise and admiration they were preparing for the coming of

Nelson? He who had performed miracles could perform yet another.

Emma fanned the flame with all her power, and her power was not small.

Sir William was ill and tired with anxiety. He could rise to the

occasion on an emergency, but more and more the reins of power dropped

from aging hands and as they dropped she gathered them up, silently,

skilfully, and Nelson knew—and not Nelson only—that she was virtually

the British Ambassador in Naples. An amazing position for a beautiful

woman of thirty-three even if her antecedents had been those of one of

the English governing families, but almost terrifying when her life and

misfortunes are considered. And the more so because the French Jacobins

were interested in discovering any blot on the scutcheon of their

inveterate enemy. Their agents in London searched out every detail of

her life. Nothing was unknown to them, and then they set to work to

embellish what needed no embellishment. “The Neapolitan Messalina” they

called her and defeated their own object except in France, for even the

most censorious knew that she had been a stainless wife to Sir William;

never a breath to the contrary had sullied her. Indeed, her faith to

him, her deep enthralling gratitude for the great gifts he had given,

became her conscience, and not Lucretia herself was more circumspect

than Emma.

Perhaps she was not very severely tempted. There is a modern writer who

holds that there is no such thing as temptation in the usual sense of

the word, that when two alternatives are presented the mental struggle

is merely one of discrimination on grounds low or high according to the

mental status of the man, and that invariably he succumbs to the delight

that draws him most strongly, and can do no otherwise. St. Augustine,

skilled in the windings of the human heart, declares that “we needs must

follow what most delights us.” It may be a fatal passion wrestling with

the longing for the pure heart, the position that cannot be impugned,

the answer of what is called a clear conscience, but that the line of

least resistance must and will be followed is as certain as that night

follows day.

To Emma, besieged by many lovers, vain and light-hearted, in love with

success and admiration, there had been many so-called temptations since

the happy day which made her Lady Hamilton. She trifled with them,

laughed and passed on, for she discriminated. It might be pleasant to

have princes sighing at her feet, but she had tasted the insecurities of

vice and was far more passionately tempted by her great position and the

power, the enlarged stage it gave her. She had but to remember how

easily the bonds of mere passion are broken and the woman always the

scapegoat, to cling with all the rigidity of virtue to her honours.

And there was gratitude to Sir William, truly and deeply felt, to set

side by side with the knowledge that no other man in the world could

give her what he gave—the chance to distinguish herself in the theatre

of Europe. In other words, she had never as yet been tempted. She had

never seen anything she could for one moment weigh against all she held

in the hollow of her hand.

As to Nelson, commingled with his burning gratitude for her help, and

the strange and shining glamour that surrounded her in his soul, his

heart was faithful to his Fanny. He was the child of the parsonage,

trained to habits of prayer and reference of his daily concerns to

God—except, indeed, when matters went very contrary with him, and a

good round oath or two would speed the business; but then God would not

be hard upon a sorely tried seaman who admitted with contrition that he

was in the wrong, and who did his utmost for a country whose cause was

God’s.

Bad men were faithless to their wives. He had kept his eyes open in

foreign ports and knew, and he was aware that this was a subtle poison

which sapped the character in subtle ways. He was not analytic by any

means, and could have given no reason for it, but knew very well he

would sooner have his clean-living Troubridge or Collingwood beside him

when the French were in the offing than a ladies’ man like _X_ or _Y_

with a wife in every port. The two kinds of stability went together and

he could not tell why. He despised the lax livers. And since his country

and the service came first with him, he also had had no difficulty in

discrimination between idle passion and duty.

So with blare of trumpet and beat of drum and flutter of flags against

blue skies, the battered, victorious Fleet came slowly up by Capri on a

cloudless September day, and Emma, conscious of personal glories past

and to be which fused and melted in the rays of Nelson’s halo, prepared

herself for the greatest day of her experience. The Queen was ill, worn

out with joy and grief, and the Ambassadress would be the chief lady,

even surpassing in interest the Crown Princess Clementine. The

long-suffering Teresa was wild with excitement. Excellenza must shine,

must eclipse all others on this day when the Great Admiral, the saviour

of Italy, was coming to receive her homage. A dress had been specially

prepared; white, of course; with the pale blue sash which Emma still

preferred to all else, and across the shoulder and breast a broad ribbon

like that of the Bath with the words “Nelson of the Nile” embroidered in

bullion. Red, white and blue, the onlookers shall observe! About her

neck hung his miniature set in small pearls and painted by the artistic

Miss Cornelia Knight, acting at this time almost as her informal

secretary. She was “alla Nelson” as she phrased it, from head to

rosetted shoes.

When she descended to the carriage that was to take them to the Royal

yacht, Sir William looked at her with pride and pleasure. His fondness

was taking on the tone of a father to a favourite daughter as he aged

and she blossomed.

“I never saw you look better, Emma mia. Now spare yourself a little, I

entreat you. It will be a day of great emotions, and you know how these

excitements try you.”

He might well say that. A more highly strung, emotional woman never

breathed, and her nights had been restless and disturbed for weeks owing

to the troubles brewing in the city and fomented by the French Jacobins

who came and went. The Queen also lingered during the hot weather at her

Palace of Caserta and it was a long and weary way for the necessary

conferences. She promised, to quiet the kind old man, and they drove

down to the sea.

The King was waiting to hand the Ambassadress to the yacht. It was her

day, every one admitted that, and by a graceful waiving of precedence

she was led on board even before the young wife of the Heir Apparent,

the Princess Clementine, who drew back and refused to stir a step until

Emma had been escorted. It never even flashed across her mind how

strange are the turns of Fortune’s wheel, as curtseying she obeyed the

very great young lady. Yet it might have done, for that very morning’s

mail had brought her a pompous, somewhat too respectful letter

from—whom?—Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh of Up Park, congratulating her

as the wife of England’s representative on “the glorious victory of our

immortal Nelson” and her share in it, which had flown, magnified by

millions of tongues, back to England.

It was in bad taste in spite of all its homage, and a more sensitive

woman would have winced under it, but not Emma. It enchanted her that he

should know her triumph, should know he had cast her out not to infamy

and poverty, but to glory and honour beyond all his imaginings. He, a

man, with money and position, had made nothing of his life (she knew of

his marriage from Greville), he was one of the mere public. She, a woman

and cruelly handicapped, sat in the seats of the mighty, and at the helm

of great events. She showed it to Sir William, from whom she had no

secrets, and told him she had half a mind to answer it. He drily

recommended her to throw it in the fire and think of it no more.

Privately, she laughed to herself at the King’s forced gaiety as he led

her on board. He tried for a holiday face and with poor success for he

was still in the hands of the Anglophobe party and she knew it, and he

knew she did. But the day was glorious, the bunting a-flutter and the

eyes of Europe on Naples. What did it matter?

Emblems of victory flew from each mast of the Royal yacht; the awnings

glittered like Cleopatra’s barge. Lady Hamilton, reclining in the stern,

might have passed for the lovely Egyptian about to meet Mark Antony.

Music winged their way, triumphal odes composed by Cimarosa—every boat

that followed was vocal. Naples afloat to greet her Liberator.

And thus they approached the Fleet—dark, war-worn, huge—lying at

anchor off Capri. Even the music and shouting were stilled for a moment

as they drew near that tremendous spectacle and saw the wounds that war

had made in those stern sides. France had left her mark deep on them:

shot-marked, splintered, jury masts rigged where the others had fallen,

they clustered together, formidable still, but wearied, wearied. There

is no creation of man which so shares and reflects his emotions as a

ship, and these were neither rejoicing nor triumphant with flag and

music, but dumb, suffering, implacable. The flagship, “the poor wretched

_Vanguard_,” as Nelson called her, seemed almost to mock the mirth of

the Royal yacht by her dumb endurance.

But the yacht came alongside, and above them frowned the yawning ports

with their hidden hell of guns. The whole scene and its cruel contrasts

struck hot on Emma’s emotions. She stayed neither for King nor Princess,

she cared not what eyes were on her, what tales malice might spread. She

ran up the ladder, tripping on her dress, caring nothing, feeling

nothing, till she knew her foot on English soil once more (for every

English battleship is England) and there was Nelson waiting with his

group of officers, collected from all the ships, his face white and

nerve-shaken. She ran to him wildly, pale, transported with a like

emotion, and so, sobbing out half senseless words—“Is it possible? O

God, is it possible!” fell half fainting against him and could say no

more, shaking from head to foot, and clinging to him lest she should

fall at his feet. It was the last entry she would have chosen to make,

but she was blown in the wind of feeling beyond her control.

With Troubridge’s help, who stood near him, he supported her with his

one arm, and all the warriors closed round the Patroness of the Navy,

forgetting for an instant the slowly following King, and more alarmed by

this feminine weakness than by the French guns bellowing about them at

Aboukir; and quickly her colourless cheek regained its colour and she

blushed to find herself the centre of so much attention and begged them

to neglect her, and was the more assiduously waited on.

“I have not slept of late. It is that!” says she, looking apologetically

in Troubridge’s face. “I felt it as every Englishwoman must do.”

“Of course, madam, of course. What else? God knows I can sympathize. Not

a man in the Fleet but has slept the uneasier for the Admiral’s wound.

Look at him!”

She looked and again the colour ebbed from her lips. He was dead white.

Every little bone stood out in his face, and a fever-spot burned on

either cheek that made the hollow beneath cruel. His hair was combed low

on his forehead to hide the raking tear made by the piece of iron that

had struck his head at Aboukir and so stunned him that for weeks after

he declared he was scarce answerable for what he wrote.

If his ship was battered, so too was he. She had not known nor guessed

how sorely. There was not much of the man left to give for England

now—his arm, his eye, this wound! A pain like a mother’s woke in her

heart to see it, while Troubridge continued:

“The day we sent off Captain Hoste with despatches he was taken with a

fever, Your Excellency, that had very near done his business. Indeed,

for eighteen hours we gave him up. I wish to God he could have quiet and

nursing better than we can give him. For, though every heart in the

Fleet loves him, men are unhandy nurses, your Ladyship knows.”

She listened, trembling. The King was talking—talking—would he never

cease? Could he not see the exhaustion in the man’s face before him? The

Princess now. Good God, when would they have done? She edged up to her

husband as soon as she got a moment and repeated Troubridge’s words.

“Sir William dear, we must have him ashore. We must nurse him at the

Embassy.”

He was as eager as she. When did Sir William ever turn his back on a

friend? They took their chance when the captains were crowding about the

King, and then it was broached.

“Oh, God!” he cried. “If you did but know how it sounds to me! An

English bed, and quiet, and to be away from the sea noises and the

trampling, and the dashing of waters. My friends, ’tis half a health to

me to see your kind faces. It would be a whole health to have rest.”

She noticed him more nervous, more emotional than he had been. A blow on

the head—well, not surprising—but she would nurse him.

“I have letters from my wife that I must answer,” he said later. “No, my

dear lady, no use to beseech me not to write awhile. I know it tries my

head; indeed the ache when I write is almost unbearable, but she must

hear if I drop.”

Emma would have given much to see those letters and know if the unseen

Fanny rejoiced as she rejoiced. She did not as yet realize her

sufficiently to bear her any enmity. Why should she? A tame English wife

far, far away in a dull English village! Indeed, she seemed to have

little to do with their great concerns.

She got him on shore that evening after a day of excitement to wear down

a man all beef and sinew instead of the worn-out invalid she saw him. A

perfect bedroom was appointed to his service away from the hot September

sun and full of cool and healing glooms. His sitting-room was adjoining

where he could lie and watch at a safe distance the work in hand

repairing the wounds of the ships. Troubridge’s _Culloden_ was barely

afloat; his own _Vanguard_—her masts, by good fixing, might or might

not hold out until he could get her to Gibraltar to refit. In short, at

Naples he must stay awhile whether he would or not.

Officers came and went, but Emma shielded him where she could. He called

her his guardian angel. One or two of his Fanny’s letters he showed to

her and Sir William with pride. They should see how elegantly she

expressed herself, how firm her trust in the Providence which had

preserved and would preserve him yet. Indeed, those innocent wifely

letters might have been published to the Fleet, so universal were they

in the expression of a wife’s calm pride and joy in great achievements.

She thanked him also very gratefully and touchingly for her share in his

honours. “Baroness Nelson of the Nile”—had she ever thought she would

live to see herself so uplifted? She must tell him, too, of the village

rejoicings in his greatness. He would not despise these amid the

applauses of Europe. The dear old farmer by the parsonage had said so

and so. Old Goody Twoshoes had clasped her hands—he would remember! He

did, and it touched him like a far, faint echo from days in another

lifetime. For here was Emma beside him, cooling his temples with her

fan, her lavender essence, her sweet care that shaded the windows to

perfection yet admitted the soft Parthenopean breeze. Her voice

rehearsed the honours and gifts awaiting him in Naples.

“Oh, my friend, your glory!” she said, leaning her head back in the

armchair beside his sofa, a wandering sunbeam caught in her hair and

eyes. “We have just had another letter. No, you shall not read it; it

wearies your brain. Listen to me. The Grand Turk has written to King

George to beg you may wear the diamond feather he took from his own

turban to decorate you! Did ever any one hear of such a thing! I declare

I could turn Turk for love of the dear old gentleman. I believe it’s the

sign of sovereignty in Turkland. ‘Viva il Turco!’ says Emma.”

She cried it, clapping her hands for joy, and must needs twist up a

scarf into a turban and parade the room, pretending herself a favourite

sultana, and so lovely that had the Grand Turk seen her he must have

offered Sir William millions of piastres on the spot to buy her for the

Light of the Hareem, as Nelson declared.

“But I wouldn’t go!” cries she, sitting down, still in the turban. “I

had rather be the glorious Nelson’s nurse than mistress of the world.

Pray, pray, my Lord, if he sends the Turkish frigate here to

congratulate you in all the forms, send the commander to me that I may

entertain the good Turban soul.”

“Why, what would you do with him?” says Nelson, enjoying the little

comedy.

“Why, I would heap him with honours and kindness and send him home

convinced that an Englishwoman at all events has a soul. They say theirs

haven’t, so I’m told, but God knows I have, and I love him for the

honour his master has done to the friend of our hearts. So I do.”

“You wonderful woman—who ever doubted you had a soul!” He was looking

at her with all his heart in his face. “Why, it overflows in every word

you say and look you look. ’Tis easy to forget you have a body at all

for all it’s so beautiful, and think you an angel just touching the

earth and to fly away again from men not worthy of you.”

“Flatterer, flatterer!—and I that thought Nelson all truth and

simplicity.” She put her finger on his lip to silence him and he kissed

it. “But indeed, Nelson, I grudge at the poor beggarly honours from

England. They have not done for you what they did for St. Vincent—St.

Vincent!—a rush light to a star! Now listen! If I was King of England

I’d have made you, with one stroke of my pen, Duke Nelson, Marquis Nile,

Earl Aboukir, Viscount Pyramid, Baron Crocodile, and Prince Victory!—so

that all the world might stare when you was announced. Now—what do you

say!”

He laughed and laughed. She never tired him and her happy laughter was

his lullaby. Baron Crocodile, she often called him after that. When she

was not with him, she was planning the glorification for his birthday

which the Royal Family and all Naples would have whether he would or

not.

He snatched his minutes from these enchantments to write to Fanny and to

exalt the Hamiltons as indeed bare gratitude demanded. Their goodness no

tongue could tell, and if he was proud of late events his chief pride

lay in the fact that he was his father’s son, her husband, and the

friend of the Hamiltons. So he wrote.

Emma wrote also—a wife would naturally wish to hear from her husband’s

friend.

But she wrote without her wonted exuberance. Those _bourgeoise_ women

locked in their dull villages—what could they know of the great world

and its doings? And the little she had heard of Fanny convinced her that

she would be of the Queen Charlotte type of woman; prim, prudish,

inclined to consider that all freedoms partake of the nature of sin. She

wrote, therefore, warmly but guardedly and submitted the letter to

Nelson, who, quite unskilled in women’s instincts, was certain it must

give my lady the utmost pleasure.

Doubtless it ought. But Fanny, too, had cares mingled in her triumphs.

Many of the Jacobin stories of Emma’s past came to London and some blew

like thistledown to Norfolk, where they seeded. All her British

instincts protested against the Scarlet Woman enthroned in high places.

It was like the vile looseness of these foreigners. Sir William Hamilton

should be made aware of his country’s displeasure! And then came

Nelson’s first letter from Naples.

“She does honour to the station to which she is raised!”—Fanny’s eyes

grew hard as she read those foolish words. So like Horatio! So like all

men, dazzled by a pretty face, and forgetful of every essential! It

would have taken very much more than Emma’s warm but circumspect letters

to convince her that there was no danger in the Embassy and its

kindnesses. And Josiah’s descriptions—now a young man of nineteen—were

not reassuring.

“Lady H. is a beautiful woman, but not like you, mother. She is too

friendly, too noisy. I describe very ill, but I find no one can look at

anything else when she is there. Sir Horatio she has always in tow.”

That sufficed. In a flash Fanny’s opinion was formed. Had Emma written

with an inspired pen she could not have pleased her. What did _she_ want

thrusting herself in and complaining of the British Government’s

inadequate reward to her husband? “Hang them, _I_ say!” she had ended.

Vulgar!—was Lady Nelson’s comment—what one would expect. Unseen, the

two women were in opposition.

The galas at the Embassy would have infuriated her could she have seen

them. My Lady Ambassadress received every one of note with a lavish and

splendid hospitality which left Sir William looking ruefully at his

accounts when they came in. Indeed, Emma’s gorgeous notions of their

position began to embarrass him in any case. He feared the Etruscan

vases must suffer.

But the rapture, the glorious delight in her face, swept both him and

Nelson away. Indeed, within the limits due to an invalid, nothing was

left undone to do him honour and Emma with him. Sir William was

relegated to the background, a mere shadow of an ambassador, all his

authority merged in his triumphant wife. Emma’s best friend, not to

mention Lady Nelson, might have thought she exceeded the bounds of good

taste here. It was like the blaring of brass and scarlet and had

Nelson’s vanity not been nurtured gradually on a stronger and stronger

diet of her praises it must have spoilt his stomach. Let the truth be

told. Emma must have a master and a strong one to do herself justice.

She had had it more or less in the boor, Sir Harry; she had had it

certainly in the cool dominant Greville; and for years in her fear of

Sir William’s superiority. Now, the rein was slipping from Sir William’s

enfeebling hand. His age and her own marvellous achievement gave her a

loose. She had the bit between her teeth, and Heaven knows where it

would lead her. She flared like a bonfire in the pride of the Battle of

the Nile, and indeed more leaked out of her services, though vague and

indistinct, than was at all wise for the King’s ears, the Queen’s

safety, or the credit that should only have crowned Sir William. She was

overfamiliar with all.

As for Nelson, he was worn out and disgusted with all the fiddling and

braying; with all but her, his twin soul; but slowly, under her proud

care, the asses’ milk prescribed in the fashion of the day, and a quiet

sunshiny visit with her to Castellamare, he regained his strength,

though never perhaps the equanimity of the days before that dangerous

blow on the head.

It was night and they sat together in the room of the mirrors looking

out into the quiet dark. The lights of the ships were twinkling far off,

and a broad moonlight floated translucent on the bay. She wore her

evening dress and jewels, with a bandeau about her beautiful brow,

rimmed with pearls and inscribed with his name. Sir William had fallen

asleep for sheer exhaustion in his study, and Nelson’s face was haggard

with fatigue. Some officers were still in the next room discussing the

events of Naples and the near sailing of the Fleet.

“A wonderful, wonderful time it has been,” she said, leaning on the

window-sill, the moonlight and the low lamplight fighting for her

loveliness. “Oh, Nelson, it was the greatest time of my life. There can

never be such another.”

“And it was all Emma’s doings!” he said, looking into her eyes. He had

taken to calling her by her name as Sir William always did in speaking

of her to him. It had come to be an openly acknowledged friendliness.

“My doing? No. The world’s doing. You have the world at your feet. It

rings with your honoured name.”

“You put it there!” he said, and clasped her hand. “We can’t tell it

wholly as yet for the Queen’s sake, but whether I live or die, the world

shall know one day that the Nile was Emma’s battle. Not a gun would have

been fired but for my friend.”

“Ah, you say that now”—her eyes were like moonlight themselves,

moonlight-brimmed, soft, mysterious—“but you leave in a few days, and

you will forget. You will go back to Norfolk and be so happy with your

wife that all these days together will seem like a dream.”

“I shall never forget,” he said steadily. “There is not a thought I can

think in future but is inspired by you, bound up with you. You are the

most wonderful woman I ever met.”

“Your wife?”

“My wife is all that is valuable. I honour the ground she walks on. She

is a wife to make a fireside home. But you—God knows what you are—you

dazzle me. Honour. That is you. Courage. You again. Wisdom, daring—all,

all are you. I can’t tell you from England in my thoughts. You inspire

me.”

She turned and looked at him with moonlight eyes.

“You love England.”

“I love you,” he said hoarsely, the very veins in his wounded temple

throbbing.

“You love your wife,” she insisted softly.

“I love you—you!” A pause, and the moonlight flooding the room—it

bathed it, reflected from the great mirrors that brought the sea and sky

about them.

She took his hand in hers and they looked at each other. Not a word,

scarcely a breath. Slowly, slowly her eyes drew his—their faces were

close, her breath was warm on his lips, her lips warmer. They kissed.

Shattering noise in the room. A chair knocked rudely over. Josiah

Nisbet, wild with wine.

“Sir, you’re my commanding officer, and I know I lay myself open to

court martial, but you’re my mother’s husband, and I swear I’ll die

sooner than you shall carry on like this with another woman in her

absence, be she who she may. Madam, you should be ashamed for yourself.”

The shouting, the noise, horrible! Emma shrank back against the window

wordless—the drunken cub! Nelson caught him with his one arm as he

advanced roughly on her.

“Josiah, you’re drunk, give over, or I’ll send you on board under

arrest!”

But still he stormed on, shouting, raving, the suspicions of days taking

head in mad insults to his stepfather and the Ambassadress.

The faithful Troubridge heard it from the next room and dashed in.

“Nisbet, good God!—come away! My Lord! Madam! Take no notice! He is mad

drunk. Nisbet, if you don’t come away, I’ll knock you down.”

Still foaming out insults, Troubridge got him to the ground, and roughly

secured his arms behind his back. Gag him he could not, and still the

hoarse shouting continued. Emma, on a signal from Nelson, had slipped

out of the room, and Troubridge shouted for Capel and they dashed cold

water over his head and got him away in a half comic, half tragic frenzy

to the waterside and to a boat and so out of sight and hearing. A

burlesque in a way. Men laughed in the wardrooms of the ships when they

heard it, and not one but said the cub should be turned adrift after all

his stepfather’s goodness to him and endurance of his fat-head follies.

Yet also, there was not an eye but watched the beauty and the Admiral

the closer when they were together, not an ear but was lengthened to

catch the drift of gossip from that day on.

Josiah called next day and made his humble apology. He had been

overtaken by drink in honour of the great victory and could not recall a

single word he had said. Inexcusable, yet would the good Angel of the

Fleet forgive the unforgivable? With forced kindliness that covered a

pale rage and shame she forgave him for fear of worse, even wrote

friendly-fashion of him in a letter to his mother a few days later,

dreading what he might have said in that quarter. Nelson refused to see

him. The insult to his commanding officer covered that.

But what, what had he seen, was her question to herself. That could

neither be guessed nor opened up, and it left her face to face with her

own judgment. Believe it or not who will, that kiss burnt on Emma’s lips

more scorching than to the chastest wife in England, for it opened up

all the gulfs of memory. She _knew_. As a wretch, climbed from the

quicksands dimpling and quivering beneath him, knows their horrors,

their slow unfolding of the doomed man body and soul, where another who

has never struggled in them sees but the glassy pools on the surface and

fears to wet his feet, so it was with Emma. A kiss! A word! She knew

what dumb horrors might lie beneath a light approach, and trembled. But

it could not help her. When the quicksands have the man by the foot, and

a kiss a woman by the heart, what safety?

The day before the Fleet left, the lovers, for so indeed they were, met

alone in the room of mirrors.

“Will you remember me? Will you write?” he asked, dry-lipped.

“Yes, yes,” she whispered, and half choked on the thought of his going.

“We must write!” he said as if in half excuse. “There will be sharp work

at Naples yet, and only you to guide it and protect the Royals.”

“But I have you to help me,” she insisted, clinging to his hand as if

for life. A pause—then very slowly:

“Emma, did that cub sicken you at me, or reveal your heart to you? Have

you avoided me the last few days for love’s sake or fear?”

“Was I ever afraid?”

“Then it was love? You feared your own heart.”

Suddenly she flamed out glorious.

“I don’t fear my own heart. I love it because it loves my Nelson. No,

how can we love each other too much? We love the same thing, glory and

great deeds. We must love each other. But we will be true. I would not

wrong my dear Sir William for all the wide world—no, not even for you

that’s more to me than any world.”

“Good God—you’re right!” he cried. “We can love each other and let it

drive us on to deeds that will make the world look and worship. Inspire

me, for you’re mine, mine! But I will be true to my wife, and you to

your good husband, and we’ll set an example of duty as well as of honour

for all to see. My own, own Emma!”

He clasped her to his breast and drowned her in kisses—such kisses as

had never yet touched her lips, and she should be a judge. His heart,

his soul, his fiery honour, burnt in every one. And behind them stood

Fate, and laughed cruelly in her sleeve at the old, impossible attempt

to square the circle.

“We will make a compact,” he said solemnly at length. “To love each

other till death, yet never to step an inch beyond the line we draw now.

To aid each other in our war against these French devils, as comrades,

not as lovers, but as man and woman who love honour better than their

own sufferings. Swear it, my Emma; my own heart’s love.”

“I swear it,” she said, looking not at him but at the ground—and they

sealed their compact with a last kiss that melted their souls in one. Or

so it seemed to him.

And so the Fleet sailed from Naples.

PART IV

CHAPTER XXII

THE MERIDIAN

IT appeared to Nelson in the anxious days coming on that Heaven itself

had sent him the destined helper in his war against French domination.

Two things were clear as noonday to the perception of his military

genius: that Buonaparte if unchecked must rule the world, and that the

theatre of Armageddon would be in the Mediterranean and lands adjacent.

And presently there was a fresh and cruel anxiety about Malta. And to

all these matters, the miserable intriguing kingdom of the Two Sicilies

was the key from its natural position and its harbours. Then to whom

could he turn but to the marvellous woman who divined his thoughts even

as he thought them, who used her unique position in the Court solely to

aid his views, and who so believed in him, inspired him, that he could

not say where the one blended with the other nor whether a thing was his

own doing or hers?

It is easy to believe what falls in with one’s own hopes and wishes, and

it became a creed with the lovers that the interests of England and the

Two Sicilies were one and that together they must stand and fall. If

that were so then duty, honour, alike bound him to the service of that

puny court and people. For him, Europe stood or fell with Mediterranean

policy, and Emma, quick as intuition and quicker, saw it with him, and

undertook to imbue the Queen with the Nelsonic doctrine.

He wrote perpetually to her and to Sir William. He drew up a paper

outlining his policy, which she must study. Can the imagination at all

paint what it must have been to Emma—the Emma of the ghastly

memories—to find herself the trusted counsellor of such a man, at such

a time? It flattered her pride and ambition as they had never been

flattered yet. She saw herself the very arbitress of Europe, and in

those days, nothing, nothing seemed impossible to her powers. She flung

all her exuberant energies into his service, for what they dreamed

together he could execute, and who was to set a bound to their

achievement?

And some day—here the baser elements stirred in her—some day—well,

Sir William was old, ageing daily. There might be a future, splendid

beyond all hopes—no, no, gratitude, everything, forbade her even to

imagine such a thing. The present was enough. She had never known such a

man—how could she? And he not only loved her but saw in her his guiding

star, the inspiration deprived of which his own ardours must flag.

Sir William also fanned her flame. His long and hereditary experience of

diplomacy had given him a remarkable insight and he saw the European

problem as Nelson saw it. Every word he wrote to England played Nelson’s

game and emphasized the strategic consequence of the Two Sicilies. If

Revolution raised its head there, good-bye to hope for Europe. Sir

William indeed so devoted himself to the single task of rousing

intelligence at home that Emma may be said to have presided at the

Embassy.

It was well enough known along the Mediterranean coasts. The French

intelligencers wrote to their home government that unless “Hamilton’s

wife” was removed, there was little hope of gaining Naples. They were

right. “Le roi Caroline” was the true ruler, and she was Emma’s

mouthpiece. Day in, day out, Emma’s mouth was opened to show forth

Nelson’s praise, and the echo of the guns of Aboukir thundered Amen.

She wrote long diary letters to her hero setting forth all their hopes

and fears and lulling him and herself with references to Lady Nelson.

That was a part of the compact. Truth to their respective bonds, and

outside that, perfect comradeship.

She wrote: “The Queen yesterday said to me, ‘The more I think on it, the

greater I find it. My respect is such that I could fall at his honoured

feet and kiss them.’ You that know us both and how alike we are in many

things, that is, I as Emma Hamilton, she as Queen of Naples, imagine us

both speaking of you! I told Her Majesty we only wanted Lady Nelson to

be the female _tria juncta in uno_ for we all love you, and yet all

three differently, and yet all equally, if you can make that out.”

So she protested her loyalty to herself and him. She wrote to Lady

Nelson again, congratulating her on Nelson’s recovery, and his great

deeds. In part, the common desire of the woman who is stealing the

husband’s allegiance, to stand well with the wife, to spare her any

cruelty but the one; in part, surely, a nobler aim. If Lady Nelson would

but respond, would enlist Emma’s warm heart on her own behalf as well as

his! That would be a safeguard—if they could be friends. But no; Fanny

had heard the stories that were flying across the sea. She believed that

a more dangerous than Circe herself lurked in her den strewn with men’s

bones in Naples.

She replied coldly, briefly, and Emma knew that the watch-dog Suspicion

was guarding that gate with wary eye. It was not wonderful. Fanny knew

well there was a change in Nelson’s letters. She could set down

something to work, to wounds, and the presence of anxieties. But yet—he

had been in danger and anxiety many a day and oft, and there had been

time for tender protestations. There were none now. She began to

perceive what had never been pressed in upon her before, the grievous

danger of the long separation of husband and wife. Hitherto it had made

him cling more fondly to the thought of home. Now—she doubted—doubted.

She might well doubt. Every day of absence from Emma endeared her to

Nelson. It was home now where she was; not only the actual walls and

sweetness of daily intercourse, but heart’s home, where every word and

look was understood and re-echoed. He missed her horribly at every turn.

His very genius seemed to dwindle in her absence.

And in Naples things grew steadily worse. The French had been busy

sowers and their grain was ripening for harvest. It became gradually

clear to Emma and therefore to the Queen that the horrors of France

might very well repeat themselves for the Royal Family. Always the face

of her doomed sister Marie Antoinette hung before Marie Caroline, the

piteous decapitated head, grey and discrowned, with deep tear-channels

worn down the hollow cheeks. Neither royalty nor beauty, nor all the

kings of all the world had availed to save her from that fate. And could

Marie Caroline look at her own children, happy, unconscious, in the

gardens of Caserta without remembering the sin crying aloud to God and

man of the torture and degradation of soul and body deliberately

inflicted on her nephew, the Royal child of France, the Dauphin, by the

French Republicans? It is no wonder that even her courageous spirit

darkened into ashes sometimes and might have been quenched but for

Emma’s confident energy and the white overshadowing wings of Nelson’s

Fleet.

For in November he returned to Naples. He could make the excuse that his

orders were to protect the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but though he

stifled his knowledge as far as possible, he knew in his own soul what

influence drew him. What was a foreign queen to an English Admiral? Yet

he wrote: “I am, I fear, drawn into a promise that Naples Bay shall

never be left without an English man-of-war. I never intended leaving

the coast of Naples without one; but if I had, who could resist the

request of such a queen?”

He was perpetually with the Hamiltons during that visit, and every

impulse drew Emma to conquer his whole heart—if any of it were left

unconquered. He still confused his passion for her with his passion for

glory and that was her most powerful aid. It reacted in every way. It

made her private interests one with the politics of the Two Sicilies. It

made her indispensable to him at every turn of events.

There were the strangest moments of confidence between them in the half

hours they could snatch together in the room of the mirrors when

Hamilton was toiling in his office downstairs—moments of self-deception

on Nelson’s part which Emma half prayed might always continue, half

longed to break into reality as her life had taught it to her.

“My Emma, my own true comrade, never was such a friendship as ours in

all the world. We will prove that a man and woman may be friends, with

the deepest love to bind them and yet loyal as brother and sister to

every obligation of honour.”

And this with her warm hand clasped in his, her violet-grey eyes glowing

on him! She smiled, responsive.

“Yes, yes, it is true. We are not made of common clay, Nelson, you and

me. What others cannot do, we can. See, I kiss your dear eyes with never

a thought that your wife would scorn if she could know. I wish with all

my soul she were here that I might serve her and show her that Emma’s

heart is true as steel to her and hers. You know it is true. I would

have her know it also. What does she say of me in her letters?”

“She writes calmly but kindly. It is not her way like yours, my beloved,

to expend her heart in writing or speaking, but indeed she is a good,

good woman, and may Heaven desert me the day I cause her a pang that

could be spared.”

“Would she comprehend our friendship, do you think? Does she understand

how great and commanding is your genius? Would she despise your poor

Emma for her adoration of the gifts that have brought the world to your

feet?”

“I have never known Fanny despise a living soul. She is all that is

humble and kind,” Nelson said gravely, “and I hope beyond expression

that in days to come you and she may be friends and live in harmony

which will make us indeed _tria juncta in uno_, to use your own dear

words.”

“She answered my letters coldly,” says Emma with a moisture on her

flower-soft lashes. “It cut me to the heart. Oh, if she could but know

my heart’s true friendship.”

“She will. She shall. I have assured her of it in letter after letter.

But let us talk of the Queen.”

The subject was painful to him, until Fanny should indeed be brought to

comprehend all his motives. But Nelson’s simplicity blinded him to much

he had better have realized. Those who knew him best knew it and feared.

A vague rumour of what was called “the flirtation” spread along the

Mediterranean and reached old St. Vincent. He, knowing Nelson, dismissed

it with a shrug of his shoulders and the dictum that Nelson and Emma

were a couple of silly sentimental fools, no worse, but he began to be

on the alert nevertheless concerning the _Vanguard’s_ visits to Naples,

to be impatient of the Sicilian imbroglio and to wish that Nelson would

put the matter in Troubridge’s or some other such man’s capable hands

and there leave it. Nelson and Emma were born romantics, he thought.

They fed each other’s flame foolishly. It was all very well for himself,

old and seasoned, to write to her that he was her knight errant. It was

a very different and more dangerous matter for Nelson to play the part

in earnest. He wished Lady Nelson would come out and look after him.

Lady Nelson wished it very much more eagerly herself. She scented

danger—danger. She wrote and proposed it in tenderest wifely terms.

They had been so long apart. She craved to see him. He answered

hurriedly—impossible. She little realized the state of affairs out

here, or she could never make such a proposal. The only result was to

strengthen her suspicions of Emma and all her works.

The night before he sailed again, recalled by the commander in chief, he

told Emma this episode, conscious himself of a half disloyalty in the

very telling.

“She could not have come!” he said wistfully. “It was impossible. Yet

how natural to wish it. It touched me.”

“No woman who really considered your immense anxieties should wish to

hamper you for one instant. Oh, my Nelson, what is the gratification of

being together compared to doing your glorious duty? It half breaks my

heart to part with my soul’s friend. Yet I bid you go. I urge you. I

would not keep you with me if even my life depended on it, for what is

life without glory to souls like yours and mine? You have taught me

this. I owe it to you, and I won’t fail. I’ll never fail.”

He put his arm about her, so that her head rested quietly on his

shoulder.

“Brave Emma! Good Emma! My friend of friends. The only one in the world

that understands me. My soul is too great for them. They wound and

bruise it because they cannot understand. I should be given a free hand

in the Mediterranean to do what I would, and here am I kept in leading

strings like a sucking captain. Your Nelson has that in him that should

make the world crawl before him, if it could find vent.”

“And it shall—it will!” she whispered. “And I’ll help. They should make

you head of the Navy and put up a statue of pure gold to you in London

if I had _my_ way. Ignorant fools! They are not worthy of you. Who is?”

“Nor of you, nor of you!” he answered fondly.

Lovers’ bombast, but the worst thing in the world for a man of his

temperament and a woman of hers.

They could not do without the atmosphere of adulation that each provided

for the other. They both grew more impatient, irritable, tyrannous, to

all outside that enchanted ring. The Queen’s rank protected her, but Sir

William often had reason to remember Greville’s dicta concerning Emma’s

“little spurts of temper,” and Nelson on board his _Vanguard_ was more

impatient of the contradictions of events, more captious than his

officers had ever known him. It might be that terrible blow on the head

at the battle of the Nile, they thought, but certainly it made

difficulties. It was unlucky, too, that St. Vincent, who knew him

through and through, was already talking of relinquishing the command

and returning to England, and of Lord Keith succeeding him; a man of

colder, dryer nature; a martinet; the last man, in any case, to

understand Nelson’s complexities and give him rein where needful.

So the _Vanguard_ sailed from Naples, and Nelson felt the world cold and

inhospitable without her sweet flatteries and clinging yet inspiring

adoration. He wrote more and more briefly to Fanny. The wound on his

head, the pressure of business, were natural excuses. He felt himself in

a maze of thoughts and feelings she could never understand. Poor Fanny!

But he wrote incessantly to Emma after leaving, letters which contained

a meaning between the lines which only she could read; the stain of

kisses the sweeter because secret. No violent scandal had as yet arisen,

for half the Fleet was in love with her courage, gaiety, and the gallant

spirit enshrined in the fairest face that ever dazzled a sailor’s eyes.

She was the comrade of all; at their beck for any service she could

render; and from Lord St. Vincent down to the midshipmen, they swore by

her. It was still easy for men to believe that Nelson thought as they

did and no more.

But Emma knew better. She who, in Greville’s words, had always needed a

master and must have the bit in her charming mouth and the bridle and

whip to direct her, had now found a slave, and a slave who had conquered

the coming master of Europe. She knew it as every woman knows her power,

and her head swam with the knowledge. Good God! what should she do with

him? The wrong thing—inevitably the wrong thing.

Nelson’s judgment in naval matters was infallible, but set him on shore

and he was a man like another; and the more fallible because his

prejudices were so strong and the self-esteem the world and Emma

combined to flatter was stronger daily. How could he ever think himself

in the wrong? He and Emma knew the inmost facts of the situation. Who

should contradict them? They went their own way.

They flung the Two Sicilies into helpless war with France in the Roman

territory, and when the Army and the miserable King fled routed, there

was nothing for it but a flight for the Royal Family to Palermo.

She lived a romance in those days and throve exceedingly on the sparkle

and bubble of it. One may see her at the Royal Palace, daily with the

Queen, exhorting, almost commanding. Nelson had advised her of

Buonaparte’s design on the Two Sicilies. In Austria was no help; no, not

even though Marie Caroline’s daughter was Empress-Consort in Vienna.

Palermo, Palermo and patience, had become the only hope for Neapolitan

Royalty in these hard times.

“But I cannot, I cannot!” the pale Queen protested. “My dear friend, you

may see for yourself that a King who flees is lost. Never again shall we

regain our throne and Buonaparte has already a creature of his own to

occupy it. I will die here. I will face my sister’s fate from the

Jacobins.”

“If you die at your post, madam, I will remain and die with you,” cried

the impassioned Emma. “But Nelson advises flight, and did you ever know

the saviour of Europe wrong?”

“But how, how can it be done if I assent—which I will not do unless

compelled? You know, my beloved, my only friend, that we are watched

night and day. We cannot fly without our jewels, treasures, necessaries.

It cannot be done.”

Emma, who knew from the Queen’s lips all the particulars of the flight

of the unhappy King and Queen of France to Varennes and its miserable

failure, recalled here how all was near lost by Marie Antoinette’s

insistence that Royalty could not flee without little queenly furnitures

which attracted suspicion. But _she_ was not there to arrange it! That

and all else if one were Emma. Her magnificent self-confidence carried

her forward.

“Remember Varennes!” the Queen added sadly, her face sinking into utter

lassitude as she looked out on the bright Palace gardens.

“Remember, madam, that Her Majesty of France had no Nelson—and may I

add, no Emma.”

The Queen clasped her hand silently. There was a long pause.

“Madam, Your Majesty has not heard our plans. We hear almost daily from

Nelson. Can you suppose that he cannot carry all the treasures and all

the needs of Your Majesty and the Royal Family?”

“If he were at our disposal, yes!” said the Queen languidly. “But why

discuss the impossible, chère Miladi? Imagine our possessions conveyed

through the Jacobin mob? Imagine ourselves—no, no, we should be torn to

pieces. If I could risk it for myself, how could I risk it for my

children?”

Emma drew nearer, her quick eyes surveyed the room, the doors, for

listeners. The Queen sat by the window, leaning her elbow on it and her

chin on her hand; an attitude of utter dejection.

“We have no star. All fails with us,” she said. Emma stood, leaning

slightly against the window and as if idly gathering a rosebud or two

from the lavish growth outside. Her voice was so lowered that it carried

to the Queen’s ear, and no farther.

“Let us suppose, madam, when we recall the history of your sainted

sister the Queen, that Paris had been on the sea. That an English Fleet

could have come and gone at its will. That the Admiral had been devoted

to Her Majesty’s service. That he had had a friend in the Queen’s

confidence and his own who could act as intelligencer between them. Does

Your Majesty think the flight could have succeeded then?”

“Not even then,” said the Queen wearily. “The true difficulty lies in

conveying so many people, so many possessions between the Palace and the

ship. Do you suppose the Jacobin watch sleeps at night?”

“Suppose there had been a secret passage between the Palace and the sea,

madam, known only to those who could be trusted. What would Your Majesty

say then?”

The Queen fixed her bright haggard eyes on her.

“Is it true?”

Emma nodded, and gathered another rose or two and flung them down to the

Royal children below, calling to them and laughing, until the women in

attendance looked up at her bright face. Then she resumed, still

leaning, so that those below could see her careless attitude. She and

the Queen might be discussing the last news of the ballet at San Carlo.

“Madam, the great Nelson would never suggest a plan of which he could

not foresee the end. This secret passage exists. It leads from below the

Royal apartments to the Molesiglio, the small pier where boats can wait.

And Nelson will have his flagship, the _Vanguard_, in waiting, and

another vessel, the _Alcmene_ for stores. On my knees I assure Your

Majesty that there is no danger, if you will leave it fearlessly to him

and to me. And from their capital of Palermo, guarded by the British

Fleet, the King and Queen can dictate terms to the Jacobins in Naples.”

Another long silence. Then the Queen broke into a thunderstorm of tears

and sobs.

“I am the most unfortunate of queens, mothers and women. I have nothing

left in the world. All has failed.”

Emma knelt beside her and ventured to clasp the hand which lay helpless

on her knee.

“Madam, you have not lost all. You have life. You have power, and

Nelson—who cannot fail you. There was a queen more unfortunate by

far—your beloved, unhappy sister of France. Oh, my adorable, unhappy

Queen, act while there is yet time, lest your name should be added to

hers—as most miserable.”

The Queen agreed faintly, exhausted with grief, and the next day

retracted her promises. So it went on for days, with Nelson urging and

Emma pleading—pleading with reinforcement from Acton—until at last,

when Emma was almost worn out herself, the Queen consented to the

gradual removal of the Royal treasures and jewels as a beginning.

Possibly, she said, if they were removed out of danger she herself would

face the storm in Naples.

Even that was something gained, and Nelson wrote that the logic of

events would convince the Queen, for the French power in Italy was

gradually drawing southward.

On the fifth of December he returned with the _Vanguard_ and _Alcmene_

and the great event was at hand. And at last the Queen realized that the

time for decision was upon her.

Every day Emma was with her at the Palace. Every day priceless jewels,

part of the old heritage of Austria, the new glories of the Neapolitan

kingdom, were carefully inventoried, and carried off in her bosom, or

the innocent bag she wore in the prevalent fashion secured to her wrist

with a slender golden chain. She was perfectly fearless and it is

probable she had never enjoyed her position so much in her life. Every

day made her of more consequence. She was the pivot on which turned the

whole conspiracy of flight.

It must be here owned that the English daughter of the people had the

true English adoration of rank and consequence, and that her own

experiences had steadily convinced her that rank and power are the

indispensables of life. Who had cared for Emma Hart with all her beauty

and gifts? Who did not care for my Lady Hamilton, her Excellency, the

adored friend of the daughter and mother of sovereigns? The queendom of

the Queen became an obsession with her.

She began to believe that the English Fleet, England itself, should

pause from all other concerns to safeguard this princess whose favour

meant everything to the Ambassadress. The contact vulgarized her mind

daily. All was subordinated to the Queen—who in turn was to be guided

entirely by her.

The work of packing proceeded in secrecy and haste, and Nelson might

have been alarmed if he had seen the mountainous cargo being prepared

for his ships. Valuable works of art, treasures small and great, were

secured in chests and conveyed into the subterranean passage for

embarkation. During the seven nights between the fourteenth and

twenty-first, of December, under Emma’s own supervision, treasures of

almost inestimable value in more than money were carried off. Nelson

himself wrote to his commander in chief, Lord St. Vincent:

“Lady Hamilton from this time to the twenty-first, every night received

the jewels of the Royal Family, etc., etc., and such clothes as might be

necessary for the very large party to embark, to the amount, I am

confident, of full two millions, five hundred thousand pounds sterling.”

There should be no booty left for the Jacobins.

She had, on Nelson’s instructions, also warned all the British merchants

in Naples that there was a refuge for them on board any of the ships of

the Fleet now in the Bay of Naples.

But all was conducted in perfect security, owing to the advantages of

the secret passage, and only the vaguest rumours got abroad. Day by day

the King and Queen showed themselves on the balcony of the Palace,

bowing to the people, calm, smiling, happy. And the mobs dispersed

content, and the preparations went on steadily.

The great night came, and still Emma supported the Queen’s resolution.

Surely a more extraordinary page in history scarcely exists.

It was the twenty-first of December, the _Alcmene_ loaded with treasure,

waiting off Posilippo; the _Vanguard_ prepared for the Royal Family and

their crowding attendants, Sir William half frantic at the prospect of

abandoning the Palazzo Sessa and the Villa Emma to the plundering of the

Jacobins, and Emma heedless of that and all else in her preoccupation

with Nelson and the Queen.

She had vouchsafed a little consideration with Nelson to Sir William’s

art treasures, the collection of a lifetime, and a part had been

embarked on board the _Colossus_, but that was all the thought she could

spare from her more pressing duties.

It was a night of storm and rain, possibly the safer on that account,

but infinitely terrifying to fair-weather travellers. Marie Caroline had

written her last farewell letter from the Palace, to her daughter, the

Empress of Austria. “Once on board, God help us!” she wrote, “Saved, but

ruined and dishonoured.”

Yet no way out, for every hour Naples grew more dangerous. Afterwards

she wrote again to the Empress:

“We descended, ten in number, with the utmost secrecy in the dark,

without our ladies in waiting, or other attendants. Nelson was our

guide.”

But even the Empress was not told all the particulars. Emma wrote them

to Greville, and it is permissible to imagine the feeling with which the

cool, the sedate Greville would read the heights to which his heroine

had soared. Emma—Good God!

“On the twenty-first, at ten at night, Lord Nelson, Sir William,

mother and self went out to pay a visit, sent all our servants

away and ordered supper at home. When they were gone, we set

off, walked to our boat, and after two hours went to the

_Vanguard_. Lord Nelson then went with armed boats to a secret

passage adjoining to the palace, got up the dark staircase that

goes into the Queen’s room and with a dark lantern, cutlasses,

pistols, etc., brought off every soul, ten in number to the

_Vanguard_ at ten o’clock. If we had remained to the next day we

should all have been imprisoned.”

It was done, and as the last boat reached the _Vanguard_, and the Royal

fugitives ascended from the tossing waves, pale, terrified, rain-wet and

wind-blown, Emma, leaning over the side, to watch their reception, felt

her heart beat high with pride and triumph. Glory, even more glorious

than her imaginations, was gained. She had saved a King and in so doing

had proved her own courage and address to all the world.

The famous flight to Varennes of the unhappy Marie Antoinette and the

King of France had failed for want of courage and address like her own.

She had not failed. She had triumphantly rescued them and not only

themselves but all their family and treasures. No half successes for

her. It _could_ not have been better accomplished. Nelson had been her

instrument; without him it could not have been done; but she had been

the brain, the soul of the enterprise. She triumphed, triumphed, as the

Queen clasped her in her arms, seasick already, half fainting, and the

terrified Royal children clung to her skirts. She led them to their

cabins; she provided for every want.

She bestowed Sir William in such comfort as was possible, and had then

one word with Nelson on the heaving rain-swept deck.

“Emma, my angel, my wonder; there is none like you—none. Thank God for

your courage and wisdom.”

She clasped his hand, and he saw her face white and beautiful in the

tossing light of a lantern. Then she sped away to her duties, and he to

his. But together they had done it—a world’s wonder.

CHAPTER XXIII

CIRCE

THERE comes a moment in the fully unfolded maturity of beauty when any

change must be for the worse. There is a portrait of Emma about the time

of the flight to Palermo which exemplifies this in perfection. It was

found in the Palazzo Sessa and represents her seated in a large chair,

hands clasped, one of her husband’s treasured vases on a table behind

her. The beautiful hair is massed and falls in softest tendrils to her

brows, there is no smile on the lips and the eyes are half-closed as

though she were lost in a voluptuous dream—a dream of full summer with

the languor of autumn in the air. One sees very clearly in viewing the

lovely face why Greville called her his modern-antique and Sir William

his Grecian, for there is something of the imperial air which reflects

no soul in its beauty. So a Roman lady might sit, indolently watching

the sufferings of the amphitheatre, basking in the beams of her own

beauty.

This picture may be typical of much that followed the strain and stress

of the flight to Palermo. It was a time of experiences which would have

broken down any but Emma’s happy peasant robustness of health and

muscular strength. Such weather fell on the _Vanguard_ as even Nelson

declared he had never before beheld at sea—a furious and awful gale. Of

the refugees, every one was ill, and helpless—the Queen in complete

prostration, Royal children, attendants, all alike in miseries of fear

and illness. They had no beds, but what Emma’s forethought had provided.

But let her describe the scene herself to the astounded Greville, for

none can do it better.

“We arrived on Christmas Day at night, after having been near

lost, a tempest that Lord Nelson had never seen for thirty years

he has been at sea, the like; all our sails torn to pieces, and

all the men ready with their axes to cut away the masts. And

poor I to attend and keep up the spirits of the Queen, the

Princess Royal, three young princesses, a baby six weeks’ old,

and two young princes, Leopold and Albert; the last, six years

old, my favourite, taken with convulsion in the midst of the

storm and at seven in the evening of Christmas Day expired in my

arms, not a soul to help me, as the few women Her Majesty

brought on board were incapable to helping her or the poor Royal

children, all their attendants being so frightened and on their

knees praying. The King says my mother is an angel. I have been

for twelve nights now without closing my eyes. We have left

everything at Naples but the vases and best pictures, three

houses elegantly furnished, all our horses and our six or seven

carriages, I think is enough for the vile French, for we could

not get our things off not to betray the Royal family. Nothing

can equal the manner we have been received here [Palermo] but

_dear, dear_ Naples we cannot show our love of, for this country

is jellous of the other. Sir William and the King are

philosophers; nothing affects them, thank God, and we are

scolded even for showing proper sensibility. God bless you, my

dear sir. Excuse this scrawl.”

No doubt Greville hastened to the clubs with his exclusive information

for, for many reasons, the world was agog to hear the news from Naples.

It adds a touch of humour to the above that the first of the

philosophers was found by Emma during the dreadful voyage shut up in his

cabin and calmly holding a loaded pistol in each hand. “Good God!” said

she. “What are you doing, Sir William!”

“I am resolved, my dear, not to die with the guggle-guggle-guggle of

salt water in my throat, and therefore directly I feel the ship sinking

I am prepared to shoot myself,” was Sir William’s serene reply.

One may picture the astonished Emma’s countenance as she hurried off on

her thousand errands.

Palermo shone like the Heavenly Land after all these tragic excitements,

and the calm within the shelter of Monte Pellegrino promised in the

happy promontory the rest so sorely needed after the desperate voyage

across the Tyrrhenian sea. Shaded in its orange groves, with a winter so

mild that year that less happy lands might well call it summer, it

received the fugitives with a dreamy enervating warmth. In the garden of

the house engaged for the Hamiltons was a tangle of flowers wild and

cultivated such as even Naples could scarcely equal. Beds of wild mint

to yield its aromatic scent when trodden, the rosy wild gladiolus, thyme

and asphodel, were everywhere in glorious luxuriance, and by the tiny

stream that rippled down to the Fountain of the Sea Nymph, as they

called it, the wild oleanders waited with the wild anemones to give

their bloom in season. There was an oriental lavishness in the air and

the sub-tropical vegetation which corresponded with the Arabic form of

the name “Balarmuh” or Palermo. Emma, eager for change, delighted in the

strange new scene presented by the town and the lovely Conca d’Oro—the

plain of the Golden Shell, with its magnificent fertility. Her mercurial

spirits flew up as she stood by the gate with Nelson to watch the

Palermitan hawkers with their strange merchandise and bright dark eyes

fixed on the lovely Excellenza and the famous English Admiral. The

water-seller with his painted table and syrups stopped to look at her;

the sponge-seller, all draped in bobbing sponges, lurked near for an

order. But the two were engrossed with their own affairs, and the charm

of Sicily, except its flowers and balmy air, passed them by.

They turned into a secluded path, her hand on his arm. He looked

inexpressibly worn and wearied. Not even her voice could light the

depression that weighed him down, though none but she could understand

the reasons public and private that caused it.

“I must have rest or go down,” he said in response to her anxious look.

“If you did but know the troubles that crowd upon me. St. Vincent

returns to England and Keith, who will be my superior, is an arrogant

cold-hearted man as dry as dust who may be counted on to misunderstand

every one of the reasons that moves you and me. I have written to St.

Vincent entreating him to postpone his decision, but the die is cast.

Keith will never realize the consequence of our King and Queen to the

struggle with the French.”

“He must; he shall!” she said in the clear voice that always stirred his

blood. “We have never failed yet, and we won’t. You mark me! But,

Nelson, I have this to say: you are worn out and no wonder. Come and

share this house. Live on shore. You can do all that is necessary from

here, and then—then we shall be together always.”

He knew it was unwise, he knew that in another man he would have

condemned it utterly, but the soft air, the dewy eyes mined his

resolution and left him weak as water in her hands.

“But Sir William?”

She knew the battle won in his question.

“I will tell you the whole truth,” she said seriously. “All the troubles

in Naples, the constant entertainments and hospitality, have given Sir

William great anxiety about money. He is in debt. We cannot live here as

his position obliges us without heavy expense.”

He broke in eager as a boy.

“If he would let me halve the expense of the housekeeping—why, Emma, it

would be a Godsend to me. Not only the rest and the being with my own

heart’s friend, but it would save me expense and give me such a home as

God knows I never dreamt of. Is it possible that I could have such good

fortune? Oh, to hear your voice, to see you moving about the rooms, to

have your good old mother’s kindliness instead of men, men, men about me

always.”

She was sure Sir William would agree, she said. He came out presently,

walking a little lame with the gout and leaning on his stick, and was at

once adopted into the council of three. Why, of course, a most sensible

plan, but all “our dear Emma’s” suggestions were sensible. It would

indeed be a desirable easement to him in money matters. Nelson could

very well imagine what both his expenses and losses had been in Naples.

It was agreed, and Nelson could scarcely face his own heart’s joy

coupled with the physical prostration which conspired with it to deliver

him into her hands. The least agitation still brought on the cruel pain

in his head from the Aboukir wound, and the very sight of the large

quiet rooms filled with sweet wandering garden scents was irresistible.

That very day his possessions were moved on shore. The grass never grew

under Emma’s feet when she was determined, nor under his either, for

that matter, and lapped in the security of their compact it never

occurred to Nelson how the Nisbet scene would rise before the minds of

his officers who knew the facts, and of many more.

It certainly occurred to Emma, but she had her securities and feared

nothing. Ignorant of any public opinion but the Neapolitan, which took

such arrangements as a matter of course, and confident in the Queen’s

support, it never occurred to her that Royal approval might not carry

the same face value all over the world as it did in Naples and Palermo.

Her Queen was daughter to the greatest empress of history, Maria

Theresa; her Queen’s daughter was herself Empress of Austria—no

statelier lineage in all the world. What woman would not be safe who

could call herself the adored friend of such a sovereign? What was a

mere Queen Charlotte of England, a petty Mecklenburgher princess by

birth, compared to Marie Caroline of Hapsburg? She was to learn the

answer to that question very painfully later on.

In connection with it, she forgot also that there were several English

ladies in Palermo, great ladies, still swayed by English public opinion,

and inclined to look down upon a fugitive queen and her dissolute court,

with very different feelings from the reverence with which Emma looked

up to the throne. For the first time she was about to pass under the

sharp criticism of women.

It was her own fault. Had she been content to remain in the shade all

might have been well, but with Nelson living in her house, the Fleet at

her command, the officers perpetually coming and going in her

hospitalities, and Josiah Nisbet giving his verdict more cautiously but

still in no uncertain terms, it was very unlikely that either the

compact or the Queen would bear Emma scatheless through the scandals

that arose.

And yet again it was her own fault. Where she had been modest, gentle,

retiring, now that prosperity and fame had come upon her, she thrust

herself forward. She vaunted Nelson’s glories and her own and made them

inseparable. She sounded the loud timbrel like Miriam after the passage

of the Red Sea, and it was “I” and “he” perpetually. Her songs, chiefly

composed by Miss Cornelia Knight and herself, proclaimed his triumphs in

clearest soprano for all the world to hear, and Nelson would sit by, his

pale face fixed on her in quiet ecstasy, absorbing it all with a kind of

quaint innocence which those who understood him, like his faithful

Troubridge, pitied, and those who did not, ridiculed.

A pathetic, almost a horrible sight, if she could have been made to see

it, but, as Greville had said long ago, Emma had so much taste and all

of it so bad, that it was simply impossible to hold her in check unless

one mastered the beautiful foolish creature with bit and bridle, and of

that art Nelson knew nothing. He believed in her utterly and adored at

the feet of his Santa Emma.

Meanwhile the fame of the escape carried her name over all Europe,

conjoined with his. Indeed, it deserved renown. Energetic, courageous,

she was a shining figure for the popular admiration and certainly the

story lost nothing in her telling, or Nelson’s or Sir William’s.

Congratulations rained in upon them all, from the highest sources.

Europe was tired of the massacre of kings and princes, and Emma

Hamilton’s courageous action was set off by the dark shadows of failure

in France and elsewhere. She sunned herself like a tropically splendid

blossom palpitating in the ardent sun, and daily her opinion of her own

perfections strengthened, fed by the Queen’s adulation and gratitude.

Yet all was not peace in the house of the Hamiltons. The strain had told

upon Sir William. His talk almost night and day was of his precious

treasures of vase and sculpture lost in Naples and in the wreck of the

_Colossus_. His day was virtually done. He told Emma certain home truths

which drove her still more ardently into the arms of her worshipper.

“Emma, I am very uneasy at the expense we incur daily. I would have you

understand, my love, that it is beyond my means. Ready money is now my

need, and the vases I would have sold in England, and on which I counted

for a price to set me straight with the world again are lost in the

_Colossus_. O God, for the peaceful days before this abominable war set

all Europe by the ears! There are times when I would I were done with it

all and forever.”

“But, Sir William, my good, my excellent friend,” says Nelson,

intervening, “while I have you cannot and shall not be in any

difficulty. What don’t I owe to you and her Ladyship that no money can

repay? Name your sum and become my debtor, and be very sure you will

never be pressed either for interest or principal.”

There were the usual protestations, but Nelson, infatuated as he now

was, and truly owing the Hamiltons a debt beyond money, insisted, and

lent Sir William several thousands, besides paying the cost of upkeep

which, when it was inconvenient for Emma, fell wholly on him. This

scandal got wind also, and flew over Palermo, disseminating itself

throughout the Fleet to Lord Keith, and through and beyond him to

England.

Sir William earned the unpleasing name of _le mari complaisant_, and

rumour grew more and more venomous daily. Greville was a powerful factor

in restraining the worst reports and in propagating others. He had with

cool placidity accepted Sir William as a fool from the day he took Emma

into the Embassy, and could at least reflect with satisfaction that he

had warned him. But he never thought worse of his uncle than this, and

defended him in all companies on more grounds than one.

“His kind heart can entertain no suspicions, and amiable as Lady

Hamilton undoubtedly is, her laxity of good nature and all her

circumstances rendered her very unfit to take the lead as she is doing

with my Lord Nelson’s aid,” he said coolly to all who discussed the

matter with him. “She is—well, what you might expect! And I understand

that Nelson is the simplest of men apart from his profession and

entirely in her hands. By the way, my Lord, I hear from Palermo that

very high play is indulged in there as a variation to other amusements,

and that many of the chief houses are merely gambling resorts.”

“Does Her Ladyship play high?” asks the delighted listener.

“Why, I am told she has a perfect passion for faro and such games.

Certainly my uncle’s fortune cannot support high play and therefore I

cannot suppose high play. But fair ladies have means of supplying

themselves with the sinews of war.” So Greville, most skilful to hint a

fault and hesitate dislike. He dared no more.

It will easily be seen that no bed of roses was preparing in England for

the Hamiltons and Nelson when the time should come for return to the

north.

Meanwhile the voluptuous south lapped them in its enervating delights.

Nelson loathed, yet clung to it, for her sake. He hated the laxities of

the Court. They appeared to reflect their own black shadow on his love

for Emma, and make all of an equal turpitude. These dissolute men and

wanton women were hateful in his eyes. He would not have her near them

if he could keep her away from the pollution. And the gaming—the

wasteful senseless gaming; the loud empty laughter. His heart was heavy

within him, though for love’s sake he followed where she led. Had he

been a classical scholar he might have remembered that Sicily was the

fabled land of many of the perils of Ulysses. Near here the

much-enduring man had escaped from the devouring Cyclops, and in the

soft azure of the sea might still be seen the rocks the monster flung

after him in vain. Here the sea-nymph Galatea melted crystalline into

the arms of Acis; here Dis ravished Persephone from her disconsolate

mother to reign with him as Queen of Shadows and Darkness.

Many warnings were about him, but all unheeded, for Emma filled his

soul, and through Emma’s bewitchments, her Queen, until the sovereignty

of Naples became a clog on the honour of England and day by day he sank

deeper into his dream. It narcotized him. The ships came and went: ships

that formerly could never have raised anchor but he would have been on

the quarterdeck alert and keen; but now they sailed away on their

fateful errands and he remained in Palermo.

Napoleon slipped back through the English guard from Egypt and landed in

France to pursue his meteoric mischiefs, and still Nelson lingered. Men

talked of the Garden of Armida and the enchantress who held him there,

but none as yet had the boldness to bring him face to face with the

truth.

At last, Lady Nelson, trembling, miserable, noting the change and

briefness of his letters, unbelieving his excuse of weariness and want

of time—for when had he ever failed her before?—summoned up courage to

write once more with the definite proposal that she should join him in

Palermo. Every day reports reached her affecting his honour, and blaming

herself bitterly for long-delayed action she wrote, tenderly as a wife

should write and made her proposition. For when husband and wife are

apart time and distance and all the dividing influences of humanity

creep in between them, and the stream, narrow at first, widens into a

river and then into the boundless sea. The sweet, intoxicating spring

had come in Palermo when that letter reached him and rudely recalled him

to the realities of life. His coxswain brought it with a bundle of

correspondence less interesting, and when he saw the well-known writing

which had once been such a joy in lonely sea-watchings, his heart beat

with a cruel quickness—as it had done ever since the long chase to

Aboukir.

“Fanny!” he thought, and then, with a quick pang, half anger, half fear.

“What does she want?”

He read it, half lying on a long chair in the Sicilian moonlight, by the

light of many wax candles which streamed from the gaily lit windows of

the house. Inside were green cloth card tables and about them a rabble

of officers and the splendidly dressed bare-necked light women of the

Neapolitan Court, women whose histories he knew very well from the not

too squeamish lip of Emma. Beautiful, but none so beautiful as the

queen-rose who sat facing him, with a heap of gold before her and her

brilliant loveliness lit by the soft splendour of the wax lights. She

wore a dress of cloth of gold falling in supple splendour about her

imperial figure and diamonds in her hair and about her neck—the

diamonds the lavish queen had heaped upon her to the tune of £30,000; so

gossip said, and Nelson knew. She was not looking at him, nor thinking

of him at the moment. Her bright eyes were shining with eagerness; she

was laughing, talking loudly with the people about her as she plunged

her hand into the heap of gold and pushed her stake forward.

His gold! Well, thank God he had it to give her—who could wish to

restrict her little harmless excitements; she who could give herself so

generously when any great cause called upon her!

He read Fanny’s letter again. Fanny in that scene of riot and laughter!

Fanny, fresh from the quiet of Round Wood and her English simplicities.

Fanny in her silk gown, and the lace folded across her breast, and the

serene candour of her dark eyes. Impossible. Did she recur to him

tenderly? Ah, no—as something far, far away, known and loved in another

life, another and very different experience; a wandering ghost in this;

alien, unwelcome.

He folded the letter and put it in his pocket and watched the scene

through the window with absent eyes, almost feeling himself a ghost, as

a man does who watches from the night the glow within that takes no heed

of him.

How beautiful she was! How beautiful! So she would look if he were dead,

the waves tossing over his bones, the sea-wind singing its lonely dirge.

No—dear heart!—he did her an injustice, for all her heart was his—his

only. He looked where Sir William sat in a corner, half asleep in his

chair, the discontented lines stressed about his mouth, and a pang of

pity cramped him. Old Mrs. Cadogan had gone off to bed long, long ago.

It was near three in the morning. Presently she rose, in her long gold

gown, girdled about the bosom in the fashion of the day.

“I’ve lost. I can’t lose any more. That makes five hundred pounds. You

go on if you will. Where’s his Lordship? I shall go look for him.” She

pushed her chair aside and the others closed up as eager as ever, and

she came out through the long hall, in her satin shoes, and so along the

warm dry grass to where he sat under the orange boughs.

Oh, the scent, the scent of the gardens, mingled with the scent of her

hair. People must close their windows later in the year lest they die

swooning from the overpowering fragrance of blossoms, and that night in

the moonlight it was sweet as Eden and sweeter. He himself was a little

dazed by it—he remembered that later.

A dead silence outside. It was like looking upon a wild picture of

half-drunken riot to see the sight within—the hot eager faces, the

bare-bosomed women clutching at the gold.

“Did we look like that?” she said in a kind of astonishment. “It’s

better out here. It was hot, hot, in there. I wanted to come out and get

cool. It smelt of wine. This smells of flowers. Nelson—how pale you

are! What is it? Come out of this glare!”

She gave him her hand, and drew him up, and they wandered from the lurid

patch of light flung by the windows out under the cool green boughs,

moonlight-silvered, with gulfs of dark and light beneath them along the

garden paths, and the first faint rustle of a bird disturbed in the

boughs by their passage. Quiet, cool quiet and a great peace, and

sweetness like the breath of a goddess about them in dark night. Before

very long it would be dawn and the wan edge of light surrender the

secret of Mongibello, dreaming in the warm darkness.

“You’re disturbed and I know it,” she said very softly at last. “There’s

nothing passes in your mind but I read it like a book. What is it? A

letter from Keith?”

“No, not Keith. At least I have only read one letter. It’s from her,

Emma.”

“Her?” He could hear the quick-taken breath, the apprehension in her

voice. Surely that should have revealed their own danger to them. There

was no longer talk of the feminine _tria juncta in uno_—three joined in

one—where Lady Nelson was concerned. Emma had grown to hate her very

name. She was a malignant presence lurking in the dark ready to strike.

And who was she after all? There was nothing in Emma’s past to imbue her

with any respect for a mere church ceremony, except in her own case and

Sir William’s, which naturally did not affect any other.

“What does she want?” she asked at length, as a low hanging bough shook

a little spray of scented dew into her fair bosom. Nelson gathered the

offending blossom and laid it there all fresh and cool, against the

glowing warmth.

“She wants to join me here or at Naples.”

“Do you want her?” The voice was cold and distant—with suppressed pain,

he thought.

“You know,” he said, and that was all. She turned upon him passionately

in the scented dark.

“Nelson, if she came I should die—I should die. She would never

understand. How could she? She would come between us. You would never

love me any more.”

“I shall love you until I die. You are my breath, my life, my soul to

me. My own heart’s angel.”

“But you love her best.”

“Don’t ask me—I don’t know what I do,” he said hoarsely. “There are

things best left unsaid. I love you. I never knew what love was until I

saw you—until this minute, I think.”

They had drawn near the fountain of the sea nymph, half buried in

maidenhair and violets. Its soft warble was like the voice of quiet. A

few crystal moonlight drops fell from the jar she held in her cold

marble hand. How many lovers had her down-dropped eyes seen by her

waters in the warm Sicilian nights? But never a pair like these—never

before and never again. It was too much for him. Everything in nature

conspired to help her, and fought against his resolution. The world

faded before him, and only her face remained star-sweet against the

dark.

Perhaps he would never get home, never again see his offended Fanny? Had

he not done enough, toiled enough by land and sea to earn his reward?

Peace and love. He asked no more; and both, both were passionately

within reach at the moment. Better forget it all and dream away their

lives in some such paradise as this forgotten and forgetting. He put his

arm about her, and hid his face on the warm whiteness of her breast. Her

own face, lovely and indistinct in moonlight and shadow, blotted out

Heaven and earth for him and left only its own intolerable sweetness. He

ached for her. The cruel, the unslaked thirst was upon him.

The marble nymph was silent in her green gloom, only the water dripping,

dripping eternally from her jar, and a white cloud veiling the moon.

He that is without sin among you—

They were together until the faint gold rim showed beyond the sea and

the mountain rose coldly white against the dawn. The revellers were

still pushing the money frantically about when they returned, but Sir

William had vanished, exhausted, and the air of the great room was foul

and close.

Next day Nelson wrote to Fanny:

“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 the _Foudroyant_ with 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 his _Foudroyant_ to 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 the _Culloden_?

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 the

_Foudroyant_ to 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 XXIV

DESCENT

THAT journey 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.